In space, no one can hear you scream, indeed.



Re: last week, I've been told the mystery man on the photo with an even younger Irina which shocked Tanya is Brezhnev. Now, this week we don't find out whether Irina is Brezhnev's illegitimate daughter, or whether he's the father of her child (btw: whoever the father is, Irina is very very young to have a child this age),or whether he's an uncle or mentor or all of the above. Not least because the sight spooked Tanya into deciding to not trust Irina but try her luck with Walja's handler instead (as he told her how to contact the woman when whispering in her ear). This leads to a great sequence of spy tropes, as well as character reveals, because Ms. America tells Tanya (with some glee, I thoiught), that they could blackmail Walya into becoming the mole only because his marriage to Tanya gave them leverage, that Walya did what he did to protect her from the Gulag. (The glee is the only thing a Le Carré written handler would not have done.) On the other hand, Irina under increasing pressure as she knows her own life is on the line now once Lyudmilla Korosova informs her BOTH Miranovs have fled and that Tanya warned her husband (which means someone must have tipped her off) keeps showcasing her investigative skills and poker face as she manages to not only filch some files from Lyudmilla's superior but track down the handler working for the Americans herself. The whole "Irina on the case" sequence culminating in the US handler seemingly throwing off the tail (as I expected her to, a woman with years of experience would have had to notice Irina following her) only for the audience to find out Irina, too, had expected this but had managed to plant a tracer on the woman which she then can follow to the apartment where the handler has stashed Tanya was great and highly enjoyable spying. At this point, Irina still seems to somehow want to save Tanya as well, but alas Tanya doesn't trust anyone anymore and knocks her down with a hair dryier, escaping once more. Given Irina's expression as she examines her bleeding head, I suspect this is the moment which older Irina alludes to in her conversation with Aleida in FaM season 5 when she says she used to be an idealist, until she found out how the world works. Actually, I half expected this part of the episode to end with Irina having to use Chekov's gun to shoot Tanya in order to protect herself (if Lyudmilla interrogates Tanya, she'll find out what Irina did to help her, after all). This might stilll happen, but not in this episode, because the non-Irina related part is full of shock horrors already, as facing betrayal and how to respond to it is a general theme.

The Chief Designer, unsurprisingly, first doesn't believe Lyudmilla when she says Walya is the mole, and bitterly asks whether this is another case like Yana. (Whom Lyudmilla tortured and killed without Yana having done anything wrong.) But given Walya has knocked out and tied up Pavel to escape via the Venus mission, he has to believe it, and we get another tense and very suspensful spying sequence as he temporarily cooperates enough with Lyudmilla to come up with a way to use Chadra, Chadra's husband and the fact Walya doesn't speak their language in order to get Walya into a part of the module they can isolate. And then things get worse from their. We've seen last minute rescues NOT work (though most times they do) in five seasons of FoM and thus we did see people die in space (most memorably perhaps Tracy and Gordo who chose to in order to save everyone else), but this was different. By the time the episode ended, I was still staring in disbelief and hadn't yet processed the show actually killed off not just Walya but Sasha and Dr. Chadra as well. And as a direct consequence of Sasha and Chadra doing the right, humane thing - they, too, after initial denial still had to face the fact that Walya wasn't wrongly accused, he was indeed the mole - but like with most astronauts (and cosmonauts) on the mother show, their solidarity as human beings (and in Sasha's case their old friendship) still meant they could not let him die, that they had to rescue him. (And for a brief time were able to do so courtesy of the Chief Designer and Sergei, neither of whom could bear seeing Walya vaccuumed, either. But all these heroic acts are in vein, because Lyudmilla had another visit from a higher up, and the chain of pressure and fear for one's life ends up with her pointing a gun at one of the engineers who has to press the button ensuring the gruesome deaths of all three cosmonauts.

(It occurs to me that there is a parallel/contrast to Miles pushing that button in order to win the war, knowing it will result in the fiery deaths of the entire command of the invading marines. Young Irina doesn't know Valya had escaped into space, or that this is going on, she's busy with her own subplot, but older Irina undoubtedly has learned about it. Hm...)

I mean, I assume they died. Yes, we did not see the bodies. But we didn't see those of the torched Marine command, either, and the image when the camera cuts away is pretty muich unmistakable. Among other things, this means that of the cast inroduced at the start of the season and not protected by plot armor (i.e. Irina and Sergeii have to survive because they are in FaM later), the sole surviving cosmonaut is Anastasia Belekova, and of the engineering team, the Chief Designer (who might be elementary to the Soviet space programm at this point but has done so many things that a Gulag, at the very least seems to be in his near future), plus Lyudmilla Korosova from the KGB. (Will she be blamed for the fact there even was a Venus mission, never mind an escaped mole on it, or will the fact she caused the deaths of all three cosmonauts in this case seen as a plus, since it means both tihe spy and the Venus embarassment can be literary safely buried?) There is of course Tanya, but I don't see her chances at survival and freedom very high, either, especially since, see above, at this point Irina pretty much has to kill her (and thus the idealistic part of her own self) in order to survive and have a career. And we're still several episodes away from the finale...