Mapping a New Politics in For All Mankind

Summary

Podcast Episode Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Episode Title: Mapping a New Politics in For All Mankind
Date: May 26, 2026
Hosts: Prof. Stephen Dyson & Prof. Jeff Dudas
Main Focus: Deep-dive analysis of political, historical, and cultural themes in For All Mankind’s Season 5, Episodes 6–9.

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Episode Overview

This episode of the Pop Culture Professors series features a nuanced breakdown of the political and ideological narratives embedded in the second half of For All Mankind Season 5. Both hosts, drawing from political science, connect the show’s alternate history, Martian revolution, and search for life on Titan with real-world analogies—exploring governance, revolution, colonialism, and the dangers of techno-optimism. The episode also includes lively responses to viewer comments and theorizes about character arcs and future show developments.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Martian Insurgency and Political Analogies

[00:05 – 13:55] Prof. Dyson (Solo Analysis of Ep 6)

• Insurgency & Liminal Rights: Martian rebels, post-violent suppression, seize the Happy Valley control center (the Moxie). This is compared to a smaller power cutting off key resources from the global economy—direct parallels are made to contemporary blockades and embargoes.
• Governance Vacuum: Happy Valley’s ambiguous legal space is “watched over by a sheriff and a governor… certainly doesn't seem that they were elected.” Residents desire Mars Charter rights and elected representation.
• Ideological DNA: “The centrists are largely the heroes,” with direct comparison to The West Wing: “a small group of centrists were sort of seen able to technocratically solve all sorts of political problems... That’s the show’s ideology.” (Dyson, 06:50)
• Internal Strife: Even peacekeepers are split on using violence, highlighting shaky legal guarantees for settlers.
• Economic & Political Demands: The insurgency pushes for an end to automation (job protection) and permanent representation.
• Soviet Figures and Authoritarian Temptation: Polivanov, the Soviet-appointed Martian governor, is “a fascinating figure,” sent to manage a potentially pre/revolutionary situation, blending both authoritarian and progressive traits. Morozova, the KGB operative, views negotiation as weakness.
• Earthly Reception – 9/11 Analogy: The President’s learning of a “terrorist attack” on Mars mirrors the iconic moment of Bush post-9/11. “We will not negotiate with terrorists,” echoes through the narrative.

2. Utopianism, Blockades, and Techno-Politics

[13:55 – 24:32]

• Blockade Parallels: Cutting off iridium shipments is compared to closing strategic straits in our world. “We might say that the Martians have closed the Strait of Mars,” (Dyson, 15:10) and Earth retaliates with a food/aid embargo.
• Limits of Economic Warfare: Both sides have reserves; such blockades are slow to create decisive outcomes.
• Dev’s Arc: Tech-entrepreneur Dev, attacked by insurgents, is shown at a crossroads: “an absolute genius tech utopian dreamer… but always, just beneath the surface, a more authoritarian or elitist point of view.” His response to being beaten—“Lock the doors”—signals a possible darker turn.

3. Episode 7: "The Sirens of Titan" – Generational Legacies and Mutiny

[24:33 – 36:43]

• Return to Space Peril: The Titan mission recaptures the early show’s danger and risk; the Russian Cosmos mission tragically fails—a callback to historic space races.
• Risk, Progress, and Anti-Authoritarianism: Kelly Baldwin’s mutiny on Sojourner cements her as a Baldwin: “reflexively anti-authority people… this is their major characteristic.” (Dudas, 29:00)
• Family Legacies: Contrasting the Baldwins' rebellion and the Stevens’ loyal bravery—archetypes for leadership and heroism in the show’s larger narrative.
• Critique of Techno-Utopianism and the Great Man Theory: The show's “American ideology” idolizes supermen and technological solutions, but the hosts caution this can lead to “techno-optimism, or... techno-fascism.” (Dyson/Dudas, 34:00)
• Dev’s Shift into Villainy: Debate if he’s redeemable after sabotaging Mars’ food supply—“he’s engaged in siege, like war crime tactics... arguably genocidal.” (Dudas, 36:43)

4. Mars Revolution’s Pitfalls & The Making of New Politics

[36:44 – 42:22]

• Martian Council’s Limits: The revolutionary council lacks strategic leadership—“the kind of stereotypical group… full of ardor and passion… incompetent at running stuff.” (Dudas, 41:16). Scenes evoke Maoist or Soviet forced agriculture.
• Comparisons to Andor: The rebellion is contrasted with the nuanced leadership in Andor, lacking a “Mon Motha” or grand strategist. The council is shown as all Cassian Andors—action without vision.
• Possibility of Fundamental Change: If the Martian revolution is truly new, perhaps political inexperience is necessary—“the rules of the game need to change.”

5. Episode 8: "Brave New World" – Consolidating Revolution and Cultural Identity

[53:12 – 1:10:38] Prof. Dyson Solo

• Institutionalizing the New: Mars Council, with intelligence support from Irina Morozova, grows increasingly effective. Miles comes into his own as a leader. “He combines his practical skills… with newfound strategic vision.” (Dyson, 54:33)
• Militarization & Resistance: The new Martian state creates its own peacekeeping force, recruits from all backgrounds, and adopts an inclusive Martian identity—symbolized by Celia’s speech: “Wherever you were from, you’re now from Mars.” (Dyson paraphrasing Celia, 57:23)
• Art, Memory & Myth-making: Martian society forges culture: “what stories it’s going to tell to itself and about itself,” seen in Gulara’s documentary and the protest song.
• Soviet Collapse Looms: Irina reports the Soviet Union is near collapse due to cut-off iridium; Polivanov eyes a transformative leadership role, either as Soviet or Martian leader.
• Symmetry with the Series’ Origin: Potential for a "red Mars" (communist/socialist Mars with Soviet ties) mirrors the altered timeline’s kickoff, when Soviets beat the U.S. to the Moon.

6. Episode 9: "Sons and Daughters" – Revolution at Boiling Point

[1:10:39 – End]

• Action & Invasion: Earth Marines invade Happy Valley; Mars resists; the revolution faces existential threat. “A lot of the plot points… are brought to a boiling point.”
• Colonialism and Legal Liminality: The dynamics mimic colonial occupation—invading forces do not understand the territory, make fatal mistakes. “They are aliens. They’re abroad. They don’t understand the… layout... engaged in constant confusion. At one point, a friendly fire incident…” (Dyson, ~1:14:20)
• Myth Creation: Events (e.g., Alex accidentally shooting Haskell) become founding myths for Martian society (“brother against brother”). The show uses often literal and metaphorical images of new life: political societies on Mars and biological life on Titan.
• Human Centrality & Commercial Motives: The show continues to explore if discoveries, such as life on Titan, will be exploited for Earth’s economic gain, echoing the series' recurring theme of “space colonialism.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Show’s Ideology:
  “I think this just shows something of the show’s ideology where the centrists are largely the heroes… the show shares a lot of DNA politically with the West Wing.”
  —Prof. Dyson ([07:15])

• On Revolution & Rights:
  “The rights... for the citizens of Happy Valley are contingent and can be taken away… whatever rights the people have are sort of up for debate.”
  —Prof. Dyson ([09:30])

• On Historical Analogies:
  “We might say the Martians have closed the Strait of Mars.”
  —Prof. Dyson ([15:10])

• On Techno-Leadership:
  “Dev... absolute genius tech utopian... but always, just beneath the surface, a more authoritarian or elitist point of view.”
  —Prof. Dyson ([21:10])

• On Mutiny & Family Ideology:
  “This is the moment in which Kelly Baldwin is really consecrated as a Baldwin... reflexively anti-authority. Right. Alex has it, we've already seen it, Ed obviously has it... this is the show's sort of attempt to put Kelly into... the Baldwin... bespoke characteristics.”
  —Prof. Dudas ([29:00])

• On Techno-Optimism:
  “If you end up with an ideology of super people and an ideology of technology as the driving force of progress, you’re very much in the realm of... techno-optimism, or... techno-fascism.”
  —Prof. Dyson ([34:15])

• On the Revolution's Shortcomings:
  “Martian revolution is made up entirely of Cassian Andors. You can't have a viable, lasting regime change if all you have is the ardor of the rebels.”
  —Prof. Dudas ([44:00])

• On the Emergence of Martian Nationhood:
  “They're developing their own native culture. It really is a state that's coming together. And Miles pulling himself together, I think exemplifies that.”
  —Prof. Dyson ([1:01:00])

• On Colonial Invasion:
  “The Marines are essentially an alien invading force. They see the territory as theirs. They see it as still Earth territory, but it’s become something else. It’s become something independent.”
  —Prof. Dyson ([1:13:12])

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [00:05–13:55]: Martian insurgency, analogies to contemporary politics, Happy Valley’s legal limbo
• [13:56–24:32]: Blockade strategy, Tech leader Dev’s shift
• [24:33–36:43]: Mission to Titan, Kelly’s mutiny, “Baldwin” and “Stevens” legacy
• [36:44–42:22]: Political inexperience of the Martian Council, parallels to other revolutionary texts
• [53:12–1:10:38]: Institutionalization of the revolution, Martian and Soviet politics, development of new Martian culture
• [1:10:39–End]: Earth invasion, colonial themes, myth creation, parallel with Titan discovery

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Listener Comments & Host Responses (Selected Highlights)

• Desire for More Sci-Fi: Some fans desire a return to perilous space exploration. The hosts note the show’s evolution to political drama is a deliberate reflection of progress in space becoming “normal” and less hazardous. ([~44:00])
• On Polivanov’s Arc: Viewers debate whether Polivanov is a pawn or future reformist; hosts note he's written as both manipulative instrument and potential Soviet Gorbachev.
• On Dev as Villain: Fears that Dev is now “irredeemable” after his food sabotage, but the hosts still allow for a redemption arc, tying him to “Dr. Manhattan” archetypes.
• On Show’s Utopianism: Discussion clarifies that “utopian” here is about striving for betterment, not perfection—“For All Mankind is utopian in that... not a perfect society but just a better society.” ([1:15:00])

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Tone and Style

• The tone is analytical, conversational, and self-reflective.
• Professors Dyson and Dudas embrace both academic and pop culture perspectives, weighing ideology and character development with equal care.
• Throughout, a critical but appreciative lens is applied, with humor (e.g., “Maybe Dev is training mining robots for Cylon combat!”) and thoughtful speculation.

