One of Apple TV+'s most successful original series is For All Mankind, which chronicles an alternate history in which the Soviet Union reached the moon before the United States, causing the Space Race to continue for decades.
With Season 2 beginning in 1983, nine years after the events of Season 1, the series' creative team -- including co-creator Ronald D. Moore and producer Ben McGinnis -- worked with Apple to create For All Mankind: Time Capsule. The app is an interactive storytelling AR experience available on iOS devices, exploring the passage of time for the Stevens family through the eyes of Gordo and Tracy's young son Danny. To herald the app's launch on the App Store, Apple released a trailer, while Moore and McGinnis participated in a round table interview attended by CBR.
"We had been talking amongst ourselves the potential of AR, or even VR, as storytelling devices for several years," Moore explained. "When the project came up, it was a great opportunity to meld those ideas together; to really be able to exploit it for the first time. A lot of the things that are in the AR experience are things that came directly came out of the show. Some things are created specifically for this experience and some things are just expansions on ideas that had been kicked around in the writers' room in one way or another. But our interest in the technology and interest in this aspect of storytelling predates even Season 1; it was something we had been talking about, just in general, about how to produce a television show in a new and interesting way."
For Moore, the app provides an even greater window into the alternate history he and the creative team have crafted for the show, with the app allowing more cultural artifacts and newscasts to be included. McGinnis was enthused to bring in authentic '80s devices like the Apple II computer, complete with its own game, and VHS tapes to show the domestic side of the Stevens' lives and allow users to play around with them to yield additional story. And with several main characters appearing in the AR experience, the returning cast members were excited to reprise their roles in new and interesting ways.
"It's something outside their normal job, like 'Here's a new thing we're working on! Do you want to play around with this?'" Moore observed. "They were intrigued by the concept and getting to do something cool and different. There was the sense of everyone being on the edge of something new, some cutting-edge technology stirred everyone's creative juices."
Created by Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi, For All Mankind stars Joel Kinnaman, Michael Dorman, Sarah Jones, Shantel VanSanten, Wrenn Schmidt, Jodi Balfour, Krys Marshall, Sonya Walger, Cynthy Wu, Coral Peña and Casey W. Johnson. Season 2 premieres on Apple TV+ on Feb. 19. The For All Mankind: Time Capsule is available now on the App Store.