Anyone watched it? Is it good?
I'm halfway through the first episode and it is looking pretty OK.
Premise
In an alternate timeline in 1969, Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov becomes the first human to land on the Moon. This outcome devastates morale at NASA but also catalyzes a U.S. effort to catch up. With the Soviet Union emphasizing diversity by including a woman in subsequent landings, the United States is forced to match pace, training women and minorities who were largely excluded from the initial decades of U.S. space exploration. Each subsequent season takes place 10 years later, with season two taking place in the 1980s, season three taking place in the 1990s, and season four taking place in the 2000s.
The US
and more importantly my Special Interest of hating the Space Shuttle made me drop it early in season 2.Space Shuttle hate as regards For All Mankind, containing spoilers for the latter
Saw a goddamn shuttle orbiter complete with big wings in fucking lunar orbit, closed the show immediately.
That shape, in that place, means that the showrunners were only ever interested in nostalgiajerking about amerikkkan exceptionalism, not in imagining a different, better timeline where space exploration continued and accelerated instead of being kneecapped by the Nixon administration and Congress.
The shuttle, as originally designed, was to have been one part of a space transportation infrastructure between the earth and moon, but was specifically designed for the earth surface to low earth orbit part of that infrastructure. The trip from low earth orbit to the moon was to have been done with a craft designed for that purpose, a craft designed never to fly in atmosphere. This is because pushing all the mass of the shuttle's atmospheric flight systems to the moon and back is obscenely wasteful to the point of total impracticality. It also has effectively no internal fuel tank. This means that once in space, all it can do is puff its way over to a space station or duck back into the atmosphere for landing.
And those wings! Those fucking wings! The show used the real version of the shuttle that flew, that we all know, so the stupid pig ignorant amerikkan hogs watching can go "ooh ooh I recognize it!" but those fucking wings were only that big because after all the cuts, NASA had to go hat in hand to the fucking Air Force to get enough funding to have anything at all to launch, and the Air Force wanted to put big ass wings on it, because they wanted the ability to launch from Florida, go once around over the poles, steal a Soviet satellite out of space, then fly on the big ass wings back down to California. Fortunately, this plan was so fucking stupid, impractical, and a causus belli for nuclear war that they never actually did it, but the shuttle was still stuck dragging all that extra wing area and more importantly, wing mass, around for its entire life.
In the For All Mankind timeline, neither the cuts to the STS program nor the resulting Air Force meddling would have taken place, so having the historic, iconic
Space Shuttle sitting there in lunar orbit just doesn't make any fucking sense, either from a rocket science or consistent alt-history perspective.Watched it, interesting concept, but too much US
. Ed Baldwin is absolutely insufferable by the end of the latest season.^This OP My partner and I watched it together. It was pretty fun at different times, some exciting plot lines and action scenes. The production value is really good imo, and there's some moments of amazing acting. But the US lib brain worms will bring you back down. We'll be watching the next season still, it's decent slop.
Edit: I forgot there's a few small points of good class analysis here and there, and the CIA at one point is shown to be the monsters that they are.
I forgot there's a few small points of good class analysis here and there, and the CIA at one point is shown to be the monsters that they are.
That's true but I felt they were overshadowed or glossed over too quickly in that last season. I really thought the writing was on the wall for a full season of class struggle and then the important bits were over before I knew it. The implications of privatisation on the people up in space was interesting, but often undermined by Ed Baldwin being a jackass. If he's not dead at the start of the next season I think I'm done.😅
I really thought the writing was on the wall for a full season of class struggle and then the important bits were over before I knew it.
Exactly this! This is what my partner and I were saying. It's clearly developing into something great and we might have a Red mars, then it's just hand waved away. Though I do like the part about the DPRK being the first to Mars and then being incredibly based at the station. The great man of history bullshit narrative about Ed is so frustrating, if there is a full class struggle flash point, they'll figure out a way for him to patronizingly flip to the side of the workers and act like he knew that was the right thing to do all along. Then there will be a statue of him on Mars.
Then there will be a statue of him on Mars.
Lol, that's how I'm hoping they start off the next season; just pan past a statue of Ed and let's move the F on.
Yeah, I will say that as much lib shit they had , even about the DPRK, they still had some of the most humane treatment of the DPRK as well.
I'm curious to see what they do with their spinoff about the Russians, but I'm also not sure I wanna trust them with any more of my time.
I'm curious to see what they do with their spinoff about the Russians...
I so hope they focus on the Soviet vision of dreaming of a better future and discuss the meaning and purpose of having unity in that vision. It'd be so cool if they cover Yuri G.
'For All Mankind' Renewed for Season 5, Spinoff in the Works at Apple
“For All Mankind” has been renewed for Season 5 at Apple TV+. In addition, Variety has learned the streamer has ordered a spinoff series focusing on the Soviet space program.
The spinoff is currently titled “Star City” and hails from “For All Mankind” creators Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert, and Ben Nedivi. Nedivi and Wolpert will serve as showrunners. The show will return to the beginning of “For All Mankind’s” alternative timeline, in which the Soviets are the first to reach the moon. But the show will then “explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain, showing the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers, and the intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space program, and the risks they all took to propel humanity forward,” per the official logline.
“Our fascination with the Soviet space program has grown with every season of ‘For All Mankind,’” said Wolpert and Nedivi. “The more we learned about this secret city in the forests outside Moscow where the Soviet cosmonauts and engineers worked and lived, the more we wanted to tell this story of the other side of the space race. We could not be more excited to continue building out the alternate history universe of ‘For All Mankind’ with our partners at Apple and Sony.”
It's lib as hell (very much so) but I keep watching it because it's the good(ish) timeline
It's crazy how much Apple produces that in no way make it on my radar at all like this has 4 seasons how have I literally never heard of it lol
They did that Foundation and Empire show, pretty mid, but a massive IP to get and there was like no advertising for it.
Ya I picked it up pretty randomly just thinking it was any old nerd stuff. Then I see it has this cool and unusual premise.
at some point it tips from fun slop to mostly boring/bad/insulting slop. but until then a few good moments here and there. I actually like ed and how kinnaman plays him, he seems like a realistically dunderheaded type of murrican and the series seems to take a sort of glee in making him suffer terribly
Watched the first season, it was between ok and good, not enough to compel me to watch the rest of the series.
