For All Mankind Season 5 spoiler special with showrunners Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi

29:05I think the general complaint that I've seen is that it lacked excitement and the kind of pioneering optimism of the previous seasons of the show. So, Helen, you reviewed this. Yeah. You gave it four stars. No, I gave it five. Five stars from Helen O 'Hara, clearly swimming against the tide. Yeah, I went back and forth a little bit. I was considering four. I'd only seen the first eight episodes, and I did feel four at that point, but I also trusted that they would land the Sojourner, if you will. Okay, fair. And therefore, I thought, screw it, I love this, and gave it five. That was pretty much my thought process.

29:40I'm not sure if it's supposed to be my thought process, but that's what it was. So, I see the complaints, right? And I think if I had been watching it week by week instead of binging it, maybe I would have felt them more. I think the binging model really helped me this time because I didn't feel such a lack of propulsion that some people have complained about. Right, and I think that has been the thing, hasn't it? From episode to episode, people aren't feeling that it's moving on. Whereas if you are just mainlining them back to back, you're like, huh, on to the next one. Yeah, that's pretty much what I did.

30:11And I do get that a little bit, but I also think that I'm not sure what they could have cut out and still kind of made it work. Because I think you needed, right, you were obviously building to a Martian rebellion of some kind, a full-on Martian rebellion not just the minor act of piracy last time. Anything we know about sort of colonial history, like there's going to be a rebellion at some point. Every single sci-fi that I can ever think of that has featured a Mars colony has at some point had a rebellion against Earth. I genuinely can't think of a single one. So that kind of felt like it was going to happen.

30:46Like there had to be some kind of thing there. But you do need a precipitating event and you need some kind of reality-based thing for that. It can't just be charismatic dude comes along and says, hey, let's break with Earth. Because, you know, there's very good reasons for a Martian colony of this vintage to also stay connected to Earth in that they're dependent on Earth for pretty much everything. So the idea that, oh, actually, it's all about, you know, automization and it's all about taking people out of the Mars ecosystem was a really, really interesting one. but I guess you then have all that uncovering that thing that then took up quite a lot of time.

31:28Hashtag journalism. Yeah, in episodes one to five. This is their kind of Edward Snowden. Yeah, very much so. As they said in the interview. So that's kind of, that does take time. I do wish they had kind of like zhuzhed that a little bit, made it a little bit faster because the second half of the season I think is much stronger. But yeah, I think that's where the time went. Did you buy Dev's turn, his villain turn? I mean, I call him William Turn. He's been shifty from the beginning. But this whole automation turn, because he dreams of this perfect Martian colony, this utopian Mars. Get your ass to Mars.

32:03But then also he wants to ship all the Martians home and replace them with machines. Yeah, I think what it is, is I think it's that very common billionaire thing where they don't really understand humans. And I think that's where he's... I don't think he's outright cackling. evil in this season. And one of my big notes about the season is I actually think we needed more Dev and we needed to understand him a little bit more because I do think he's... Because he disappears for a long time. And I get the sense that he's traumatized by that attack during the rebellion, but you don't really see him dealing with that rather than just looking worried a couple of times.

32:42So I think we needed a bit more Dev. We needed a little bit more to understand that. But I think the closest we get is where he's showing his big vision to Alex. and Alex is going, well, but people are going to want to, you know, alter this. They're going to want to customize it. They're going to want to make it their own. And he's a bit sort of taken aback by that because it's like, no, but this is my idea. And I think that maybe is the big insight into him this time. I think that's the big thing. But I would have, I will admit that we could have done with a bit more dev, if I'm honest. Yeah, I think so.

33:14I mean, it feels like this particular season has three kind of broad narrative threads in that you've got the whole Martian uprising, you've got the Sojourner storyline, and then you've got the what's happening on Earth, how Margot in prison, that kind of dynamic there. Yeah, and almost no Earth, really. Very little. Very, very little. And I think, again, this is something, I talked to the Cinemile about this recently, Kathy and Dave have some, we're friends of the podcast, but they have some very big reservations about this season, and one of them is they wanted more Margot, they wanted Margot to play a bigger role.

33:47bigger role. But I do think there is a kind of reality to the fact that some people don't get what they deserve. Some people do get thrown away. Some people do get treated unjustly. And no matter how much good you do, sometimes you don't get past your worst decision. I get the reality of that. I get why it's dramatically unsatisfying as well, but I do think there's a reality to it. So I didn't hate that. I did expect more from her phone calls. I thought maybe more she would succeed a bit harder than she did. But I appreciate that she tried. And given that we see her at the end with Graciana, I guess there's a sense of either that she's going to continue to play a role, at least in Graciana's life, or that maybe that relationship becomes important in the sixth and I believe final season.

34:31Yes, that's right. So I hope she's still on the board for a reason, but I don't know. But yeah, I mean, again, maybe we could have had a bit more of that. But I think it's interesting and I think it's good actually that the show is moving away from earth it has moved steadily away from earth if you think about how much time there was on even the moon in season two and three compared to season one you know and it's just moved steadily more and more away from earth as the center of its story and i think that is that's what the show is all about it's all about us expanding across the at the very least solar system and then hopefully galaxy which is actually why star city is so interesting because star city which has obviously started airing on apple it essentially recounts the events of the first season, but from the Soviet perspective.

35:16So it takes you all the way back to when they're first looking to the stars, but in a very different, I mean, this isn't a Star City spoiler special, we aren't going to this, but it's a very different beast is what I'm saying. But it takes you back to that feeling where it was very much earthbound before we had the moon, before we had Mars, before we had this different, let's be honest, Expanse origin story. Now, did you bring this up when you spoke to them? I did bring this up, yes. Have they heard this before? They didn't admit to having heard it before. They have at least one writer in common with the expanse they are not officially tied in but they've said essentially what everyone has said before which is they're both reality-based near future space stories so there's going to be some commonality so right so i'm taking from that this is now canonical it is an expanse prequel that's got it if that's what they said that's what they said okay no that's uh that's good to know but like did you like when you get to the end of the season let's look at the finale briefly because it feels like this season, as you say, it starts quite slowly and it really requires us to be quite invested in the character relationships, which actually I thought was quite successful.

