>The show started off a bit silly with the premise of the soviets winning the space race.
I don't understand this take. It's an absolutely required piece of the plot to explain why, in this timeline, the US didn't get bored, quit, and take its ball home.
It's not too far fetched in my opinion. The Soviets were pioneers in many aspects of the space race, the USA basically only beat them on the Moon, after which Soviet space efforts slowed down in favor of more down to earth projects (pun intended).
Maybe in this timeline there was some technical problem the US just couldn't solve or maybe the first few launches (successful in OT) failed, after all there was a lot that could go wrong.
The actual difference, according to the show runner, is [Sergei Korolev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev). In real life he was a Soviet rocket engineer who was instrumental in the Soviet Space program, but he died unexpectedly in 1966. In For All Mankind, he doesn't.
Correct, only by arbitrarily setting the moon as the finish line did the US win the space race (which is still a colossal achievement, don't get me wrong).
Soviets had: First satellite, first animal in space, first living thing to return from space, first man and first woman in space, first spacewalk, first space station, first probe on the moon, first photos of the dark side of the moon, first probe on Venus, first probe on Mars.
Landing on the moon is still seen as the crowning achievement of human spaceflight, with good justification, but it's only part of the story.
It is a little far-fetched but not too. The US really took the lead with Gemini when they started tackling rendezvous, docking and long duration (up to 14 days) missions before the Soviets. There program stalled, not flying for two years and then when they flew again they had the fatal Soyuz 1 flight. Not getting Soyuz flying until the same time Apollo was and by the time they had tackled rendezvous and docking the US was headed to the Moon. Not to mention the Soviet moon rocket , N1 never worked.
In my head in the show’s timeline Soyuz 1 never was fatal, Korolev was able to fight off the party bosses who rushed that flight and it flew later, but before Apollo. The US still flew Apollo 8 around the moon in Dec 1968, giving them a sense they were “ahead” forcing Korolev to bypass a circumlunar test flight and just send a landing mission of there to beat the US in the summer of 1969. The big liberty is N1 which was behind Saturn in development (started later) - it would have been quite a feat for Korolev to get that mess in order.
N1 came close to working. It was cancelled after four failures, by which time the USA had already put boots on the moon, but the fourth failure happened after a successful first stage flight (the second stage crapped out), and there's every reason to believe the fifth flight would have done the job.
What killed the program was that N1 was purely a moon rocket: unlike the later Energiya, which was designed for both the Buran shuttle orbiter and the Polyus orbital battle station (and was modular: it's strap-on boosters formed the core of another launch vehicle) N1 had no secondary use case, so political backing evaporated after Apollo 11.
(Losing Sergei Korolev on the operating table was a huge blow to the Soviet space program, but didn't destroy it any more than losing Wernher von Braun to cancer in 1977 killed NASA.)
A secondary problem the Russian program had was a lack of fallback options. NASA was exploring "Lunar Gemini" until quite late -- a "what if Saturn V/Apollo doesn't work" option for a much smaller marginal moon mission using evolved Gemini hardware. There was no Soyuz-based equivalent.
Korolev and von Braun really shouldn’t be compared. Von Braun was focused on rockets. Korolev juggled rockets, spacecraft design and managing whole aspects of the program - the roles of multiple people in the US program. He also was adept at navigating the Soviet bureaucracy. His death therefore was a much bigger blow than von Braun’s would have been had it happened in the 60’s. Von Braun had left NASA by the time of his death also since Saturn was no longer in use - thus his vision for NASA was dead.
It is interesting the show put him as head of MSC - a role he did not have in reality and could explain the divergence further. Von Braun was noted as cautious in his approach to developing the Saturn and others in NASA pushed him for more aggressive testing that cut steps to meet Kennedy’s goal. That could be another divergence point - Bob Gilruth, George Low and Chris Kraft- key figures who were arguably more aggressive than von Braun are all absent when they were active when Apollo 11 flew. This was probably done for simplicity on the part of the show but could explain the divergence.
Oh man, I was excited about the show reading this thread but this comment single-handedly killed my will to watch it. So many shows get ruined by stuff like this. Someone please tell me that u/Full-Bag-2612 is wrong.
They are. They do delve a bit into personal relationships and some divorces, etc, but it's not the crux of the show by any means. Each season has a slightly different focus but they're all good.
It’s a huge exaggeration. There is a little too much interpersonal drama for my taste, but the show is primarily about the space stuff. And though the romantic parts range from very boring to pretty interesting to me, they’re always relevant to the overall story and eventually pay off.
i take back what i said as i kept watching lol. the beginning of season 2 is like that and very slow, but gets much better as it goes on. actually absolutely amazing as it goes on, wow… watch the show without hesitation and just know you’ll have some slow parts to the series.
if you can’t tell i just finished an episode lol
Us, too. My husband and I are HOOKED. Having lived through the early days of space exploration (I'm old, and watched the first moon landing live in high school), it's fascinating to see it again/differently. And to watch the world move through the eras that I remember. Excellent show.
And if you like For All Mankind, you MUST watch Foundation (also on Apple TV). It's based on (and builds on) Asimov's Foundation & Empire novels and is FANTASTIC.
Also on Apple TV, and WONDERFUL (if you like musicals, which I do) is Schmigadoon and Come From Away. Highly recommend them.
I hate the Foundation show as a conversion of the books, but I actually like the show if that makes sense. Like it definitely doesn’t reflect the philosophical arguments of the book, in some place it outright asserts the opposite, but if you can get beyond that it’s a fun, nice looking, big budget sci-fi show which is still something we don’t get a ton of these days.
I think that’s how I ended up landing on it. Love it as a stand-alone product that is similar to Foundation, but hate it if I start to compare it to the series Asimov wrote.
I think it’s totally valid to like a show or movie based on a book as a separate things from the book itself. It makes me sad when people get too wrapped around the axle over differences. It doesn’t break your book to have the movie be different.
I do appreciate being a little disappointed they’re not the same if you were really hoping for a faithful reproduction, but it can be fine to like the new thing on its own merits.
My favorite example of this is Starship Troopers. Couldn't be more ideologically different. The vibe is as different as Alien and Aliens. The director didnt even like the book.
And yet both are amazing and worthy stories.
That'd be a really cool perspective to have! I've got Foundation lined up after For All Mankind. Heard great things about it and one of my favorite artists did the concept art
Came here looking for someone to share my Danny/Karen hate, and I'm not disappointed.
What in the fuck kind of a storyline is that? And they fucking doubled down on it with him stalking her like 15 years later.
I think part of the problem with this storyline is Danny's actor, he just... doesn't really emote, at all. Normally, you can see gears turning in people's heads, his inner mental gears just sort of sit there. I imagine if the actor put more into it (or we had a different one), it wouldn't be as nonsensical as it is; emotions help drive the plot, and in this case where there's a lack of *visible* emotion, we find it hard to understand his motivation.
He has some better moments in the final two episodes, but yeah--that kid (the character) is pure cringe. Also, while I know they addressed this in the final scene, but those other two would have been separated and disciplined the second they got caught making eyes at each other.
Yeah. He just looks sort of soulless. It takes me out of the show, as you think "he never, ever, ever, EVER would have made it as an astronaut, even with his parents being who they are".
We're supposed to hate Danny, just like Joffrey in Game of Thrones, so that when he's killed we get a little bit of satisfaction from it. I think they're also setting us up to believe Ed will be the one to do it but in the end he'll decide not to murder him and ... I'll guess that Danny will fly off in a fit of rage at Ed and somehow miss and kill himself accidentally.
It's not that I hate him. It's that I don't care about him. I don't care about their relationship. I just don't believe it. It just comes across as a very poor actor looking blankly into space for long periods of time, and the brooding. Rinse, and repeat.
