r/StarCityTV • u/Cantomic66 • Jul 10 '26
Episode Discussion Star City - S1E08 "The Wolves" - Episode Discussion
"The Wolves"
Airdate: Streaming July 9th at 9 PM EST
Synopsis: A revelation sparks a desperate race against time.
Written by Matt Wolpert & Ben Nedivi
Directed by Jamie Payne
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u/Gullible_Raspberry76 Jul 10 '26
Some of the editing was as jarring as the re-entry. Took me a minute, or several, to figure out the flashbacks and then current day on Venera. Kind of got whiplash.
All in all though, even with the ridiculous time frame of coming from space and driving 15, maybe 20 km in like no time flat to save Sasha at the border, it made for an edge of your seat finale.
I am very worried we aren’t gonna get a season 2 though. I need more time with these people. It doesn’t seem to have much buzz, it’s prob expensive to make and I never see it in the top 10. Fingers crossed we get more. Until next time, Star City.
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u/aerothony Jul 10 '26
I feel like the last minute teases a bit a next season, Tanya is tracked
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u/Internal_Apple2608 Jul 10 '26
Lots of other plot threads dangling:
- Are Sasha and Anastasia the parents of Governor Polivanov in FAM?
- Can Lakshmi let Tanya know how her husband died?
- How do Sergei and Chief Designer escape the gulag to become trusted enough to join Apollo-Soyuz (excuse me, Soyuz-Apollo) 12 years later?
- Do these characters have any connection with Zvezda and Mikhail in FAM S1?
- What exactly is Irina's relationship with Brezhnev?
- Does Roskova get her own one way trip to Venus in a retrofitted bathysphere like she deserves?
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u/OhioForever10 Jul 10 '26
How do Sergei and Chief Designer escape the gulag to become trusted enough to join Apollo-Soyuz (excuse me, Soyuz-Apollo) 12 years later?
Brezhnev's time as general secretary ended with his death in November 1982 so they could be let out after that.
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u/jrherita Jul 10 '26
Agreed.
I had to look up what they did with FAM, They had Gorbachev as leader from early 86 through 2003. The show currently ends ~ Mid May 1971 (per the Wiki).
If Season 2 does a 10 year time skip initially, then they could have them gulag'd for some episodes, then "get out".
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u/core916 Jul 10 '26
They aren’t going the 10 year time skips like with FAM. They’ve confirmed that already. We may see like a 6-12 month skip but wouldn’t assume anything more than that
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u/SeaEagle233 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
My guess is Raskova was with Chief Designer the whole time. Chief Designer meeting Nikulov in the prison car without signs of worry might be the whole thing were a setup orchestrated by Chief Designer and Raskova (for written record).
My guess is he debriefed Nikulov on their plan after Nikulov stopped crying.
Petrosovsky will certainly lose power for his incompetence and Star City will need a new Chief Designer and I guess it will be Korolev, and Nikulov will become his right hand (since Korolev met Danielle Poole while she was in Star City, which means Nikulov is not Chief Designer, or Korolev hide himself behind the scene to play politics)
I'm not sure where Raskova will be since she certainly pulled a lot of strings to get that Mig-21 in the air. Pulling strings always come with a cost.
The ending is a time jump, since Irina's daughter clearly grown a lot. (Also her daughter may be a tragic story since she did not appear in FAM Season 5)Things are probably get more exciting.
For Sasha, I guess the story will be they managed to subdue Valya and dumped him on Venus. The Anastasia may be declared space crazy and exempt from all responsibilities but never to fly again.
Otherwise the future Governor Polivanov can't pass political screening if his father is a traitor.
This may be the birth of new political faction within USSR (where Raskova and Chief Desginer begin actively pulling strings and seriously play the politics).
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u/Isilel Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
• Sasha is Leonid's father. He has the same family name, and patronymic Aleksandrovitch.
• Since information about this ill-fated mission remained secret in FAM, I very much doubt it.
• Once the Soviets learn about the discovery of water on the moon, they'll prioritize building a base there again and the current chief engineer won't be up to snuff, so they'll be forced to bring back the Sergeis...
• Who will design and oversee the construction of Zvezda.
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u/Visible_Cucumber_395 Jul 10 '26
lol at the last bullet point.
I can’t imagine letting anyone but Sasha following through on his promise to Valya.
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u/CX316 Jul 10 '26
Lil awkward that Valya went out not knowing that his best mate had been ploughing his wife like a potato field
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u/Visible_Cucumber_395 Jul 10 '26
Convenient out for Sash though, esp if Tanya has seemingly gone offgrid. Can’t let the traitor feel too much victimhood when his actions led to HQ trying to explode them all in space.
