For All Mankind (TV Series) Polaris (2022) User Reviews

Immigrant Moon

[slak96u · 7/10 · 10 June 2022]

Jeeesh, AppleTV has been on a roll. Probably my most anticipated returning series of the year, so looking forward to what S3 brings for the returning characters, and meeting the new ones.

Off to a solid start, an awful lot to catch up on and cover, honestly a bit overwhelming. Margots storyline, I'm betting, will be the most compelling. The "space hotel" set was very well done, as were the 90s costumes, production values looking good so far. The show certainly didn't wait to ramp up the drama, episode 1 starts with disaster. The resolution felt a little cheap tbh, though I still enjoyed the heck out of the episode.

A gripping episode

[GwydionMW · 9/10 · 10 June 2022]

I'd expected a build-up to future drama getting to Mars.

There was that, but also there was a drama where it might not have been expected. And one that left your expectations open till almost the end.

A splendid beginning. As good an episode as they've had in the series.

Also some interesting Alternative History.

Don't believe the low scores

[njmace · 8/10 · 21 June 2022]

The low scores are by over critical people who honestly shouldn't bother watching tv

When you start picking apart a show for an engineering flaw in one episode you are neurotic

It's a tv show ya know meant to be entertaining if we went with everything 100% accurate there wouldn't be a show!

Jeez these people prolly rated Gladiator a 3 too lmao.

One of the best episodes of the series.

[justcrone · 10/10 · 10 June 2022]

Apple TV+ is money well spent these days. They came out swinging hard for season three. I think I gasped out loud at least three times. Off to a great start here guys!!

second half exciting

[q-83817-654990 · 14 June 2022]

The story at NASA ended at the end of season 2, it was good. I was excited to see this polaris thing and thought a new generation of characters will be here with new and cool adventures, but nope it's just a bunch of old NASA people being pathetic. Also who cares about which country goes to mars first when you can make a ton of money with sapce tourism.

The design of the space station is pretty bad, the science is inaccurate, the computer interface they use is inefficient, but i dont care much anymore because things are going crazier and crazier since season 2 and logic is out the window. I get that you need to create dangerous situations to make people excited. Viewed as a dumb adventure show with space technology it's alright. Just don't think too much about the plot or science and you'll be ok.

Season 3 is here! Outstanding episode.

[burdrogerl · 10/10 · 10 June 2022]

I enjoyed this opening episode immensely! I like where this season seems to be heading and the aging of the main characters adds to the story nicely. For those who have criticized, go watch something else... I personally can't wait to see the next episode, just wish we could stream them all at once... Oh well, just have to wait. By the way, if you watch the time line segments it explains the time gap between seasons nicely.

2001 comes back

[frankmathy28 · 9/10 · 11 June 2022]

The first episode was amazing. A rotating space station very much like the one from Kubricks 2001 epic in a super exciting setting. Looking forward for what this season will bring.

WOW!

[iounu2 · 10/10 · 16 July 2022]

I dont understand any rating under 9. This episode was awesome and unique to any other show. Just wow. The anxiety and the Dont Be Cruel during the wedding is amazing.

Everyone is Old

[winstonsmith_84 · 8/10 · 16 June 2022]

Haha ok yes this takes a lot further into the future and everyone is older! The makeup and stuff is a little silly perhaps but I can live with it. The actual story and everything is pretty solid. The series is really starting off with a bang. While I do not expect perfection this time round, like we had with season one and two, this season opener did not disappoint. I am strapped in and ready to watch.

A Decent Start to the Season.

[jp-206 · 8/10 · 12 July 2022]

I've been looking forward to season three of this stellar series since season two came to a wrap too long ago. I was wondering how well the slate of familiar actors would do now that we're 30+ years after the start of the series, but the aging makeup isn't too bad.

I was thrown off a little bit by the bad science of the hotel. I don't remember season one and season two being so cavalier with physics, but then again, we've never had a hotel in space so I guess they can do what they want. Also, even though we're well into an alternate reality, it's weird to me that they have flat screen TVs and monitors, Newton type devices, but still heavily rely on landlines and pay phones.

Overall I'm happy to see the series back and I look forward to catching up on the action.

Introducing everyone and catchup

[bobetjo · 6/10 · 11 June 2022]

The first episode of series 3 is mostly exposition and a little peril. The catchup is a mixture of redubbed news footage and newspaper front sheets. (Remember Gary Hart?) That brings us to early 1990s. Plus a little clumsy dialogue ("So we've been doing this ten years")

Spoilers follow. Some of the stalwarts are back like Poole, Cobb and Baldwin. There is a wedding at a space hotel which has a technical hitch. One would have thought there would be failsafes and easily accessible valves given the hard science pedigree of the show. But never mind, a new hero appears.

The show is what could have been if the world and especially the USA would have continued to pursue space. Series 2 had elements NASA planned to use but canceled. This series has new science discoveries like cheap nuclear fusion that still does not exist and is moving from the alternative reality to SciFi. I like that but we have to be careful new technology is not just handwaving plot devices.

Still worth watching.

