Watched the first three episodes of this last night (that’s all that seems to be available at the moment) and I’m really digging it. It’s got a really heavy Harry Turtledove vibe to me, where you take one divergent point in history – in this case the Russians reaching the moon before us – and work out all the fallout from it across a large cast of characters whose various stories intersect at different points along the way. One of the neat twists is how NASA’s widely praised methodical approach to our space program versus the Soviet Union’s “Throw stuff up there and break records” approach comes under fire once that Soviet approach beats us to the moon. We get an angry Nixon and full-blown Congressional hearings about NASA being too cautious that feel exactly like how we’d handle such an embarrassing defeat.
There’s a moment at the end of the first episode centered around the Apollo 11 mission – which still happens because we’re not about to cede the moon to the Russians – that was a real emotional wringer and had me choked up at the very end. And I didn’t think any new emotion could be wrung out of that for me.
Is anyone still watching this? I wasn’t a big fan of the first half of season 1, but it grew on me. And holy shit, the most recent episode escalated things in a big way.
It comes up in the ‘shows that don’t deserve a dedicated thread’ thread every once in a while. Trouble City viewership of it seems to be gradually increasing.
They’re really doing a great job fitting real events into the alternate timeline they’ve constructed. And the personal stories are leaps ahead of what they were trying to do on The Right Stuff. Then you’ve got the lunar Cold War aspect, which has been great.
Way behind on this. Just watched the episode in season one, 8, I think, where there’s a tragedy. Really got to me, especially considering where the austronaut is.
Can’t wait for season 2, which by all accounts is a big step up.
First episode of the season was a solid reintroduction to the world of the show. A few interesting alt history things like Gary Hart being a 2 term president in the 80’s, flat screen HDTVs (in 16:9) already being a thing along with what looks like digital video editing available to the masses (if the slideshow at the wedding was any indication). So by 1992 in that world, they are roughly a decade ahead of where we were in consumer tech.
Episode 2 seemed to be the proper season premier with the introduction of Helios Industries vying to be the first mission to Mars. Really cool stuff and glad the show is back.
I like that they’re leaving us hanging re: Margo and Sergei. Apparently in the two year time jump Sergei was removed as the head of Roscosmos, but we don’t know if it’s because Margo has ice water running through her veins and refused to give up the NERVA info, or for some other reason. Her reaction to Aleida saying that MARS-94 was pushing their engine 20% over max implied that she knows more about the Russians’ nuclear engine than she should, but it could also just be common sense that doing that is a terrible idea.
I finally started watching this, and while the show is great, I feel obligated to point out that Turtledove is fucking trash.
Spoller-ish - I’m in S3 and knowing what we know now, I don’t see how the USSR would still be a going concern in 1994 with the black hole of a space race sucking them even drier than they would have been otherwise.