Disney execs were pleased to discover that Miramar could easily stand in for the “gloriously Low Rent” Edwards Air Force base. And the weather is so much nicer on the coast!

Last week, the California Film Commission announced that Disney+’s The Right Stuff, an adaptation of the Tom Wolfe novel about the American space program, would be filming its second season in San Diego, thus allowing it take advantage of California’s Film and Television Tax Credit Program. Showrunner Mike Moon expressed excitement over the move, saying he hoped the change of setting would help with his planned change of tone for the respectfully received series. “Season One, despite its drama over which of the Starry Seven would get to be the First Man in Space, was dull as dirt, or maybe mundane as moon dust, because it totally missed the point of the original Tom Wolfe novel, which was that the astronauts were not pilots, and therefore could not possibly be imbued with the Right Stuff. The Stuff that made the military’s test pilots members of the True Brotherhood, guys who could fly a rocket plane into the ether, ride it tumbling end-over-end back down toward earth like a ‘chimney with little razor blade wings,’ and still manage to land the damn thing and be at Pancho’s in time for Happy Hour, there to get smashed, get laid, and get maybe two hours’ sleep before getting back in the saddle the next day. So for season two, we’re turning back the clock to those early days out in the desert, 1949, when as Wolfe put it, ‘the girls began turning up at Pancho’s in amazing numbers. They were young, lovely, juicy, frisky — and there were so many of them, at all hours, every day of the week!…They were moist labial piping little birds who had somehow learned that at this strange place in the high Mojave lived the hottest young pilots in the world and that this was where things were happening.’ It was either that or send seven squares into space, and there ain’t no girls in space. We figure San Diego’s a good town for recruiting extras, if you take my meaning. Lotta bored young ladies stuck in the so-called purple tier. Should make for good television, and a good time to boot.”