Susan Granger’s review of “For All Mankind: Season 4” (Sony/Apple TV+)
Wanna binge on a terrific sci-fi/spy series? An alternate historical take on the international space race, “For All Mankind” has just concluded its fourth season – with season five already on the drawing boards.
Created by Ronald D. Moore, Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert, it poses the provocative question: What if the Soviet Union had won the race to the moon?
The first season revolves around US astronauts Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) and Gordo Stevens (Michael Dorman) who were ordered not to land on the moon, allowing a cosmonaut to get there first, infuriating then-President Richard Nixon.
Meanwhile at NASA in Houston, rocket engineer Wernher von Braun (Colm Feore) mentors Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt), the first woman at Mission Control, while Gordo’s wife Tracy Stevens (Sarah Jones) becomes the first female astronaut.
Planting a crucial sub-plot, Mexican teenager Aleida (Olivia Trujillo) emigrates to Texas, yearning to join NASA, while Astronaut Ellen Waverly (Jodi Balfour) is a closeted lesbian. Plus, there’s ornery veteran test pilot Molly Cobb (Sonya Walger) and determined Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall), the first black female astronaut.
Skipping ahead 40 years to season 4, set in now-colonized Happy Valley on Mars, the plot pivots around Helios entrepreneur Dev Ayesa’s (Edi Gathegi) determination to mine a metal-rich asteroid – which requires expanding the labor force beyond pilots and engineers, involving workers’ rights, unionization and sabotage.
Recalling their mother/daughter-like relationship, now-grown Aleida (Coral Pena) is reunited with Margo, who fled to the USSR after saving her Russian colleague Sergei (Piotr Adamczyk) from the KGB.
And Ed Baldwin’s adoptive daughter Kelly (Cynthy Wu) arrives on Mars with her young son Alex (Ezrah Lin), leading a Helios search for signs of life in the craters.
What distinguishes this compelling series is how these complicated, conflicted, ‘fictionalized’ characters are deftly delineated against a thriller background of ruthless political turmoil, sexism, prejudice and ‘patriotism.’
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “For All Mankind” is an escapist 8, streaming on Apple TV+.