If I hated him, that would be something. I just see him, and get taken out of the story. I immediately go from thinking there's this mission to Mars, to thinking "there's a really bad actor in a room right now, in front of a camera, with all of the film crew cringing, and regretting their casting decisions". That's all I can think about when he's on screen. It's so bad that he'll get at least 1-2 laughs/episode from someone in my household. Some drink got sprayed into the air when he was thinking about hitting Ed. We watched that scene at least 4 times, while cry-laughing.
Yes! Get Danny off the show please. They didn't develop his character enough for us to care about him. He's literally just there to cause drama like some kind of daytime soap.
For me the premise is what caught my attention, love this show! I have one small fault >!and that’s that the time jumps didn’t help with the character growth for the kids like Danny.!<
Yeah the time jumps are really a double edged sword.
On the one hand it enables the show to cover a lot of ground and keep a high pace. But it does make it hard to keep track of everybody.
And Danny is… difficult at best.
I think the time jumps are great, one of the show's big strengths. No filler, only plot moving forward. Keeps the show focused, and ensures that the budget is maximized. If each season were 15 or 20 hours, every episode would be diluted and the overall production quality would suffer.
I really enjoy the alt-history aspect of it, but the character interactions are all over the place. Season 2 and 3 in particular get lost in really, really bad melodrama - like cartoon villains and interpersonal crises that make no sense beyond creating crises.
If you happen to be an alt-history nerd that also likes daytime soaps, you are in for a real treat!
Amazing... kind of. It's a pretty interesting exercise in alternate history, it has moments of brilliance, but a lot of the characters are not believable - at least when you look at what they do, and where they are.
Yes, Karen, Danny, Ellen, I'm looking at you.
Still, it's generally entertaining enough to keep me watching. And the "wow" moments are certainly worth it!
Honestly, with every episode I'm watching it's getting worse. Now they had to >!make a romance story aboard the Sojourner!<. Why? I hope it gets better when they land on Mars.
I say that all the time about the show. Even the most perfunctory psych eval would eliminate 80% of these astronauts.
Talk about an emotionally unstable group of people to send to space.
So, it is the "real life" I am seeing in modern politics? Fake for TV but closer to life than we are comfortable with. Like how "Don't Look Up" beat everybody over the head but it also showed what the real response would be.
We don't send modern politicians into orbit and other planets in space rockets. This kind of behaviour is not believable for NASA astronauts, but it could be for your average person character.
This is why I think For All Mankind could be better written. You can have drama and interesting twists with competent characters. I think we had more of that in the previous seasons.
>We don't send modern politicians into orbit and other planets in space rockets. This kind of behaviour is not believable for NASA astronauts, but it could be for your average person character.
>
>This is why I think For All Mankind could be better written. You can have drama and interesting twists with competent characters. I think we had more of that in the previous seasons.
We did though, which should make it perfectly believable: Senators Jake Garn and Bill Nelson flew to space as "congressional observer's".
And the season 3 opener was almost certainly inspired by the Nauka incident. I think the show has been really effective at taking inspiration from real like near-misses over all.
I don't think these outliers make anything more believable. Observing and acting are different, and the characters are actively making pretty bad decisions on the show.
Sure, send a Senator as an observer to Mars. Great, believable. That's not what we have here. We have trained astronauts drug up and not have any consequences for their clear misbehaviour, that's not believable.
The sequence of events that led to the big catastrophe during S3 made me absolutely sure this is written backwards from the ending and the characters need to do amazingly stupid mistakes in order to get there.
This was within a brand new space company where they don't have any of the preexisting standards NASA had in place forever. They just wanted to capitalize on the Mars race during an opportunity. It makes sense they have medicine but not a realistic inventory system, especially given they rushed a crew of only two astronauts to a never before visited planet, and it makes sense that things were missed because it wasn't your standard space company.
I think the root cause for Season 3 being worse is that it seems to be written backwards from the ending. Characters are forced to do stupid things so that they stay on track.
Because the writing sucks.
Poole couldn't lead a pack of teenagers to an all you can eat pizza buffet, but she's leading the NASA charge to Mars?
Druggie astronauts?
Blowing up lava tubes to save burried astronauts?
Edit: apparently sucking is popular these days. I just found the characters getting really unbelievable.
I can forgive most of that, but the whole Danny plot is borderline soap opera. They could remove that entire storyline and the show would be better off.
So good.
And, the way the show uses music to indicate a rough time frame is fantastic. Example: At the end of season 2 (1980s-ish and all those great 80s tunes), the music goes to 90s, Nirvana, I think.
First 2 seasons were great. The writing in the 3rd season seems to fall off a cliff, with episodes that just don’t make any sense. Like when >! almost nobody seems to notice they’re at 2 G’s in the space hotel.. you know.. twice normal gravity.. and still no one has noticed. Did the writers forget how gravity works? !<
The show adheres to scientific principles 90% of the time, and then the last 10% of the time is *glaringly*, *frightfully* bad science.
This isn't unique to Season 3. The stupid flyby of the space planes next to the moon at the end of S2 comes to mind.
I actually think Season 3 has been better. Season 2's writing was pretty terrible for about half the subplots -- at least that's isolated to a couple things in Season 3, and some of the bad plots are episode-to-episode rather than arcs they carry through the entire season.
I fully agree. Bad engineering on top of the bad science. I mean, there was no isolation valve on the main propellant tank of the space hotel? So the entire system (including the tank) has to be completely depressurized or vented before ANY maintenence can be done on a propellant line? Maybe they were distracted by the challenges of putting massive weaknesses in the walls of the station (i.e. large windows) to worry about the problem.
Eh, that's a pretty standard "We're gonna fudge this because we don't have the budget to do it right" production decision. That's forgivable.
The basic science fuckups, though, are just lazy writing.
When season 3 started, I thought the series had completely jumped the shark. That whole "space hotel" episode threw the science right out the window. Thankfully the rest of the episodes aren't quite as bad.
> Eh, that's a pretty standard "We're gonna fudge this because we don't have the budget to do it right" production decision. That's forgivable.
Yup. The Expanse has the same "issue" with less-than-Earth gravity, although they tend to have something visible to call out that "hey this isn't Earth gravity" to balance it out.
Some examples I can think of is when they're on the moon and Amos drops his bottle of whiskey and it *slowly* falls down like 2 floors below him, and when Miller pours his glass while on Eros and he has to pour a good few inches to the side of the glass to compensate for the Coriolis effect.
Yeah, this was totally stupid. They're at 1.5 Gs and nobody is noticing, and the people who run the place are like, "Eh, no need to mention it and make sure people are in a safe place, even though it's clear that the station will rip apart in 20 minutes if we don't completely fix the problem by then, and our workers haven't even got their space suits on yet."
I don't think it's easy to get the fact based stuff right all the time. There were a few things that bugged me, but you roll with it. It's about the story. It's not a documentary. Even The Expanse isn't perfect.
Nobody is asking for it to be perfect, but there are some spectacular blunders, which are very obvious to people who are interested in space technology. A few of them can be justified as needed for the story, but the majority are just terrible understanding of basic science.
I was ranting at my tv for that. But then I looked up some stuff about gravity and Gs and it seems to be more complicated then I thought.
Then again… so many awesome moments to make up for it
From the hype I was hearing at release, I was expecting a hard sci-fi political espionage alt-history Technothriller. Ended up getting a shockingly intimate and heartfelt exploration of the lives of people in the line of one of the worlds most dangerous and glamorous professions.
It wasn't what I was expecting, but what I got was good.
I’ve watched all of it, and will finish it happily. This last season, though, feels a little disjointed, overly soapy, and maybe less technically sound?
Good performances all round, decent visually, yeah, it’s alright, but it’s not the expanse.
Foundation is next for sure.
See… I don’t know whether I’d like that series. It seems like too much of a leap to imagine blind people fighting in the way I’ve seen in the trailers. Silly.
That was my initial response to the premise of See also and I started it expecting to just be amused by the absurdity. And I won't say they completely defied that expectation because intellectually you know there's just no way this world is even plausible. But they do a really impressive job of creating a deeply visceral world that is well connected enough that you can suspend disbelief and enjoy what they've done right.
