Review: For All Mankind rewrites history with a prolonged space race

Note: This review contains spoilers, including some from episodes that haven’t been released (as of the date of publication).

At the start of 1966, in the heat of the space race between the US and the Soviet Union, NASA was spending about $5 billion annually and providing work for 420 000 people . Yet even before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon, the White House had started squeezing NASA’s budget and cutting the workforce. In the decade following the Moon landing, NASA’s direct workforce would shrink considerably as the US economy went into a recession, costs associated with Vietnam increased, and NASA floundered without a defined long-term goal . The Soviets never sent anyone to the Moon, and the space competition between the two superpowers faded.

But what if Armstrong hadn’t been the first person to step onto the lunar surface? What if the Soviets had perfected their N1 heavy-lift rocket and Alexei Leonov (who died last month ) had walked on the Moon in June 1969? That scenario forms the basis of Apple TV’s new alternative-history series, For All Mankind , developed by former Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and Battlestar Galactica producer Ronald D. Moore along with producers Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi.

The 50th anniversary of the real Moon landing seems an appropriate time to enjoy a family drama with good scripts, music, acting, and special effects. Moore and his writers have done a remarkable job examining the possible implications of a Soviet flag being planted on the Moon, creating a future that’s more optimistic than typical alternative-history fiction. Not every episode in the 10-part first season is perfect, but many of them are very good, and space-history buffs will have great fun speculating what NASA and its employees will do next as the alternative future unfolds.

As the series begins, the impact of Leonov’s historic steps on the Moon is immediate. For example, Ted Kennedy stays in Washington, DC, instead of going to a party at Chappaquiddick Island. Shortly after the US matches the Soviets’ lunar feat, President Richard Nixon pulls troops out of Vietnam (“he wanted to get out of Vietnam anyway,” says Moore) and reallocates resources to the space race. In 1971, in response to the Soviets landing the first woman on the Moon, NASA sends a female astronaut of its own. By 1973 the US has built a lunar base.

Rather than concentrating on real historical figures, the show focuses on several lower-profile individuals, mainly fictional, and follows their careers as the years progress. “We didn’t want our people to be the political movers and shakers,” Moore says. “We want our people to be the ones that had to actually execute these plans and had to deal with the consequences of the plans and put themselves at risk.”

Season 1 centers mainly on two astronaut families along with NASA engineer Margo Madison (played by Wrenn Schmidt). Eventually Madison ends up running Mission Control.

According to Moore, Madison’s character is not based on either of the two most well-known women working as NASA engineers at the time, Poppy Northcutt (who is briefly mentioned in the first episode) and JoAnn Morgan . Instead, Madison was inspired by the subject of a famous photo. Judging from Moore’s description, the photo is of Margaret Hamilton , one of the MIT programmers for NASA’s Apollo Guidance Computer . “I decided that she would be one of our characters,” Moore says. “I never even looked into who she was, but there was something inspiring about this young woman working at NASA at that time.”

The first few episodes set the scene, but the real meat of the story starts emerging in the later episodes with NASA’s development of a female astronaut corps. Sonya Walger plays Molly Cobb, who is based on the late Geraldyn M. Cobb . The real Cobb was a candidate of a private program in the 1960s to find women who could pass all the same physical and mental tests as the male astronauts of Project Mercury. Cobb was the first to pass, and she argued before Congress in 1962 that women should be allowed to be astronauts too. In the series, Molly Cobb becomes the first American woman to go into space.

“The introduction of women into the program is a big historical change for us,” Moore says. In the show it leads to the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, which in reality has yet to be ratified. That is one example of what Moore says was the goal of developing a story arc “toward the idea of a better future.” But, he says, “we wanted it to still feel real and [convey] that not everything is perfect.”

Indeed, the show demonstrates that progress has limits. For example, an FBI search for Soviet spies ends up focusing on the sexual orientations of an astronaut and a mission controller. According to Jodi Balfour, who plays fictional astronaut Ellen Waverly, that story line led her to research Sally Ride , who in 1983 became the first American woman to reach orbit. It wasn’t until Ride’s death, in 2012, that the public learned that she was gay. “I became obsessed with studying her,” Balfour says. “The way she lived is beyond inspiring.”

The series also focuses on the challenges experienced by those involved with the space program. During the real space race, many of the people connected to NASA suffered divorces, alcoholism, and extreme stress. That is reflected by one astronaut’s slow emotional disintegration throughout the season. Michael Dorman, who plays the astronaut, does a superb job of capturing the intense pressure.

Mission Control is an exact replica of the original center in Houston, says Moore. The space suits and the initial Apollo equipment look accurate, and original footage from the period is interspersed. The lunar base has the same dimensions as Skylab , and the equipment inside it looks like what would have been available at the time.

For All Mankind has already been renewed for a second season, and Moore says the producers have mapped out another five seasons beyond that. “We will move aggressively into the future . . . doing a sort of a multigenerational story going forward, to show not only how the space program itself changes and expands but how it changes culture and changes politics in the world,” he says.

The first five episodes of Season 1 are available now. The remaining five episodes will be released on a weekly basis.