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

Huge alternative history reveal in the new episode. Danielle says she plans to make her granddaughter watch “all three” Star Trek series, meaning that two spinoffs didn’t get made. Sorry Scott Bakula, I have to assume you’ve been erased.

the strike storyline* was lame

*if you can call 20 minutes a storyline

I was trying in vain to figure out where Sergei’s scenes were supposed to take place. The license plates, road signs, and newspaper were all sort of correct but didn’t line up to a coherent answer. We’ll call it Anytown, Midwest

Yeah, no doubt it was Cali-for-Iowa.

Sergei fate was predictable, but as for the show itself ... no idea where it will land this season. I do think Kelly's kid will be grown up and space-y in a future season. Maybe to honor his late grandad and, at this rate, maybe mom, too.

I'm holding out hope for a bonkers "there's an underground Mars civilization of living rocks" finale and Trekkie Cmdr Danielle recognizes them as Horta, then Ronald Moore steps from behind the curtain, clapping slowly, "you passed my test, not just for yourselves but...

...FOR ALL MANKIND"

sure, why not

Does the next season start as Ed and Less-Annoying Elon Musk finish up their prison sentences?

This season blew, apart from Margo, it was impossible to give a shit about any of the characters, or who got the stupid asteroid. So many boring, underlit grey sets, I felt like I was mired in the middle of season 3 of Battlestar Galactica.

An insult to Galactica! (On my recent rewatch, knowing what was coming the decline wasn’t as sharp as I remembered.)

Aleida > Margo > Dev > Eli > Irina > Asteroid > Dani > Ed > Miles > Kelly > have already forgotten the other characters

The plot structure in the finale was odd, I wouldn't go so far as to say it was interesting but things that you'd expect to be pivotal points were undercut by other points: Dani gets shot and almost dies but is fine, Aleida/Margo sabotage the mission but (I think?) it didn't matter anyway because of the override thing on Ranger. Plot also didn't make much sense ("I am totally guilty of entering the code despite not being anywhere near a computer, you'll have to take me at my word and there is no possible way to check") but I can live with that.

In the end this season was worse than s3. Last season had some dumb characters but this season the plot was so cluttered and they ultimately didn’t fully embrace Ed’s treasonous turn. The fact that other characters suddenly switched at the end to agreeing with him was lame. Like, he was absolutely not the hero and was not right about anything he did. But in the end he basically got what he wanted and didn’t really suffer any consequences. (Also, was his daughter/grandson even in the final episode? I’ve already forgotten, but in any case they were due for a real confrontation, especially over the way he turned his grandson into an accomplice. But it never came. No one ever truly challenged how ego-blind he became this season.)

^agree. The Stevens kids sucked but S3 was otherwise pretty good. This season had so many plot holes, dead ends, failures to deliver consequences (like how are Ed and Dev not sent back to earth and put in jail for stealing the asteroid??), and the stupid fake out with Dani. It’s too bad because there are so many potentially interesting storylines within the alternate timeline they created. Sometimes they hit upon one (like role of private businesses in space, striking grunts on Mars, treason vs progress FAM) but they get drowned out by the stupid plot lines.

just caught up. this season has been nothing but discarding consequences for some pretty egregious actions, again and again, over and over, despite the cost of lives, injury to others, multiple murder and sabotage attempts. on and on. I can't even figure out how Ed has been allowed to roam free this entire season, let alone comprehend all the ridiculous plot holes they've ignored and serious suspensions of disbelief they have demanded. Even for a sci-fi show.

So you guys are confirming my decision to bail without watching any of it?

Like for one thing I always felt Ed worked best as a foil for someone else, be it Gordo, Karen or Molly. Ed untethered, Ed unbound, not nearly as interesting.

He might have worked in this season had his character had a clear or consistent motivation. Greed? Rebellion? King of Mars? Shaky-hand stoner? Pride? Self-destruction? All of the above?

We chuckled a lot during this episode, for the wrong reasons, but my favorite might have been Ed sneering at Dani something like "you're still tied to that little blue planet!" and she immediately responds "of course I am!" Because what the fuck is there for anyone on Mars?

So Dani is still a good character at least?

She pretty solid in the first half of the season and then gets jerked around by the plot

Ugh. Sounds bad.

Cancel this and devote the CGI resources to an adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy.

^^^^

Cancel this, go back in time and give us another season of ROME.

Bring back Gordo.
Make it a Gordo-zombie series.

Lol

Ha. Earlier I said I'm waiting for the Mars riots and I guess I wasnt too far off as it turned out lol.

Lovev the M83 at the end! But yeah despite, I assume, everyone assuming the sabotage was Margots doing, why werent Ed and Dev keelhauled for at least their theft/ghost ops shenanigans??

I assume next season might be about Ed's daughter finding the life on mars thign after all? Assuming the show don't get cancelled.

XP to James, you could likely just be fine with whatever the info dump/catch-up is at the start of the next series and skip this one with a wikipedia synopsis perhaps, it's getting flabby and slightly incoherent, the curse of shows that run too long I guess.

Last series I was sure there was going to be some sort of extra-terrestrial beings making an appearance even if it was a science-based storyline like in an Arthur C Clarke novel, which I would have loved, but instead, we get Miles and his big face and his marriage troubles, bleargh.

I assume next season might be about Ed's daughter finding the life on mars thign after all?

really thought the last scene was gonna be this, instead of just Dev looking up into the sky zzzzz

agree with everyone's points above, this season was just overstuffed. could have cut the CIA/KGB torture on Mars plotline entirely and maybe focus instead of Ed/Kelly/Alex which got no resolution at all

focus instead on*

ILX TEXT

This season was annoying because if you reduce it down to a few sentences: a new East India Company is formed with NASA as the Royal Navy when asteroid 16 Psych is discovered. BTW, Margo defected - to me that sounds like it would be completely awesome - only it’s done all wrong.

