For All Mankind (spoilers)

[SpaceChampion]

Ronald D. Moore on ‘For All Mankind’ Season 3, Their Seven Year Plan, and If We’ll Ever See a Starship

Quote

I asked you this question a while ago, I'll ask you again. Season three introduces three versions of how you can get to Mars, but it's all building towards the Starship. So, what season do we get ... Do you have the Starship in mind? And is it like that's the end of season seven and they're all taking off to go to warp speed?

MOORE: I have some thoughts about the Starship, but I'm not going to say when we get there. But yeah, it's certainly something that rattles around in my head.

I mean it has to be something like it's-

MOORE: Oh, sure.

You mentioned you had a seven-year plan, so do you guys still have an idea of where and when you envision in an ideal world, how the show would end, or is that a moving target where it could be a few things?

MOORE: Yeah. It's become more of a moving target. And even seven years is not written in stone because we've talked about ... Now we've gotten to the point where we've seen potentials for what's past season seven. I could see what season eight is and nine. Not to say that we have those pickups yet, but there's an idea of how you could continue the show even past what we thought was sort of the logical ending of it. And it is a bit of a moving target right now.

 

[Spockydog]

Just watched S03E01. Bah! Not a Lazyscrog to be seen anywhere. So unrealistic. Literally unwatchable. 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Spockydog said:

Not a Lazyscrog to be seen anywhere

What?

[Ran]

The opening history sequence was fun, but god damn it, why did Kirk Gibson still have to hit his homerun in 1988? Why can't the A's catch a break?!

Spoiler

The physics of the episode was pretty wonky, though after last season that's no surprise.

I'm dubious Danny could have climbed a ladder at 3G, for one thing, but can just about suspend disbelief for it especially as it would get easier as he climbed. But his hanging for an extended time by one hand from the station -- where gravity would have been even higher! -- and doing useful work while doing it? No. Bloody. Way. The world record one-arm dead hang is a little over 2 minutes at body weight. People doubling their weight with vests and weights are measured in seconds, not minutes. Triple the weight? Forget about it.

Similarly, the result of his being temporarily knocked out ... should not have been his peacefully hanging from the end of his tether. His momentum would have led him to swinging and hitting the side of the station as the station slowed relative to his speed, and then he probably would have oscilitated back and forth for awhile before reaching equilibrium some time after the station returned to 1G.

Also, finally, why was the station's main area at 1G? Surely the whole point of space would have been to give people the experience of lower-than-1G gravity. I'd have had the main region at like .5G. Have fun playing basketball when you can dunk better than Trailblazers star Michael Jordan!

(Actually, the real last remark was about how utterly stupid the station's design must be that there's a single stuck valve causing all this trouble -- where's the redundancies? Why isn't there an option to evacuate or remove the fuel to starve it? Or additional valves? Hmm...)

Normally not the sort of stuff that I nitpick, but the shift of the show from pretty grounded in S1 to this tomfoolery -- unnecessary tomfoolery, if they just dialed back how many Gs they were pulling -- is hard not to notice.

 

[Werthead]

12 hours ago, Ran said:

 

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(Actually, the real last remark was about how utterly stupid the station's design must be that there's a single stuck valve causing all this trouble -- where's the redundancies? Why isn't there an option to evacuate or remove the fuel to starve it? Or additional valves? Hmm...)

Normally not the sort of stuff that I nitpick, but the shift of the show from pretty grounded in S1 to this tomfoolery -- unnecessary tomfoolery, if they just dialed back how many Gs they were pulling -- is hard not to notice.

 

I think it's a commentary on the private sector getting involved, which immediately leads to cut corners, cost-savings, people being underpaid, ignoring health and safety laws if they think they can get away with it and being reluctant to admit anything to government or regulators (like nobody at any time thinking to ask NASA for help or advice).

[Ran]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think it's a commentary on the private sector getting involved, which immediately leads to cut corners, cost-savings, people being underpaid, ignoring health and safety laws if they think they can get away with it and being reluctant to admit anything to government or regulators (like nobody at any time thinking to ask NASA for help or advice).

If the next episode brings that up, maybe. But within the episode itself, no one raises a question about it, which struck me as odd.

[hauberk]

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think it's a commentary on the private sector getting involved, which immediately leads to cut corners, cost-savings, people being underpaid, ignoring health and safety laws if they think they can get away with it and being reluctant to admit anything to government or regulators (like nobody at any time thinking to ask NASA for help or advice).

I agree with most of what Ran dinged (especially after the fantastic adaptation of the Drive short story in the Expanse).  However, this is a great point - I could see it being a sticking point for Karen as well - I don't see her wanting to be at less than a G.

[Spockydog]

Just because we didn't see the micro-gravity playrooms towards the centre of the structure, doesn't mean they don't exist. 

[Werthead]

For All Mankind is also kind of loose with the science, which is a shame. Season 1 was pretty tight on it, but in Season 2 they broke away from it and started saying that "rule of cool" triumphed the real science, and I suspect that will continue to be the case moving forwards.

Ron Moore does have form on that, with BSG they leaned very hard on real science in some areas (Newtonian movement, the logistics of how to keep the fleet supplied with food and water in the early episodes etc) and completely handwaved it in others (FTL, artificial gravity), despite him constantly moaning about all the magic science in the Trek shows he worked on.