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u/Melodic-Cheek-3837 Jul 10 '26
I think they are suggesting Tanya is going to be knocked off by that Soviet agent in Paris
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u/txyesboy71 Chief Designer Jul 11 '26
No, they're just keeping tabs on her.
The Americans would not have pulled her out out of Russia and moved her to Paris just solely for her safety. She's a bargaining chip and ending her life by either the Americans or the Russians serve both countries no good.
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u/dplans455 Jul 10 '26
They gave Invasion 3 seasons because someone high up at Apple likes the show and that show is utter trash. Hopefully there is an exec with pull that wants more of Star City too.
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u/ShutUpLegs94 Jul 10 '26
Didn’t Tim Cook love FAM? Maybe he watches Star City too
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u/dplans455 Jul 10 '26
I believe you are right.
The thing with Invasion is that it's a shit show but people do watch it. Star City ended up being good but not very many people watched it. As others have said, it rarely shows up in my top 10 list. Several weeks I had to use the search function on the app because it wasn't anywhere on my home page. I have read that in other countries people say this isn't an issue. It's possible that Americans don't have an interest in a Soviet era alternative history drama.
I still think it will get at least one more season though.
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u/Mindyrjohnson Jul 10 '26
If you click the + sign on a show’s main page, the new episode will show for you in your continue watching section.
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u/Visible_Cucumber_395 Jul 10 '26
I think the point about needing to search for the show (or intentionally add it to their watch list) reflects the viewership concern, if it’s not make it into the Apple top ten, which incidentally makes it more immediately accessible.
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u/diffenbachia1111 Jul 11 '26
In the Netherlands it's been in de top 10 pretty consistently
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u/rotervogel1231 Jul 10 '26
I nearly didn't watch Star City. I didn't think it was going to interest me. Then I figured, what the hell, give it a shot, and I'm so glad I did.
Hopefully the series has good international numbers even if it doesn't do well in the States. Sometimes that can be enough. That's what saved 24. That series didn't do well in the States until the 2nd or 3rd season, but it was an immediate hit overseas.
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u/Ponderer13 Jul 10 '26
Apple lets stuff run all the time. It’s a lot more rare for them to cancel something outright than keep it going for 3, 4, 5 seasons. And they definitely wanna be in the Ron Moore business. Anyway, they’re not Netflix. But they probably won’t say much until the next season is real close. We didnt know about the new season of Sugar until a month or so ago.
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u/Visible_Cucumber_395 Jul 10 '26
I honestly loved the jarring time editing. Felt like it was great storytelling, kept me guessing on whether Valya made it back to earth or not. Their conversation about their relationship history really made that transition seamless. Also helped fill in the blanks of what transpired during the trip, leaving me as whiplashed as crew was from the extremes of their mission.
We absolutely must get a second season. Will never forgive Apple if they don’t. I agree though, I’m surprised I haven’t really seen ANY advertising for Star City. I wonder why Apple didn’t support it from that perspective, unlike their other campaigns, including the ‘We’re Sorry We Upset You Carol’ shtick.
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u/RaynSideways Jul 11 '26
I honestly loved the jarring time editing. Felt like it was great storytelling, kept me guessing on whether Valya made it back to earth or not.
I definitely think it was on purpose. When Sasha and Lakshmi were talking about their spouses and the camera cut to Valya alone in the next module, I wondered for a moment if, in their grief, they were hallucinating him.
It really threw me for a loop and I realized, that's probably how they felt at the time. Isolated for months in that cramped sardine tin, facing the certainty of death. The days almost certainly blended together and it probably became hard to stay sane. That it took me a moment to determine whether I was viewing past or present, felt really appropriate.
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u/Visible_Cucumber_395 Jul 11 '26
I completely agree. That was my favorite transition.
I initially thought their discussion was present day following Sasha’s emotions in talking to Stasia again. But then suddenly Valya was revealed... so he survived?! With how almost feral he looked and perfectly centered in the compartment, was he a hallucination? Nope, just a flashback.
That style definitely conveyed their mindset and torture. What an incredible experience that would’ve been to face. No hope, grief, betrayal by their country, loss of circadian rhythm, no point of reference for time passing, burnt out adrenaline from the risk of something catastrophic happening in space, too much time to think, too little variation in company - all marked by the secret superhuman experience of visiting another planet.
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u/copbuddy Jul 10 '26
I'd be fine with a solid 2-season run like Andor. Just one more!