36:16Like the teenagers in particular because this season is another one of those generational passing of the torch ones. Yeah, which is a risk, big risk. Yeah, it is a big risk. But you've got to the point now where, you know, I feel like if Ed hadn't died of what he ultimately died from, he would have died from the weight of the prosthetics that Joel Kinnaman was having to carry around because it was getting ever so slightly ridiculous. Yeah, I did. I mean, part of me almost, I had on my longer list of questions, is there something about like, could you have done an anti-aging machine thingy at some point?

36:48You know, because there's some sci-fi I've read. There's a fantastic series by Julian May called the Galactic Milieu series and the saga of the exiles. Frickin' one of my all-time favorites. But in that, there's one family that has a gene where they don't age. And then everyone else at a certain point, aliens come and they bring the technology to have de-aging. So you can have a bunch of characters who stick around forever, right? And that's very helpful when you're telling a generational saga. So you have the kids growing up and taking their own rules, but you can also have Joel Kinnaman still looking hot, as it were.

37:19And I think, I guess they thought that that was a little bit too far for this show at this level of technology. It's too grounded, I think. It works for Foundation beautifully. Exactly. But like, they're still listening to Gangnam Style here. It doesn't fit with Gangnam Style, right? It doesn't. So yeah, that's kind of, I guess, where you're at. Yeah, because this is what, 2012 this season? Yeah, that's right. And next season's going to be 2020, the final season. Seems like, yeah. Yeah, nothing major happened in 2020. I think it's going to be fine. Yeah, it's all good. Yeah, no problems there.

37:46Can't foresee any issues. But yeah, no, as you say, it's a big risk to... But it's been going for 40 years of in-show time. There is a point where you do have to... Well, Cynthia Wu is still in her 20s and was already playing someone well into her 50s. you know it's not just Joel Kinnaman who's in the prosthetics they're more lightly worn obviously on Alayda and Kelly but they are there they are definitely there and they're both in their 20s by the way which is wild but then Cynthia Wu's character like I was reading that they hadn't planned to kill off Kelly like she like they'd all it was always Ed was always going to die no offense Ed but you were never making it out of season 5 alive but Kelly was supposed to continue and I guess they just it got to a point where they wrote themselves into if not a corner then a place where it just felt organic that she ultimately make that sacrifice.

38:33Well, this is something that, as you've heard, we talked about a lot in the interview. Yes, because I have absolutely listened to your interview, Helen, and know word for word what was said. But I do think it's interesting that that's something that they argued about a lot. How forgivable was her sin? How forgivable was what she did to Walt? How forgivable was it, the effect that it had on Walt? It wasn't just, I have chosen unilaterally to put the lives of all of you at risk. I have also chosen to make you doubt your own sanity. in the way that I've done it because I've been so sneaky. I guess this gets her some measure of redemption, but I do find it interesting that it's not.

39:10It's not a direct one for one. He still doesn't know what she did. It wasn't like they had the conversation. She never fessed up. She never fessed up. She never, ever fessed up. He would have been furious. Oh, he might have killed her himself. I'm glad that he didn't because Walt doesn't seem like a terrible person. But he's a bit of a dickhead, but he's not the worst. But I think it's interesting that she was able to at least, I think certainly in my eyes, regain some measure of goodness from that. I'm not saying it's a one-to-one, but I do think it helped a little bit. Yeah, I think so. Although I have questions.

39:47I feel like if one of your team is injured and you have to run to a thing, I'm so sorry, you're dead weight, you're dying on Titan. You are, yes, but as we all know, you're a monster. Just practicality, Helen. They are not monsters. That's all I'm saying. It's just efficiency. You know, the German lady, I think, has small children. Fucking liability. And last we heard, by the way, her husband was injured on Mars, and we don't know the status of her husband, so she may need to get back to those kids. You know, Alex is fine. Kelly can give her her life, and it's not so bad in that sense. She also had been monomaniacly focused, professionally speaking, on finding alien life.

40:23Yes. For most of the last three seasons. Like, at least that's what we've known from her. so it kind of makes a certain amount of sense that having achieved that her main goal is for somebody to get back there alive and bring that work home because her job essentially is done and i'm not saying that she wouldn't like to go home to her son but like she has she has done what she came there yes and and that was the almost heartbreaking moment they discovered life alien life and then there was very real chance no one would ever know about it and it's like that's the worst secret to have to take to your grave.

40:55That would suck so much. I do have worries, and I'm assuming that I shouldn't, that the Sojourner would be able to take off again. Because if the Titan atmosphere is kind of corrosive or damaging somehow to equipment, it's not a done deal. And I do have worries about that. But I'm just going to assume that Walt gets home okay and everything's fine. I think we're going to have to assume it does, and it is. Especially because, as we say, we leap forward eight years for the next season. and we should mention and I don't know if this is generally known I suppose if people are on Apple they would have seen this point but there are kind of interstitial docu-series in between each season so you see the news reports you can see what happens in the gaps between seasons if you've never actually watched these kind of bridging series so the next giant leap is the most recent one which takes place between 2004-2012 oh I haven't even watched it yet yeah they're on there and there's one between I think there's one between obviously four and five I have one between three and four and one between two and three.

41:54Okay. So there are a few of them out there. I've not actually watched them, but I think they are literally just news reports to fill you in on the alternate history. That's kind of cool. That is cool. The alternate history, I think they're kind of moving away from that just because so many things have now changed. Yes. I think I like how it turns up a couple of times in this season. So, for example, everybody's running around with their Newtons. Did you notice that? What, their little iPod things? Yeah, there's no iPhone, which there would be obviously by 2012, there are Newtons. And Newtons are the sort of PDA that Apple made in the late 1990s.

