For All Mankind

[Nibb31]

I kind of hate the episode that just came out, FWIW. Most of it was good. But that ending. Frak.

The ending was completely stupid. Astronauts are supposed to be the top of the crop, yet these ones are unprofessional to the point where they can't even stick to some simple rules of engagement. And it's amazing that nobody ever thinks about actually communicating with the other party. Even at the heights of the Cold War, there was a red telephone. You don't just send in troops. You first give them an ultimatum to leave the area. Always leave your opponent an honorable exit strategy. It's diplomacy 101.

And the teenage drama fluff around Karen and Aleida and Kelly is just boring and pointless. Give us some space action.

[Blackstar]

The ending was completely stupid. Astronauts are supposed to be the top of the crop, yet these ones are astonishingly unprofessional. And it's amazing that nobody ever thinks about actually communicating with the other party. Even at the heights of the Cold War, there was a red telephone. You don't just send in troops. You first give them an ultimatum to leave the area. Always leave your opponent an honorable exit strategy. It's diplomacy 101.

I think you missed what was happening there. The Marines were communicating with the Russians. They were shouting something over their radios and looking at their Russian phrases on their arm notepads. The Russians were going back to their box to get something.

[Nibb31]

They were yelling, probably unintelligbly, and were unable to understand a reply. That is not communication.
Ultimately, they should have called Houston, who should have called Washington, who should have called Moscow, who should have ordered the cosmonauts to vacate the area.

[sanman]

Ellen is going the be the Elon Musk of this timeline. Her dad owns an airline and she is clearly thinking of taking up the CEO seat instead of being head of NASA. After the latest fiasco on the Moon (for which she bears a pretty large responsibility) and the issues with her personal life, I think she is going to quit NASA and turn her dad's company into a more successful Virgin Galactic.

Maybe there will be multiple rival launch companies to have a new space race amongst, since a premise of the show is this alternate accelerated-spaceflight timeline.

The ending was completely stupid. Astronauts are supposed to be the top of the crop, yet these ones are astonishingly unprofessional. And it's amazing that nobody ever thinks about actually communicating with the other party. Even at the heights of the Cold War, there was a red telephone. You don't just send in troops. You first give them an ultimatum to leave the area. Always leave your opponent an honorable exit strategy. It's diplomacy 101.

The whole handling of the conflict over the lunar mining site seems too implausibly unrealistic. There's no communication or dialogue between the 2 govts, who instead just vaguely dispatch personnel to the lunar surface to settle things with armed force. Strange that the Soviets don't seem to be armed, in spite of having taken over somebody else's mining site. Maybe that notionally tank-like Soviet rover will eventually show up.




Meanwhile, I wonder what will happen to the Apollo-Soyuz program if there are hostilities in space between the US & USSR, instead of a détente? How can there even be an Apollo-Soyuz program, if the Soviets have been occupying a mining site started by the US? It feels contradictory and paradoxical.

And the teenage drama fluff around Karen and Aleida and Kelly is just boring and pointless. Give us some space action.

That's Ronald Moore's style, as shown numerous times in BSG. Sometimes it does seem like he wants to make an episode of Dallas. I'll predict that the Karen-Danny fling will lead to a falling out between Ed and Gordo. This presumes that Gordo doesn't get killed in some military showdown on the Moon.


I also wonder - can you shoot somebody in a spacesuit and reasonably expect them to survive?

Aren't they pretty much guaranteed to depressurize, and suffer an agonizing death, like in to that scene from Total Recall?

[Blackstar]

Aren't they pretty much guaranteed to depressurize, and suffer an agonizing death, like in to that scene from Total Recall?

Yes. Total Recall was literally true.

[libra]

Paul Verhoven really liked trashy and gruesome death... ! 

[Robotbeat]

I kind of hate the episode that just came out, FWIW. Most of it was good. But that ending. Frak.

The ending was completely stupid. Astronauts are supposed to be the top of the crop, yet these ones are unprofessional to the point where they can't even stick to some simple rules of engagement. And it's amazing that nobody ever thinks about actually communicating with the other party. Even at the heights of the Cold War, there was a red telephone. You don't just send in troops. You first give them an ultimatum to leave the area. Always leave your opponent an honorable exit strategy. It's diplomacy 101.

And the teenage drama fluff around Karen and Aleida and Kelly is just boring and pointless. Give us some space action.

I agree it was stupid, and I hated it, but it was *realistic*. Give guns to flawed humans, and miscalculations WILL be made.