[Ran]

2 hours ago, Spockydog said:

Just because we didn't see the micro-gravity playrooms towards the centre of the structure, doesn't mean they don't exist. 

I'm sure they do, but the whole point is that it'd be a lot easier for it to be at lower gravity -- easier to maintain, safer for the superstructure, and surely more interesting to the tourists.

No nausea from being at some amount of G, so why go all the way to 1G? Especially as space tourism implies that no one is staying there permanently.

In fact, were I Polaris, I'd have set the main area to .38G -- aka Mars -- and propose NASA pay to have astronauts go to the station to train for the Mars expedition at Mars-like gravity before then ferrying over to the Moon for additional training.

 

Edited June 15, 2022 by Ran

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I should have seen that episode 2 twist coming from the start.  The Elon Musk analog seems too good to be true.

[Ran]

They’re having fun with the alt history.

Spoiler

I laughed with genuine joy when Sinatra’s “Fly me to the Moon” started playing.  Great choice to pair with what followed, including Molly cheering Ed on (I have to suppose Ed and/or Kren will recruit her). 

I had not expected Margo to become such an antagonist this season. She’s always been on the process and bureaucracy side, but near as I can tell Molly did not in fact do anything she wasn’t allowed to do. 

And to go back on the question from the previous episode, the show very briefly touched on the Polaris scandal… but curiously, it seemed that a lot of the scandal was about how NASA apparently had oversight in certifying the safety of Polaris and screwed the pooch. Which means the eggheads at NASA thought that design was acceptable. That seems unbelievable to me.

 

 

[Spockydog]

16 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The Elon Musk analog seems too good to be true.

Ooh, did a former employee get swatted for raising safety concerns?

/sarcasm

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Is anyone else really bored by the “Danny Obsession with Karen” storyline?

[Ran]

Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Is anyone else really bored by the “Danny Obsession with Karen” storyline?

It's a horrifyingly bad soap opera storyline, and I have no idea why it exists in a show that is otherwise so solid.

[JGP]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

 

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I had not expected Margo to become such an antagonist this season. She’s always been on the process and bureaucracy side, but near as I can tell Molly did not in fact do anything she wasn’t allowed to do. 

 

Spoiler

And there's the rub with Margo. In-story, we've seen that she knows she's doing wrong with the Russians [at least insofar as State concern] so it remains to be seen if it's some kind of moral and/or higher minded equivocation going on with her, or what. Either way, whether her head has been filled with fluff by her Russian manager or not, she's clearly been compromised. I'm curious if her arc will loop back to Wernher's self deceptive Nazi scientist type bullshit. 

I don't expect the show to spend a lot of time on it, but it's a significant plotline that hopefully won't now be overshadowed by the private sector push.

 

Edited June 17, 2022 by JGP

[IFR]

Just started this show at the beginning of the week, and I've finished episode 6 of season 1. I love it. The soap opera elements are a bit annoying, and I feel like sometimes the show loosely treads the line between nuanced exploration of sociological issues in an alternate timeline and shameless sermonizing, but overall what this show does well, it does really well and I'm enjoying the ride.

My favorite character is von Braun. His entire speech with Margo and the revelation that her father was a Neddenmeyer/Kistiakowski composite I thought was excellent. I really like how the show lets the character inhabit a morally gray domain. And the actor is quite good. In fact, most of these characters are pretty well done.

Edited June 17, 2022 by IFR

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Really enjoying S2 so far , I’m also really interested by the political campaign sub plot going on , will be very significant if she ends up becoming president to the future timelines…interesting choice to portray her as a republican at a time when the party is quite demonised in contemporary society. Hopefully politics in this alt history won’t get quite as polarising.

[Werthead]

7 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Is anyone else really bored by the “Danny Obsession with Karen” storyline?

It is just odd. A now-28-year-old guy creepily obsessed with his dead mother's 60-year-old best friend after they had a fling ten years earlier is straight up psychologically disturbing, and at least they seem to be acknowledging that with him going full stalker. But it also feels like a tedious distraction from everything else going on.

I'm also still trying to work out how Ed, a 60-year-old guy (possibly older, with him saying he'll be pushing 70 in 1998, despite I believe his birth year being given as 1932 in an earlier episode) with a broken leg and alcohol issues, is even remotely in the running for the Mars commander role at all. Dani, at 48 but with almost as much spaceflight experience, does feel like a much more logical, robust choice.

[Ran]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

I'm also still trying to work out how Ed, a 60-year-old guy (possibly older, with him saying he'll be pushing 70 in 1998,

He's exaggerating because he's feeling sorry for himself. He'll be closer to 70 than 60 in 1998, so he rounded up.

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

with a broken leg

Should not matter 4 years away from the mission, unless it doesn't heal properly.

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

and alcohol issues

More of an issue, though how much of one it would be on the mission seems questionable -- I don't expect they'll be setting up a still...

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

, is even remotely in the running for the Mars commander role at all. Dani, at 48 but with almost as much spaceflight experience, does feel like a much more logical, robust choice.

Molly picked the commander who most resembled herself, and Margo did likewise. But for my money, given the nature of drama, I'm going to assume that things will go wrong and Ed is probably the one best suited (by dint of experience, personality, and natural inclination) to deal with the "unknowns" of the mission, as Molly argued. They're literally planning a second mission for the next window, so maximizing based on experience and the intangibles of leadership and experience dealing with improvising seems reasonable enough.