42:30Oh, see, I didn't know that. I just thought it looked like one of the old, because it's got physical hard drives strapped to it. Well, it looks like, it does look like an iPod. It's thicker than an iPhone. It's a lot thicker than an iPhone. Like one of the original OG iPods. So my, no, I don't know if this is canon. I didn't get a chance to talk to the showrunners about this. My husband's immediate theory on that was Steve Jobs never came back to Apple. So Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 97, 98, and he killed the Newton. He killed it. It existed, and then he killed it. So that's, first of all, and second of all, he was the guy who was obsessed with thinness of tech.

43:05Yes. So if the Newton exists and then has evolved to this and it's still fat as fuck, then maybe Steve Jobs didn't come back to Apple. But given that this is an Apple show, they may well have canon on that, so I don't know what the canon is. I bet they do. I bet they do have some kind of Apple canonical version of the Olsener history, how it's affected them. But yeah, I thought that was a cute little nod to the tech nerds. Yeah. Certainly, Andrea got very excited about that. So, well done, him. That's really funny. No, I'd miss that completely. But then I don't know what a Newton looks like. So, I've never clapped on one.

43:36It actually looked a bit like a Kindle, but it was a PDA. And it was kind of outsold by Pound Pilots. Nobody likes PDA, Helen. Sorry, not public displays of affection, but personal digital assistant. And it was outsold by the PAM pilots. I had a sharp IQ. I had a PAM pilot. Did you? That's very cool. Oh, very good. I learned the little special script for it and everything. We are aging ourselves rapidly. Oh, we really are. This is genuinely terrifying. But right, okay. So this is the penultimate season of the show. And the final season, as we have understood it, is going to be all about the discovery of alien life.

44:11I think so. I don't know what that final scene was. So we saw a wrecked or semi-wrecked, semi-derelict Russian spaceship in those final moments of the show in 2020. That has been revealed what that is now. Yes, it has. It's the ship that the Russians abandoned on their way to Mars in season three. They had to evacuate to the American ship, which is why they all landed on Mars at the same time. Yes. I had completely forgotten that, by the way. And at the end of the series, I was like, I don't know what that is. It's cool. It's Russian, but I don't know what it is. Yes, I can recognize Cyrillic, but that's as far as I can go.

44:47But I don't know what has reactivated it. It seems to be out in the orbit of Saturn, which is obviously further than we've gone before. It's exciting, but I don't know what it means. No. What does it mean? No, no. What does it mean? What does it mean? Yeah, I have no idea. I love that they do this, because they always do it. You get the chronological flick forward, and then you get a tease of where it's going. Wasn't the Sea Dragon one in season one or season two? that was pretty cool with the rocket launching out of the water oh that was awesome so yeah I'm excited to find out what it means but I have no clue no neither do I but I you know I'm fascinated to see how the Titan stuff develops obviously it's the it's the Star Trek approach the universal sign for alien life is just glowy shit glowy shit yeah I did have a moment when she when she goes up to the lake to die basically when Kelly goes up to the lake to die and there's the light in the water I did have a moment of I mean I've seen the abyss yes is that one of the dudes from the abyss and what kind of thing and you want I honestly had that moment of is this an alien coming to save her like is it sort of flapping in front of her like an angel and Ed Harris is going to be okay now and not have the bends like is that what's happening I don't think obviously again it's not that kind of show alien life takes the form of like bacteria not necessarily angel dudes living in the South Pacific or whatever but yeah just for a moment you know and I think they've said haven't they she is gone like she's done and she won't be back.

46:13Yeah, I believe that. She hasn't ascended to another plane of existence. I mean, you know, can't rule it out. You can't rule it out. For a Baldwin, they've cheated everybody else. They might as well cheat death. I mean, that's true. I love them. We do love the Baldwin's. I'm a big fan of the Baldwin's. But as we say, we've got new characters in this particular season. Mireille Enos, obviously, as Peacekeeper Celia Boyd. I like Mireille Enos in basically everything. But I really liked her as the kind of the woodpecker done good, if you will. Yeah, I liked her. I liked her a lot as Boyd. I think, again, people may not like her as much because they associate her with that slow burn sort of first three or four episodes.

46:48I liked it. No, I had fun with her bit of the sort of investigation, but I get that that was sort of like, why are we investigating? And they're like, what do we care about this? So it kind of took a long time to kind of come into focus what was actually going on there. But I thought she was great and such a force for sort of just humanity in policing, which is a nice thing to occasionally see. Yeah, because there's not a lot of that in this show. No, a huge one. But I think that it's okay to have a lack of kind of narrative propulsion when the character work is really good. And I really enjoyed all of them.

47:17Like, you know, Ruby Cruz as Lily. Love Ruby Cruz. Was it Sean Kaufman as Alex? He's great. He's really, really good. And I felt like that kind of generational shift and understanding those characters' dynamics between the kind of budding romance, all of that. I was really invested on that on a character level. So I didn't necessarily need larger kind of narrative movement. I was happy to just hang out with these people and spend time with them. But we do get narrative movement as it goes on because once all the Mars stuff kicks into gear, once it's like war with Earth, you feel very, very invested in that stuff.

47:49And that's when all the Expanse stuff kicks in. Very much. I think it's very expensive and I think it's very just hard sci-fi because, again, if you read a lot of sci-fi, you get these stories of colonies rebelling and then what do you do without basics? And we're talking basics like air and water, not basics like toilet paper and beans. And it's really pretty scary. And I think those meetings where they're kind of like basically counting down the days and doing the rationing and stuff, I find really compelling, actually. I thought that was all really powerful stuff. Again, I don't know what else you could have done to kind of like pick up the pace in some cases because it does take an incredibly long time to get from Earth to Mars and vice versa.

48:34So, yeah, I'm not sure what else we can do. Well, that's because they don't have the Epstein drive yet. Yes. Is that an Expanse reference? Yes. Okay. Yes. That speeds things up a little bit when you're going down the well. But yes, I really like the fact that it takes a hard turn. And by hard turn, I mean like when Avery and the Marines turn up, Avery, of course, being Tracy and Gordo's granddaughter. Did you catch that Gordo is now being used as a piece of slang? No. for going outside without your helmet. Oh, yes, I think I remember that line. Yeah, yeah. What do they say? You're going to pull a Gordo or something?

