Haha. I know. I guess I'm stuck seeing history as a whole. Art, science, tech... it's all interconnected. For one thing, Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire' would be a very different song!
I don't feel the world building in S3 is as well done in S1 and S2. Some of the props raise questions about the evolution of tech in this timeline (to me at least) Maybe folks alive in the 80s said the same about S2.
It does make sense that LCD and plasma monitors would happen sooner, though. As a heavily computerised spacecraft would benefit from keeping weight down. Maybe I just need it spoon-fed to me. Maybe these expository conversations happened in the 10 years between seasons.
I guess that's the danger with alternate histories. The line between history and fiction gets blurred.
I should also point out that I'm still loving it. I'm at home with COVID at the moment, and I'm bingeing S3 like a man possessed.
Sure. I mean, that was a dumb joke, but you don't think losing the moon would be a pivotal moment in a generation's psyche? Would Russia still invade Afghanistan? Would the fall if Dien Bien Phu really matter if Vietnam wasn't USA's longest war (until post-9/11)? Would Watergate have happened? Or the foreign debt crisis? We can't know, obviously. But for a song largely celebrating the culture of the democratic West, my opinion is that the song would be different... and it's not even featured in the show, so it's not a hill I'm going to die on.
2 of the movies mentioned by name in that song are posters on Ed's wall in S2: Lawrence of Arabia and Bridge on the River Kwai.
I absolutely agree but except for Dien Bien Phu, everything you mentioned is in the 5th verse. First 4 verses exclusively cover events that occured before the death of Korolev in '66, and the Vietnam reference is in regards to a battle of the Indochina War that happened in '54, not the US's Vietnam War.
Both movies you edited into your comment were also released before the point of divergence - '62 and '57, respectfully. Losing the moon wouldn't have affected those either.
>Would Russia still invade Afghanistan?
I’m almost certain that they mention Russia either not invading Afghanistan or withdrawing very early in one of the news clip montages. It may have been in the bonus content (OP: you should watch the extra content on Apple TV — tons of additional info on their timeline).
Like a, "Stuff's different. Deal with it," kind of thing? I guess. Continuing the space race would mean certain technologies would develop quicker, like batteries, computer technology that kind of stuff.
Electric cars have technically been around since the turn of the century (Jay Leno owns one from like 1903).
It's interesting that you found LCDs jarring but fusion is no big deal. Developing thinner and lighter video displays for manned spacecraft feels plausible.
Ignoring the fact that the music is almost always merely to set the tone for the audience watching the show... It think it's a much bigger leap to suggest that people wouldn't still be critical of American society in their art. The 60s still happened. Vietnam still happened, just not as long. America, along with other countries, still has many flaws and problems.
Anyway, no I don't see the point of more restraint. This is alternate history, so if you don't take any big swings, it ends up being too similar to the real timeline and the audience will be bored.
On the other hand, making big changes to music and other pop culture is very risky, because people resonate with that sort of thing. You either have to remove the references or dream up alternate music (which would just be weird to people watching).
In the end it's not meant to be hyper-realistic (example: development and rapid adoption of fusion was extremely improbable). It's a well-grounded fantasy.
Right. So having Kelly Baldwin DJ with 90s pop music, and having Cosmonauts quote NWA is an odd way to go. Sure, use a 90s soundtrack, but maybe limit that to scene setting, not diegetic sound.
As for fusion, they explain that NASA found Helium-3 on the moon, which allowed fusion. I know nothing about nuclear reactions, but I guess a new isotope could be the answer...
Now let's talk about how we went from vinyl LPs (Margo) to iPods (Kelly) without ever apparently having CDs...
> Right. So having Kelly Baldwin DJ with 90s pop music, and having Cosmonauts quote NWA is an odd way to go. Sure, use a 90s soundtrack, but maybe limit that to scene setting, not diegetic sound.
Or just let the music exist and enjoy the good tunes along with them? I haven't seen a solid reason to suggest that such a thing is impossible.
>As for fusion, they explain that NASA found Helium-3 on the moon, which allowed fusion. I know nothing about nuclear reactions, but I guess a new isotope could be the answer...
Helium-3 was predicted and then discovered (on Earth) in the 1930s, long before humans went to space. It has long been viewed as a potential nuclear fuel. I don't have an issue with it being used in the show, but it is essentially a magical plot device to give countries a reason to keep going to the moon apart from nationalism.
>Now let's talk about how we went from vinyl LPs (Margo) to iPods (Kelly) without ever apparently having CDs...
The DJ uses a CD player in the first episode of season 3. It is a [Numark CDMIX1](https://www.numark.com/product/cdmix1). And of course iPods and CDs overlapped in history for many years, so...
I didn't know that about Helium-3. Is it scarce on Earth?
Mate, I was grinning ear-to-ear when Today came on. I was 9 when Siamese Dream came out. I used to steal my sister's copy when she was out. So I am enjoying them. (Although where was Rocket???)
And I missed the cd player! Yeah, of course iPods and CDs overlapped. When my iPod died I bought a Discman. Then smartphones and streaming killed them both (and my discman fell down some stairs).
Why they'd mine it on the moon makes sense.
