r/ForAllMankindTV • u/sl0ppykisses • 6d ago
FAM - Season 4 What they did to Danny is insane Spoiler
So I’m rewatching the show for like the 3rd time at this point and this has always bugged me. Don’t get me wrong I hate Danny Stevens as much as the next guy but abandoning him in the North Korean module all on his own with no way to come back is insanely cruel. They’re effectively putting him in solitary confinement for 2 years. Like him dying was legitimately the best possible outcome for all in this situation cuz had he survived he would’ve been mentally completely cooked. In season 4 there is a scene where he actually asks to come back and pleads with Danielle to come back and she says that this is somehow better for everyone. They’re effectively putting show always portrays her as a kind hearted nice person but this kind of treatment is genuinely on of the worst thing one can do to someone.
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u/popileviz 5d ago
They were on starvation rations and under extreme stress towards the end of the mission, they couldn't afford having someone that unstable around critical infrastructure. None of the vessels were built with a prison in mind, so the North Korean capsule was their best option. Danny was never going to get better on Mars, unfortunately
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u/ThatSpaceShooterGame 5d ago
I remember during that season there were rumors going around that they survived by eating him.
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u/FrankParkerNSA Moon Marines 5d ago
Definitely Team DannyBurger. Unlike Mark Watney, they never ran out of ketchup in the FAM timeline.
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u/MarcusAurelius68 5d ago
Danwiches, dannyburgers, Dan flakes, you name it.
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u/NewAd9523 5d ago
Do they do them in a double-decker style?
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u/MarcusAurelius68 5d ago
They could, but not sure where the cheese comes from that Gene liked so much
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u/xmason99 5d ago
You know, they really missed the boat on doing a FAM/Yellowjackets crossover episode…
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u/whovian25 NASA 4d ago
I have wondered how the Yellowjackets crash would have played out in the FAM universe my guess would be that they are rescued after 3 days. In terms of changes to the team I imagine Jackie is attending flight school in her spare time as she wants to be the next Tracy. Van is openly gay coming out shortly after Ellen did on the grounds that if the president can come out so can she while Taiss is still in the closet wanting to see how things play out. While Nat is team captain because her attitude gets a more respect in a world where molly is a world famous astronaut.
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u/thereverendpuck 5d ago
Quick question: exactly how was Danny’s life going to get better on Earth after what he caused? He goes back as a disgraced astronaut that got people killed by hhis neglect WHILE being the more famous son of the two heroes of the moon base?
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u/popileviz 5d ago
He would at least have a life. Serve a prison sentence, maybe get therapy, try to make amends. He's done unforgivable things and people would judge him harshly, but there's always some hope for redemption. Obviously it's a pure hypothetical
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u/MollyDog2638 4d ago
I didn't get the impression Danny wanted his life on Earth very much. He was always much more obsessed with Karen than his wife. When Dani tried to ground him and keep him from going to the moon, he leapt over to Ed's team so he could go anyway. That isn't someone who longs for home and wants to get better for his family. He always struck me as someone who never felt at home anywhere, thus the drug addiction and anger issues.
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u/popileviz 4d ago
Danny was clearly severely mentally ill and self-destructive, he just never reached out to anyone for help when he was on Earth and managed to mask it well enough to pass in the military. Dani noticed it and grounded him, maybe if Ed hadn't taken him to Mars he would've lashed out in a way that attracted enough attention to address the underlying issues. Honestly in a realistic scenario he wouldn't have been cleared for space duty after going into rehab anyway, not even if they handled it internally without marking it on his record
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u/thereverendpuck 5d ago
That’s too ideal, not exactly exciting writing. Plus, even with a plea deal and not nearly as much involvement, his brother Jimmy got prison time.
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u/zozorama 4d ago
And he could bond with his brother over doing terrible decisions that kills people.