49:10And it's like, for those of us who were there, it's too soon. Justice for Tracy and Gordo. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Yeah, gaffer tape. Always keep it on you. That was absolutely wild. And I really enjoyed the whole Avery trying to shrug off this kind of tainted legacy of her father and feeling like her name is cursed. And the fact that she has that massive chip on her shoulder and literally attacks people on a fairly regular basis. I enjoyed that whole thing. I became incredibly invested in that storyline. And when the Marines turn up and the M6 troops turn up and it all kind of kicks off, I think I was slightly unprepared, which I guess I shouldn't have been, slightly naive for how full on it was going to be.

49:49Because it wasn't like, we're going to contain you, we're going to shut you down. It's like, we're going to come in here, we're going to fucking kill you people. And they just blanket start shooting people. I mean, admittedly, they're not shooting unarmed civilians at that point, but they are basically shooting the shit out of people who are not actively shooting at them. Yeah, quite often, yeah. I think, I mean, again, I think they're basing that in the history of colonialism, in the history of rebellions, you know, East India Company, British troops in the US, whatever you want to go for, really, I think it's all kind of there.

50:20It's unpleasant and wildly unjust, and I thought it was interesting, you know, they maneuvered a couple of witnesses into position at a couple of moments. I was so unhappy when Alex went into the tunnels and I knew his little friend who's in the Marines was down in the tunnels because I'm like, they're definitely going to shoot each other. And they did shoot each other. Oh, that was really sad. And yes, it brought Alex and Avery together and they had their little sort of bonding moment, which is great to see because we want the Gordos and the Baldwins to team up once again. We do. But yeah, some of that I was sort of almost pre-traumatized by because I could see it coming a mile away.

50:57like you know Martian Marine Boy going home it was never going to end well like I was and I'm glad he survived or seemed to yay for that but that was that was really worrying me like most of the season on the website I like that idea that which I guess is a deliberate choice here that they managed to solve with diplomacy in seconds what they were completely unable to resolve through force of arms so all it essentially takes is for these two sides to talk to each other and then everything de-escalates quite a lot because it had gone like the temperature had dialed up literally quite a lot. So you've got the M6 people come in, shoot a load of civilians in the face, you know, pretty brutal there.

51:35And then they basically cook the entire command structure alive. Yeah, yeah, not good. I find it really interesting how the show dealt with that. Because basically the next thing we see from Miles is him being sworn in as governor or president. No repercussions. Well, again, I feel like we're looking at history and you either get executed or you become the leader of your people. You become promoted, yeah. And I think they've gone, at least in the short term, for you become leader of your people. It's not to say that they won't execute in one day. And same kind of with Dev, right? He also committed a small war crime in the course of this Martian uprising.

52:15And the last we see of him is, you know, sitting doing a bit of farming and gardening, chatting away to Lee quite happily. So there is a sense that I think, and again, this is reflecting of peace processes on earth, you know, my own Northern Ireland, South Africa, you name it. Like sometimes you just have to let this shit go and try and move on. But it is imperfect and it is unjust fundamentally for these people not to be punished. But that is also what happens. So I guess. I also, we didn't get specific confirmation on Polivinov, the governor. Yeah. I think he's going to become the new president of Russia.

52:53Like, I think that's, he's going to be... Because he was lost. We found out he was kind of persona non grata at home, but then there's been a changing of the guard within Russia. Exactly. And he has helped bring about the end to this Martian standoff as far as it will be portrayed back home. That's certainly what Irina was sort of heavily implying or outright saying. Is it Irina? Yeah, Irina. Yeah, we should say Irina, we see young Irina in Star City. So we get a whole new dimension on that character when she's younger, when she's wet behind the ears. that's fascinating. She's a player. She is a player.

53:22The whole storyline with her and Margot in the previous season, I thought was fantastic. Really love that stuff. But yeah, it's a difficult time, I think, for everyone at this point after this has happened, because you've got Dev and Alex. It's unclear to me what the status is between them, because there's been a lot of betrayal in that relationship. Alex is a Baldwin. Baldwins betray everyone eventually, apparently. Well, certainly in the last two seasons. I feel like Dev still looks on Alex as a bit of a son. Yes. I'm not sure that Alex returns the feeling at all anymore. But equally, Dev, he's a kind of big-hearted kid, and I feel like Dev could win his affections back.

54:01And Dev was instrumental in bringing an end to the hostilities by basically wiggling the antenna. He did also destroy his 18th birthday and kill his friend, though. So, you know, we'll squeeze around that, I guess. I'm really interested to see what the future has in store for Alex, because I feel like he's now completely orphaned. He's completely alone. He is a scion of one of the most famous families, presumably in Earth history, that, you know, one of the American pioneers of the space race, his mother, the woman who discovered alien life. And now what does he do and what does he do with that?

54:33I think that's a really interesting position for him to be in. I think Ruby's character, is it Lily? Lily is now presumably the daughter of, we think, the governor or something of Mars. Yeah. But also knows now that her dad was, for example, feeding information to the authorities. Does she believe it, do you think? That's an interesting question. I don't know. Because she rejects it, but then you would out of hand. And then it probably sits with her. I feel like if she confronted him, he wouldn't deny it. No, I don't think he would. Which might mean she doesn't confront him because she doesn't want him to tell her.

55:05I thought that was an interesting wrinkle, having him almost as like a kind of collaborator. Yeah. I think, again, it's probably drawn from history. Like, if you look at the background of some of these leaders, they have very complicated pasts, you know? So I guess it makes sense. I like that character because I found his turns believable. The fact that, for example, when he does ignite the oxygen and says he'd kill a whole room full of people, he insists on doing it himself. Like he's going to carry the weight of that. He's not going to give the order. He will press the button himself and do it.

55:34And you can kind of see why they did it at that point. And it's like, obviously, there's a whole moral resting. Like Alita definitely doesn't approve of it. Irina ever the practical woman it's like yeah do it but you feel at that point the M6s have invaded their home they are killing their people their friends their neighbours their family pretty much indiscriminate yeah it's existential for them and also if they lose they're all going to spend the rest of their lives in jail anyway so I guess at that point you can totally believe that he's like you know in for a penny in for a pound I'm going to kill all of you yeah look I get it from a you know a practical calculus.

