For All Mankind’s smart alternative history of the space race is one of the best shows on TV, let alone Apple TV Plus.
In For All Mankind’s third season finale, President Ellen Wilson references John F Kennedy’s famous speech encouraging America to strive for the moon (and other endeavors), “not because they are easy, but because they are hard”. Those historic words, uttered six decades ago, are a neat encapsulation of this bona fide Apple TV Plus series precision engineered to marvel at the miracle of humans traveling into outer space.
Of course, the show’s co-creator Ronald D Moore has form when it comes to emphasizing the challenges of life on the final frontier. While he made his name working among the warp drives, transporter beams, and palatial starships of Star Trek, his brilliant and daring reinvention of Battlestar Galactica (BSG) ensured that squabbling over oxygen, water, and food supplies were as much a part of day-to-day life as staying one step ahead of those pesky Cylons. NASA’s more optimistic, can-do approach to space exploration in For All Mankind may be light years from the gritty war footing of BSG, but there’s still no denying that space travel comes with an extra frisson of danger and excitement when the protagonists are floating in a glorified tin can.
There’s more to For All Mankind than simply staying alive in a hostile environment, however. If you’re yet to dive into this particular jewel in the Apple TV Plus crown you’re missing out, because a brilliant three-season, 30-episode saga awaits you –and a fourth season has already been greenlit. The show imagines a compelling alternative history of the late-20th century, in which the Soviet Union beat the United States to plant the first flag on the Moon in 1969.
In this version of events, relegating Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to runner-up status proves to be the spark that lifts the space race to new levels of competitiveness. Where America’s real-life excursions to the moon ended with Apollo 17 in 1972, the For All Mankind-verse envisions NASA racing the Soviet space agency to establish a permanent base on the moon – pushing science and the astronauts to their limits and beyond.
