Trauma Is Hell On Earth…And On Mars: PTSD and For All Mankind, Season Four
Note: Spoilers for For All Mankind’s season four are included in this piece — trigger warning for references to trauma and PTSD.
While they certainly don’t lack courageousness or mental toughness, three central characters on the Apple TV+ show For All Mankind, which takes the viewer through an alternate history of spaceflight, are finding out precisely what happens when you lie to yourself by keeping the mind’s secrets under wraps. The new season of For All Mankind shows how three of its central characters are attempting to deal with encroaching symptoms of complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Each character deals with their symptoms differently during the early 2000s — but each method affords them no real relief. Note: spoilers for season four ahead.
Aleida Rosales, whom viewers have been following since she was a space-mad teenager in season one, is now approaching middle age and is wrestling with the trauma she suffered in For All Mankind’s last season when a terrorist bombing destroyed the fictional Johnson Space Center. During that horrible time, Aleida (played beautifully and sensitively by Coral Peña) walked to a building’s blown-out façade to search for her mentor, then-JSC head Margo Madison (played by Wrenn Schmidt), who was believed to be killed in the blast (that plot twist would require another blog post entirely).
Nearly a decade later, Aleida — working in a rebuilt Mission Control — literally runs away from her console during an asteroid retrieval mission gone wrong. That is one way trauma survivors learn to “deal” with their symptoms: by running away from the stressor completely. Meanwhile, a now jobless Aleida copes by staying up late — every night — and keeps herself busy by dismantling the entire television to fix it, as one does.
Aleida tries to return to NASA, but a chat with the agency’s new corporate-motivated administrator, Eli Hobson (played by Daniel Stern), does not go well, and Aleida realizes trying to “fit” back into that intense environment is, in her words, a “mistake.” Hobson’s empty catchphrases about “mental health awareness” at the agency make no impact upon Aleida, who understands no amount of talk therapy will diminish her horror, even years after the fact. While she currently works with Kelly Baldwin (played by Cynthy Wu), whose daddy we will discuss next, at a revamped Helios corporation, Aleida’s silent screams of avoidance — chillingly illustrated by her dodging numerous calls from NASA on her of-its-time flip phone — suggest a later crisis to come. She quietly and measuredly remarked to former NASA colleague Bill Strausser (played by Noah Harpster) during a visit to his home, with stunning insight, “I am not as resilient as you.”
Our next central character lacks the internal insight made by Aleida, but then again, he’s a product of his time. Ed Baldwin, who we’ve been following since he was a typical, of-his-era late 1960s Apollo fighter jock astronaut in season one, is now spaceflight’s Gordie Howe as he continues to go strength to strength in his long and varied career. Like Number 9 during his comeback(s), Ed has some grey hair and wrinkles but still is fearsomely in command. However, unlike Howe, Baldwin (played in age makeup by Joel Kinnaman) is relying more and more on marijuana to aid his age- and Mars-related aches, pains, and mobility issues, even going as far as to grow a small crop on Mars’ “Happy Valley,” the place he’s called home for close to a decade. While he’s aware with increasing frequency and fear that his health isn’t the best, he continually makes excuses not to return home to Earth.
The darkness in Ed’s face when he discusses going back to Earth — where he can only be reminded of the horrors of last season, which included the bombing death at JSC of his former wife, Karen — is palpable. By tuning out with joints, avoiding his own remaining family, and staying tied to Happy Valley, a place very much not Earth, Ed deals with his trauma and grief by not running away. He illustrates the other side of the PTSD coin, which is staying close to a foreign place not directly tied to trauma that happened elsewhere. But as we know, Ed is only exercising another flavor of avoidance.
Finally, Danielle Poole (played wonderfully by Krys Marshall) — one of the all-time heroes of For All Mankind — finds herself drafted into an unexpected Mars return by Administrator Hobson after the first episode’s asteroid retrieval tragedy. Poole is still haunted by last season’s sojourn on the Red Planet, which forced her to exile human spam email and generally lousy person Danny Stevens to the remote North Korean Mars landing site. The Stevens situation was complicated by the fact he was the son of former colleagues Gordo and Tracy Stevens, who reached mythical status in season two as heroes when they sacrificed their lives to save the lunar Jamestown habitat. It’s hard to believe Danny possessed no trace of his parents’ selflessness, but psychopathy doesn’t care about your family’s heritage. Now, years later, Danielle still wrestles with her complex feelings related to having to essentially strand a crew member — albeit a terrible one — on a distant world with no escape.
When Hobson approaches Danielle about a Mars return, she reacts to the idea like most people react to touching raw chicken — unenthusiastically and gingerly. So, it is surprising when she decides to return to Happy Valley at the end of episode one. Unlike Aleida and Ed, she doesn’t resort to avoidance as a method of “forgetfulness.” Her return signals another way trauma survivors cope with their symptoms — by returning to the “scene of the crime,” whether it’s an accident site, a grocery store, or whichever place activated their triggers. Perhaps, in Danielle’s mind, a return will strengthen her despite her misgivings. In this case, Danielle’s trigger is what she was forced to do to Danny, and as the new season advances, one wonders if somehow Danny will make another appearance — either physically or somehow, in spirit — at Happy Valley. (His status is still a mystery.)
The American author and poet Sylvia Plath once wrote, “Is there no way out of the mind?” For Aleida, the way out is a new project far from NASA. For Ed, it’s through copious joints from his marijuana crops. For Danielle, it’s a triumphant return to form. But one wonders if these are really ways “out of the mind” for these three central For All Mankind characters or if they’re just biding their time before the next crisis.
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