Showrunner Ronald D. Moore characterizes For All Mankind as the alt-history foundation for Star Trek’s utopian future. It’s a bold but conflicted premise because while the show is packed with thrilling retrofuturistic ideas, its political worldbuilding grows less and less coherent with each new season.
[This post includes spoilers up to season 4, episode 1 of For All Mankind.]
Beginning in 1969, For All Mankind charts an alternate timeline focusing on the Space Race, hinging on a deceptively simple conceit: The Soviet Union lands the first man on the moon. This prompts the US government to bulk up its space program, training female astronauts in the early 1970s. In turn this leads to greater gender equality and (indirectly) to the early adoption of same-sex marriage in the late 1990s, after one of those women becomes the first openly gay US president. Another of NASA’s top astronauts is a Black woman, whose success signals a cultural shift in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement. In the background of the show’s interpersonal drama, we witness the evolution of a less racist version of America.
Over on the tech side of things, this elongated Space Race results in dazzling innovations including the elimination of fossil fuels. By the 1980s there are permanent outposts on the Moon, followed by crewed Mars missions in the ‘90s. Set in 2003, season 4 introduces an international Mars base where NASA heroes and blue collar workers live side by side.
Jumping forward a decade or so each season, For All Mankind offers a satisfyingly ambitious brand of speculative sci-fi. Yet the further it reaches toward that Star Trek-adjacent future, the more frustrated I become by its depiction of electoral politics, which often clashes with this pre-utopian vision of the late 20th century. In recent seasons this issue has graduated from casually implausible to downright nonsensical.
Season four opens with a montage of doctored archival footage and fictional news headlines. Recapping important events from the late 1990s and early 2000s, we learn that president Ellen Wilson (the former astronaut) was re-elected for a second term with George H.W. Bush as her VP. Gorbachev remains in power, but the Cold War has thawed. The Clintons got a divorce. Jerry Maguire and Cast Away are still popular movies in this timeline, alongside a blockbuster dramatization of the first mission to Mars. And in 2000, Bush Sr. runs for president and loses to Al Gore.
Despite my enjoyment of For All Mankind’s sci-fi soap opera vibes, this background worldbuilding is increasingly hard to swallow. In a timeline so radically different from our own, why are Bush and Gore still presidential candidates?
Along with being a clumsy approach to alt-history storytelling, these choices create an ugly subtext around which events can and can’t be changed. They suggest that certain real-life figures are somehow immutably destined for power—a more distasteful idea than the similarly implausible references to IRL pop culture. (Why, after all, would Nirvana and Jerry Maguire still be cultural touchstones in a completely different version of the ‘90s?)
The show’s presidential timeline offers an oddly conservative counterpoint to the wild twists of its spacefaring narrative. We begin with Nixon from 1969 to ‘74, followed by one term of Ted Kennedy, then two terms of Ronald Reagan. He’s succeeded by Democrat Gary Hart (1985-93), who lost out IRL due to a sex scandal. Then we get Ellen Wilson from 1993 to 2001, handing over the reins to Gore.
In other words, with the exception of Ellen Wilson, the show sticks to real-world candidates. Men whose careers were shaped by the events and values of our own timeline, and whose lives should be unrecognizably different in the world of For All Mankind.
As a sci-fi fan, I tend to assume that small changes should beget an outsized ripple effect. This is the foundation for numerous stories about branching timelines (including this one!), and it feels particularly relevant to electoral politics. Election results can turn on a dime, with success rooted in a specific cultural moment, and failure often resulting from bizarre flukes and unpredictable micro-scandals. Hell, an ill-timed rainstorm can alter turnout to a disastrous degree. So while it’s easy to accept Nixon’s role in season one, it strains credulity to imagine George H.W. Bush and Al Gore as major players in For All Mankind’s version of the ‘90s.
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In this universe the oil industry is dead, North Korea shares a Mars outpost with NASA, and the Soviet Union is still going strong in the 21st century. Realistically speaking, Bush and Gore should no longer be relevant. In fact the entire political landscape should look drastically different from what we see onscreen.
Ellen Wilson’s presidency ought to have marked a permanent departure from our own electoral timeline. Her season three arc was already a bold move, encouraging us to optimistically suspend our disbelief about America accepting a lesbian president in 1995. In fairness, For All Mankind has always been a wish-fulfillment fantasy. However this rose-tinted outlook really isn’t compatible with the persistent return of politicians from our own—far more conservative—timeline.
This leaves us with the question of why For All Mankind features such bewildering political worldbuilding. I highly doubt that sci-fi icon Ronald D. Moore fails to understand the logistics of branching timelines. So this must be a conscious storytelling choice, most likely intended to keep the setting as accessible as possible.
