Star City 1.04
Jun. 16th, 2026 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakDarth Real Life continues to cut down on my internet time, but it does exist. Thus:
Star City 1.04: In which the show keeps surprising me by the rapid pace it puts its intrigues under. Because by the end of the episode, Irina has discovered who the mole. And here I thought they would drag it out at least for two more episodes in order to buiilt up the friendship between her and Tanya in order to enhance her diilemma. But no. (Though the scene the two of them share before Irina figures it out is layered, more about this later.) Also, und not through Irina's fault, poor Sergei concludes the episode for the first but not the last time in the KGB's less than tender custody. If anyone's, it's the Chief Designer's fault, because what makes Sergej look suspicious to Lyudmilla the Night Witch is not least the genuinely fishy stuff Sergei in reality has been doing for his hero and the Designer's Venus mission. Well, that and reading forbidden books and being unwillig to rat out his fellow engineers. Anyway, this was an episode full of reveals, starting with the teaser, which in a mini movie/montage tells us how Valya ended up as an American mole. Turns out it was because Tanya with her love of (forbidden) music hung out with a group of dissidents labelled dissidents mostly not for actual subversive stuff but being after such cultural contraband before she met Valya, and was observed by an American spy on the hunt for informants, who couldn't believe her luck when Tanya (who knew and knows nothing about this) ran into Valya the cosmonaut and ended up married to him. Because his wife's "dissident" past made Valya in barely-post-Stalin Russia open for blackmail , which the US promptly ruthlessly exploits. (BTW, the montage makes the American secret service(s) as cold-bloodedly exploiitative with Valya as the KGB ilater will be with Margo n a very Le Carré way.)
The episode also shows KGB Colonel Lyudmilla on the other end of receiving pressure as the Chief Designer is only the first and not the last person in the episode to point out that's two dead cosmonauts now whose demise she is responsible for. (Directly in the case of Yana, and indirectly by insisting on the system reboot in the case of Arkadi.) Her superiors in Moscow also are less than pleased by this in combination of the mole not yet being identified and strongly hint it should be soon, sounding as if they're already writing Lyudmilla's obituary. Who because she's ruthless but not stupid and knows the carrot works as well as the stick orders Irina to her and doesn't just continue the chain of ominous threats and pressure but instead basically promises fast promotion out of the typing pool if Irina can deliver the mole. While Irina is questing to do that and demonstrating her investigative skills in her subplot, Lyudmilla continues to review everyone's files, which is bad news for Sergeii, see above. Now obviously Sergeii can't remain locked up long at this early point of his life for continuity reasons, and I am curious whether he'll be released because the Chief Designer will get him out (possibly by having to reveal his Venus and Mars plans?), or because Irina will deliver the true mole.
Which brings me to the episode's ending: while following the trace of the production company where most of the bug in the Luna 19 was manufactured, Irina had used Tanya as a babysitter for Zoya, and when she comes to pick her up, Tanya, whose subplot in tihs episode had her chew on the idea that Valya is cheating on her (which the audience knows he's not, because the woman she saw him with is handler), with her own lover Sasha all but pointing out the obvious here, keeps her in the flat for a while longer for a confidential chat. (Not so confidential that she doesn't lie to her new bff about her own extramarital activities, which btw I found psychologically realistic.She may feel drawn to Irina enough to already call her "Ironushka", but admitting she herself has been having an affair to someone she's only known for a short time in this utterly paranoid society? Nah.) This turns out to have fatal consequences because another trip to the bathroom allows Irina to realise something and with her appalled look as the penny drops in her mind we end the ep. I'm not going to speculate again that the show will draw this out because of the pacing so far, so I expect Irina making her decision within the next episode already, though I will insist on my speculation that all of this will eventually mean Anastasia (of whom we saw more again this episode) WILL be able to return to space after all. Because: the Chief Engineer has just drafted what's his name and the survivor guilt-ridden Sasha for his Venus project. (Even if they don't actually leave the planet, this means they're compromiised once this project gets busted.) And if Irina outs Valya as a more, this will make yet another cosmonaut unavailable. At the same time, the government absolutely wants to continue the space race and show up the Americans. They're thus running out of trained cosmonauts .
Anastasia being reduced to an endless series of PR appearances and realiising what this means is textually paralleled with Gagarin, but then this IS an AU, and thus I'm not giving up hope. Also, the episode had her and Sasha (with their respective issues boilling over) have angry sex for the first time, and thus if they now start to have an actual marriage I smell competitive trouble ahead.
Finally: a new character shows up, an Indian scientist the Chief Engineer has lured to the USSR under false pretenses but really because he considers her work instrumental in creating a vessel with enough air supply for a trip to Venus and back. I didn't have the time to google, but considering the Chief Designer - whose name the show hasn't spoken out loud yet, but who is clearly based on a real life Soviet scientist who lives longer in this AU than he did in RL, which seems to have created this different timeline in the first place - , is she based in a real life precdent as well, or completely invented? I mean, given India was (and is) famously bloc free, I could see some Soviet/Indian scientific cooperation happening in 1970 (or at least being planned).
