For All Mankind season 3: Come As You Are (to Mars)

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > For All Mankind season 3: Come As You Are (to Mars)

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Admiral Bosch posted:

No manual fuel shutoff to the ring thruster? No counter thruster to slow rotation in case of emergency?

i'm not gonna rewatch it but in the immediate scenes after the disaster starts they say the fuel shutoff isn't working and the available counter-thrust isn't powerful enough

though the point is obviously to show that they didn't do a great job and doing poo poo in space is hard

# ¿ Jun 11, 2022 08:17

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 20:28

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

tokin opposition posted:

All the S1 characters should be retired but wygd you got all the big names in S1

I low-key hated this episode and am worried how much more of this season is going to be long long long oh my god long scenes of Ed and Karen and any one else who's a hundred years old complaining about how the only way they could be happy is to go to mars

Any arguments about whether Margo or Molly were right are undermined by Margo choosing her 60 year old friend to go on an exhausting space trip because of his affinity with entry level space joysticks. If there's been this much progress in the 30 year timeframe we're seeing, there should be maybe ten thousand people you could pick to go on the trip that aren't Ed Baldwin.

I'm sure they'll pull it off by the end of the season but so far nothing in the show has changed my impression that traveling to mars would really suck poo poo

# ¿ Jun 18, 2022 07:10

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Dr. Sneer Gory posted:

And I feel like a crazy outlier that I don't hate the Karen/Danny storyline.

Optimistically, the continuation of the Karen/Danny storyline could have some positive outcomes. It's a sign that the writers aren't limiting themselves to what's "safe" or "good". The show might be free to make bolder statements if they don't have to cave to the audience's expectation of being "fun to watch" or "comfortable on the stomach"

on the other hand, it's not great that they're keeping on with it because it truly blows rear end

# ¿ Jun 19, 2022 00:14

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Grand Fromage posted:

I don't see this show going as simple as just having a straight up evil character.

agreed, doesn't seem as likely to be malicious as foolhardy or overconfident

it's tough knowing whether the writers actually think any part of the Helios operation is Actually Cool And Good, it reads to me like a bunch of rinky-dink wannabees who are gonna get people killed

we'll know by the end of the season whether their Valve Software assed office structure turns out to be a boondoggle or the blueprint for that Season 7 intergalactic federation

# ¿ Jun 19, 2022 02:33

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Aleida's introduction was great because it demonstrated how new characters could be added to the show each season, of different backgrounds, driven by the impact that previous seasons' characters had made.

Unfortunately, they haven't done that this season yet, nor has Aleida had much to do. Hopefully we'll meet a young Helios engineer who has to learn some lessons the hard way, or someone on Ellen's campaign who makes it through her tragic downfall emboldened.

Instead so far we've gotten many minutes of man-pain with the World's Oldest Astronaut. One upside is that the chances of Ed Baldwin dying this season are increasing.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2022 22:20

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

I liked this episode a lot more than the last, great that we've now got all the pieces in place for everyone to start making their space mistakes.

Shame they didn't any more characters along the way. NASA's boat doesn't have a ton of extra space but Helios' craft could have a whole school bus of eager redshirts to expand the cast.

Curious how close we'll get to the people on the Soviet ship. The show has portrayed them mostly as enemies but at some point there will be enough fuckups in Mars orbit that people will have to make friends.

I was a little surprised by the time jump but glad to not spend any more time in the Spaceship Draft.

Did the show say how long the trip to Mars is expected to take? It could take 9 months with 2022 technology, I dunno if these nuclear helium space rockets are supposed to be any better. Will a whole episode just be watching everyone develop space madness?

Curious to see the fate of NASA's slingshotted hab modules. Can't imagine that goes perfectly!

