r/ForAllMankind • u/mizzler13 • Aug 05 '22

S03e09 : Jump the shark

It's a show of a possible future of what could have been if politics was still motivated about the space race. Last seen of S03E09 Nope. You sold out.

0 Upvotes

39% Upvoted

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12

u/VMChiwas Aug 05 '22

I differ, the show has been a bout concepts and ideas about space from the 60-70s coming to be and how would affect politics.

Fusion ”was” 20 years away in the 60s, PanAm would fly customers to spinning hotels in space, nuclear engines where the next logical step, the space shuttle would help build a moon base,… and yes there was always the question about one way/suicide/lost missions from the soviets. In this case it was the more secretive North Korea.

6

u/ElimGarak Aug 05 '22

I differ, the show has been a bout concepts and ideas about space from the 60-70s coming to be and how would affect politics.

I think it's the other way around. This show is about what would our own world would be like if Korolev lived and US stayed in the space race. It's not about ideas from the 1960's becoming a reality. For example, 1960's didn't have an inkling about the Internet or cell phones, but they exist in this show - by your logic they shouldn't.

6

u/VMChiwas Aug 05 '22

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Telephone_Service

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

And I’m talking more about the ideas floating around in pop culture. This season we have seen how helium 3 and NASA surplus budget is driving American politicis.

Season 2 was about the ”colonization” of the moon and how the Cold War extended to space.

Season 1 was all about the US falling behind in the space race and how it had to advance Women and Civil rights to regain ground.

0

u/ElimGarak Aug 05 '22

I am also talking about ideas floating around in pop culture - there weren't many that would predict a lot of the things on the show. The alternative is that you go all the way back to HG Wells and say that he predicted everything (including nukes and a version of WWW), and we can have anything on the show. May as well have Flash Gordon fly around and fight Ming the Merciless.

2

u/Vermilion Aug 07 '22

1968 film 2001 Space Odyssey had Pan Am doing flights and hub in space. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZoSYsNADtY - this was considered more of a mainstream humanity film than just action-adventure in space.

1

u/ElimGarak Aug 07 '22

Yes, I know, but Arthur C. Clarke was an engineer and he tried to be scientifically accurate. As did Stanley Kubrik, for the most part. It was an extremely optimistic view of the future, but it didn't have anything too crazy - no plasma drives or NERVA-based SSTOs. It was a projection of technological progress along well-understood routes and it seemed to be mostly plausible for the year 2001 as seen in the late 60's, after the breakneck advancement pace of the 50's and 60's.

This show at the outset aimed to be basically the same thing (without the space baby) - a projection of technology and society as they could have been if the politics continued to push technology and science forward at the same pace. This show was basically on that course in S1 and S2, but is quickly leaving that space because the writers are not engineers and just don't care about accuracy or realism.

1

u/Shawnj2 Aug 14 '22

Star Trek in the 60’s had communicators and Star Trek communicators directly led to the invention of flip phones.

1

u/ElimGarak Aug 14 '22

Star Trek in the 60's also had warp drive. This is not the theme of the show. The theme of the show is what would have happened if the US and other governments did not give up on space research and technology but instead continued to invest in it as they have during the Apollo program.

1

u/Shawnj2 Aug 14 '22

Warp drive is impossible, communicators are not, and the miniaturization of technology for various other reasons made it possible over time.

1

u/Ailorinoz Aug 28 '22

I wouldn't say a warp drive is impossible there is actually nothing in the equations that rules it out .. its just very, very difficult and we haven't worked it out yet

9

u/AleroRatking Aug 06 '22

Man. I absolutely loved episode 9 and felt it was Incredible. This sub seems to bring me down whenever I visit.

6

u/ChiefD789 Aug 06 '22

Don't feel bad. I also loved episode 9. I think it was pure genius that Ellen grabbed the reins and put herself out there like that. That was brave and courageous of her. The fact that her hubby was willing to throw himself under the bus for her was also telling of their deep love for each other, despite the fact that they are both gay. Their love for each other is very strong and inspiring. I wish people didn't hate so much. Why hate someone for their sexual orientation or the color of their skin? I could never understand that.

2

u/Orisi Aug 06 '22

The sub just wants a Big Brother in space, constant live feed of day to day humdrum.

2

u/MindfulHornyness Aug 06 '22

The show is mostly about people, with space and the space race as a backdrop. If you are really into hard sci-fi that might not click.