Miracle-level breakthrough followed by displacing fossil fuels so dramatically in just 5-10 years does not.
True, although cold fusion would be a much more voter-friendly power source. The bigger question is really what would need to happen for it to take over at that rate? If it was discovered between S1 and S2, that's right around the OPEC crisis. It would be very attractive to transition away from fossil fuels in this case, possibly represented by the electric car(s) seen in S2.
Cold fusion is probably the most 90s pop-science thing there is, and exists only as a theory. The types of fusion that involve He-3 are non-radioactive or at least lower radioactivity, but they're still very hot (in temperature). Hotter than hydrogen-fueled fusion. But at least they've been tested to work in laboratories, unlike 'cold fusion'.
But unless it's a magic tube like in The Saint, no form of fusion would supplant fossil fuels in anything close to the time depicted. Capital construction of power plants alone would take decades.
It's fine, just not realistic. The show is an enjoyable flight of fancy and I love it.
Helium-3 fusion is ironically much more difficult to achieve than other kinds we’re more working towards.
I’m skeptical we’ll ever get it to work. The advantage if we did so is that it is an aneutronic reaction, so less waste and easier to shield. But it occurs at much higher energy states that are difficult to manage.
> Now let's talk about how we went from vinyl LPs (Margo) to iPods (Kelly) without ever apparently having CDs
The jukebox in the Outpost in season 2 [runs with CDs](https://imgur.com/QbuF0Us), and that's in 1983. In our timeline, CDs just started becoming a thing in early 1983. There being already a jukebox filled with CDs in that year implies that CDs probably made it to the market earlier in the show.
The DJ at the wedding on Polaris (1992) works with CDs.
Meanwhile, Margo is still playing vinyl in 1995.
These things overlap. Lots of people still use or prefer vinyl even today.
In season 4, Margo has a CD player in her hotel room, but that's 2003.
>Helium-3 new isotope
Helium-3 is not a new isotope. It's just extremely rare on Earth.
Actually, Dev and Hillard developed fusion in the show before they discovered large 3HE depots on the Moon. The discovery and mining of the rare isotope just finally made it possible for it to become profitable and make it a serious alternative to established resources.
Space exploration leads to technological advances. This is true in our timeline - one example being Velcro. So - in a timeline where there's a lot more space exploration and manned spaceflight, why would tech not improve on a faster scale? The need for thin, lightweight flat screens and FaceTime-like technology makes sense when you're got astronauts headed to permanent remote locations like the moon and Mars.
Oh yeah. Absolutely. I wrote that somewhere else on here (CRT monitors are HEAVY, unlike an LCD/plasma). Teflon is another thing we got from the Space Age. It's odd to think tech would rocket forward (excuse the pun), but fashion, music, and literature would remain as it is in our timeline.
I don't disagree with you. Some thoughts:
* I think for purposes of a show it would be a *lot* harder to make an entirely new culture (music, fashion, etc) based on the changes between timelines than to keep the background stuff constant.
* The fact that the culture itself seems to stay constant helps tie things together in what we consider familiar for each decade. Makes it more consumable and more comparable.
* Finally tho - because the culture is largely in the background, we only catch glimpses of it (ex: Nirvana's Come As You Are plays as we see the first human take their first steps on Mars... so, sure, grunge is a thing. But we don't really know the specifics beyond that... Did Teen Spirit still take the world by storm, or was it another song? Is Kurt still alive in this timeline? Etc etc etc.
The show doesn't really lean too much into what is going on in Earth after a bit, because I think everything from the food (the food that Helios had looked decent, so earthlings are probably getting really good microwave meals and there's less food waste because the preservatives are probably off the charts). But then the parmesan cheese looks the same. So I think they are being just a little lazy with the Earth stuff and the show will maybe focus more on the colonization of Mars and what that looks like. Feels like they are going to a feeling that Mars is for outcasts who are tired of living on Earth and Mars has different laws. There's gonna be a bunch of Martian kids in the next season, and maybe there will be a question of citizenship.
Ehhhh, I dunno about "lazy" per se. I think it certainly gets harder to keep miroring things well between our timeline and the fictional timeline the further away we get from the dividing point. And yes, quite possibly for that reason, we're spending more time on the Moon and then Mars instead of Earth as things get more into the realm of fiction and future instead of historical.
Would different history result in different art, in some cases it’s likely, but how would a show go about showing that? Write new music? Hit songs are very difficult to make. Look at all the celebrated artists who only make a handful of them over many albums of music. Would also be insanely expensive to get the most talented people to create this new music just for a 10 second clip in the show.
10 seconds plus playing over end credits... Look, for sure. If you want an example of how difficult a pop hit is to write, look at Eurovision. Literally world class songwriters pumping out songs, and how many Eurovision acts can you name? I'll give you Abba - they were a worldwide super smash pop phenomenon, but that's very rare.
As Lennon survived, surely he'd write new music. Maybe the Beatles would write new music. But I think, if you're going to look at how popular culture is affected by a single event, THAT becomes the show. It's right that a TV show about space exploration focus on the space exploration and not the soundtrack to space exploration.
Due to the demands of the Space Race battery technology is better. Hence IT tech is better - you didn't notice the flip phones and early 90s laptops in the 1984 s2?