56:14I think the moral calculus is still pretty grotesque just because I think, like a lot of people, I feel it is more horrific to press a button and burn a bunch of people in a, you know, in a closed space on an alien world than it is to, I don't know, pull the trigger on a gun. I don't know why, but it does feel worse to me in some way. It's more inhuman or something. I know what you mean. On the one hand, I imagine it's easier to do because it's abstract. Because the idea that they're not there, they're just numbers on a screen. It's just looking at a dial. But to be fair, he knows. And it could very well have killed his, you know, quote-unquote friends.

56:51Yeah, I think Polivinov, again, has to hustle pretty hard to get himself and Ilya, the bar owner, out of there in time. That was kind of an interesting wrinkle as he's, you know, playing both sides and trying to walk a very careful line. And then he's like, oh shit, this guy's in here as well. and what if he says the wrong thing? Oh my God. That was, yeah, squeaky bum time for him. Very much so. But again, I like that. And I like that this show is not afraid to look at moral compromise. And Kelly is another example of that. Like behaves in a kind of reprehensible way, an incredibly selfish way, but you kind of almost want her to do it.

57:30You do go along with it. And that Titan thread is certainly what people have observed. It's probably the most sci-fi this series has ever felt. Yes, yeah. So it had a distinct edge to it. Because as you say, they're moving away from this alternate history and it's now pretty much just a sci-fi show. And there was a sense of, and it's probably the only place you get it in this particular season, that same sense of magic, of pioneering, of the unknown, of the, you know, irrepressible nature of the human spirit. Like that sort of Magellan's voyage feeling, right? That is what we want a lot from, well, I want a lot from this show.

58:05I want there to be a space race. I want us to go into space. I want us to explore. I want us to be outward looking rather than endlessly inward looking. I want us to be an optimistic race because I think a lot of our problems right now come from nihilism and nihilism is for weenies and losers and we should move away from it. And so that is one of the many things that I absolutely adore about this show. And I think, yes, getting to that is a really good thing. And I think for a lot of people, actually, again, another issue with this season has been it hasn't felt optimistic enough. It has been kind of stuck on Mars, like we're not moving forward.

58:42And I think, you know, if you think about last season, the decision at the end of was episode seven, the X going to give it to you needle drop where they decide they're going to steal an asteroid. The Goldilocks heist. Oh my god, so fun. But like that was very much about cementing Mars's place in the galaxy and making it important to earth and making like making sure that mars would continue and here it's kind of the same thing again but on a bigger scale making sure that mars would continue to be viable and important and would continue to grow through a human population and become a human center and so i think that is it feels like repeating the same point but i think it is a slightly different point it's about making mars a colony and not just a place that's important you know what i mean yeah and having Mars as a colony is the next step to moving out further and further and further.

59:31So hopefully that's now what we're seeing with Titan and whatever is coming towards Saturn in season six. It is. I mean, it's a classic formula, isn't it? Like the idea of sort of that you've got colonialism and then the links to the past thin and thin and thin until they sever until they're like, no, no, fuck you. We don't need you. We're not sending you all our shit. Or slightly more fraught on Mars where you literally can't make anything and you'll die if you go outside as evidence when they destroy the dome and of course their ability to create food. But this is essentially the premise of the expanse, the idea that, you know, the colonists on Mars severed ties to Earth and then you have this war, this standoff between Earth and Mars because Mars wants self-determination.

1:00:08It wants to be free of the shackles of Earth. And so you end up with like very specific national politics, but on an almost like an interstellar stage. I mean, it's the kind of question of, you know, it's all very well, you know, declaring independence from Britain, but then where do you get your tea? Indeed. A? 13 colonies? Except in this case, instead of tea, it's food, oxygen, water. I mean, yeah, nearly as essential as tea, sure. But yeah, I think it's really important to get into that. And I do get the sort of realism of that. But I also get why people are frustrated that it hasn't felt as optimistic and as forward-looking and as, you know, soaring as this show is at its best.

1:00:48So. No, I agree with that. And I think there's a, I don't want to use the word grubbiness to it, but there's a frontier spirit to this, which has kind of replaced the pioneer spirit. So I think when they go to Mars initially and when they're on the moon, it's a pioneering thing. So we are at the forefront of human discovery. And here it's like frontier justice. And it feels like the rule of law is very frontier. It's like this is an extreme place. This is a hostile environment. Therefore, we have zero tolerance for anything. it's very oppressive very authoritarian so you can understand why Miles ultimately becomes this kind of reluctant revolutionary because you sense certainly in that character early on and obviously he changes as the series goes on but you feel like there's almost a moral purity to people like him and people like Boyd who like they're clinging to you know the last shreds of civilization from Earth in a place where much like we saw with the frontier in the Old West where civilization kind of stops at the door and you kind of have to form your own type of civilization, your own type of justice, your own type of law, and you have to recalibrate what you think of as fair.

1:01:55Yeah, and I think it's interesting in that sense how Mars itself has changed and how the younger generation see it. On one hand, you have this kind of longing for home. You know, Alex's sort of VR playing with the beach, you know, and lots of them planning to go back to Earth to go to university or join the Marines or whatever. But also, they are Martian natives, and they are much more loyal to Mars, and that is now their home, and that is where they think of as home. Yeah, and Alex was literally born in space. Yeah, so it's an interesting kind of balance there for them, I think. I'm really fascinated to see how it progresses, because, again, a thing that was really striking, I think this was episode one, you literally see Miles and his wife waking up in bed, and they're now in a double bed in a normal-looking bedroom with a big flowery bed spread.