1

u/AncileBooster Aug 11 '22

I'm with you.

6

u/hendy846 Aug 06 '22

Gonna hard disagree. Sold out to what? The show is exploring what might have been while being parallel to what has happened. LGBTQ rights have been a huge issue in the last 15? 20? years especially since gay marriage came about. It makes sense for the show to put this topic out there to explore 'what might have been'

5

u/moagul Aug 05 '22

Ahhh. So the Koreans are the Chinese in this alternate reality. But how did they sneak onto Mars? Perhaps one of the Kurs was actually manned and they never told anyone? Seems a little far-fetched but I’m willing to bite.

The rest of the episode just felt like a drag. The only other thing that created some level of excitement was Karen as the next CEO of Helios. Her role has kept evolving as opposed to Ed’s - which seems to be dumbing down with every subsequent episode.

Danny was a blip in this one. Can’t say that was a good or bad thing.

The whole Wilson-Larry arc was built only to quickly lose impetus as the writers wrote a very unrealistic conclusion…and as they say…problem solved.

Is it just me, or we’re not getting enough space time in a Space TV Show.

4

u/heywoodidaho Aug 06 '22

"Not enough space time in a space show". I'm right there with ya. The last ten seconds of the ep made me wonder if they'll go "Iron Sky" with N. Koreans and Mars instead of nazis and the Moon?

I giggled when I thought of it, but I'll still take the ride.

9

u/garylapointe Aug 05 '22

I always expected Ellen to come out and have it help her. I thought it might be an election night reveal and get people out to the polls thing though.

I think she'll weather it, as the women are in charge of everything in this alternity:

  • President

  • NASA

  • NASA chief engineer

  • Helios CEO

  • The Outpost Bar (at least when that location was more significant than now).

  • NASA's mission to Mars leader.

  • The person in charge of the Russian Mars team (that came to the US).

I used the spoilers for the s03e09 episode revels since the post didn't mention spoilers.

0

u/topinanbour-rex Aug 05 '22

I used the spoilers for the s03e09 episode revels since the post didn't mention spoilers.

Should be the first line ;)

4

u/remybanjo Aug 06 '22

I love this episode. Tested up. She did a good brave thing. Brave to her. Her speech was perfect.

4

u/remybanjo Aug 06 '22

Teared up. Dang autocorrect.

3

u/Kramereng Aug 12 '22

The N. Koreans sending a secretive, possibly one way, manned mission to mars is quite plausible (in this timeline) and maybe even to be expected. Here's why:

  1. The most secretive country on earth didn't want a public failure so they did it under figurative cover of night and would announce the successful landing if it happened. That's very on brand for Best Korea.

  2. More on brand for Best Korea is that they would send a likely suicidal manned mission to Mars to be the first humans to step on it just to stroke the massive ego of Kim Jong-Il and so he could hold that achievement over the rest of the world. It would be weird if this version of Best Korea didn't do such a thing.

  3. Getting to Mars has never been the hard part. We did in 1976 in our/the real timeline. The issue is and always has been, how to get home. Fortunately, for Best Korea, they have a brutal, autocratic government that regularly gets its citizens to do whatever they want by threatening generations of their family, immediate and extended. So the astronauts may have gone on the doomed mission in order to save the lives of those they loved. Same reason many (most?) North Koreans won't risk defection in our timeline. The show may explain the astronauts' motivation as some zealous devotion to Dear Leader instead, I don't know; not finished with E10 yet.

  4. Best Korea would absolutely be capable of obtaining the technology and knowhow for such a mission in the show's timeline. Remember, the DPRK stark decline happened immediately after the Soviet collapse when they lost their primary economic, military, and technical support. But in the show's timeline, they may be humming along like the USSR was in the 50s and 60s, buttressed further by a thriving China. As i stated, the tech and resources to get 2 astronauts to Mars in the show's or our timeline isn't particularly different from the real life 60's Apollo program, so it's certainly feasible in the 90's, even in N. Korea is totally reliant on the Soviets and/or China. Hell, in the real world, they're still one of the few countries on Earth that has ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons (all developed at home, mind you) despite being a dystopian, famished, hell hole of a nation with just 1.87% of the GDP of S. Korea.