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Conclusion

Episodes 6–9 of For All Mankind, as mapped by the Pop Culture Professors, reveal a show unafraid to tackle the messy emergence of new political orders—both on Mars and in the shadow of its alternate-history Soviet Union. The hosts dissect leadership, failure, colonial legacies, and utopian longings, constantly relating the drama’s speculative future to present-day anxieties about governance, technology, and the quest for meaning across generations. The discussions offer a unique fusion of political science, media critique, and sharp cultural analogy—essential listening for fans craving both depth and breadth in their pop culture engagement.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[B]

It's the pop culture professors. And today we continue our analysis of season five of the Apple TV streaming show For All Mankind with our analysis of episodes 6, 7, 8 and 9. The decision is made by the insurgents to not transport any more iridium back to Earth. So here you have a smaller power cutting off exports of a strategically essential fuel back to the larger world economy. It's hard not to see analogies to what's going on in our world at this time. We might say that the Martians have closed the Strait of Mars. I'm Professor Stephen Dyson and I'm a political scientist who has just watched episode six of season five of For All Mankind. The episode is called no Sudden Moves. I'm here to give my instant reactions and analysis to this episode, focusing largely on the political themes and historical analogies that have been alluded to in the episode, as well as giving some sort of appreciation of the narrative and the work of drama. I'm flying solo this week. My usual co host, Professor Dudas, is away. And so I'd really appreciate this week if you could help me out in the comments with your own thoughts, critique what I'm going to say here and give me your own interpretations. That would be a big help this week. So this episode senders around the Martian insurgency, which has now progressed in response to the violent suppression of last week's riot. It's now progressed to taking over the Moxie, the control center of Happy Valley. And there's then a question of how far do the insurgents want to push things. You have a set of kind of extremist sort of points of view that want to push things to an absolute maximum in terms of taking over control and using violence. And then you have a more moderate faction that's represented largely by Miles Dale and then later by the Martian peacekeeper Celia V, that seeks to kind of mediate between the. The various factions, the remote arm of Earth Control and the more radicalized insurgency there on Mars. It's very interesting that Miles wife says to him, you have to go and get involved in this because what she calls the anarchists will trust you. When of course we know that Miles has a somewhat compromised history as a revolutionary. I think I maybe don't mean compromised. I mean that he has played in the past and is again playing in this situation the, the role of something of a centrist. And I think this just shows something of the show's ideology where the centrists are largely the heroes. I'm often reminded of this show by something like the West Wing, in which a small group of centrists were kind of seen able to technocratically solve all sorts of political problems and sort of bring people together and move the country forward. And I think the show shares a lot of DNA politically with the West Wing. And so Miles and Celia insert themselves into this situation on the moxie and act as kind of the centrists who are going to try and mediate a solution. Of course, the reason why a solution has to be mediated goes to the events of last week and the very violent response of at least a large section of the Martian peacekeepers to the protests on Mars. And that really indicated another long running theme, or at least running throughout this season. Political theme of the show, which is Happy Valley is in this sort of liminal political space, it's a settlement on Mars that has people who still owe some sort of allegiance or at least have some sort of identity. They have at least come from different countries on Earth. And so they have still that kind of background. But they also are increasingly, and this is very much the story of the season, seeing themselves as Martian citizens and wanting the rights, wanting to negotiate the rights that would go along with citizenry of a different entity than the one that they came from. But of course, they operate under the Mars Charter, which is referred to in this episode as bestowing some rights, and of course, crucially, limiting other rights. And because they're in this liminal space, they're kind of watched over by a sheriff and a governor. It's not clear how these people are selected. It certainly doesn't seem that they were elected. And the rights that they sort of guarantee for the citizens of Happy Valley are contingent and can be taken away. And that's shown when the. The Martian peacekeepers fairly readily resort to violence. And as is explained in this episode, there's an argument with one, one peacekeeper against the other where it said that the peacekeepers were actually starting to turn on each other when some of them wouldn't go to the violent extremes of others. There were splits even within the peacekeepers. And so we're just reminded this is a fairly contingent political and legal space in which whatever rights the people have are sort of up for debate, not really guaranteed. And that's a big part of the demands that are made by the insurgency in this episode. They want to negotiate an end to automation, so a practical economic demand, but they also want to negotiate permanent elected representation on the M7 council. And believing that this would allow them to codify and guarantee their rights and safeguard themselves going forward, it would at least put them on a more permanent and perhaps equitable legal and political footing. I do think there was some fairly delicious scenes in the hostage situation that was going on in the moxie that highlighted the strange role that Polivanov, the governor, and Morozova, the KGB security operative, are playing in this situation. Polivinov, of course, is from a Soviet Union which in this timeline is economically much more prosperous. Well, it still exists. That's one change. It's economically much more prosperous than the late Soviet Union in our timeline. And it hasn't collapsed, but it also hasn't become democratic and liberal in a way that some political science theorists theories would predict. You know, as a country becomes more wealthy, the argument tends to be that it becomes more more liberal and more democratic and more free. It has more of a sustained middle class that start demanding their own rights, and it's therefore likely to become democratic and unlikely to backslide into authoritarianism. And that hasn't happened in the Soviet Union. And so Polyvinov, I've always found a really fascinating figure because he's sent off to this obviously pre revolutionary and perhaps now actually revolutionary situation as the governor of Mars. He has that right, of course, because the Soviet Union in the United States started to work together to mine the iridium. And so I presume they kind of rotate who. Who selects the governor of Mars. And he goes into this situation and he brings into it a lot of Soviet authoritarian characteristics. He says at one point to the insurgents in last night's episode that they would be, I think, hung for treason if they'd done this within the Soviet Union. But he's also, you know, a guy who wears a suit and who was shown in recent episodes sort of on a democratic walk about trying to meet his people, asking them where they're from. And he's clearly not just a KGB thug or a pure authoritarian. And I. I did wonder and do wonder what Polypanov Polyvinov's arc is going to be and whether one thing that's going to happen is he's going to be changed by his experiences on Mars and maybe have a liberalizing experience himself and take that back into the Soviet Union. I have to say, though, I'm a little more bearish on that outcome after this episode in which he does seem to not. Not be falling into sympathy with the insurgents, falling back on sort of Soviet authoritarian habits of mind. And I really wonder whether his arc is not going to end more tragically after having seen what we did See, in this week's episode, Morozova, I thought was just fascinating. In this episode, she watches Polivanov, this politician in a suit who from her standpoint should know better than trying to placate or negotiate with terrorists. She clearly thought whatever man of the people instincts that he'd shown in his role so far were just shows of weakness. He'd probably brought upon this situation himself. And as he's trying to make connections with the insurgents and negotiate with them a little bit, she has these delicious little smiles that play across her lips where she's clearly thinking, you fool, this just isn't gonna work. And I have a KGB playbook here that we'd really be much better off if we employed that and stopped trying to play Mr. Nice Guy. We then get to the way that this news is received on Earth. And here we have one of For All Mankind's patented callbacks, or references to events that happened in our world that are changed or given a twist when they happen in the For All Mankind timeline. President Bragg is informed by what I think we can assume is his chief of staff that there's been a terrorist attack on Mars. And this is, I think, fairly evidently a callback to the famous footage of President George W. Bush being informed of the 911 terrorist attacks. If you remember, he was reading in an. In an elementary school, he was reading to children. And Andy Card, his chief of staff, comes across and whispers in his ear that, you know, sir, America is under attack. And George W. Bush, and he was criticized for this at the time, stared off and, you know, looked contemplative, I think in Bush's defense, he said, what was I supposed to do? Kind of jump up and down in a room of children screaming, terrorist attack. You know, what. What would that have achieved? But clearly that footage of Bragg being told there's a terrorist. There's been a terrorist attack. What he believes or refers to as a terrorist attack on Mars was a callback to that 911 moment. And then he does very sort of George W. Bush type things in response. He says, we will not negotiate with terrorists. I think it's clear from the orders that Avery Stevens receives at the end of the episode, which says sort of go back to barracks, that, that what we've long thought is going to happen is in fact going to happen, that her Marine unit is going to be dispatched to Mars to solve this situation or to try and storm the Storm Happy Valley and bring it back under Earth control. This was. This is something the show does a lot. Take an event in Our timeline that happened in a, at approximately the same time in the for all mankind timeline. And give it a different twist and usually give it a better twist. I mean, I remain of the view that this is a show that is largely utopian. If we define utopia as the constant search for a better tomorrow and the belief that changes can indeed be made and they may not produce a perfect world, but they can produce a markedly better world, human action can produce this. I think that's what's going on in this show, just on a macro level. And so 911 in our timeline is obviously horrific attack of mass murder that leads to hugely violent and terrible outcomes. In this timeline that there is a massacre, people are killed, but it's not on the scale that 911 was in our timeline. And it's largely a sort of economic and rights dispute. It's not perhaps suffused with the millenarian or apocalyptic ideological clashes that 911 was in our timeline. It's a milder form of terrorism, I guess, if it's even terrorism at all. There is, of course the, the very famous old cliche of one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. And the, the Martians are referred to by Bragg as terrorists. I think they see themselves as fighting for their own future and their own rights and see themselves as entitled to those rights in that future. There's also, I think, a much less deliberate or much more inadvertent analogy that's been made to our timeline in the way that the, the Marsies and Earth responds to the new situation. Because what we have is once the, the moxie is seized, the decision is made by the insurgents to not transport any more iridium back to Earth. So here you have a smaller power responding to what they see as an act of unprovoked violence by cutting off exports of a strategically essential fuel back to the sort of larger world economy. It's hard not to see analogies to what's going on in our world at this time. We might say that the Martians have closed the Strait of Mars. And again, I think this is an inadvertent analogy, but there are some echoes in the way that President Bragg responds to the Mars. He's closing the Strait of Mars. He imposes a counter blockade. He says in that case we will not send you any food, send you any shipments, send you any aid. You'll have to survive on your own without your home planet. So you have bragged blockade and counter blockade. And it's hard not to see what must be an inadvertent because this show was written, you know, a long time before the events of today. But it's hard not to see echoes in what's going on in our world. Of course, the problem in the for all mankind situation is not dissimilar to the problem in our world, which is blockades and counter blockades are indirect weapons of war and they take a long time to be successful. It's not like the Earth economy is going to immediately crash from a lack of shipments of iridium. At least I assume that's the case. There will be reserves and there'll be a capacity to kind of go on with a scarcer supply for at least a period of time, although eventually it will reach a crunch point. And likewise, I imagine it's not the case that Mars instantly on day one finds itself unable to fend for itself without shipments from Earth. After all, one of the key geostrategic dynamics that's going to have to play out here, and this includes the sending of what, what I imagine is going to be the sending of Avery Stevens and her Marines is there's a, there's a large distance between Earth and Mars. Apparently in the Frau Mankind timeline, it's, it's 30 days difference. So anyway, Mars was only getting, was not getting. It wasn't in a globalized economy where it's getting just in time shipments from Earth, they must surely have some sort of strategic reserve. The blockade and the counter blockade are likely to take a while before either side feels sufficient pain that they're going to have to come to some sort of settlement. And then I thought the other really interesting development was in Dev's story. Dev, who of course occupies this strange space on the show where he is on the one hand this absolute genius tech utopian dreamer who seems to be very sort of altruistic, very other oriented, very democratic in his, in his sensibilities, but, but always sort of just beneath the surface or the, the darker side of Dev is a more authoritarian or elitist point of view or stance. And Dev kind of goes off to try and solve the situation on his own and tries to get to MedBay to check on Alex Baldwin and he runs into a gang of the insurgents who do not regard him as the great benevolent tech genius Dev, who's trying to build, you know, heaven on, not heaven on earth, heaven on Mars for the common people. But regard him as candidly one of the villains. He, he is, after all, someone who seems to be totally complicit in the automation push which is at the heart of the complaints of the Marsies and they beat him up. And then we're seen in the, I think the very last shot of the episode with Dev going back into his Helios sort of bunker, his Helios workspace and saying lock the doors. And I do wonder what it is that Dev has planned. Whether this, whether being beaten up, actually meeting the views of the people head on, you know, boot on head, I guess would be another way to put it, is not gonna tip him over into a, a darker approach to dealing with people. Maybe an ever more full embrace of automation as a replacement for human labor who he now sees as maybe the people who've just kicked the, the heck out of him. And I, I wonder where Dev's going with this, where, where Dev's arc is going to lead. I hope it's not going to lead to a fully dark timeline or a fully Dax storyline for Dev, because I do think that Dev has importantly represented tech entrepreneurs in our world. And I think it's important that we understand that they are people who are pulled in different directions. They're simultaneously utopians and techno optimists, but many of them are also driven by fairly recognizable profit motives. And their actions in our world are likely to be highly risky for the ordinary person or at least require some sort of mitigation for in terms of their impact on the ordinary person. And I do hope that the, the show finds its way to giving Dev a positive influence in their world rather than a negative influence, because I think we need some examples of that to draw some inspiration from. Okay, so those are my basic thoughts on the episode. I did want to spend just a couple of minutes at the end of the video responding to some comments on last week's video. We got a lot of comments last week and they were really, really high quality. We really do appreciate them. We, we respond to all the comments in the comments section and sometimes I like to respond to them on the video as well. Stephen yw9sn said last week that the show has no imagination now not enough space exploration. They need to get to Titan next episode or I'm out. Steven I'm afraid they didn't get to Titan, although we did see the Sojourner crew. I hope you will continue to watch the show though. I want to see them stand on the beach of one of Titan's seas or find life on it. Preferably more than just microscopic life. It would be nice to see some exotic methane based life forms living there. I hope they get back to the sci fi this I think is a really interesting comment in that one of the things that's happened in the evolution of the show over many seasons is the sheer thrill ride of perilous space exploration has become less central to what the show is doing. And it has become more and more like a political drama in terms of its ideas and something of a soap opera in terms of the dramatic representation of the characters lives. And in. In one sense that's dramatically difficult. And I do know there are a fair number of people who yearn for a return to the hard sci fi elements of the show's early years. In another sense, and I do admire the show for this, it's consistent with the show's portrayal of its world in. In which quote unquote normal space exploration simply is less hazardous and more routine. That's a story the show is telling. And I do think it is important that they explore the political implications of what multiple societies spread out beyond the earth would start to look like as they are doing with with Mars. But I certainly hear you Stephen, that lots of people feel that way, that they would like to see more perilous sci fi. I think we are going to get that from the Titan arc in the end this season. Godecki Michelles72 writes, I think this is about Governor Polevanov. For him, Mars was just a stepping stone, basically a job he needed to check mark for his career to advance. And that is how he treated it, as business as usual. I do think that's an interesting perspective on the governor and more broadly, this question of the Soviet Union within the show's ideological structure is a very important one and I do hope they're going to continue it because this anomaly in political science terms of a society that's so rich not liberalizing in any way, I think is a super acute focus of the show and I'd like to see them do more with it. I think when they started doing this with the Soviet Union, I was a little unsure about it. I did think it would be. I thought it would be more in line with what the show was trying to say if the Soviet Union had simply followed a linear more small L liberal in terms of like liberal democratic rather than liberal liberal in terms of partisan political American ideology. A more small L liberal trajectory would have been a more natural path for the Soviet Union to follow given what the show was about. I now increasingly think that it's a super fascinating aspect of the show that the Soviet Union hasn't done that and I'd like to hear more about it. And I'd like for Polevanov to be a vector or a vehicle by which we do learn more about the Soviet Union. Because this idea of increasing technological capacity and increasing local wealth in the Soviet Union and gross wealth in terms of human prosperity not leading to a shift away from authoritarianism is an important message and a message that strikes increasingly urgently in our own situation here on Earth. I'm very interested in Star City for that reason. I do think it will be, it would be good to see that show explore the social and political structures of the Soviet Union in something more than a kind of cartoon, cartoonish, authoritarian way. I thought Margot's storyline, the Soviet Union in season four was a little disappointing in that it just showed the Soviet Union as this bleak and drab authoritarian state. And actually seeing a really invigorated Soviet Union with a more pluralistic set of ideas for how to organize itself would be interesting. I hope there's something of that in Star City. It's not just kind of a KGB spy fest and sort of torture fest. And in the, in the last couple of seasons of For All Mankind, I hope that Pollivanov is not a character that meets a. Meets a negative end necessarily. And we do see his storyline develop and him sent back to Earth. As I said earlier in the video, though, I'm increasingly skeptical that he's going to meet anything other than a sticky end. And then finally we had A comment from Razorhead9489. This is the comment I dislike irrationality. They I believe he's talking about the Mars insurgents. They don't have specific information, only that Mars will have more automation. First of all, it's the only viable long term strategy. If humans were to carry out Dev's plan, it would take decades. Secondly, there would most probably still be opportunities to work. And who thought that starting a riot in a really limited space would be a good idea? I think the last point we can all agree with, starting a riot under all circumstances is probably not a good idea. And in that limited space, space certainly not a good idea. And it hasn't had happy consequences so far. It is true that there was a very quick jump from finding out that the plan was to automate a lot of what was going on on Mars into an immediate sort of insurgency. And I think that's because Happy Valley had really been a tinderbox for a long time before that plan came out. And it's very much a straw camel's back scenario rather than a 0 to 100 in terms of aggression scenario. Once that that information dropped. It was very much the last, the last straw for, for the putative insurgents. It's the only viable long term strategy. I believe that's, that's probably true that robotics would have to play a very significant role in human attempts to colonize Mars or anywhere else in space. I think here we can cut the show a little bit of slack and say that the rub the threat of automation is, is very, a very particular ideological threat to what the show is trying to say about humanism and the centrality of humans to the future and importance that we're not replaced by technology, that technology serves us and not the other way around. But I agree with you in practical terms that robotics would almost certainly be playing a larger role in this world in practical terms than we're actually seeing on screen. If humans would carry out Daz plan, it would take decades. Agreed. There would still probably be opportunities to work. This I think is a, is a super interesting point. It strikes us strikes at the heart of some dilemmas that are happening in our own world. There was in the New York Times yesterday a long essay from a Silicon Valley reporter who said that everyone who says that everyone she talks to in Silicon Valley workers and tech titans and so forth, all agree that the median person is screwed by AI in the, in the short and medium term. I think that the article was titled something like Silicon Valleys is bracing for a permanent underclass. And this is a fear that you hear expressed a lot. Obviously I teach college students and they're all graduating, being unsure about what the job market is. And you can say humans have always responded, our economies will respond, always responded to technological change by finding different opportunities to work. And that has largely been true historically. But it doesn't mean that it's necessarily true in the short term. Doesn't mean that many people who hit the economy at critical points without quite the skills to cope with a new transition find themselves as well off as they would be if the transition hadn't happened at all. And it's genuinely a scary project. So I sort of understand what the, what the masses are saying. Even if I do think that the show wanted to tell a story of a Martian revolution and this automation kindling was, was a convenient plot device to get the revolution going. I agree with you that robotics in practical terms would probably be more, more embroiled in human space endeavors if they were to look like they look in the for all mankind timeline. Okay. So thank you for sticking with me. If you do have comments, I'd really love to hear them, they'd be especially important to me this week, as I said, because I'm sort of on my own in trying to analyze this episode. But on that bombshell, people coming over the radio. Ah, we're dying.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's like, who. Who are these people? I'm Professor Stephen Dice.

