Apple just dropped the first full-length trailer for its forthcoming sci-fi space-race series, For All Mankind. Developed by Battlestar Galactica creator Ronald D. Moore, the series is meant to explore an alternate reality where the global space race never really ended.

For All Mankind (not to be confused with the 1989 documentary of the same name) joins a host of other TV series in development for Apple TV Plus, a new video subscription service launching this fall that features Apple original programming—yet another contender in the streaming wars. At a conference in March, Apple CEO Tim Cook called the fledgling streaming platform “the new home for the world’s most creative storytellers, featuring exclusive original shows, movies, and documentaries.”

Details about the series are scarce, but it will star Joel Kinnaman (of Altered Carbon fame, fresh off his stint as Erik Heller in the TV reboot of Hanna) as Edward Baldwin, possibly a US astronaut, judging from the new trailer footage. It opens with a recreation of the first crewed lunar landing in 1969, with a twist: the first man to set foot on the moon is not NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong but Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. (The real Leonov was part of the Voskhod 2 mission, becoming the first man to perform a 12-minute spacewalk on March 18, 1965.) “The shock across the nation at this event is just… indescribable,” the trailer’s fictional news anchor intones.

We’re firmly in alternate-reality territory here: what would have been the US response if it had missed being first? In this case, it’s to regroup and think bigger in terms of goals. “We thought it was about being first,” NASA bigwig Gene Kranz (Eric Ladin) tells his team of scientists and engineers in the next scene. “Turns out the stakes are much bigger than that.”

Those stakes include the discovery of water on the Moon, but Kranz’s vision also includes eventual interstellar exploration. “This race will be ours to fight for and to win, and we are not stopping there,” he declares. “We’re going to Mars, Saturn. The stars. The galaxy.”

And hey, at least some of those astronauts seem to be women.

For All Mankind is expected to launch in fall 2019.

Listing image by YouTube/Apple TV

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