The Voyagers is basically a documentary that talks about the voyager missions in relation to the gold record which carries images and sounds from Earth endlessly into deep space. It tells us about the origins of this record and of the relationship that Carl Sagan had with a colleague that Sagan worked on the record with. This talk of relationships allows the narration to start to ponder on this love while also telling the story of the Voyager probes and then also talk about her own relationship. If it sounds awful and pretentious then you are right, because it totally has the potential to be and even when I describe it above I find myself wondering what on earth I found to like in this arty nonsense when all I was looking for was a space documentary.
But it isn't awful and it actually works pretty well although it does need you to go with it, because it does walk a fine line in the connections it makes and the places the thoughts go. However, to help you "go with it", it is done well enough to lead you rather than demand you meet it there. It may look and feel like a documentary, but to me it worked more as poetry because it engaging lyrically – not with flights of fancy or difficult wording, but more just with the delicateness of its thoughts and patterns that carried me with it. So it engaged me in the factual side and then deftly brought in emotion and feeling in the context of those facts, before then moving more directly into them but still not losing touch with the base.
This is all delivered over archive footage which again helps to anchor us in somewhere factual and familiar and I felt quite comfortable and relaxed as the ideas of love and perseverance of spirit in the face of the odds. Lane's mellow and concise voice is engaging and the result is something of a delicate, lyrical beauty even if it does walk a fine line and will not win over all viewers as a result.
