Published Sep 9, 2026, 11:00 PM EDT
Dhruv is a Lead Writer in Screen Rant's New TV division. He has been consistently contributing to the website for over two years and has written thousands of articles covering streaming trends, movie/TV analysis, and pop culture breakdowns.
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In Apple TV's vast catalog of highly acclaimed sci-fi shows, there is one that takes a fascinating look at alternate history. The show in question, For All Mankind, explores a massive what-if where it questions what would have become of the world if the Soviet Union had landed on the Moon first in 1969. With this as its plot's driver, it walks through everything from an escalating space race to the hardships faced by astronauts.
Both For All Mankind and its new hit spinoff, Star City, are incredibly compelling. They highlight how a potential shift in history could have led to monumental technological developments for humanity. Even from a social standpoint, the event could have prompted NASA to scramble and recruit female astronauts and minorities decades earlier.
Human life in itself would have probably been much faster and significantly more advanced if the alternate space race had triggered the development of electric cars, advanced computing, and clean fusion energy. However, there is another what-if scenario that For All Mankind never explores: What if humans had never landed on the moon?
Apple TV's Dark Matter season 2 takes this question and explores an alternate world where the moon landing never happened.
Dark Matter Finds A Wild New Way To Explore For All Mankind’s “What If?”
Courtesy of Apple TVIn Dark Matter season 2, the central Dessen family hopes to find a peaceful world where they can live the rest of their lives without being bothered by the overarching multiversal chaos. This is when they end up in a parallel world that is technologically backwards. When they explore its history, they discover an intriguing point of divergence in time: JFK lost the 1960 election to Nixon.
John K. Kennedy's loss led to NASA getting defunded. This, in turn, led to the US and the entirety of humanity never landing on the moon. With the lack of speedy developments surrounding analog tech and microchips/computers as we know them, the world remained technologically stagnated and stuck in the 1970s/80s.
With its own portrayal of alternate history, the Apple TV sci-fi show captures an intriguing ripple effect that we might have experienced if Neil Armstrong had never had the opportunity to say, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Without the "giant leap," the massive microchip boom would not have been triggered, which was specifically developed to fit light hardware into spacecraft.
Interestingly, though, instead of portraying the alternate world as a low-tech nightmare with no cellphones and internet, Dark Matter makes it look almost heavenly for the Dessens.
Dark Matter Turns The Space Race’s Alternate History Into A Multiversal Family Drama
Credit: MovieStillsDBBefore arriving in their "ideal" alternate reality, the Dessens end up in a world where AI development and surveillance have gone too far. Their motive is to flee their past and never run into alternate versions of themselves in parallel worlds. To their dismay, in technologically advanced worlds, it becomes incredibly easy to track their digital footprints merely through facial recognition.
In a world where moon landings never happened, however, there is no internet. With no internet, they can neither be tracked nor have their real identities easily traced. It seems like the perfect safe haven for them.
After watching Dark Matter season 2's episode 2, it is hard not to be compelled by the fact that two distinct Apple TV shows adopt the same "alternate history" formula. They both use the same historical event as a device to explore its rippling effect on the future. And yet, one turns it into a family's journey towards finding its place in the multiverse while the other, For All Mankind, gives it a grand and global scope.
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Dark Matter
9/10
Release Date May 7, 2024
Network Apple TV+
Directors Jakob Verbruggen, Alik Sakharov, Roxann Dawson, Logan George
Writers Blake Crouch
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Joel Edgerton
Jason Dessen / Jason2
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For All Mankind
9/10
Release Date 2019 - 2027-00-00
Network Apple TV
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Michael Dorman
Gordon 'Gordo' Stevens
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English (US) ·