For All Mankind

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Qhue

Qhue

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Cybsled said:
On that note, I do wonder if they will end up doing a 9/11 parallel next season. As an interesting twist, what if the "9/11" in this reality happens vs. the USSR? I could see them going that route because you could do some interesting story beats with that: What if "War on Terror" had its nucleus there? What sort of coalition would form, and how might that boost their standing in the space race? Who would be the perpetrator and their motivation? How would the US react?
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That's a very compelling idea. Since the USSR is still very much around in this alt-timeline it might make sense to have that occur. Plus it gives us extra reasons to explore Margot in a USSR-based plot thread.
 
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elidib

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Fucking LOL at having osama bin laden be a friendly ally for the post 9-11 attack in this alt-history.
 
Goatface

Goatface

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rewatched the news montage again for season 3, looking for the bit on the middle east
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guess the text really isn't cannon, as no idea what is going on after the 3rd paragraph
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clinton wins for no reason...
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Mist

Mist

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Goatface said:
looked up dates from the wiki, which is think is only based on what has been on the show

Season 1 = 1969 - 75, Season 2 = 1983, Season 3 = 1992-95, Season 4 = -2003-

[2003 ages]
Ed - 1932 [71]
Ellen - 1943 [60]
Danielle - 1944 [59]
Aleida - 1961 [42]
Danny - 1963 [40]

Molly - 1937 to 1995 (58)
Gordo - 1936 to 1983 (47)

couldn't find any dates for Margo, Dev, Kelly etc

Ed's age doesn't seem to work for the korean war. 18 + 4 years at naval academy + 1 year (at least?) flight training.

=
also read that they have an 8 season plan if it last that long.
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Ed's was injecting himself with HGH or something all season.

If they go 8 seasons they either have to cheat with life extending technologies like they did in the Mars Trilogy or rotate the cast.
 
Goatface

Goatface

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Mist said:
Ed's was injecting himself with HGH or something all season.

If they go 8 seasons they either have to cheat with life extending technologies like they did in the Mars Trilogy or rotate the cast.
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spronk

spronk

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binged through the season 3 the last few days, really enjoyable stuff and very different from pretty much everything else. Just love alternate history mixed with space shit. It'll never happen but in my head this is all like a prequel to Mass Effect, ending in them discovering a relay out past Pluto.

The gay president shit was stupid as hell, she would be impeached the very next day so just rolling up to her ??GF??s house at the end is dumb as fuck, plus the show didn't address at all how FUCKED her kid is, he will be bullied for the rest of his life for being the son of 2 queers but apparently neither her nor her gay husband give a fuck about that. Maybe in the next season he will come out as trans to out idiot Gordo's kids, who are the biggest fuckups in the universe. Jesus christ the two of them are so bad. Oh well, a few minutes of shit over 10 hours of TV is acceptable.

Loved all the Ed / Kelly stuff, that was really great shit and was a total shock who died in the end and who didn't. Fuck those hillbilly redneck truther bombers, killing innocent hard working people. They felt one dimensional evil, should have been explained and built up a little better. Black Elon Musk was great, had a great mix of hubris, genius, and over self confidence.

I don't get the ending scene at all, was that fucking Margot in Russia or the moon? wtf lol Crazy the show started season 1 in 1969 and now its gonna be 2003 in season 4.

 
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Cybsled

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It’s insinuated that Russia used the bombing as a cover to extract Margo from the US
 
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elidib

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Cybsled said:
It’s insinuated that Russia used the bombing as a cover to extract Margo from the US
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Oh, my interpretation was that margo made a deal with the russians, her for the guy and his family, and she had already snuck out before the bomb detonated.
 
Ossoi

Ossoi

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Cybsled said:
It’s insinuated that Russia used the bombing as a cover to extract Margo from the US
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Do you mean they had a hand in the bombing itself or just took advantage of the aftermath? Because Margot was already approached for an extraction, hence her handing the meeting to Alita and the shot of her walking away
 
spronk

spronk

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elidib said:
Oh, my interpretation was that margo made a deal with the russians, her for the guy and his family, and she had already snuck out before the bomb detonated.
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oh yeah that makes a little sense, the only scene we have is the Russian head chick talking to her saying they have a source at the FBI and Margot is being investigated, and they can help her. We don't see what Margot says in response, and then some time later we see Sergei call Margot and say they are in Germany thanks to her which didn't make much sense since we didn't see anything from Margot coordinating an extract.

But if Russia voluntary sent Sergei and his family over to the West in exchange for Margot promising to defect to the USSR, then all that makes a little more sense. Not total sense tbh though, it doesn't feel like a Soviet thing to send their people over first and hope Margot follows through, but then again if she has an FBI investigation hanging over her then maybe they see it as her having no options. A part of defections too though is the one-upsman ship, for USSR to say "hah! see this top US scientist chose to come work for us over you capitalist dogs, clearly we are better for science". Using the bombing as cover to fake her death kinda removes that.

I don't ever get the insinuation in season 4 that the Russians had anything to do with the bombing, plus a ton of their own people died since they were at JSC at the time, so I assume its still home grown terrorists with no Russian involvement.

I dunno while I really thought the Mars young black guy announcing he was gay and the aftershocks of that was well done, I thought the Margot and President "I'm teh gay too" subplots were not done very written or organic. The one scene where the Prez says "well... maybe the republicans SHOULD die off!" was a bit too much the writers trying to preach their politics, but fortunately it didn't drag on too much.
 
