r/ForAllMankindTV

I was nuts for this show when it first came along. The interesting play of alternate history going forward was amazing. They gave interesting characters and put good build out into them.

I came to places like here and raved about the show……and then I just stopped after S3.

I’m doing my first rewatch as an attempt to get through all the seasons, and I just finished S3 and I remember why I stopped.

They seemed to have this need to really cap a season by shocking us. Craziness in S1, Gordo and Trace in S2. And it seems they just felt they had to keep upping the ante each season finale. The bombing was at least well sourced to real issues that were going on in the universe. I get that. But the fact it had to go off and take many other solid built characters makes no sense to me. Especially when the younger gen we are left with have mostly not been set up to be liked.

They could have highlighted the factors that led to a bombing without the bombing actually going off.

But…..I’m going to try to keep going now. At least the remaining seasons are right there to watch now.

I was knocking myself for not finishing the show long ago, but I’m reminded now not to be too hard on myself. I’ll never understand why they went so damn hard in these season finales.

Season 5 was so awkward and disappointing from the very beginning. The whole Craters concept is absurd. The writers have no regard for whether it makes any practical sense within the show’s setting. Large numbers of people secretly infiltrate the space base without any screening or medical examinations. A single COVID-scale outbreak could devastate the entire base, not to mention the risks of drugs, contraband, crime, resource shortages, or people dying during transit.

Happy Valley more like a badly run small town in Texas. Protesters can get close to critical areas, sensitive information is ridiculously easy to access, security personnel can hand out weapons with barely any oversight, and the command system seems to stop functioning the moment things get messy.

In a sealed habitat, the obvious response would be to lock down corridors, isolate life-support and command modules, restrict dangerous equipment, and keep unrest away from anything that could kill the entire colony. Instead, the show just recreates an Earth-style protest scene on Mars. Security personnel get into physical confrontations with civilians, while weapons are fired recklessly inside sealed compartments.

Alex is part of the same problem, someone who raised on Mars should understand better than almost anyone how fragile the habitat is and how quickly disorder can become a survival crisis. Instead, he leaks sensitive information like he is just living in Minneapolis.

Sorry for my poor English. The content was write by myself, and I used ai to help translate and polish some parts.

I thought that song with the final seen was so perfect.

Literally pull up that last scene and with the song and love it.

final scene plus song. perfect

A 4-part documentary showing the human side of the space race leading to the ISS: the politics, the astronauts, the people behind the missions

I think anyone who loves For All Mankind would love this.

I'm on my first watch (this series has me on a chokehold).

I've just started this episode (I hoped to be able to go to sleep but alas, I can't without knowing how the landslide is resolved).

Soooo, is Danny going to get scot-free of the incident? The start of the episode has him recording a message talking normally and interacting with other crew members like nothing.

After causing the deaths of three people, damages probably in the billions and cutting short the greatest achievement of mankind to the date?

Just because he had the luck that one of his victims was the only one who knew it was directly his fault for being drugged out of his mind?

Because he told Ed some sad story? BS.

I already disliked the character but he was only a cheater. Now he's a killer.

ETA: Finished the season. Fuck the Steven's sons.

Seems that Danny is facing consequences, thank goodness. We will see if James also does.

Hello, I'm currently watching season 4 episode 6 and wondering for a long time why Aleida cares so much about Margo's betrayal of the country?
What does it have to do with her what Margo did to help the USSR catch up on Mars? Margo saved lives by doing that
Isn't the purpose of those scientists to advance space exploration for all mankind??
I wonder especially because Aleida isn't even born in the USA! Why is she so patriotic?
Margo is a hero to Aleida, and she didnt have a choice to help USSR, she was forced to do it, tortured even!
I just see Aleida as a very dumb person

https://preview.redd.it/zofn68ezzbjh1.png?width=1806&format=png&auto=webp&s=db36998967ae9cac643e26709273cf8b2e60565f

Maybe I've been living under a rock but I had no idea this show even existed. I found out a few weeks ago when a friend got me into Star City and mentioned FAM. Well, I loved Star City so decided to rewind to this. I am on a bender - binged season 1 last weekend and would already be done with season 2 if I hadn't put limits on myself (almost there anyway). Needless to say I am over the moon (yup, did that) even though I get mad at some of the character shenanigans.

Is FAM's depiction of combat in space (with small arms) the most realistic? OPEF soldiers are issued air rifles as opposed to conventional firearms, which have the advantage of using versatile ammunition types that can be fabricated within a vessel or HAB with a 3D printer. An added benefit is the lack of heat build-up which could cause catastrophic failures.

Was the film's armorer's choice of firearm chosen purely for realism or were air rifles chosen because they looked cooler?

