Fiction and science fiction are my favorite genres, whether in movies, books or series. The possibility of creating a world, an entire universe from a blank canvas has given birth to great films like “Star Wars” or great literary sagas like “Game of Thrones” or “Harry Potter”.
However, sometimes you don’t have to create an entire world from scratch to have an interesting sci-fi premise. Sometimes all you have to do is review our past and change a key point in history to imagine how different our present would be. This is the resource called What-If, and he is the one who uses the Apple TV + series “For All Humanity” very effectively.
With the original name of “ For All Mankind ”, the series asks the following question: What if the Russians had become the first to set foot on the moon? What would have happened then? Ronald D. Moore (responsible for ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ and ‘Battlestar Galactica’) responds to it with an alternate story that begins from this hypothetical moment in the late ’60s and tells how the United States reacts with it. a space race that never ends, with tensions escalating to much higher levels than they did in reality.
And in this space race which continues at an exponential rate, we see the history of NASA astronauts, with much more budget, working against the clock to make it to Russians looking for victories against the Communist milestone of leaving a mark on the moon before everyone else.
I can’t count without stepping into a minefield spoilers, but imagine that’s a pretty good premise for any space lover: ask yourself what would have happened throughout the second half of the 20th century if we hadn’t stopped going to the moon. If there were very frequent and regular missions, with all the research and technological advances that would entail.
The first season is about the late 60s, while the second season takes us into the hypothetical 80s where we are already seeing technological advances that we actually only saw in the 90s. More space exploration, more benefits for humanity en bloc. It promises, especially because in the following seasons we should see 90s and 2000s with breakthroughs that we maybe see nowadays. An alternate story in which humanity is advancing technologically much faster. And of course, in this alternate world there is no shortage of Apple.
This desire to know what would have happened in this alternate story is what makes “ For All Humanity ” one of the most interesting premises that currently exist on Apple TV +. Yesterday the penultimate chapter of the second season came out, and I’m already counting the days of the week left to see the final season.
