Ok, 58 isn't so bad then. Man if there's a season 5, and bounce another 10 years, they'll surely have to kill some of these guys off? I wonder do they have a time jump past which they won't go & end the show.
The For All Mankind Wiki has Danielle as being born in 1944 making her 59 assuming the 4th season is set in 2003(Ed is 74) . Given that I think a bit of Salt n Pepper is perfectly adequate, for now anyway.
Instead of wasting half the season on the Stevens kids they should have spent more time last season establishing some new younger characters so they could carry it on this season. I think Kelly and Aleida are the only ones, age wise, that make sense to still be featuring.
Mind you, at least they tried with Ed. Saw this screen-grab form the trailer, and it looks like Danielle got a lot less makeup; I see a little a little salt & pepper and that's it.
It's funny cos something like The Crown showed you can have a successfull show that constant recasts for the age changes.
I feel like he just barely scrapped in, age wise, for the Mars mission last season. I forget what year they're meant to be in at this stage but assuming he was at the very least 30 when it started, in 1969, he would have been knocking on for 60 last season, and assuming another decade jump, yeah, he should be collecting his pension in Florida at this stage.
Hopefully this is an instance where they kill off a main character in Episode 1, cos Ed should be what ... 70+ at this point?
Oh god, I hope he has a very limited presence this series.
This is returning November 10: we get a first trailer by way of a fake Promotional Video for Helios. Be sure to be sitting down for Joel Kinnaman's old-age makeup...
Ah it wasn't that bad was it? More wasted time on stupid interpersonal crap but when its good all that is washed away and there were a few great scenes.
S3 is a real struggle.
I got 4 episodes in and I am not really fussed about continuing, other than the fact I hate not finishing things.
Still have S3 to watch, S1 was great, S2 was OK, S3 started the first episode and stopped have way in. Must get started again.
They should have recruited Clint Eastwood to replace Joel Kinnaman, he's probably about the same height, although shrunk a bit with old age. 😛
The total disregard for ageing has been and remains my biggest pet peeve with this show. Season 4 will be set in, what, the 2010s maybe? Ed should be ancient yet Joel Kinnaman will just get a bit more fake grey hair. They should have recast 2 seasons back.
Yeah, S3 really went too far into the soapy stuff, and both Stevens kids were utterly useless. There's a lot of characters gone now though, I think Ed and Danielle are the only original characters left, unless we're still getting Margo in exile stuff.
Season 3 brought in the idea of Privatised Space Travel, and even a decent potential proxy for Elon Musk with Edi Gathegi. And they went to Mars. It was set-up for a stellar season. And I was encouraged to see Karen get a mostly organic professional development off the back of S2, only to waste all that time on a f*cking affair and silly family politcs.
A few good moments - Operation Jolly Roger, the lone Korean, some some decent spectacles but otherwise a real step down from Season Two.
It's already finished shooting. A while ago apparently. So unless Apple don't want to release it with no promo, it shouldn't be delayed.
if it ever gets written or acted
Season 4 cast Daniel Stern, Svetlana Efremova, Tyner Rushing and Toby Kebbell
Disagree about the cast tbh, there are very few stand out performers IMO.
I find Joel Kinnaman incredibly wooden, and really struggle with him as an actor. The actor who plays Danielle Poole is also fairly poor IMO, I find her very cheesy or something.
Though maybe they're just being let down by awful dialog being served to them by the writers.
There was a scene in ep4 that I was watching last night, Danny was arguing with some young crew member extra, Baldwin catches him. Conversation ensues, Baldwin arm on Danny's shoulder, both with intense faces, pep talk, any time you want to play cards we should play etc. It was a complete cliche from start to finish.
And there are LOADs of scenes like this in this show.
I’m not mad about the time jumps. Originally I understand why they did it and how it allows them to jump forward in terms of space exploration. However I think the writing has suffered as a result and it’s moved away from an ‘alternate history’ to an altogether alternate reality which I found harder to care for. For example, the concept of what would happen to the world if Russia was first to the moon is narratively more interesting to me than the ‘current day’ alternative social politics that they are presenting in the latter seasons.
I’ll watch season 4 but I am disappointed in what the show has become, it had an amazing cast, big production budget but poor writing as let it down in a huge way. The less said about the two lads the better
There's a season 4 coming; I believe shooting happened in late 2022, so I guess we might see the new run sometime this year. No trailer yet.
The timeline has leapt forward so much I do wonder much longer they can keep going with its cast; Season 3 also stretched credulity in terms of it ignoring just how old Margo, Ed etc. should be in the 1990s. If we're gonna jump into the 2000s, a full 40 years later from Season 1, the old-age makeup is gonna look laughable. While where to next for the show? Europa and the search for life?
Is S3 the end of it? I might persevere for the sake of closure if it is.
Yea the Stephen's kids are ridiculous. The Danny and Karen thing, honestly, how dull.
Season 3 was very variable when it came to quality, but I'll take a good show that wobbles over a show that never quite figures its shít put, every time. Gordo and Tracey's kids are the biggest weak point though and threatened to sink the show with their nonsense.
At least one plot point on Mars felt like a good piece of ethical drama intentionally ignored, with another was utterly insane in all the best ways. So basically, this show somewhat in a nutshell.
Yeah there was a few bits of the Mars plot that were pretty good, but I didn't love where it all ended up, other than that bit you mentioned.