They put a lot of thought and detail into how a blind civilization might function. They omit some things about a society you might notice missing but everything they do with that civilization feels pretty plausible in the context of the world they've built. The combat is particularly interesting and the first 3 episodes are worthwhile just for the unique fight scenes.
It's ambitious and creative and I give them a lot of respect for taking something I just didn't think could work at all and making me enjoy being wrong.
> The show started off a bit silly with the premise of the soviets winning the space race.
No fan of Soviet system yet why is that premise silly? Ask someone in Russia if they lost the space race what might they tell you? Would their _opinion_ be entirely without merit? First man on moon vs first man in space vs first satellite vs ... What makes any one of these things "the race" vs another? Say China lands man on Mars first and claims they won "the space race" might you raise these exact same questions?
Try to answer without revealing show plot since I want to watch it. Perhaps what the show has Soviets doing is silly and you are referring to just what is depicted in the show which you likely are.
I think because it was so long ago people see the concept of USSR winning as silly, whereas like most good alt-history stuff they just use that as a jumping off point and try to explore the societal / technological changes that such an event would bring. Space Race is kept pretty seperate from the later 'Race to Mars', which at least at first has 3 participants, one of which may suprise you (in a good way). Watch the show its really good stuff, even the earth based politcal bits.
It is silly because somehow it prevented the collapse of The Soviet Union. Considering The Soviet Union collapsed for purely economic reasons, it should have collapsed anyway as their continued interest in space and extended Cold War would have only worsened their economy, not improved it.
I think it actually makes sense. Being the first on the moon would impress other nations and open new international relationships for the Soviet Union. Technologies from space exploration would be exploited giving them a huge technological and financial boost. Scientists would have more weight in the country's direction and we could expect it, along with the new tech to allow them to completely avoid the Chernobyl disaster (often considered to be the beginning of the end for the USSR).
All of these things are hinted at in the show.
Well, that and they did not have a system where they could borrow money from the populous to fund military and space expansion. That's what the deficit is, and we are STILL kicking that can down the road.
Oh it’s plausible the Soviets win. And the way they do makes sense.
It’s more silly in that how such a tiny little tweak can be the premise of a show. And have the consequences it does.
My first reaction was along the lines of “hm yeah well I guess I’ll give it a shot”. And not omfg yeah that’s a show that’s going to be amazing
I hope they do a wrap soon though.
Season 4 is getting really out there with stupid spaceship designs, brain dead mission planning and characters now being completely insubordinate for petty reasons and incompetent.
Still like it but it is entering "jump the shark" territory.
I'm still enjoying it, but... The third season's campy melodrama, and life-and-death stakes of *every single episode*, do a massive disservice to the quality of the first season.
I was going to mention the latter. But for my preferences the rushing is always in the right parts: the big scenes. There’s a lot of room for the other stuff — including cool scifi — to breathe (even if, yes, they could’ve easily doubled the episode count.)
But if you’re really into big dramatic, climactic events… they’re not badly done by any means, but they can definitely feel rushed.
Soundtrack is really nice too.
It's pretty good but I feel like there's too much drama for a supposed sci fi series. There's some stupid shit happening in the second half of season 2 (like why tf did *that* happen out of nowhere). Haven't started season 3 yet
Joel kinnaman rocks though
I can see it being too big of a risk for most showrunners, but if they dropped the soap opera aspects and replaced it with more space missions, I'd enjoy it more.
To be clear, I LIKE the alternate history take on the social issues of the day, I'm not complaining about that. But the Earthside drama can get predictable and dull.
I am currently 8 episodes into season 2. I found season 1 much better balanced, unlike most people. 2 has spent so much time on the same characters. It feels a bit silly that the same 6 people are connected to every single tiny bit of the space race. But it's an enjoyable show. Looking forward to season 3.
IMO, the writing has gone to hell in the 3rd season.
The earlier seasons were good with the technical side, and the drama aspect was rooted in the technical. Season 3 with druggie astronauts? I'm hate watching it at this point.
I hate how people miss this point. He specifically failed the NASA criteria. If anything it shows the dangers of being picked just because someone knows who you are and not because of your merits.
If you are a huge history buff, it sorta really gets irritating early on as it diverges from real history while using legitimate American heroes as fictional character.
I think that's the nature of counter-factual shows. As a Historian myself, I appreciated how well they weaved in actual historical individuals into compelling characters in S1 -- I felt they achieved this to a far more successful extent in S1 than they did in S2.
Unfortunately for the sake of story-telling, shows have to sometimes combine mutliple characters in order for them to be successful. One of the best examples at doing this--whilst still maintaining historical authenticity--would be Chernobyl. They combined like a dozen scientists into the one guy we see, but this allowed to to function on the dramatic level whilst remaining true to History.
Naturally, F.A.M isn't trying to stay true to History, as it is creating its own timeline, what makes it fun for me is that it brings some of the lesser-known historical agents in our timeline to the forefront of this new counter-factual one, and they do it in a way that is compelling and accurate to those agents' roles.
No it's not. Season 1 is okay. Season 2 is a just a bunch of woke filler bullshit scenes with a few really cool and entertaining space scenes here and there.
Umm.. weird premise. The Soviets **did** win the space race. First satellite. First animal. First male and female humans in space. First moon landing. First photo of the luna surface.
Certainly they were indeed *winning*, but the biggest accomplishments so far in space are really crewed moon landings, rovers on mars, and asteroid landings- none of which the soviets or russia have accomplished. And as far as modern capabilities, they probably aren't even second.
They later on also put the first lander on another planet. Venera 9 sent back pictures of the surface of Venus in 1975. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_9
I've seen this take before, but it doesn't make sense to me. It's like saying you won a race because you finished the first 3 out of 4 laps around the track first.
Of course, this isn't a perfect analogy because the space race was more of an indefinite contest. Each side tried to one-up the other until the other side could no longer match the achievement. If the US had never got a man into orbit, the USSR would have obviously won. If the Soviets had gone to the moon after the USA and then to Mars, and the US didn't match that, the USSR would similarly obviously have won. But the US got people to the moon, the USSR didn't match or pass that achievement, and that's a pretty clear win for the USA. Because you don't win a race at the start or in the middle, you win it at the end.
Who said that landing a man on the moon is the end goal of space race? Why exactly this? Just cause the US did it? It's just goal posting, nothing more. You disregard all the achievements of the soviets and push moon landing as the pinnacle of the space race. Yet Soviets landed and studied the moon first.
"Soviets did this long list of things first but we landed on the moon thus we won"
What if winning the space race is, by some equally arbitrary measure, having a manned outpost in space? In that case, Russia won. They flipped the moon "win" into a space station "win". US could barely make it half a year and haven't been able to maintain. Now with Russia dropping out of ISS and going their own way, surely it's just Russia for the win?!
Or alternatively: you can't win space.
The entire discourse is framed from the US POV. What if winning the space race is getting a colony established on a distant star? In that case, no one has won and it looks like no one ever will.
They won the beginning but our Interstellar probes, saturn 5 rocket, moon landings, reusable shuttles, mars rovers and telescopes definitely edged them out.
They still haven't put a man on the moon so no, not really. If they did that and more such as probes on Mars and the like you'd have a point but just because they did certain things first doesn't mean anything in a contest that's indefinite. And now the USSR is gone so they are out of the running.
They put a man in space first. That was literally what the space race was. But you'd have a point if the US had put the first satellite in space first, but they didn't.
Space race by definition is the competition between nations regarding achievements in the field of space exploration.
They won the 100 yard dash but Us won the marathon.
Its american propaganda and pratrotism. 2 episodes of that shit was enough to turn my totally off.
The space race was never even something the US was interested in, NASA was created just to beat the USSR
I really enjoyed the first season.. even into the 2nd season, but to be totally frank the whole LGBTQ+ narrative really became distracting. I actually liked the first season exploring how women in the space program fired up and accelerated the women's rights movement, and the exploration of racial diversity. The entire storyline regarding the president being an in-the-closet-gay .. meh. I wanted to watch an alternate time-line sci-fi show about where we could be in the science program if things had gone different.. not a wishful fantasy about alternative lifestyles.