[A]

And I'm Professor Jeff Dudis.

[B]

And we are two political scientists who have just watched episode seven of season five of For All Mankind. The episode is called the Sirens of Titan. We're going to give our instant reactions to this episode, talk about its themes, maybe especially focusing on its political themes. And then maybe at the end of the video, we'll respond to some of the comments on last week's video, of which there were many. And thank you for those. And please do leave us a comment and like and subscribe if you would be so kind. So, Jeff, the Sirens of Titan, an episode in which I think there's a couple of key storylines going on. One is the. We return to the mission to Titan, to the Sojourner mission. And, you know, immediately as the episode starts, the kind of tragic fate that befalls the competitors to Sojourner, the Cosmos mission. And then independently, we've got the sort of Mars Revolutionary Council, the sons and daughters of Mars, who are six months into their revolutionary project. And I think there are some different themes between those two storylines, but also some connecting tissue. Where would you like to start?

[A]

I guess let's start quickly with the mission to Titan.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Since that receives the least amount of, I think, screen time this week.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, yeah.

[B]

Had you remembered that there was a Cosmos mission?

[A]

Not really had.

[B]

Am I imagining this, or did we actually never have any visual side of Cosmos, its crew? It's because, you know, people were coming over the radio. Ah, we're dying.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's like, who. Who are these people?

[A]

I think so. I had not remembered that that extra mission was taking place. You had reminded me off camera that there was some fleeting reference to the fact that Kurigan had sent Kyrgyz. Kurgan.

[B]

Kurgan.

[A]

Kurgan had sent out a crew in advance. But, no, I'm certain that we never see them on screen.

[B]

Yeah. They'd received the same kind of inconclusive readings that suggested there might be life. That was my understanding. And then they'd had their launch window better aligned or they were more ready to go than the Sojourner people were, than Helios and the, you know, and that crew were to go. And so they'd kind of stolen a match, which is something the show has done in the past. Right. The Mars missions had a similar dynamic. Weren't the three of those. And in the end they all had the moon mission.

[A]

And it's a throwback, as Kelly Baldwin makes clear. It's a throwback to the race to the moon.

[B]

So I think that's what the show is doing. And one critique I've seen off season five, I mean you forwarded it and I've seen it elsewhere, is that the show has become almost solely about politics and less about the peril of space travel. And clearly the time mission has always been the counterpoint to that. And they're really in this episode, I think, trying to re. Engage with that early season thematic. These dueling missions to the new destination. Re embracing the notion of the risk of space travel. Of course, the cosmos mission kind of skips off the atmosphere of Titan and falls into Saturn. And reengaging a theme of. Well, it's called Go Fever in the negative context within the episode. Reengaging a theme of space as a place where not only is it risky and perilous, but actually embracing the risk is a positive. And this is one of the meta political and social themes of the show which is in. In for all mankind, the United States and really all space faring nations kind of re. Embrace that culture of risk because of the shock of the Soviets getting to the.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

To the moon first. And that was something that had been lost, you know, maybe has been lost in our society. It's very much more risk acceptance.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Society as. As a whole, if that makes any sense. Yeah.

[A]

I do think that there's. That is part of what the show is trying to do is making this claim presumably that links progress to risk. I also think, I mean to me the thing that's really happening in what we see in the sojourner scenes this week is that this is the moment in which Kelly Baldwin is really consecrated as a Baldwin. Right. And this put makes it clear what the show's stance is on the Baldwin family. Right. That these are reflexively anti authoritarian people. Anti authority, I should say. People who decide that anything that they disagree with or don't like is illegitimate and must be subverted, resisted, attacked or like in this week's case, I mean, I mean, Kelly commits mutiny. Right. This is, you know, you have talked about in other texts. I remember when we talked about the Wrath of Khan, that one of the things that you brought to it was the way in which those space scenes, the space battle scenes were linked to and really modeled on sort of old naval battles. Right. In the way that space was constructed, in the ways that the ships kind of moved around and against one another in space. So there has been this kind of long standing linkage between spacecraft and navalcraft. Right. And the way that they work. And that I think also leads to or connects to internal dynamics like crew dynamics, dynamics of authority. So what has happened this week is that Kelly has committed an act of mutiny. She would have been swinging from the gallows in the 1700s for what she's done this week. But it's really the first time that I can remember, and I don't have a photographic remembrance of Kelly's storylines over the years, but it's the first time I can remember the show portraying her according to that dynamic. Right. Of just reflexively anti authority. Right. Alex has it, we've already seen it. Ed obviously has it, you know, kind of in a multitude of ways. And so it feels like this is the show's sort of attempt to put Kelly into the, as I say, to consecrate her as a Baldwin according to the unique bespoke characteristics of what it means to be a Baldwin. So I thought that that was, to me, that was the most interesting thing that was happening with the Titan mission. Right. Is that this is the moment where Kelly really and truly is portrayed as, you know, as a Baldwin.