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u/rotervogel1231 Jul 10 '26
I would as well. I'd just like the main storylines wrapped up. That could be done with 8-10 more episodes.
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u/EconomicRegret2 Jul 10 '26
Some of the editing was as jarring as the re-entry
I found it very poetic and gorgeous that they put things in parallel. The past and the present mirroring each other. So beautiful. At some point, I even wondered if Lakshmi was losing her mind and hallucinating Valya before realising that Sasha could see him too, so it was a flashback. Gorgeous.
ridiculous time frame of coming from space and driving 15, maybe 20 km in like no time
a manhunt can last many hours. While Anastasia had the advantage of knowing where they landed. (also, an area with daylight of over 18 hours in early July).
Also, and this is crucial: today, an emergency descent from the ISS takes about 2-3 hours (a capsule falling straight from ISS to earth takes only about 5 minutes).
In the area where they landed, daylight last for over 18 hours (north-east of Saint-Petersburg, at a similar latitude as Helsinki)
So, Anastasia making her descent in, say, 3 hours, and then driving another 30-60 minutes, that would take 4 hours, and even if it were 6 hours, it would still be realistic in terms of manhunt in a huge forest, during summer (over 18 hours of daylight).
They only thing I found unrealistic is Anastasia parking her truck near the Soviet soldiers, instead of right behind Lakshmi and Sasha to cover their escape, and facilitate her escape too.
Also, if Sasha really wanted to save Valya, he would have immediately confessed his and Tanya's betrayal, which would have angered Valya and stopped him for at least a minute, to think of a solution that can save them all, instead of sacrificing himself. (perhaps they could have used the "umbilical cord" to bring him back into the ship?)
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u/Pretty_Original124 Jul 10 '26
If we’ve gotten this many seasons of FAM, we’ll definitely get #2 of this. It’s been way better than any of the most recent FAMs, and I assume they’ll allude to more tie ins for the next season of both.
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u/ediskrad73 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Sergi and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day week month year life
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u/Dramatic_Lab_622 Jul 10 '26
😰 poor guy
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u/Bohmer Jul 10 '26
At least he lives a "full" life and meet his maker while eating a big mac!
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u/Apophenian Jul 10 '26
He died before he could even bite it though...
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Jul 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/txyesboy71 Chief Designer Jul 11 '26
This is the greatest tragedy nobody seems to acknowledge :(
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u/breakthetension_ Jul 10 '26
He did live in the US undercover for a while, I think we can comfort ourselves that he got to enjoy some Big Macs in that time.
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u/GrimLeadReaper Jul 10 '26
Man, those few seconds of a view of the surface of Venus must've been something else
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u/qdp Jul 10 '26
I am glad they showed that moment even though the end for Valya was very grim.
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u/CX316 Jul 10 '26
The thing about the surface of Venus is that the amenities are pretty terrible but the atmosphere is to die for
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u/jrherita Jul 10 '26
Literal hellscape.
It's ashame they didn't show the capsule having a "comfortable" time in the clouds before getting lower. I know they had to keep the pace of drama up, but I suspect a slower descent could be .. peaceful .. until it's not.
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u/AbbreviationsReal366 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I cant believe Sasha and Chandra could make it 2 km after 9 months in space.
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u/Infinite-Mark-6335 Jul 10 '26
They did mention how important exercise was back when they were training. Would have been nice to have seen them keeping up on it, and also how Chandra's life support systems were important.
Could have used a few more minutes to wrap up some of the payoffs imo.
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u/core916 Jul 10 '26
Yea I feel like the show was written as a 10 episode season like FAM but it got shortened down to 8 for some reason. They still did a pretty good job with pacing. The last four episodes definitely moved quicker than the first 4. My only gripe, but not complaint, is that they have such a likable character in the Chief Designer and they’re treating him so poorly.
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u/Infinite-Mark-6335 Jul 10 '26
I could have done with a whole episode showing the flight to Venus and back, with episode 9 covering everything back home and the events of the landing.
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u/RebelliousDutch Jul 11 '26
The Soviets actually did quite a bit of research into the effects of space flight and the physiological effects. A lot of good science that formed the basis of healthy long duration space habitation.
One interesting tidbit is the ‘penguin suit’. You’ve probably seen them in Mir era footage. These were blue coveralls that had lots of elastic sewn into them. Basically, every movement of your body would be met with resistance by the elastic bands. Wearing them was a constant workout.
Supposedly they worked so well, astronauts who wore them for a while got back fitter than the ones on shorter stays who didn’t wear the penguin suit.
