WARNING: Contains SPOILERS for For All Mankind season 4, episode 9, “Brazil.”
Star Trek veteran and For All Mankind co-creator Ronald D. Moore has confirmed that only three Trek shows exist in the AppleTV+ alternative history show’s timeline. For All Mankind depicts an alternate history in which the space race never ended. Star Trek was notably a huge influence on the real life NASA, with Uhura actress Nichele Nichols accepting a job with the organization to help increase the diversity of their astronauts. One of those astronauts was Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, who would later have a cameo in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Second Chances.”
The For All Mankind character, Commander Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall) is loosely based on Mae Jemison. Like Jemison, For All Mankind‘s Dani is the first African-American woman in space and a big Star Trek fan. In For All Mankind season 4, episode 9, which is set in the year 2003, Dani sends a video message back to her stepson Isaiah, to congratulate him on the pending birth of his daughter. Dani warns Isaiah that she’s going to turn her granddaughter into a “full-blown Trekkie. That’s right, we’re gonna watch all the series, all three of them.” When asked about this revelation by Inverse, Ronald D. Moore had the following response:
The original Star Trek went off the air before the Apollo II landing. […] In my version of history, Paramount does make the Phase II show in the mid-seventies. And then they transitioned into Wrath of Khan and not Star Trek: The Motion Picture, because of the run of the lengthy and glorious, and critically acclaimed run of Phase II, it’s a year later that The Wrath of Khan comes out. But it’s still The Wrath of Khan that we know and it was essentially the same story. I love The Wrath of Khan and I couldn’t bear to change that. So it’s the same thing.”
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Does Star Trek: The Next Generation Exist In For All Mankind?
By reinstating Star Trek: Phase II, Ronald D. Moore’s alternative Star Trek timeline leaves the question of what the third show is that Danielle refers to in For All Mankind. Danielle refers to three shows in 2003, so it’s unlikely that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager exist in the For All Mankind timeline. Voyager premiered in 1995, the same year that humanity landed on Mars in For All Mankind, so it makes sense that audiences would be more interested in real-life space adventure than the fiction of Star Trek. That leaves Star Trek: The Next Generation as the most likely third “series” for Danielle to show her granddaughter.
It would likely be a different take on Star Trek: The Next Generation, responding to the different culture of For All Mankind‘s alternate history. It would also seemingly be a far less successful TNG, as it failed to generate the Star Trek spinoffs that “our” version did. In the real world, Star Trek: The Original Series was canceled before the Moon landing. It would be a neat bit of symmetry, therefore, if, in For All Mankind‘s alternate timeline, TNG came to an end just as NASA was setting its sights on landing a human on Mars by 1995.
For All Mankind
Imagine a world where the global space race never ended – For All Mankind is a thrilling “what if” take on history that explores what would have happened in the race to the moon between the Soviet Union and the United States, as well as the space programs and the race’s effects on the astronauts and their families in the aftermath. The Apple TV+ series hails from Ronald D. Moore and stars Joel Kinnaman as a NASA astronaut. For All Mankind also features historical astronauts like Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong.