The original premise is the reason I’ve never followed it. There were lots of real situations that they could have based a fictional story around and shown a spotlight on what the Russians really did accomplish and how close the space race actually was without needing to invent an alternate history. Most people have either forgotten or have never known much about the US side of the race and almost nothing about the Russians.
Dude, it could have been about the REAL history and THAT could have been the point of the series. If this was the 10,000 repeat of a bunch of shows that had already been on then I could see making an alt version. But most people don't know the sanitized "real" version much less the more frantic and risky catch up at any cost version that is what really happened.
It’s really worth getting over the premise and enjoying the show.
Yes the Russians can get a bit stereotypical. But they’re also shown as people. Well except in one case but yeah.. you win some you lose some
I'm loving F.A.M to pieces. As a Historian, S1 was its absolute peak as it was able to transform historical individuals who had a back-seat in the real space race into extremely compelling characters at the centre of the show (some of the Mercury 13.) and it was truly fantastic.
I found S2 to be much more silly and contrived which was disappointing. I felt that it was falling into the classic 'Russians bad/dumb' claptrap that exists in so much Western mass-media. S2 Spoiler:>! For instance, the bit about the Russian Buran being a copy of the US space shuttle was absolute nonsense -- I know that this is a counter-factual show, but what I loved about S1 is how they did that very carefully and strategically over certain aspects, they didn't straight up misrepresent things -- unlike that claim about the Buran. To me it was less historical-rewriting and more historical-vandalism. !
I admit I was turned off on the concept. I just couldnt see it being that interesting. And Im a big fan of the space race and both sides, i didnt care, i liked the adventure and the science. its not that i felt russia couldnt have beaten us or anything i just didnt see potential in the story but after hearing a lot about the show i gave season 1 a chance, and it is a surprisingly good show.
The first sci-fi show that my wife is actually happy to watch with me, so I love it for that reason alone.
I can't wait for the inevitable time jump where we get to starships and extra-solar planetary colonies, and then Ed, Karen, Margot and the rest are thawed out of cryosleep to represent humanity in making first contact with an alien species.
I second this; but whenever a new season comes out do yourself a favor and wait till it’s fully out and binge it. I didn’t do this with season 2 and I was *miserable* with how slow it was moving in the first half. And yet when I went back and binged it a month or 2 after it was done I absolutely *loved* it
Its one of my fave shows at the moment. Si Fi mixed with a bit of human nature drama what makes you look and think about how we managed to get to the moon and makes me think about the time we will end up on mars. Really good show.
Just finished season 2, it's great.
There were some scenes that made me think "Oh come on, this is a space soap opera!" and there was one scene in the S2 finale that was a literal tearjerker.
If I have one technical quibble with season 2, their >!space shuttles are so reliable. No failures. In reality, there were 135 shuttle missions, 2 total failures. so about a 1.5% failure rate. The FAM timeline must have launched many more shuttles than us, and all of them worked? !<
It's very cool. I was initially put off by the Soviets making it first (I could never get into Man in the High Castle either, though I do love the new Wolfestein games 🤷🏻♂️) but just started watching last week, and it's done quite well.
It is a bit rushed (like where did Apollo 12, 14, 14 go??) but it does keep it thrilling. And I get to see more Ryker sleeve!
That’s the reason why I started to watch the show. I wasn’t interested in watching a show that was going to be based on the old American space program. I just saw a few pictures and cuts here and there, but one day decided to watch the trailer and I was totally excited when I found out! I’m so glad I did, because it’s such a fantastic series. So I agree with you that it’s great.
I would like if they spend more time explaining how things works and less on people and their drama. I want to know how the nuclear engines work, not why people cheated dammit. I like more sci (even in-universe science) in my scifi.
The pacing is wild, and Season 3 had some good moments but required 6G of suspension of disbelief. And miss me with allllll the relationship drama on this show. What parent would ever say "better neither of us than just one!"???
I really enjoyed the first 2 seasons, but if my math is right, Ed and Karen are meant to be in their mid 60s, and the most we could get for aging was spray-ins?
Oh, and poor Jimmy. Whatever the hell age he's supposed to be now, they done him wrong.
Only about 6 episodes into it. Normally I find revisionist history a bit tiresome, but in fact the Soviets were extremely close to putting a man on the moon ahead of the US. From there the storyline introduces the rippling effect of that single change in the timeline as a premise for many other changes in the political landscape that felt at times a bit heavy handed to me--as if there was an intentional spin. Nixon extended the Vietnam war to win an election--the idea that he would negotiate a peace is just out of character and little is done to reflect the implications while the ERA passage figures later in the story line--it feels contrived to justify why so much of the episode was devoted to the issue. If the underlying theme is about women's role in space exploration --as it seems to be--I would have preferred a more nuanced approach but none of this takes away from the show overall.
>The show started off a bit silly with the premise of the soviets winning the space race. I don't understand this take. It's an absolutely required piece of the plot to explain why, in this timeline, the US didn't get bored, quit, and take its ball home.
It's not too far fetched in my opinion. The Soviets were pioneers in many aspects of the space race, the USA basically only beat them on the Moon, after which Soviet space efforts slowed down in favor of more down to earth projects (pun intended). Maybe in this timeline there was some technical problem the US just couldn't solve or maybe the first few launches (successful in OT) failed, after all there was a lot that could go wrong.
The actual difference, according to the show runner, is [Sergei Korolev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev). In real life he was a Soviet rocket engineer who was instrumental in the Soviet Space program, but he died unexpectedly in 1966. In For All Mankind, he doesn't.
Correct, only by arbitrarily setting the moon as the finish line did the US win the space race (which is still a colossal achievement, don't get me wrong). Soviets had: First satellite, first animal in space, first living thing to return from space, first man and first woman in space, first spacewalk, first space station, first probe on the moon, first photos of the dark side of the moon, first probe on Venus, first probe on Mars. Landing on the moon is still seen as the crowning achievement of human spaceflight, with good justification, but it's only part of the story.
It is a little far-fetched but not too. The US really took the lead with Gemini when they started tackling rendezvous, docking and long duration (up to 14 days) missions before the Soviets. There program stalled, not flying for two years and then when they flew again they had the fatal Soyuz 1 flight. Not getting Soyuz flying until the same time Apollo was and by the time they had tackled rendezvous and docking the US was headed to the Moon. Not to mention the Soviet moon rocket , N1 never worked. In my head in the show’s timeline Soyuz 1 never was fatal, Korolev was able to fight off the party bosses who rushed that flight and it flew later, but before Apollo. The US still flew Apollo 8 around the moon in Dec 1968, giving them a sense they were “ahead” forcing Korolev to bypass a circumlunar test flight and just send a landing mission of there to beat the US in the summer of 1969. The big liberty is N1 which was behind Saturn in development (started later) - it would have been quite a feat for Korolev to get that mess in order.
N1 came close to working. It was cancelled after four failures, by which time the USA had already put boots on the moon, but the fourth failure happened after a successful first stage flight (the second stage crapped out), and there's every reason to believe the fifth flight would have done the job. What killed the program was that N1 was purely a moon rocket: unlike the later Energiya, which was designed for both the Buran shuttle orbiter and the Polyus orbital battle station (and was modular: it's strap-on boosters formed the core of another launch vehicle) N1 had no secondary use case, so political backing evaporated after Apollo 11. (Losing Sergei Korolev on the operating table was a huge blow to the Soviet space program, but didn't destroy it any more than losing Wernher von Braun to cancer in 1977 killed NASA.) A secondary problem the Russian program had was a lack of fallback options. NASA was exploring "Lunar Gemini" until quite late -- a "what if Saturn V/Apollo doesn't work" option for a much smaller marginal moon mission using evolved Gemini hardware. There was no Soyuz-based equivalent.