Star City 1.04: In which the show keeps surprising me by the rapid pace it puts its intrigues under. Because by the end of the episode, Irina has discovered who the mole. And here I thought they would drag it out at least for two more episodes in order to buiilt up the friendship between her and Tanya in order to enhance her diilemma. But no. (Though the scene the two of them share before Irina figures it out is layered, more about this later.) Also, und not through Irina's fault, poor Sergei concludes the episode for the first but not the last time in the KGB's less than tender custody. If anyone's, it's the Chief Designer's fault, because what makes Sergej look suspicious to Lyudmilla the Night Witch is not least the genuinely fishy stuff Sergei in reality has been doing for his hero and the Designer's Venus mission. Well, that and reading forbidden books and being unwillig to rat out his fellow engineers. Anyway, this was an episode full of reveals, starting with the teaser, which in a mini movie/montage tells us how Valya ended up as an American mole. Turns out it was because Tanya with her love of (forbidden) music hung out with a group of dissidents labelled dissidents mostly not for actual subversive stuff but being after such cultural contraband before she met Valya, and was observed by an American spy on the hunt for informants, who couldn't believe her luck when Tanya (who knew and knows nothing about this) ran into Valya the cosmonaut and ended up married to him. Because his wife's "dissident" past made Valya in barely-post-Stalin Russia open for blackmail , which the US promptly ruthlessly exploits. (BTW, the montage makes the American secret service(s) as cold-bloodedly exploiitative with Valya as the KGB ilater will be with Margo n a very Le Carré way.)
The episode also shows KGB Colonel Lyudmilla on the other end of receiving pressure as the Chief Designer is only the first and not the last person in the episode to point out that's two dead cosmonauts now whose demise she is responsible for. (Directly in the case of Yana, and indirectly by insisting on the system reboot in the case of Arkadi.) Her superiors in Moscow also are less than pleased by this in combination of the mole not yet being identified and strongly hint it should be soon, sounding as if they're already writing Lyudmilla's obituary. Who because she's ruthless but not stupid and knows the carrot works as well as the stick orders Irina to her and doesn't just continue the chain of ominous threats and pressure but instead basically promises fast promotion out of the typing pool if Irina can deliver the mole. While Irina is questing to do that and demonstrating her investigative skills in her subplot, Lyudmilla continues to review everyone's files, which is bad news for Sergeii, see above. Now obviously Sergeii can't remain locked up long at this early point of his life for continuity reasons, and I am curious whether he'll be released because the Chief Designer will get him out (possibly by having to reveal his Venus and Mars plans?), or because Irina will deliver the true mole.
Which brings me to the episode's ending: while following the trace of the production company where most of the bug in the Luna 19 was manufactured, Irina had used Tanya as a babysitter for Zoya, and when she comes to pick her up, Tanya, whose subplot in tihs episode had her chew on the idea that Valya is cheating on her (which the audience knows he's not, because the woman she saw him with is handler), with her own lover Sasha all but pointing out the obvious here, keeps her in the flat for a while longer for a confidential chat. (Not so confidential that she doesn't lie to her new bff about her own extramarital activities, which btw I found psychologically realistic.She may feel drawn to Irina enough to already call her "Ironushka", but admitting she herself has been having an affair to someone she's only known for a short time in this utterly paranoid society? Nah.) This turns out to have fatal consequences because another trip to the bathroom allows Irina to realise something and with her appalled look as the penny drops in her mind we end the ep. I'm not going to speculate again that the show will draw this out because of the pacing so far, so I expect Irina making her decision within the next episode already, though I will insist on my speculation that all of this will eventually mean Anastasia (of whom we saw more again this episode) WILL be able to return to space after all. Because: the Chief Engineer has just drafted what's his name and the survivor guilt-ridden Sasha for his Venus project. (Even if they don't actually leave the planet, this means they're compromiised once this project gets busted.) And if Irina outs Valya as a more, this will make yet another cosmonaut unavailable. At the same time, the government absolutely wants to continue the space race and show up the Americans. They're thus running out of trained cosmonauts .
Anastasia being reduced to an endless series of PR appearances and realiising what this means is textually paralleled with Gagarin, but then this IS an AU, and thus I'm not giving up hope. Also, the episode had her and Sasha (with their respective issues boilling over) have angry sex for the first time, and thus if they now start to have an actual marriage I smell competitive trouble ahead.
Finally: a new character shows up, an Indian scientist the Chief Engineer has lured to the USSR under false pretenses but really because he considers her work instrumental in creating a vessel with enough air supply for a trip to Venus and back. I didn't have the time to google, but considering the Chief Designer - whose name the show hasn't spoken out loud yet, but who is clearly based on a real life Soviet scientist who lives longer in this AU than he did in RL, which seems to have created this different timeline in the first place - , is she based in a real life precdent as well, or completely invented? I mean, given India was (and is) famously bloc free, I could see some Soviet/Indian scientific cooperation happening in 1970 (or at least being planned).
