It's the New Millennium, the Cold War is over as the USA and the USSR's blocs have formed the Mars-7 Alliance to colonize Mars together and build up Happy Valley into a self-sustaining human colony. However a mission to capture an asteroid soon turns awry and casts a shadow over this new era of peace and prosperity.
- The Alliance: The Mars-7 (M-7) Alliance is a cross-bloc coalition of US and Soviet-aligned nations and private corporations like Helios Aerospace, built for the express purpose of ending the space race and the disasters the competition ultimately created and working together to colonize Mars and exploit the riches of the asteroid belt.
- Alternate History: A series of news broadcasts fill us in on what's been happening over the last eight years.
- The USSR is still going strong in the 21st Century. Western brands like McDonald's, Bentley, and Louis Vuitton have opened in Moscow, moving the USSR towards a mixed economy like China. However, this is met with disdain from communist hardliners.
- Al Gore wins the 2000 Presidential election by a similar razor-thin margin. Aided by the Wilson Administration's poor handling of the Elian Gonzales case to give him a boost in Florida when in reality he was hampered in the state by the Clinton Administration's perceived poor handling of the case.
- Ellen is renewed for a sixth season instead of being cancelled.
- Bill and Hillary Clinton divorce in the late 90s.
- President Wilson signs a "Marriage Inclusion" act, legalizing same-sex marriage on a Federal level.
- Harvey Weinstein is charged with sexual assault in 1999.
- Stanley Kubrick's last film before his death is A.I.: Artificial Intelligence instead of Eyes Wide Shut.
- Michael Jordan retires from basketball, signing a major league contract with the Seattle Mariners. He helps them win the AL West pennant in 1997, going on to face the Baltimore Orioles in the playoffs.
- A successor plane to the Concorde is introduced.
- Having lost their wealth and influence due to the world switching to fusion energy, not to mention a lack of American foreign policy interest in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia has destabilized with rebels seizing Riyadh.
- The Y2K bug happens and wreaks havoc on the International Space Port.
- Asteroid Miners: The episode and season begins with the attempt to capture an asteroid in order to mine it.
- Blatant Lies: Miles writes on his application that he went to FSU even though he doesn't have a college education.
- Dawn of an Era: President Al Gore gives one such address at the end of the opening newsreel montage:Al Gore: As we usher in a new decade, the growing partnership between the United States and the Soviet Union, both on Earth and on Mars is bringing a new sense of optimism to the nations of the world. Tonight, I can proudly say that the Cold War is over. Those we once thought of as our enemies have become our friends and a new era of peace and prosperity is before us.
- Different World, Different Movies:
- A biopic based on the race to Mars, titled Race To Mars, is made in the late-90s, starring Clint Eastwood as Ed Baldwin and Jada Pinkett as Danielle Poole.
- A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is directed by Stanley Kubrick in the late 90s instead of Steven Spielberg after the former's death and is released posthumously a month after his passing.
- A reality TV show named Moon Miners is released around the turn of the millennium and is exactly about what the title suggests, miners on the moon.
- Fire-Forged Friends: The USA and USSR have become this by the New Millennium with a joint USA/USSR mission in the Ranger-1 spacecraft achieving another milestone, the first human to set foot on an asteroid. The distrust and cultural posturing that made prior interactions difficult between the two is gone as people from both nations not only work together without conflict but Ed and Grigori have become close personal friends in the seven years since the end of last season.
- In Spite of a Nail:
- IBM's Deep Blue still faces off and wins against Gary Kasparov.
- Even though he ultimately couldn't leverage it into a presidency like he did in our timeline, George H. W. Bush still becomes Vice-President, replacing Bragg as Ellen's VP after he turns on her for coming out as gay.
- Jerry Maguire and Cast Away are still released and still starring Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks in their respective lead roles.
- Woodstock '99 still happens and is by all indications just as much of a disaster as it was in our timeline.
- The British handover Hong Kong to the Chinese, and as in reality, the transfer is peaceful.
- Uncertain Doom: The fate of Danny Stevens is not revealed. The NASA, Soviet, and Helios astronauts are shown returning to Earth a year later, but Danny isn't featured in a photograph of the crew upon their return. Danielle also speaks of him in a hushed tone. Did Danny die? Is he still manning the North Korean capsule in exile?
