For All Mankind 4.04
Dec. 1st, 2023 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI had a thoroughly exhausting week - not in a bad way, just very much to do - and thus am very much behind in replies and media. However, there's life, well, astronauts, cosmonauts and workers on Mars!
No Aleida and Kelly this week. Otoh, we get some fleshing out of Eli the ex car salesman (literally) currently heading NASA, as we see him in a crisis, first smugly certain that he can outnegotiate the newly reimperialized Russians, finding himself frozen out by Irina and then actually coming through with a good idea to solve the episode's key dilemma, thereby proving he actually is good at (this part of) his job. The scene with his wife also shows he's emotionally invested in this particular job and not regarding it as interchangeable with heading another big industry, which I don't think we knew before.
Meanwhile in Russia: the Margo/von Braun echoes/parallels keep piling up, as this week she's doing what von Braun did mid s1 - being the disgraced engineer figuring out what caused the big accident, and that the fault is in the own team's manufacturing. (Though unlike the US case, where the Apollos exploded because second rate manufacturers got supply jobs as part of a political trade, in this case the fuck up was because of meter/kilo versus feet/pound conversion problems. (Good lord, even in this AU, Americans have not yet adapted the metric system! That's how we know we have a long way to go until Star Trek time, because Starfleet does use the metric system, thank you, Gene Roddenberry.) Also, because this is the USSR after a successful coup by neo Stalinist hardliners, Kirill the engineer taking responsibility for said screw up isn't just fired, as he would have been in the US, too, he's taken away by the KGB. In between, we saw Margo befriend what looks like a Russian version of Aleida, Tatiana, and there's even a Russian version of the infamous NASA vending machine, we saw her get praised by Irina and then get told by Tatiana about Kirill's fate. And we saw her visibly revitalize and light up when she was given a problem to solve - and solve it she did. All very good scenes, with the arguable highlight being the scene with Margo and Irina in Irina's office, where you could see that on the one hand Margo hadn't forgotten to be scared by Irina and what she symbolized but otoh could not help but be warmed and flattered by the way Irina seemed to value her, gave her the chance to truly work again and even (because, let's not forget, Irina is KGB and presumably trained for handling assets like Margo) adding additional emotional fodder by the 1960s Russian engineers photograph that includes a young Sergej. My current speculation is that Margo will find herself in yet another von Braun situation before this season is over - Irina will keep promoting her to the point where Margo would be able to do essentially do what she has done at NASA only with even more man power and goods at her disposal - but at a terrible human price, and she will have to make a choice - everything (with slave labor or something close to it) - or nothing, a the risk of her own life but in a way that could save others.
This episode starts pulling the various plot threads together as Eli at a NASA briefing gives us something about Irina's background and why she was on Team Not!Putin against Gorbachev during the Coup, and the big problem du jour on Earth is causaed by the Soviet cosmonauts reacting to the new political situation back home, resulting in an argument between Svetlana the cosmonaut (Team Gorbachev) and Wassili the worker (Team Not!Putin) which gets physical on the Mars surface and results in Wassili nearly dying due to an unfortunate shove of Svetlana's. Which in turn ends up igniting the Ed versus Danielle confrontation we knew would be coming, and ties in into the growing problem of bad morale among the workers. I really appreciated all the layers. We the audience start out sympathizing with Svetlana, not just because she got introduced last week as a pal of Ed's with flirty undertones but because she calls Wassili on his Stalinist bulllshit, and we also see he provoked the argument. BUT then, even before the Earth dimension of the crisis kicks in, we see Ed doing what Ed (and not just Ed - Molly Cobb when she was in charge did exactly the same thing, which is part of why Margo fired her) always does, wanting to not punish Svetlana at all because hey, she's another pilot and a friendand also he's into her , while Danielle points out Svetlana, no matter her intentions, did cause serious injuries to Wassili and there need to be genuine consequences, and won't budge. This is already a serious disagreement foreshadowing the later one, but becomes temporarily moot as Svetlana is ordered to return to stand a (show) trial back home because Wassili it turns out is related to a member of the new Politburo, which of course Danielle is against, too. Which is when we get yet another side, that of the Helios workers, who don't see Wassili as the privileged one (I bet none of them is aware of the whole "related to a member of the new Politbureau" part), they see Svetlana the cosmonaut as the elite and Wassili as one of theirs, a worker injured with one of the "upstairs" people caring. This is the kind of idea that wouldn't have developed had the Helios workers not been treated so badly, but it makes complete sense under these circumstances, and also illustrates that the intermingling of nations on Mars did work not just for the astronauts and cosmonauts, as Sam and Miles see Wassili more as one of them than they do the astronauts in this particular situation.
When Samantha becomes the first Helios worker we see approach Danielle to talk about this, I like that Danielle doesn't immediately react perfectly - not least, presumably, because she knows what awaits Svetlana back home and would actually have punished her had Star City not interfered, so Sam accusing her of not caring gets her hackles raised - but after her first defensive statements thinks about it, reconsiders, visits the comatose Wassili and bases her eventual conclusion on this, too, because Danielle is the type of team leader who does listen to what her subordinates have to say. Doesn't mean she'll always agree, but she does listen and really thinks about it.
