Historian had one chance to pull off 'the greatest shot in television' and he nailed it one take

When non-fiction TV shows are filmed during real-life events, the host only gets one take to capture the moment in the best way possible. On August 20, 1977, when Voyager 2 was set for lift-off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, BBC was filming Season 1 of “Connections” at the same location. The episode’s host, science historian James Burke, had only one chance to synchronize his script with the moment of Voyager’s launch.

In 1978, when this scene was broadcast on TV, “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry,” people saw Burke explaining fascinating rocket technology just as Voyager 2 blasted off in the background. Lately, a clip of this scene has been going viral, with people hailing it as "The Greatest Shot In Television History." The once-in-a-lifetime moment in television history resurfaced after it was posted by BBC Archives in 2022 and later by @historyinmemes on X. Voyager 2 was the first of the twin space probes launched by NASA to explore the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. Today both Voyager 2 and Voyager 1 have traveled billions of miles away from Earth, and keep sending valuable information about the planets of the solar system. Similarly, the epic vintage clip of Burke continues to make rounds on social media as a perfectly timed shot.

“You see all three men had understood that certain gases ignite,” Burke says in the clip while walking beside a fence line of the launch station. He says that a thermos flask allows the storage of large quantities of these gases, safely, in the frozen liquid form, until one wants to ignite them. Demonstrating it with a silver thermos flask, he says that to ignite them, one needs to take off the top of the flask for the gases to evaporate.

“Now two gases do that better than any other,” Burke explains, “hydrogen and oxygen.” Burke is then seen standing in front of the cosmodrome from where a rocket carrying Voyager 2 was about to take off. “If you release those two gases into a confined space, with a hole at the other end of it, and mix them as you do so, and then set light to them, you get that,” Burke turned his head around and pointed at the spaceport. At that exact moment, Voyager 2 lifted off from the port, releasing clouds of smoke billowing in Burke’s background.

Ideally, journalists and actors practice their shots a few times before getting it right, but Burke had only one chance. If he had missed this chance, the epic moment would have been lost forever in time and the episode would never have featured this perfectly-timed shot. Burke stood there with his back towards the camera, watching the rocket zip through the air.

Over the years, this clip has received an astonishing number of reactions from people who just can’t stop playing on loop. “This is, in fact, the greatest shot in television. Dude had one shot at pulling this off, and he nailed it., nailed it,” commented @x-celsius5905 on YouTube. @1.4142 quipped, “At the end of each day, James Burke points at the sun and it sets for him.”