For All Mankind--Season 4

I didn’t realize season 4 had started. I binged the first three seasons earlier this year and loved them. Now I’ll need to restart my Apple TV subscription, but I’ll probably wait until all the episodes have been released.

They killed off or otherwise wrote out so many characters. Some have aged a lot. Others hardly at all.

Watched the premiere earlier today and I think I'm finally ready to drop this show. The fact that it's basically a soap opera with the space stuff happening in the background is something I was willing to overlook for three full seasons, but I've had sufficient now – I FF'd through most of the drama and I was still bored. And the cable-snapping incident felt like warmed-over soup.

Margo's Russian was HORRIFIC, absolute gibberish. Sofia looked nice, though. Thought it was my city for a split second, but then I saw the distinct cobblestones and nope, definitely not it.

The handsome actor who refused to sign the divorce papers, why does he look so familiar? What's he been in?

Toby Kebbell

I LIKE the "space stuff."

r4 Ooh, he's the gorgeous angry husband from one of Black Mirror's best episodes, that's why he looked so familiar. So pretty.

r5 That was my point – if only it was just about the space stuff, without the bland Days of Our Lives bullshit tacked on.

Filler episode.

I'm new to the series, and happened upon it only because I wondered recently what actor Joel Kinnaman was up to. I enjoyed him so in "The Killing," "House of Cards" and "Altered Carbon." I'm also super curious now as to how the show was able to maintain continuity during the writers' strike.

It so happens that the last episode of season 4 only just aired on January 12. Bingeing all four seasons this last week, I was struck by the obvious parallels and intersections in this alternate-timeline scenario. I can see how people would lose interest as timelines diverged, and the narrative rippled along the narrow confines of an aeronautics history that never happened. The prospect that, if more resources had been directed to space exploration, we not only might have figured out nuclear fusion as a clean energy source, the USSR collapse would not have commenced in 1989, the USA would be further ahead on sexual and racial equality, cell phone technology would have remained constant, JPII would have lost his life in the 80s, the music world might still include John Lennon, and new music would have maintained relatively constant.

What I found most compelling were, of course, the individual characters. I am particularly drawn to Margot Madison, a gifted engineer mentored by Operation Paperclip asset Werner von Braun. I enjoyed her struggle with right and wrong, her evolution as a human and leader, her implied asexuality, her dedication to humanity, and the ever-increasing complexity of the world through her academically disciplined yet wise eyes. The development of her character is well thought through and realized with an effective economy of words.

I found the idea that, even with a closeted gay President, DADT was an unfortunate, yet necessary step toward gay civil rights, extremely disturbing. I always thought our community would continue to debate that for years to come, but I don't think people talk about it anymore, and perhaps deserves a separate thread. I find myself agreeing that it was evil, inevitable, and necessary. I think there were times when we, as a community, relied too much on Democrat allies, and that the ball could have moved much more quickly if we'd found a way for one Republican with the courage to carry the ball.

I think the series is extremely compelling, and wish I'd found it sooner.

Ooh, I love this show. Rare anyone’s ever heard of it. Toby Kebbel has a real look of Theo James.

Quite an interesting concept they’ve created of upstairs/downstairs, elite/blue collar even in a new colony on Mars. Humans be humans I suppose. And the Russia thing is interesting but I do feel sorry for Margot. I have suspicion she might sweep in & save the day though.

I do think it’s probably time to wrap it now though. It’s now what, the 1990’s? The OG characters can’t possibly still be in charge of NASA or major space missions if they go forwards in time anymore. It’s far fetched at this point! And they’ve not introduced anyone interesting enough to carry a new series without the OGs..

Renewed for another season and it's getting a spinoff.

[quote]Apple is billing [italic]Star City[/italic] is “a propulsive paranoid thriller” which will explore a key moment in the alt-history retelling of the space race — when the Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon. But this time, it will explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain, showing the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers, and the intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space program, and the risks they all took to propel humanity forward.

I just started season 1 and am halfway through. It took a few episodes to kick in, but I'm really enjoying it now.

It'll take me a while to catch up... might even take until season 5 premiers. I have a lot to watch, so I'm not going to be binging this super quickly I don't think.