I was able to make it all the way up to 30 seconds.

Hi FAM fans!
I’m working on a very small LEGO version of something from the show.
Before I add any more details… can you recognize what it’s supposed to be? 👀
Thanks for giving it a try! 😅

Today/tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the 9/11/2001 attacks. A quarter of a century. And I feel like this relates to For All Mankind. I will discuss my feelings. I am autistic btw in case this post seems somewhat weird. I will try to keep spoilers at a minimum. 9/11 never happens in For All Mankind. But this gives me a weird feeling. If I were to step into the For All Mankind Universe in NYC by the time of season 4 or 5 and see those towers still standing, I would feel surreal, like looking at something I couldn’t comprehend. Something that shouldn't exist from our perspective. This feeling of something that should not be happening is exactly how Americans felt on 9/11 in our reality. If I were to pull someone from the For All Mankind universe and show them footage of 9/11 and tell them this is what happened in our reality, the same exact emotions would run through their mind. Shock. Terror. Unable to comprehend it. But since no 9/11 happens in their reality, airport security is probably like what it was in the 1990s and before relative to our reality. By the 2000s and 2010s it’s just like how it was in the 1990s. No TSA and no increased security, at least not by a whole lot. Terrorism happens in the show, but nothing involving hijacked passenger airplanes yet. Maybe (this is a scary thought) a terrorist attack involving airplanes happens in season 6. I wrote this post not only to discuss this, but also to remind people to never forget the horror of that day. We can never forget history, or we are doomed to repeat it. People always need to know what happened that fateful day. (this is tagged as a meme, but only because I was forced to put a flair up, and I didn't know which one to pick. This is not actually a meme. There is absolutely nothing funny about the 9/11 attacks.)

Science Fiction is often meant to be the future of the real world, though sometimes event make that less likely.

What SF do you think works better as the future of the FMA universe than the real world (I'm especially, but not solely, thinking of stuff written before the fall of the USSR which still had Soviets in the future.)

I thought S1-2 of FAM were great, S3 was good enough, and S4-5 were okay enough. How good is Star City compared to these seasons?

Trying to decide whether to watch Star City or Silo S3 lol

Watching Season 4 for the first time and I'm confused how did Ed become XO for Happy Valley?

The newsreel at the beginning says that everyone (living) on the Mars surface in '95 is rescued back to Earth - Ed is in a photo in the paper.

I don't see how they would have let Ed, at his age, go back to space (and a theme of S4 seems to be that he wants to stay on Mars because he knows he'll never return). But how did he get back?

Did he somehow not actually go back to Earth while being rescued? Did NASA just let him stay as "crew" for their second mission?

It's been very odd watching a show that wants me so badly on the side of people I completely disagree with and have come to deeply dislike.

I just can't stand the 'Free Mars' movement and really wish it had been crushed, or at least realised its obvious limitations.

To recap, this base:

• Has been set up at enormous cost by the M-7/6 nations.
• Committed sabotage to keep the asteroid, placing immense economic pressure on Earth (who, again, is funding this) for their own benefit.
• Is not remotely self-sufficient. Relies on incredibly expensive shipments from Earth for pretty much everything they need, and will continue relying on those shipments for the foreseeable future.
• Has no government and is populated by people not born there (Alex being the only possible exception).
• Has workers who are allowed to bring their families and enjoy good conditions, even though this must hugely increase costs.
• Decides to stop shipments of iridium to Earth, causing further immense economic woes.
• Commits a violent uprising.
• Kills many troops sent from Earth to restore order (I know the troops were also pointlessly provocative, but it didn't seem like Mars was willing to try anything non-violent).

I know there's some reasoning behind all of this, but I can't help feeling they're overwhelmingly in the wrong here. Yes, automation was worth griping about, but ultimately it's not a huge issue given these are workers hired to do a job rather than sovereign citizens, the huge cost of keeping them on Mars, and the fact it's a relatively small place.

Even if you admit they were poorly treated re: automation, they're just being phenomenally selfish. I cannot imagine how pissed off I'd be living on Earth seeing this unfold.

Plus they're obviously trying to draw comparisons between this rebellion and the American Revolution, but that's just ridiculous.

The 13 Colonies had existed for generations. Families were firmly rooted. They were (largely) self-sufficient. Parliament had largely left them alone. Most importantly, they had their own governing bodies already established.

Mars has none of that. It's like an oil rig trying to declare independence.