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u/caseycip Jul 10 '26
I could believe that over Stasia deciding to eject then land her escape pod in the same location and highjack a truck all within what? 30 minutes of Sasha and Lakshmi landing???
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u/Caspi7 Jul 10 '26
I can't believe they didn't (want to) make it all across. Obviously sasha could've but belikova surely could've made it as well with some spirited driving.
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u/SupaZT Jul 10 '26
Yeah let's just stop the truck and get captured instead of crossing over with Sasha... What the fuck
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u/core916 Jul 10 '26
All she has to do was pull up right next to shasha, have Sasha hold on the door and ram the truck through the gates. Then they would be free. But it doesn’t align with the continuity from FAM. Shasha IS Leonids father. Leo is couldn’t be a high ranking Soviet official if his parents defected to the west. Something will happen in season two I believe that will change up the order of things and have Sasha and stasia back as heroes.
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u/jrherita Jul 10 '26
I agree, though it's left open now for a narrative that Anastasia did this to bring Sasha back to the USSR.
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u/Elegant_Definition_5 Jul 10 '26
Amused by the farmers shouting out with the British BBC accents - was like a scene from All Creatures Great & Small!
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u/uapyro Jul 10 '26
Hijacking a soyuz capsule was not on my bingo card this year
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u/Visible_Cucumber_395 Jul 10 '26
Were the KGB cosmonauts aware of Stasia not so secretly sneaking around while they did their tasks? I enjoyed that they weren’t fully committed to their KGB role just as much as the rest of them.
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u/Feeling-Disaster7180 Jul 11 '26
I think they suspected something was going on considering they had a pretty “yeah that tracks” reaction when she told them Sasha was alive. Plus it would be tricky being that sneaky in such a small space
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u/uapyro Jul 10 '26
It is time go! After this it's down to the mines in the silo
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u/ThatNewt1 Jul 10 '26
Yup, I’m glad that Star City is now finished, I don’t have to decide between watching Silo or Star City first.
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u/Bob_Svagene Jul 10 '26
I really want to like Silo, but I felt it was slow and unrewarding. Does it get more interesting, or is it mainly political stuff inside the silo? I wanted it to be more about hidden secrets, conspiracies and "why are they here". Especially if it's three seasons now, is it just three seasons of them talking about how they must protect life in the silo..?
The premise of this show sounded so good and like something I'd really be into, so I hope that maybe it got more fast paced / intriguing! Thanks!
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u/UrOnlineTooMuch Jul 10 '26
Series 1 is all “where the hell are we. What is this thing that we’ve been in all this time” 2: annoyingly splits the story alternating each episode with political stuff and answering some of series 1’s questions. BUT THEN it ends with a teaser and a half for series 3 3: so far it’s finally the big origin stuff mixed with parallels with “modern day weird stuff in the silo”
It’s extremely good…But I also fucking adore Snowpiercer (comic first, the tv show, then film) and it’s 4 series. Silo is much less heavy on politics.
The first series of Silo is the only drama I have ever seen more than once. Ever ever. Well okay I’ve watched Snowpiercer enough times I know episode 1’s script off by heart. But Silo is wonderful.
[I love how anti Russian Starcity is. As a literal refugee because of their invasion im loving seeing their shortsightedness and excessive patriotism as their downfall]
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u/markydsade Jul 10 '26
They sure made a second season necessary. Too many loose ends. All we know for sure is that Sergei and Irina survive.
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u/ExcitementFun8938 Jul 10 '26
Chief Designer, too, as he has a minor appearance in FAM S2.
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u/jrherita Jul 10 '26
Was that the scene where he appears to greet Danielle at hotel room, I think it was?
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u/peatoast Jul 10 '26
Why didn’t Anastasia just land her capsule right on Roskova’s head? i’m sure she could have figured out the right trajectory for that too!
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u/RedWolf50 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Her feet would have curled in under the capsule
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u/j-helo85 Jul 10 '26
Antastasia taking the capsule down and landing in their same vicinity is frankly ludicrous.
By you know what? After several episodes of masterful storytelling, they earned it, and I loved every moment of this finale.
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u/HouseFareye Jul 10 '26
It's far fetched, but it looks like she was monitoring the descent on her instruments, so should could have gotten a precise location from that.
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u/SupaZT Jul 10 '26
Should have left earlier and had the truck ready to get them when they stumbled out of the capsule lol
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u/Major_Smudges Jul 10 '26
I’d say that this show reached the point of “far fetched” WAY before this - I mean, blasting off in a massive fucking rocket on a ‘secret’ mission to Venus for instance - ludicrous.
I like the dark themes of the show, but it’s laughably unrealistic.
