For All Mankind's Ronald D. Moore tees up the rest of season 4
The creator of Apple TV+'s sci-fi series opens up about the challenges of the show's newest chapter, as well as FAM's potential future

If there’s one thing For All Mankind is known for, it’s making astounding leaps in its alternate history between seasons. In that respect, the Apple TV+ drama doesn’t disappoint in its fourth season, which kicks off in 2003, when humans have already set up a successful base on the moon and on Mars and are trying to hurl asteroids into orbit to extract minerals.
As always, the series balances sci-fi with grounded drama (sometimes a little too much this time around). On the Red Planet, astronauts argue amongst themselves while facing a potential rebellion from the low-level workers. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the U.S. and the Soviet Union continue their space race. Things are getting complicated in the new episodes, which drop every Friday through January 12.
The A.V. Club spoke to series creator Ronald D. Moore about planning this season, how the rest of the episodes might play out for OGs like Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) and Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt), and what ideas Moore is already brewing for the show’s next chapter.
The A.V. Club: What was the process of planning For All Mankind’s scope at this point? How far did you want to take it on Mars, because there’s so much happening at Happy Valley?
Ronald D. Moore: We had a general idea going into the season of what Happy Valley’s state was. For practical reasons, we didn’t want to expand it too much over one season. We had an idea of where we wanted season four to end, making some general planning difficult. It became about logistics, like how much we had to spend and how much time it would take to build certain sets. But we knew pretty early what the size of the [Mars] compound would be. We wanted the upstairs-downstairs quality of it, so we spent some time trying to work out how that would look on camera, what the upper-level astronaut quarters were like and the world that they lived in was like, and then building out what place the miners worked in and what their existence was. We spent a fair amount of time trying to differentiate those two.
AVC: FAM’s alternate history is depicted with sci-fi and technological advancements. Do you feel pressure to evolve the show in a particular way to make it feel different or more exciting than our real life?
RDM: Certainly from within the show, we challenge each other about how far we can go. We had those conversations since year one. Once we said we wanted to accelerate the advancement in technology, you can quickly get into big conversations of, “Okay, which sections, how fast, and how fast is too fast?” You start getting into expansive talks about, “Well, when are flat screens going to show up in this world? They could be invented, but you have to have an industrial base to make the plasma screens, and does that exist here?” There is a certain amount of sociological planning we do in the writers’ room.
On another level, you then have to ask, “Does it really matter?” We need to do what we think works dramatically and we can pretend some of these problems were solved easier than they probably ever could have. We just want to show consistent technological change moving at a rapid pace.
AVC: So much time has passed in the show’s world with an eight-year jump between seasons three and four. What’s it like to plan arcs for original characters like Ed, Dani, and Margo now that they’re much older? Did you consider closing their journeys out and introducing more new characters instead?