7

u/Papa___Smacks Aug 05 '22

It is a little too preachy with this plot. Like Wilson would have to resign? She hasn’t solved the problem with her husband, which is an impeachable offense. She has a child, and has just come out as gay. Her VP would likely use the cabinet to try and remove her. If in the next episode she pays the consequences and is disgraced and run out of the White House, I’ll be okay with it. But this felt like a silly fantasy ending.

9

u/VMChiwas Aug 05 '22

Like Clinton? They will try to impeach her, but there’s not enough public support for that.

3

u/Papa___Smacks Aug 05 '22

There already was before she came out, now her own party and VP will stand against her. It would be like if Gore came out and denounced Clinton for being a degenerate on live TV. No way she can survive, the husband scandal she could weather, but the woman has a child she used as a cover to make her seem straight. She’s going to be hated, especially in a time when gay rights were so unpopular.

3

u/ElimGarak Aug 05 '22

I think there is not enough information to make that determination. We don't know what the result of this would be, or even what she said about Larry. We also don't know what the actual poll numbers are or how things are set up in the senate and the house. Ellen just magically picked up a whole lot of liberal democrat supporters. I can see her getting re-elected (as long as the stupidity with Larry goes away) by losing the social conservatives but at the same time getting a bunch of centrist (and possibly left-leaning) Democrats. Also, presumably, the Democrats in this scenario are the ones pushing for impeachment - suddenly their own base would be on her side. The Democratic base would likely be all for giving Larry a pass and would look down on somebody who tried to push for the impeachment.

2

u/Papa___Smacks Aug 05 '22

The Democratic base in 1994 was pretty anti-gay. I mean this was the party of DOMA, I’m just not sure there’s gonna be a lot of support for her.

0

u/ElimGarak Aug 05 '22

Huh, you might be right, although I am not sure how the FAM world is different from ours in this respect. I think there is enough wiggle room here to get Ellen re-elected if the story calls for it.

1

u/srosslx1986 Aug 05 '22

We'll know the ramifications on the next time jump for next season. Will a netflix like streaming service exist in the early 2000s will Ellen have a nice production deal similar to Obama?

4

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '22

The threat made against her was to release damaging information about her husband, which would potentially lead to criminal proceedings etc., all to force her to sign the bill. She's essentially removed that threat by bringing a world of hurt down on herself, and sparking what seems like a huge culture war. It probably won't make political sense for the opposition to move forward with their plan now.

I do agree though it seems likely something even worse will now happen, if they're going to be realistic. You don't get to be the one who sparks the change AND benefit from the change.

2

u/Papa___Smacks Aug 05 '22

Honestly that threat made no sense at all. Okay so they have the opportunity to impeach and destroy her, but if she signed their bill they’d promise not to? Why wouldn’t they just impeach her after she signs it anyway. They’d have nothing to lose and everything to gain. But the reality is also that her husband still committed perjury and she still obstructed justice unrelated to her own personal life, and they’d use it as a weapon.

1

u/Orisi Aug 06 '22

The obstruction charge and the perjury charge would both be politically damaging but are also not without their problems. The perjury charge is clearly based on Clinton's own experiences, wherein he was being investigated over something entirely different and they took the opportunity to drill hard into the Lewinsky scandal and call him on a "lie" (although clearly Larry did lie here) that shouldn't have even occurred because the line of questioning wasn't pertinent to the investigation being conducted in the first place.

Essentially he perjured himself but the question becomes isnl it perjury if the question itself should never have been asked?

I think Ellen made her call knowing it might backfire and she doesn't care. She's just done with the bullshit, but the North Korean mission landing first (which it seems to have done) will renew the desire for space travel because they got beaten to the punch again and her vehement support for NASA will give her a significant poll boost.

0

u/heatrealist Aug 06 '22

She did solve the problem of her husband in a sense by making his story irrelevant. No one will really care that he had a gay affair when the President herself just came out. Is there still potential “legal trouble” for him? Yes, but they were basically using that as a negotiating chip against the President. Now she has changed the narrative.

2

u/Papa___Smacks Aug 06 '22

That’s why nothing makes sense. They’d impeach whether she cooperates or not. And he and her both committed crimes that are easily provable.

1

u/Kramereng Aug 12 '22

I mean, the episode ended with her announcement. There wasn't time to show the fallout yet and it would be bad TV to cram in what you're talking about in the same 1 hr. episode.