# ¿ Jun 24, 2022 07:09

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

the first couple seconds of Danny and Dani in the simulator I was able to imagine a world where he was just a generic military dude unburdened by the weight of all his childhood and post-childhood baggage and it was kinda nice

but instead he is on the road for his space alcoholism to get him into space arguments that beget space mistakes

show I am begging you, please introduce even one new 1990s character (I guess besides our new corporate grifter and the Soviet boyfriend choking brigade)

# ¿ Jun 24, 2022 19:31

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

i want them to find bona fide Star Trek aliens on Mars but it's reconciled with our timeline because we see a stray note that says "Year 2000 - Leave Mars Forever"

# ¿ Jun 25, 2022 23:23

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

QuoProQuid posted:

in what world would a kgb director be allowed to just straight-up murder the head of the soviet space programme on british soil in the head of nasa's hotel room

their hypersophsticated intelligence gathering techniques assured them she wouldn't call their bluff

alternatively if he died maybe they could have just played it off as a prank or misunderstanding

also nobody on the US side is watching Margo because girls have cooties

# ¿ Jun 26, 2022 05:28

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

xerxus posted:

Have they said how long it would take to get to Mars?

It's about 8 months one way with our technology but they obviously have better tech.

The exposition of Margo saying "this 5 minute delay is killing us!" wounded me. It's important that the show deliver that information, but in reality the NASA people would have been dealing with an ever-increasing transmission delay for the last several months so saying it out loud that way is dumb

Everything that happens as the ships get further and further from Earth and further and further from each other requires engaging the emergency belief suspension system. who even knows what plausible-adjacent shenanigans will happen once this ragtag group of frenemies has to land on a thing

I do like how Dev and his private sector flunkies have been properly revealed as real bastards. Not sure how that conflict is going to play out with Dev and Ed having to play-by-email their space arguments at this point. Glad they didn't arbitrarily dump part of the ship or the fuel so there will be plenty left to explode around Mars.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2022 07:11

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

we're starting a new country on Mars with the only things we need:

hydroponic salad prototype USS enterprise with my boss on permanent screen share
pre-landed habitat modules only mentioned like once so far
angry irradiated russians
this unstable little rear end in a top hat who banged my wife

# ¿ Jul 7, 2022 07:26

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Bananaquiter posted:

I am once again asking you to kill Danny.

if they didn't splat out onto the martian surface I'm not sure how it's gonna happen

though I would love, love, love for him to not make it through this season. writers, find some way to make all this angst end in a meaningful way and free us of this torture

science-wise, what the hell is this little wonkavator that can get within 1000m of the martian surface and then just zoop back up to orbit? does everything have little helium-3 engines that are magic?

I was honestly surprised by the "we're at mars now" time skip, though it makes sense because the show is obviously disinterested in showing the myriad challenges of sitting on cruise control in a relatively cramped Big Space Shuttle for many months. Where is the food??? How do you live???

# ¿ Jul 8, 2022 06:57

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

D-Pad posted:

I gotta say the landing scene was suitably epic and just really redoubles my hate for how unimaginative NASA (and especially those holding its budget hostage) are in reality. gently caress we really should be on Mars now and it shouldn't be a tech bro looking like our only real shot to get there.

See this is where I'm worried people watching this show get a mistaken impression that going to Mars would be cool and fun when in reality it is stupidly boring and dangerous.

The show really isn't making it clear how long the Sojourner trip took, but those people would've been going stir-crazy in a cramped spaceship for at least two months and more likely six. All for the opportunity to make a risky landing to the surface and splat or send another 6+ months in a radiation-heavy resource-light environment.

It is not really worth sending humans to die on mars so they can pick up some novel dirt. We can keep sending little helicopters to blow the dirt around if we want.

If real-NASA wanted to spend money improving life on Earth we should be out there mining asteroids.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2022 17:25

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

muscles like this! posted:

Also I wonder if the Danny subplot would come across better if we actually got to see him turning into a real creep instead of it happening between seasons.

clearly the answer to Danny's scenes being awful is More Danny

# ¿ Jul 9, 2022 19:34

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

blue squares posted:

Yeah I loving hated the politics in this. The most purestrained lib poo poo. If you�re pissing off both sides that means you�re being the adult in the room!