Meanwhile, Ed: regards even the compromise solution Eli back on Earth comes up with - Svetlana being sent to India, the one neutral state in the M7, and put on trial there, not in the Soviet Union - as outrageous, and that's when we get what's bound to be only the first of several big bust ups between him and Danielle. Who when accused of towing the company line for her career's sake (which is exactly the kind of shitty argument Ed used the last time when he stood in danger of losing something he volued, back in s3 when Margo chose Danielle over him and Ed pulled the " we all know this is just because you're black" card) finally has had it and pulls out the big verbal guns by calling Ed on his cronyism: with Gordo in s1 and s2, and insisting on enlisting Danny for the Mars mission despite Danielle explicitly (and correctly) telling him Danny was in no emotional and psychological shape for this. As I said, it's not just Ed who is like this, has this "Pilots 4eva!" attitude - when Molly let off Ed and Gordo with a slap on the wrist mid s2, she did exactly the same thing -, but Ed does it most often and while he got lucky with Gordo, it had fatal consequences in the Danny case.
Miles: jumps on the latest get rich quick scheme in as many episodes, and look, show, we get it. He does that. (And would be dead if not for Sam rescueing him.) He needs to get other stuff to do now, or he'll be a one note character. To be fair, he had one interesting scene where he disagreed with an old time Helios worker about what the return of Dev to the top would mean for the workers - the veteran believes Dev's announcement that now everything will be better again, whereas Miles thinks Dev is a phoney. But still. Oh, and I did appreciate Samantha got her scene with Danielle in addition to her scenes with Miles, so we got to see her in a new context.
No Aleida and Kelly this week. Otoh, we get some fleshing out of Eli the ex car salesman (literally) currently heading NASA, as we see him in a crisis, first smugly certain that he can outnegotiate the newly reimperialized Russians, finding himself frozen out by Irina and then actually coming through with a good idea to solve the episode's key dilemma, thereby proving he actually is good at (this part of) his job. The scene with his wife also shows he's emotionally invested in this particular job and not regarding it as interchangeable with heading another big industry, which I don't think we knew before.
Meanwhile in Russia: the Margo/von Braun echoes/parallels keep piling up, as this week she's doing what von Braun did mid s1 - being the disgraced engineer figuring out what caused the big accident, and that the fault is in the own team's manufacturing. (Though unlike the US case, where the Apollos exploded because second rate manufacturers got supply jobs as part of a political trade, in this case the fuck up was because of meter/kilo versus feet/pound conversion problems. (Good lord, even in this AU, Americans have not yet adapted the metric system! That's how we know we have a long way to go until Star Trek time, because Starfleet does use the metric system, thank you, Gene Roddenberry.) Also, because this is the USSR after a successful coup by neo Stalinist hardliners, Kirill the engineer taking responsibility for said screw up isn't just fired, as he would have been in the US, too, he's taken away by the KGB. In between, we saw Margo befriend what looks like a Russian version of Aleida, Tatiana, and there's even a Russian version of the infamous NASA vending machine, we saw her get praised by Irina and then get told by Tatiana about Kirill's fate. And we saw her visibly revitalize and light up when she was given a problem to solve - and solve it she did. All very good scenes, with the arguable highlight being the scene with Margo and Irina in Irina's office, where you could see that on the one hand Margo hadn't forgotten to be scared by Irina and what she symbolized but otoh could not help but be warmed and flattered by the way Irina seemed to value her, gave her the chance to truly work again and even (because, let's not forget, Irina is KGB and presumably trained for handling assets like Margo) adding additional emotional fodder by the 1960s Russian engineers photograph that includes a young Sergej. My current speculation is that Margo will find herself in yet another von Braun situation before this season is over - Irina will keep promoting her to the point where Margo would be able to do essentially do what she has done at NASA only with even more man power and goods at her disposal - but at a terrible human price, and she will have to make a choice - everything (with slave labor or something close to it) - or nothing, a the risk of her own life but in a way that could save others.
This episode starts pulling the various plot threads together as Eli at a NASA briefing gives us something about Irina's background and why she was on Team Not!Putin against Gorbachev during the Coup, and the big problem du jour on Earth is causaed by the Soviet cosmonauts reacting to the new political situation back home, resulting in an argument between Svetlana the cosmonaut (Team Gorbachev) and Wassili the worker (Team Not!Putin) which gets physical on the Mars surface and results in Wassili nearly dying due to an unfortunate shove of Svetlana's. Which in turn ends up igniting the Ed versus Danielle confrontation we knew would be coming, and ties in into the growing problem of bad morale among the workers. I really appreciated all the layers. We the audience start out sympathizing with Svetlana, not just because she got introduced last week as a pal of Ed's with flirty undertones but because she calls Wassili on his Stalinist bulllshit, and we also see he provoked the argument. BUT then, even before the Earth dimension of the crisis kicks in, we see Ed doing what Ed (and not just Ed - Molly Cobb when she was in charge did exactly the same thing, which is part of why Margo fired her) always does, wanting to not punish Svetlana at all because hey, she's another pilot and a friend
When Samantha becomes the first Helios worker we see approach Danielle to talk about this, I like that Danielle doesn't immediately react perfectly - not least, presumably, because she knows what awaits Svetlana back home and would actually have punished her had Star City not interfered, so Sam accusing her of not caring gets her hackles raised - but after her first defensive statements thinks about it, reconsiders, visits the comatose Wassili and bases her eventual conclusion on this, too, because Danielle is the type of team leader who does listen to what her subordinates have to say. Doesn't mean she'll always agree, but she does listen and really thinks about it.