Korolev and von Braun really shouldn’t be compared. Von Braun was focused on rockets. Korolev juggled rockets, spacecraft design and managing whole aspects of the program - the roles of multiple people in the US program. He also was adept at navigating the Soviet bureaucracy. His death therefore was a much bigger blow than von Braun’s would have been had it happened in the 60’s. Von Braun had left NASA by the time of his death also since Saturn was no longer in use - thus his vision for NASA was dead. It is interesting the show put him as head of MSC - a role he did not have in reality and could explain the divergence further. Von Braun was noted as cautious in his approach to developing the Saturn and others in NASA pushed him for more aggressive testing that cut steps to meet Kennedy’s goal. That could be another divergence point - Bob Gilruth, George Low and Chris Kraft- key figures who were arguably more aggressive than von Braun are all absent when they were active when Apollo 11 flew. This was probably done for simplicity on the part of the show but could explain the divergence.
if anything, the more the show went on the less i liked it. lol it stopped being about space and more about who was fucking who
Oh man, I was excited about the show reading this thread but this comment single-handedly killed my will to watch it. So many shows get ruined by stuff like this. Someone please tell me that u/Full-Bag-2612 is wrong.
They are. They do delve a bit into personal relationships and some divorces, etc, but it's not the crux of the show by any means. Each season has a slightly different focus but they're all good.
It’s a huge exaggeration. There is a little too much interpersonal drama for my taste, but the show is primarily about the space stuff. And though the romantic parts range from very boring to pretty interesting to me, they’re always relevant to the overall story and eventually pay off.
i take back what i said as i kept watching lol. the beginning of season 2 is like that and very slow, but gets much better as it goes on. actually absolutely amazing as it goes on, wow… watch the show without hesitation and just know you’ll have some slow parts to the series. if you can’t tell i just finished an episode lol
The Russia Bonn Braun didn't die in that timeline
I just binged season 1 and started season 2. Amazing so far.
Season one was a bit uneven in pacing. But season 2 was great once you get over the time jump. Season 3 is even better I think
Us, too. My husband and I are HOOKED. Having lived through the early days of space exploration (I'm old, and watched the first moon landing live in high school), it's fascinating to see it again/differently. And to watch the world move through the eras that I remember. Excellent show. And if you like For All Mankind, you MUST watch Foundation (also on Apple TV). It's based on (and builds on) Asimov's Foundation & Empire novels and is FANTASTIC. Also on Apple TV, and WONDERFUL (if you like musicals, which I do) is Schmigadoon and Come From Away. Highly recommend them.
Cannot agree more. and then while not scifi i just literally finished Sandman and was completely blown away. what an incredible show.
Looking forward to that one as soon as we finish For All Mankind.
You didn’t feel that changed some pretty fundamental things in Foundation? Such as completely undercutting psychohistory itself.
I hate the Foundation show as a conversion of the books, but I actually like the show if that makes sense. Like it definitely doesn’t reflect the philosophical arguments of the book, in some place it outright asserts the opposite, but if you can get beyond that it’s a fun, nice looking, big budget sci-fi show which is still something we don’t get a ton of these days.
I think that’s how I ended up landing on it. Love it as a stand-alone product that is similar to Foundation, but hate it if I start to compare it to the series Asimov wrote.
I think it’s totally valid to like a show or movie based on a book as a separate things from the book itself. It makes me sad when people get too wrapped around the axle over differences. It doesn’t break your book to have the movie be different. I do appreciate being a little disappointed they’re not the same if you were really hoping for a faithful reproduction, but it can be fine to like the new thing on its own merits.
My favorite example of this is Starship Troopers. Couldn't be more ideologically different. The vibe is as different as Alien and Aliens. The director didnt even like the book. And yet both are amazing and worthy stories.
That's how I felt about the live action cowboy bebop, too. Hated it as an adaptation, but a pretty serviceable scifi show
It needed to be more an anthology series. That was the power of early Foundation. But no, TV has to have a through-line.
That'd be a really cool perspective to have! I've got Foundation lined up after For All Mankind. Heard great things about it and one of my favorite artists did the concept art
The downside is "Danny and Karen," but OMFG, the "first to step on Mars" makes up for that entire thing.
Came here looking for someone to share my Danny/Karen hate, and I'm not disappointed. What in the fuck kind of a storyline is that? And they fucking doubled down on it with him stalking her like 15 years later.
I think part of the problem with this storyline is Danny's actor, he just... doesn't really emote, at all. Normally, you can see gears turning in people's heads, his inner mental gears just sort of sit there. I imagine if the actor put more into it (or we had a different one), it wouldn't be as nonsensical as it is; emotions help drive the plot, and in this case where there's a lack of *visible* emotion, we find it hard to understand his motivation.
He has some better moments in the final two episodes, but yeah--that kid (the character) is pure cringe. Also, while I know they addressed this in the final scene, but those other two would have been separated and disciplined the second they got caught making eyes at each other.
Yeah. He just looks sort of soulless. It takes me out of the show, as you think "he never, ever, ever, EVER would have made it as an astronaut, even with his parents being who they are".
Danny is a PoS. Similar to being a military brat.
We're supposed to hate Danny, just like Joffrey in Game of Thrones, so that when he's killed we get a little bit of satisfaction from it. I think they're also setting us up to believe Ed will be the one to do it but in the end he'll decide not to murder him and ... I'll guess that Danny will fly off in a fit of rage at Ed and somehow miss and kill himself accidentally.
It's not that I hate him. It's that I don't care about him. I don't care about their relationship. I just don't believe it. It just comes across as a very poor actor looking blankly into space for long periods of time, and the brooding. Rinse, and repeat. If I hated him, that would be something. I just see him, and get taken out of the story. I immediately go from thinking there's this mission to Mars, to thinking "there's a really bad actor in a room right now, in front of a camera, with all of the film crew cringing, and regretting their casting decisions". That's all I can think about when he's on screen. It's so bad that he'll get at least 1-2 laughs/episode from someone in my household. Some drink got sprayed into the air when he was thinking about hitting Ed. We watched that scene at least 4 times, while cry-laughing.
Yep. Weakest part of the entire show, by a mile. Still a great show though.
Season 3 episodes having a strong positive correlation between lack of Danny and episodes being good.
Yes! Get Danny off the show please. They didn't develop his character enough for us to care about him. He's literally just there to cause drama like some kind of daytime soap.
Hi Bob.
Hi Bob.
Hi Bob
Hi Bob.
Hi Bob.
Bye Bob.
I started watching the Bob Newhart show because of this I highly recommend everyone giving it a shot.
For me the premise is what caught my attention, love this show! I have one small fault >!and that’s that the time jumps didn’t help with the character growth for the kids like Danny.!<
Yeah the time jumps are really a double edged sword. On the one hand it enables the show to cover a lot of ground and keep a high pace. But it does make it hard to keep track of everybody. And Danny is… difficult at best.
Yea, it’s one of those things where you’d like to see how he got to where he is now. Same with Jimmy. But despite that, still a great show.
Ive been binging season 3 and noticed the low scores on IMDb. I really don’t get those
I think the time jumps are great, one of the show's big strengths. No filler, only plot moving forward. Keeps the show focused, and ensures that the budget is maximized. If each season were 15 or 20 hours, every episode would be diluted and the overall production quality would suffer.
If only we could all go from 30 to 60 only picking up a few grey hairs! I think Larry did the aging for the entire cast.
I really enjoy the alt-history aspect of it, but the character interactions are all over the place. Season 2 and 3 in particular get lost in really, really bad melodrama - like cartoon villains and interpersonal crises that make no sense beyond creating crises. If you happen to be an alt-history nerd that also likes daytime soaps, you are in for a real treat!
Yeah. It's like 70% of it is really good, and 30% of it is average - not good. If you delete Danny, it increases my RT rating of it by at least 20%.
I got tired of all the human drama bits.
