I come in peace... three times a night -- FOR ALL MANKIND (Apple TV Plus)

Awesome show, can't wait to get started on the second season.

About to watch S1E1 which is free, I guess.

Gus?

Thanks for starting the thread Leee! I was very taken by this show. Article about the deepfakes they pull off in S2 here

Third season has already started filming and I'm very excited that it will cover the 90s and Mars!

Does anyone else think Gordo looks kinda like Ron Swanson with that mustache in S2?

heard Michael Dorman from Patriot is in it so automatic add to watch list

Happy to see the thread. I'll try not to spoil until enough folks here have seen S1.

Love this show, the attention to detail is both brilliant and never overwhelms the story.

s2e1, lol at Margo's chili hair.

I wholly attribute the single pop-culture alt-history bit that keeps popping up to Ron Moore’s boomerism (as some here have already heard me mention)

Trying not to read the thread yet. Just watched "Red Moon." Great stuff, right in my wheelhouse. See you soon. Now entering LOS.

i just realized i have hardly watched any s2

:O

will start putting that right tonight

Cape cookie sighting early on, S1E2!

This is really good, says I after watching three episodes.

Real James is correct in his description.

Season 2 Gordo is a thing of beauty (beauty = sadness)

S1 = TOS cowboy/cowgirl lawlessness
S2 = TNG apex of bureaucratization (at least 2 episodes in)

As for Gordo: Damn this show for making me empathize with an ex-jock has-been!

oh when we were talking about fact v fiction

i forgot add for anyone who is unfamilliar, Molly Cobb’s character is based on aviator/Mercury legend & badass Jerrie Cobb (who rules) - S1E4 is dedicated to her

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerrie_Cobb

The story about the big rocket at the very end of S1

Another weird fact vs. fiction which is a small S2 spoiler: Ellen Wilson seemed likely to be based on Sally Ride (particularly keeping her sexuality private), but then Sally Ride also becomes a character on the show!

This is so good, says I 1/3 of the way through S1.

:D

WVB stuff is incredibly well done imho

Probably didn't need to hide that, but who knows.

James: agreed -- I thought it a very important thing to show people who are urbane and charming were capable of being complicit in atrocities, and also the human cost of scientific progress.

S2: early on when Tracy eyes Danny all grown up, it was REALLY uncomfortable because of the smaller age difference between the actors.

Yes, at first I thought they were going to shy away from von Braun's past, but they really DID NOT

If I may go there, while there are some obligatory retro quotation marks, all the personal emotional relationship stuff is deeply, um, relatable, those quotation marks are not at all of the moronic ironic scary variety, as someone like our old friend Momus may have described them.

Feel like maybe that is TMI. We don’t talk about those things.

Houston, how long until that TMI?

can you re-state it in a less oblique way? sorry to be dim but idgi

Sorry I was obfuscating. Just feel like the characters aren't just stranded in their fate in the alternate timeline past. There is some bit of self-awareness in them under the uptightness. Which seems to have been done pretty carefully, so they seem both of their time but more up to date as well. I imagine this becomes more apparent later, I am only in the episode after "Hi, Bob." Don't know if I have explained any better this time around, sorry.

Maybe I just don’t watch enough tv these days and every show already does a good job of avoid this trap 🪤 I imagined while I was suffering from space isolation

Or, to paraphrase what I think JM said on this thread or maybe it was the other, I came for the tech fetish but stayed for the characters.

Okay, maybe I didn't want to go there, but I am especially relating to some of the stuff about being married and being a parent, the way it is handled.

the parenting / marriage stuff is so good, and it just gets more impressive/affecting/devastating as it goes

i know Moore only had a hand in writing a few episodes but careerwise his strength as a show runner & writer has always been his ability find the humanity in characters over beating you over the head w tech/concept

the writers are never so locked into the era/concept that they ever deny a character’s ability to respond like a human person

it’s a really underrated quality

i bawled my damn eyes out over s2e3, let alone s1 — will need tear duct surgery soon if they keep it up

Roger, VG, you are go on that TMI.

Showing the consequences on the characters' personal lives is a strong theme, and I think it's handled very well. Sci-fi as a genre doesn't have the best track record with it either

Watching this episode now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clvrPmTx4n4

Also wanted to say it was driving me crazy wondering who that actor was until I saw in the credits it was James Urbaniak.

So my ickiness at Tracy ogling Danny gets doubled down on in s2e7 when Danny kisses Karen.

Just you wait

Just finished S1. Now to see what this S2 is all about.

I get the impression that the creators of this show definitely watched Halt and Catch Fire. And it’s not just the parallel Gordons.

Just you wait

Hah ikr. Also, s2e8: THAT ENDING. OMFG talk about nightmare fuel.

S2E1 was kind of big adjustment for me but now getting into it

yeah its weird getting used to seeing Ed wuth a few extra pounds & riding a desk

I get the impression that the creators of this show definitely watched Halt and Catch Fire.