1:02:46And that sounds like nothing. Okay, that sounds ridiculous. But if you think about when he came to Mars as a sort of AC engineer, and you were allowed as much as you could fit in your tiny locker, and you slept in a bunk with 16 other people in the room, or whatever it was, and you were very constrained on all the physical things in life. There's an abundance now to Mars that wasn't there in the first place. Now that they've got a KFC and a subway. Kind of thing, yeah. Yeah, but I think that's the interesting thing. I think that's what you're saying. It's frontier now. It's not pioneer. It's not just a wagon load.

1:03:22You have your cabin, if you like. And that is a different sort of sense of something to fight for. When Deadwood stops being a camp and becomes a town. Yeah, yeah, I guess so. But nobody is quite as hot as Timothy Olyphant, but we can have everything. His hair would get ruined in the helmet. Oh, yeah, you're right. He should stay on earth. I mean, do you think there's a dishonesty to the way the narrative is shaped? So there's, I would say, this show very heavily arcs towards the separatist movement, to use Phantom Menace parlance. Do you think there should have been more of a kind of an earth narrative, more of a balance to it, so that we kind of feel...

1:03:59Because we are 100 % on board with the Martians. We are. I'm Northern Irish. So I'm going to say no. Okay, fair enough. But no, I do think actually, I think the show is okay this way because Earth, by any rational standard, already has an abundance. It may not have an abundance of this one mineral that comes from Goldilocks. Yes, unobtainium or whatever it is. I mean, you know, it's a real mineral, but I forget which one. But like, it has enough. It has everything that it actually needs. Mars is a bonus. And Mars should be part of a push out that will benefit all mankind, for all mankind, literally.

1:04:41Earth has already benefited in this show from the space race, okay? They have much better electric batteries. They have all of this new unobtainium element, whatever. They have learned things. They may not know it, but we know it because we come from the world where the space race stopped. We know that they're better off than we were. We know that they have stuff that we don't have. We know that, you know, Reagan wasn't there to rescue Chrysler and therefore it collapsed and therefore electric cars came in. And therefore, even when Al Gore became president in the year 2000, he didn't have to do as much work to save the environment, right?

1:05:15We know all this. They don't necessarily know and they don't necessarily share our sense of gratitude for all of that, but they should because expanding outwards, exploration is a gift for all mankind and it should be a thing that is appreciated. And so I'm absolutely on the side of those who are trying to expand into the universe. Well, it still has that almost Roddenberry-esque optimism, doesn't it? This idea that discovery is its own reward, that given surplus, given plenty, given the absence of scarcity, humanity will gravitate towards their best impulses and look to the stars and realise the dream of Magellan and all these wonderful poetic things which, if you look around on Earth, seem incredibly unlikely.

1:06:00Very much so at the moment. There is also the fact that, you know, there's a whole other allegory here and a whole other parallel to our world, which is that they are trying to automate all of Mars. And they are trying to not only, you know, say to the people up there, we don't need you anymore. You can just die or come home. We don't care. They are actively trying to take out the human element of the exploration. Yeah. And that is a very clear parallel that I'm not saying they necessarily meant to the current debate over AI, but it's very much feels like part of the same discussion. But, you know, the human element is important.

1:06:37You know, you need the human weirdos like Kelly to push further into the galaxy. You need the humans like Alex to point out, Dev, this is not actually a city for people. This is a city for figments of your imagination, you know. So I think that the human element is something that this show very much fights for. And I think that's what the separatists movement is all about. It's saying we need to be here. It's not just, you know, this needs to exist. Humans need to be here to do this, to push forward, to keep expanding into the expanse. Indeed, into the expanse, literally. I've already said this and we've already talked about it, but it bugged me.

1:07:17It bugged me so much. Not that they were looking to automation, because you can understand, especially from Dev's point of view, efficiency, automation, mechanics, you can totally see him going there. It was the betrayal of saying, you know what, we're going to ship all the people home. These are your people. These are people who identify as Martians. These are, those people almost represent Dev's entire dream for Mars. And that's the thing that I found so frustrating. But as you say, I think he was so out of touch with what, he was so looking at the cold calculus and the design of what he wanted Mars to be.

1:07:47He didn't see that the heart of it is the people that he's trying to ship out. Yeah, I think that's the fundamental thing. And I think this is what the, you know, our billionaire problem on earth right now is genuinely linked to. You know, the fact that you have these billionaires building their bunkers in Colorado or Hawaii or New Zealand or wherever, and acting like, well, then it's fine if the earth dies. And it's like, what kind of life do you envisage in your bunker, guys? What, do you understand that you also lose something here? You know, I think there's elements of that kind of myopia in dev.

1:08:19and just generally in the world. And I think it doesn't all come down to profit and loss. You do actually need other people to live your best life, much as we are frustrated with that truth sometimes and would really like it if other people could get out of the freaking way. You're never going to go on a nice beach holiday again if the world ends. I'm sorry, you're just not. Even if you have a bunker to ride it out, you're going to have a shit time. You're living in a bunker. You're living in a bunker. And similarly with this, yes, we've got to Mars and we have a colony on Mars and you're going to build this big city that you see in your dreams.

1:08:51That's great. But if it's only like rich people living there and they're not allowed to change anything, they won't be happy because rich people are never happy with not being allowed to change things. And if you bring in poor people, they're also going to want to have their friends and family around and that's going to upset you as well. So you need humans there and you definitely need humans to expand outwards across the solar system. Yeah. And I think on some level he understands it Because unlike our homegrown billionaires, Dev does have a humanity to him. Like there's definitely an empathetic street.

1:09:20Like he feels something for Alex. Yeah, he does. And I think one of the frustrations we have here on Earth in the real world is it feels like with great wealth comes absolutely no humanity. Like the complete and total lack of empathy or feeling for other human beings. Because you've got people who have the capacity to fundamentally fix the fucking world but have no incentive, inclination, or desire to do so. And I don't think that's who Dev is. No, I don't think that is. I think he's more the sort of 19th century robber baron model of billionaires. So, you know, he will... I think he wants to be more of a Carnegie or whatever or an Astor or a Rockefeller.