[B]

Well, she explicitly draws the analogy between her dad's sort of great regret was not pulling the trigger on landing on the moon very early on when he could have beaten the Soviets and then ending up kind of losing the, the risk because of this.

[A]

And then it also prompts me to think about we saw nothing from the Steven's granddaughter this weekend. This week I should say, presumably she'll be back next week. But it also, it prompts me to think about how the show wants to configure these two legacy families. So clearly the bald ones, it seems to me, are being configured in this kind of anti authority leadership by way of mutiny or rebellion. That this is their major characteristic. The same Stevens, it seems to me, have been consistently characterized as like people who do heroic and brave stuff. Right. This is what happens with Gordo and Tracy, right. They sacrifice themselves, right, to save the Mars. I mean, excuse me, the moon colony, their son Danny. Remember, it ends badly for Danny. But remember when we're first introduced to him as an astronaut, it's in that first episode of season three where he goes out and saves the space hotel or whatever, like, you know, extraordinary act of bravery and danger. So it makes me think that the Stevens are these Kinds of. If the Baldwins are the anti authority leaders and the rebels, then the Stevens are kind of the loyal foot soldiers who are super brave and heroic. Right. And so it leads me to believe that that's what the dynamic is probably going to be at some point later in the season when the. What is her name? Allie.

[B]

Which.

[A]

Oh, the granddaughter.

[B]

God, what is she called? Tabasco.

[A]

When Tabasco shows up in Mars, that leads me to believe that that's gonna be the dynamic that starts to form. She won't be the leader. She'll be like the loyal foot soldier to Alex's rebel.

[B]

Ah, yes. That's an interesting sound find. It is. You wonder whether that's an ideology of historical change from the show or the. The imperatives of dramatizing things where you have to show things as happening through characters. Because it is a. Quite. Quite a sort of. Both of those are kind of great man theory.

[A]

Yeah, but we know that. But that is the. That's one of the. It seems to me one of the driving ideologies of the show is that it's. We've talked about this before, that this is a show about generational legacies and it. It's not an accident that the writers keep throwing up the same families over and over and over again. Right. These are the ones that hang around in one form or another. And so, yeah, it is. It's. On one hand the show, I think, wants to be about as. As we've talked about earlier, about the. About ordinary people. Right. And about the ways in which ordinary people can. Can make meaningful differences in the sort of march of progress. But on the other hand, the show is really about. It is. It's about the great people.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's very. I think you had mentioned this last week in your hostage video that it's very West Wing in that way. Right. This notion that, you know, five really dedicated people can change the world. Like there's very much that kind of ethos that seems to be pulsing through the. For all mankind.

[B]

Yeah. Which. Which as a show that I have argued is essentially sort of semi or proto utopian in its. In its direction, does present a. A potential set of perils.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Because the other thing that you've got going on is a. Is an ideology of. Of progress as led by technology and technology as something that's capable of kind of overleaping. It's very American ideology. Technology is capable of overleaping long standing structural, political and social problems if we just get the Right. Yeah. Progress and the progress. Material we can solve. These problems without having actually to hash them out in some sort of contentious, you know, an imperfect and maybe irresolvable political process. And so if you end up with an ideology of super people and an ideology of technology as the driving force of progress, you're very much in the realm of what we would associate contemporaneously with what's called techno optimism, or is called by critics techno fascism. Yeah. So I think of something like Mark Andreessen and his techno optimists ideology. Right. Where, where there's this very sort of Ayn Rand, Adam Smith, you know, men must embrace risk. And it's the risk to the risky people go. The reward and every. The market is the greatest force of progress. And that's what determines winners and losers. And it's a very sort of Manichean, very sort of evolutionary kind of way forward wedded to this notion of technology that does lead to justifying people like Dev, and maybe this is a segue, leads to someone like Dev, as an ubermensch, as someone at the leading edge of technology, being allowed to, and in actuality being required to by the forces of history and destiny, take it, take upon himself the, the fate of peoples and make decisions on their behalf and sort of do whatever it takes to, to make those decisions. And that's how history is going to progress, which I had always thought to

[A]

be

[B]

outside of the realms of progressive utopianism and actually in, in the realms of, of something quite different. And that's why I think actually quite a lot rests on what Dev is up to.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And whether he has, as he's become, as he's portrayed in this week's episode, sort of a straight villain.

[A]

Yeah, I, I agree. And it also, I'm not sure it matters anymore.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

The doubts about Dev have been there from the beginning. Right. The, the sort of, the strongman, authoritarian fascistic tendencies have been there from the beginning. Right. I mean, Karen Baldwin called them out. Right. We, as you talked about a couple weeks ago, or maybe it was last week, she, you know, she sort of identified these things from the beginning. You know, I think the question is whether he's crossed the, he's crossed a line in this last week that can't be undone.

[B]

He's, he's Anakin.

[A]

It's, it's clear that he feels bad about what has happened, but let's step back and say, okay, if this had worked out perfectly, what does he imagine has happened? Well, he has just destroyed the sole food source for a colony of I don't know how many People, thousands of people. People who he has already admitted are stubborn and are zealots and are not going to be brought to the table. So what has he actually done? I mean, he's engaged in siege, like war, crime tactics is what he's done. Right. That's the best case scenario. Right. The fact that they hit during the dance party and some people died is, is I guess especially obvious, especially direct in its consequences. But best case scenario, he has engaged in behavior that is, you know, arguably genocidal. So I don't know how 1. And he's done it in. In very self righteous terms. Right. So I'm not. It might be too late already for Dev. Right. In terms of he can be redeemed, obviously. Yeah. But in terms of him being like a tech figure, tech leader who on balances more rather than less progressive, I think that may be settled.

[B]

That ship has sailed. Yeah. I mean, Dev's argument is that he's saving the people from themselves. Right. He says that they're willing to put their lives on the line for something utterly foolish. So set.

[A]

Exactly like the tech fascist would say, right, I know what's best. I'm saving you from yourself.

[B]

Yes. No, I agree. That's the ideology. And I do think even if the show turns out to not be as utopian as certainly I'd read it in previous seasons, and you've made a compelling case over a number of weeks that there's a darker undertone to the show than we've previously seen. It still is an important heuristic for thinking about the political moment that we're in because the parallels are obviously so strong, we've kind of drawn them out. And how should we receive these figures who believe themselves to be oracles of, of progress? And how does, how does a demos receive an ubermensch who claims to know its will or its interests in a way that's separate from and prior to its own collective muddling through of what those interests are. And of course we're very quickly back at the. The classical juxtaposition of politics and utopia and the danger of embracing utopia and seeing it as beyond politics.

[A]

And flip side of that coin this week is that we get a real deep dive into the character of the Martian Revolution. And a couple points here that I have. First, connecting back to the earlier discussion about the legacy families, From that perspective, of course, the Martian revolution is a complete mess and it's totally failing. There's no Baldwin to lead it and where's the Stevens to do the heroic stuff? Miles is Nobody's idea of a strategic political leader. He's asking Aleida basically for advice on what he should do. This is in a certain way the Martian revolution, I think is revealed this week as the kind of the stereotypical group of people who are full of ardor and passion and who are really good at doing stuff like taking things over and really incompetent at running stuff. They don't have any idea what to do. And it's obvious there was never any plan for what to do once you gained power. They have, over the previous six months, figured out some sort of program, some sort of labor program, which I also thought. I want to get your take on this. I found the sort of the scene. Scenes where they're growing the crops and to be very kind of like people's revolution, China, like forced, you know, agricultural stuff. And it's not played like that, but that was what. It was redone for me. This seemed like sort of, you know, Chinese great leap forward or Soviet like, you know, new economic plan stuff, you know, played with a, you know, I mean, being, you know, they're forced to work. Yeah, I, I'm interested what you, what you thought of that. But that, to me, it was a little notable, I guess. Yeah.

[B]

That's interesting. Particularly in line of. In light of, sorry, the, the great juxtaposition that's been set up between things that humans do with their own hands and, and labor saving, you know, productivity enhancing kind of automation and robots and so forth. That. Yeah. If you, if you put a bunch of people on Mars, cut, cut them off from. Resupply from Earth.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And say subsist on your own without robot technology and so forth, you're going to be back to subsistence farming and it's going to be very physically difficult in the way that it was on Earth before.

[A]

Right. But who's doing like. I mean, that's all true, but also like, who's doing it like, it's, it's the young kids, it's the people who don't have any power, presumably don't have any power in Martian society. And they're sort of. I, I just thought it was, I thought it was a strange. I thought it hit strangely.

[B]

Well, but the analogies you drew are interesting, which is the, you know, one reason for the kind of sort of Maoist iconography and so forth. One reason is that, yes, that practically needs to happen to, to feed people in a country that's, you know, was in many ways pre industrial.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The other project that was going on was an ideological project of trying to forge a new. A new and different identity. And yeah, if you grant the show a degree of sophistication, maybe that's what they're trying to show. I mean, I. I don't think that the Martian revolution is going to fail in incompetence and it's going to be unproblematically absorbed back into Earth's existing structures. I think they're going to. Something is going to happen where the revolution succeeds or it fails in a way that causes revolutionary change back on Earth. I just don't think, you know, a return to status quo. Andi is where the show's going to go in now.

[A]

Well, I'm sure you're right about that because your predictions about what this show is going to do up to this point have been basically spot on. So I'm sure that that's what's going to happen. But I think, you know, that will be. It might be an unsatisfying storytelling turn given the way that they've presented the sort of the Martian Council as full of people who I, I think, don't have a great idea of what they're doing. If Miles is the leader, that's not particularly inspiring.

[B]

But he's an ordinary man. That's his whole shtick, right? He's a normal.

[A]

But they don't have. We talked about this. So contrast this. You know, another text that we. That we spent time with was Andor Season 2. And contrast the way that the rebellion there is portrayed and the internal dynamics of that rebellion are portrayed in the ones and the way that it's portrayed here in For All Mankind on Mars. They don't have a Mon Motha. They don't have an intellectual leader. They don't have somebody who know. Who actually understands the nature of power, that it's not just, you know, you either have the power or you don't. Right? It's they. They don't have anybody who understands that power is conditional, it is relational, it is dependent and highly contingent upon the circumstances and upon the people and personalities who are yielding, wielding that power or who are being subjected to it. They don't have anybody who understands governance. They don't even have like a Lutheran figure who's like a kind of a grand strategist of rebellion. It's as though the rebellion is made up entirely of Cassian Andor's. Right? And I think one of the things that Andor is so good at portraying is that you can't have a viable, lasting regime change if all you've got are you know this if all you have is the ardor of the rebels.

