by A three-way race to Mars is set to take off next month with the return of the critically acclaimed “For All Mankind” and Apple TV Plus gets its first extended look.
The alternate space history series, which last season topped several lists as the best show of the year, will launch with the first of 10 new episodes on June 10. On Monday (May 16), Apple TV Plus released the trailer for the third season, which again sees the series jump forward almost 10 years, this time picking up in the early 1990s with all eyes on getting to the Planet first. Red.
“We’re never going to come second to anyone again,” says Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt), who, when last seen in season two, had risen from the first female engineer in Mission Control to director from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Underlining her words and playing throughout the trailer is the 1994 song “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden.
As established in the first episode of the series, “For All Mankind” explores how the world might have been different had the Soviet Union been the first country to land a human on the moon in 1969. The first and the second season focused on NASA’s attempts. to catch up and overtake the Russians on the lunar surface as the Cold War space race grew increasingly hot.
In this new season, Mars becomes the new frontier of the ongoing competition, but not only for rival nations.
“Some say that private citizens have nothing to do with space exploration. I emphatically disagree,” says Dev Ayesa (Edi Gathegi), an Elon Musk-esque visionary who runs the fictional Helios Aerospace in “For All Mankind.” .
The first successful commercial space launch was actually in 1982, but it wasn’t until 38 years later that a company, Musk’s SpaceX, carried the first astronauts on a privately operated orbital spaceflight. SpaceX is now pursuing its own plans to send humans to Mars using its Starship spacecraft, still in development, but it is years away from sending crews to orbit the moon, let alone Mars.
“Being the first is what it’s all about,” says Ayesa.
As the trailer for “For All Mankind” shows, the question of who will be first is just one of the challenges facing crews bound for Mars, as a massive dust storm blankets the planet and the search for water can be difficult. key to one or more of the success of the missions.
“The survival of my crew depends on it,” says Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman), commander of Apollo 10, Apollo 15 and the first launch of NASA’s next-generation Space Shuttle Pathfinder.
Other scenes in the two-minute trailer show two seemingly troubled spacewalkers outside a large rotating section of a spaceship; a lander approaching the Martian surface; astronauts walking and driving a rover on Mars; and, back on Earth, NASA administrator Ellen Wilson (Jodi Balfour) won a seat in the United States Senate in 1986.
“It’s just the beginning,” says astronaut Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall), NASA’s first black astronaut and American commander of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, as the trailer draws to a close.
Created by Emmy Award winner Ronald D. Moore with Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert, “For All Mankind” is produced by Sony Pictures Television. For Season 3, Nedivi and Wolpert serve as showrunners and executive producers alongside Moore and Maril Davis of Tall Ship Productions, as well as David Weddle, Bradley Thompson and Nichole Beattie.
In addition to those already named, “For All Mankind” cast members returning this season include Shantel VanSanten (“Karen Baldwin”), Sonya Walger (“Molly Cobb”), Cynthy Wu (“Kelly Baldwin”), Casey Johnson (“Danny Stevens”) and Coral Peña (“Aleida Rosales”).
Catch up on seasons one and two of “For All Mankind” now on Apple TV Plus. Season 3 debuts with the first episode on June 10, followed by a new weekly episode every Friday through August 12.
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