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Gravel

Gravel

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Szlia said:
If there is one thing I don't like, it's the "engineer thinks Margo is a spy" line. It makes almost zero sense to me. Firstly, she works on the assumption that some person implicated in the project is leaking the documents and eliminates the people based on what they have access to, but this is not how spying works : anyone actively looking for documents could be able to have access to things they are not supposed to. It could even be people from the cleaning staff, it could be people breaking in or sneaking in (we have seen this season that it's not that hard to do), their offices could be bugged, etc. Secondly... why does she care ? Isn't keeping the space race close a guarantee that both the US and russian space programs are well funded which is better For All Mankind ? Maybe that's the point Margo will make when confronted.
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The real issue with all of that was that Aleida went and took tons of classified documents to her garage (and we know it's classified because it's the engine design the Russians had). Oh, and a few episodes prior she shows her fucking ex husband or whatever he was. And then brings the ex-NASA guy to her garage to show. Shit on Margot all you want for being a spy, but she's pretty fucking bad about handling classified info too.

In the last episode my wife made a snide comment about "I guess they allow cell phones in mission control in this universe" in reference to Karen Baldwin having her cell there (and my wife having been to tons of tests less sensitive than this).

Overall there was way too much fluff from this season, and not nearly enough space. I really thought the MacGuffin of the magnesium soil sample the NK guy took would impact Kelly's pregnancy, but that turned into nothing. I also thought it was weird the surgeon stayed on Mars and I guess ...? delivered the super dangerous pregnancy.
 
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DickTrickle

DickTrickle

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spronk said:
oh yeah that makes a little sense, the only scene we have is the Russian head chick talking to her saying they have a source at the FBI and Margot is being investigated, and they can help her. We don't see what Margot says in response, and then some time later we see Sergei call Margot and say they are in Germany thanks to her which didn't make much sense since we didn't see anything from Margot coordinating an extract.

But if Russia voluntary sent Sergei and his family over to the West in exchange for Margot promising to defect to the USSR, then all that makes a little more sense. Not total sense tbh though, it doesn't feel like a Soviet thing to send their people over first and hope Margot follows through, but then again if she has an FBI investigation hanging over her then maybe they see it as her having no options. A part of defections too though is the one-upsman ship, for USSR to say "hah! see this top US scientist chose to come work for us over you capitalist dogs, clearly we are better for science". Using the bombing as cover to fake her death kinda removes that.

I don't ever get the insinuation in season 4 that the Russians had anything to do with the bombing, plus a ton of their own people died since they were at JSC at the time, so I assume its still home grown terrorists with no Russian involvement.

I dunno while I really thought the Mars young black guy announcing he was gay and the aftershocks of that was well done, I thought the Margot and President "I'm teh gay too" subplots were not done very written or organic. The one scene where the Prez says "well... maybe the republicans SHOULD die off!" was a bit too much the writers trying to preach their politics, but fortunately it didn't drag on too much.
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Just finished binging this and dude... The US got Sergey out. That was a plan that Margo started and talked about with Bradford. She was whisked away either before or after the bombing but it doesn't really matter.

The takeaway you're supposed to get from all of that is the tragic irony of Sergei's freedom at long last occurring when she is forced into exile.
 
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DickTrickle

DickTrickle

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Overall, I thought this show was pretty good so far. I binged in a week. I wasn't suprised to see some wokity woke woke complaining when browsing the thread but I actually thought the majority of those plotlines were fairly well done (especially in the first two seasons) -- they were usually a part of the character, not the whole, and there was often some nuance around it (and given the time period, fitting/plausible in one way or another). That changed a bit with Will Tyler and the President outing herself. I just don't buy she would have sacrificed everything she worked for, especially given the political climate of the time AND being a Republican. Larry should have given himself up and that be the end.

My biggest gripe is not those storylines but the soap opera romance bullshit. Gordo and Tracy ended great but there was some weak stuff in there before then. And the whole fucking and getting pregnant on the goddamn Mission to Mars like they're in high school is a bit too much. We're not talking about first year recruits on a Navy ship, here. There should have been more outrage at her actions, quite frankly. At least there wasn't an abortion debate episode about her pregnancy. And Danny, jesus, how did this dude ever get anywhere in life? His storyline just felt too cheap and melodramatic all the way through. I also never liked how quickly Karen turned on Ed after accepting him going back to doing missions. It felt like it happened too fast and wasn't developed enough.

All the space stuff and tension is great, but I do think the third season was weaker than the first two. I actually like the NK reveal, even if it was pretty implausible. I'm a little torn about the lack of buildup around the bombing but I think they were trying to restrict your awareness just to what Jimmy was seeing/thinking to reflect his naivete, but I still think they could have shown some of the radicalization. There was more sloppy shit too, like Aleida showing everyone her classified work and people just walking around with hardly a care to security. The show had a much better balance of people story time vs space story time in the first two seasons.

Still, very interested in seeing where this goes, since we don't really have as much of a view into that. The timelines for doing things beyond Mars are very long and that cuts down on a lot of the tension between space and Earth (I guess they could just start launching full fledged missions from Mars but that seems like more than an eight year jump). I worry how they're going to transition the rest of the cast, especially since most of the younger people are nowhere near as compelling. Who's going to replace a character like Ed Baldwin? Does anyone really want to see a season dominated by Danny, Jimmy, Kelly, and Aleida, and a bunch of people from season three that had 10 minutes of talking time? I can't wait for Helios Employee Who Spoke Her Mind to be a feature character!
 
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spronk

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season 4 begins Nov 10th on Apple TV+

if you haven't watched its a great show, basically a Starfield/Mass Effect prequel
 
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