— Were it not for a difference in our timelines, the title of the season 3 opening episode of “For All Mankind” might have been a spoiler.
In real life — as opposed to the alternate space history presented in the critically-acclaimed Apple TV+ series — “Polaris” is the name of a three-mission, privately-funded program intended to advance the day when humans will launch to Mars. On the show, as revealed in the first few minutes of the first episode, “Polaris” is the name of a space tourism company and its rotating space hotel in Earth orbit.
For its first two seasons, “For All Mankind” has used real space events, programs and even people to ground its science fiction storyline in reality. That might have been the case this time, too, were it not for the fact that filming on the third season wrapped five months before the SpaceX-based Polaris Program was revealed to the world. Rather, it was just a coincidence.
That happenstance, though, is still one of the few remaining connections between our timeline and the one that diverged on “For All Mankind” two years ago, when the series began with the Soviet Union beating the United States to landing a man on the moon. Whereas before, characters like Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) and Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall) took on the real missions achieved by the astronaut Thomas Stafford, offering a sense of familiarity, where season three takes them — and us, the audience — is where no one has gone before.
“That was always the intention,” said Ron D. Moore, series creator and executive producer, in an interview with collectSPACE. “The Russians get to the moon first, but then we wanted to explore what are the next steps? Let’s move forward. There was a moon base and then two moon bases, and then, bigger shuttles and then mining on the moon. We wanted to keep building on top of these achievements, so by the time you get to the third season, the history has now diverged much more broadly, such that the changes…