I hate the writers did it. Because it made me really sad. But it’s the realistic consequence of adding weapons and resource conflict to a situation.

I think the writers were making the case that bringing weapons (like guns) to space is a really bad idea. And that resource conflict combined with non-cooperation in space is also a massively bad idea.

...and, like, yeah. Point very, very effectively made. It really brings new perspective to me about our real life space cooperation with the Russians (and Chinese...?).

And I don’t like *all* the character development decisions made, but I actually don’t mind it and some of it has been really fun to watch... like the Gordo and Kelly arc so far has been fantastic (although in season One, they were either kind of forgettable or annoying)... Certainly better than watching bullets go into cosmonauts.

[Robotbeat]

They were yelling, probably unintelligbly, and were unable to understand a reply. That is not communication.
Ultimately, they should have called Houston, who should have called Washington, who should have called Moscow, who should have ordered the cosmonauts to vacate the area.

Gotta say, the series of unlikely events you just described makes what actually happened in the show seem a lot more realistic. *Tragically* realistic.

[Robotbeat]

 I hope they don’t frak up the Margo and Korolev(?)Sergei Orestovich Nikulov thing. Do not break nerds’ hearts.

[Robotbeat]

In a world where the Russians don’t speak English and the Americans don’t speak Russian... you’re gonna get stuff like this happening. Makes me think we should also start learning Chinese (and the Chinese should learn English, if they haven’t learned it already due to how common English is in culture and scientific literature).

[su27k]

The ending was completely stupid. Astronauts are supposed to be the top of the crop, yet these ones are unprofessional to the point where they can't even stick to some simple rules of engagement. And it's amazing that nobody ever thinks about actually communicating with the other party. Even at the heights of the Cold War, there was a red telephone. You don't just send in troops. You first give them an ultimatum to leave the area. Always leave your opponent an honorable exit strategy. It's diplomacy 101.

You could ask the same question about the shot down of KAL 007, how could the Soviet not know it's a jetliner? Why didn't they use the red telephone and gave opponent an honorable exit? Shit happens when people are armed and tension is super high...

[ncb1397]

I hope they don’t frak up the Margo and Korolev(?) thing. Do not break nerds’ hearts.

Korolev doesn't know Margo. According to IMDB, the character she knows is called Sergei Orestovich Nikulov played by Piotr Adamczyk. Korolev was the shady guy talking to Dani when in captivity in Russia.

[libra]

The ending was completely stupid. Astronauts are supposed to be the top of the crop, yet these ones are unprofessional to the point where they can't even stick to some simple rules of engagement. And it's amazing that nobody ever thinks about actually communicating with the other party. Even at the heights of the Cold War, there was a red telephone. You don't just send in troops. You first give them an ultimatum to leave the area. Always leave your opponent an honorable exit strategy. It's diplomacy 101.

You could ask the same question about the shot down of KAL 007, how could the Soviet not know it's a jetliner? Why didn't they use the red telephone and gave opponent an honorable exit? Shit happens when people are armed and tension is super high...

Exactly. The PVO chain of command was atrocious, the Soviets were angried and frakked off by previous RC-135 harassement, the 747 was returning to international espace (by pure luck !), Osipovitch had the wrong ammunitions and radio frequencies to try and warn the intruder (instead of killing it - he fired his guns to no avail)... plenty of cumulative silly things like this.
Still, the arsehole PVO commander that ordered the shoot down certainly blundered. Not only for the live lost (sadly, he probably didn't gave a rat), but also for all the shit the Soviet Union (rightly) took for this slaughter.

Fundamentally, what happened that night was that a 747 with the wrong heading (15 degrees, from memory) found itself at the worse possible place (Soviet SLBM base in Kamchatka !) without its complacent crew ever realizing it.

And the said (unvolontary!)  intruder really took the PVO with their pants down (but really: it was a complete shamble and chaos that night) until some criminal idiot ordered the shoot down as the 747 was going back into international airspace.

[Blackstar]

I agree it was stupid, and I hated it, but it was *realistic*. Give guns to flawed humans, and miscalculations WILL be made.

But it’s the realistic consequence of adding weapons and resource conflict to a situation.

And... well, anybody who has studied history (or current events--as I was typing this, I saw a news flash about confusing a taser for a gun...) knows that this kind of stuff happens all the time and people get shot and sometimes wars have started.