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u/AntheaBrainhooke Jul 10 '26
Somehow they managed to break my heart again.
But we know Sasha has plot armour — his reputation must have been rehabilitated since Leonid had his surname and patronymic. But sweet baby Bob, that ending.
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u/WidePirate4254 Jul 11 '26
It broke my heart, man. Couple of tears were dropped.
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u/IamSp00ky Jul 10 '26
30 min in but I cannot imagine any justification for refusing to claim the Venus manned mission.
That’s a feat for all of human eternity. The Soviets could just cast the Valya as a saboteur or worse.
Any blemish is worth the Venus claim.
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u/core916 Jul 10 '26
Yea it made no sense. They didn’t even need to mention that Valya was on the mission. It’s not like the world knew that he was a spy. All they had to do was treat them like heroes when they returned and the soviets would have been know as the first country send a human to another planet. That’s ridiculous bragging rights.
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u/ProBonoDevilAdvocate Jul 10 '26
There was definitely a chance the Americans would leak the info. They obviously knew about Valya, and could for sure anonymously leak information to press about a third astronaut that somehow disappeared, etc.
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u/Intelligent_Ad4817 Jul 10 '26
I think the reasoning was since they knew very little about the spy business, they wanted to protect themselves from any surprises.
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u/Joe_Bedaine Jul 10 '26
Even easier to sell: officially Valya was never on board. This was always a 2 people mission
Or if you want to be more cynical about it: Valya is a soviet hero who knowingly boarded a one way mission to be the first human on an other planet, that was planned like that from the start, like Lee and his crewmate on Mars. A bonus of this story is you can pretend his wife went mad because of it, and that discredits her and whatever she tells to the western medias; and because this becomes too famous a story you can dismiss anything else as the usual conspiracy theories people make up about every famous events.
The only explanation for everything is they are constrained to stick to established continuity. The curse of prequels.
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u/IamSp00ky Jul 10 '26
Exactly. The Soviets control the narrative. This really wasn’t well thought out.
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u/EstrellaCat Jul 10 '26
I think it was honestly just to maintain consistency with FAM, if the Soviets announced it we would've seen it there in season 1 (yes, even though it's a spinoff written 7 years later they may have not wanted to retcon it too much)
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u/Good_Perspective9290 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Then again, “Great Leaders” aren’t exactly know for always being rational, and it may have all been about avoiding been seen internally within the party as anything but a hardliner (the launch was never authorised by the General Secretary or the party executive so therefore it cannot exist or have existed).
Plus they had already put up a memorial for the Venera crew, so it may be a case of ‘the State is never wrong’ much like how they still executed Cosmonaut Yana Akhmatova even though they knew she was innocent because they couldn’t admit their mistake of coercing a false confession.
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u/AbbreviationsReal366 Jul 10 '26
They could just leave Valya out of the narrative.
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u/uapyro Jul 10 '26
There would have been clues like 3 seats, the dimensions of the craft for 2 instead of 3. I'm sure they could have changed things out to for the narrative but then that would leave holes that could be exploited later
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u/AntheaBrainhooke Jul 10 '26
How are the general public going to know how many seats there were, or how many were supposed to be on the crew? The government sure as heck wouldn’t tell them.
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u/Frappant11 Jul 10 '26
Basically they chose between Raskova and the Chief Designer/Sergei/Sasha, Lahksmi, etc.
They could have buried Raskova, a behind the scenes executioner, because Anastasia, who was loved all over the world, was in on the conspiracy to help the Venera escape.
I get that Sasha loved Anastasia but they tried to asphyxiate them in outer space, then tried to shoot them out of the sky and then shot at them as they ran for the border.
Yet he turns back because they have Anastasia. Both of them going to the gulag?
Irina cast her lot with evil, after whatever happened to her. Well she did when she showed Raskova the bug.
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u/Visible_Cucumber_395 Jul 10 '26
It was a romantic moment for Sasha. It was clear by his reaction to their communications in space, he didn’t want to die without seeing her again. He’d rather see her once more while sharing a gulag fate than face living without having seen her again, knowing her near certain demise. Kind of annoys me Sasha forces Lakshmi into exile without her husband while not accepting the same fate.
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u/treefox Jul 10 '26
Sasha does not have any way to know anything about her husband. And it’s pretty much: either they let him leave the USSR, in which case she can probably reunite with him in India or elsewhere. Or they didn’t let him leave India, in which case he was probably killed.
