'For All Mankind' Season 2 Trailer: The Alternate-Reality Space Race Continues On AppleTV+

Shows about space seem to be all the rage these days, but Battlestar Galactica and Outlander veteran Ronald D. Moore's AppleTV+ series For All Mankind takes a different approach than all of its contemporaries: it's set in an alternate reality where the Russians beat the United States to the moon, and the Space Race never ended.

The new streaming service launched the first For All Mankind season 2 trailer during the show's Comic-Con virtual panel this past weekend, and you can watch it below right now.

Disney+ is about to launch a streaming adaptation of the seminal Space Race book/movie The Right Stuff, which appears to hew pretty closely to the source material while building out the relationship the aspiring members of the Mercury Program have with their wives. But while show appears to be slightly hamstrung by history, For All Mankind shows us a vision of the space program that many modern-day folks wish we had gotten in this reality: one that includes women and people of color in visible roles as they make essential contributions to furthering our nation's mission.

On the other hand...this particular vision seems to involve astronauts locking and loading with automatic weapons for a trip to the moon. Are they going to overthrow a Soviet post up there? Does the show turn from a fascinating "what if" alternate reality in season one to a commentary on greed and power in Reagan's America in season 2? How far is this America willing to go to achieve dominance in space? What lines are we willing to cross?

And I know this song has been a bit overused in marketing materials, but I have to admit that I'm kind of digging the altered version of Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams" in this context. That pulsing synthesizer has such a driving power behind it that it gives this trailer a killer pace; the whole thing is done in one minute, but it's cut so quickly that you feel like you've seen a lot in a very short time.

Here's the show's official synopsis:

Deemed the "Feel-Good Astronaut TV Drama of the Season" by Thrillist when it premiered last fall, "For All Mankind" explores what would have happened if the global space race had never ended. The series presents an aspirational world where NASA astronauts, engineers and their families find themselves in the center of extraordinary events seen through the prism of an alternate history timeline — a world in which the USSR beats the US to the moon.

For All Mankind season 2 does not have a release date yet, but it will debut exclusively on AppleTV+.