For All Mankind (AH Tv series at Apple TV)
- Thread starter Michel Van
- Start date
I can vouch for the first season being generally good AH, though the writing, IMO, started jumping the shark in season 2 and jumped it all the way to orbit (...hah) in season 3. Which is kind of a shame, because the core concept and even most of the character beats are sound; there are just enough nonsensical geopolitics and space decisions that I couldn't stomach it after Red Mexico and North Korea Goes to Mars.
Yeah, those really grinded my gears, among other bizarre writing choices that were made.
Given what I know about Mexican history, it was laughably bad at how they tried to convince the viewer as to how Mexico could have even possibly elected a Communist president. It's as if the writers looked up a Wikipedia article of Mexican elections, picked out a few names from the 1988 election and BOOM, somehow it works (it doesn't, really).
At this point, I sadly don't care much about the story anymore.
I'm mostly interested if I'm going to laugh at it or be genuinely impressed at what other AH events parallel real life.
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Definitely a great show to check out. Lots of character centered development/activity with enough hair raising stunts to keep you interested, also not afraid to kill off a person periodically if it can add to the story. But absolutely not a soap opera, though it does have drama moments every once and a while but nothing that comes off as stupid or hugely forced into the story.
On a Doylist level, the show always had an element of...well, not to get too political, but liberal wish fulfillment to it (I mean, that's not exactly hidden, what with the very title of the show, the emphasis on female representation (yet, curiously, race politics are absent from the first two seasons--Danielle is the first black astronaut period, but IIRC that's never brought up), the fixation on John Lennon, killing Pope John Paul II off...), and I get the impression that the writing staff's knowledge of Latin American history and politics begins and ends with "CIA did coups," so naturally they do the opposite--a more left-wing America doesn't do the coups, so naturally all of Latin America goes Red. This is already ironic, because they (inadvertently?) ended up endorsing the very domino theory that the US government used to justify backing right-wing dictators in the first place, but doing it with Mexico is doubly ironic, since, as one fellow noted in this thread when it happened, Mexico was 1) one of the few Latin American countries that didn't get coup'd and had basically the same party in charge from the 1920s to the end of the Cold War IOTL and 2) that party was already center-left (though engaged in armed suppression of left-wing groups for this entire period).Yeah, those really grinded my gears, among other bizarre writing choices that were made.
Given what I know about Mexican history, it was laughably bad at how they tried to convince the viewer as to how Mexico could have even possibly elected a Communist president. It's as if the writers looked up a Wikipedia article of Mexican elections, picked out a few names from the 1988 election and BOOM, somehow it works (it doesn't, really).
At this point, I sadly don't care much about the story anymore.
I'm mostly interested if I'm going to laugh at it or be genuinely impressed at what other AH events parallel real life.
I get what they're going for, the emphasis on space leads to a disengagement from earthly arms races and all that, but...brah, the Cuban Missile Crisis was just a generation ago and the US is just going to let its second-longest land border turn into an extension of the Iron Curtain?! At minimum, Mexico going Red in 1988 should have been enough to make Hart a one-term President, since California would flip solidly Republican in response (with anti-communist Mexicans turning into the Republicans' most reliable Latino bloc after the Miami Cubans).
Apparently, it's gotten even dumber--I understand Turkey is red now too?
On a purely space level, season 1 is like 90% great. Some dumb ideas, and some technical goofs with the super-lunar module they unveil, but the Jamestown core module design is sound enough that I can overlook it. But season 2 already runs more on 'rule of cool/aesthetics' than logic--at minimum, it's either Sea Dragon or Shuttle, not both. Shuttle's economics require a high flight rate; Sea Dragon's very existence hurts the Shuttle program (I'll give them a pass for using the OTL design--stock footage is free, I get it).
I suppose the single unifying theme for my complaints is that the research they did is very obviously entry-level. The writers' understanding of politics, economics, tech, whether on Earth or above it, is very shallow.
Which is a shame, because the actors do a good job, as do the visual effects team (as of season 2; no idea what happens later, visually), the direction is sound, the human elements of the story mostly work well (...aside from Danny's affair with his dead best friend's mom, let's not talk about that), and the theme of minority representation in season 1 is an excellent unifying element (though I'm still annoyed that race politics just get ignored compared to gender ones). They didn't have to make the worldbuilding mistakes they did; the show was, as of season 2, pretty good, but it could have been magnificent. It could have been the gold standard for Space AH, heck, for television AH in general. (EDIT: If you want, you can read this post as an endorsement of the show anyway--if it didn't do its good parts so well, I wouldn't find its failures so frustrating)
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Glad someone else saw it for what it was, too.
I usually don't mind seeing some of the biases of the writers (of either side of the political spectrum), but it just got very predictably cringy for me when it got in the way of a good, plausible, well-written AH.