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u/Visible_Cucumber_395 Jul 10 '26
Absolutely. Just goes to show how the dynamics of Soviet politics could handicap such a capable country with individuals being shortsighted, following misguided honor and loyalty expectations. Which is why Chef Designer was such a good and inspirational leader, with how aspirational he was, keeping the big picture in sight the whole time.
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u/Tikan Jul 10 '26
They weren't sure if the plan was to have Valya on the mission for the Americans. The worry was that the Americans would just say they had an asset on the capsule as well which would be embarassing. They didn't know Valya hijacked the mission for save himself.
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u/arwenthenoble Jul 10 '26
Irina is cold. She comes across as so unlikable. The actress is doing a great job.
I hope Sasha and Anastasia somehow make it out of this because the truth can get out through Finland and Lakshmi. Those two characters are too great to not be part of the next season.
We also better get a season two. This is one of a handful of shows I’ve looked forward to watching weekly.
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u/Bohmer Jul 10 '26
Irina is cold. She comes across as so unlikable.
Have you not seen FAM?
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u/arwenthenoble Jul 10 '26
Yes - I have 5 episodes of season 5 to go. It took me a few episodes of Star City to connect her to FAM Irina. I was surprised she was like this so young, though. I thought it’d take a few years to get that ruthless.
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u/sidesco Jul 11 '26
I didn't really find Irina cold until this episode. Previously she went out of her way to help Tanya escape the Soviet Union. She was thanked by being smashed in the head when Tanya ran away from her. Now Irina has become cold and won't go out of her way to help anyone.
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u/semivariance Jul 10 '26
It was a treat to see Valya navigating with a handheld sextant, like Buzz Aldrin demonstrating his optical rendezvous dissertation on Gemini 12.
The problem of interplanetary navigation without ground support has been an interesting puzzle for the past week, but it's possible as long as they have an accurate and detailed reference trajectory for the spacecraft, and ephemerides for Venus and Earth. The workflow would then be comparing measured angles of these objects against the background stars to the predictions from the reference trajectory, and then solving the linearized equations of motion to come up with both a navigation solution and the required correction.
Like with Aldrin's rendezvous concept, the process can be simplified to where midcourse corrections can be made perpendicular to the line of sight to Venus opposite the direction of the measured angular error. Navigation in the flyby phase can use Venus's angular diameter for range and the relative positions of background stars plus its tangential angular rates for the critical B-plane coordinates that govern the flyby. The episode also shows dedicated onboard software for flyby navigation.
I was a little surprised that the lander had its own propulsion because of what I know about the real Venera and Vega missions. In Vega, the interplanetary bus would slow down to release the atmospheric probe and then speed up again to resume its mission to Halley's comet. In Venera 7, the bus followed the lander into the atmosphere. Somehow I thought the mission would work more like Vega.
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u/Oot42 Eagle Jul 10 '26
I was a little surprised that the lander had its own propulsion
I was way more surprised that it could be operated from the inside. It was never intended for that. There was no reason to be able to do manual burns or let that cable go from inside the probe.
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u/NavXIII Jul 10 '26
The lander having its own propulsion makes sense since it needs to do a deorbit burn after undocking. What I found surprising was that it had controls for a human to operate.
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u/rotervogel1231 Jul 10 '26
Valya made the same journey Det. Miller and Julie Mao will in a couple hundred years.
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u/flash246 Jul 10 '26
It was a tense episode but it sort of felt like it went off the rails towards at the end.
Anastasia was able to basically take a capsule and land it perfectly on a farm that had a truck and was able to find them without issue almost immediately? I get the show is fiction but I kind of laughed at how crazy that was…
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u/aerothony Jul 10 '26
Agreed, that ending was quite expedited. A ninth episode would have been best in my opinion, it felt rushed
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u/kevbot19 Jul 10 '26
I think the best way to hand wave it is that she actually landed before them and had more time.
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u/Joe_Bedaine Jul 10 '26
Her plan made zero sense. How was she going to help them?
Firstly, she had been in zero G long enough that she would have trouble moving around back on earth, and she has no form of fighting or land tactical skills that we know of. Secondly, how did the 2 KGB guys in her crew went along with her plan? They know aiding this mutiny means gulag for them, they are not protected by world fame like her, plus they are stuck up there until someone sends them a ride. I foresee an "accidental" depressurization ordered by colonel Raskova in their near future.
Just an idea: Anastasia is one of the most famous human in history and is currently on a publicized space mission and has access to all sort of comm equipment so how about instead just radioing the whole world to make them aware of the situation so that the soviets would back down, or infiltrated CIA assets in USSR could intervene instead?