Nothing felt close to the Molly story and Gordo and Tracy story from season two. I think the one bit that jumps out as a memory was
finding the Korean
S3 was...... a struggle at times.
I'm not saying nothing good happened but I'm struggling to remember any. There were several questionable choices made with the better storylines, and then some of the storylines were just bad throughout. *cough* Gordo and Tracey's children *cough*
I’ve skipped a bunch of pages here to avoid spoilers.
Im only a few episodes into season 3. Is it just me, or is this season absolute garbage?!
The writing is appalling, it’s so cliched! Endless scenes of ponderous staring into space. Awful attempts at building intrigue. Honestly I think I’m cringing through every other scene, I’m on episode 4 now and I had to stop watching half way through, I just couldn’t cope any more.
The actors appear to have become more wooden than in the previous two seasons.
I feel like I’m watching a soap opera with lots of CGI.
does it improve?
Kelly being pregnant was honestly so stupid. She's one of the most pre-eminent biologists ever and she lets herself get and remain pregnant while living in 38% of earth's gravity on a planet with no magnetosphere to shield against radiation. The risks to the foetal development are way too enormous to risk in a situation where that baby doesn't have the option to live permanently on Mars. (And where extensive testing on foetal development of animals hasn't already occurred.)
As it is, in reality female astronauts take contraceptives not to avoid pregnancy but to stop menstruation completely in space. Women on such a long mission as this would absolutely be on long term contraception. And while contraceptives can fail, it's not actually that common when taken correctly as you'd expect a biologist on an incredibly important and dangerous mission to do. And even if it did fail and Alexei's death made her reluctant to abort, she should know just how dangerous and stupid continuing the pregnancy would be and I find it hard to believe that she'd continue it.
And all of that is just Kelly. The idea that there was only 1 MSam on the Phoenix is too unbelievable. I mean if Ed and Danny had crashed on entry, that would have been it, mission failed, while the rest of the Phoenix crew just uselessly orbit Mars until they run out of fuel to maintain orbit or hope to get rescued in 96 because they were reliant producing fuel for the journey home on Mars. They would have had a minimum of two MSam's probably three. Way too much of the tension in this series was created by unbelievable scenarios brought about by lazy writing. I do love this show but the second half of S3 was really poor compared to what came before it and it wouldn't have been if there had been more thought put into the writing.
A large flaw of this show's structure is that it does these time-jumps even within a season's plotting: witness how we went from the "Kelly is pregnant!" cliffhanger of one episode to "Kelly is about to give birth!" in the very next instalment. A whole episode's worth of drama, tension and moral conundrums that could have sprung from that knowledge - just immediately canned. I'm not say I wanted a 50 minutes of people debating abortion on Mars - but it just turned out to be another problem to solve with science, and another convenient ticking clock - rather than some human drama. Or topical drama: not like the show hasn't shied away from that to an extent. Pregnancy is a crippling, debilitating change to your body on EArth, nevermind Mars; the show was way too glib about it IMO.
Agreed about the introduction of the North Korean astronaut - cosmonaut? - what was the point of that except a little humbling moment for Poole and the Russian Captain when they realise their rivalry meant nothing.
Unfortunately, we're going to get a TV summary in Season 4 because unless she pulls a FDR, there's no way there'll be a President Wilson; and I'm going to go ahead and presume it'll be President Gore ... given, well. It probably should have been in our timeline as well lol.
Right up until we saw Margo in 2003 I had been feeling they might do a late 90s season 4, rather than jump on a decade. The story this season just feels very incomplete. Season 1 and 2 both felt like they had a narrative structure that, while leaving lots of potential for further series, still told complete stories so I didn't feel like we were jumping to the next decade with huge amounts left untold. But here there feels like there are all these plot points just left hanging. One of the two climactic scenes was a massive bombing where nothing is resolved in the literal minutes of screen time that follows it.
We are left with all of these plots that I want to see resolving. I want to see how things are for NASA after both the bombing and the reveal that Poole/Kuznetsov were not the first people on Mars but an expendable North Korean. Because what the hell was the point of Lee Jung-Gil being on Mars if it wasn't to keep driving America's competitive desire when they can be beaten in the space race. I want to see how Ellen, as president, handles the four huge events that she is now left with, being beaten to Mars, the astronauts staying behind, the NASA bombing and her coming out. I want to see the decisions that are made at NASA RosCosmos and Helios due to their people choosing to stay on Mars. And while I don't love watching him, so can't say I want to see Danny Stevens, we have been left with him in isolation in the place that Dani and Kuznetsov buried a gun. There is a plot hanging there as to whether he goes mad and attacks someone else or just kills himself.
I don't want to jump to say 2001 and have all of those plots tied up in the news montage at the beginning of the episode. Those news montages are a fun way of setting the scene for the new decade and showing us the changes from our timeline, most that will play a part in the politics/technology of the show and some just for fun. They shouldn't be a way for storylines to be tied up. I don't want to be told rather than shown how all of these characters I care about (and Danny) resolve all their current tension. The time jump to 2003, already felt like that. The jump to the Sea Dragon launch in S1 and the Mars landing in S2 weren't tying up loose ends from the season, they were sneak peeks of the continuing strides made into space. This ending in 2003, was used to make a 'big reveal' that Margo was exfiltrated rather than killed. But showed us no hints about where humanity is headed next. As a result, I'm a hell of a lot less excited for S4 than I was for S3.