If you read the history of the Cuban Missile Crisis, there are all kinds of examples where "highly trained" people who should have known better screwed up. There was a U-2 spyplane that had a navigation mixup and ended up over the Soviet Union during the height of the crisis, prompting the famous comment from Kennedy “There’s always some son of a bitch who doesn’t get the message.” US Navy destroyers and aircraft were harassing Soviet submarines that had nuclear torpedoes, getting very close to the point where one of them was fired. And Fidel Castro, who you would have expected to be concerned about his country being turned into glass, was sending messages to the Soviets about how willing he was to have the shooting start. Look up the Berlin Crisis as another example.

Dumb miscalculations, hotheaded soldiers--and generals--and stupid accidents are common throughout history. The show's writers know that. Indeed, they are modeling these events on actual historical events like the two I cited above.

[Blackstar]

Exactly. The PVO chain of command was atrocious, the Soviets were angried and frakked off by previous RC-135 harassement, the 747 was returning to international espace (by pure luck !), Osipovitch had the wrong ammunitions and radio frequencies to try and warn the intruder (instead of killing it - he fired his guns to no avail)... plenty of cumulative silly things like this.
Still, the arsehole PVO commander that ordered the shoot down certainly blundered. Not only for the live lost (sadly, he probably didn't gave a rat), but also for all the shit the Soviet Union (rightly) took for this slaughter.

As a counterpoint, look up the case of the USS Vincennes and the Iranian airliner.

[Frogstar_Robot]

Of course, there are also many examples where a pretext is setup where it is inevitable that a conflict results. Sometimes wars start due to "accidents on purpose".

I haven't seen the episode, but I think it sounds like the simpler trope "good guys vs bad guys". Bad guys do something bad, good guys are obliged to go and sort them out.

[Orbiter]

The way that second cosmonaut died was absolutely horrific. To their credit, they did attempt to render medical aid after the shots were fired.

But does anyone else think this season just... kinda sucks? The show is 80-90% family drama subplots, which are at best tedious to get through, and the plot keeps taking more and more ridiculous turns. This season is just a chore to get through. Definitely a major step-down from the first season.

[Robotbeat]

The way that second cosmonaut died was absolutely horrific. To their credit, they did attempt to render medical aid after the shots were fired.

But does anyone else think this season just... kinda sucks? The show is 80-90% family drama subplots, which are at best tedious to get through, and the plot keeps taking more and more ridiculous turns. This season is just a chore to get through. Definitely a major step-down from the first season.

On the contrary, I think in many ways this season is better than the first. The characters are more interesting and less just annoying.

[Blackstar]

They were yelling, probably unintelligbly, and were unable to understand a reply. That is not communication.
Ultimately, they should have called Houston, who should have called Washington, who should have called Moscow, who should have ordered the cosmonauts to vacate the area.

Here is the scene:





In this scene, they were sent to do a mission, and they were the people on the ground. They couldn't immediately call back to Earth for more orders. "Er, Houston... it looks like they might be reaching for their weapons so they can kill us. What should we do, over?"

And if you've ever dealt with military people, you may have noticed how they are "mission oriented" and what that means. The simple explanation is that they're given a mission and they seek to carry it out, no matter what. That can be a great thing because they figure out how to organize and tackle a problem rather than discussing it to death. But that can definitely have downsides too, as often they take their orders too literally and fail to recognize a bigger picture, or the consequences of their actions. They're not supposed to ask why they've been given that mission, even though in some cases understanding why would help them to perform the mission better. I know a guy who works for NASA with a lot of former military personnel and he has encountered difficulties at times where his people will run into problems and look for another way to get the job done when it made more sense for them to stop and reassess the situation.

[libra]

Exactly. The PVO chain of command was atrocious, the Soviets were angried and frakked off by previous RC-135 harassement, the 747 was returning to international espace (by pure luck !), Osipovitch had the wrong ammunitions and radio frequencies to try and warn the intruder (instead of killing it - he fired his guns to no avail)... plenty of cumulative silly things like this.
Still, the arsehole PVO commander that ordered the shoot down certainly blundered. Not only for the live lost (sadly, he probably didn't gave a rat), but also for all the shit the Soviet Union (rightly) took for this slaughter.

As a counterpoint, look up the case of the USS Vincennes and the Iranian airliner.

I never, ever understood how on Earth could an AEGIS operator mistake a TOMCAT for an AIRBUS.

I mean, it's like aiming at a wild goose and shooting a fat cow instead.