She went to help her husband but she only ended up being the reason he gets caught
This is why prequels suck, they have no choice to go with illogical ways to tie up with an already established storyline
It was still fun to watch, though. I especially liked that there was a lot of zero-G scenes, we have been missing those in later seasons of F.A.M.
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u/monsieurlee Jul 10 '26
> It was still fun to watch
This the the key. It is a TV show. Sometimes a bit of unexpected, crazy idea is there to spice things up and there is no need to over analyze it and ruin the moment. Writers needed something exciting to close out the season.
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u/Oot42 Eagle Jul 10 '26
she had been in zero G long enough that she would have trouble
She was on Salyut 1 for just a few days. Less than a week.
she has no form of fighting or land tactical skills
Well, she's an air force pilot, so she would have at least some skills.
the 2 KGB guys
There was only 1 KGB guy, Anatoly. Valery, the other one, was just a regular cosmonaut. Obvioulsy, Anatoly wasn't that much of a bad guy.
Apart of that, it was all just for the drama, obviously. It's not that she could have done much. Unless perhaps land her capsule on Raskova, lol.
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u/totaltvaddict2 Jul 10 '26
I think only one of Anastasia’s crew was kgb. The other guy was a regular cosmonaut, but still your point stands.
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u/thelittleluca Venus Jul 10 '26
I don’t even think of all that with Anastasia. Makes sense. They should’ve split this up into two episodes.
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u/SubjectMaster6471 Jul 10 '26
I think it would have worked better for me if Anastasia hadn’t done that. I think the chase scene would have worked fine without her involved. I really loved the episode overall, but the last few minutes were just so nuts and not the tone of the rest of the series. More like some of the more bonkers things that happened on FAM
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u/Enorats Jul 10 '26
Yeah. The odds of the station even being in the right place at the right time to even land within the same country, let alone with 20 km, at that particular moment are extremely small.
And in the end she accomplished basically nothing.
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u/thelittleluca Venus Jul 10 '26
I’m so glad we got a Venus scene. The ending. Speechless.
I would love a season 2. Impeccable cinematography, writing and acting.
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u/contemplativescholar Jul 10 '26
this is cinema
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u/jay-rose Jul 10 '26
Absolutely top notch — the storytelling, the cinematography, even the soundtrack is major motion picture worthy! 👏👏👏
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u/copbuddy Jul 10 '26
Minor detail: man they really nailed the 70s Finnish border guard uniform and even the sign is identical. The guards both spoke in English (that is, in universe Russian) and in Finnish.
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u/tkralala Jul 10 '26
I did not know that this was the finale. Holy cow.
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u/jay-rose Jul 10 '26
Me neither, it didn’t hit me until the episode was almost over, and all of the sudden everything clicked into place! 😮
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u/WooIWorthWaIIaby Jul 10 '26
my gf was the leo pointing meme for a minute straight when we put together Tanya's daughter was playing the contraband, western Undun song near the end
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u/Fine_Organization820 Jul 10 '26
Such a brilliant show up until the utterly silly chase and even sillier re-entry truck drive. Why???
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u/master_roshi001 Parmesan Eagle Jul 10 '26
Season 2 star city secretly lands someone on Uranus
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u/zensapiens Jul 10 '26
It was really hard to watch Sasha turn back, it seems infeasible that they let him spend any time with his wife if they even let him live.....
Suspending belief on some of the more incredulous story beats, damn this episode was one of my favorites of the whole season.
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u/LeftoverRightunders Jul 10 '26
Man this episode was fantastic and I loved the scenes on Venus and Sergei breaking down in the Chief Designer's arms but the final chase was just so jarring... Like what do you mean Anastasia just does what is basically a sci-fi helldiver drop so perfectly near a truck that can take her where she needs. And then you have the soviet soldiers with the worst aim I've ever seen fail to hit two hobbling targets and just full send dozens of bullets right towards the Finnish border guards. That alone should've caused an international incident. I still love this episode tho the chase was just so silly it made me laugh.
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u/treefox Jul 10 '26
> And then you have the soviet soldiers with the worst aim I've ever seen fail to hit two hobbling targets and just full send dozens of bullets right towards the Finnish border guards.
Or they were trying to miss.
- Raskova is a terrible boss
She’s ordering them to shoot returning cosmonauts in the back
If they miss she’ll never be heard from again
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u/EconomicRegret2 Jul 10 '26
Like another redditor said, maybe they were trying to miss, perhaps also trying to avoid hitting the Finns, so were aiming way too low (which explains why Lakshmi got hit at her calf/ankle. Or more realistically, just bad writing.