Another show I completely adored

wow yeah the gordos are definitely of a piece

Love this show, I feel one of the connections with Halt & Catch Fire is (for me) unfortunate and that's being a bit bashed over the head with seemingly unconnected period music, HEY it's the SIXTIES! Sitars!!! Jumping Jack Flash!!

Although that one Petula Clark song they chose was rad.

Oh, hadn’t realized you hadn’t finished S2.

taking it slow :)

Good approach. I binged and crashed.

S1E7 touches some deep place in my existence.

Like various things I am interested in or can relate to were collapsed into one tissue-paper spacecraft-piercing meteorite.

Several implausibilities in s2e10 cheapened the experience. the handshake changing everyone’s mind and Reagan diverting Air Force one to Moscow (really????) and Ed’s last minute decision to fire on his own payload (???). Not to mention the wife/kid storyline was shit…and the reveal that the Russian dude isn’t really interested in poor Margo… …. Feel like the overall quality of the show went slowly but steadily downhill.

Is there an ETA for Season 3, anyone know?

They're already filming but imagine a show like this has a ton of post-production. There's no release date yet but guesses are early 2022

Really enjoyed the show but agree with calstars, Several implausibilities in s2e10 cheapened the experience

I went with S2 and enjoyed parts of it a lot, including the boffo last two episodes but yeah. had a bunch of issues, same one calstars did. I even found a Reddit thread deploring the somewhat icky and probably unnecessary "Stacy's Mom" subplot.

oh hey I watched this show in just over a week, and now I say things like "Negative, Flight" when I don't want to do something. It's been fun learning about space stuff (lots of time spent looking up FIDO/GUIDO/astrowives/Sea Dragon/etc on Wikipedia)* and as called out before it shares with H&CF the joy of following the characters hang out/invent the future/screw up over the course of decades. Every scene in mission control is great.

The broader story and character arcs had a tendency to veer between predictable and wtf with not much in the middle, esp in S2.

most bizarre part: wartless portrayal of Reagan, double bizarre given some of the show's other themes

best characters: Margo and Molly by a distance. Wayne is cool too.

Roll on S3, though I guess the timelines must be diverging totally now and I don't really care about the next generation (I will not be happy if Kelly+Danny are the next couple with relationship issues; Aleida is fine)

*One thing I learned while looking into Ed's accident while dogfighting with Gordo was that the top cause of death for astronauts in the 1960s was crashing your T-38 while travelling between bases

Good write-up. I like all the characters, I guess, although it did take me a while to warm up to Wayne, but if I had to pick two (PO2- Flight, give me a read on those PO2 levels!) I'd go with Gordo and Kelly, I think.

Soillers galore, obv, but: https://www.vox.com/culture/2021/4/23/22396461/for-all-mankind-season-2-finale-recap-the-grey-review-ron-moore

Heh, interesting typo

S3 Predictions:

-Most of the cast will return having been aged up by sprinkling baby powder in their hair, and nothing else

-In contrast, millions in special FX will be spent on de-aging Michael Stipe to redo the "Man on the Moon" video

-Ron Moore will make a cameo as a young writer at a newsstand reading a Variety article about TNG launching as two Cylons look on

Lol!

Absolute favourite moment was Margo's toothbrush pen

this is embarrassing but I knew literally nothing about Flight KAL 007 until this episode

wikipedia read got me like O_O fuk

if anyone can recommend me a good book about it i’d be grateful

Lol had no idea that was a real event either

the wikipedia article is bananas

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007

also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

It truly is, 1983 was such a fucking minefield, I'm glad I was only 11 and all 'tra-la-la' not knowing what terrible cold war, human error shit was going on back then.

I had forgotten about the Soviets shooting down that Korean air lines flight. Question for season 3 (seems to be '93-'95), what event(s) from our timeline will show up in the FAM timeline? Soviet Union or Russia, the Balkan war, Bill Clinton becomes president, Hubble Space Telescope, tech/internet innovations?

I guess Clinton will be knocking about doing something but the timelines should have diverged too much for any of the tech stuff to make sense (they already had video calls and electric cars in 1983, who needs AOL?). Oil presumably not so important so maybe Gulf War I didn't happen. USSR longevity is I guess the big question for the writers - they already didn't invade Afghanistan, does Chernobyl happen?

