[yayr]

there is this review of "for all man kind"

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7772588/

why should it be any different on mars than on earth?

> This show has a cool premise, that being what if the space race never ended. It's a sort-of alternate reality and it does a good job of weaving in actual historical events with where the timeline diverged. The main problem is that I feel like the show is being pulled in two directions. In one direction, there is the tension of the space race, engineers scrambling to be the first on the moon/mars and dealing with all manner of technical issues in a realistic-ish way. That part of the show I enjoy. Then, for some reason, the show also throws in a bunch of trite interpersonal drama and stupidity. Like inter-marital affairs, people leaking NASA secrets to the soviets, and a CLEARLY unstable drug-addicted astronaut being given solo control of a super important mission. It's like the showrunners thought the show couldn't stand on it's own without dumb drama, as if there couldn't organically be issues and drama in the context of Frigging SPACE. The first season does this better, but by the 2nd/3rd seasons most of the issues come not from unforeseen difficulties of life on the moon/mars but idiots. It really makes me wonder if they just aren't sure who their audience are. The people who like the technical stuff are not going to like the artificial drama, and vise-versa. Pick a lane, show, and stick with it.

[basementcat]

I would argue that sometimes "dumb drama" is a good mirror of humanity. Inter-marital affairs really do happen (including in the highest levels of public policy as well as the astronaut corps), people do disclose "secrets" and pilots (including astronauts) are known to deceive medical professionals to avoid being "grounded".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak

https://www.space.com/spacex-employee-lawsuit-sex-discrimina...

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2019/04/30/after-video-of-sp...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/27/faa-pilot...

[nxobject]

My other favorite example of dumb drama at the highest levels: ex-director of the CIA, David Petraeus, was forced to resign after being caught by the FIB in an extramarital affair with his biographer. [1] You'd certainly think that the ex-military head of a spycraft organization would know to be a little more disciplined... and less vulnerable to blackmail.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petraeus_scandal

[exe34]

Where there are humans, there will be dumb drama. It's practically a law of human nature.

[Filligree]

The drama isn’t even done that well. Like you say, it’s stupid; the people are on average just worse than the sort of people who would actually be there.

I wanted the technical sci-fi to be worth it, but it wasn’t. There really isn’t much catering to an engineer audience.

[polairscience]

As somebody who has spent a lot of time with high-quality academically pedigreed humans in far out places, I assure you that they're very capable of dumb drama. And, again tho I hated the show, everyone will be watching just as they were in for all man kind.

[mensetmanusman]

People have many facets of intelligence, and no one hits them all across the board. Where there are blind spots, there will be drama.

[wyldfire]

> The people who like the technical stuff are not going to like the artificial drama, and vise-versa. Pick a lane, show, and stick with it.

I like the show as-is. Maybe I'm not in love with every single subplot but in general the show is pretty great. IRL people have motivations that drive them to do greedy, irresponsible things -- even astronauts.