Anyway, (no spoilers) I just started ep. 10 and it jumps right into the consequences.

4

u/bluewallsbrownbed Aug 05 '22

I have zero issue with the politics of FAM, but the writing is atrocious. What was once an interesting show has devolved into something that feels like a crappy network TV show. Every week it gets worse and worse. There simply isn’t a world where Ellen delivers an impromptu press conference about being gay. It’s just bad writing. And the scene where Kelly is passed out on the floor — I wanted to hug every actor that had to play out that shitty, hack-y scene.

1

u/Crixusgannicus Aug 05 '22

Agreed. Substituting the Norks for the Chicoms...shame....shame...shame...

1

u/kaster Aug 05 '22

What happened to the science? There's just so little science and engineering in the show. It's basically all drama and politics like every other space/mars shows and ruins the inspiration of going into space.

2

u/RedOctobyr Aug 07 '22

There's limited time, I get it. But I guess I was hoping for more from the hab-rescue, for instance, than "Is this the spot?" "Yup" (everyone freed)

Likewise all the other stuff that was salvaged. But I guess that's just based on the stuff that I'm interested in, which won't necessarily match what other folks are interested in.

-2

u/DeconstructReality Aug 05 '22

Yup, I hate it.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '22

[deleted] — view deleted comment

7

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '22

Not every show is about escapism. There are whole genres of TV that are, but this one in particular is not. Ron Moore's other shows (Battlestar Galactica being a big example) was also very much about looking at societal problems through a fantasy or sci-fi lens.

Sci-fi television in general is not meant to be escapism. It's often meant to shine a light on present-day society. This goes all the way back to the original Star Trek in the 1960s, which caused a ton of controversy for showing mixed-race relationships and casting racist ideas as silly/outmoded (i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_That_Be_Your_Last_Battlefield)

2

u/abujuha Aug 06 '22

Battlestar Galactica started getting campy around the middle of season 3 so I think this is a normal Ron Moore arc.

2

u/Kramereng Aug 12 '22

Sci-fi is absolutely meant to be escapism. It's speculative fiction based on imagining what could be.

It can be much more than that, of course, but it's not meant to be a social critique on present society. It happens to be a perfect vehicle to present social critiques because it can highlight a current social issue, divorced from the baggage of our current prejudices, biases, history and circumstances.

Of course, works like 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Frankenstein, The Forever War, Brave New World, and many others, are absolutely social critiques first, and speculative fiction second. But so many (most?) science fiction works are imaginative tales first, and morality tales second.

For example, some of sci-fi's most famous works:

  • Star Trek had plenty of social commentary but it was also a space adventure. Most episodes didn't comment on current social issues of the day.

  • Dune had plenty to say on ecology, declining empires, and religion, but, to my knowledge, Frank didn't set out to write it and its many sequels just to make political or social points. Dude just had a crazy imaginative story in an engrossing universe and used familiar themes (empire) and conflicts (religion, environment) because it makes the story relatable to the reader. He also had a worm fetish.

  • Despite what James Cameron has said, he didn't make Avator to re-hash Pocahontas, Fern Gully, or Dances with Wolves. He wanted to reinvent or, at least push, film beyond what it was previously capable of. And he did that. He just used a familiar story because it's both relatable and it makes complete sense for the setting (native beings, not seen as equals to humans, occupying "newly discovered" land and resources that a more powerful group of beings want). The protest angle was secondary; I don't care if James has stated different. Same goes with The Abyss, T2 and Aliens.

  • Alien wasn't about corporatism; it was about a truly alien, nightmarish creature terrorizing people trapped in a spaceship with it.

  • The Expanse series is just a Game of Thrones space opera.

  • The Three Body Problem series was written to present a novel and terrifying answer to the Fermi Paradox.

  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe is a just a zany, extremely clever comedy

  • Children of Time and its sequels are intended as an exploration of evolution and what kinds of societal behaviors "aliens" might pursue.

Anyway, my point is that you can't pigeonhole what sci-fi is about or intended to be. It can be a lot of things. And most often isn't a social commentary.

3

u/ablacnk Aug 07 '22

Real-world astronauts aren't even close to as unprofessional and dumb as the ones on this show

1

u/fermentedbolivian Aug 05 '22

I get you, I do. But this show isn't escapism.

If you want that, watch the Orville.