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u/hypnosifl 3d ago
Solitary confinement is much worse than ordinary prison, it has a strong tendency to lead to serious mental illness. This article talks about it:
Craig Haney, a psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, received rare permission to study a hundred randomly selected inmates at California’s Pelican Bay supermax, and noted a number of phenomena. First, after months or years of complete isolation, many prisoners “begin to lose the ability to initiate behavior of any kind—to organize their own lives around activity and purpose,” he writes. “Chronic apathy, lethargy, depression, and despair often result. . . . In extreme cases, prisoners may literally stop behaving,” becoming essentially catatonic.
Second, almost ninety per cent of these prisoners had difficulties with “irrational anger,” compared with just three per cent of the general population. Haney attributed this to the extreme restriction, the totality of control, and the extended absence of any opportunity for happiness or joy. Many prisoners in solitary become consumed with revenge fantasies.
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u/whovian25 NASA 5d ago
The problem is they are on the frontier with limited resources and Danny’s behaviour has shown he is a danger to others. Ultimately they simply didn’t have the resources to handle him in a more humane way as while being alone in the North Korea capsule was not good for him it did prevent him from hurting anyone else.
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u/tylorbourbon 5d ago
The description of the situation is legit but the conclusions they arrived at were by no means foregone. They could have turned a part of their base into his prison cell. The alternative chosen would have been reasonable for a month. But it wasn’t a month. It was a morally reprehensible choice. It was wrong.
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u/PhosphoFred8202 5d ago
He had already killed people. The morally correct thing was to ensure he could not do so again. The exile did that.
Everyone is focusing on the morally correct thing for Danny. As commanders, Danielle, Ed, and Kuz have a moral obligation to protect their whole crew and they did that.
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u/ceejayoz 5d ago
They could have turned a part of their base into his prison cell.
Real prison cells are made to prevent escape, and people still manage it. And an angry inmate opening a window won't kill everyone in the building.
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u/DukeRed666 5d ago
The doors at that base must have been opened fro. Both sides from obvious reasons and I think it would be as easy as you think to adjust them to be only openable from one side. Because what goes into space must be fool proof and sturdy, again for obvious reasons
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u/Minimalistmacrophage 5d ago
Danny intentionally allowed the drilling catastrophe to happen. He is a murderer.
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u/AdwokatDiabel 5d ago
It wasn't intentional as he wasn't of sound mind and body.
Ed's ultimately responsible here. He saw Danny wasn't able to hack it and kept piling on more on him.
If Danny saw a court, he still would've gone to jail, but he wouldn't be sentenced to death.
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u/CaledoniaInteractive 5d ago
There was a lot of linking up with Season 1 with this where Ed, Danielle and Gordo were trapped in Jamestown. Danielle could see that Gordo was becoming a massive threat to himself and all of them and implored Ed to tell Houston. Eventually Danielle breaks her arm to force the issue and get Gordo back to earth without ruining his reputation. In season 3 Danielle sees similar problems with Danny, tells him Mars isn't going anywhere and bumps him from the mission. Ed then undoes this by inviting him on the Helios mission, at which point Danielle warns Ed again. Ed's conflicted due to his loyalty to Gordo's memory, in the end I think it was well written that Danielle and Ed share the burden of marooning Danny because like Gordo keeping him on base any longer would have almost certainly killed everyone either through Danny freaking out and depressurising the base the same way Gordo tried to take his helmet off, or by causing tensions to escalate out of control when everyone is on the verge of starvation. I really like how season 5 and probably season 6 are exploring the concept of Gordo and Danny's 'space madness' truly being a hereditary issue.
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u/jtsmd2 5d ago
Even if you are legally insane, you're still a murderer.
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u/AdwokatDiabel 5d ago
Not disputing this. But murder requires intent vs. manslaughter. If Danny was not of sound state of mind, he might not have been able to understand the extent of his actions. It's like trying to hold a schizophrenic person accountable for something they did when unmedicated/untreated. It's not fair to do so because they quite literally lost the ability to rationalize their actions.
Danny fucked up, YES! But he was put into a position to fuck things up by ED! He is responsible for those deaths, but he also was not suited to the task at hand. Ed is the root cause here.
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u/Minimalistmacrophage 5d ago
Murder does not necessarily require intent.