1:10:01Like, he will absolutely make a fortune in oil or railways or fur trading, but then he will spend some of it on libraries and concert halls, right? He wants something that will outlive him in a positive sense. And I genuinely think we have a bunch of nihilists in charge at the moment. And I don't see as much of that positivity. In a couple of cases, they've made some significant donations and set up some significant charities. Bill Gates, for example, has done some significant good in the world. Yeah, so they're not all terrible. They're not all. Hashtag not all Benji Bears. But certainly most.

1:10:36And I think, you know, so I think that's a really interesting thing to explore with him. Yeah. But again, I think they're drawing so much of this from history and maybe that's why it's frustrating sometimes. Perhaps it is. Right, should we answer some questions? Sure. We have had some questions. So, what do we have here? This is from Rob Lanshoud-Naps. How can they ensure Margot gets to do something in Series 6, given how wonderful she is? I mean, given how old she will be in Series 6, I'm not sure we're going to have an awful lot of Margot. Let's be honest with you. She'll be like 80, right? I mean, at least.

1:11:12How old is she? I mean, she's looking pretty old in prison at the moment. Hang on. So, in 69, she was in her 20s. Right, okay. So, she was born in the 40s, right? Sure. So, 2020, she'll be 75, 80. But she has had a hard life. She had a much harder time, like, in the USSR than, like, Ed did. Oh, God, yeah, absolutely. Her 80s were fundamentally harder than Ed. They were not the same, yeah. So, there's a bit of that. But I, I mean, she could still be on the board, but she's going to have to wear even more prosthetics. Yeah, if she gets out of prison. I don't know. What was her sentence? I don't know.

1:11:45What do you get for treason these days? Presumably quite a lot. Quite a lot, yeah. Unless you're Baldwin, in which case it's... Unless you're a Baldwin. Speaking of which, Michael says, with one Baldwin left, how will Alex's role evolve in season six? Also, will his haircut improve? I think that's just about trying to make him look young and, you know, kind of naive and stuff. I'm sure his haircut will improve, actually. I think it really will. what was our hair doing in the early 2020s? Well, I guess none of us saw each other to know so we'll find out. Do I think, I think, I don't know what way he's going to go.

1:12:19I genuinely don't. I think at this point it's really open, right? He seems to be interested in medicine, stuff like that so he could go into the kind of research science-y side of things or straight up medicine and be a medical officer on a mission to wherever. You've got to feel that he'll inherit Kelly's mantle to a certain extent. and be involved in the Titan. I would like him to be heavily involved. Yeah, and I think he will be. And hopefully the fact that he still has some kind of maybe tie to people like Aleda and Dev will help with that, maybe. Yeah. He's still a Baldwin. Nepho babies forever, apparently.

1:12:53A Baldwin, but not bald. No, not yet. Graz says, season five had quite a few character deaths in it. Which one hit the hardest? Oh, I mean, Ed Baldwin, no. It is much more than Kelly. Don't get me wrong, love Kelly to bits, but Ed has been the heart and soul of the show since the very first scene of the very first episode. Yeah. So losing him was a blur. Yeah, the corridor scene of him sort of going with Gordo. Yeah.

1:13:23I worried, I genuinely, when Ed died, I was just like, ooh. I don't know what this show is without Ed. Because he was, you know, God's point where he was the irascible maverick and I just loved having him around. He was, I mean, he did, look, I know people complained about the prosthetics. I think from a technical point of view, they're very good prosthetics. It's just that we know how much he's wearing. But I thought he was such a good, like, maverick grander character. That final scene in the bar where he's telling Ilya, you know, you've got to serve Alex. You know, it's his first drink. And then when Kelly comes in going, oh no, we've got to let Alex have a drink.

1:13:59It's his first drink immediately afterwards. And just that was such good, mischievous grandfather behavior. I thought that was that was perfect for him I like that we got the little flashbacks of him so we could see him with artist prosthetics on frankly back in Korea and yeah the corridor scene with him greeting his long lost wife and son oh god not okay and Gordo Gordo it's all very upsetting it's very upsetting right Robert Frost presumably not that one says did it jump ahead too much between seasons and run out of stories slash become too sci-fi Robert but you can never become too sci-fi. Yeah, that's, yeah.

1:14:38It's not a thing. I think it actually like trod the line with sci-fi very, very well. You know, like I said, we're finding microscopic life. We're not finding little, even little mice things. Yeah. It's just, it's literally algae or something. Like single-celled organisms is where we're at. And a bit of phosphorescence in water or other liquid. So I thought that was spot on. I think for a sci-fi show, I think it's still remarkably restrained in its use of sci-fi. and things like the Newtons you know there's a timeline there's a history of where that comes from and I think they have given similar thought to so much of what they use here I think that's great so no I get what you're saying I think it has felt much more grounded I think they're moving away from that alternate history stuff because too many things now have changed and we've moved too far on as Matt and Ben said in the interview but I also think that that is the nature of the beast we're now 50 years down the line or so so it kind of has to change.

1:15:36I think so. It feels like a slightly different show but for me people have said that they don't like this season as much. I have enjoyed every season of this show more than the last and this was no exception. I loved everything about it but then this is weirdly this has moved into a space that I'm more comfortable in because the alternate history stuff 60s, 70s like it's great television and I appreciated it as such but now we're in kind of proto deep space nine territory and like this is where i fucking live uh and although there were moments where i would say we weren't on quite star trek polystyrene set territory but there were moments where the aesthetic was a bit late 90s sci-fi channel there's there's a lot of corridors this a lot of corridors a lot of bulkheads yeah i do feel like they've they've saved a bit of like vfx money this season compared to some of the other ones because like so much of what we've seen has just been corridors.

1:16:29Yeah. Yeah, we had the attack on the asteroid. We had the Sojourner mission. But apart from that, it's pretty much been corridors. A lot of corridors. So I get that complaint. People find it visually a bit flatter. Yeah, you're probably right. I don't know how they could change that given the story they wanted to tell. But I hope that that will be different next season. Yes, so do I actually. Per Bradley says, I missed NASA. Did anyone else feel its absence this season? no only because we've all our guys there have kind of gone yeah it feels like we've moved away from that i don't know anyone at nasa now so yeah i don't have that invested because it's not i feel like it wasn't the entity or the place it was the people that anchored us to nasa in the show and since they've now all moved on to things like prison and mars uh yeah it's it's not the same hashtag not my nasa wow okay uh another one here not a question but this show is most definitely a prequel to The Expanse.

