Apollo 8 was probably the most challenging of all the Apollo missions from a planning and execution point of view (short amount of planning and training time for the lunar mission, second manned Apollo flight, second Saturn V flight [and the first to be manned], no LM available for "lifeboat" contingencies, etc.), yet was utterly successful in meeting all its primary goals. By flying Apollo 8 over Christmas 1968 NASA put itself back on track to achieve Kennedy's mandate on the moon timeline.
This is another brilliant DVD from Spacecraft films. This DVD isn't a conventional documentary; rather it is a collection of all film shot on Apollo 8, as well as multiple camera angles of launch, training, and recovery events. All television broadcasts are also included, although the black and white picture quality is horrible by modern standards. (The fact that they had no monitor for the video camera onboard requiring the CAPCOM to continuously give the crew directions about where to point the camera becomes a bit distracting after a while, but that's the way it was.)
My favorite disc was disc one, and I was especially enthralled by the recovery video, particularly the audio track of the reentry as recorded by the onboard tape recorder. I had read the transcripts of the air to ground transmissions, but hearing the inter-capsule conversation in real time made the events of reentry more comprehensible for me. As an aside, I was very startled at how noisy the RCS jettison was.
This is not for the casual space buff, but serious space enthusiasts will absolutely revel in this set. I highly recommend this set, and thank Spacecraft films for producing this series.