Apple's 'For All Mankind' tops USA Today's best TV of 2021

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  • Reply 21 of 22
    GeorgeBMacgeorgebmac Posts: 11,421member
    CarmB said:
    Again, where is this rewritten reference coming from. The rewriting exercise in regards to the moon landing is the effort of lunatics, so to speak, running around claiming the actual moon landing never happened and the footage faked. Never mind that in a pre-CGI era it would have taken a lot more time, expense, and intrigue to pull off the fake than to just go to the moon with a three-man crew. But I digress.

    For All Mankind is not a rewriting of history but rather an exercise in imagining how events could spin off in another direction entirely if the Russians had beaten the United States to the moon. The intention of the series makers is to eventually move beyond our own time period and from start to finish the entire project is a fun speculative exercise that in no way intends to alter the telling of actual history. This series is not an exercise in history telling and to view it as such is to misrepresent what is going on. It is what I see as an interesting exercise that mostly - though not entirely - has been well executed so far. Looking forward to where this is going, especially as it veers further away from events as we know them to have occurred in our collective reality. 

    Yes, rewriting history to serve an ideologic, theologic or political purpose is one form of rewrite.  But it is not limited to that.

    Perhaps you would also favor a rewriting the holocaust so that the Americans did it as an extension of our ideas on eugenics instead of the Germans?
    ... After all:  it's just an "exercise in imagining".

    Some things are best left as they were without any "exercises in imagining" (aka "rewrites").
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  • Reply 22 of 22
    "For All Mankind" -- Haven't watched it and don't plan to.

    Landing a man on the moon, despite enormous cost in energy, money and human lives, was an enormous triumph not only for the U.S. but for all of mankind:  "One tiny step for man...."  And, at the same time, the world agreed to keep space open for all without military rivalries or interventions.

    No, rewrite of that history can improve on what was accomplished there.
    The reality is far superior to any fiction.  I prefer to cherish the reality.  The hope and opportunity that it promised has shaped my life and that of others -- such as Steve Jobs who also grew up in that era where even the sky was no longer the limit.
    The reality was truly better than fiction... until it wasn't. The will to be great died in the early 70s, and it took some unbalanced and maniacally egotistical billionaire entrepreneurs 45 years to bring it back.

    But whatever you think about the past and present, FAM is an interesting and well-told story and I'm enjoying it greatly so far, even though I have terrible distrust for the creator ("Battlestar Galactica" was one of the worst f*ckups and cheats in the history of SF).
    (and it was all done with paper, pencil and slide rules (even the emergency rescue of Apollo 13) -- computers (even calculators) barely existed back then.  [...]
    Are you ignorant, or exaggerating for effect? That's false, though the computers they used certainly were primitive, and they did do a lot by hand. (In fact, computer technology was driven forward tremendously by the moon shot.)

    I am glad you are enjoying the rewrite and I trust that you are correct that it is an improvement over historical fact.  But for me, it is not a competition.  The Apollo program represents one of man's best hours and I want to cherish it and hand it down to succeeding generations just as it was without "improvement".  It wasn't just about the amazing accomplishment but also about the hope, courage, confidence and optimism for mankind that it illustrated. 

    Was I exaggerating about what they accomplished with so little (by today's standards)?  Nope!  Not a bit.  It was primarily accomplished with paper, pencil and slide rules:  computers were in their infancy back in the 60's.  A room sized computer was fed by punched cards and could not do what an iPhone does today.   But yes, the program very much advanced a number of technologies that they developed in order to do what they did.
    “The Apollo program represents one of man's best hours …”

    Let’s not forget the women who contributed as well. 



    Japhey
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