I don't think a gay Republican president inventing Don't Ask Don't Tell basically on-time was meant to be read as a triumph. More of a "dang, you could've done a thing but..."

it's interesting from our current perspective of complete political gridlock that their reason for acting as they did was "but my jobs bill!". how good could that jobs bill be, really?

Data Graham posted:

Danny popping acetaminophen (if I saw it correctly) I thought was going to end up leading to him getting fast-acting Martian liver warts or something

watching a bunch of martians go hard on the vodka in a cramped space made me anxious. I don't know what space party culture is like but if I had been without liquor for a month or more one shot is fine thanks

# ¿ Jul 16, 2022 03:16

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

not a good episode

waiting for a lot of shoes to drop, please just drop them

Aleida is going to confront Margo, we didn't need a whole other episode where she didn't

Ellen is going to be outed, we didn't need a whole other episode where she wasn't. Also what the gently caress getting a full presidential security detail to your ex's tiny house unannounced (?). If this doesn't lead to her just publicly admitting it I don't know how else you can explain that.

Jimmy's QAnon friends are up to something, alright they did it (?). It would be hilarious if they really only wanted to steal that statue. Not sure why they needed a badge to do it, seems like it's just sitting there by the street.

Danny is going to gently caress something up, well great he did. In an incredibly contrived way.
In what other show has someone so obviously unfit been carelessly left in front of such a simple task and hosed it up so badly?
Danny, stay here while I look at these numbers on the other side of the room for no reason. Make sure to flip this switch on and off when appropriate because we haven't automated this poo poo. Did this make it past a first draft in the writer's room?
Obviously he's going to be allowed to live forever now, so he can redeem himself, and so not everyone in the next season will be 70 years old.

They've still gotta unleash that water and/or find life on Mars but it's fine for them to save that for the last episode if they want.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2022 06:52

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Escobarbarian posted:

now there�s ANOTHER lovely Stevens kid to reckon with

the one upside of the Jimmy Stevens plotline is the actress who plays his not-girlfriend Sunny, I could definitely be led into stealing equipment from my dad's work by such a person

who I am now learning from google is Bryan Cranston's daughter ??

Sivart13 fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Jul 22, 2022

# ¿ Jul 22, 2022 08:03

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

You could probably recut this episode to be less infuriating if you could make it look like they never put Danny on the controls, he was just hanging out in his anger corner (or up in Phoenix) because Ed put him on time out

but the thing still blew up because the remaining guy was trying to do his dumb spreadsheets and operate the comms at the same time

or it blew up because Ed or someone else forgot to bring the special space wrench because he was preoccupied fighting with Danny

or it blew up because it turned out Helios repurposed a discount oil rig and didn't have the staff to verify whether it would work

or it blew up because there's a goddamned sandworm they're drilling into, the spice must flow

# ¿ Jul 22, 2022 16:13

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Drunk in Space posted:

Ed's dumbass toxic masculinity logic

i tried to make the phrase 'toxic marsculinity' happen but my wife wasn't having it

Drunk in Space posted:

On the Phoenix itself there could be dozens.

I would think the crew size would be constrained by how much food they could realistically pack for such a long trip but the show rarely seems like it stops to consider such things

# ¿ Jul 22, 2022 17:45

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

FYI Wrenn Schmidt (Margo Madison) is in Nope for a minute though jsut about the only thing her character does is wear/remove/adjust a cowboy hat

# ¿ Jul 23, 2022 03:18

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Jerusalem posted:

I really miss Gordo and Tracey, they ruled.

Gordo going from a fat drunk on the after-dinner speakers circuit to getting his poo poo together and going back to the moon ruled.

this is something I hated at the time in S2, it bothered me how hard Ed was working to bring Gordo specifically back to NASA. There's surely a ton of qualified candidates who could do the job just as well. Bringing in your old space friend is step N on the endless road to nepotism gerontocracy that this show seems to crave.

compared to the Ed+Danny stuff it's amazing though

# ¿ Jul 23, 2022 06:46

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

The show weirdly succeeded at making me feel a little sympathy for Danny (one of the worst people to exist) when he explained how he felt responsible for Shane's death and he's just trying to do all this space stuff out of some weird obligation.