[B]

Sure. Well so in a counterpoint to that would be that. That is true unless you are fundamentally changing the terms of the game. Right. They don't have scale skilled political players in the Martian revolution in a way that in the, in. In the revolution portrayed in. In Andor the rebellion they did because they were co opting people from the exist who. Who were quite high ranking within the existing political system. But then we know that the Star wars arc of history writ large not just in Andor is essentially cyclical. Right. It's empire rebellion. Empire rebellion, Empire rebellion. And neither of them are able to solve the fundamental problems of governance which means they provoke or allow to exist within within their midst the seeds of their own destruction which restarts the cycle again and again. Now a utopian text would be. Would be more teleological. Yeah, it's politics is going. History is going towards a different end point and maybe you do need a politically unskilled rebellion because or revolution because you're not trying to replay politics. You're just going to do things in a fundamentally different way. Yeah, that's going to going to be very costly and maybe ineffective within the old rules of the game. But then the rules of the game need to change and there's a couple

[A]

of the rules of the game involve having more than two weeks worth of food.

[B]

Well that's generally useful to not just have to declare the people as being fed to have actually fed the people, you know. But there are two vectors of change that the show is giving us. Right. One would be and they're both on display in this week's episode. One would be the imminent sort of discovery of life on Titan and what, what kind of game changing things practical or ideological or whatever that brings the other is the. The shipping of the revolution back to Earth which could come I think in the form of Polyvinov who, who would seem to be a busted flush in the last couple of weeks but who I'd originally thought was obviously going to be the figure that brings political change back to the Soviet Union due to his experiences on Mars. And it now seems that having discounted that possibility we've re embraced the idea that maybe Polivanov is going to be the Gorbachev figure even though there was a real Gorbachev in the for all mankind timeline. But the younger fresher anti neo Stalinist figure who gets shipped back to the Soviet Union and starts doing different things.

[A]

Yeah, I think it depends on what you make of Irina and how successful you think her Machiavellian maneuvering is going to be. I mean, I still think that Polivanov is a character who is fraught, whose future is fraught. You know, she has already set him up to take the fall for this revolution. She's the one who convinced him, like, don't forget to call out the dogs and to call out the violent, homicidal security forces against the protesters. She planted that idea in his head and she knows that. Right. But she did it in a way that would allow her to sort of disassociate herself from responsibility for it. She's now planting the idea in his head that he's going to be the popular leader back home and that whenever he gets back, he's a shoo in as a revolutionary figure. That may be true, but what do we know from her that would suggest that we should take her on the level and this isn't just another game that she's playing. We'll see what happens to Polivanov. I remain ambivalent about his.

[B]

His fate long term trajectory. Yes, Irina is, you know, I keep expecting her to look directly into the camera and start addressing Frank Underwood or Francis Urquhart in the British original House of Cards kind of figure, but she's all kind of arch. Well, you might want to think about doing this because, you know, she very much has that. That demeanor to her. That's true. I want to get to comments from last week in just a second here. Last point on this week's episode, that dance party was very strange. And I've said in the past, I'm not 100% convinced by the verisimilitude of the portrayal of the contemporary teenager. Now, I will admit I'm not a contemporary teenager, nor do I have a great insight into their motivations and behaviors, certainly outside of a college classroom. But, but we have seen this group of teenagers, one, deeply engaged in contemporary affairs and sort of discussing them on their own in an earnest and sincere way. And historical affairs, two, you know, discussing grand sort of theorists again with apparent enthusiasm. And then three, like running a. Whatever she's called. What is her name? Lily Dale. Yeah, running a sort of bait and switch on Pooh Alex, leading him to believe that he's going to get a quote unquote, special birthday present, and then imagining that he would find it sort of gratifying and amusing if not only her, but all his pals jump out of the crops and start doing a weird sort of Gangnam style dance in front of his face at 3am in the morning that when I was Alex's age I would not have found funny or a suitable birthday presents.

[A]

Well, you're not a bald one, though.

[B]

That's a good point.

[A]

And also, like, in fairness, this may not be how contemporary 2026 teenagers, but in 2012 or wherever we are and for all mankind in Mars, maybe this is, you know, standard fare.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know, they're led by the. By their North Korean defecting astronaut.

[B]

Yes. Who you write just sort of crack the whip in the fields, doesn't he?

[A]

Yeah, he's cracking the whip, but when he's not doing that, he's a part of the. He's all in on the dance party.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought that was very strange. I suspect what happened is at some point the actress said, oh, by the way, do you know I can dance? And the producer like, oh, we should work that in somehow.

[A]

I'll just say this. This is not a show that does whimsy in a way that would be recognized as effective. And I think this is the show's attempt at whimsy. And it's clunky and not very good and then it turns out to be a head fake. Anyway.

[B]

My rewrite, if I was Shorina, you know, it's occasionally fun to play this game. What would I have done with that? That would have been a good scene if all of the teenagers had then been sucked out into space after the. After deaths kind of attack.

[A]

With the music still blaring.

[B]

With the music still blaring. Yeah. And shall we do a couple of viewer comments here in the couple of minutes that we have. We have left? All right. Thank you for the comments we got on last week's video. We always appreciate your comments. These are just our initial reactions. We often, you know, maybe all the time you tell us get. Get things wrong or miss things. So we do like hearing what you have to say. We respond to every comment below the line and we also like to talk about some of them in the. In the subsequent video. So we've got a few interesting ones, I think. Jeff Kingdom of Capybaras 6850. Polivanov handed the whole situation about as badly as he could have from the start. Irina clearly thinks he's an idiot and will throw him under the bus as soon as possible. I'm very curious as to what Dev will do next and astonished that he didn't end up in the hospital after the kicking he got.

[A]

Yeah, I'm in complete agreement with all of Those. I think we see further evidence this week that Polivanov is a kind of a. I mean, at least arena is treating him as a stuffed shirt, as a puppet to be manipulated. Dev, again, I agree. I don't know how he didn't end up in the med board or whatever last week.

[B]

It's the Captain Fantastic Genes or whatever he is. Mr. Terrific. Is that his name?

[A]

Maybe Superhero genes. Yeah.

[B]

Okay. Philip Leavenworth. I'm a little terrified that Dev might become a straightforward villain. This seems like actually a very on the pond point comment now, but I'm hoping his beating serves as a wake up call and Dev funds the revolution. Well, he's not doing that. At least I don't think so.

[A]

It served as a wake up call in a certain way, but in the opposite way. I have no doubt that there's going to be a redemption arc for Dev. I thought that was fairly clear from the end of last week's episode. But again, I do wonder, as I was talking about earlier, whether his involvement and sort of the attack on the crops this week crosses a line that sullies him forever. Yeah, let's put it that way.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And then a final comment here. The season so far has portrayed Leonid Polypnov as something of a stuffed shirt, to use a phrase. This is a theme, isn't it? He's someone seemingly out of his depth. Irina looks at him like he's an idiot. I'm left to wonder, how was someone like that a prodigy and heir to Korschenko? Was he in that role because the Soviet elite saw him as someone they could control once he was in office? Maybe so, yeah. The question is, will they be successful in being able to do that, or does he have some final flourish up his sleeve?

[A]

If he does, it's almost certainly because his wife is a more sophisticated operator than anybody is giving her credit for.

[B]

