Star City 1.03
Jun. 7th, 2026 05:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThe Soviet Union based spin-off continues apace. This episode puts the spotlight on some different characters than the first two, while providing one of the answers to the set up questions already.
This episode focused on Wallja (not Wasja, my bad for the wrong spelling last week), Tatyana "Tanya" and Sasha among the cosmonauts (and wife of same) who were supporting characters last week, while Anastasia became a supporting character this week (though a poignant one, as the Chief Designer's prediction from last week has become true - she's now a propaganda asset, which means the government won't risk her in space agian, which means her career is in effect over and she*s reduced to signing autographs - mind you, given what else is going on in this episode I have hopes they'll be forced to let Anastasia Belikova back into space, but she doesn't know that yet!). What's more, Irina's response to transcribing the surveillance of Tanya in particular starts to get overtones of one of the few post WWII German movies to become an international success, The Lives of Others. If you haven't seen it (you should, it really is very good): It's the early 1980s, a Stasi officer gets the task to bug the flat of an East German writer and his actress girlfriend, officially to find out whether there is something subversive going on, but, as he comes to figure out eventually, really because one of the party big wigs is interested in the actress himself and wants to get rid of the writer. Our antihero the Stasi officer starts out as a true believer (and ruthless interrogator in the opening sequence), but listening to the daily lives of the writer and the actress starts to affect him emotionally, he becomes drawn to both of them and even invested in their relationship, and of course there comes the moment where he has to choose between his job and his repressed but not unextingished humanity. The late Ulrich Mühe gives a fantastic performance, believable as both the ruthless Stasi interrogator of the opening scene and the slowly thawing human being thereafter. When young Irina who listens in to Tanya humming and dancing to contraband Western music decides to change this to "T sings a Russian folk song" in her transcript, I felt a distinct echo. (The first serious sign that the Stasi officer has been affected beyond idle curiosity is when he changes the writer and a friend talking about a forbidden article the writer is composiing about GDR suicide rates to the discussion of an invented play about Lenin.) It's also both interesting, fitting and ironic at the same time that it's Tanya and not Walja Irina becomes increasingly affected by. (Not just for those of us who saw some subtext in older Irina's interest in Margo.) The contrast to her own life is obvious - Tanya is a rule breaker in several ways (though as far as we know not an unpatriotic one, which would have deterred Irina). And as it turns out, Tanya is not just being hyperbolic when saying during her argument with Walja that music is the "the only thing I have left" - pre marriage to a cosmonaut, she used to be a professional musician who now teaches music to school children (among them, as we and Irina find out in the course of the episode, Irina's own daughter Zoya). Smuggling in Western music on X-rays to listen to isn't some idle fancy, it goes to the core of her. (BTW, all of this really adds to making Tanya a more layered character than "wife who has an affair". )
The encounter between Tanya and Irina at the market followed by Tanya inviting Irina into her flat and Irina feeling ever more uneasy bout this collision of professional and private llife (underlining how young and relatively unexperienced Irina still is at this point) while also being fascinated against her will and even lured into talking about Zoya's father ("not a good man") a bit, though in a way that prohibits the audience from hearing what else she has to say (and she*ll erase that part of the conversation later from the surveillance tapes via magnet). There are several possibilities here, but I hope they don't go with Irina being raped, because that would be very clichéd. Anyway, The other possibility I can see is that the father was someone higher up in the party and that Irina getting pregnant is one explanation why she went from going to a very good university - "privilege," said Ludmilla in the pilot, "I can smell it on you" - to ending up as a typist endlessly transcribing surveillance tapes, and is perhaps an additional reason why she is so determined to rise.
However - Irina erasing part of her conversation with Tanya is going to look very bad and suspicious indeed once it will be revealed, as it inevitably will be, that the mole in Star City is none other than Tanya's husband Walja. (I knew it! It's (nearly) always the quiet, reliable types.) (They were building up towards this reveal through the episode as Walja, introduced as the calm type, behaved increasingly under stress and snappish like throughout, and concern for his fellow cosmonauts in space only goes so far.) My current guess: the only way Irina is going to avoid ending up as a susupect herself is by throwing her newfound friend to the wolves before anyone else can, and that will be the next big step on her arc from compassionate idealist to ruthless KGB master manipulator. But before that happens, they're going to allow for the friendship between the two women to bulid.
Meanwhile in space: another illustration of human life not being a priority comes when Sasha tells Anastasia they're not going to wear the complete space suits for the next moon landing when they're supposed to establish a base, because the landing capsure doesn't have room for two cosmonauts in full gear. And if cheapness doesn't do you in, state paranoia will, as when once the Chief Designer has told Ludmilla that Sergeij and he detected an American frequence hidden in the Luna broadcast, there has to be a complete reset of the systems, which kills the US signal but then leads to Arkadi's death. (BTW, note the show doesn't take the easy route out by letting Ludmilla be factually wrong. She turned out to have been correct suspicions: there is an American mole in Star City, equipment was smuggled in. And the rest did kill the device. But happening in a vehcle which was severely underequipped anyway because of propaganda reasons (lunar base NOW NOW NOW), it proved fatal, and it just underlines how expendable human life is for the/this state that it was risked.
(Except this was another trained cosmonaut who just died, after Yana in the pilot, and I don't think they have that many available. Hence my assumption that Anastasia will get another chance to go to space after all.)
