As NASA ramps up for an extended space race, Nixon frees up money and resources by pulling American troops out of Vietnam. Within the first episode, Ted Kennedy cancels a weekend trip to Chappaquiddick to prepare for senate hearings into NASA’s failure to beat the Soviets to the moon. The race to the moon might have been symbolic, but For All Mankind’s conclusion is that the effects of that race were anything but. A permanent military base on the moon is proposed, and so on. When the crew of the second Soviet moon landing features a woman, NASA hastily recruits a group of female astronaut trainees to answer that accomplishment. In For All Mankind, Apollo 11 lands on the moon four weeks after Leonov-crash-lands, in fact, and is presumed lost for long enough that William Safire’s eulogy for Armstrong and Aldrin is read onscreen-and NASA keeps going. And yet NASA kept up the chase until it could quit while it was ahead. It wasn’t until the circumlunar flight of Apollo 8 in 1968 that NASA achieved a major milestone the Soviets hadn’t already accomplished. The Soviets launched the first satellite, put the first living being in space, the first man in space, the first man in orbit, the first woman in space, the first probe on the moon, the first satellite to orbit the moon, the first two-man spaceflight, the first spacewalk, and the first space station. The Soviets beat NASA to every major milestone of the first decade of spaceflight. In our timeline, the United States kept playing until it could claim victory.
That framing raised the stakes of the space race to unbelievable heights-superiority in space was an indicator of national and political superiority. It depicts NASA, the Nixon administration, and the American public at large responding to Leonov’s landing with such ferocious outrage that the truth is laid bare: American astronauts didn’t come in peace for all mankind-they came to demonstrate the power of the American strategic missile program, and the superiority of Western capitalist democracy. For All Mankind is named for the inscription on the plaque the crew of Apollo 11 left on the lunar surface, and its premise tests the sincerity of that sentiment. It’s a jarringly provocative image, and it sets the tone for the rest of the series. And rather than commenting on the giant leap mankind has made, Leonov dedicates the achievement to “the Marxist-Leninist way of life.” Only the flag in question carries the Soviet hammer and sickle, and the first man on the moon is not Armstrong, but Alexei Leonov, a real-life cosmonaut who was the first man to walk in space and commanded the Soviet crew of the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975. Veteran character actor Michael Harney, as crypto-Cronkite news anchor Jack Broadstreet, narrates the events as the first man on the moon comes down the ladder, sets foot on the regolith, and salutes the flag.
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It’s a scene familiar to anyone old enough to remember Apollo 11, or to anyone who’s seen Apollo 13 or Mad Men or any of the numerous films or TV programs set against this backdrop. The show’s opening scene is a montage of awestruck people watching coverage of the first manned lunar landing, meant to illustrate the power of the event as a unifying moment of global human achievement. Quite a bit, according to For All Mankind, which takes a maximalist approach to its view of the alternate history. (HBO’s Confederate could also be lumped into this group of big swings at alternate history, though it will never see the air and we’re all probably better off for it.) These programs indulge the natural curiosity about what might have happened if history’s great events had turned out differently-if the moon landing, or the Allies winning World War II, was such a watershed moment, what did it change?
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What For All Mankind, the new limited series on Apple TV+, presupposes is: Maybe it did?Īlternate history is having a bit of a moment right now as The Man in the High Castle wraps up on Amazon Prime, HBO is in the midst of its Watchmen miniseries, set in 2019, but on a timeline that spawned from the 1985 depicted in the original DC comic series. To this day no cosmonaut has left Earth’s orbit, and the N1 never made it to space. ‘The Morning Show’ Has Everything but Feels Like Nothing The Ringer Guide to Streaming in November The Apple TV+ Entrance Survey What Does Apple TV+ Want to Be?
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