Despite literally being about rocket scientists, For All Mankind isn’t precisely aimed at nerds. It combines science fiction, historical drama and prestige soap opera programming, appealing to viewers who don’t necessarily consider themselves sci-fi fans. This necessitates a kind of “this far, but no further” attitude to the show’s role as an alt-history thought experiment.
It’s surprisingly easy to accept big, sweeping narrative choices like the demise of fossil fuels, or For All Mankind’s accelerated timetable for race and gender equality. But if the show began to extrapolate a more realistic departure from our own timeline, things would soon get a lot more complicated. They’d have to introduce new politicians, celebrities and social movements, spending time fleshing them out and illustrating their impact on the American public. And although those complications would fascinate some viewers, they’d confuse and alienate others. It’s more efficient to keep using real-world politicians and celebrities as a narrative shorthand, no matter how little sense they now make in context.
In For All Mankind’s version of 2003, Al Gore’s presidency is probably just meant to signal that we’re in a more eco-conscious version of America. It works better if you don’t overthink it. Although for viewers like myself, that’s easier said than done.
Gavia Baker-Whitelaw is a geek culture journalist and critic. She co-hosts the Overinvested film podcast, and co-edits the Hugo-nominated Rec Center newsletter. Find her on Bluesky (@Gavia) and X (@Hello_Tailor).
Interesting article. I haven’t seen the show, but this definitely piques my interest.
I will say, though, that while the political landscape can change on a dime, what doesn’t change is the narcissism of politicians. So, I would imagine those particular names would pop up in an alternate timeline because they so desperately need to be seen in a position of power, altering their political stances accordingly and making whatever expedient backroom deals they need to get there. Perhaps, with a tip of the hat to Dr. McCoy, this is another constant in the universes.
The branching timeline happens in the 1960s, so many of the men who would become politician types were already on the path that would lead them to the White House.
The Soviet moon landing calls Ted Kennedy back to Washington in July 1969, so Chapaquidick never happens and that makes his presidency possible. Nixon ends Vietnam early, so he is popular enough to win election in 1972 and serve a full term without the need for the Watergate break-in. Those are pretty substantial and interesting changes.
Having the 2000 election be between Gore and the other Bush is probably just meant to be an entertaining counterpoint to reality.
What often goes unsaid in the show is that its world doesn’t seem to have a public internet. The continuing Cold War meant that the internet was kept securely locked down by the military. This makes a potentially REALLY different world going forward from 2003. But we’ll have to see if the show can make something cool out of it.
Like some other Ron Moore shows, it seems that he’s turned over the controls to other people in the later seasons and isn’t really doing any of the writing anymore.
Alt history does this all the time: Susannah Clarke’s Strange And Norrell – which I adore – pictured a radically different English history to the one we got but we still had Napoleon and Byron. Terry Pratchett’s Nation had a hugely different history leading up to its 19th Century but still managed to give us Darwin, Shakespeare and Austen.
Alt-history, in general, exists largely as commentary on the real world. It needs to change some things, or it wouldn’t be alt-, but if it departs too far from the familiar, then it becomes less compelling as commentary.
It makes sense to introduce new major characters when they’re essential to the story the authors want to tell (there aren’t many real-world figures who would be obvious candidates to become a lesbian President of the United States in 1993). It also makes sense to keep real-world names when those characters can satisfy the needs of the story. After all, most of us know much more about Al Gore and the various Georges Bush than we do about whatever new characters might replace them.
It’s not hard to see at all.
Gary Hart, Jerry Brown — who loses very narrowly to FAM star character Ellen Wilson — and Al Gore were very future-oriented politicians.
Big backers of the space program. Each very involved with renewable energy and what we used to call high tech. All were anti-Vietnam War. Hart opposed any U.S. troops in a Middle East war, ie, no Gulf War. Brown’s presidential campaign slogan was “Protect the Earth, Serve the People, Explore the Universe.” Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change. Etc, etc, etc.
A bit off the topic: The soviet capital outdoor scenes in S1E1 were shot in Sofia, Bulgaria. Some landmark buildings are easily recognizable. If only I had known… you would see me as an extra… :)
On the topic – I find the social changes unbelievably fast. These things chage with the switch of generations. Or with bloody revolutions. This is a common fault of Alternative History, not just this show – the authors just do wishful thinking/writing. The superfast development of the space technology falls in the same category – there was a long discussion on thespavereview about that.