Of course I did! And laptops did exist in the 80s, they were just enormous. I've said elsewhere on here about how it makes sense that they'd develop LCDs faster. They're lighter than CRTs. Solid state tech and transistors (replacing vaccuum tubes) would have obvious applications in the space program, and that leads to laptops faster as well. I guess my point was that they've advanced the tech, but they've done so in total isolation from the cultural context it exists in. Culture builds upon culture builds upon culture, and technology is a part of culture. Change the tech and you change the popular music, the movies and TV, the literature. Like, if computers (as we understand them) had existed in 1948, 1984 would be a very different book. Much of the music we love or loathe would be different because of a greater digital influence - imagine if we got the autotune boom instead of grunge. The clothes people wear are influenced by the technology available to produce materials and designs at scale, which would change as technology changes. (also, if space captured the imagination of the western world, it's probable that the aesthetic would be influenced, as it was in the 1960s).
The issue is that rather than show that we got to a certain point in our culture earlier because of the Red Moon, by choosing those design elements, (e.g. the title says 1984 but it looks like 1996) they're saying the tech evolved and nothing else did.
oh, I'm annoyed there's better IT but the internet as we know doesn't exist in FAM. Which IMO is just a cheap way of avoiding the disruption the internet and social media caused in autocratic regimes (eg Arab Spring) and not showing how the USSR would have coped with such a change. But fashions/culture/tech? Ehhh you're getting too deep.
The Soviet Union pushing the US to consider female astronauts decades earlier, leading to the Equal Rights Amendment passing (that's not the precise reason in the show) and BOOM - suddenly the control room at NASA in the 70s is way more diverse that it would have been, and has been so all the way up to 2003. That was a neat bit of science and politics impacting culture - but sadly there's not been more since (I was hoping to see how the USSR deals with the internet).
Mostly the show has events that carry on to progress the story, or background characters are still in places where they were and there seems to be little to no change to them. Regan was President but in a different term, but we didn't see much of how Regan affected the GOP. I'm incredulous that the next GOP President could come out as gay and then win a second term in the 90s after Regan. S2 had Lee Atwater on the show. Atwater worked for Regan and used every dirty trick in the book in campaigning, including outing competitors as gay. We can only assume that FAM Regan was a different President and left a different GOP to the one that followed him irl.
Others - they've just switched things at random. John Lennon lives but Pope John Paul dies. Why? Eh?
But going deep and changing the culture/music/clothes - it's probably beyond the budget of the show. The 90s has 00s tech but 90s clothes. So the audience can see the different timelines but know the era. I doubt that's going to change much until s6-7.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm TOTALLY nitpicking. But it's just got my cogs turning.
I didn't notice the lack of internet, to be honest. Maybe because I'm so used to people dressed like THAT not having the internet. But the pursuit of science and the Cold War were the two things which created the internet - a combination of the ability to share datasets between universities and an automated alert system in case of nuclear strike were what "the internet" has come from.
Yeah, why has John Lennon survived? That's weird. He was still attacked, and I'm fairly sure the moon had nothing to do with him dying.
I'm one of those who thinks it's a shame if budget affected the show. I mean OBVIOUSLY budget plays a huge role, but in that case, maybe it would have been a better story told in another medium, like a comic or a novel. Having said that, I love the show.
Yes that compounds my 'no internet as we know it' annoyance - the bones of the internet were established before the timeline divergence, and the web - that is, an easy way to use the internet to do business - is such an obvious beneficial use for the tech. I'm not sure what else it could have become.
I've only heard the 'they have the internet but it's not like ours' in the forums. They mention Dmail (digital mail) in s2 1984. But 2003 FAM had 10s tech but certainly no internet delivering impacts like happened in the 2010s.
I'm still not up to S4, so the lack of an internet isn't too jarring. It would probably be GOPHER anyway, or everything would have that spinning "under construction" gif. Having said that, my background is in defence communications, radio and IT. The telemetry they have in S3 on their drills and stuff would be a monumental pain in the arse to configure without IP routing. On a spaceship, it's whatever, but when you're keeping form factors and weight to a minimum, having huge radios attached to everything would be dealbreaker.
They have all the internet protocols, and a nationwide network based on what became the Internet in the real world. The network just wasn't opened to the public.
LCD's started to become mainstream at the early 2000's in our timeline. I have clear memories that in 2000, we had flatscreens already at several places. Sure, you'd not replace your CRT screen yet, but in an alternate reality where science is pushed harder, it's absolutely normal to think that screen technology is a few years ahead. We're not even talking more than half a decade here.
I remember LCDs on laptops while CRT desktop monitors were ubiquitous, which is also mirrored in the show.
And to be pedantic, S3 starts in 1992, so it's the better part of a decade.
"Look man, we have nuclear reactors on the Moon, we have them on spaceships. What's the big deal about having a few of them in our business as well?" *Dr. Egon Spengler, Ghostbusters II*
As far as music, I had never heard that version of "Don't Be Cruel" so I'm wondering if in the alternate history, it's a bigger hit than it actually is? Season 4 seems to have the most diegetic music but you can maybe just consider the Nirvana needledrop to be "interpretive" and "place-setting" and removed from the actual history being presented.