In conclusion: Another suspenseful episode of the John Le Carré meets Space Exploration show!
This episode focused on Wallja (not Wasja, my bad for the wrong spelling last week), Tatyana "Tanya" and Sasha among the cosmonauts (and wife of same) who were supporting characters last week, while Anastasia became a supporting character this week (though a poignant one, as the Chief Designer's prediction from last week has become true - she's now a propaganda asset, which means the government won't risk her in space agian, which means her career is in effect over and she*s reduced to signing autographs - mind you, given what else is going on in this episode I have hopes they'll be forced to let Anastasia Belikova back into space, but she doesn't know that yet!). What's more, Irina's response to transcribing the surveillance of Tanya in particular starts to get overtones of one of the few post WWII German movies to become an international success, The Lives of Others. If you haven't seen it (you should, it really is very good): It's the early 1980s, a Stasi officer gets the task to bug the flat of an East German writer and his actress girlfriend, officially to find out whether there is something subversive going on, but, as he comes to figure out eventually, really because one of the party big wigs is interested in the actress himself and wants to get rid of the writer. Our antihero the Stasi officer starts out as a true believer (and ruthless interrogator in the opening sequence), but listening to the daily lives of the writer and the actress starts to affect him emotionally, he becomes drawn to both of them and even invested in their relationship, and of course there comes the moment where he has to choose between his job and his repressed but not unextingished humanity. The late Ulrich Mühe gives a fantastic performance, believable as both the ruthless Stasi interrogator of the opening scene and the slowly thawing human being thereafter. When young Irina who listens in to Tanya humming and dancing to contraband Western music decides to change this to "T sings a Russian folk song" in her transcript, I felt a distinct echo. (The first serious sign that the Stasi officer has been affected beyond idle curiosity is when he changes the writer and a friend talking about a forbidden article the writer is composiing about GDR suicide rates to the discussion of an invented play about Lenin.) It's also both interesting, fitting and ironic at the same time that it's Tanya and not Walja Irina becomes increasingly affected by. (Not just for those of us who saw some subtext in older Irina's interest in Margo.) The contrast to her own life is obvious - Tanya is a rule breaker in several ways (though as far as we know not an unpatriotic one, which would have deterred Irina). And as it turns out, Tanya is not just being hyperbolic when saying during her argument with Walja that music is the "the only thing I have left" - pre marriage to a cosmonaut, she used to be a professional musician who now teaches music to school children (among them, as we and Irina find out in the course of the episode, Irina's own daughter Zoya). Smuggling in Western music on X-rays to listen to isn't some idle fancy, it goes to the core of her. (BTW, all of this really adds to making Tanya a more layered character than "wife who has an affair". )
The encounter between Tanya and Irina at the market followed by Tanya inviting Irina into her flat and Irina feeling ever more uneasy bout this collision of professional and private llife (underlining how young and relatively unexperienced Irina still is at this point) while also being fascinated against her will and even lured into talking about Zoya's father ("not a good man") a bit, though in a way that prohibits the audience from hearing what else she has to say (and she*ll erase that part of the conversation later from the surveillance tapes via magnet). There are several possibilities here, but I hope they don't go with Irina being raped, because that would be very clichéd. Anyway, The other possibility I can see is that the father was someone higher up in the party and that Irina getting pregnant is one explanation why she went from going to a very good university - "privilege," said Ludmilla in the pilot, "I can smell it on you" - to ending up as a typist endlessly transcribing surveillance tapes, and is perhaps an additional reason why she is so determined to rise.
However - Irina erasing part of her conversation with Tanya is going to look very bad and suspicious indeed once it will be revealed, as it inevitably will be, that the mole in Star City is none other than Tanya's husband Walja. (I knew it! It's (nearly) always the quiet, reliable types.) (They were building up towards this reveal through the episode as Walja, introduced as the calm type, behaved increasingly under stress and snappish like throughout, and concern for his fellow cosmonauts in space only goes so far.) My current guess: the only way Irina is going to avoid ending up as a susupect herself is by throwing her newfound friend to the wolves before anyone else can, and that will be the next big step on her arc from compassionate idealist to ruthless KGB master manipulator. But before that happens, they're going to allow for the friendship between the two women to bulid.
Meanwhile in space: another illustration of human life not being a priority comes when Sasha tells Anastasia they're not going to wear the complete space suits for the next moon landing when they're supposed to establish a base, because the landing capsure doesn't have room for two cosmonauts in full gear. And if cheapness doesn't do you in, state paranoia will, as when once the Chief Designer has told Ludmilla that Sergeij and he detected an American frequence hidden in the Luna broadcast, there has to be a complete reset of the systems, which kills the US signal but then leads to Arkadi's death. (BTW, note the show doesn't take the easy route out by letting Ludmilla be factually wrong. She turned out to have been correct suspicions: there is an American mole in Star City, equipment was smuggled in. And the rest did kill the device. But happening in a vehcle which was severely underequipped anyway because of propaganda reasons (lunar base NOW NOW NOW), it proved fatal, and it just underlines how expendable human life is for the/this state that it was risked.
(Except this was another trained cosmonaut who just died, after Yana in the pilot, and I don't think they have that many available. Hence my assumption that Anastasia will get another chance to go to space after all.)
In conclusion: Another suspenseful episode of the John Le Carré meets Space Exploration show!
