So, welcome back listeners!
In this episode of Film fancies on you’re listening to radio revel I’m going to share some thoughts of mine about the series For all mankind. I can pretty much assure you that there won’t be much in the way of spoilers, since I’m mainly going to talk about what you see in the title, differences between individual choice and overreaching mandates. Which of these two are true to the title of the series?
I saw the first episode twice. The first time I saw it I pretty much decided that it wasn’t a series I was going to get hooked on. There’s only so much 1960s romanticism about the US Space program I’m willing to take on. I grew up in that decade and a half, I built a plastic model Lunar Module, I sat up all night waiting for Lance to take that first leap for all mankind. I didn’t need to see more idyllic barbeques hosted by perfect astronauts’ wives, or dashing macho heroes willing to risk their lives to justify government investment in that Space program at the cost of their relationships with their kids. The first episode just didn’t catch my imagination.
And enough time passed between that first screening of episode one and the more recent second chance I gave the series that I didn’t even remember having seen it, though as I watched it I kind of remember having done. I wasn’t totally sure, though, since it was so like other movies and series set in that environment. I guess what I’m trying to say here is, do get past Episode One, it’s worth it.
The series was sold in trailer form as a kind of “what if” alternative reality in which the Americans were not the first to put a man on the moon. The Russians won the race to space. So, what if the Russians won? How would that impact history?
Well, it does in both subtle and remarkable ways. Constitutional amendments that didn’t pass in our reality did pass in the alternative reality. People who for us viewers were assassinated did not die in the series. A woman becomes President of the US and is even instrumental in drawing attention to certain civil inequalities that in our reality were addressed better much earlier. All of these butterfly-effect changes to reality allowed the scriptwriters to elevate certain types of characters and plot lines, gave characters more opportunities to choose.
Probably one of the most remarkable changes with subtle repercussions was the passing of the ERA. That didn’t happen in our reality. Yet, because it does happen in the series’ alternative reality, the role of women, the importance of women in the series, becomes a given. They cease to be the other sex that seems to invade upon manly turfs, their roles become equal to the men, there is no genital tension for most of the series, which allows it to focus on other aspects of human relationships with reality.
One of those is our relationship with authority. Despite that first episode being really cliché, it does introduce the overriding theme of the series. The glitch in the matrix that leads Russia to landing first on the moon actually arises from an individual putting authoritative mandate over individual choice. And having chosen authority, despite personal doubts, haunts the character who made that choice throughout the five seasons he protagonized.
It was the astronaut Ed Baldwin who was doing a fly-over mission to the moon. He was so close to landing, he was sure he could land, you could see his hand reaching out for the joystick that would let him control a landing, but that was not the mission. Authority told him to do his mission, to not land. Had he landed the Americans would have won that space race. He wasn’t Armstrong, but his having landed first might not have changed history as much as the Russian landing did. And Ed Baldwin carried the regret of not having disobeyed orders to the end.
Throughout the series we see characters struggle with such choices. The first black, female astronaut to command a flight was told by authority that she could not shake hands with her Russian counterpart in space, in a show set up by the rival space agencies to demonstrate international cooperation. She made a choice against authority, she did shake hands with the cosmonaut, that handshake changed history in its own way. It also took her through, with more integrity than Baldwin, to the final episode of the series.
Others made lesser choices. Ed’s wife, Karen, makes a number of choices like that. Authority says she must be the perfect astronaut spouse, yet she smokes pot with the stay-at-home husband of one of her husband’s female astronaut colleagues, she realizes that being an astronaut’s wife is not a real role in life. She buys herself a bar and becomes a business woman. She has a one-nighter with a youngster, literally young enough to be her son, she confesses the sexual slip up to her husband, effectively bringing an end to their marriage. She becomes an important part of a space hotel business venture, she becomes first a consultant then a Chief Executive Officer of an Elon-Musk-like private space company that manages to get to Mars. The principle way in which she was able to make these dramatic changes in her life was her decision to buck authority, make and follow her own choices. The passing of the ERA certainly helped….
And the list goes on. You can pick any of the characters and discover a moment in which they are faced with following orders from a higher authority or making a choice from the depths of their personal ethics, wants, desires, rebellion. The two real main characters, Margo and Aleida, again both women, make majestic choices from the outset through the final episodes that stand as the foundation of the series: do what you are told until what you are told no longer represents what you do, who you are.
Stepping away from the choices and mandates, though, the series is just very well done. You will have to suspend disbelief a lot when it comes to the space stuff, but my brother simply pointed out that all that part was “science fiction”, which as the name indicates, is fiction, so just let it slide. Like how could they smoke in the Moon base without exploding a moon-pod that was full of pure oxygen? Or even more down-to-earth, how could they really think they were getting away with smoking and blowing the smoke into an exhaust tube when everyone knows that smoking stinks no matter how wide you open your bedroom window or wave your hands about when mom or dad knocks on the bedroom door? The series addresses this as Ed Baldwin does just that, waves his hands about when a knock comes on his bedroom door on Mars.
Despite the heavy-duty suspension of disbelief, there was one detail that proved to me just how well-ordered the series was. Late in the fourth season something gets buried in the sand and we as spectators happily forget about it…. that is, until late in the final season, when that something is found and becomes an integral part of the climax of the series. That clever use of a prop spanning two seasons is just a symbol of the overall consistent planning, the order behind the art that made For all mankind a solid, good series to get addicted to.
8.5 out of ten on my approval scale. My mate gave it a 9. Don’t binge it, it’s worth taking the drama one episode at a time, that will give you time to think about the underlying themes, talk to others about the “what ifs” laid out in the shifts in historical events. What if the ERA had actually passed? Where would be be now?
Thanks for the listen. See you in a week with another Film fancy.
Cheers,
revel.
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