After two seasons of a prolonged Cold War For all mankind moved into the technology boom of the 1990s. If the real 90’s were driven by a techno-optimism, For all mankind explores an idea of what a utopian, technology-driven America would actually look like. In this alternate, space-focused timeline, the ’90s are filled with electric cars, videophones, and mining on the moon. Sounds pretty good right? But as the season progresses For all mankind shows that we could not have left our problems behind even if the utopianism of the current 1990s could have been translated into reality.
From the third season For all mankind’Alternate history has leaped beyond where our ’90s found us. The larger powers have shut down their military snafus in Vietnam and Afghanistan to focus on building military bases on the moon. The Equal Rights Amendment was enshrined in the Constitution thanks to the prominence of female astronauts, electric cars are readily available thanks to investments in technology, and the Soviet Union never collapsed.
It placed its own heroes like Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman), Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall) and Gordo Stevens (Michael Dorman) alongside the Aldrins and the Rides. Real life figures were moved around like chess pieces, with Ted Kennedy becoming president after Nixon and then Reagan. They speak to characters through a combination of Voice actors and deepfakes.
Real-world characters exist in Season 3, but they take a backseat to the world of the show. The rise of computers and the internet doesn’t play a huge role in the show, as all the exciting technology has been focused on sustaining life in space for decades. While it’s not a one-to-one analogy, replacing “computers” with “space travel” makes it possible For all mankind
A charismatic billionaire headed for Mars has obvious parallels with Elon Musk, but Ayesa bears no resemblance to the hyper-visible billionaire. He only owns one company, Helios, not four. He rejects the title and corner office and works directly under his employees. Helios employees practice office democracy by holding public votes on important company policies. And most significantly, Elon Musk does not compete with NASA – SpaceX is working detailed with the government.
Ayesa feels more akin to the techno-libertarians of the ’70s-’90s who saw technology as a means of personal liberation, historians say Fred Turner called the New Communalists. As Turner describes in his book From counterculture to cyberculture, they found “the cybernetic notion of the globe as a single, interconnected pattern of information” as “deeply reassuring”. The “invisible information game” would bring about “global harmony”, a break with the hard lines drawn during the Cold War.
in the For all mankind, Ayesa watches in horror as the moon becomes a battlefield for world powers and then split in half, with one part for the USA and the other for the USSR. He wanted to smack both of them to Mars and create a free trade zone that would be essentially invisible to most people on Earth, but would challenge both ideologies. Above all, the key is to be the first. And considering how advanced space technology is at this point, he didn’t even have to build everything himself. He takes advantage of a terrible catastrophe at a space hotel in the first episode of Season 3 and buys the technology Helios needs to take on NASA and the USSR in a race to Mars.
Ayesa continues his shopping spree, poaching NASA employees who are annoyed by the low pay and outdated sense of order. It’s hard to blame them given NASA’s economic position matters For all mankind has improved radically, they haven’t seen a raise in years. When Helios employees discuss company issues, such as who should lead the company’s mission to the Red Planet, they feel heard. A communal structure and a capitalist enterprise make for a romantic vision.
For all mankind was co-designed by Star Trek alum R onald D. Moore, and the show references the franchise from time to time. Long associated with utopianism, it is derided as obsolete in the ’90s season three, in which astronauts favor the hellish fantasies Foreigner
And yet, the show constantly reminds its characters that the number of things that can go wrong in space is endless. There’s no oxygen or gravity, no atmosphere to protect against radiation, and tremendous distance between landmarks without the ability to fast travel. There is the isolation from most of humanity, as well as the years of imprisonment in a confined space, which would lead to what with a trip to Mars NASA (in our universe) thinks behavioral problems are “inevitable.” For all mankind Fans have already seen these issues play out at the Jamestown base alongside episodes of The Bob Newhart Show.
The phrase “space is tough” has become such a standard phrase in the industry that the US Space Forces used it in commercials. But it’s more than hard, it’s horrific and For all mankind is not afraid. Characters die a brutal death in For all mankindfrom being burned alive in a spacesuit to bleeding from their eyeballs after being exposed to a harsh lunar landscape.
These deaths are mourned and remembered, but they don’t stop anyone from taking to the skies. Neither Ayesa’s space libertarianism nor NASA’s reliance on military structures can stop disaster in the most unforgiving environment imaginable, a place where the smallest piece of debris can destroy an entire ecosystem. The only way For all mankind argued, is to somehow work together in all sincerity at some point, even if it’s just a little at first.
While the Mars mission is successful in the sense that the boots are on the ground, after that it begins to fall apart. Similar to the 1990s, an underground movement of anti-government extremism is downplayed For all mankind until it’s tragically too late. Like Timothy McVeigh, the perpetrators of the season-ending terrorist attack are ex-military. transmission of the real world For all mankind‘s spatial focus, the events of Jamestown become as radicalizing as that Waco wins.
The world is upside down For all mankindThe final episodes of : the President is openly gay, neither the Soviets nor the Americans were first to Mars it turns out, and the Johnson Space Center is in ruins. Space is suddenly a financial and political drain as dreamers like Ayesa and Margo Madison are locked out of their own institutions.
The exploits of Gordo and Traci Stevens couldn’t be further from the past. As the sparkle of Radiohead’s Everything in Its Right Place ushers in the 2000s, the characters find their lives turned upside down as an age of space heroism transitions into a time of deep uncertainty. Thom Yorke’s haunting vocals, born out of his nervous breakdown after the success of ok calculator, went perfectly with the quick shot of Margo waking up to her new life in the 2003 Soviet Union (not since). The American was a show with needle drops so good).
But despite all the chaos, the show feels like Moore’s version of the horrible Star Trek: Enterprisewhich examines the earliest beginnings of Star Trek–like society. Earth may have changed, but space is still up and calling for exploration.
Despite what billionaires are trying to sell you, the road to life under the stars wouldn’t be easy. lives would be ruined. A sense of adventure would fade. Mankind would be dragged screaming and kicking into the future, dragging the inequalities, hatreds, and petty squabbles of the pale blue dot alongside rations on a journey across the solar system. but For all mankind argues that shit that hits the fan knows no language or ideology. If anyone out there wants to be successful at all in the Great Hereafter, there is simply no other option.
For all mankind Season 3 will stream on Apple TV Plus.