I’ve watched For All Mankind seasons 1 and 2. And while they definitely piqued my interest, they didn’t really appeal to me as much as they might’ve appealed to some others.
The show clearly had an American audience focus for the first two seasons. The first Apollo missions are a collective celebration for much of the American audience and this show rightfully captures that. But come season 3 and we witness a Space Race, a race towards Mars, and a story that is as open-ended as a Yawning Buddha’s face.
For All Mankind starts off in a very similar manner to how real life played out. But it branches out in the fact that Russia is a strong contender in the Space Missions. Russia, which apparently, didn’t undergo economic collapse in the 1990s has a love-hate relationship with NASA.
After occupying and to some extent militarizing the moon, the two superpowers are on their way to Mars in the third season. Only to discover that North Korea got there first. So the ending of Season 3 just throws things wide open. While the Astronauts have their own things to figure out a gazillion miles from Earth, their relationship also, to some extent governs the geopolitical situation back home.
Amidst all of this, there are calls to defund NASA - or more precisely to tax NASA cause NASA is making a lot of profit. That would inadvertently mean money out of R&D, which is not what the POTUS, former NASA staff wants.
In many ways, For All Mankind seems like something the world could’ve been like had some things not gone the way they did. Because when you look back at Earth and you have to wonder, what happened to the Space Race after all those beautiful Apollo, Soyuz, and all other missions?
Also one has to wonder, what’s going on now that everything is suddenly back to the Space Race.
It’s the Underweights punching their weight
If you ask me, it is the ambitions of some countries which were not a part of the initial space race that is fuelling the current boom. We have countries like India which recently launched the Chandrayaan 3, a spacecraft that is going to attempt to soft-land on the Moon’s south pole. Then there’s China whose Manned mission might take off as early as 2027. India also has Gaganyaan which has three stages.
The first two stages will send robots to check the various systems. And the third stage, arguably the most important stage will send humans on to the LEO. This does not mean India is going to send humans on to the moon, but it is a precursor for what India can achieve.
Now getting back to For All Mankind. It has grown from being a show that has a mildly interesting concept to one of my favorites. It is now an open sandbox and the producers can do anything with it that they want.
I am very interested to see what’s in store for Season 4 and beyond. And I hope they manage to take it much beyond.
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