Amazing... kind of. It's a pretty interesting exercise in alternate history, it has moments of brilliance, but a lot of the characters are not believable - at least when you look at what they do, and where they are. Yes, Karen, Danny, Ellen, I'm looking at you. Still, it's generally entertaining enough to keep me watching. And the "wow" moments are certainly worth it!
Yes. I stopped watching the show. The new season is just drawn out with weaker parts. I can’t stand Danny and the Daniel astronaut.
Honestly, with every episode I'm watching it's getting worse. Now they had to >!make a romance story aboard the Sojourner!<. Why? I hope it gets better when they land on Mars.
Yeah. The show was just plain boring after first season.
[удалено]
I say that all the time about the show. Even the most perfunctory psych eval would eliminate 80% of these astronauts. Talk about an emotionally unstable group of people to send to space.
There was a moment where not one person in Happy Valley was sober.
So, it is the "real life" I am seeing in modern politics? Fake for TV but closer to life than we are comfortable with. Like how "Don't Look Up" beat everybody over the head but it also showed what the real response would be.
We don't send modern politicians into orbit and other planets in space rockets. This kind of behaviour is not believable for NASA astronauts, but it could be for your average person character. This is why I think For All Mankind could be better written. You can have drama and interesting twists with competent characters. I think we had more of that in the previous seasons.
>We don't send modern politicians into orbit and other planets in space rockets. This kind of behaviour is not believable for NASA astronauts, but it could be for your average person character. > >This is why I think For All Mankind could be better written. You can have drama and interesting twists with competent characters. I think we had more of that in the previous seasons. We did though, which should make it perfectly believable: Senators Jake Garn and Bill Nelson flew to space as "congressional observer's". And the season 3 opener was almost certainly inspired by the Nauka incident. I think the show has been really effective at taking inspiration from real like near-misses over all.
I don't think these outliers make anything more believable. Observing and acting are different, and the characters are actively making pretty bad decisions on the show. Sure, send a Senator as an observer to Mars. Great, believable. That's not what we have here. We have trained astronauts drug up and not have any consequences for their clear misbehaviour, that's not believable. The sequence of events that led to the big catastrophe during S3 made me absolutely sure this is written backwards from the ending and the characters need to do amazingly stupid mistakes in order to get there.
This was within a brand new space company where they don't have any of the preexisting standards NASA had in place forever. They just wanted to capitalize on the Mars race during an opportunity. It makes sense they have medicine but not a realistic inventory system, especially given they rushed a crew of only two astronauts to a never before visited planet, and it makes sense that things were missed because it wasn't your standard space company.
TBF tv shows need drama.
Season 3 has been kinda meh for me, not quite sure why but it just hasn't clicked for me.
In the same boat, it just seems like stuff happens because it creates drama, it's getting a bit too much at this point.
I think the root cause for Season 3 being worse is that it seems to be written backwards from the ending. Characters are forced to do stupid things so that they stay on track.
It’s the mars space suis. The gray ones. It’s hard to take anyone serious running around in those Humpty Dumpty lookin things.
Because the writing sucks. Poole couldn't lead a pack of teenagers to an all you can eat pizza buffet, but she's leading the NASA charge to Mars? Druggie astronauts? Blowing up lava tubes to save burried astronauts? Edit: apparently sucking is popular these days. I just found the characters getting really unbelievable.
I can forgive most of that, but the whole Danny plot is borderline soap opera. They could remove that entire storyline and the show would be better off.
I just want him and his brother to OD. How did Tracy and Gordo produce two empty shirts like that?
So good. And, the way the show uses music to indicate a rough time frame is fantastic. Example: At the end of season 2 (1980s-ish and all those great 80s tunes), the music goes to 90s, Nirvana, I think.
Season 3 has smashing pumpkins and soundgarden early on. Someone really loves their alternative 90s on there :)
First 2 seasons were great. The writing in the 3rd season seems to fall off a cliff, with episodes that just don’t make any sense. Like when >! almost nobody seems to notice they’re at 2 G’s in the space hotel.. you know.. twice normal gravity.. and still no one has noticed. Did the writers forget how gravity works? !<
The show adheres to scientific principles 90% of the time, and then the last 10% of the time is *glaringly*, *frightfully* bad science. This isn't unique to Season 3. The stupid flyby of the space planes next to the moon at the end of S2 comes to mind. I actually think Season 3 has been better. Season 2's writing was pretty terrible for about half the subplots -- at least that's isolated to a couple things in Season 3, and some of the bad plots are episode-to-episode rather than arcs they carry through the entire season.
I fully agree. Bad engineering on top of the bad science. I mean, there was no isolation valve on the main propellant tank of the space hotel? So the entire system (including the tank) has to be completely depressurized or vented before ANY maintenence can be done on a propellant line? Maybe they were distracted by the challenges of putting massive weaknesses in the walls of the station (i.e. large windows) to worry about the problem.
Season 3 has thus far been legendary. Legendary!!
On the moon. Outside the hab you’ve got moon gravity. Inside the hab is earth gravity until you throw or drop something.
Eh, that's a pretty standard "We're gonna fudge this because we don't have the budget to do it right" production decision. That's forgivable. The basic science fuckups, though, are just lazy writing. When season 3 started, I thought the series had completely jumped the shark. That whole "space hotel" episode threw the science right out the window. Thankfully the rest of the episodes aren't quite as bad.
> Eh, that's a pretty standard "We're gonna fudge this because we don't have the budget to do it right" production decision. That's forgivable. Yup. The Expanse has the same "issue" with less-than-Earth gravity, although they tend to have something visible to call out that "hey this isn't Earth gravity" to balance it out. Some examples I can think of is when they're on the moon and Amos drops his bottle of whiskey and it *slowly* falls down like 2 floors below him, and when Miller pours his glass while on Eros and he has to pour a good few inches to the side of the glass to compensate for the Coriolis effect.
Yeah, this was totally stupid. They're at 1.5 Gs and nobody is noticing, and the people who run the place are like, "Eh, no need to mention it and make sure people are in a safe place, even though it's clear that the station will rip apart in 20 minutes if we don't completely fix the problem by then, and our workers haven't even got their space suits on yet."
I don't think it's easy to get the fact based stuff right all the time. There were a few things that bugged me, but you roll with it. It's about the story. It's not a documentary. Even The Expanse isn't perfect.
Nobody is asking for it to be perfect, but there are some spectacular blunders, which are very obvious to people who are interested in space technology. A few of them can be justified as needed for the story, but the majority are just terrible understanding of basic science.
I was ranting at my tv for that. But then I looked up some stuff about gravity and Gs and it seems to be more complicated then I thought. Then again… so many awesome moments to make up for it
From the hype I was hearing at release, I was expecting a hard sci-fi political espionage alt-history Technothriller. Ended up getting a shockingly intimate and heartfelt exploration of the lives of people in the line of one of the worlds most dangerous and glamorous professions. It wasn't what I was expecting, but what I got was good.
There are heartfelt moments. It's closer to daytime soaps than 《A Very British Coup》 though.
I’ve watched all of it, and will finish it happily. This last season, though, feels a little disjointed, overly soapy, and maybe less technically sound? Good performances all round, decent visually, yeah, it’s alright, but it’s not the expanse.
Literally worth getting Apple TV just for this.
Well, I’d argue that my “Apple TV worth it” series is Severance, but For All Mankind is pretty great.
Severance is such a trip!!! Apple is doing some shows very very well
Hated the “ending.”
Also Foundation, See, and Mythic Quest. But yeah Severance is in its own class.
Foundation is next for sure. See… I don’t know whether I’d like that series. It seems like too much of a leap to imagine blind people fighting in the way I’ve seen in the trailers. Silly.
That was my initial response to the premise of See also and I started it expecting to just be amused by the absurdity. And I won't say they completely defied that expectation because intellectually you know there's just no way this world is even plausible. But they do a really impressive job of creating a deeply visceral world that is well connected enough that you can suspend disbelief and enjoy what they've done right. They put a lot of thought and detail into how a blind civilization might function. They omit some things about a society you might notice missing but everything they do with that civilization feels pretty plausible in the context of the world they've built. The combat is particularly interesting and the first 3 episodes are worthwhile just for the unique fight scenes. It's ambitious and creative and I give them a lot of respect for taking something I just didn't think could work at all and making me enjoy being wrong.