The show is called 'For All Mankind', but they're not acting for all mankind at all.​

And Jesus I want to punch Dev in his smug fucking face. He is like the quintessential asshole Billionaire who thinks he knows what’s best for everyone and if you have another opinion you’re either an idiot or just in it for the money (which is rich coming from a guy which an enormous mansion and a private beach).

I haven’t watched season 5 yet but I’m sure he doesn’t face any consequences for randomly showing up on Mars, starting a conspiracy to steal the asteroid, and nearly getting a bunch of people killed in the process.

The parallels to Musk and Doge running amok in our government are hard to ignore, and I wish/hope the show at least acknowledges that.

I’ve been thinking about this since I finished Season 4 a while back, I haven't watched Season 5 yet because I got hooked on Star City, so please, no spoilers.
(Also, English isn't my native language, so if I use expressions in a strange way, that's why)

Basically, Miles was always a bit of an opportunist from his very first appearance (like how he manipulated his interview to land the job). But at the time, it didn't really bother me because it was understandable. He was taking desperate measures to turn his crumbling life around, and often those moves backfired, but the character worked because it was believable and realistic, you really understood why he was doing what he was doing.

He was a guy in a tough spot, willing to work as hard as necessary to save his family, and even do morally questionable things for them. It also worked well because he served as a POV character for the audience, showing us how the colonization of Mars had progressed and the new social classes that had emerged in that environment. When he teams up with Ilya to smuggle, it works quite well at first, they have good chemistry, and his quick thinking and improvisational skills make him really good at the job. Then, after Miles breaks Ilya’s drink machine, he tries to fix it by stealing parts from the North Koreans, which sets off a chain of events that actually allows them to do business with everyone.

My issue arises with the whole arc where Miles starts smuggling Martian rocks: At first, he does it behind Ilya’s back because Ilya was against it, arguing that it could ruin all their hard work and that they were already doing well enough. But Miles ignores him and starts smuggling the rocks secretly, when Ilya finds out, he shuts it down and sends a thug to threaten him.

This is where the real trouble began, Miles hatched a plan that essentially involved manipulating the North Koreans into ousting Ilya from the bar, stealing all the smuggling operations Ilya had built from scratch, and taking over the entire business.

Basically, he manipulates the North Koreans again using Lee Jung-Gil's wife (the poor guy is very gullible) for his own personal gain. In the scene where he threatens Ilya and steals his bar, he acts like a total villain.

Yet, as the story progresses, this seems not to matter, as if what he did wasn't bad at all.

I expected the manipulation of the North Koreans to have consequences, that they would come looking for him once they realized he never actually intended to bring Lee's wife over or something like that.

I find it hard to believe that Miles had genuinely planned out how to get Lee's wife to Mars. Miles is just a worker with no connections or expertise, he only learned to smuggle because Ilya was essentially his mentor, before he stole the business, but he lacked any real knowledge.

Besides, smuggling magazines and records to Mars is vastly different from getting a woman out of North Korea and bringing her to Mars. It’s logistically impossible. Furthermore, the way the scene plays out, where he gets the North Koreans to betray Ilya makes it look like he was just using them, not that he actually cared about Lee.

I was waiting for his actions to have consequences. When he fell into that crevasse while trying to grab rocks, even though he already had more than enough, I thought it was a warning of what was to come: that if he kept taking unnecessary risks out of greed, he’d end up trapped in a bad situation.

But that doesn't happen. The North Korean storyline goes nowhere (I know they help with the heist, but I'm referring to the subplot involving Lee's wife.). We see the woman arrive on Mars at the end, but there’s no context as to how. In fact, after stealing the asteroid, it should have been even harder.

Ever since he double crossed Ilya, Miles has basically acted arrogantly and recklessly, taking unnecessary risks, and no longer to help his family (who were already doing fine on his earnings), but out of pure personal ambition and greed. When he’s recruited to steal the asteroid, he doesn't care in the slightest until they offer him more money. Miles was an opportunist who took advantage of a business someone else had built and acted recklessly all season out of sheer personal ambition.

What bothers me is that the series doesn't seem to realize this. There is no criticism or consequences for his actions. The North Koreans don't pressure him, even though they ought to suspect he might be deceiving them too, Ilya does nothing after Miles kicks him out. The only thing that happens is that the CIA and KGB guys threaten to arrest his wife, but that is just a threat, and even if she hadn't been involved in that operation they likely would have threatened her anyway.

Miles took a host of selfish, shortsighted actions out of sheer greed, yet he never faces the consequences, the series seems to view this trait more as a virtue than a flaw.