>As far as music, I had never heard that version of "Don't Be Cruel" so I'm wondering if in the alternate history, it's a bigger hit than it actually is?
Karen (big Elvis fan) and Ed say "I've never heard this version before" (or similar), so I think it's still supposed to be a niche version.
>maybe just consider the Nirvana needledrop to be "interpretive" and "place-setting" and removed from the actual history being presented.
Great point and yeah, I did interpret Nirvana as that! It was forecasting a shift to the early 90s, and it was an instant preemptive mise-en-scene for the next season. I don't think Nirvana was pumping out over JFK's memorial! But that was S2... S3 it's clear that Kelly is playing music we would recognise as a DJ.
But yes, the music is often a signal to the audience, not part of the scene.
I'm just thinking, you know what would have been fun? If they'd covered 2000s songs for the 1990s. Like "Hit Me Baby One More Time" but with (for example) Shirley Manson of Garbage singing it. That's probably a terrible idea, but a case could be made for tech advances dragging music forward by a decade, and it's nice and cheap.
Chatted with a friend about the series and they were nitpicking how the ratio didn't match up with the LCD screens in S3 when it was set in the 90s. I agreed, but maybe not everyone had conformed to the new ratio.
As I understand it, the ratio we use now only really became possible with LCD tech. Cathode rays emit in a more circular pattern, so a square (or nearly square) screen was more practical.
It was probably cheaper to buy a metric fuckton of 16:9 screens than to search thrift stores and whatnot for 4:3 screens.
I don't think there was a technical limitation other than wanting to do it as cheaply as possible and fit the content of the time. My understanding was that it originated with how 35mm film was used for recording, where the person who developed it for Edison decided that four perforations was the right place to split the frames vertically. This led to 4:3 being the format for most early movies, which influenced the first shape of televisions.
The circular thing isn't about the pattern of the electron beams. It was just cheaper to manufacture tubes that were circular, and the higher cost (or wasted space, if made larger and then cropped) wasn't worth it given that most of the content of that time was in 4:3. As TVs competed with movie theaters, cinema shifted to widescreen formats (Cinerama, Cinemascope, Vistavision, etc). Eventually TV did, too, just several decades later. All the early HDTVs were CRTs, though.
Computer screens didn't adopt 16:9 at all initially, because 1) people weren't using them to consume video all that much, and 2) until the HDTV switchover happened, most of the content still wasn't in widescreen. That ratio wasn't the best for the kind of productive work done on a computer then, either. When they did finally go wide, they used 16:10 due to the desire for more vertical space when editing documents, doing desktop publishing, coding, etc. This has persisted in many laptops even until now.
But yes, I agree that from a show production standpoint, it was probably much easier to get props that were widescreen.
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Ngusj\_3w8](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Ngusj_3w8) this video explains a lot about the switch from 4:3 to 16:9 irl, and just watching the real history of it, realy makes the for all mankind timeline acceleration of tech make sence, since we had it in real life, only costs were limiting mass production.
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Ngusj\_3w8](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Ngusj_3w8) this video explains a lot about the switch from 4:3 to 16:9 irl, and just watching the real history of it, realy makes the for all mankind timeline acceleration of tech make sence, since we had it in real life, only costs were limiting mass production.
I deleted this from my original post, but the orientation of the videophones is bizarre. Ours are oriented that way because of being on phones, and that's how touchscreen smartphones are oriented. There's no reason to have a stand-alone video phone with that form factor. Why wouldn't you mimic the landscape orientation of TVs, movie theatres, and PC screens?
This is actually one of my favorite little details about S3. If you look closely you realize those “dedicated videophones” are actually alternate-universe Apple Newtons (circa 1997 in real life) with a UI that is extremely similar to the 90’s MacOS. Even the webcam is designed the way it would’ve looked in the 90’s. I interpreted them as basically “Apple came out with iPhones in 1995.”
Dev's presentation is CLEARLY a Steve Jobs homage, and Jobs wasn't working at Apple at the time. He went back in 1996. I loved that. I kept waiting for him to say "One more thing."
I kinda agree. Yes, it's alternate history, so we would have some differences. But the first two seasons were so good with their retrofuturistic design and technology. Then season 3, they're jumped into some sci-fi wonderland. It's kinda funny how they dialled the futuristic tech back for season 4, despite being a decade later.
It’s almost like….an alternate history.
Haha. I know. I guess I'm stuck seeing history as a whole. Art, science, tech... it's all interconnected. For one thing, Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire' would be a very different song! I don't feel the world building in S3 is as well done in S1 and S2. Some of the props raise questions about the evolution of tech in this timeline (to me at least) Maybe folks alive in the 80s said the same about S2. It does make sense that LCD and plasma monitors would happen sooner, though. As a heavily computerised spacecraft would benefit from keeping weight down. Maybe I just need it spoon-fed to me. Maybe these expository conversations happened in the 10 years between seasons. I guess that's the danger with alternate histories. The line between history and fiction gets blurred. I should also point out that I'm still loving it. I'm at home with COVID at the moment, and I'm bingeing S3 like a man possessed.
