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The
Marvelous María
Beatriz and I have
stumbled upon the Apple
TV series For All Mankind,
a counterfactual
history of the race for
space. The series
begins with the 1969
moon landing, with the
familiar (well,
“familiar”
to a certain
generation) grainy
images of the lander on
the moon and the slow
descent of an astronaut
to the surface. Except
that in this telling of
the tale, it is a
Soviet cosmonaut who
first touches down, not
an American, and from
that historical twist
springs the arc of the
series.
The season we just
finished, Season 4,
released in 2023 (there
is a Season 5, with
Season 6, the last
season of the series,
scheduled for 2027),
has a pretty deft take
on some of the issues
currently roiling our
world, though it is set
in 2003: capitalist
exploitation, worker
rebellion, colonialism,
divisive politics,
resource extraction. It
gives some of the soap
opera-ish elements an
edge and bite.
Here’s the setup.
On Mars exists an
outpost called
Jamestown, a colony
jointly administered by
the United States and
the Soviet Union (yes,
it is still the Soviet
Union). Al Gore is
president, and the
political situation in
the Soviet Union has
had a shake-up because
of a conservative coup
d'état. The
cosmonauts in Jamestown
are in disagreement
about the politics,
which raises the
political tension
throughout the
community for everyone.
There is a third
partner in this
venture: Helios, run by
Dev Ayesa. His ambition
is to establish Mars as
a cognate of Earth. He
made his money earlier
in the series by mining
helium-3 on the moon,
which has created a
clean, non-polluting
fuel that completely
demolished the fossil
fuel industries.
(It’s also thrown
all the workers in
those industries out of
job, which creates its
own cluster of tensions
within American society
– and ironies,
with politicians
finding themselves
arguing for the return
of the
climate-destroying
fossil fuels in order
to preserve jobs).
The administration and
running of Jamestown,
then, falls to three
groups: the Americans,
who are in command of
the base, the Soviets,
and Helios through its
worker bees who
literally live in the
steerage section of the
Jamestown hab units,
isolated, exploited,
demoralized. (There is
a contingent of North
Koreans as well. Long
story about how they
got there, but they
also have a dog in the
hunt about commanding
the resources of Mars.)
Then, from out of the
blue (well, the inky
black of deep space)
comes 2003LC, an
asteroid moving into
the inner solar system
that is rich in iridium
that may be worth $20
trillion when fully
mined. The United
States, the Soviet
Union and Helios are
salivating to grab the
goodies, but the
workers stage a strike
that threatens to
scuttle the
overlords’ plans
to lasso the asteroid
and drag it into Earth
orbit so that the
iridium can be fully
extracted without the
exorbitant costs of
mining it at Mars and
transporting it to
Earth.
In steps Helios who, in
cahoots with some
disaffected Americans,
Soviets, and North
Koreans, manages to
steal the asteroid to
keep it within the
orbit of Mars and thus
keep the Jamestown
enterprise going by
making it essential.
(The truth was that
when the asteroid
reached Earth, the Mars
tents would be folded
up and brought home,
and those who now
consider Mars more
their home than Earth
were not going to let
that happen.)
The United States and
the Soviet Union have
no choice but to move
their mining ambitions
back to Mars, which
causes an expansion of
Jamestown to hold
thousands of people
(some of them migrants
who stowaway on the
supply ships that
furnish the colony
– they are known
as
“craters,”
people who have hidden
away in the crates.)
The last episode of the
season shows Dev
looking up at the
asteroid as it circles
the planet, and then
the camera flying up to
the asteroid to show
outposts and mining
facilities studding the
rock, indicating that
humans are now
beavering away at
pulling it apart.
What the season shows,
as the show itself has
always shown, is that
the strong aspiration
to achieve an
existential purity by
flying to the stars
– the focused
mission, the
selflessness of the
team, pushing the
bounds of knowledge,
the devotion to a
purpose larger than
one’s self
– cannot be
severed from the impure
gnarl of human greed,
need, deceit, desire,
blindness, sadness.
Mars is seen as a new
Eden (the title of an
episode in Season 3);
many scenes in many
episodes focus on the
awesome and
shut-my-mouth beauty of
the planet’s
austere and perilous
landscape (also true
when the space
travelers were only on
the moon). For a
moment, these people
looking out to the
horizon are literally
out of their minds,
existing in a timeless
state that feels
glorious in its
suspension of the usual
demons roiling around
inside.
Then, of course, the
ordinary muck of human
life seeps back in, and
people are at each
other’s throats
once again, pursuing
their narrow interests,
taking risks without
adequate information,
driven by regrets and
guilts and betrayals.
There are not too many
productions being
broadcast these days
that show workers
uniting to break the
stranglehold of the
owners, rebellion and
dissent against the
overlords, the perils
of colonizing to the
colonizers as well as
the glories of
engineering and the
rarefied beauty of the
pursuit of science.
(Time and again time,
the engineers, shunting
their feelings of the
moment to the side,
depend on facts and
imagination to solve
the problems blocking
their way – a
true belief in fact,
logic, sharing,
revelation. Refreshing.)
That being said, For All Mankind is not an adept Marxian analysis of class conflict and the false consciousness of capitalist exploitation. It’s riddled with soap opera banalities and sometimes moves way too slow dramatically. But it is clever in how the writers, directors, and producers deal with these larger questions of power and survival, authenticity and expediency, better angels and betrayals. Definitely worth a watch.
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