The storytelling is smart and the worldbuilding world-beating, but it’s the characters’ deeply felt commitment to progress and each other that makes this come alive and soar to the stars.

For All Mankind remains ever ambitious with its fifth season, where the series makes the reflection off its alternate history mirror even stronger as the lives of everyday people get squeezed between the politicians of Mars fighting with the politicians of Earth.

Themes include the use of government propaganda on Earth to frame events on Mars in a negative light, also relevant to real-world current events. Science fiction is often at its best when it reflects the here-and-now, which “For All Mankind” has done from the start, contributing to the strength of the show’s dramatic storytelling.

Even when its narrative turns a tad staid, its profuse empathy carries the day.

Another great season of sci-fi as alternative history becomes alternative present, and reflects more of the reality we face, for better and for worse, in the world today.

It’s both understandable, given the sheer amount of things the show needs to seed for the audience, and a shame that the Season 5 premiere feels like a list of plot points needed checking off before diving into the real meat for the remaining nine episodes.

In its early run, FAM managed to intertwine its ambitious ideas and scope with the nitty-gritty of character development and relationships. Unfortunately, it slowly started to lose its grip on this. Season four, which was about how capitalism has ruined Mars, turned a little too soapy, with not as much concern for thrilling galactic adventures. Season five begins on a similar note.

Wow this is bad, unwatchable. What happened ?? It used to be fresh and interesting. Now it's as stale as a 4-day old bagel, and as tedious as watching paint dry. What a disappointment.

This season is absolutely abysmal. I cannot remember the last time a show I enjoyed so much fell off such a huge cliff. Each preceding season was always centred around a particular space mission and figuring out how to make it work was where the tension and drama drew from. The mission in this season has gotten about 20 minutes screen time total in 8 episodes so far and 95% of each episode is garbage dialogue about preachy tired tropes. This is a shame when I spent the past year looking for updates on when this season was gonna finally drop. Out of curiosity I looked up how the writing staff has changed throughout the seasons and everything now makes sense. We went from writers who previously worked on shows like TNG, DS9, Battlestar Galactica and Fargo to current writers of this season with only 2-3 previous credits (sometimes not even for writing) of garbage no one has ever heard of and one with their highest profile credit being a CW show. Such a disappointment.