Anyone watched it? Is it good?

I’m halfway through the first episode and it is looking pretty OK.

Premise

In an alternate timeline in 1969, Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov becomes the first human to land on the Moon. This outcome devastates morale at NASA but also catalyzes a U.S. effort to catch up. With the Soviet Union emphasizing diversity by including a woman in subsequent landings, the United States is forced to match pace, training women and minorities who were largely excluded from the initial decades of U.S. space exploration. Each subsequent season takes place 10 years later, with season two taking place in the 1980s, season three taking place in the 1990s, and season four taking place in the 2000s.

  • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    7·
    6 days ago

    I forgot there’s a few small points of good class analysis here and there, and the CIA at one point is shown to be the monsters that they are.

    That’s true but I felt they were overshadowed or glossed over too quickly in that last season. I really thought the writing was on the wall for a full season of class struggle and then the important bits were over before I knew it. The implications of privatisation on the people up in space was interesting, but often undermined by Ed Baldwin being a jackass. If he’s not dead at the start of the next season I think I’m done.😅

    • tactical_trans_karen [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      I really thought the writing was on the wall for a full season of class struggle and then the important bits were over before I knew it.

      Exactly this! This is what my partner and I were saying. It’s clearly developing into something great and we might have a Red mars, then it’s just hand waved away. Though I do like the part about the DPRK being the first to Mars and then being incredibly based at the station. The great man of history bullshit narrative about Ed is so frustrating, if there is a full class struggle flash point, they’ll figure out a way for him to patronizingly flip to the side of the workers and act like he knew that was the right thing to do all along. Then there will be a statue of him on Mars.

      • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        6 days ago

        Then there will be a statue of him on Mars.

        Lol, that’s how I’m hoping they start off the next season; just pan past a statue of Ed and let’s move the F on. data-laughing

        Yeah, I will say that as much lib shit they had , even about the DPRK, they still had some of the most humane treatment of the DPRK as well.

        I’m curious to see what they do with their spinoff about the Russians, but I’m also not sure I wanna trust them with any more of my time.

        • tactical_trans_karen [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          3·
          5 days ago

          I’m curious to see what they do with their spinoff about the Russians…

          I so hope they focus on the Soviet vision of dreaming of a better future and discuss the meaning and purpose of having unity in that vision. It’d be so cool if they cover Yuri G.

          • glans [it/its]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
            2·
            5 days ago

            ‘For All Mankind’ Renewed for Season 5, Spinoff in the Works at Apple

            “For All Mankind” has been renewed for Season 5 at Apple TV+. In addition, Variety has learned the streamer has ordered a spinoff series focusing on the Soviet space program.

            The spinoff is currently titled “Star City” and hails from “For All Mankind” creators Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert, and Ben Nedivi. Nedivi and Wolpert will serve as showrunners. The show will return to the beginning of “For All Mankind’s” alternative timeline, in which the Soviets are the first to reach the moon. But the show will then “explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain, showing the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers, and the intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space program, and the risks they all took to propel humanity forward,” per the official logline.

            “Our fascination with the Soviet space program has grown with every season of ‘For All Mankind,’” said Wolpert and Nedivi. “The more we learned about this secret city in the forests outside Moscow where the Soviet cosmonauts and engineers worked and lived, the more we wanted to tell this story of the other side of the space race. We could not be more excited to continue building out the alternate history universe of ‘For All Mankind’ with our partners at Apple and Sony.”