Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

reviewing Black Doves; Cross; Dark Matter; Dept. Q; Dexter: Resurrection; Dune: Prophecy; For All Mankind; Foundation; Hijack; Memory of a Killer; MobLand; Outlander; Paradise; Presumed Innocent; Severance; Silo; Slow Horses; Smoke; Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; Tehran;The: Day of the Jackal, Diplomat, Last of Us, Night Agent; Your Friends & Neighbors +books, films, music, podcasts, politics

George Santayana had irrational faith in reason - I have irrational faith in TV.

Saturday, May 9, 2026

For All Mankind 5.7: Titan!

Finally, an inspiring episode this season -- 5.7 -- of For All Mankind. An episode that captures the essential quality of what we humans need to do to push the limits our existence, and through science and spirit get ever further out into this infinite universe.

[And there will be spoilers ahead ... ]

The set-up was perfect. The Mars settlement is continuing to destroy itself. Earth is no help at all, and indeed is making life on Mars worse. One of the two missions to Titan -- the largest moon around Saturn, replete with an atmosphere, and therefore a possibility of life -- has failed and taken with it its crew. The captain of the other mission, with Kelly Baldwin on board, wants to turn back. But Kelly has other ideas. And ...

The mission lands on Titan! The final scene of the crew standing on Titan, looking at the darkly clouded sky, was wonderful. We may call it a moon, because Titan revolves around a planet, Saturn, not the sun. But we're walking on another world, the furthest away from our homeworld of Earth that we've traveled so far. That's an epitome of progress.

I will say, though, that I wish For All Mankind would stop presenting communication from Titan to Mars as instantaneous. The same for communication between Earth and Mars. Since the show isn't postulating that in this alternate history in the 2010s we humans figured out a way to send messages across these enormous distances at a faster-than-light speed, there would be an inevitable lag in the communication. I understand that For All Mankind is ignoring the lag for dramatic effect, but I think these scenes would be more effective if they respected the laws of physics.

Back to the narrative: Dev may not have intended to hurt let alone kill anybody, but launching that attack against the Martian greenhouses was still unconscionable. I've been pretty much a fan of Dev up until episode 5.7, but I have to now classify him as a demented maniac with a god-complex. Given what happened, Lily did have a great idea for a birthday present for Alex, but the two would have been better off celebrating Alex's birthday is his room.

And back to Titan: I hope our team discovers some kind of life there. And if it's intelligent life, that it doesn't have it in for us.

And I'll be back here next week with a review of the next episode.