For All Mankind Trailer - Apple TV- SPOILER

Goodbye, Bob.

I wonder what Sally Ride would've thought of her depiction.

 

Holy crap!

Even if it's a Spoiler discussion i'll put my thoughts in spoilercode for now.

Spoiler: Season Finale

That's the second time today i completely choked up and was near tears today ( the first one was during a scene from the season finale of Falcon and Winter Soldier.

When Gordo and Tracy made it back to hatch i thought they'd make it, maybe with severe damage to skin, limbs and other organs but the reveal of their death really hit hard. The funeral with Ed breaking down was so gutwrenching.

I said previously that there's no way the show could avoid war when the last episode ended but they found a way which i think is at least believable. Cuba has proven that if cooler heads are at the helm there is a chance to turn things around, even as massive as the 2 superpowers charging full speed at each other. I absolutely loved it that regular people ( as regular as somene who is being shot into space can be) have shown that they don't need to enemies. That things that unite us are far more powerful than things that separate us and Danielle might just have saved millions of lives with the publicity stunt ( i was surprised the Soviet commander went for it, in the US the worst that would have happened to Danielle would be prison, in the USSR Stepan might have been executed).

The Pathfinder scenes were also amazingly tense and awesome but in hindsight, from a realistic point of view, Ed could have just told them he'd rather shoot Sea Dragon than Buran but then again there would be no drama.

Aleida getting to issue the command to dock

Margo.. oh poor Margo. That Soviet general is right, they have her. She has become susceptible to blackmail when she reveaied the booster design flaw to Sergei ( albeit out of the intention to possibly save lives). The Soviets can now pressure her to continue as they have the perfect tool in their hand and they will use it ( and Sergei alongside, who doesn't look too happy). Wonder how that will play out in season 3.

Speaking of season 3 - damn, 1995 and the first human to step on Mars! Season 3 is sure to be wild too as the race for Mars heats up - perfect PR opportunity for the Soviets to step onto the RED planet first.

 

One point on which this series got me thinking: that spouses of persons with responsibilities have responsibilities themselves. It was evident that Ed was not completely lucid after what his wife had told him, and the lives of millions of people would then depend on his actions.

 

So we could see a bit of cast shake up. Ellen is the only one we have a known age for will be 52, Ed would be very late 60s if not into his 70s and Margo probably 5 - 10 years younger.

Be interesting to see where they go with both the technology. In our timeline, the internet was starting to take off in that year, Microsoft revamped Windows in a big way and IBM had well and truly given way to biege boxes (so no more PS/2s with older style monitors

The iron curtain probably won't have fallen, Berlin wall will still be standing and who will be president? Clinton in his second term or some-one totally new?

time will tell.

 

I think Apollo-Soyuz mission and Regan meeting directly with the Soviet Premier will help cool relations between the two powers.

Maybe Mars will be a joint mission?

 

Interview with Ronald D. Moore. Says there's a seven-year plan where each season is the next decade.

Also, in this timeline, Star Trek: Phase II happened and Wrath of Khan is the first movie, and that's why the movie came out a year later than our timeline.

 

Damn.

Gods damn.

I was already saying "Way to go, Gordo!" when he remembered the old comms system as means to reach out to Houston.

But then he had to go and do that. And Tracy, without hesitation, went with him, to ensure mission success. I knew there was no way in hell they would survive out in space, even with the help of duct tape, but it still hurt.

And yet it was almost for not, if it hadn't been for Dani's ballsy decision to buck orders and reach out to Soyuz to do the handshake. Turns out her Star Trek quote last week came to fruition and I'm glad I was wrong on that count.

And yet (again) it almost went straight to hell if it hadn't been for Sally standing up to Ed on his decision to blow up Buran. Thankfully between her and Gary, some sense was knocked into Ed in the last second and he blew up Sea Dragon instead.

And fuck. Just when I was beginning to really trust Sergei and his relationship with Margo, we find out he's being forced by the Soviet general to turn Margo into an asset without her knowledge. She already opened the door when she signaled to Sergei to double check the O-ring. Gods, as much as I love this show, I really don't like this turn of events.

That said, I loved the expected time jump to 1995 and the first manned mission to Mars. I'm sorry we don't actually get to see that first mission (if season two is anything to go by), but very cool nonetheless!

An aside: Last week it was Star Trek, this week Dani invoked "Space Oddity" when she talked to Soyuz.

 

First thing i saw in that article - "There is a plan" ( a not so subtle dig at Moores' BSG where that was a keyphrase but as the show went on it became evident the writers didn't have a plan )

Good interview and also adressed one of my key questions about actors through the seasons - i guess for many of the original cast season 3 might be the last such as Joel Kinnaman but Moore stated they are introducing new ones, let's hope they work out ( i for one could stand to see much more of Aleida for example).