Technical errors but a gripping episode

[jrameshha · 7/10 · 3 July 2022]

The cables wont fail at-least until 4Gs as the person in the episode said. And if 1.5 was used i'd even say 6Gs for the cable. The cables would've straightened out fast. And how did the command crew didn't think of other thrusters to maintain the integrity of the hull.

Yep this review is badly formatted with bad grammer but being drunk kinda adds to that.

Season opener seems to be jumping the shark

[MossMan · 3/10 · 14 June 2022]

What I liked about the premise and the first two seasons was when nice little "what-if" ideas were teased out and developed. As a fan of sci-fi realism and world-building - and as an aerospace engineer - I tried to overlook some of the more annoying soap-opera and personal-drama aspects and concentrate on how the real events, personalities, tech and concepts I knew about were being woven into an interesting story.

This first episode of season three started out a little clumsy and muddled but I kept my hopes up that the slightly awkward character re-introduction and exposition was just necessary to get the ball rolling. Unfortunately though, things took a turn for the disaster-movie worse instead. Without going into spoilers, I will just mention that every tired and predictable trope was ticked off - countdown of doom, swelling of music, heroing of heroes, trashing of engineering realities... so instead of being excited I was bored out of my mind and heading to the IMDb reviews page instead.

I remember rolling my eyes during the season two opener as well, and things certainly improved following that one, so I just hope the "drama" is dialled back a bit in subsequent episodes of this season too.

Addendum: I'm now watching season 4 and in my opinion they have un-jumped the shark in a big way! I'm happy to say I am enjoying the genuinely intriguing stories and - despite the season opener again having an "action movie" bent - so far there has been no eye rolling silliness or soap-level drama. Phew!

Bad TV Disaster Movie

[BLAlley · 4/10 · 12 June 2022]

The initial technical errors in the pilot aside, I've enjoyed the speculative nature of the show.

Sadly, Season 3 started off by dumbing down the technical aspects and hoping the audience is too stupid to notice.

There would never be a single valve on a main rotation thruster like that.

The cables would be engineered to much high standards than shown. Most likely higher than the thrusters could achieve. They also would not flop around after their initial tension release. They would quickly straighten out due to the same forces creating the simulated gravity. Even if they and the habitat were made of steel they wouldn't produce sparks, nor would they become hot enough to glow with such a short contact period.

Even if a single thruster was able to fire it wouldn't simply rotate the ring faster but push the entire station into a re-boost or de-orbit depending on its position and angle of thrust.

Even if it somehow remained in position and only accelerated the rotation, those inside would not suddenly feel heavy as the Centripetal Acceleration reached 2.0. A 200lb person at 1.25G would feel like they gained 50lbs, and 300lbs at 1.5G. At the slow rate it increased in the episode, by the time it reached 2 some of the guests would have succumbed due to their circulatory systems failing.

I hope the show runner and writers realize their error and return to science based storytelling rather than Supertrain levels of stupid, especially since they are headed to Mars. After The Martian it's not so easy to fake depictions of Mars and space exploration.

Steppin out and trippin

[osmodius · 5/10 · 15 June 2022]

Love this series !

But this episode was PAINFUL... Like there would NOT be a centrally located valve system to shut off propellant to a thruster?

Nobody with a clue about engineering would buy any of this. Normally I have no problem buying into what they do on this show. Guys! I realize you needed a "space disaster" to show the hostile turns on a dime nature of being in space but, would have been WAY better if that debris just depressurized a section of the station.

Going to stay with it as like so many recent scifi shows it has a lot to offer (not YOU Avenue Five! You still blow chunks)

Embarrassing

[ninjafightimdb · 2/10 · 18 June 2022]

So did they change up the writers and fire the science consultants for this? What dramatic insanity. I don't even know how to write this review it was so bad. And I've generally enjoyed the series. This was an episode where all scenarios, all characters, made no sense.

Everyone has a problem with the way a piece of space trash rocks a space hotel

[apaskevi-1 · 5/10 · 4 July 2022]

I want to like this show so, so, so badly. Everyone has a problem with the way a piece of space trash rocks a space hotel, and yet no one has a problem with the fact that Ed Baldwin would be roughly 66 years old when the mission to Mars begins and would take at least 3 years to get there and back, meaning Ed Baldwin returns in his 70s. Neither NASA nor the viewer seems to care about this, for some reason.

Let's talk about Ed, actually. This is the same Ed Baldwin that has had numerous, numerous failings. Like how after he learned his son died in an accident, went completely offline for several days in Jamestown while an emergency situation unfolded, and Mission Control had to cook up a solution to flash lights in Morse code just to get his attention so he responds to them. Great leadership!! All while this was happening, Ed Baldwin had taken a Russian cosmonaut hostage, risking nuclear war between USA and Russia for a personal vendetta, and intended to torture information out of the cosmonaut. It is by complete dumb luck that he gets out of this situation.