Still, this episode was a remarkable feat of keeping me somewhat interested in the fate of two people whomst I truly do not care whether they live or die.

We're not even in the 2000s yet and technology is sufficiently advanced that Mars hospitals seem like they might give better healthcare than 2022 Earth hospitals.

Going by the general rules of how TV works, Kelly is 100% gonna have that baby. and since this isn't the kind of show that would kill a martian baby, that baby's gonna grow up to be the next incarnation of Ed Baldwin

Also, is Apple TV+ bad at streaming content? I'm on fiber but I got hella buffering / low quality video problems until I gave up and torrented it.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2022 07:13

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Escobarbarian posted:

Can someone tell me real quick how this episode was compared to last week so I know how trepidatious to be going in? Thank you

👍 👍 👍 👍 👍

mobby_6kl posted:

Episode was ok. Better then the previous one at least.

D-Pad posted:

That episode was great. This show is great. Goons can't help but hate.

Jerusalem posted:

I enjoyed this episode way more than last

Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:

I liked the episode but I really had to fight the urge to skip past the Failson Stevens scenes.

Spacebump posted:

Enjoyed the new episode and excited to see how they close out the season.

👎👎👎

JazzFlight posted:

Man this show completely poo poo the bed. Another bad episode

Nihonniboku posted:

Yeah, it was another pretty boring episode.

blue squares posted:

Show sucks now, confirmed. Could have been a cool episode

# ¿ Jul 30, 2022 08:21

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Grand Fromage posted:

Refueling on Mars, okay, that's doable. But you'd have to get all that methane and oxygen up to the ship, and the MSAM is a tiny lil thing.

perhaps they can enter a geosynchronous orbit and extend a very long hose

# ¿ Jul 30, 2022 19:14

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

DamnGlitch posted:

and Danny starting to reveal the affair just before the explosion goes off.

I have no desire to actually see this conversation play out, so I'm fine with Danny continually almost saying it as a hilarious reoccurring motif

# ¿ Jul 31, 2022 05:44

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

I was definitely hoping some of the younger characters other than Danny would make it into next season

with so few episodes left we're definitely in for a season of cyborg ed

# ¿ Aug 2, 2022 21:35

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Cojawfee posted:

What a crazy episode. I realized that they can't kill off Ed, because he's the only one who speaks any Korean.

the delay would be a pain but technically they could dial up someone on the space phone to do that as well

I was a tad dissapointed by that plotline, the opening was excellent but I wish I knew more what was going to happen to this guy. I hope he shows up in 2003 and is in a position to tell us more about his past and present worldview.

Jerusalem posted:

Ellen loving off to hang out with her ex-girlfriend after a terrorist bombing on the JSC and in the middle of potential impeachment hearings is a moment for me.

i'm not gonna go and rewatch the episode to see if this is incorrect but technically this could be happening any amount of time after the bombing, right?

Vegetable posted:

That scene at Helios made me howl with laughter. The dialogue they wrote for the extras was so bad. �What about my mortgage??� lmao

all the Helios "okay people, bring it in" scenes are ADR'ed to hell and back. very surreal feeling

# ¿ Aug 12, 2022 07:11

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Cojawfee posted:

there was clearly no way for him to ever return home

which makes me confused about his "I have to get back to my post" -- homeboy you just got a way out, why you wanna go back to living in the trash can? Though I'm sure his mental state was all hosed up at that point.

I would love to know better how long he was in there and how much food he might have needed, but I don't think the show even really knows how long the NASA/Helios/etc Earth <-> Mars race took, so oh well.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2022 07:24

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Unkempt posted:

Not sure about this new treatment for high blood pressure during pregnancy tbh.

i found it just a bit unbelievable that the character who quite recently was found unconscious on the floor was able to do a daring jump from a rocket to a spaceship with no ill effects (perhaps it even IMPROVED the baby??)