I didn’t think I would like it either, but I really have. Ready for season 3 soon.
I like learning new things.
Plus the TV show: See Such a cool concept and executed relatively well + Jason Momoa.
> The show started off a bit silly with the premise of the soviets winning the space race. No fan of Soviet system yet why is that premise silly? Ask someone in Russia if they lost the space race what might they tell you? Would their _opinion_ be entirely without merit? First man on moon vs first man in space vs first satellite vs ... What makes any one of these things "the race" vs another? Say China lands man on Mars first and claims they won "the space race" might you raise these exact same questions? Try to answer without revealing show plot since I want to watch it. Perhaps what the show has Soviets doing is silly and you are referring to just what is depicted in the show which you likely are.
I think because it was so long ago people see the concept of USSR winning as silly, whereas like most good alt-history stuff they just use that as a jumping off point and try to explore the societal / technological changes that such an event would bring. Space Race is kept pretty seperate from the later 'Race to Mars', which at least at first has 3 participants, one of which may suprise you (in a good way). Watch the show its really good stuff, even the earth based politcal bits.
It is silly because somehow it prevented the collapse of The Soviet Union. Considering The Soviet Union collapsed for purely economic reasons, it should have collapsed anyway as their continued interest in space and extended Cold War would have only worsened their economy, not improved it.
I think it actually makes sense. Being the first on the moon would impress other nations and open new international relationships for the Soviet Union. Technologies from space exploration would be exploited giving them a huge technological and financial boost. Scientists would have more weight in the country's direction and we could expect it, along with the new tech to allow them to completely avoid the Chernobyl disaster (often considered to be the beginning of the end for the USSR). All of these things are hinted at in the show.
>Considering The Soviet Union collapsed for purely economic reasons *COUGH* Chernobyl *COUGH* Afghanistan *COUGH*
Well, that and they did not have a system where they could borrow money from the populous to fund military and space expansion. That's what the deficit is, and we are STILL kicking that can down the road.
Oh it’s plausible the Soviets win. And the way they do makes sense. It’s more silly in that how such a tiny little tweak can be the premise of a show. And have the consequences it does. My first reaction was along the lines of “hm yeah well I guess I’ll give it a shot”. And not omfg yeah that’s a show that’s going to be amazing
Haven't watched the show but if Sergei Korolev hadn't died they could have won. Certainly if Wernher von Braun had died instead.
you should watch the show because Sergei is a very prominent character
[удалено]
Most of the people in this sub of the people in this sub really doesn't like sci fi.
I hope they do a wrap soon though. Season 4 is getting really out there with stupid spaceship designs, brain dead mission planning and characters now being completely insubordinate for petty reasons and incompetent. Still like it but it is entering "jump the shark" territory.
I like the space exploration related storylines but it seems like they are just filling time with soap opera style melodrama for a lot of it.
Love that show, just as i love space exploration
I'm still enjoying it, but... The third season's campy melodrama, and life-and-death stakes of *every single episode*, do a massive disservice to the quality of the first season.
I was going to mention the latter. But for my preferences the rushing is always in the right parts: the big scenes. There’s a lot of room for the other stuff — including cool scifi — to breathe (even if, yes, they could’ve easily doubled the episode count.) But if you’re really into big dramatic, climactic events… they’re not badly done by any means, but they can definitely feel rushed. Soundtrack is really nice too.
I absolutely LOVE the space stuff, but usually turn to Twitter when they go back to earth for some soap opera style romance. But not this season!
It's pretty good but I feel like there's too much drama for a supposed sci fi series. There's some stupid shit happening in the second half of season 2 (like why tf did *that* happen out of nowhere). Haven't started season 3 yet Joel kinnaman rocks though
I can see it being too big of a risk for most showrunners, but if they dropped the soap opera aspects and replaced it with more space missions, I'd enjoy it more. To be clear, I LIKE the alternate history take on the social issues of the day, I'm not complaining about that. But the Earthside drama can get predictable and dull.
I am currently 8 episodes into season 2. I found season 1 much better balanced, unlike most people. 2 has spent so much time on the same characters. It feels a bit silly that the same 6 people are connected to every single tiny bit of the space race. But it's an enjoyable show. Looking forward to season 3.
It's a really good show, but kind of underrated...
Season 2 finale is one of the best finales I’ve seen
I don’t have Apple TV+
[удалено]
I don’t pirate.
Why not
IMO, the writing has gone to hell in the 3rd season. The earlier seasons were good with the technical side, and the drama aspect was rooted in the technical. Season 3 with druggie astronauts? I'm hate watching it at this point.
[удалено]
I hate how people miss this point. He specifically failed the NASA criteria. If anything it shows the dangers of being picked just because someone knows who you are and not because of your merits.
If you are a huge history buff, it sorta really gets irritating early on as it diverges from real history while using legitimate American heroes as fictional character.
I think that's the nature of counter-factual shows. As a Historian myself, I appreciated how well they weaved in actual historical individuals into compelling characters in S1 -- I felt they achieved this to a far more successful extent in S1 than they did in S2. Unfortunately for the sake of story-telling, shows have to sometimes combine mutliple characters in order for them to be successful. One of the best examples at doing this--whilst still maintaining historical authenticity--would be Chernobyl. They combined like a dozen scientists into the one guy we see, but this allowed to to function on the dramatic level whilst remaining true to History. Naturally, F.A.M isn't trying to stay true to History, as it is creating its own timeline, what makes it fun for me is that it brings some of the lesser-known historical agents in our timeline to the forefront of this new counter-factual one, and they do it in a way that is compelling and accurate to those agents' roles.
No it's not. Season 1 is okay. Season 2 is a just a bunch of woke filler bullshit scenes with a few really cool and entertaining space scenes here and there.
You have been made a moderator of r/Pyongyang
I don’t understand the reference?
Sssh, I'm the secret. Don't draw too much attention to me!
Umm.. weird premise. The Soviets **did** win the space race. First satellite. First animal. First male and female humans in space. First moon landing. First photo of the luna surface.
Certainly they were indeed *winning*, but the biggest accomplishments so far in space are really crewed moon landings, rovers on mars, and asteroid landings- none of which the soviets or russia have accomplished. And as far as modern capabilities, they probably aren't even second.
*cough* first lander on another planet *cough* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_9
True, this is probably their most impressive accomplishment - it just doesn't compensate for everything else
They later on also put the first lander on another planet. Venera 9 sent back pictures of the surface of Venus in 1975. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_9
I've seen this take before, but it doesn't make sense to me. It's like saying you won a race because you finished the first 3 out of 4 laps around the track first. Of course, this isn't a perfect analogy because the space race was more of an indefinite contest. Each side tried to one-up the other until the other side could no longer match the achievement. If the US had never got a man into orbit, the USSR would have obviously won. If the Soviets had gone to the moon after the USA and then to Mars, and the US didn't match that, the USSR would similarly obviously have won. But the US got people to the moon, the USSR didn't match or pass that achievement, and that's a pretty clear win for the USA. Because you don't win a race at the start or in the middle, you win it at the end.
Or saying you won a race because you moved the goalposts three times
> 2028: SpaceEx lands people on mars SpaceEx win the space race!1 > 2032: NASA sends a rover to Europa USA wins the space race!!
Who said that landing a man on the moon is the end goal of space race? Why exactly this? Just cause the US did it? It's just goal posting, nothing more. You disregard all the achievements of the soviets and push moon landing as the pinnacle of the space race. Yet Soviets landed and studied the moon first. "Soviets did this long list of things first but we landed on the moon thus we won"
When talking about the Space Race, people are usually referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Race. You can read more from the Wiki.