Speaking of real events in the series, I was somewhat relieved to not to have to relive the Challenger tragedy in '86. I think the show hinted at it a couple of times -- made it seem as if it was about to happen -- but then diverged.

yeah they obliquely reference it in the ep with the korean airliner is shot down
when Margo says to the Russian dude about the Apollo Soyuz (paraphrasing terribly) “we discovered a flaw in the o-ring that it cracks when it gets cold” the subtext is the challenger disaster was averted

There's an awesome power these alternate history shows can have in avoiding historical tragedies. Though it wasn't as striking as, say, what Tarantino did in Inglorious Basterds or Once Upon a Time, I loved that the Challenger explosion was avoided

KInd of hate alternate history unless it is done right, maybe that is a content-free statement, if so, sorry.

yeah i liked how they handled it here
still really impactful & moving without any real signposting

this is embarrassing but I knew literally nothing about Flight KAL 007 until this episode

wikipedia read got me like O_O fuk

if anyone can recommend me a good book about it i’d be grateful

I was 17, just graduated high school and have vivid memories of the KAL007 shootdown. IIRC, the plane was overdue but there was already suspicion that the Soviets had shot it down because they had already shot down another KAL jet in 1978. A week later Jeane Kirkpatrick gave her speech to the UN Security Council. I listened to it in the car on I-40 somewhere between Barstow and Ludlow - I couldn't decide if I wanted to keep going home or turn around and hang out another couple of days with my stoner rockclimbing friends who were out at Kelso Dunes. I went home, but I was convinced that this was going to lead to some sort of retaliatory first strike and then an all-out nuke war. I was in OC - even the Laguna Beach commie hippies demanded bloodthirsty revenge.

Weird associative memory: I saw the Talking Heads at the Pacific Amp the night of the shootdown. I was listening to them constantly through this time.

The Air Crash Investigations episode on KAL 007 is well done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYYqcDUDc44

fuck, I don't want to sound like I'm age shaming, but as I watched the episode and realized that Tom was on a Korean Air jet I was seriously "oh shit, they're really going there!"

As for future events? It's difficult to say, because everything that FAM season 2 has portrayed so far is performatively better than what aerospace engineering and NASA was proposing in the 1990s. I'd love to see the Star Raker make an appearance, but it's a 1978 proposal. After thirty years of a gung ho and well-funded NASA, spin-off tech can presumably be anything but I suspect the collapse of the Soviet Union (maybe the Mars mission will hasten it?) and the internet will be in season 3 somewhere.

KInd of hate alternate history unless it is done right, maybe that is a content-free statement, if so, sorry.

Long time since I've seen it, but I liked how Dark Skies worked itself into history (especially the UFO shooting down Francis Gary Powers). Too bad season 2 never happened.

Get the Project Orion variation Freeman Dyson was working on calculations for and go to Alpha Centauri: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)

}At 0.1c, Orion thermonuclear starships would require a flight time of at least 44 years to reach Alpha Centauri, not counting time needed to reach that speed (about 36 days at constant acceleration of 1g or 9.8 m/s2). At 0.1c, an Orion starship would require 100 years to travel 10 light years. The astronomer Carl Sagan suggested that this would be an excellent use for current stockpiles of nuclear weapons."

Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus

That's the scene after the credits play at the conclusion of season 3. USA & the fallen USSR team up and fulfill Sagan's vision.

finished s2 and i bawled my face off

was not expecting it to go that way even though rationally i knew Moore always likes a good named-cast bodycount with finales

please respect my privacy at this time ;_;

I change my mind this show pulls its punches and leaves the important questions unasked and thus blows:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uuv6TVv0r44

We're not quite done the first season, but I think the premise of this show is totally ingenious. I love how it creates drama from subverting history (omg, are they going to kill Neil Armstrong?! etc.), making you root for characters who are not real but real-adjacent (omg, I can't believe we did it, I can't believe the pretend first woman on the moon pretend discovered water!!!). Like, sometimes you have to remind yourself that yeah, we *did* put a man on the moon, didn't we?

twelve of them, even

so many mens

Men on Moons

In any case, this topic caused a recent revive by me of DSKY-DSKY Him Sad: Official ILB Thread For The Heroic Age of Manned Spaceflight

Can’t remember if I brought it up on this thread or the other or neither, but Gene Kranz never actually said “Failure is not an option,” it was something written for his character to say in Apollo 13 and the real GK liked it so much he used it for the title of his book and ends up being spoken by his character in this show as well.

Wonder what will be the musical accompaniment to Margo's morning routine in the opening episode of Season Three. Speculations are welcomed.

Anyway, rewatching a bit and enjoying, although I am a little more weary of the Forrest Gump-like musical cues, which I tolerated better the first go ground

We just reached the high stakes space rescue episode of season 1, thrilling stuff!

Gordo in all phases is my favorite thing about this whole series, he is so great

I loved Molly most of the way through but i think she got ~too~ ornery somewhere in there & wore out her welcome

I feel bad but I didnt really care much about the lesbian astronaut? name?, but I didnt really enjoy that actor much, felt like she was just doing “bambi eyes” & hoping for the best

ellen?

didn't recognise molly as penny from L O S T but don't think I'd have remembered penny from L O S T if I hadn't looked up molly

I have enjoyed this programme

I really like the way Ellen is portrayed, the way the extra level of repression and her career feedback into each other in some kind of chicken and egg way, but then again maybe I have some special interest in repressed characters, see also longstanding fascination with Mary Woronov.