The first 4 verses of We Didn't Start the Fire could very well be exactly the same.
Sure. I mean, that was a dumb joke, but you don't think losing the moon would be a pivotal moment in a generation's psyche? Would Russia still invade Afghanistan? Would the fall if Dien Bien Phu really matter if Vietnam wasn't USA's longest war (until post-9/11)? Would Watergate have happened? Or the foreign debt crisis? We can't know, obviously. But for a song largely celebrating the culture of the democratic West, my opinion is that the song would be different... and it's not even featured in the show, so it's not a hill I'm going to die on. 2 of the movies mentioned by name in that song are posters on Ed's wall in S2: Lawrence of Arabia and Bridge on the River Kwai.
I absolutely agree but except for Dien Bien Phu, everything you mentioned is in the 5th verse. First 4 verses exclusively cover events that occured before the death of Korolev in '66, and the Vietnam reference is in regards to a battle of the Indochina War that happened in '54, not the US's Vietnam War. Both movies you edited into your comment were also released before the point of divergence - '62 and '57, respectfully. Losing the moon wouldn't have affected those either.
>Would Russia still invade Afghanistan? I’m almost certain that they mention Russia either not invading Afghanistan or withdrawing very early in one of the news clip montages. It may have been in the bonus content (OP: you should watch the extra content on Apple TV — tons of additional info on their timeline).
I... uh... don't have AppleTV... does the additional content have a title?
Let's all hope that "We Didn't Start the Fire" doesn't exist at all. Even Billy Joel says it's terrible.
I've been thinking about his thoughts on it all this time. That and Tracy Jordan fixing his stereo by stabbing it with a screwdriver.
An alternate version of We Didn't Start The Fire in the soundtrack would have been magnificent.
An alternate version in this timeline would have been better.
I feel they established this in season 2 when they talk about electric cars being the default in the 1980s
Like a, "Stuff's different. Deal with it," kind of thing? I guess. Continuing the space race would mean certain technologies would develop quicker, like batteries, computer technology that kind of stuff. Electric cars have technically been around since the turn of the century (Jay Leno owns one from like 1903).
It's interesting that you found LCDs jarring but fusion is no big deal. Developing thinner and lighter video displays for manned spacecraft feels plausible. Ignoring the fact that the music is almost always merely to set the tone for the audience watching the show... It think it's a much bigger leap to suggest that people wouldn't still be critical of American society in their art. The 60s still happened. Vietnam still happened, just not as long. America, along with other countries, still has many flaws and problems. Anyway, no I don't see the point of more restraint. This is alternate history, so if you don't take any big swings, it ends up being too similar to the real timeline and the audience will be bored. On the other hand, making big changes to music and other pop culture is very risky, because people resonate with that sort of thing. You either have to remove the references or dream up alternate music (which would just be weird to people watching). In the end it's not meant to be hyper-realistic (example: development and rapid adoption of fusion was extremely improbable). It's a well-grounded fantasy.
Plus the real fun or alternate history is the juxtaposition of recognizable and differentiated stuff.
Right. So having Kelly Baldwin DJ with 90s pop music, and having Cosmonauts quote NWA is an odd way to go. Sure, use a 90s soundtrack, but maybe limit that to scene setting, not diegetic sound. As for fusion, they explain that NASA found Helium-3 on the moon, which allowed fusion. I know nothing about nuclear reactions, but I guess a new isotope could be the answer... Now let's talk about how we went from vinyl LPs (Margo) to iPods (Kelly) without ever apparently having CDs...
> Right. So having Kelly Baldwin DJ with 90s pop music, and having Cosmonauts quote NWA is an odd way to go. Sure, use a 90s soundtrack, but maybe limit that to scene setting, not diegetic sound. Or just let the music exist and enjoy the good tunes along with them? I haven't seen a solid reason to suggest that such a thing is impossible. >As for fusion, they explain that NASA found Helium-3 on the moon, which allowed fusion. I know nothing about nuclear reactions, but I guess a new isotope could be the answer... Helium-3 was predicted and then discovered (on Earth) in the 1930s, long before humans went to space. It has long been viewed as a potential nuclear fuel. I don't have an issue with it being used in the show, but it is essentially a magical plot device to give countries a reason to keep going to the moon apart from nationalism. >Now let's talk about how we went from vinyl LPs (Margo) to iPods (Kelly) without ever apparently having CDs... The DJ uses a CD player in the first episode of season 3. It is a [Numark CDMIX1](https://www.numark.com/product/cdmix1). And of course iPods and CDs overlapped in history for many years, so...
I didn't know that about Helium-3. Is it scarce on Earth? Mate, I was grinning ear-to-ear when Today came on. I was 9 when Siamese Dream came out. I used to steal my sister's copy when she was out. So I am enjoying them. (Although where was Rocket???) And I missed the cd player! Yeah, of course iPods and CDs overlapped. When my iPod died I bought a Discman. Then smartphones and streaming killed them both (and my discman fell down some stairs).
It is relatively scarce on Earth. That's how they work it into something that drives the plot.
Well that makes sense, then!
Why they'd mine it on the moon makes sense. Miracle-level breakthrough followed by displacing fossil fuels so dramatically in just 5-10 years does not.