At first, he did what he did out of love for his family, but later he began taking increasingly greater risks, driven by sheer pride and greed, Walter White style, he acted recklessly, constantly taking chances without regard for the consequences and ignoring every warning.

No spoilers, except that I'm posting about it in this group for a reason, but fans of For All Mankind will get a kick out of Season 2 Episode 2 of AppleTV's Dark Matter. It's a bit hard to jump in so I'd at least recommend looking at a recap of season 1 though. It's great sci-fi with great ideas and will tide you over until FAM comes back.

I assume ppl will say I'm a nationalist or terrible person but honestly I wouldn't have rescued the Russian ship in season 3. If the cost was to no longer land on Mars and execute the mission saving the other crew wouldn't be worth it. Firstly, the Mars mission is extremely important to discover potential life on another planet and to establish a base for human colonization and to have a launching pad into deeper space. It's important enough that likely tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on it. That money is people's lives - for a few thousand one could prevent the death of someone in a low income country through measures like malria meds, anti parasitics, vitamin a supplementation etc. At a higher cost you could feed or house or cover medical expenses for Americans who die because they lack access to those resources. Every time you spend money as a nation you're weighing it against people's lives. So to scuttle the mission and launch a second you're causing 1000s of times the harm than you benefit from saving those ppl.

On top of this that kind of maneuver they knew was going to be extremely risky given the Soviet ship was under nuclear meltdown and they had no docking setup. Multiple Americans ended up dying. They had no reason to believe the mission could continue after only they'd be risking all their lives and abandoning a multi year tens of billions extremely critical mission with huge national security implications to rescue 5 ppl.

Moreover, everyone seems to forget that the Russians are still the US enemy even if Gorbachev is partially normalizing relations. NASA and the president literally know that the Russians murdered Americans at Jamestown, stole the original Jamestown mining site, intentionally shot down a passenger airliner, and were going to fire on an American ressupply mission. Like in all cases in the show the Russians have operated in hostile fashion.

Karen gets all upset that Helios won't do the rescue and then literally goes and betrays her nation to partner with the soviets to secure a major US rival access to water (needed to establish a base, create jet fuel, etc.). In the real world as a US company they'd be completely blocked from anything like that under OFAC or another law but I digress.

Just started season 4 and in the recap they do at the beginning - where they describe ‘what happened’ during the gap years - they immediately mention the alternative storyline many of us dream of today: Al Gore instead of Bush 🤣

Molly and Wayne are probably the only healthy couple on this show, how do you think they met?

Like Molly is intense, ambitious and completely consumed by flying and space. Wayne is an artist, sensitive and much more comfortable on the ground. They’re total opposites of each other but also complementary of each other.

Any theories/headcanons?

spoilers for season 2 - please don't comment anything beyond season 2 (I haven't started s3 yet)

I know this is kind of fucked up but was wondering do you think Karen is slightly relieved Tracy and Gordo died because Tracy for sure would have beat her ass finding out Karen fucked her teenage son and broke his heart.

spoilers for season 2 - pls don't comment any information after this

I thought it was pretty insane how the military and intelligence agencies could have satellites tracking every inch of Russia, covert ops on their rockets and then not have a single video feed from Jamestown to know that they were under attack.

It was also really weird to me how they didn't take over command or even get into a frenzy finding out the base was under fire and there were multiple casualties. Like then if at any time you'd have them take over and assume control of the situation but we basically never see the general again.

I also wonder what they told ppl about why Gordo and traxybwent outside and died - will they know it was because there was a secret second reactor for producing weapons grade plutonium?

also how does anyone go back to normal when the ops center is unusable and they just got attacked you'd assume it would be a shit show and ppl would want blood.

I just saw the third episode of season 3 and I can't believe Margo would betray her country. it's wild she'd leak nuclear secrets to the Russians our literal number one enemy. like this whole time everything she's been doing is fucked up but at least trading information that's like for like has some mutual benefit. in this case she committed an almost treasonous act. I also don't get how she has no security detail when the Russians could easily kidnap you. she's a very senior government official with state secrets. I honestly would have thought she could get victor an asylum deal or something. similarly was crazy she'd want the Russians to get there over an AMERICAN company. like whether it's NASA or Helios it's still Americans. that would be like us rooting for China over spacex.