Could be cool to jump between the two shows to see both sides of the space race simultaneously bouncing back and forth between the shows.Theres one for Marvel movies/TV shows which makes it even more fun to watch. The MCU one doesn’t have you watch it in order of release dates but rather the time line inside of the specific show universe.

Mars-94 is obviously setting up one last Margo/Sergei discovery

I keep coming back to the fact that the Mars-94 screen doesn’t just show some mysterious detection. It specifically says NIKULOV LOADING.
I think the simplest answer might be the right one: Sergei had some experiment/program running on Mars-94, it finally detected whatever it was looking for, and now there’s only one person left who might understand what he was doing.
Margo.

It also feels like they’ve left exactly the right people around for this. Irina is on Mars and would know the classified Soviet side of Sergei’s work. Aleida can actually work with/rebuild the technology. But Margo knew Sergei in a way neither of them did.

So I could see Irina knowing what the Nikulov program was, Aleida figuring out how it works, and Margo being the person who realizes what Sergei actually discovered.

Which would be especially fucked up considering Irina had Sergei killed.

There’s also something very FAM about Mars-94 being the thing that does it. That mission was basically a Soviet humiliation. It failed, people died rescuing the crew, and then the ship was just abandoned out there for decades.

The show loves turning failures into something important later.

And they basically hammer that idea again in the S5 finale with all the old satellites. The modern systems aren’t available, so everyone suddenly has to depend on ancient hardware nobody cared about anymore.

Then the episode ends with the ultimate piece of forgotten hardware waking up.
Mars-94.

That’s why I don’t think it’s going to be aliens finding the ship or Mars-94 somehow traveling to another star. I think it has been sitting out there collecting data, and something Sergei built finally triggered.
If GW really is gravitational waves, maybe that discovery eventually points them toward something outside the solar system. Alpha/Proxima Centauri would make sense as the next frontier after Titan, especially now that Kelly has proven life independently evolved somewhere besides Earth.
Kelly’s discovery basically answers: Are we alone biologically?

Sergei and Margo’s could answer: Where do we look next?

And I have a feeling the emotional payoff is Margo finishing something Sergei started 25+ years earlier.
Maybe the discovery even ends up officially carrying both names. Nikulov-Madison or Madison-Nikulov.
That would be a pretty perfect ending for Margo IMO. She doesn’t need to get pardoned or have everyone decide she was secretly right all along. She can stay a complicated historical figure.
But Sergei and Margo finally get to accomplish something together that neither the US nor USSR gets to own.

And knowing this show, if that happens, I would be shocked if they don’t bring the jazz records back.
Margo listening to one of Sergei’s records while whatever their discovery made possible launches toward the next frontier feels almost too obvious.
But FAM is kind of predictable like that.

And that’s actually why I think it might happen.
They never got to go anywhere together, but their work does.

Hello, I'm currently watching season 4 episode 6 and wondering for a long time why Aleida cares so much about Margo's betrayal of the country?
What does it have to do with her what Margo did to help the USSR catch up on Mars? Margo saved lives by doing that
Isn't the purpose of those scientists to advance space exploration for all mankind??
I wonder especially because Aleida isn't even born in the USA! Why is she so patriotic?
Margo is a hero to Aleida, and she didnt have a choice to help USSR, she was forced to do it, tortured even!
I just see Aleida as a very dumb person

https://preview.redd.it/ac4nutokr4jh1.png?width=1806&format=png&auto=webp&s=b8d41d8eedc62a90985d168caa5959b5207d2068

I was hooked on this show from S1 and have loved it. So fun, well written (S1 especially), and unique!
Season 4 tho, man, I’m having a tough time. Especially with >!them doing my girl Margot like this!< The line in my title is from >!Aleida to Margot!< and it annoyed me more than >!Ed being a child, Sam being a nuisance, and Milo being an absolute greedy jerk.!<

I still miss >!Gordo and Tracy!< - not related to the above, I just do.

Polish speakers please correct me if I'm wrong, but around 2:00 Piotr is talking about filming 80s flashback scenes for For All Mankind in Bulgaria? Which would track cause Svetlana Efremova (Irina) also posted about filming in Bulgaria on IG not long ago and she also posted a photo of the script for 6x5. I guess it might not be that surprising given there's going to be a whole ass ship named after Sergei in S6, but I'm still glad we'll actually get more glimpses of him. AND Wrenn Schmidt is ALSO credited for 6x5 on IMDB. Hoping for a Margo/Sergei phone call PLEASE APPLE.