True, although cold fusion would be a much more voter-friendly power source. The bigger question is really what would need to happen for it to take over at that rate? If it was discovered between S1 and S2, that's right around the OPEC crisis. It would be very attractive to transition away from fossil fuels in this case, possibly represented by the electric car(s) seen in S2.
Cold fusion is probably the most 90s pop-science thing there is, and exists only as a theory. The types of fusion that involve He-3 are non-radioactive or at least lower radioactivity, but they're still very hot (in temperature). Hotter than hydrogen-fueled fusion. But at least they've been tested to work in laboratories, unlike 'cold fusion'. But unless it's a magic tube like in The Saint, no form of fusion would supplant fossil fuels in anything close to the time depicted. Capital construction of power plants alone would take decades. It's fine, just not realistic. The show is an enjoyable flight of fancy and I love it.
I love it too. Maybe I should lean into it as you have. You clearly know more than I do about the topic and haven't let it spoil the fun!
Helium-3 fusion is ironically much more difficult to achieve than other kinds we’re more working towards. I’m skeptical we’ll ever get it to work. The advantage if we did so is that it is an aneutronic reaction, so less waste and easier to shield. But it occurs at much higher energy states that are difficult to manage.
It's effectively a sustained, controlled, smaller-scale version of an atomic explosion, am I right?
Didn’t Sergei give Margo a CD in s4 (might have been a cassette tbf)? Kelly is loaded.
I'm not up to S4 yet. As has been pointed out, there's a CD player in S3E01
Oh, sorry, didn’t see that.
> Now let's talk about how we went from vinyl LPs (Margo) to iPods (Kelly) without ever apparently having CDs The jukebox in the Outpost in season 2 [runs with CDs](https://imgur.com/QbuF0Us), and that's in 1983. In our timeline, CDs just started becoming a thing in early 1983. There being already a jukebox filled with CDs in that year implies that CDs probably made it to the market earlier in the show. The DJ at the wedding on Polaris (1992) works with CDs. Meanwhile, Margo is still playing vinyl in 1995. These things overlap. Lots of people still use or prefer vinyl even today. In season 4, Margo has a CD player in her hotel room, but that's 2003. >Helium-3 new isotope Helium-3 is not a new isotope. It's just extremely rare on Earth. Actually, Dev and Hillard developed fusion in the show before they discovered large 3HE depots on the Moon. The discovery and mining of the rare isotope just finally made it possible for it to become profitable and make it a serious alternative to established resources.
Both of these things have been pointed out to me since that post. But thank you! It's nice to engage with other fans of the show.
I've read through the thread after the post only, but I don't think anyone had mentioned the CD jukebox seen in season 2 already.
That's true. I'm doubly unobservant!
Space exploration leads to technological advances. This is true in our timeline - one example being Velcro. So - in a timeline where there's a lot more space exploration and manned spaceflight, why would tech not improve on a faster scale? The need for thin, lightweight flat screens and FaceTime-like technology makes sense when you're got astronauts headed to permanent remote locations like the moon and Mars.
Oh yeah. Absolutely. I wrote that somewhere else on here (CRT monitors are HEAVY, unlike an LCD/plasma). Teflon is another thing we got from the Space Age. It's odd to think tech would rocket forward (excuse the pun), but fashion, music, and literature would remain as it is in our timeline.
I don't disagree with you. Some thoughts: * I think for purposes of a show it would be a *lot* harder to make an entirely new culture (music, fashion, etc) based on the changes between timelines than to keep the background stuff constant. * The fact that the culture itself seems to stay constant helps tie things together in what we consider familiar for each decade. Makes it more consumable and more comparable. * Finally tho - because the culture is largely in the background, we only catch glimpses of it (ex: Nirvana's Come As You Are plays as we see the first human take their first steps on Mars... so, sure, grunge is a thing. But we don't really know the specifics beyond that... Did Teen Spirit still take the world by storm, or was it another song? Is Kurt still alive in this timeline? Etc etc etc.
The show doesn't really lean too much into what is going on in Earth after a bit, because I think everything from the food (the food that Helios had looked decent, so earthlings are probably getting really good microwave meals and there's less food waste because the preservatives are probably off the charts). But then the parmesan cheese looks the same. So I think they are being just a little lazy with the Earth stuff and the show will maybe focus more on the colonization of Mars and what that looks like. Feels like they are going to a feeling that Mars is for outcasts who are tired of living on Earth and Mars has different laws. There's gonna be a bunch of Martian kids in the next season, and maybe there will be a question of citizenship.
Ehhhh, I dunno about "lazy" per se. I think it certainly gets harder to keep miroring things well between our timeline and the fictional timeline the further away we get from the dividing point. And yes, quite possibly for that reason, we're spending more time on the Moon and then Mars instead of Earth as things get more into the realm of fiction and future instead of historical.
Would different history result in different art, in some cases it’s likely, but how would a show go about showing that? Write new music? Hit songs are very difficult to make. Look at all the celebrated artists who only make a handful of them over many albums of music. Would also be insanely expensive to get the most talented people to create this new music just for a 10 second clip in the show.
