Stream It Or Skip It: ‘For All Mankind’ On Apple TV+, Ronald D. Moore’s Vision Of A Space Race That Never Ended

What if the Soviets landed on the moon first, instead of the U.S.? Ronald D. Moore imagined what that timeline would be like, and determined that the space race, which more or less ended with the 1969 moon landing, would never end. His vision is the driving force of the Apple TV+ series For All Mankind.

FOR ALL MANKIND: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Scenes of the early days of the U.S. space program, with audio of John F. Kennedy making various speeches about how the Russians surged ahead, including the famous State of the Union where he promised a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Then we see the moon in Parras de a Fuente, Mexico on June 26, 1969.

The Gist: A group in Mexico, who are planning on crossing the border into the U.S. in about a month, are gathered around the TV, watching an avuncular news anchor (Michael Harney) talk about the historic moon landing that’s about to happen.

But something doesn’t compute: It’s June 26. Didn’t Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20? We see others watching the coverage, including astronaut Edward Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman), who almost landed on the moon in the previous Apollo mission but just hovered above, according to plan. He’s visibly amazed and angry as the first man steps on the moon and talks, in Russian, about the Marxist state.

The headlines the next day say “RED MOON.” Yes, somehow the Soviets beat the Americans to the moon, and U.S. intelligence had very little knowledge that it was about to happen. The next day, lead astronaut Deke Slayton (Chris Bauer) tells the astronauts to take the day off to “get pissed, have a few drinks, and then Monday we go back to work.” Despite the low morale, it won’t deter them from pushing forward with Apollo 11.

At the local astronaut watering hole, Baldwin tells a reporter that NASA has stopped taking risks since the Apollo 1 fire in ’67. When the quotes are published, Slayton takes him off Apollo 15 and puts him at a desk job. He says he’s lucky; Wernher von Braun (Colm Feore), chief of the space program, wanted him removed. Baldwin’s wife Karen (Shantel VanSanten) frets about what will happen if Baldwin has to go back to the Navy.

Not only has the Soviet landing diminished the upcoming Apollo 11 mission, but it may signal the end of the space program; we hear “Richard Nixon” talk on tape about how pissed he is that he’ll be blamed for botching this, and the Apollo 11 crew get told he might not even call the lunar lander because “the president doesn’t call the silver medalist.” But the launch goes as scheduled. But the landing isn’t smooth; in fact, the Eagle lunar landing module crashes and goes incommunicado for hours. Mission Control, including lead control specialist Gene Kranz (Eric Ladin), start to give up hope.

But just as Mission Control is about to shut down, they get a transmission from Armstrong (Jeff Branson) that they crashed but he and Buzz Aldrin (Chris Agos) are safe and ready to explore. The space race isn’t over yet.

Our Take: For All Mankind is certainly a visually stunning show. Creators Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivihave made sure that the VFX are bright and detailed and that the alternate timeline they write about meshes well with actual historic figures, archival footage and audio. The performances are almost universally fantastic.

Here’s the problem: It’s as boring as plain oatmeal. Sending the timeline of the space program into chaos by making the Soviets be the first to land on the moon is an inspired idea; you would think a show about that would involve finger-pointing a redoubled effort to get back ahead (go to Mars, maybe?) or even some sort of espionage to find out what the Soviets were doing. Instead, though, it concentrates on the people who are redoubling their efforts. And because of that, the first episode moves like molasses and gives us glimpses into square-jawed characters who treat space travel like it’s a grim mission.

There are, of course, some slight changes to the timeline, mainly involving Nixon grumbling about how he’ll get the blame and the fact that the program might get dropped after Apollo 11. And the Eagle’s crash landing only seems to be there because Moore and company figured the timeline’s blown up anyway, so might as well change the landing (though the removal of a commemorative plaque might have thrown things off). It likely needed to be there because there isn’t any tension in the episode; everyone continues as they would have in the real timeline, only more pissed that the Soviets got there first.

But the first episode is a lot of talking… a LOT of talking. Talking about the promise of space. Talking about NASA getting cautious. Talking about taking chances, as von Braun does with young engineer Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt). And we’re not particularly clued in on what’s going on when the Mexican immigrants cross the border during the U.S. moon landing. We’re assuming one of them, maybe the little girl that’s featured, will be a future astronaut when women are let into the program in the ’70s, but we have no idea.

We get that when you change a historic timeline, things need to be set up. But we’re not in the mood to watch yet another streaming show where we’re told we have to watch the first few snoozer episodes to get to the good stuff. This isn’t homework; it’s entertainment. And, despite promises that For All Mankind will get better, we’re not interested in struggling to stay awake through the episodes that get us there.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: With the song “What Becomes Of The Broken-Hearted?” playing, we see a gorgeous visual of the lunar landing site, with Armstrong and Aldrin bouncing around the boulders, while the Eagle seems to be balancing on two feet.

Sleeper Star: Schmidt got lots of screen time as Margo, who seems to be an old family friend of von Braun’s. We know she’ll get involved more as things go on, but she’s a good representation of the women engineers who contributed to the space program back then. We also know that Michael Dorman plays Baldwin’s flight partner Gordo Stevens, but we didn’t see much of him in the first episode.

Most Pilot-y Line: As two pilots buzz the launch pad of Apollo 11, von Braun says, “We should have stuck with the monkeys.”

Our Call: SKIP IT. As much as we love Moore’s shows, and love that the effects he uses have advanced from even the days he was running Battlestar Galactica, For All Mankind just doesn’t have enough going on to keep us awake, much less prompting us to watch other episodes.

Your Call:

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, FastCompany.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream For All Mankind On Apple TV+