Meanwhile, Ed: regards even the compromise solution Eli back on Earth comes up with - Svetlana being sent to India, the one neutral state in the M7, and put on trial there, not in the Soviet Union - as outrageous, and that's when we get what's bound to be only the first of several big bust ups between him and Danielle. Who when accused of towing the company line for her career's sake (which is exactly the kind of shitty argument Ed used the last time when he stood in danger of losing something he volued, back in s3 when Margo chose Danielle over him and Ed pulled the " we all know this is just because you're black" card) finally has had it and pulls out the big verbal guns by calling Ed on his cronyism: with Gordo in s1 and s2, and insisting on enlisting Danny for the Mars mission despite Danielle explicitly (and correctly) telling him Danny was in no emotional and psychological shape for this. As I said, it's not just Ed who is like this, has this "Pilots 4eva!" attitude - when Molly let off Ed and Gordo with a slap on the wrist mid s2, she did exactly the same thing -, but Ed does it most often and while he got lucky with Gordo, it had fatal consequences in the Danny case.
Miles: jumps on the latest get rich quick scheme in as many episodes, and look, show, we get it. He does that. (And would be dead if not for Sam rescueing him.) He needs to get other stuff to do now, or he'll be a one note character. To be fair, he had one interesting scene where he disagreed with an old time Helios worker about what the return of Dev to the top would mean for the workers - the veteran believes Dev's announcement that now everything will be better again, whereas Miles thinks Dev is a phoney. But still. Oh, and I did appreciate Samantha got her scene with Danielle in addition to her scenes with Miles, so we got to see her in a new context.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-02 04:36 am (UTC)OTOH, Miles's inevitable fall made me really appreciate how damn sturdy the Mars suits are, and how that makes some of the chances slightly more likely.
I continue to wish there was a bit less obvious that the Soviets are evil. If they'd not said that Wassili had an important family, if Kirill's fate was not so obviously dire, it would have been more interesting.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-02 10:26 am (UTC)Incidentally, I didn't notice at the time, but other reviews have reminded me that Kirill is in fact the Rozkosmos official who brushed Margo off when she showed up in the season opener and told her she and her knowledge were obsolete and not useful any longer. Which I think adds another layer to Margo's reaction. Is she solely horrified about his fate, or was there a tiny sliver of satisfaction at least when she delivered her report and Irina confronted Kirill about it? Don't get me wrong, once Tatiana told her Kirill was handed over to the KGB, any Schadenfreude she might have felt would have vanished completely and she'd just felt appalled at the fate of another human being and fellow engineer. But I think this might have contributed to her being ready to start connecting to Irina, who is scary but does recognize and value her contributions where Kirill had dismissed her as trash and now has shown himself to be less than competent.
re: Ed, wasn't it just? I mean, Ed (still) has some virtues - for example, as angry and as sullen as he is, I don't doubt for a moment he'd take a literal or proverbial bullet for Danielle in a second if she were the one in danger -, but good lord, is he ever someone I'd never want to be the boss of me. Or anyone's boss. He's a good test pilot. Not a good team leader. At all. It kind of is okay if the team is minimal and consists of one or two other pilots, but no more than that. And the more people he's supposed to be in charge with, the more that damages other people.
Mind you, I did think it realistic Ed got away with it for so long. He has the hero reputation of decades, he's been living relatively isolated on Mars where the only people of comparable authority were his buddies and everyone else in awe of him, and he had no real supervision. It's not a coincidence that I think Ed was at his best on s2 when he was a) professionally in a high but not the highest position and counter checks and balances and b) was around his family all the time, so that as opposed to s1 when his fathering of Shane on the rare occasions when he was there was such a disaster, there was the possibility for him, Kelly and Karen to talk things out as a family (sidenote: yes, his and Karen's marriage fell apart, but I'm talking about them in a family context as parents in relation to Kelly) and for Ed to rethink and change his behavior. Now Ed still did his "Pilots Together!" thing and appointed Gordo to the moon solely based on that, and it worked out for him instead of backfiring within that season - but on a greater narrative level, we've seen it set a bad precedence since he did exactly the same with Danny a season later, ignoring all the warning signs and Danielle's very explicit warning because hey, it had worked out with Gordo, and also He Knows Best.
In conclusion, a massive reckoning really has been coming for a long, long time, but this strikes me as intentional build up in terms of show writing.