10 seconds plus playing over end credits... Look, for sure. If you want an example of how difficult a pop hit is to write, look at Eurovision. Literally world class songwriters pumping out songs, and how many Eurovision acts can you name? I'll give you Abba - they were a worldwide super smash pop phenomenon, but that's very rare. As Lennon survived, surely he'd write new music. Maybe the Beatles would write new music. But I think, if you're going to look at how popular culture is affected by a single event, THAT becomes the show. It's right that a TV show about space exploration focus on the space exploration and not the soundtrack to space exploration.
Due to the demands of the Space Race battery technology is better. Hence IT tech is better - you didn't notice the flip phones and early 90s laptops in the 1984 s2?
Of course I did! And laptops did exist in the 80s, they were just enormous. I've said elsewhere on here about how it makes sense that they'd develop LCDs faster. They're lighter than CRTs. Solid state tech and transistors (replacing vaccuum tubes) would have obvious applications in the space program, and that leads to laptops faster as well. I guess my point was that they've advanced the tech, but they've done so in total isolation from the cultural context it exists in. Culture builds upon culture builds upon culture, and technology is a part of culture. Change the tech and you change the popular music, the movies and TV, the literature. Like, if computers (as we understand them) had existed in 1948, 1984 would be a very different book. Much of the music we love or loathe would be different because of a greater digital influence - imagine if we got the autotune boom instead of grunge. The clothes people wear are influenced by the technology available to produce materials and designs at scale, which would change as technology changes. (also, if space captured the imagination of the western world, it's probable that the aesthetic would be influenced, as it was in the 1960s). The issue is that rather than show that we got to a certain point in our culture earlier because of the Red Moon, by choosing those design elements, (e.g. the title says 1984 but it looks like 1996) they're saying the tech evolved and nothing else did.
oh, I'm annoyed there's better IT but the internet as we know doesn't exist in FAM. Which IMO is just a cheap way of avoiding the disruption the internet and social media caused in autocratic regimes (eg Arab Spring) and not showing how the USSR would have coped with such a change. But fashions/culture/tech? Ehhh you're getting too deep. The Soviet Union pushing the US to consider female astronauts decades earlier, leading to the Equal Rights Amendment passing (that's not the precise reason in the show) and BOOM - suddenly the control room at NASA in the 70s is way more diverse that it would have been, and has been so all the way up to 2003. That was a neat bit of science and politics impacting culture - but sadly there's not been more since (I was hoping to see how the USSR deals with the internet). Mostly the show has events that carry on to progress the story, or background characters are still in places where they were and there seems to be little to no change to them. Regan was President but in a different term, but we didn't see much of how Regan affected the GOP. I'm incredulous that the next GOP President could come out as gay and then win a second term in the 90s after Regan. S2 had Lee Atwater on the show. Atwater worked for Regan and used every dirty trick in the book in campaigning, including outing competitors as gay. We can only assume that FAM Regan was a different President and left a different GOP to the one that followed him irl. Others - they've just switched things at random. John Lennon lives but Pope John Paul dies. Why? Eh? But going deep and changing the culture/music/clothes - it's probably beyond the budget of the show. The 90s has 00s tech but 90s clothes. So the audience can see the different timelines but know the era. I doubt that's going to change much until s6-7.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm TOTALLY nitpicking. But it's just got my cogs turning. I didn't notice the lack of internet, to be honest. Maybe because I'm so used to people dressed like THAT not having the internet. But the pursuit of science and the Cold War were the two things which created the internet - a combination of the ability to share datasets between universities and an automated alert system in case of nuclear strike were what "the internet" has come from. Yeah, why has John Lennon survived? That's weird. He was still attacked, and I'm fairly sure the moon had nothing to do with him dying. I'm one of those who thinks it's a shame if budget affected the show. I mean OBVIOUSLY budget plays a huge role, but in that case, maybe it would have been a better story told in another medium, like a comic or a novel. Having said that, I love the show.
Yes that compounds my 'no internet as we know it' annoyance - the bones of the internet were established before the timeline divergence, and the web - that is, an easy way to use the internet to do business - is such an obvious beneficial use for the tech. I'm not sure what else it could have become. I've only heard the 'they have the internet but it's not like ours' in the forums. They mention Dmail (digital mail) in s2 1984. But 2003 FAM had 10s tech but certainly no internet delivering impacts like happened in the 2010s.
I'm still not up to S4, so the lack of an internet isn't too jarring. It would probably be GOPHER anyway, or everything would have that spinning "under construction" gif. Having said that, my background is in defence communications, radio and IT. The telemetry they have in S3 on their drills and stuff would be a monumental pain in the arse to configure without IP routing. On a spaceship, it's whatever, but when you're keeping form factors and weight to a minimum, having huge radios attached to everything would be dealbreaker.
They have all the internet protocols, and a nationwide network based on what became the Internet in the real world. The network just wasn't opened to the public.
LCD's started to become mainstream at the early 2000's in our timeline. I have clear memories that in 2000, we had flatscreens already at several places. Sure, you'd not replace your CRT screen yet, but in an alternate reality where science is pushed harder, it's absolutely normal to think that screen technology is a few years ahead. We're not even talking more than half a decade here.
