For All Mankind is an AppleTV original that shows an alternate history retelling of the space race. In this AU, the Soviets land on the moon first, which extends the space race into a decades-long conflict.
The show currently covers about 30 years of alternate history showing the US and the Soviets establish a moon base, new propulsion systems, and eventually landing on Mars.
This show is really good. It’s excellent hard sci-fi. It really sticks out to me, though, for its depiction of the Soviets.
See, in this universe, the Soviet Union doesn’t collapse. At least not at the same time it collapsed in our own history. Instead, they stick around and consolidate significant power, winning victories they lost in our own timeline.
This means that by the 90s, communism has essentially rooted itself as a dominant ideology in most of the world.
Now, don’t get me wrong: this show depicts the soviets as evil, with the KGB boogyman following every Russian character. But the show doesn’t do a great job at depicting this. Instead, the Soviet Union ends up being an absolute economic powerhouse that consistently keeps up with the US at every turn, only starting to fall behind technologically for unclear reasons in the latest season. Hell, Mexico is communist in the FAM timeline.
I think this is telling. If you construct a universe where the Soviets ‘don’t lose,’ they end up winning. Half of the world is communist and it’s gotten to the point where it seems internally inconsistent that the US is managing to keep up.
I just wanted to post about one of my favorite TV shows. Anyone else watch FAM?
It’s an American show, you can’t make the Soviet Union too sympathetic. People would get the “wrong” idea. But it’s my favourite TV show ever. I love space, and I love cold war movies that aren’t *entirely *propaganda. The writers clearly recognise that the Soviets were pretty big on equality.
And in a sea of badly written TV shows… it really stands out.