So there I was, watching an episode of the FX series “The Americans,” when what comes on-screen but a diagram of the Brilliant Pebbles space-based anti-missile interceptor:
For those unaware, “The Americans” is a spy drama set in 1981, with a pair of Soviet spies pretending to be an American married couple trying to dig up information on the Strategic Defense Initiative. In one episode, a report comes into their hands in the form of microfilm; one page is shown as if viewed through a little microscope, showing the BP interceptor and “life jacket.” Above is a photo I took of the image, direct from a TV screen. I don’t recall having seen this particular diagram before; if anyone knows the source, I’d be interested.
“The Americans” has a number of anachronisms. First, SDI was not proposed by Reagan until 1983. Second, Brilliant Pebbles wasn’t designed until 1986. Third, the “Illegals” program the show is based on apparently didn’t begin until the 1990’s, *after* the fall of the Soviet Union. Still, it’s interesting to see such things on-screen. I have provided a few such historical tidbits to a few productions, though so far nothing I’ve provided has been shown even half as clear as this (still to come: two large format SST diagrams that may appear in a pilot episode). Much earlier in the season there was a briefly-glimpsed “stolen document” on space-based nuclear pumped X-Ray lasers which caused me to perk up and wonder where they got it… until I noticed that the illustration on the cover of the report was of Skylab. It was something cooked up by the art department, it seems. Good enough for TV work, I suppose, seeing as how it was on screen for maybe one second, and, let’s face it, most people wouldn’t recognize a diagram of Skylab if they had an hour to examine it.