7 years, i.e. about 70 years of show time - wow. They're already ahead 30-40 years from us when they are able to put someone on Mars by 1995, what will the show look like in season 5 or 6? Actual start of colonization projects on the Moon and Mars as depicted in The Martian, where astronauts actually grow food on Mars?

On a side note - Perserverance, the newest rover on Mars managed to create 5 grams of Oxygen by splitting Carbondioxide, it would be enough for 10 minutes of breatheable air for an astronaut. So given this reality possibility and extrapolating it with the will and funding displayed in the show Mars by 1995 doesn't seem that implausible (especially if that race is getting political again but please no more near war escalation again).

 

Anyone notice the cosmonaut defector could converse in English in this last episode? So either all this could've been avoided or someone in the writer's room goofed.

 

It looks like the Soviets are going to recruit Margo by using Sergi's friendship as the way in. That's what she gets for helping the Soviets avoid a potential launch disaster.

I would have used the make shift duct tape "suits" to go from the galley to the other American occupied area of the ship where the actual suits are. Then go outside to change to the backup reactor controls in the real suits.

 

I feel bad for Danny Stevens. He now has an even bigger legacy in which to live up.

I'm not sure I like Margo being turned into a Russian asset. They Russians seems overconfident in their ability to turn her - I guess it depends on how badly the other administrations handle things making the Soviet Union seem reasonable. I also dislike the idea of Reagan getting credit for stopping a potential world war when he and his cronies were complicit in instigating things.

Season three can't come soon enough. I wonder who POTUS is in 1995 of the alternate reality.

 

Wouldn't that only work if there were internal airlocks? They might not be able to open a door to a pressurised section because of overpressure. They'd risk depressurising a compartment containing crew who would have no idea who was trying to get in and would be too slow to react by the time they did realise. The rest of the crew had no idea what Gordo and Tracy might be up to as they were not in communication with JSC. The melodrama demanded a noble sacrifice and those two were it.

I wasn't happy about Sally Ride's standoff with Ed. It'd be fine for a fictional character but it's not appropriate for a real person, deceased or otherwise. Why didn't he say we'll fix this by blowing up Sea Dragon? Because it would ruin the jeopardy and dramatic tension.

Anyway with that nuclear debris now glowing on the far side, perhaps we know what to expect in September 1999...

 

I just realized, Phase II means the core crew would've included Decker, Ilia, and Xon. It's possible TWoK was the epic return to Star Trek of Kirk and Spock after years away (since there was a possibility Shatner would only be on Phase II for the first several episodes to get the ball rolling, then Decker would become captain). In which case, yeah, Spock getting killed off would've been an even bigger kick in the ass (and a worse spoiler).

It could be the defector didn't want to speak openly to the Americans in front of the other Cosmonaut (or over an open channel the Soviet Base was monitoring), for fear of being identified as a defector.

 

Get out of the depressurized section the same way the Marines entered and exited it.

 

Well, he wasn't exactly lucid...

 

Ah, but that would prevent the emotionally impactful noble sacrifice and we'd have to view an interminable scene dealing with Tracy splitting up with whatshisface rich guy to get back with Gordo. I'm just making excuses for the plot holes that were necessary to move the melodrama along. The forced "Mrs Robinson" plot line was dopey enough. I suppose weird things do happen in real life with astronauts such as driving hundreds of miles in an adult diaper with a half-baked plan to kidnap and possibly kill a love rival. I could watch similar nonsense on just about any soap opera if that were what I was into.

 

One of the things Vox's Emily VanDerWerff noted in her review/interview with Ron Moore is how Aleida is deliberately set-up as the connecting character between the seven season, so we would see her entire life and her work with the space program.

That's the part I've been most looking forward to and I'm thrilled they're finally heading there next season!

The problem with that is they didn't know the full situation with the cosmonauts and Tracy already watched one Marine die. It was "easier" to go directly to the backup reactor controls. Especially since they were on a time crunch with the reactor melting down in short order.

I hope we get more and more tidbits about how Star Trek develops in their timeline. Not just the shows we know existed and also the potential projects that didn't happen (like Eddie Murphy in The Voyage Home), but also all-new stuff, too.

 

What an eventful end to season 2.
Can't wait for 3!

Also great insight into the overall plans by Moore. They should do that in every series.

 

If, like me, you noticed Tracy's headstone noting she'd received the "Medal of Honor" and thought that was odd since she wasn't in the military, I just learned that was just because of the framing of the shot, and she likely actually received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, which is awarded to any astronaut, military or civilian, who performs an extraordinary feat on a NASA mission.