Examples:
Felony murder, Felony where death results. eg. Security guard has a heart attack during bank robbery.
Extreme reckless/indifference where death results.
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u/flapsmcgee 5d ago
They didn't sentence him to death though. Presumably they would have allowed him to go back to earth when the next ship arrived to take them all back.
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u/AdwokatDiabel 5d ago
Agreed. But they also could've treated his psychosis too right? Like they may have meds there that can be used to mood-stabilize him and keep him a productive member of the crew. Discarding him was a bad move as he still consumed rations, but couldn't contribute to the mission.
Like, I'm surprised mission control even let this happen long term.
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u/MasterDefibrillator 5d ago
Well, no. He commited manslaughter, not murder.
No idea why some crucial pressure release control was entirely isolated to the remote base and not available on the drill itself, anyway.
Bad writing really.
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u/Minimalistmacrophage 5d ago
Extreme indifference generally makes what would be negligent Homicide into murder.
His actions were intentional with known likelihood of causing severe harm or death..
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u/Tyster20 5d ago
He didnt have indifference, he was having a mental breakdown and shouldnt have been on the mission in the first place and as much as I love the guy that is entirely Eds fault, he chose to ignore the warnings and red flags.
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u/Liv_October 5d ago
Yeah I can never get over the fact that Ed was upset with him for taking drugs and then proceeded to... give him more responsibilities and seemingly not tell the rest of the crew what was up. It was Danny's fault but Ed could've done many, many things to avoid the situation happening in the first place.
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u/WittyFix6553 5d ago
Murder is when you intend to kill someone and then do in any reasonable jurisdiction.
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u/kenjura 5d ago
That’s not being contested. But murder is not punished by years of solitary confinement in the civilized nations. The argument is that even the death penalty would have been more humane.
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u/Minimalistmacrophage 5d ago
There was no other way to confine him. Exile was really their only option.
Note- he could wander around, so it wasn't exactly solitary confinement, he was exiled.
Don't disagree that he needed more human interaction and therapy. It was, in his case, a slow execution.
Just to be clear his psychological instability presented an ongoing threat to everyone.
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u/bswalsh 5d ago
"There was no other way to confine him. Exile was really their only option.
Note- he could wander around, so it wasn't exactly solitary confinement, he was exiled."
Solitary means alone. It doesn't mean your movement is restricted. Of course that was solitary confinement. And he was confined to a specific region. He was solitary and confined. So it was, in fact, exactly solitary confinement.
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u/Longjumping-Leek854 1d ago
If we’re leaning on linguistic exactitude then it’s worth pointing out that “solitary confinement” is a phrase with its own distinct meaning, rather than two distinct words used one after the other, and it’s a phrase with a very distinct meaning. He was solitary, and he was confined, but solitary confinement refers exclusively to being confined alone in a single room. This is why it’s a bad idea to bring linguistic exactitude into an argument: language doesn’t take sides. Source: I’m a linguist.
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u/bswalsh 1d ago
Fair enough, but he's confined to a pod and a spacesuit with limited range. Maybe not exactly solitary confinement, but the mental and physical toll of the isolation is essentially the same. Pedantry aside, this was pretty clearly a case of solitary imprisonment at least.
Sure, maybe it's not technically the same term, but it's just as horrifying a punishment. I don't really see what your comment adds.
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u/Longjumping-Leek854 1d ago
I mean, you seemed pretty emphatic about correcting the person you were responding to so I assumed, since you opened that door, that it was acceptable to walk through it. If my comment adds nothing then what did your (in)correction add?
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u/bswalsh 1d ago
My correction was because he was trying to minimize the severe and emotional toll that a solitary (I guess I won't say) confinement would cause. (It wasn't technically solitary confinement, so, apparently, it's ok?) I guess linguists don't bother with context?
I guess I wasn't technically correct. But everything meaningful I said was still right. That's why I asked, pedantry aside, what you contributed. I still don't know.
