Some historical figures, from Nixon to Neil Armstrong to Johnny Carson, play background roles.
‘For All Mankind’ Continues to Make Giant Leaps in Season 2 pulls out of Vietnam early in order to focus on the Cold War’s new celestial front, and the early inclusion of women in the Apollo program spurs public support for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Ted Kennedy cancels a trip to Chappaquiddick in order to head a Senate investigation into the lunar failure, then beats Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election before losing to Ronald Reagan in 1976. We’ll even go as far as looking at who’s a candidate, or who would be a NASA administrator, looking at the actual history.”įor All Mankind doesn’t just alter the history of space travel. Going into the next season, we know who the president is. But the detail of it is great because it makes us feel like we’ve got ourselves covered. “Our writers’ PA, every time we talk about things in the room, something comes up, and he has to go up and change the timeline,” says cocreator and executive producer Ben Nedivi.
RACE INTO SPACE ALTERNATE HISTORY UPDATE
And we get to see all of those effects.īeyond the predictable alt-history lunar confrontations, For All Mankind plots out its alternate history in such minute detail that the writers have to keep and update a chart just to make sure they’re following their own timeline correctly. The Soviets landed on the moon first, not just changing the course of the space race but of history writ large. The show’s most distinctive feature is its earnest maximalism, not just in terms of characters and plot, but in examining the furthest reaches of its own historical and political world. to the moon in 1969 by a matter of weeks, and instead of the space race coming more or less to an end by the mid-1970s, the discovery of water on the moon heats it up to its greatest intensity ever. The premise of For All Mankind is that the Soviet Union beat the U.S. This is a compliment.) The most complicated part of For All Mankind is history itself. Watching it was like taking a fistful of amphetamines and BASE jumping off Half Dome.
RACE INTO SPACE ALTERNATE HISTORY TV
(The last two episodes of Season 2, which won’t air until April, comprise two of the most bonkers hours of TV I’ve ever seen. But at its core The Expanse is a fairly compact drama that focuses on only a few characters, while For All Mankind has sent more people to space than the actual real-world NASA.īut the hardest thing to keep track of isn’t the extensive cast or the fast-moving, heart-pounding plot. For All Mankind draws comparisons to another sprawling upper-middlebrow streaming space epic The Expanse, which itself follows in the footsteps of Game of Thrones with its extensive world-building and intergalactic scope. In addition to the seven NASA astronauts and ground staff that the show’s second season primarily focuses on, there’s also the spouses and children, dozens of astronauts in supporting roles, NASA functionaries, politicians, and their opposite numbers in Moscow. For All Mankind is as big and chaotic as space itself.
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