Oh, the missed opportunities!
I'd love it if it turned out to be Ilya's moonshine still exploding.
Wrong. Rae (sister of Clayton Poole, Danny's first husband) was critical of NASA and the US Government's policy towards black veterans and Danny brought up to Ed how black people get the short end of the stick using "command experience" as a cover, leading him to recommend her for Apollo-Soyuz after Poole explains the systemic racism angle to him.
Zor
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The first two seasons are great. The quality dipped in season three, which I started sensing at the end of S2 when it was being heavily implied that Wilson was going into politics while being a closeted lesbian married to a closeted gay man. I knew it'd lead to some more preaching in the show, not that I necessarily oppose the message, but that sometimes you just want a break from politics and current events, you know? And it just seems so predictable and cliche, like you can't just write a gay character and have them be gay without the need for some sort of message? And the legalization of gay marriage in the late 90s is wishful thinking by the writers. It took until 2008-09 for polling to reflect a majority of Americans supported gay marriage. It was controversial enough when dark blue Massachusetts legalized it in 2004.
Also North Korea ends up beating the U.S. and Soviets to Mars.
I always assumed that wrt Mexico “Communist government“ simply means “government whose policies we don’t agree with”.Yeah, those really grinded my gears, among other bizarre writing choices that were made.
Given what I know about Mexican history, it was laughably bad at how they tried to convince the viewer as to how Mexico could have even possibly elected a Communist president. It's as if the writers looked up a Wikipedia article of Mexican elections, picked out a few names from the 1988 election and BOOM, somehow it works (it doesn't, really).
At this point, I sadly don't care much about the story anymore.
I'm mostly interested if I'm going to laugh at it or be genuinely impressed at what other AH events parallel real life.
At this point communism is basically red capitalism ala China so your description is even more accurate.
Leaving aside the fact that Apolitical Fiction is impossible in general, it's especially true that you can't have Apolitical Alternate History. I mean seriously "What if the Nazis won WWII", probably the most ubitious AH scenario, is by it's very nature glaringly overtly political. Having the text of an AH Story be "the Nazis Won and so things are Bad" is making a political stance, even if it is a very common one. Same goes for the (thankfully) less common "The Nazis Won and so things are Good", as well as "The Nazis won and things are neither good nor bad" in all it's despicable neutrality.
The Space Race was an overt act of American and Soviet Political Policy in the Cold War. NASA is a part of the United States Government. There is no way to depoliticize these things and the attempt could only makes things worse.
Zor
The Space Race was an overt act of American and Soviet Political Policy in the Cold War. NASA is a part of the United States Government. There is no way to depoliticize these things and the attempt could only makes things worse.
Zor
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I would recommend it. It uses the alternate history aspect to a pretty good effect to the point that things are actually significantly different from OTL 20 years after the POD (end of season 3). I will say that the show does take an optimistic vision of how things could go so if you prefer dystopias or a Panglossian "ours is the best of all possible worlds" take then it might not be your thing, but I do think it also works to earn that optimism and show that it's not happening without hurdles or opposition. Plus it integrates those things with the character stories pretty well.
I started watching it yesterday and I have to say, I'm really liking it so far
Halfway through season 1. Thanks to everyone who recommended it!
Halfway through season 1. Thanks to everyone who recommended it!
Really making me want to do a re-watch....
Just don't really have the time rn.
Just don't really have the time rn.
It is what it is, sure lots of off the cuff stuff ... But over all nothing is unbelievable... But yes it's liberal.. they could have made it dystopian and everyone would complain too.
Its tv.. it's entertaining .. hand waving a few items is standard stuff. Its better then 80percent of the junk on TV by far
Its tv.. it's entertaining .. hand waving a few items is standard stuff. Its better then 80percent of the junk on TV by far
I mean most shows are liberal let’s be real, Hollywood does lean more in one direction than the other. Though honestly it hasn’t been as preachy or politically focused as some other AH shows like Hunters (they literally made an allusion to Donald Trump in the finale… set in 1979) or the last season of Man in the High Castle (trying to draw a false equivalency between the US and Nazi Germany via the BCR plot line). And it doesn’t really seem like FAM is going to have many political issues at the moment, though if it does, it seems to be angling for more economic than social issues given how the latest episode went.
Even this claim is tenuous given how the solution to the Soviet Union's ills is a combination of political reforms and capitalism. Arguing for better conditions for workers and better unionisation is a hot-button issue basically only in the US, German Ordoliberalism for example which serves as the basis of the modern post WWII German economy always had cooperation between unions and business at its basis and nobody can claim that modern Germany is not a capitalist society.
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So Margot is Flight Director at Roscosmos now?!??! And what are the concessions made to retain power by the Russian President, and what has happened to Lenara?
And Dev has Helios back.
And Dev has Helios back.