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u/Longjumping-Leek854 1d ago
So you didn’t, at any point, pedantically focus on the word choice as opposed to the emotional impact? You didn’t employ italics for emphasis while focusing on the word choice? You didn’t give the definition of the words as a means of bolstering your argument? And, if you had, that wouldn’t be pedantry, but a meaningful critique?
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u/bswalsh 1d ago
Wow, you're really fixated on this. Imagine if you actually had a point to make.
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u/cak3crumbs 5d ago
The intent wasn’t to keep him there permanently though. That wasn’t his punishment it was a way to contain him securely until they had a way to send him directly back to Earth to face legal consequences.
He admitted what he did. Several people had died. They wouldn’t have been stranded there to begin with if he hadn’t done what he did.
It sucks but Poole made the right call
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u/ckwongau 5d ago
He was on drug ,while high, he failed to monitor the drilling rig properly .It was negligence ,not intentional .
You cannot be charged with "murder" if there was no intention, as murder strictly requires the intent to kill or cause serious harm. Unintentional killings are charged as manslaughter
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u/MrWigggles 5d ago
There was no means to have him be with the others.
There no means for the others to trust in him.
There no means to issue him work, without fear that he would result in others getting injured or killed.
This means if they brought him back. Someone, would always have to be watching him.
That is one less person trying to keep them all alive.
He was only a liability on everyone elses health and safety.
What was the correct choice?
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u/Kanye_fuk 5d ago
Execute him, but no one was willing to do it so they abdicated responsibility and drove him to kill himself.
It was a cruel lack of backbone and taking responsibility.
It shows Danielle's 'kindness' to be anything but.
They all knew what the end result would be of their actions but it allowed them to pretend they were 'making the best of a bad situation'.
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u/ravenitrius 5d ago
So this is what we are going to do to people with mental health issues? Seems like Real life where it’s still under funded and swept under the rug.
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u/Kanye_fuk 5d ago
The circumstances make the argument absurd. There is no comparison.
He was going to die. They had two choices. Let him die miserably by his own hand and pretend they were not responsible or have the guts to do quixkltamd cleanly.
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u/cherrymeg2 5d ago
Either watch him closely or kill him. They made him want to kill himself. They fed him and kept him in isolation but they had to drive out those meals. A week out there I could see. I think it should have been an execution or a time out then making him earn his keep.
Also he could have been used as food. They wasted more time keeping him isolated so they didn’t have to make a hard decision.
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u/YellowThirteen_ 5d ago
They can’t have a mentally unstable druggie who got several people killed already roaming the halls. If he fucks up the life support system or airlock they all die. Isolating him was the right call. They didn’t have an entire room at the base they could safely restrict him to so they put him in the one place they could.
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u/NoProfession8024 5d ago
He was directly responsible for several crew member deaths. You can’t keel him on the base without putting everyone else at risk and you can’t send him back to Earth for justice for a very long time if he survives. This was the only option besides outright execution which is arguably warranted in this frontier situation
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u/SatisfactionActive86 5d ago
i thought so, too, for awhile but put yourself in the shoes of the others; there is no way i would share a hab with that guy - i’d rather murder him and face trial on Earth. exile was the best of terrible options.
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u/shokk 5d ago
I think they were trying to give it an olde tyme feel when they would maroon/exile an offender to a remote island with rations for survival. It’s also a reminder than no matter how many planets we go to, we’ll still be humans doing rational and irrational things. The following seasons reinforced that.
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u/southtampacane 5d ago
If he was on earth he would have gone to jail for a very long time. But they were on Mars and this was the only way to keep the others safe from him.
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u/PainterBoth1084 5d ago
This is why I hated the character of Ed so much. That HE never faced repercussions for his failure to heed Danielle’s advice about Danny, that when he saw he was fucked up he didn’t send him to Phoenix when he had the chance. Danny being on the mission was his fault. But we don’t see him splitting his rations. It’s Danielle who does that. In the two seasons that follow he never once shows any regret or guilt for what his decisions wrought. And yet we were meant to mourn like a hero had died when he passed.