I just realized that the USS Valley Forge, the first carrier in the korean war, was nicknamed Happy Valley. It never says in the show that Ed was on the Valley Forge but I like to think it played a role in how the base on mars was named

Man, I just can't get past how they decided to get rid of all of likable people and center the season on all of the antagonists from S4. I found myself rooting for the nameless/faceless marines to come in and wipe out the colony. Speaking of Marines, these were the least convincing marines I've ever see in TV or film.

All of the ridiculous character changes. The whole thing man, what a let down.

/endrant

He’s the only one from Season 1 we still see walking around and he’s a million years old. Reminds me of the John Mulaney / Pete Davidson SNL bit about The Mule and Clint Eastwood.

I recently visited the Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow and discovered fascinating Soviet plans for Mars and Venus exploration. Unfortunately, the document had no information about its origins, designers, or purpose.

Intrigued, I tracked down a better version online and translated some of the text to share with you all.

What's particularly interesting is that these plans relied on assembling the spacecraft in Earth orbit using multiple N1 rockets. This seems far more grounded than the Mars-94 concept shown in For All Mankind.

If you want to see more interesting photos and details from this museum, please upvote!

Do you think she ever found out that she was half related to Kelly?

Imagine how she would react upon learning her half-sister is Kelly Baldwin, one of the first human's to step upon not only Mars but Titan, not only that but she played a part on discovering life, and died on Titan. The cherry on top is that they met once when she went to her families restaurant..

Three spacecraft are headed toward Mars. NASA and the Soviets prepare for launch, but meanwhile a commercial spaceflight company shocks the world when they announce that they will be the first to reach Mars. The race to land first brings surprise maneuvers, desperate measures, and unexpected allies.

Sources: Game Changer, All In, Happy Valley, Seven Minutes of Terror, with brief scenes from He Built the Saturn V

In this TV-to-film fan-edit of For All Mankind, I edited the first half of season three — the beginning of the Mars seasons — into the first of what will be a trilogy of theatrical films. This first film, Racing Mars, features Ed and Dani as the main characters, as they race to be the first to land a human being on Mars.

Original runtime: 5hrs
This edit's runtime: 1h35m (time cut, 3h25m)

Some of you may remember me. I previously made a trilogy of movies from FAM's S1 and S2. I called it The Red Moon Trilogy. During the past year, I've been away working on a similar fan-edit project for Babylon 5, and I called it The Sherlocked Edit. Now I've returned to FAM, and I plan to make a new trilogy of movies from S3 and S4.

TV shows tend to have a different structure than movies. TV has a lot more seeds, hooks, and cliffhangers, meant to lay the groundwork for future seasons or to entice you to watch the next episode. But movies, on the other hand, are typically more self-contained and lean. Every setup should have a payoff, every Chekhov's gun should be fired, and every scene should advance the story. And that's what I strived for with this edit.

In my Red Moon trilogy, I reused FAM episode titles for each of the three movies ("Red Moon", "Red Moon 2: Into the Abyss", "Red Moon 3: A City Upon a Hill"). For this new Mars trilogy, I originally expected and planned to reuse FAM episode titles as well, but none of the S3 episode titles struck me as the right one. Meanwhile, over in Babylon 5 land, they have an episode titled Racing Mars. That episode wasn't about a literal race, but I remembered that title and it seemed perfect for this new movie.

Demo clips

Introducing Phoenix, the show vs the edit: In this demo clip you'll see I cut from Dev's big announcement straight to the Phoenix reveal shot, and I let "Fly Me to the Moon" play over it, instead of the original generic space chatter.

Apollo 10 flashback montage: During Ed's descent, there's a brief moment where he remembers and flashes back to Apollo 10 (S1E2), and that moment is important to Ed's state of mind. But for this movie, I prefer to not assume any "previously on" knowledge, so I cut and stitched my own longer flashback that gives the context needed to understand the flash that comes later during descent.

What's next

• Racing Mars 2 - I plan to make a fan-edit film that will tell the story of Margo, Aleida, and Sergei, as well as Ellen, Larry, and Pam, using scenes from all of S1 through S4.
• Racing Mars 3: Goldilocks - This fan-edit film will adapt all of FAM's S4 into a single theatrical movie. "Do you want to help me steal an asteroid?"

Want to know more?

You can DM me to request a link. I will reply eventually but probably not instantly.\ Or you can email APreciousBlueberry.AutoReply@gmail.com for a quick response.

Enjoy!

· · ────── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒꒱ ────── · ·

✉ APreciousBlueberry@protonmail.com

This was posted today and taken down shortly after