Does a space themed TV show have to be an astronaut soap opera to be mainstream?

[CmdrShep2183]

I am enjoying "The Expanse" and I am excited for "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" but it was a alternate history soap opera on Apple TV that has ignited my interest in real life space exploration and space science. Before COVID hit I watched the trailer and dismissed it as another astronaut wives club style soap opera but during the quarantine I decided to check it out due to curiosity and boredom.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq6Zrp632Y4

It was better than I expected. First three episodes were slow but it picked up once it gets to the training of the female astronauts.

Thanks to this show I am much more interested in NASA, the history of spaceflight, and space exploration. Before this show I forgot NASA were working hard developing new spacecraft and probes. It became all too easy to think America had given up on human spaceflight.

I am excited for "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" but for a show to get the mainstream excited for science and space travel would it have to be an astronaut soap opera without any aliens or lasers? Do TV viewers still think of spaceships and aliens as "childish"?

[Psyren]

It's an okay premise but (for me) hardly worth signing up for yet another streaming service.

"What if the Russians beat us putting a man on the moon, so somebody had the idea of reclaiming our spot in the space race by putting a woman there first" is a fine starting point for a show, but I can probably guess what most of the main plot beats would be just from that sentence, and the trailer isn't doing much to convince me that my guesses are particularly far off.

As for why the more fantastical forms of sci-fi/fantasy are capturing the zeitgeist rather than historical fiction - I can only speculate. I imagine at least part of it is due to the escapism they provide from a very depressing real-world state of affairs (year 2 of global pandemic etc.)

[Cikomyr2]

It's an okay premise but (for me) hardly worth signing up for yet another streaming service.

"What if the Russians beat us putting a man on the moon, so somebody had the idea of reclaiming our spot in the space race by putting a woman there first" is a fine starting point for a show, but I can probably guess what most of the main plot beats would be just from that sentence, and the trailer isn't doing much to convince me that my guesses are particularly far off.

As for why the more fantastical forms of sci-fi/fantasy are capturing the zeitgeist rather than historical fiction - I can only speculate. I imagine at least part of it is due to the escapism they provide from a very depressing real-world state of affairs (year 2 of global pandemic etc.)

I have finished the 1st season, and you don't have it exactly right. The Americans' goal is to move the goalpost and claim the real race is about having the first manned settlement on the moon rather than the 1st man on the moon. The plot of making women astronaut is spurred by something different.


The "making women astronaut" is actually in reaction to the Soviet's 2nd mission to the moon having a woman cosmonaut. That very episode had the americans feeling super progressive for having a woman in the control center, and the Soviets basically 1-upped them with having actual women astronaut.

so to save face, the Nixon administration pressured the NASA leadership in having women astronauts, which kick-starts a whole new feminist equality movement

All in all, the show is 40% about breaking new frontiers scientifically and socially, and 60% about the character of the people who participate in the space program. Be they mere mission control operators or the actual astronauts. It's about who are these people, what makes them tick, what kind of boundaries they build around them when they can be sent in super dangerous missions while the nation is looking at them with a magnifying lense and in the midst of anti-soviet paranoia.

Warning: since it focuses on character, there are quite a few tearjerker moments. But overall, the story is inspirational and about if we hadn't abandonned the space race because the US won, but instead if the US had lost but were just spurred to go farther and stronger.

8/10, really enjoyable.

[Precure]

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