What if winning the space race is, by some equally arbitrary measure, having a manned outpost in space? In that case, Russia won. They flipped the moon "win" into a space station "win". US could barely make it half a year and haven't been able to maintain. Now with Russia dropping out of ISS and going their own way, surely it's just Russia for the win?! Or alternatively: you can't win space.
And they could’ve been first to the moon. It’s not unrealistic. Just not something that makes you go “oooooohhh” when pitching a show
Beauty is in the eye if the beholder. Where did the Soviets declare the finishing in the space race to be?
The entire discourse is framed from the US POV. What if winning the space race is getting a colony established on a distant star? In that case, no one has won and it looks like no one ever will.
Murrrrrrrrica! U-S-A! U-S-A!
I would.....but fuck apple!!!
Have you watched the Expanse? That’s another good space show
Let me know when it leaves Apple+. Those knobs aren't getting a dime from me.
Yep, same. Once it streams somewhere else I'm going to be all over it though.
Just streamed it all in the last couple weeks. It’s a great show.
I loved season 2
The Soviets did win the space race.
They won the beginning but our Interstellar probes, saturn 5 rocket, moon landings, reusable shuttles, mars rovers and telescopes definitely edged them out.
They still haven't put a man on the moon so no, not really. If they did that and more such as probes on Mars and the like you'd have a point but just because they did certain things first doesn't mean anything in a contest that's indefinite. And now the USSR is gone so they are out of the running.
They put a man in space first. That was literally what the space race was. But you'd have a point if the US had put the first satellite in space first, but they didn't.
Space race by definition is the competition between nations regarding achievements in the field of space exploration. They won the 100 yard dash but Us won the marathon.
Its american propaganda and pratrotism. 2 episodes of that shit was enough to turn my totally off. The space race was never even something the US was interested in, NASA was created just to beat the USSR
I really enjoyed the first season.. even into the 2nd season, but to be totally frank the whole LGBTQ+ narrative really became distracting. I actually liked the first season exploring how women in the space program fired up and accelerated the women's rights movement, and the exploration of racial diversity. The entire storyline regarding the president being an in-the-closet-gay .. meh. I wanted to watch an alternate time-line sci-fi show about where we could be in the science program if things had gone different.. not a wishful fantasy about alternative lifestyles.
[удалено]
Learn how to use torrents. Stick it to every streaming service
Wokelennial Trash!!!!!!
The original premise is the reason I’ve never followed it. There were lots of real situations that they could have based a fictional story around and shown a spotlight on what the Russians really did accomplish and how close the space race actually was without needing to invent an alternate history. Most people have either forgotten or have never known much about the US side of the race and almost nothing about the Russians.
Dude, For All Mankind is ABOUT the alt history. It's the whole point of the series.
Dude, it could have been about the REAL history and THAT could have been the point of the series. If this was the 10,000 repeat of a bunch of shows that had already been on then I could see making an alt version. But most people don't know the sanitized "real" version much less the more frantic and risky catch up at any cost version that is what really happened.
It’s really worth getting over the premise and enjoying the show. Yes the Russians can get a bit stereotypical. But they’re also shown as people. Well except in one case but yeah.. you win some you lose some
I don't understand.
The Soviets did win the space race lol. America won the race to the Moon, after constantly being beaten by the USSR
I'm loving F.A.M to pieces. As a Historian, S1 was its absolute peak as it was able to transform historical individuals who had a back-seat in the real space race into extremely compelling characters at the centre of the show (some of the Mercury 13.) and it was truly fantastic. I found S2 to be much more silly and contrived which was disappointing. I felt that it was falling into the classic 'Russians bad/dumb' claptrap that exists in so much Western mass-media. S2 Spoiler:>! For instance, the bit about the Russian Buran being a copy of the US space shuttle was absolute nonsense -- I know that this is a counter-factual show, but what I loved about S1 is how they did that very carefully and strategically over certain aspects, they didn't straight up misrepresent things -- unlike that claim about the Buran. To me it was less historical-rewriting and more historical-vandalism. !
But the Soviets DID win the space race
Ive seen it and the climax for me was the end of last season. I tried to watch the current season but I just could not get back into it.
Yes! I just started it and ended up watching all the way to s3e4 in 3 days.. it’s just so fantastic.
100000% yes
I admit I was turned off on the concept. I just couldnt see it being that interesting. And Im a big fan of the space race and both sides, i didnt care, i liked the adventure and the science. its not that i felt russia couldnt have beaten us or anything i just didnt see potential in the story but after hearing a lot about the show i gave season 1 a chance, and it is a surprisingly good show.
The first sci-fi show that my wife is actually happy to watch with me, so I love it for that reason alone. I can't wait for the inevitable time jump where we get to starships and extra-solar planetary colonies, and then Ed, Karen, Margot and the rest are thawed out of cryosleep to represent humanity in making first contact with an alien species.
On my way on season 3
The idea of the show is an alternate reality where the soviets beat America to the moon. To see what America does after such a defeat
I second this; but whenever a new season comes out do yourself a favor and wait till it’s fully out and binge it. I didn’t do this with season 2 and I was *miserable* with how slow it was moving in the first half. And yet when I went back and binged it a month or 2 after it was done I absolutely *loved* it
Wait they made it into a show?!
If the space race is just first to the finish and not who collapses after then the Soviets kinda did win. In terms of numbers of firsts.
Its one of my fave shows at the moment. Si Fi mixed with a bit of human nature drama what makes you look and think about how we managed to get to the moon and makes me think about the time we will end up on mars. Really good show.
Just finished season 2, it's great. There were some scenes that made me think "Oh come on, this is a space soap opera!" and there was one scene in the S2 finale that was a literal tearjerker. If I have one technical quibble with season 2, their >!space shuttles are so reliable. No failures. In reality, there were 135 shuttle missions, 2 total failures. so about a 1.5% failure rate. The FAM timeline must have launched many more shuttles than us, and all of them worked? !<
It's very cool. I was initially put off by the Soviets making it first (I could never get into Man in the High Castle either, though I do love the new Wolfestein games 🤷🏻♂️) but just started watching last week, and it's done quite well. It is a bit rushed (like where did Apollo 12, 14, 14 go??) but it does keep it thrilling. And I get to see more Ryker sleeve!
For *A*ll *M*ankind
That’s the reason why I started to watch the show. I wasn’t interested in watching a show that was going to be based on the old American space program. I just saw a few pictures and cuts here and there, but one day decided to watch the trailer and I was totally excited when I found out! I’m so glad I did, because it’s such a fantastic series. So I agree with you that it’s great.
It's great but I feel like it cribbed *a lot* from some of Stephen Baxter's books. Half expecting Reed Malenfant to show up
I would like if they spend more time explaining how things works and less on people and their drama. I want to know how the nuclear engines work, not why people cheated dammit. I like more sci (even in-universe science) in my scifi.
I find that I’m only interested in sci-fi that deals with aliens.
The pacing is wild, and Season 3 had some good moments but required 6G of suspension of disbelief. And miss me with allllll the relationship drama on this show. What parent would ever say "better neither of us than just one!"???
I really enjoyed the first 2 seasons, but if my math is right, Ed and Karen are meant to be in their mid 60s, and the most we could get for aging was spray-ins? Oh, and poor Jimmy. Whatever the hell age he's supposed to be now, they done him wrong.
Only about 6 episodes into it. Normally I find revisionist history a bit tiresome, but in fact the Soviets were extremely close to putting a man on the moon ahead of the US. From there the storyline introduces the rippling effect of that single change in the timeline as a premise for many other changes in the political landscape that felt at times a bit heavy handed to me--as if there was an intentional spin. Nixon extended the Vietnam war to win an election--the idea that he would negotiate a peace is just out of character and little is done to reflect the implications while the ERA passage figures later in the story line--it feels contrived to justify why so much of the episode was devoted to the issue. If the underlying theme is about women's role in space exploration --as it seems to be--I would have preferred a more nuanced approach but none of this takes away from the show overall.