1:17:25Yes, we have established that. That is now officially canon as of this podcast. Right. John T says, please stop nagging about the age of Kinneman. The character was younger than him first season. That's probably true, but not by much, I think. Yeah. How much younger are we saying? I think he's in his late 40s. Late 40s, early 50s, I would guess. Yeah, I think second half of the 40s. Yeah. 79. Okay, so he's like 47 this year. 47 this year. And I think, actually, he probably was about the age that Joel Kinnaman was in season one, right? That was what, 2019? Sure. So he would have been, check notes, about 39.

1:18:05I think he's meant to be, yeah, you're right. He's meant to be a little bit younger. He's meant to be like mid-30s. But he's already meant to have been a pilot in Korea, as we know, which was in the mid-50s. So 15 years before. So he can't have been younger than about 35. So he can only have been about four years younger than he was when he made season one. Yeah. Logically. Maybe six if you push it to an 18-year-old pilot, but he didn't look 18. He does look 108 by the time he dies in this show, to be fair. He looks like a man in his 80s who lives on Mars. You can't say I'm wrong. Msvahedj says, will Dev turn out to be a good guy or a bad guy?

1:18:42Yes. Yes, is the answer to that question. I don't think this show likes to deal in moral absolutes in that way. I don't think... Only a Sith does. Only a Sith deals in absolutes. I don't think there are good guys and bad guys in this. Anyway, even Arena, do you know what I mean? I think everyone has their own agenda, everyone has their own perspective, and I think if you were to quiz any character in the show, every single one of them would think they're the hero, and I always think that's the mark of a good character. Yeah, I think, I mean, like, you know, Ed was our hero, but he was also a pirate, and he did disobey a bunch of orders, and he did do some horrible things to people he loved.

1:19:16And he was a raging moustachemist a lot of the time. Yeah, and, you know, he evolved a little bit, But yeah, I don't think it's that simple. But I think that Dev still has the potential to do great things. And I hope that he does next season. Next question. This comes from Stephen. Has all the budget gone to Star City? This season seemed cheap and underdeveloped. Wow. Wow. So I had a theory on last season's House of the Dragon. This is unrelated. But I had a theory on last season's House of the Dragon that I think it under-delivered a bit on the whole war bit. because maybe they were saving up and they were going to have a whole bunch of battles in season three, right?

1:19:55I still don't know if that's true. I haven't seen season three yet. Battle of the Gullet is coming, Helen. Battle of the Gullet is coming. You know, Battle of the God's Eye. Very excited about that. But so maybe that's going to happen. Maybe there's going to be so much more on Titan or beyond next season that they needed to put a bit of money in the can. I don't actually think that's necessarily the case because I don't know that Apple works that way because they seem, and the showrunners would probably laugh if I said this and go, lol, I wish, but it honestly seems like Apple just throws money at shows and then doesn't care what happens.

1:20:30It does seem that way. I have been reliably informed that's not always the case. I mean, I assume it's not the case. I assume they got to be this rich by being a bit more careful than that, but it's certainly, like compared to some of their streaming contemporaries, it feels like they just throw some money out and go, see you, come back in a couple of years. Yeah, I must admit. But I think it's the nature of a business whereby this isn't their business. Do you know what I mean? Like, they don't need Apple TV to make a profit, really. That's not what it's for. And I think that puts them in a much better situation than someone like Netflix, where it's their entire business model.

1:21:02So, you know, long may it continue. Long may it continue. Please don't ever look at the budget, Apple. Never. Never look at, just sign those checks. Just sign on the checks. 100%. Well, I think that's the last question. I think that brings us to the end of our For All Mankind Season 5 spoiler chat. I'm very excited. I'm very excited to see Season 6. I'm bereft that we're not going to see it for quite a while now. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what to expect. I'm really, really interested to see where they go from here. I feel like they probably won't do COVID in 2020. I feel like COVID won't exist.

1:21:37I'm excited to see why not, you know, because they've had a bunch of minor changes. I was actually reading up on the alternate history today and as well as the things that we've discussed like John Lennon surviving and obviously my beloved Kennedy storyline, which I just thought was one of the smartest pieces of TV writing I've ever seen. But there's also been things like Michael Jordan made a success of his baseball career and is a major league baseball star as well as having been a basketball star. That was freaking awesome. They must have had so much fun with that stuff. Just like looking through the history and thinking, what can we just go fucking nuts with?

1:22:09What would be a really fun thing to do? Just, you know, John Lennon playing the Super Bowl halftime. in the 2000s or whatever it was. You know, all of these kind of things. I realize that we're moving away from that, but I still hope we find room for those because I think they're just, they're so fun. They're so fun and they're so weird. But I also noticed, I literally hadn't read this before, I don't think, that Maggie Thatcher was assassinated by the IRA in this timeline. I missed that. Oh my God, we spent all this time talking about colonialism. Missed that, oh dear. Anyway, obviously that's very unfortunate and terrible.

1:22:44Bad violence. Deeply regrettable. Deeply regrettable. Anyway. Okay, fantastic. Well, that is it for our For All Mankind Spoiler Special. As ever, thanks for subscribing to Pilot Plus. Your support means a lot. And of course, is the reason that we are able to keep doing this. We will almost certainly do a pit spoiler special at some point as soon as Boyd pulls his finger out. So good. Oh, well then, Helen, feel free to join us. Spoiler. It's incredible. It's very, very good. But we need Boyd to watch the rest of the season first. Also, we need to finish airing. I don't think it's finished airing yet, has it, season two?

1:23:12Oh, you might be right. So, yeah, once that has happened, so keep an eye out for that. In the meantime, it's a big, big old Martian goodbye from Helen. Bye, Bob. Bye, Bob. And we will return, we will get our arses back to Mars, you best believe it, for season six. Until then, pilot out.