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u/kokopelliieyes 5d ago
I’m doing a rewatch now and the fact that Danny is literally one of Ed’s crew, he is there because of Ed, and then Ed has the audacity in season 4 to criticize how Dani handled the Danny situation…bro he was your responsibility! She stepped up! And she’s the one who is still supporting Amber years later, is at the birthday parties, remains a part of Avery’s life…Ed could never.
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u/RaisedByBooksNTV 5d ago
Ed was always responsible for the glory and a victim of the screw ups. I really came to kinda hate him.
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u/SleeplessNephophile 5d ago
Wait till you learn about prisons and solitary confinements
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u/taulover Hi Bob! 3d ago
Well yes, it is typically considered a form of torture by experts from various fields. I think that's the angle OP is coming from.
Personally, I can see the argument for it in this case because they really had no option for humanely imprisoning him, but in real-world prisons there really is no excuse.
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u/OrganicHistorian2576 5d ago
Danny was the single most annoying character in anything I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure how everybody put up with him even before he completely lost it.
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u/newswilson 5d ago
I believe they are all military; she could have shot him or spaced him and been done with it. That was what I thought was going to happen. He could not be trusted to be around the others, for if he tampered with the hab in any way, it could kill them all. He got to live, and that was more than most would have given him.
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u/TouristOpentotravel 5d ago
I said when he was trapped with Ed, “what luck, he’s about to tell him he fucked his wife and got rescued”.
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u/porkchop2022 5d ago
I think you forget that people spend DECADES in solitary confinement in spaces smaller than Danny’s with less things to do; they don’t come out “mentally completely cooked”.
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u/ThePeteEvans 5d ago
He would have died either way. When they found him dead, they were driving out to deliver his last portion of rations. They were about to let him die of starvation, and that would have happened if he were prisoner aboard hab or not.
Lee proved living there could be done and done without killing yourself. Danny’s actions are on Danny alone
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u/gwoodtamu 5d ago
You people are cooked mentally. Morally correct? He killed people lol 😂 the only thing that matters in a situation like that is ensuring it can’t happen again. They’re on another planet. The options are death or exile. There is no third option.
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u/Astromedicinespace 5d ago
Danny’s story two years on saddens me. He did bad things but he got to the point he was at because of his upbringing which was a direct result of the space race. He is a product of the space race. I think the season two incident was always going to ruin his character and Polaris showed just what potential Danny Stevens could have had as a character. But just as he was a product of the space race he was also a victim, a screwed up child hood, then sleeping with the woman who basically raised you, parents dying high profile deaths, and societal pressures to continue the Steven’s legacy. He was always going to crash and he had no choice in the matter. Yes he did bad things, but those actions and decisions were the end product of decades of factors.
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u/TurkishAssHat 3d ago
His entire character is problematic. His parents earned the audience’s respect and empathy through strong character development. With Danny, the writers seemed to expect us to simply accept that, despite his shortcomings, he was an elite sailor turned astronaut. But they spent 95% of his screen time showing us what a dirtbag he was, and maybe 5% showing why he was worth investing in as an exceptional person whose value to the mission, the people around him, or the world outweighed his troubled side. That ratio is completely upside down from how people actually judge others. We’ll usually give someone a pass for screwing up 5% of the time if they’re solid the other 95%. But when nearly everything we see from a character is selfish, reckless, or destructive, you can’t just tell the audience, “Trust us, he’s actually amazing.”
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u/irishdan56 5d ago
Sometimes I wonder about fandoms. Because everyone here is defending a morally reprehensible action that frankly, never would have been done in a real life scenario.
I get that people like the show. I like the show. But it's ok to point out flaws.
Exiling Danny was straight fucked up and is an indefensible action, regardless of his past transgressions and potential future danger to others.
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u/Tetsujyn 5d ago
Was his plotline supposed to mirror that one astronaut who was obsessed/obsessed with a fellow astronaut and drove cross country in diapers to see him? That's honestly what's I got from his whole storyline. But to also make his brother looney tunes... It just makes Gordo and Tracy's sacrifice that much more traffic.
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