Okay. So we hope there was something of value in that. Again, please leave a comment. We'd love to hear from you. But on that bombshell and this interconnection between the search for new life on Titan, the forging of a new form of life on Mars, and the impact of both of these things on the old forms of life on Earth really is, I think, the central theme of this season. And it's brought into a particularly sharp focus in this episode, which I thought was good and effective. I'm Professor Stephen Dyson and I'm a political scientist who has just watched episode eight of season five of For All Mankind. The episode is called Brave New World, and I'm going to give my instant reactions to the themes of this episode with a courser and heavy focus on its political ideas. I'm on my own this week. Professor Dudas is away and so I would really appreciate your support in the comments. Please help me to understand this episode. Check what I say. Have I got it right? Do you have alternate views on what this episode means and where this season is going? And I do want to take some time towards the end of this video to talk about how I see this episode fitting in the broader arc of the season and what I think this season is really about. I also, again, towards the end of the video, want to respond to some some of the comments that were left on last week's video. So in Brave New World, we see that the new really is being discovered, is being searched for in three different places. Of course, you've got the ongoing story of the Martian revolution and the attempt to forge a new kind of social and political settlement for the people on Mars. You've got the literal search for new life which is happening on Titan as Kelly continues to kind of completely take over that mission. And then you've got the impact of in particular the Martian developments on the old forms of politics and society back on Earth as some very old political structures look to be crumbling and some new deals are about to be forged. And this interconnection between the search for new life on Titan, the forging of a new form of life on Mars, and the impact of both of these things on the old forms of life on Earth really is, I think, the central theme of this season. And it's brought into a particularly sharp form focus in this episode, which I thought was good and effective. Let's begin with what I think is the core of this episode, which are the developments on Happy Valley, really the capital of the new Martian revolution. And I do think in this episode, all elements of the Martian revolution, the brave new Martian society, are coming into focus, are being institutionalized and are being strengthened. The Mars Council is really working effectively at this point and they have some strong advantages. They've got a source of privileged information in the form of Irina, who continues to bring important intelligence and developments to the attention of the Martian Council. And they also, I think this week have a much more effective leadership structure and leader in Miles, who seems to have suddenly sort of found his groove in becoming an effective leader. He's evincing at this point a much more decisive nature and a much broader strategic vision than he's had in the past. And this is an episode in which Miles, I think, comes into his own. And he combines his practical skills, his knowledge of chemistry and engineering, along with a sort of newfound strategic vision and confidence as a leader in really driving things forward, in integrating the different forms of information that he has and taking decisive action, which of course, is the central function of a leader of any political structure. Of course, the new is coming to strangle the old in the cradle in the form of a military expedition for from Earth. I do think it was quite a funny moment when Miles is, you know, presented with this news and he says, that's not true. We would have seen it coming a long way off. And I think as viewers, we think the same thing. I'm not sure we ever actually did see the. The military expedition on route. Although, of course, it was obvious from Avery Stevens training and storyline on Earth that that was where things were going. Just a sidebar. I did think it was very interesting to see the troop transport that was bringing Avery Stevens and the Marines to launch their invasion of Mars. It shows another type of space vessel that Earth has developed. I did think the word I was put in mind of the Sulaco, the troop transport from Aliens or maybe some of the Earth cruisers from Babylon 5 by its design. Very interesting of the show's creators to continue to show us how space travel, and in this case space force protection over space, has become institutionalized and routinized in the Earth of this alternate timeline, with a differentiation of the capabilities of projection of human power across the solar system. The manner of resistance of this invasion, which is suggested to Miles by the North Korean astronaut, is to blow up the port, essentially to blow up the spaceport, or at least the platform of the spaceport on Kuznetsov Station. And Miles takes decisive action and signals that that is in fact what should be done. And this is a fairly classic military strategy in resisting invasion by a superior military force. You may, if you'd followed the news recently, have seen the reports that Denmark had landed troops in Greenland and they were prepared to blow up the major runways in Greenland when that territory was considered under threat by President Trump. In recent months, institutionally, a Martian state is also starting to take shape. Celia is training or is inducting the Happy Valley Corps, a new sort of peacekeeping or police force by and of the people of Mars. So having a very different kind of posture than the. The previous Martian peacekeeping force. And she gives a speech in which she talks about a new Martian identity being forged. Wherever you were from, you're now from Mars. This is going to be a peacekeeping force that does things differently. Earlier in the season, she talked about being of a lineage of. Of peacekeeping forces or, sorry, of police forces and wanting to do something different and thinking that coming to Mars she could break the patterns of her own family past. And she now sort of completes that journey by saying, a month ago, I couldn't have told you what a MASI was, but now I'm proud to say that I am one and that we're going to be a different kind of force. Of course, the. The exertion of control over the means of force and monopolization of the legitimate use of force is, if not the key feature of a political state. And here we do see the Martian revolution again, institutionalizing itself. Even more importantly, I would say the new Martian state is. Or new Martian society is starting to produce its own culture, its own art, its own way of thinking through who it is, how it wants to present itself to the world, what stories it's going to tell to itself and about itself. And this, again, is an absolutely central aspect of forging a nation state, which is clearly what the Martian revolution is becoming. We see, I think, actually quite a good short film produced by the Gulara before her death, a bleak documentary, a black and white documentary with some fairly florid lines of prose, including Living Under a Tubercular sky, which of course, is a line that she had borrowed from an Allen Ginsburg Beat Generation poem. And we do see the new generation on Mars being a sort of Beat Generation. In a sense, they are. They are the future. And the show's presenting them to us as the future, but. But For All Mankind is also an explicitly nostalgic show. It does exist in this strange sort of liminal space. It's. It's retelling a contemporary story. It's presenting futuristic human capabilities and where it perhaps hopes that our human society could go. But it does through largely. It does, so sorry, largely through the lens of nostalgia. The motivating impulse of the show is a nostalgia for the exploratory and daring imagery of the space race. And. And really, here you see in Reaching Back to the Past, Allen Ginsberg in the. The kind of protest song in C major which had, I don't know, Bruce Springsteen vibes that we see presented halfway through the show. This is. This is a show whose culture of the future is in some way nostalgic or backward looking to the. To what the show's creators would see as ideologically the best parts of our past. The Beat Generation. It's. It's had in the past a veneration of the John Lennon and a sort of peacenik movement. These are, I think, the cultural touchstones that the show is presenting to us as the best aspects of our nature. Lilly, I think, has it right when she describes this cultural production not as a PR exercise, although of course that's its explicit form. It will help them to win converts and win support back on Earth. But when she talks about we need to capture what it feels like to live here not just as a material matter, what is it like, but what does it feels like, what's the texture of life here? And that's done through the protest song, through. Through Gulsey's documentary. That's what societies do through their art. They're not literal documentaries of the practical conditions, of course, that's what happens, but they're really attempts to capture the feeling of living in and belonging to a place. And finally, in terms of developments on Happy Valley, we see how closely these developments have been followed on Earth and really how these developments on Mars are reshaping or are going to reshape the politics of Earth. It seems fairly clear from Irina, Irina Morozova's intelligence report that the Soviet Union is on the brink of collapse, that it's really suffering the most as a political and economic system from the cutoff of the Iridium shipments, that President Korschenko is sort of one swift boot in the. In the ass away from being deposed from office. This, of course, gets Polivanov's political antenna quivering and fires ambition in him. Polyvinov, I think, sees his. His hero moment hovering into view and he volunteers, along with Celia to take part in the hopper mission to go and rig with explosives the platform on Kuznetsov Station. I think he realizes that this will put him in a heroic position, that it will play well, perhaps with elements, reformist elements in the Soviet Union. He either spies himself as the next President of the Soviet Union. That would make a lot of sense, or perhaps he's going to end up being the first president of the Martian Republic. But either way, he's going to be a pivotal figure in negotiating a new settlement with the Soviet Union. As Irina says, as soon as Koshenko is gone, the logical move for Koshenko's successor will be to cut an independent deal with the Martian colony for the reacquisition of iridium shipments. This is going to give Mars really a huge sort of form of leverage over the M6, which Arena says will eventually dissolve. And I think this is sort of the path for independence. Path to independence for Mars. And it is a really sort of interesting development. And you do start to wonder whether it's not the United States but the Soviet Union that's going to be the vector through which the Martian revolution transforms Earth politics for the better. It does seem as if we might be heading towards a red Mars in both senses, the kind of normal sense that's the hue of the planet, the customary sense, but also a communist Mars or a Mars associated with a reformed Soviet Union. And there would be a nice symmetry there because Red Moon was, of course, the first episode of. For all mankind. And the Soviet landing on the Moon instead of the United States or ahead of the United States is the motivating change in the timeline. So it would be a nice piece of symmetry and I think a good piece of writing. If it's this Soviet Martian alliance that ends up changing the political balance of power on Earth, on Titan, of course, we perhaps spend less time, but we do spend significant time. The Sojourner has landed away from where it was supposed to do. So now they're sort of out of striking range of the crater where they believe that life may exist. And so Kelly is trying to organize an exp. An expedition out to complete the original mission that they landed on Mars. For Walt, the nominal captain is, of course, undergoing a crisis of confidence. He is understandably somewhat confused over how he's managed to find his. His ship in this position, over what's gone wrong. Of course, Kelly could solve his crisis of confidence by explaining pretty directly what happened, which is she shifted the. The programming around, but she chooses not to do this, instead being sort of outwardly supportive to Walt, but really effectively taking control over the mission in order to fulfill its original objectives. And just a final word about this week's episode, specifically, before I give some thoughts on where I think we stand as a. With the season as a whole. I do think this episode looked really, really good. And there has been some debate both on this channel and elsewhere, about the aesthetics of the show. Particularly early in the season. There was a question mark about various aspects of it. I do think they've hit their stride this season, or at least in this episode. It looked really, really good. I thought the scenes of the Hopper emerging from the Martian atmosphere were very, very effective. I was really pleased to spend some time on Kuznetsov Station, which I thought looked just fantastic. The aesthetic of the marine transport ship I thought was really interesting and important and added another dimension to the. The visual vocabulary of the show. I do Think over the past few seasons they've been really influenced by Chris Nolan's movie Interstellar, both in the use of music and also the use of visuals. And that was very effective in this episode. So big thumbs up, I think from me in terms of this episode, in terms of the look of the show. Okay, so some overall thoughts on where we stand this season, putting this episode into context and what do I see as the strengths and weaknesses of this season? I continue to be very high on this show. I think it's doing something unique for someone who is interested in the conjunction of politics and popular culture. I think it's an extremely brave show and as I said, a somewhat singular show. This attempt to tell a comprehensive and cohesive story of the intermingling of politics, of history, of economics and of society. To essentially do a counter history or a retelling of our own age as if we had believed our own ideals and at the founding of the space race, as if we lived in a more techno optimistic world. This, I think is really valuable and there's something that's really important that's going on here and I do think that continues to be the show's core strength. I really am in radical appreciation of this attempt to do things you often don't see on television and to really commit to a cohesive fabric of a counter history of as a real signal to us as to how things can be different, how politics can make a difference in the trajectory, the macro trajectory of essentially our species. We're on the cusp of discovering new life in this show. We're seeing new political forms emerge. It's also been done in a way that's. I don't know if realistic is quite the right word, but a plausible and I think good faith way. There's a real theory of historical causation that going on in this show. There's a real attempt to give a panoramic view of how the different factors that might shape history in any one era come together. Real explorations of cause and effects. Bravo. I think that continues to be really the wonderful and singular quality of this show. And I remain fully on board for this journey. I'm really excited to see where it goes both in this season and in the next season. That is though a mode of narrative address that it is not without cost. And there's a reason why, for example, you often don't see natural resource economics or slow burn geopolitical type strategies playing out on screen. They often don't dramatize particularly well. And one problem that I think for all mankind has had this season is that it really does sort of telegraph its developments. I think it's been pretty clear from the. The first episode that there was going to be a Martian revolution, that it was going to influence Earth politics, that it was probably going to do so through the vector of the Soviet Union. And I've taken great pleasure in seeing these things play out. And they haven't all played out exactly as I thought they would. But I do think the broad contours of this season have been clear from the start. Again, I think that is not a fault of riding. I think it's inherent in this. This mode of address, this panoramic, cohesive view of a society in. In transition. That's not a mode of addressing which you're going to be dropping a lot of cliffhangers or massive sort of plot twists. I don't think, you know, little green men are going to turn out to live on Titan. It's. It's really not that type of show. But I do understand why for some people, the show is. Is at least a little predictable in terms of where the storylines are going. For example, I would imagine that we are going to see Alex's pacifism, which