Nothing happened to him though, of course, and not only that, he is rewarded somehow in Season 2 with a prestigious position where he alone has authority over the program to find people suitable to be future astronauts (lol) That is until he gave himself the opportunity to fly the first Pathfinder mission. Must be nice. So, what happened then? Oh ya, he escalated tensions with the USSR blockade of the moon and fired nuclear warheads at his own ship. He detonated nuclear bombs in space on the dark side of the moon, as Russia was getting ready to do the same. What if Russia, seeing warheads coming their way fires back? "Who cares!" says Ed Baldwin to his crew while one of them holds a literal gun to his head because she thinks he is unhinged. We actually know he's unhinged because his feelings are hurt about his wife cheating on him. And we also know, like everyone else in NASA, that in season 1, Ed's feelings were hurt by the death of his son, so he took a cosmonaut hostage and cut communication off with the Earth for multiple days.

That's the 70 year old Ed Baldwin that Molly, another individual that has demonstrated a series of catastrophically terrible judgement, wants to lead a mission to Mars, and all anyone here wants to talk about is the way theoretical space trash might damage a theoretical space hotel.

I had hoped so, so, so badly that this season Ed Baldwin, Molly, and all the others with catastrophically terrible judgement would finally at least enjoy background story arcs, while we get some new blood and better characters that you can actually root for. I cannot believe we're in for another season of watching Ed Baldwin make the same childish, reckless decisions that he's only ever been rewarded for.

Laws of Physics? Who needs them?

[CX78-I · 1/10 · 13 August 2022]

When you make a hard sci-fi movie, please hire a physicist. The Polaris disaster is a shocking display of lack of basic physics knowledge the most flagrant being ignoring the momentum conservation law.

Typical season 3 decline...

[ecsecs-91225 · 3/10 · 15 June 2022]

No spoilers but they really dumbed it down from season 1 & 2. Being grounded in engineering concepts out the window, show relies on a less sophisticated audience that's for sure.

Start of a major decline

[michaelprescott-00547 · 4/10 · 1 September 2022]

While seasons one and two were spotty at times, they were written at a generally high level. In season three, the series suffered what its characters might call a catastrophic failure. The first episode announces this dramatic decline in quality. No, I'm not talking about technical errors, which I'm not competent to judge. I'm talking about an overly familiar disaster-movie scenario, cheesy heroics, and soap opera cliches. It's "The Towering Inferno" in orbit, and that's not a good thing.

Having watched all of season three, I can say it only gets worse from here. The subplot involving Danny Stevens is particularly stupid, and the President Wilson story becomes outright laughable. Meanwhile the astronauts lurch from one idiotic, often self-imposed disaster to the next. Maybe they should spend less time drinking and more time reviewing their user manuals.

"For All Mankind" really should have ended after two seasons. It's outlived its welcome, yet reportedly it will return with season four. I'm hoping we'll get to see Afghanistan land the first humans on the moons of Jupiter. It's about as plausible as one of the later developments in season three.

Ok, but starting to get off track a bit

[Ravelund · 5/10 · 12 June 2022]

First of all. I like For All Mankind. Specially S01.

S02 ended rely good.

This episode is not great. It has good acting and emotional impact.

My big problem is with the space-station.

A junk part hits and engine and the rocked ignites, causing the spinning of the space station to accelerate.

This again causes the gravity inside the space station to increase.

The problem is: 1. Why could the just not cut the fuel to the engine?

I would guess that the fuel thank is not directly connected to the engine.

2. It is established that the space station will break if it reaches 4Gs However it starts coming apart at 1.5 Gs ? Just because?

3. When it starts breaking apart the stabilizing cables break.

The problem is the break at 1.5 Gs the apparently does not matter because the space-station handles up to 3 gs without them.

So again they exits only to give more dread to the EVAs This again just felt comically.

For a group of people that has "mastered" space travel, they are rely bad at designing and making decisions regarding space travel.

So the series as a whole getting a bit to "womanized" Don't get me wrong the stories told in S1 was very good.

The problem is, when there are almost 70% woman stories told, it makes it hard to relate as a man.

They need to balance man and woman stories a bit better to keep the series interesting for all.

Do any of the writers know anything about space oe engineering?

[namyhk · 2/10 · 10 June 2022]

Come on. No redundancy for a propulsion component and it's control system or fuel supply?

This episode manufactured a lot of drama out of sher stupidity.

I continue to be frustrated by a great overall concept undermined by poor science and soap opera cliches.

While this series looks good and expensive enough, some one should actually hire some aerospace engineers to work on it.

An abysmal start to build on 2 great seasons

[yadaboy · 2/10 · 11 June 2022]

All the magic of the earlier episodes' writing and directing is absent in this third season opener. I suppose it will still attract a particular crowd, but I am not in that crowd, nor do I want to be. I hope they find the groove they've clearly lost.

Poor Start

[Elaphi · 1/10 · 11 June 2022]

Has to be one of the poorest showing of an established TV show since GoT

Writing is poor. Plot is poor. Really disappointed in the start of this season. Hopes are not high for what's to come.

This episode is essentially filler content. Apple has established the show and apparently no longer want to put the effort into interesting episodes. I would skip this one altogether you won't miss much.

Love This Show

[jtb44 · 5/10 · 21 July 2022]

Love it. Loved it from the first scene of the first episode. But this opening to Season 3? Dude, you wrote this? And you're happy with it?

Please get better!