Haven’t watched season 4 yet, but my own problem with the first three seasons was the soap opera nature of the character’s lives. Evidently this universe has no equivalent of the National Enquirer.
For a writer who uses famous people in his alternate histories in a different way, check out Howard Waldrop. A good example is “Ike at the Mike”, where a young Dwight Eisenhower steps off the train on his way to West Point, and it changes the lives of people as different as George Patton and Elvis Presley.
Alt history is very hard to do. Ask Mr. Turtledove – for every really good one he’s written, he’s got a bunch of lesser ones. This one is, for me, a lesser one.
It just has too many suspenders snappers in it for me. Even if Korolev had survived (the big change for Season 1) the N-1 would have never made it to orbit. It was just too badly flawed of a design to salvage and I couldn’t accept that enough to bother with the show.
Glancing along over the seasons since, I haven’t really seen anything in the soap opera to convince me to change my mind. OTOH, I can be glad for the cast and crew for their success and hope it continues because that’s never a bad thing even if it isn’t my personal cuppa tea ;)
Now if only Season 2 of Prodigy would air :D
@5 said: After all, most of us know much more about Al Gore and the various Georges Bush than we do about whatever new characters might replace them.
Something that gets a little lost in this discussion is that both Al Gore and George H.W. Bush are dynastic politicians, in that both of their fathers were in Congress well before the 1966 timeline split the show proposes. In Bush’s case, he had a pretty established career of his own, having won election to the U.S House of Representatives in 1966 and been seated on the powerful Ways and Means Committee upon taking office
You think very rich white men with old Ivy League and family connections still won’t have a massive leg up even in a more scientific meritocracy? I’ve seen absolutely no evidence in the real world that that might be the case.
In the string theory multiverse that most scifi leans on, all possible universes exist – so it’s not just probable this happened, but almost certain fact. Just because scifi does history changing one way, doesn’t make that way the best way or the only way it should be handled.
9) called it.
For a work of speculative fiction to succeed, if billed as alternative history (as opposed to fantasy or hard/soft SF, horror, etc.) the starting point has to be based on what in economics are called “historical alternatives” – i.e., a choice between decisions A and B, both of which are equally plausible, based on the situation at the decision point, and each of which “could” happen.
If one is going to go otherwise, than just call it fantasy and invite the elves and dragons; they are more fun and easier to work with by the author and to take for the audience, honestly.
The Soviet human spaceflight program in LEO was impressive, for what it was – but the Soviet lunar program was never in a position to succeed. The N-1 was a disaster waiting to happen, given the state of the art when it came electronic controls of a launch vehicle with a cluster of 30 engines on stage 1; even today, the (current) 100% failure rate of a similar “modern” design with 33 engines – despite five decades of improvements in control systems – makes clear the odds against the successful use of such a design for lunar missions.
It’s like poetry, it rhymes.
I was strongly disagreeing with the premise of this article until almost the very end. Yes, I think the show is going to continue to reference real world figures as long as possible, because the point of the show is not that it’s some completely different world, but that it is our world with a few changes. And as few as possible to still get the point across.
I also agree with what others have said above here, in that certain historical figures are going to succeed and become important in almost any timeline or set of events. The Gore and Bush families in particular enjoyed advantages that were unlikely to go away just because of the minor changes to the world that we’ve seen so far.
For me, it’s a fantastic show, perfectly mixing near future science fiction storytelling and technology with the most salacious soap opera storylines. If every “major/historical” character in it became unrecognizable to us this soon, it wouldn’t feel like a show about our world being slightly different, it would feel more and more like a totally fictional Star Trek show, which is not what I’m there for at all. No matter what the producer thinks.
To be honest, I think the idea that the US would respond to a Soviet moon landing by saying “yikes, must be more space-feminist” is dodgy from the start. The USSR, after all, put the first woman into space. The US did not respond to that AFAIK by mounting an increased effort to put women into space. If the USSR put the first man on the moon, a far more plausible reaction would be “yikes, better make sure we beat them to Mars” or something.
Making big sweeping statements about how alternate histories should develop is, ultimately, just saying what you personally happen to like, because we don’t have a mysterious server in China that will allow us to experiment on stub continua and see what happens.
Maybe the USSR winning the race to the moon in 1969 would result in greater space-feminism in the US by 1990. Maybe it would have resulted in the fall of the USA to communism. Maybe it would have resulted in a third world war against China. You can tell any one of those stories if you like, and if you make the sequence of events make sense and be an exciting narrative, then good for you. But what you can’t do is say “the Laws of History mean that a change like that in 1969 would have far bigger effects by 1990 – you are WRONG”. Because, well, how do you know?