he expressed in a number of. On a number of occasions in this episode, coincide with Avery's doubts about her identity, about her past, and about her role in the. The old Earth military mission. And they're going to have a conversation about whether it's really appropriate to use force. And Avery is. Is going to sort of reunite the Stevens and Baldwin families. I thought the show was pretty explicitly telling us that in this. In this episode. Similarly, I think the actual discovery of life on Titan is really about the specific form of that life. And there's a rel. Constrained scope of possibilities as to what that life's going to look like. And I don't think it's going to be particularly complex or spectacular life. The real question is what is the discovery of that life? How is it going to play into the political and perhaps even economic structures and stories that are going to be told over the next decade of human history in the show, which, of course will be the next season. In one sense, that just does rob the discovery of new life of its dramatic impact. The show essentially told us there was life on Titan and needed to, for cohesive narrative reasons, in order to motivate everyone to spend all the resources to go out and investigate it. But in another type of show, that discovery of life would be the kind of massive climactic moment and a huge surprise. And again, that's not what For All Mankind is, but overall a very effective episode. One that I think is bringing the season five arc in, I think pretty nicely for a, for a landing. And I continue to appreciate all of the many strengths and unique qualities that this show has. Okay, so I'd like in the final part of the video to address viewer comments from last week. We got some really interesting ones that definitely helped me understand what was going on in that episode and I clearly missed pretty crucial and important things. Please do leave a comment. We try to respond to every comment below the line. We do really value them. I mean, the big point for us of doing these videos is to have a conversation and try to think through the text of Frau Mankind, not only individually but in conversation with, with others and get a deeper understanding in that way. Drew Swenson writes very engaging discussion. Thank you, Drew. For context, I was Alex's age in 2012 graduation, and all the dancing was the frankly awkward trend of flash mobs. This refers to a comment that we'd made last week in relation to the in relation to Lily's birthday present for Alex, in which there'd been kind of nudges and winks as to what was going to happen in this late night rendezvous. And it turned out Alex was ambushed by all his buddies coming out of the the cornfields and doing an impromptu dance. And I did sort of speculate as to how plausible that was. Was that really what teenagers did? And Drew is reminding me something that I'd forgotten, which was there was a phase, sorry, of flash mobs, of impromptu dancing which would then be captured on the Internet. I totally forgotten about that. And it's, you know, bravo to the chauffeur for aligning the time periods there and for providing a much more plausible view of young adult life than I'd realized that they had. Ryder lynch writes, it's too early to say whether the revolution will succeed or fail, but I do agree that currently it doesn't have a clear leader. The SDM Council scene depicts an organization led more by disorganized committee than by a defined leader, with Miles being out of his dep. Being the out of his depth peacemaker between the different factions. As I said earlier in the video, I agree with that last week, and I do think again, compliments to the show. They've shown a plausible development of Miles as a political leader and the SDM Council as a functioning political organization. Miles has got real this week. They only have a couple of weeks of food left that under threat of the use of force. A lot of the problems are not hypothetical or not far in the future, but are immediate and require decisive action. And he's taking decisive action again. He's integrating different perspectives. They've got a functioning intelligence organization, if you like, in the form of irina. They've developed a kind of state use of force, or at least peacekeeping arm in the form of the Happy Valley Corps. They're developing their own native culture. It really is a state that's coming together. And Miles pulling himself together, I think exemplifies that. Here now is Philip Leavenworth, who's given us a number of hostages to fortune, made a number of predictions about where the season or maybe the series as a whole is going to. Let's see how wrong I am, he says. I think the Soviet Union collapses and Polypanov comes in as a hero once the Martian revolution succeeds. That is looking more likely, Philip, after this week's episode than it was last week's episode. So congrats there. I think you're on the right track. Dev creates the conditions for a paradise on Mars, but doesn't live there and relocates to Titan to be away from everyone else. Dev was absent from this week's episode, so we don't know what he is doing. We have no greater clarity on that. I suspect he's going to be a big part of the next week's episode. I do like that idea though, that Dev is going to create conditions for a much better Mars and that's going to be his. The conclusion of his narrative arc. I do continue to think that it wouldn't quite be in accordance with the show's ideology for him to be a pure evil tech Titan. I like also the idea of him going off to live on Titan. I think that puts him in alignment with someone like Dr. Manhattan from the Watchmen, who of course would periodically take himself off to to was it the moon Dr. Manhattan would teleport himself to just because he couldn't stand all of humanity blathering in his ear constantly. And that would kind of reinforce maybe Dev's self image as this, this Dr. Manhattan esque kind of superhuman force. I like that prediction, Philip. Alida splits Helios in two with those loyal to Dev and others loyal to Alida. Also they name a lake after Ed on Titan. I think all of that is. Is entirely plausible. Was really interesting thinking about Helios and the way in which corporations are working in this world that Kelly's mission to Titan. She explicitly says is, you know, a Helios mission. It's not a mission of different nations. And if the Mars Revolutionary Council is one form of post Earth nation state organization, then the grand corporation like Helios is another form of that kind of post national political organization. Jay Goolsbee says it's because we're in a chronosynclastic infundiboulum. No guarantee that I've said that. Right. Of course, Jay Goolsbee. I did have to go and Google that immediately. That is the central sort of plot device from Kurt Vonnegut's novel Sirens of Titan. Last week's episode was named Sirens of Titan. This week's episode, of course, also had a literary reference point in in that it was termed Brave New World. Chronosynclastic in Fundibulum, it turns out, is some sort of device that has a lot to do with alternate history, with different timelines or different points in time being able to be experienced simultaneously. Maybe there's a message there from the show's creators. I'm sure that they certainly read a lot of sci fi alternate history works before they sat down to write For All Mankind. So thank you for that elliptical tip into what Sirens of Titan meant, the title of last week's episode. Finally, Chris Gannon writes, I've never interpreted For All Mankind as utopian. Optimistic, certainly, but realistic in its presentation of human beings earnestly wanting different things without real malice. I think that's an interesting point. I've often been the person on this channel who's talked about For All Mankind as a utopian work. And I think this does give an opportunity to. To make a point about utopian theorizing or utopian literature. I think you're definitely right in, in that utopian. The utopian idea has come to be associated with a perfect place free of political conflict and a sort of blueprint of a finalized perfect human society. And that's certainly the common understanding of the term in our culture. And I agree that For All Mankind is not that there is a maybe more specialized or more niche use of the term amongst those who work in politics and philosophy and cultural studies who would call themselves utopian theorized theorists who think of the utopia as not a perfect society but just a better society. And think of the point of utopian texts and utopian theories not as providing sort of authoritarian blueprints, but as providing just the impulse to be better and as opening up space for understanding that things can not only be different, but can be better. And I think For All Mankind is utopian in that maybe narrower reading of the term. That's the the purpose of the series is to show that our history could have been different and therefore our future could be different, and that it's humans acting in Agenda Quiz who could forge that difference. But thanks for that comment. It was really useful to be able to think about those different understandings of the term utopian. All right, that brings us to an end of our discussion of this episode. I hope there's been something of value in this video. If there has been, please like and subscribe. Please do leave a comment. We love to receive them, but on that bombshell, he's led into an act of violence. It's an it's an act of misunderstanding or misrecognition, which again was a theme throughout this episode. Misunderstanding, what was going on, misconduct, communications. The kind of things that happen when an alien force tries to invade a place that it doesn't understand and it can't properly comprehend. I'm Professor Stephen Dyson and I'm a political scientist who has just watched episode nine of season five of For All Mankind. The episode is called Sons and Daughters. I'm going to give some initial reactions to that episode, break down some of its political and other themes, and also talk about it as a work of dramatization and give some sort of aesthetic appreciation. And then towards the end of the video, I'd like to respond to some of the comments that were left on last week's video. I do hope that this can be a conversation. So if you do have thoughts about this episode, whether you agree with my analysis or have a totally different take, I'd love to see some comments. And we do engage with all of the comments below the line so Sons and Daughters is a very action heavy episode. A lot of the plot points that were set in motion during this season, in particular the Martian revolution and Earth's resistance to that revolution, are brought to a boiling point and we get straight into it. The Marines sent from Earth invade the Happy Valley complex by force and the Marsies resist. And maybe at one point there was a possibility of a slow siege or some form of negotiation, but that had been, I think, quite literally blown up. When the Marsie's bomb goes off at the end of the last episode and inflicts a casualty on the Marines, they're clearly in a no nonsense mood. They invade the Happy Valley Valley complex and they seem to have something close to a shoot on sight policy, which leads them into a lot of problems later on. As the narrative proceeds, this story of the Martian revolution and Earth's resistance to that revolution. It's paralleled in this episode, as it really has been in the whole season, by the search for a new form of life on Titan. And you've had this recurrent plot paralleling in this season. The emergence of a new form of political and social life on Mars and the search literally for a new form of biological life on Titan. With Kelly Baldwin's mission, which continues. And it does seem that she may be on the cusp of discovering new life. There are initial setbacks. She analyzes the existing sample from the seeker robot and it remains inconclusive in terms of revealing a new form of life. But later on in the episode, she encounters some kind of mysterious blue glow, which I think we're meant to believe is going to contain within or itself constitute some new form of life. And I do think this narrative paralleling has been pretty effective in this scene. And it's been a pretty effective. I don't know if you'd call it a metaphor to have a revolution and the emergence of a new form of political life alongside the search for a new form of biological life. Even within this episode, you have a nice paralleling where Kelly is scientifically finding that the search for a new form of life is inconclusive, perhaps is in process. It's in the process of being discovered at the same time that the Martian revolution is under threat, is in danger of being strangled at the emergence of that new form of political life is itself incomplete or is inconclusive. And of course, the events that we're seeing in this episode are really going to become the founding myths, the real historical structures of Martian society. Miles words, the actions of people like Alex Baldwin, the documentary footage that's taken by Lily Dale, the way that the Martian peacekeepers have been kind of caught up in the middle of this as protagonists and also literally caught in crossfire during this episode. All of these things are going to be famous stock retold for generations. So this is a new form of life that is being built in the events that we're witnessing on screen. I do think, aesthetically, these events are portrayed pretty effectively, particularly the invasion and resistance narrative. I did appreciate the shots that we got of Happy Valley at the start of the episode. I think that gave us, certainly, for me anyway, a new appreciation of the scale and shape of the Happy Valley complex. I hadn't quite realized it was that big. And I hadn't quite realized the extent to which it was this interconnecting series of modules and pipes and Crawl spaces. And I think all of that geography was effectively deployed in the episode in order to heighten tension. I thought at many points of Ridley Scott's cinematography in Alien, where you would often see characters in crawl spaces and, you know, using kind of parts of the ship to hide, the alien would do that and crew members would kind of emerge from behind equipment and so forth. And that was happening a lot in this episode. I thought that was esthetically very well done and really worked effectively. I do think it's notable that the episode was directed by Sergio Mamika Gazan, who fans of Ronald D. Moore's old all TV series Battlestar Galactica will recognize as someone who had a number of directing credits on that episode. And Ronald D. Moore would say whenever we had an action heavy episode, they would turn to Mamiko Gazan to direct it because he did that kind of thing. Well, I think he's especially skilled with the kind of handheld documentary style that was again a hallmark of Battlestar Galactica and is deployed effectively in this episode of For All Mankind. Incidentally, if there are people who are fans of For All Mankind and have never seen Ronald E. Moore's earlier effort, Battlestar Galactica, I imagine many of you will have done. There would be natural companion pieces or naturally you would have been led to For All Mankind, maybe from Battlestar Galactica. But if you like what For All Mankind does. I think Battlestar Galactica, the Ronald D. Moore reimagining is a really interesting text and you, you would get a lot out of it if you don't already know about that show. I do think while the invasion and Resistance combat narrative or combat action was, was very well done in this episode, we could have used perhaps a few more orienting scenes maybe in the last couple of episodes where Miles Dale and the. And the Martian Council talked a little bit about what the resistance plan would be. One principle in action cinema or action action on screen is it's always very important that the viewer is given a sense of geography. You really need to know where the action is taking place in relation to some other objectives, who's doing what to whom, and one way that you can kind of achieve that. I mentioned Alien early in this movie. I'm thinking now of Aliens in which there are those scenes where Ripley and the Marines kind of get the schematics of the facility out and you, you see where they are and where the aliens might be coming from. And it really helps you understand what's happen when the action kicks off. And I think For All Mankind in this episode and previous ones could have done with seeding a little bit of that geographical knowledge for the viewer to help us understand where specific incidents were happening around Happy Valley. Nonetheless, I do think this was all effectively done. It was a genuinely engaging episode from an action standpoint. I think the parallel of looking for life on Titan and an emerging form of life coming into being on Mars, which again has run through the whole season and I think is to the fore in this episode really points out an interesting political theme. And I think it's a theme of colonialism. Of course. Happy Valley, or the Mars is a colony of Earth that's engaged in a revolution. And the Marines, I keep wanting to call them Colonial Marines, have come to put this down and to reclaim