For All Mankind Review: Polaris (Season 3 Episode 1)
For All Mankind Season 3 Episode 1, “Polaris,” sees the story jump ahead a decade and finds both the world itself and many of the characters from Season 2 in new places as the United States prepares to send a mission to Mars.
Texas Senator Ellen Wilson is running for president, facing off against an Arkansas governor named Bill Clinton. Having franchised The Outpost (the horror!), Karen Baldwin and Sam Cleveland are now in the space tourism business and opening a luxury hotel among the stars.
Danny Stevens has followed in his parents’ footsteps and become an astronaut, while Tracy and Gordo’s tragic deaths are immortalized by way of a statue at JSC and a big-screen biopic starring Meg Ryan and Denis Quaid.
Much of “Polaris” is dedicated to table setting for the rest of the season, catching us up on where most of the story’s major players are now and putting them into position for the story to come. Yet the hour still has time for a high-stakes Poseidon Adventure-style crisis that’s genuinely tense, emotional, and fully grounded in the things that have come before.
Thanks to the space colonization treaty that has calmed down relations between America and the Soviet Union on the moon, it’s not much of a surprise that the Russians are now also aiming to launch a manned mission to Mars.
The official announcement comes by way of Margo’s bestie Sergei, with whom she’s been secretly sharing intelligence and engineering information as a sort of quid-pro-quo over the past decade. (We find out Sergei has been doing the same for her and that NASA has benefited from some of his info)
Even on a transatlantic payphone call across hundreds of miles, Margo and Sergei’s relationship remains as awkwardly charming as ever as the two try to navigate their very clear affection for one another around a bunch of concerns about international diplomacy and possible treason.
Plus, Margo’s nervous about the state of the US’s likely preparedness for their own Mars mission launch, given that every time she, Aleida, and Bill try to test the fancy nuclear-powered engine they’re building on the moon, it fails fairly spectacularly. (Her obvious dislike for the burgeoning industry of space tourism is hilarious though.)
Elsewhere, at the luxury space hotel known as Polaris, we are reintroduced to some old faves: Ed Baldwin and Danielle Poole arrive for Danny’s wedding—which is being held on the orbiting venue—and they all seem genuinely glad to see one another, and happy for their friends’ son.
Both Ed and Dani are in new relationships: he with a woman named Yvonne who really can’t hold her liquor and she with a young widower whose teenage son she’s essentially adopted. The two of them are also in direct competition to lead the Mars mission, though Margo and Molly are still butting heads over which will win out. (Molly favors Ed’s ability to think outside the box; Margo says Dani is the more calm and collected choice.)
Because this is For All Mankind a stressful near-death situation almost immediately unfolds: A misfiring thruster caused by an errant piece of space debris from the explosion of a North Korean rocket throws the gravity aboard the space hotel off. It begins spinning faster than it should, increasing the pressure on the structure, which wasn’t built to withstand more than 4 Gs.
As the gravity within the hotel begins to shift — and watching Ed and Dani slowly and simultaneously figure out that something is very wrong is riveting TV that shifts easily from comedy to terror — emergency alarms begin to sound.
Two astronauts (poached by Karen from NASA) attempt to spacewalk and fix the problem but are killed almost immediately by a loose structural cable, which flings them into the void of space. Evacuations are ordered as the gravity increases to the point where guests can barely stand.
Who else was ever going to step forward to save the day besides Danny Stevens?
Despite the obvious and abundant evidence that both Danny and his brother Jimmy are still extremely emotionally scarred by Tracy and Gordo’s deaths — and not just by the circumstances surrounding their parents’ loss, but by the legacy they’ve left behind and the way NASA itself has sanitized and commercialized their lives in the wake of their sacrifice. (Lives that suddenly sound a lot different than either Stevens boy likely remembers as fact.)
Yet, when push comes to shove, Danny could not possibly be more his parents’ child. He’s the one who steps into the breach on a daring and quite frankly idiotic rescue mission, with little more than a good idea and a prayer to help him.
And in a season that is so clearly going to be about the long-term impact of Gordo and Tracy’s sacrifice—on the boys they left behind, on the colleagues they saved, and on the organization that is so clearly willing to co-opt their memories for its own ends, that has to count for something.
Stray Thoughts and Observations
- Some of the most fascinating bits about For All Mankind’s alternate history are the small tidbits we learn about how this world evolved differently from our own. Here, Michael Jordan was drafted by the Portland Trailblazers, Margaret Thatcher was assassinated by the IRA, the Beatles performed a record-breaking reunion concert, and communism is enjoying a booming decade of success around the globe. Happily, both Nirvana and Mariah Carey’s self-titled debut album still exist in this reality.
- The combination of Danny’s choice for “Don’t Be Cruel” for a wedding first dance and the fact that Sam is dead by the end of the hour is making me REAL nervous as to where things between him and Karen are likely to go this season.
- I have to say: Given how much of Karen’s story in the first two seasons of For All Mankind is essentially about her being left behind, it’s surprisingly satisfying to see her get the chance to be in space–even if she, in true Karen form, generally hates it.
- What do we think Ed was injecting himself with while getting dressed?
What did you think of the season premiere of For All Mankind? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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New episodes of For All Mankind stream Fridays on Apple TV+.
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Lacy Baugher
Lacy is a pop culture enthusiast and television critic who loves period dramas, epic fantasy, space adventures, and the female characters everyone says you're supposed to hate. Ninth Doctor enthusiast, Aziraphale girlie, and cat lady, she's a member of the Television Critics Association and Rotten Tomatoes-approved. Find her at LacyMB on all platforms.