In one scene from National Geographic’s new limited series about naval fighter pilots, Navy Lt. j.g. Andrew Seepe speeds back to base in his T-45 Goshawk trainer following a successful skills test. High on the moment, he continues to accelerate until he’s about 100 over the prescribed limit of 350 knots.
“Seepe, don’t ride the lightning,” a concerned tower operator radios.
If this were a Tom Cruise film, Seepe would have chuckled and tried to spill the operator’s coffee. Instead, he sobers up fast, realizing his future career dreams are in the balance, and submits to an ego-bruising scolding and review without a word in his own defense.
“I got the yelling I deserved,” he confesses to the camera.
“Top Guns: The Next Generation” follows a handful of Navy and Marine officers as they take on the rigors of advanced fighter training at Naval Air Station Meridian, Mississippi. It’s the final — and most challenging — six months of training for these would-be pilots before they earn the coveted Wings of Gold.
The six-episode docuseries includes lots of the elements that first made the moviegoing crowd fall in love with fighter aviation in 1986, from the mind-melting aerial dogfight footage to that unmistakable tubular bell chord as familiar to “Top Gun” lovers as a Kenny Loggins chorus. (Also present are the wacky and wonderful aviator call signs: Viewers will be dying to know more about the instructor called “Lord Fartquad.”)
But no one here is throwing the NATOPS flight manual in the trash. While these pre-winging students are admittedly on more precarious ground than those at the Nevada-based Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor Program we know as TOPGUN, they demonstrate the culture that the high-stakes world of fighter aviation requires: one of precision and radical accountability.
We see Marine 1st Lt. Austin Claggett — whose mustache and angular build draw comparisons to Goose, Maverick’s wingman — humbled and abased after several flight parameter violations put his future in the course on the line.
We follow Navy Lt. Carissa Meinster close to despair after failing a field carrier qualification only to have to do the same 13 flights over again, but better and under greater pressure.
And we see the results of straying outside limits, as trainer jets subjected to too many Gs are pulled off the line for a meticulous damage inspection.
“You think it’s all Tom Cruise and ‘Top Gun,’” another trainee reflects. “The reality is, you’re just a 25-year-old kid trying to find your way.”
The cast of characters also differs from the testosterone-heavy stereotype. Two of the half-dozen pilots most closely followed by the cameras are women; one is a Black man.
Marine Capt. Stephanie Harris, the cool-headed class leader, is a self-described “hippie” who previously lived in India to learn yoga. While the producers doubtless sought to emphasize diversity of perspective — and fighter aviation demographics continue to show that women and minorities remain dramatically underrepresented — there are signs of change on the wind.
“I don’t think the best pilot today is the kind of fighter pilot we would have envisioned 30 or 40 years ago,” Cmdr. Justin “Duster” Estrada, commanding officer of Meridian’s Training Squadron Nine, said.
Seepe, who spoke to Military Times this month, had a path to fighter aviation akin to a superhero origin story: Originally rejected by the Navy due to an allergy to bee stings, he spent three years building an immunity to the venom through immunotherapy injections. He said agreeing to be part of the documentary project was a “pretty easy decision” in light of all the difficulty he’d undergone to reach that point.
While he said he felt the series sprinkled “some Hollywood” in the final packaging, he was pleased overall with the final product.
“I think they did a really good job of capturing the struggle, getting you really involved with the emotions each of the students is facing,” he said.
Amid the all-consuming and high-stakes syllabus of advanced fighter training, Seepe said, the cameras faded into the background. But, now at Fleet Replacement Squadron 106 at Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia, Seepe is realizing he’s about to be famous. Moments from the series –— such as when an exasperated instructor tells him ‘You like to die a lot … you love death’ following an unfortunate dogfighting exercise — will likely be repeated to him forever, he admitted.
“But I think part of the importance of how things were portrayed is, it shows I’m authentic,” Seepe said. “I’m honest about my mistakes … So I think it’s kind of a good peek behind the curtain.”
Tanya Shaw, the series executive producer, said the road to completing the project was full of obstacles, from the challenge of securing permission from the Navy to devising a service-approved solution for camera mounts that could safely allow filming inside the cockpit. The engrossing dogfighting and aerial maneuvers footage was further achieved with support from aerial cinematography company XBrand, which also worked on “Top Gun: Maverick.”
Shaw said one of the the moments of film she’s most proud of is a high-adrenaline sequence in which a student stalls out in a climb and spends a few terrifying moments trying to regain control of his jet as it begins to lose altitude.
“Even though I’ve seen it so, so many times, every time I see it, my stomach just kind of drops out,” she said. “I will find myself not breathing, waiting to see if he’s going to manage to start the engine again before he plummets to the ground.”
While tactical aviation enthusiasts are most likely to view this series as appointment watching, Shaw said watching the trainees dig in and devote everything to achieving their goal of flying had applications for any human trying to accomplish something big.
“It’s not just about what we physically do,” she said. “It’s about what we are mentally like.”
The first episode of “Top Guns: The Next Generation” premieres Sept. 16 at 9 p.m. Easter Standard Time/8 p.m. Central Standard Time on National Geographic and streams the next day on Disney+ and Hulu.
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