# ¿ Aug 12, 2022 17:13

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

D-Pad posted:

I mean Ellen won't still be president in 2003 even if she gets a second term so not sure what else her character could do.

the law of conservation of characters gives her a 100% chance of returning to space

or more boringly she could be one of those government go-betweens, but I don't think the show would resist the chance to shoot an aging person back in to space

# ¿ Aug 12, 2022 18:40

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Drunk in Space posted:

This is something that's killing the show for me a bit. Karen's son died horribly, her son's friend's parents both died horribly, her second husband died horribly, her ex-husband almost dies horribly a bunch of times, the father of her adopted daughter's baby dies horribly, said daughter and baby themselves come close to dying horribly, and then finally she herself dies . . . horribly.

that's space, baby

you either die in some crazy manoeuvre or live to die in the next crazy manoeuvre

# ¿ Aug 16, 2022 17:25

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Owlbear Camus posted:

While diagetically true, it's funny that given the conceits of dramatic TV and the way it was shot we the audience pretty much know the MMU maneuver is almost certain to succeed and it's Ed's fate that is very much in question.

how grim would it be for Kelly to have missed that airlock and just floated out to space forever

the show has a way of taking nearly impossible feats that no one in real life could ever do (Ellen's catch, Danny fixing Polaris), and making it a sure thing because the consequences of failure would be worse than Danny's plotline

and nothing is allowed to be worse than Danny's plotline

# ¿ Aug 23, 2022 01:18

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

tokin opposition posted:

Your posting disagrees

???

# ¿ Aug 23, 2022 01:58

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

General Battuta posted:

when things go THAT bad THAT quickly you sort of have to think "maybe this space business is not such a good idea."

which better aligns with my personal worldview and I wish they went further in that direction.With the slim margins they seemed to be running everything at, poo poo should be going catastrophically wrong all the time.

You can't reasonably expect to push your Mars mission up a year and for everything to go great, but in the FAM-iverse cutting edge space technology tends to run perfectly until a Stevens kid gets near it. There's even enough leeway to have an pregnancy birth on Mars without catastrophic downside, just pull one of those "The Martian" rocket jumps and bingo bongo nothing of value was lost

# ¿ Jan 8, 2023 19:24

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Owlbear Camus posted:

Still feels like the work of an in some way insanely culturally conservative writer's room that not a single character at a single point in that dire edge of survival context even whispers the word smasmortion.

the only thing more worth preserving than humanity's drive for exploration and understanding is one human baby

# ¿ Jan 10, 2023 18:24

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

I had been assuming with NASA's superior moon technology they had invented some de-aging serum and that was what Ed was injecting into his butt

# ¿ Jan 25, 2023 22:40

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Taear posted:

Man I just do not get why people are so annoyed about the Karen storyline [...] character drama is important

no it's bad

When Ed's son dies while he's on the moon, thats character drama that tells us something about Karen and Ed and gets you to feel emotions and have thoughts

Karen screwing Danny while Ed is in space is a retread, which could maybe be interesting if Danny was being built into a character we cared about but unfortunately Danny just sucks, like the absolute worst

# ¿ Jan 26, 2023 18:31

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 20:28

Sivart13: May 18, 2003; I have neglected to come up with a clever title

Mokotow posted:

Holy poo poo that sure is a look for Ed!

2021 Ronald D. Moore posted:

It�s a unique structure because it�s a generational tale and characters are going to have to kind of cycle in and cycle out. There is a fair number of brand-new characters as well as existing ones. Some will die and some will just sort of leave the story. And we have to start making those decisions now.

2023 Showrunners (probably) posted:

some older characters will now have a beard

# ¿ Sep 13, 2023 20:34

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > For All Mankind season 3: Come As You Are (to Mars)