Gday, watching this show for the first time at s02e08, molly's losing her sight and chilling in their bohemian apartment and im wondering why they havent moved house in all this time, i thought maybe her and wayne are just a down to earth [scuse the pun] couple, but even Ed & Karen have the same house. Gordos place is humble. Margo sleeps on a sofa at work lol.

They have lush cars but very humble homes.

Im just wondering if theres some fun factoid that actually NASA astronauts are or were paid peanuts despite such skilled and hazardous work?

Cheers

I’ll go first:

Personally, I think the first two seasons were the best seasons of the whole show, being the only ones where it actually felt like the Cold War shifted to space, and the space race never ended, especially with the ending of season 2. Beyond that point, it just became sci-fi nonsense (although I still enjoyed the later seasons).

The show consistently shows a more diverse and tolerant society than our own (which is great), but doesn't bother to depict the struggle and resistance that would allow such a society to form. It seems like there's no sexual harassment, no discrimination, no bigotry (except against gay people) at nasa in the 80s, why, because a black woman was on the moon? Those things still overwhelmingly exist in the STEM fields even today.

People in power do not give up that power simply because they are inspired to do better, but because they are worried that they might lose that power if concessions are not given. White men in the beginning show directly benefit from sexist and racist hiring practices, astronaut jobs are highly coveted and even the best of the best don’t get the job because there are so few slots. This is the hierarchy that sexism and racism in NASA and other institutions preserves and justifies, and anyone who threatens that hierarchy, and fights against that sexism or racism, will be seen as a threat to white men who want those covetous jobs. The fact that the show doesn’t show the conflict necessarily to change this is strange. And don't tell me it would ruin the tone of the show to depict these things, because Star City is able to depict police brutality, misogyny, surveillance states, etc. without throwing any punches. The only reason the show doesn't depict these things on the American side (and the type of shit that it would take to overcome them) is because of jingoism and American exceptionalism, pure and simple. The writers want to depict a better america without depicting the conflict and activism and resistance to pushback that would make that america better

Also, early in the series, when sexism racism etc. are still a thing, before they are magically wished away by the writers, it seems to only exist in the context of like, oppressed people oppressing themselves or people of their own oppressed group. Danielle Poole breaks her own arm in order to help Gordo, I think it was Molly who says the only explicitly sexist thing in the show, and there are probably more instances I'm forgetting. They even have Lee Atwater on the show and he just seems like, a somewhat weasily politician rather than a massive racist, which is deeply offensive, also none of the many gay people in the show comment on the fact that the guy who is helping one of them run for congress for his party helped perpetuate the aids crisis, because Reagan is idolized by this show, and they can't depict him as the genocidal monster he was because this pushes against the disgusting american exceptionalist mythology that it is trying to reinforceAlso, early in the series, when sexism racism etc. are still a thing, before they are magically wished away by the writers, it seems to only exist in the context of like, oppressed people oppressing themselves or people of their own oppressed group. Danielle Poole breaks her own arm in order to help Gordo, I think it was Molly who says the only explicitly sexist thing in the show, and there are probably more instances I'm forgetting. They even have Lee Atwater on the show and he just seems like, a somewhat weasily politician rather than a massive racist, which is deeply offensive, also none of the many gay people in the show comment on the fact that the guy who is helping one of them run for congress for his party helped perpetuate the aids crisis, because Reagan is idolized by this show, and they can't depict him as the genocidal monster he was because this pushes against the disgusting american exceptionalist mythology that it is trying to reinforce

Just finished season 5 and I gotta say, it's by far a downgrade from the previous seasons. One of the biggest problems I had is that they made Kelly such a selfish, irresponsible person.

When they first introduced her in season 2, she was so mature and forthright in her goals in life and also family. Then the show does a complete 180 and makes her the most immature, selfish, and honestly annoying character? She gets an unexpected pregnancy as a result of not keeping it in her pants for 5 seconds with a cosmonaut. That alone should've grounded her from any scientific endeavor in space ever again. To make it worse, the rest of the astronauts have to take an insane amount of risk getting her off mars. By season 5, she's literally endangering her entire crew to be the first to find life. Like that scene where she sees the water reflection right after the other astronaut burns her leg? Kelly looks like a goddam junkie eyeing the samples.

I really hate what they did to her character. I get them trying to make her walk in her father's footsteps but while Ed recklessly endangered lives at times, he (usually) gets his crews consent. Kelly seems like she straight up does not care in order to be the first to find life, and actively manipulates her crew mates instead.

Honestly, I don’t think I wanna watch anymore. Culminated there for me reminded me of my relationship with my dad, where dev is saying you’ll regret not being there when he passes. That tough love. The drinks at the bar with alex and Kelly. Man I’m sobbing right now. I hope the show stays watchable but I’ve been binging for a week and I am walking away for a bit.