I was disturbed to see Margo so far off her game. She’s one of the more interesting characters on television and her trajectory through this season was (quoting that's not my post) “gets jerked around by the plot.” Dani finally gets out of this too, but I have a question that better writing should have addressed.

What the hell is NASA now in 2003? Are we supposed to care about anything Eli Hobson says? I feel like so much time was wasted on stories that were either fake drama or another five second shot of Aleida looking worried. If this show was at all realistic, someone would have fragged Ed by episode 4.

I’m not joking about the East India Company nor what the hell NASA is now. Think of it as an analog of an unanswered question from Aliens What exactly is the relationship between the United States Colonial Marine Corps and Weyland-Yutani? If you look at it sideways, are these actually the good guys? Is the Kelly Baldwin plot just science washing? The CIA showed up there PDQ and could have easily owned the place if the plot would have let them. Just how much money is the M7 industrial complex spending on Mars that a proportionate black market that stooge Miles bottomfed on. Fuck that guy. I’m not joking about Ed - frag him.

Because I live near JPL and a life long fan of the robotic space program, just as in real life, the show has ignored anything w.r.t. the outer solar system. What I want for season 5 is for life/organics to be discovered on Enceladus, Helios responds by setting up a methane processing plant on Titan and hilarity ensues. We all know about Europa, attempt no landings there.

Rioting in this is handled as well as it was on nuGalactica and similarly I feel like FAM is stuck in one of malaise-era runs where you hope the payoff is worth the trudge.

ILX TEXT - now you all know what my IA Writer file name is.

I mean it’s a great marker

Too many dropped threads and the story couldn’t figure out which characters to highlight and when.

The only relief in the narrative was Margo getting her diplomatic immunity dropped, meaning she’d go to a US federal prison and not to whatever presumably grimmer fate she’d face back with the Soviets. The head of Roscosmos knew her own fate was screwed and it was nice she didn’t take everyone down with her.

The Helios staff far outnumbered everyone else on Mars, right?

Seemed that way. That just added to the frustrating hand-waviness of the season, since the installation of an invaluable resource on Mars would not have guaranteed security, rather, it would have likely done the opposite, provoking a complete military takeover, especially after how said Helios employees behaved.

I must have missed it, but what did the head of Roscosmos do wrong to earn implied punishment at home?

The attempt to send the asteroid to earth failed. Soviet chain of command just sends you to the gulag if your task fails and Margo was under her direct supervision and took the blame for the asteroid's diversion.

She would have been in deep shit even without the Margo angle, but with it, double deep shit

I didn’t get why Margo’s boss revoked her diplomatic immunity to let the Americans lock her up (and why this treated as a cruel act). Federal Superman beats the hell out of the KGB prison she was headed to if she goes back to the Soviet Union!

I think she liked her? But yeah, Margo macguyvering a gulag escape plan with her cellmate Boris Yeltsin next season would have been a better thing to look forward to than sad Elon Musk conquers Mars.

They very clumsily set up Margo as the new Werner. If we see her in the next season, it’s not going to be at NASA. Might make it out of federal prison and be stuck around a shabby apartment in the US

I don’t think it was set up as cruel, just that both she and Aleida realized she got a raw deal all around after Sergei clued her in that it was Irina who played him to begin with, and now that he’s been killed and Margo took one for the team she’s out of cards to play.

Sergei got the worst of it. Poor guy.

That entire conversation where Margo tried to draw a parallel between her choice and Werner was clumsy as fuck, though. The human misery she was willing to accept was… earth not getting a giant supply of iridium sooner rather than later? The fact she was getting busted?

So not watching this that I don’t even mind reading the thread for spoilers.

Hope I am not overstaying my welcome with these irrelevant comments, like I did when VG told me to take my COUNTERPART commentary elsewhere and I ended up starting a new thread.

irrelevant comments ~about this show~ are welcome lol

great job on making probably the least sympathetic group of rebels I've ever seen in a movie! who exactly were we supposed to be rooting for in that ending?

space

Yeah agree, Ed and gormless Miles were not heroes. That one dark haired woman was, but geez I cant even recall her name now so they didn't flesh her character out well. Dev was a cockhead Musk-lite. Dani was completely useless as a leader, frankly. I thought she'd come in and kick some arses but under her (despite her? who knows) everything went to hell.

I preferred this season over S3, except maybe the parts of S3 where they're racing to Mars. countless plotholes and dropped threads as you all have mentioned, and I can't blame anyone for giving up on this show, but I'm still enjoying the ride. finale as usual had me gripped. this show is basically turning into an Expanse prequel

great job on making probably the least sympathetic group of rebels I've ever seen in a movie! who exactly were we supposed to be rooting for in that ending?

Can't believe they spent the first two thirds of the season setting up the upstairs/downstairs union plot only to abandon it in 10 minutes in order to hatch a plot to make a zillionaire God of Mars.

If it was so easy to get that Mars glass back to Earth, why did it need to be a power struggle between the Russian guy and the dopey American? Also you want me to believe a bunch of Americans had been on Mars for 10 years without anyone thinking to try and send back Mars stuff to sell?!

Also lol at being able to smuggle a load of actual people to Mars. Surely weight is strictly regulated plus how would they even survive/eat etc during the six months (or whatever) it took to get there?

maybe oblique reference to
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91gKbMrXH+L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

I'm 4 episodes into season 4 and am wondering what happened to this show, was it always this stupid, and if the rest of the season worth carrying on?