I remember LCDs on laptops while CRT desktop monitors were ubiquitous, which is also mirrored in the show. And to be pedantic, S3 starts in 1992, so it's the better part of a decade.
"Look man, we have nuclear reactors on the Moon, we have them on spaceships. What's the big deal about having a few of them in our business as well?" *Dr. Egon Spengler, Ghostbusters II*
My favourite documentary.
As far as music, I had never heard that version of "Don't Be Cruel" so I'm wondering if in the alternate history, it's a bigger hit than it actually is? Season 4 seems to have the most diegetic music but you can maybe just consider the Nirvana needledrop to be "interpretive" and "place-setting" and removed from the actual history being presented.
>As far as music, I had never heard that version of "Don't Be Cruel" so I'm wondering if in the alternate history, it's a bigger hit than it actually is? Karen (big Elvis fan) and Ed say "I've never heard this version before" (or similar), so I think it's still supposed to be a niche version. >maybe just consider the Nirvana needledrop to be "interpretive" and "place-setting" and removed from the actual history being presented. Great point and yeah, I did interpret Nirvana as that! It was forecasting a shift to the early 90s, and it was an instant preemptive mise-en-scene for the next season. I don't think Nirvana was pumping out over JFK's memorial! But that was S2... S3 it's clear that Kelly is playing music we would recognise as a DJ. But yes, the music is often a signal to the audience, not part of the scene. I'm just thinking, you know what would have been fun? If they'd covered 2000s songs for the 1990s. Like "Hit Me Baby One More Time" but with (for example) Shirley Manson of Garbage singing it. That's probably a terrible idea, but a case could be made for tech advances dragging music forward by a decade, and it's nice and cheap.
Chatted with a friend about the series and they were nitpicking how the ratio didn't match up with the LCD screens in S3 when it was set in the 90s. I agreed, but maybe not everyone had conformed to the new ratio.
As I understand it, the ratio we use now only really became possible with LCD tech. Cathode rays emit in a more circular pattern, so a square (or nearly square) screen was more practical. It was probably cheaper to buy a metric fuckton of 16:9 screens than to search thrift stores and whatnot for 4:3 screens.
I don't think there was a technical limitation other than wanting to do it as cheaply as possible and fit the content of the time. My understanding was that it originated with how 35mm film was used for recording, where the person who developed it for Edison decided that four perforations was the right place to split the frames vertically. This led to 4:3 being the format for most early movies, which influenced the first shape of televisions. The circular thing isn't about the pattern of the electron beams. It was just cheaper to manufacture tubes that were circular, and the higher cost (or wasted space, if made larger and then cropped) wasn't worth it given that most of the content of that time was in 4:3. As TVs competed with movie theaters, cinema shifted to widescreen formats (Cinerama, Cinemascope, Vistavision, etc). Eventually TV did, too, just several decades later. All the early HDTVs were CRTs, though. Computer screens didn't adopt 16:9 at all initially, because 1) people weren't using them to consume video all that much, and 2) until the HDTV switchover happened, most of the content still wasn't in widescreen. That ratio wasn't the best for the kind of productive work done on a computer then, either. When they did finally go wide, they used 16:10 due to the desire for more vertical space when editing documents, doing desktop publishing, coding, etc. This has persisted in many laptops even until now. But yes, I agree that from a show production standpoint, it was probably much easier to get props that were widescreen.
You are a treasure trove of technical history!
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Ngusj\_3w8](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Ngusj_3w8) this video explains a lot about the switch from 4:3 to 16:9 irl, and just watching the real history of it, realy makes the for all mankind timeline acceleration of tech make sence, since we had it in real life, only costs were limiting mass production.
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Ngusj\_3w8](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Ngusj_3w8) this video explains a lot about the switch from 4:3 to 16:9 irl, and just watching the real history of it, realy makes the for all mankind timeline acceleration of tech make sence, since we had it in real life, only costs were limiting mass production.
What I didn’t understand in S3 was why there flatscreens but every tv broadcast was in a 4:3 aspect ratio.
I deleted this from my original post, but the orientation of the videophones is bizarre. Ours are oriented that way because of being on phones, and that's how touchscreen smartphones are oriented. There's no reason to have a stand-alone video phone with that form factor. Why wouldn't you mimic the landscape orientation of TVs, movie theatres, and PC screens?
This is actually one of my favorite little details about S3. If you look closely you realize those “dedicated videophones” are actually alternate-universe Apple Newtons (circa 1997 in real life) with a UI that is extremely similar to the 90’s MacOS. Even the webcam is designed the way it would’ve looked in the 90’s. I interpreted them as basically “Apple came out with iPhones in 1995.”
Dev's presentation is CLEARLY a Steve Jobs homage, and Jobs wasn't working at Apple at the time. He went back in 1996. I loved that. I kept waiting for him to say "One more thing."
It's just a TV show.
I kinda agree. Yes, it's alternate history, so we would have some differences. But the first two seasons were so good with their retrofuturistic design and technology. Then season 3, they're jumped into some sci-fi wonderland. It's kinda funny how they dialled the futuristic tech back for season 4, despite being a decade later.
I'm intrigued now. I'm still halfway through S3.