- Race into space alternate history full#
- Race into space alternate history series#
- Race into space alternate history tv#
Perhaps in this version of the space race, retinols work much, much better. (It’s an alternate-history show, yes, but some things never change!) But astronauts? Astronauts going to Mars? Korean War veterans in the mid-’90s with the musculature of an MMA fighter and barely a hint of wrinkles? Hmm. On the administrative side, it’s all too plausible that people in power in the 1970s could still be hanging onto their posts well into the ’90s. By my math, Ed and Karen Baldwin should be pushing 70, and yet there they are, looking fresh-faced and ready to hop aboard multiyear missions into the depths of the solar system. It’s hard to take a cast that’s been working very well and dismantle them for the sake of the show, but in the case of For All Mankind, that decision presents challenges. Johnson’s Danny Stevens, Krys Marshall’s Danielle Poole, and Jodi Balfour’s Ellen Wilson. Much of the main cast is still present, including Joel Kinnaman and Shantel VanSanten’s Ed and Karen Baldwin, Wrenn Schmidt’s Margo Madison, Casey W. Some of the missteps of For All Mankind’s third season are silly but relatively easy to overlook. You have got to be kidding me!! How could you possibly expect this to be a good call!? What were they thinking! And sometimes, it made me stand up and pace around my home like a deranged sports fan ranting about poor coaching decisions.
Race into space alternate history full#
All of that coalesces into a season that is sometimes a fist-pumping celebration of passion and ingenuity, full of tension and glory and feats of space-themed derring-do. and Russia are still the chief players, but For All Mankind also adds Helios, a privately owned tech company, as a major competitor in the race to land on the red planet. Season three, which premieres today, leaps forward into the mid-1990s, and the world’s focus is now set on colonizing Mars.
By the end of season two, America and Russia both have permanent lunar bases. Seasons one and two spin that premise out into the 1980s, following the rough idea that increased global competition sparked significantly more investment in space exploration.
Race into space alternate history series#
But the highs are higher.Īpple TV+’s space-race alternate-history series began in the late 1960s with the simple premise that, in its fictional timeline, Russia beat the United States to the moon. In a long-running series, like For All Mankind has now become, there’s more room for growth and odd tangents and for stuff that, frankly, does not work.
Over the course of a series, everything feels pretty much like everything else. It’s one of the frustrations of the limited-series format: The upside is a tightly controlled arc where all the variables can be measured and tweaked, but the downside is a lack of experimentation or risk.
Race into space alternate history tv#
TV is best when there’s room to take big, potentially disastrous swings.