the colony or to ought to eliminate the colony's independence in service of the. The Metropole. And you see a lot of colonialist practices or, you know, colonialist mistakes being made here. The Marines are essentially an alien invading force. They see the territory as theirs. They see it as still Earth territory, but it's become something else. It's become something independent. And so they're having to invade it. They can't assume that they're at home. They can't assume that they're going to be greeted as liberators. They in fact meet violent resistance. And they are aliens. They're. They're abroad. They don't understand the. The geographical layout of the Happy Valley complex. They get confused, they go off in the wrong direction. They're engaged in constant confusion. At one point, of course, there's a friendly fire incident where they. They shoot Martian peacekeepers who are essentially on their side, mistaking them for insurgents. These are all fairly recognisable things that happen to an occupying or invading force. And they are especially. Poignant is the wrong word. But they're especially dangerous for a colonial invading force because the colonial force will assume that this is essentially their territory and they should be at home. They should have this sense of kind of natural dominance. And this is why colonial conflicts or colonial occupations can be especially bloody as this one is. When you have two sovereign states fighting each other, you can be governed by a sense of limit. And you kind of understand that there are two separate entities that are engaged in a conflict with one another at one point. It's brought up in this episode that we're under the Geneva Conventions, which is of course, a set of conventions designed to govern interstate war and to protect civilians and to provide for provisions for prisoners of war in a colonial situation. The gap between the, the invading force and the, you know, the colonizer and the, and the colonized is a little more liminal or a little more confused and it can become even more deadly. It's harder to, to understand who is a prisoner of war, who is a combatant and who is a non combatant in practice. It's harder to understand. It's harder to understand in legalistic terms as well. And you see that happening a lot in this episode. What really are the rules of engagement here? On the one hand, the Marines seem to be on an essentially shoot to kill policy. On the other hand, they are taking prisoners of war. They are not assumedly, they are not on a mission of extermination. They're actually trying to bring these people back within the existing Earth legal order, even though these actions are making it harder and harder for that to happen. Lily at one point says, I'm press. And so she's claiming for herself a particular status within the law of war, a particularly protected status. And that status is, you know, not really properly observed. Again, adding to this kind of legal confusion in this liminal space where you have what looks like an all out war, but it's a war between people who are at some level supposed to be on the same side. You have Polivanov saying, look, I'm the governor of this place. Give me. He's not really requesting asylum. He's saying, I'm the proper governor. These people have kidnapped me, put me back in my legally constituted role as governor. I think we know at this point that that's not how Polivanov sees himself anymore, that he's gone over to the other side if you like, and he's deploying this status of governor. At least this was my reading. Tell me in the comments if I've got it wrong. He was deploying the status of governor as a way to deceive the invading force. And again, you get these legal confusions or liminalities that are especially deadly in a colonial occupation situation, which is the one that the residents of Happy Valley and the Earth invading forces are now finding themselves. And I do think the search for new life on Titan has to also be considered perhaps within this colonialist framework. I do think it's notable that the idea of a search for new life on this show was introduced by Kelly Baldwin. I think during mining operations on the moon. Someone can correct me in the comments if my memory of the show is incorrect. I think this is right. And she has a conversation with Ed, with her father, in which Ed says, you know, we're going to go ahead and continue these mining operations. And Kelly says, but we haven't properly tested everywhere to see if there might be some form of. Of life, something that we don't yet understand here. And it's like, no, go ahead. This is a commercial operation. And I do wonder how life is going to be perceived or processed when I think it is when rather than if it's found on Titan for all. Mankind has maintained that space exploration needs to have a commercial motivation in order to be viable. Establishing a colony on the. On the Moon was linked to the helium 3 and linked to the Earth, the way in which that would fuel developments in Earth technology and the Earth economy. Iridium and the Goldilocks asteroid has been key to the viability of a colony on Mars, which is becoming something else, which is becoming political and social and cultural, but began as an economically motivated expedition. I do wonder how life is going to be treated on Titan. Is it going to have some sort of commercial implication? Is it going to be mined or. Or is its chemistry going to be used for some kind of commercially viable developments on Earth? And at that point, how would we see this search for and discovery of life? Would it be in the Shore's idealistic vocabulary, this sort of great humanistic achievement, the greatest discovery in the history of mankind? Or would it be something that's commercially exploited and Titan becomes essentially another colony of Earth exploited for its natural resources? In terms of the conclusion of this episode and what it might be pointing towards for next week's season finale, it was obviously crucial, I think, that the coherence of the Marines invasion, even as they gained more territory in Happy Valley, was starting to crumble. They were starting to get confused as to where they were. That there was very faithfully and significantly a point where Haskell and Avery Stevens split off from the, from the main invading force. And Haskell, who I'm glad was wearing a name tag because to be honest, I'd completely forgotten what that guy was called. Of course, he featured in the early episodes of the season a native of Mars. He says, look, I'm from here. You don't understand this territory. You're getting confused. To his Marine commander. And the Marine commander chooses to disregard his advice. And Haskell says, screw this, I'm going off on my own. Avery Stevens goes with him. And I. I had thought that Alex's pacifism would play a really crucial role in this episode. And I still think it's gonna. Although of course he's. He's led into an act of Violence. It's an. It's an act of misunderstanding or misrecognition, which again, was a theme throughout this episode. Misunderstanding, what was going on. Miscommunications. The kind of things that happen when an alien force tries to invade a place that it doesn't understand and it can't properly comprehend. And he ends up shooting his friend Haskell. And now, at the end of the episode, goes to seek help from Dev in the Helios bunker and the. The medical supplies that. That Dev has there. Alex has really, you know, made a. Made a fateful contribution here to the revolution, and so has Haskell, and of course, that will become another of the. The founding myths. Brother turned against brother or brother shooting brother. Haskell, of course, is going to end up renouncing his. His allegiance, as I would have thought, if he. If he survives things. And this will bring Avery Stevens on side, I would imagine. I think that's where we're going in the. In next week's episode. I think also in next week's episode. You know, we didn't see Miles at all in this episode. He was just this disembodied commanding figure. Obviously, we're gonna. We're gonna see in the. In the conclusion of this story, we're gonna see Miles. I think perhaps with some of the ways that Lily was being told of his original sin, you know, Miles is gonna get some form of redemption next week. I would imagine it may be the end of. Of his character. His redemption may come, you know, at the cost of his own life. That would be my prediction. I guess we'll wait and see. I also think that Dev here has an opportunity for redemption. I wonder what Dev has been cooking up in the Helios bunker. Is it something that is going to be able to help the Marsies resist the Marine incursion? I guess it's a different show. I did mention Battlestar Galactica, but I do think it would be sort of funny if one. What Dev's been doing is retraining his mining robots to be some sort of. Some sort of combat force. And you get essentially Cylons kind of streaming out of the Dev bunker to. To beat back the Marines. I don't think we're gonna. We're gonna see that. But, hey, it's a free idea for the writers, I guess. A little late for them to incorporate it now, but let me know what you think. What do you think is gonna happen in the conclusion next week? Where do you think this is going and how is it gonna point towards what's gonna happen in the next and final season. Okay. And so before we finish here, I wanted to respond to a few comments from last week's video. I do enjoy receiving them and find them really valuable, so please continue to leave them and engage in this discussion. Godecki Michelle says, I think this is Dev's last season. The Marzies will not forgive him for his role in Gull's death and the near death of all those youngsters, not to mention sabotage of critical food supply. I think with Mars seizing the asteroid, Dev will lose everything and be actually forced to return to Earth. They will build a new Mars, but without him. The security chief also will probably have to go through a trial before he's allowed to return to Earth. I can also see this being last season, Dev's last season, and therefore next week's episode being Dev's last episode. I don't know if the Marzies will sort of instantly forgive him, but I do think that, you know, Dev has always been presented as a historically consequential actor in the show, and I think it's unlikely that he will exit the narrative in total ignominy. I think he probably has one more last big role to play, and I do think the balance of his character, you know, good or bad, is is in the balance. And so I do hope that it's a big positive last flourish from Dev before he exits the scene. M. Shonley writes, I love lots of different forms of sci fi, including stories of alien life, but I hope this show sticks to scientific findings not far from what we can extrapolate. If they do find signs of life on Titan this season, I think it would fit with the world building of the show that it's later to be found due to contamination or from Lithopan spermia. I think the contamination and lithopan spermia are, I think, related ideas which would center around the notion that any life found on Titan was it has not developed completely independently from life on Earth. Maybe the seedings of life in both places were bought by the same, I don't know, Comet or whatever. Again, someone in the someone who's more scientifically oriented could let me know if I'm getting these concepts right in the comments section. I guess the thrust of it is that they were not independently evolved forms of life, which would be amazingly significant, you know, if we were to find a completely independently evolved form of life, however simple, on a planet within easy reach of our own planet, that would have incredible implications for the proliferation of life throughout the universe. Which would actually be fairly decisive evidence that life was incredibly abundant in the universe. Which would raise the old Fermi paradox question of why haven't we seen more of it? I don't know what the show is going to do here. I do think it's a really interesting meta ideological question for the show, which is so humanistic in its focus as humans so much at the center of it to the degree that it, to the extent that it's really resisted notions of artificial intelligence, for example, it's really centered a distinctive human agency and humans as drivers of their own history. That's really been the central telos of the show. And it would interestingly complicate that narrative if we found life on another planet, however simple that life was. Unless I guess, of course, we just exploited in colonialist terms, as I've. I've kind of alluded to earlier in the video, maybe that would preserve a central, you know, anthropocentric narrative to the show. So I agree with you. It's, it's one of the remaining central questions about the ideology of the show. What is the nature of this life and how does it relate to the centrality or otherwise of human life in the cosmos? The other interesting meta ideological question of the show is why is the narrative stopping in our own time? That's my understanding of what the next season is going to be. It's going to bring us essentially up to, up to date, up to our own time period. You know, 10 years on from where we are on Mars now would essentially be our own time. And then the show is going to be over. And I do think it's going to be very interesting. This is a conversation for, for a video next season, but it's going to be very interesting whether right at the end of the show we're not given some sort of mega flash forward to see, to see the long range trajectory maybe hundreds or thousands of years in the future that this alternate timeline has put us on, or whether the show is literally going to content itself with retelling our own timeline, it's going to stop where we are. I think that's another big meta ideological question. And finally, Pancake foxp writes, it's interesting to me that for all mankind is a story that goes out of its way to set up an alternate history in which the Soviet Union lasts at least 20 years longer. But so far it hasn't seemed to have a lot to say about the Soviet Union itself or about the impact of its continued existence on the broader world. I'm Hoping this will change with the foreshadowed interactions between the USSR and an independent Mars. Look, I totally agree with this. And there was definitely a different story for the show in which the Soviet Union plays a much bigger role than it seems to have done. We've essentially been operating within American liberal democratic capitalist ideological space, even though this alternate ideological structure, the Soviet Union lasted a lot longer in this alternate world and was a lot more materially successful than it was in this world. And what would a super abundant techno superpower Soviet Union have looked like? Would it have looked less like the sort of Brezhnevite stagnant authoritarianism, which is what the Soviet Union seems to be in this alternate timeline and what it was, of course, when it effectively collapsed in our world despite Gorbachev's efforts to reform it? Or would it have been different? Would Gorbachev's efforts not have been plausibly much more successful? In this alternate timeline of all mankind, Gorbachev again seems to be a failure. He's deposed by hard liners. But why that happened was never completely clear to me. Because if Gorbachev had been able to deliver a different form of life and material abundance, I would have thought he would have been much more successful. And maybe the Soviet Union would have converged towards what were then American liberal democratic capitalist ideals under Gorbachev. Or maybe there are different ideological possibilities. If you remember earlier in the Soviet Union's history, actually at the start of the space race, Khrushchev's ideas were for a techno abundance communism, and that high technology would allow communist ideals to be realized in a way that they just couldn't under the command of industrial economy of the Soviet Union at the time. And you do wonder how that state would have evolved. Would it have gone in a less authoritarian direction, something that was more true to the. The ideals of communism than its actual manifestation in our timeline. So I do think that's a really interesting ideological question and one that we haven't yet seen explored that much in the, in the show. Maybe, as you suggest, it will be explored more in the interaction between the Soviet Union and independent Mars, maybe in the next season. I don't know what they're going to do in Star City. I think, you know, they're going to have the classic prequel problem in Star City, which is we actually know the ideological direction of the Soviet Union, which is ostensibly the tale that it's telling in Star City from the parent text. And so they are sort of constrained in terms of the big narrative directions they can go but I guess we'll watch that show and see. Okay. Thank you for watching. I hope there was something of value in this video discussion of Season five, episode nine. If there was, it would be lovely to hear that. If there wasn't, please challenge me and let me know what I got wrong. I always do appreciate these interactions. Thank you for watching. And on that bombshell,