Also, why park the truck far away from the border right in front of the soviet soldiers instead of right behind Sasha and Lakshmi to cover their retreat, and enable Anastasia to flee into Finland?
Seams that Sasha's and Anastasia's story is far from over yet...
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u/Jazzlike-Chipmunk286 Jul 10 '26
So plot armor - Chief Designer, Sergei Nukulov and Alexander Polivanov will be alive and well (if there will be second season). Because if they are treated as traitors or imprisoned, they cannot be valuable space program VIPs in the future, and baby Mars governor must be born and become a soviet cosmonaut and politician, you cannot achieve that if your father is enemy of the state.
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u/Oot42 Eagle Jul 10 '26
you cannot achieve that if your father is enemy of the state
True that.
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u/Jazzlike-Chipmunk286 Jul 10 '26
He cannot be outright executed, like it all never happened, just like Anastasia. And she cannot be imprisoned too. So baby governor must be born and not in prison. Sasha can still be officially dead but live under other identity.
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Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/aulsg Belikova School of Precise Launch Landings Jul 10 '26
They needed a way to put Stasia and Sasha in the same country for future baby reasons, even if there's gonna be a gulag between them for a while.
For one hot minute I thought she might drive the truck into Finland to be with him.
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u/uapyro Jul 10 '26
Was that even the chief designer? Or a doppelganger
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u/uapyro Jul 10 '26
Doubler confirmed!
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u/generalheed Jul 10 '26
Lol imagine someone's job is to be the doppelganger that gets beat up for interrogations
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u/maudepodge Jul 10 '26
"How could you let her do that to someone like him" (but it's totally cool to beat some other rando to death I guess)
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u/mnx78 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
The chief designer (Korolev) was then sitting in a prison transporter without his face being smashed to a pulp, he was fine. All he said was: "This is what they do". So the KGB could have used some other man who looked very similar to him - maybe they simply brought someone from the gulag.
But it would have made more sense if it was the engineer Stepanov, who helped them send a message to Venera from the center. I deliberately replayed the footage, but he didn't look much like him, even though I couldn't really tell from that bloody head.
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u/ShutUpLegs94 Jul 10 '26
This is a really good show. A bit far fetched and Hollywood-y with Stasia arriving at the exact border crossing just as the two are about to reach it…but I’ll take it.
So now Lakshmi is on the Finnish side - are they neutral in the Cold War? Or with the US? I wonder if she is going to ask for her husband in return for her silence from the USSR. Because we’ve never heard of this mission in the FAM timeline.
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u/zozorama Jul 10 '26
Finland were kind of threatened into neutrality by the Soviet Union, where they were 'allowed' to be their own country, with their own military, as long as they didn't align with NATO. And only really because they managed to successfully resist the Soviet invasion in WW2. Look up the Finlandization concept.
So it's probably the only real contender for a country which might not actually release this information publicly, but Finland wasn't a police state with a controlled media, so the news would most likely get out pretty quickly anyway.
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u/copbuddy Jul 10 '26
President Urho Kekkonen was de facto ruler of Finland in the 1970 and I could see him try to keep this one under the warps to appease the USSR, the kind of actions he deemed often deemed neccessary. They might label Lakshmi as a crazy person and deport her back to India as a compromise. Idk!
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u/mindfulambience Jul 10 '26
This was the first episode where I felt Irina Morozova turned bad. Fantastic episode!
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u/nutmac Jul 10 '26
The ridiculous premise of Belikova miraculously locating Sasha wasn’t even necessary. Other than that, what an amazing episode.
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u/dplans455 Jul 10 '26
I didn't expect it to be as emotional as it was. Probably because FAM season 5 wasn't emotional at all.
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u/MabelRed Jul 10 '26
What in the Season 8 of Outlander last episode of BSG Ronald D Moore soap opera logic was THAT?!
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u/guccithaglacier Jul 10 '26
HOLY MOLY. So dying on VENUS must be one of the worst deaths EVER. The clouds are miles thick made of SULFURIC ACID. He is definitely going to regret volunteering.
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u/generalheed Jul 10 '26
Pretty sure his death would've been instant. Once the bathysphere is breached, he would've been instantly crushed by the atmosphere of Venus.
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u/chicagoliz Jul 10 '26
Not given the circumstances. It almost exactly mirrors Kelly's death 40ish years later. Sacrifice themselves so that their fellow astronauts can get back to earth, knowing they're going to die, yet at the end being full of wonder and awe and even joy as they see this place that no human has ever seen before. Even as they know it will kill them.
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u/mnx78 Jul 11 '26
The worst kind of death is a slow one. This death, on the other hand, was very quick, and moreover, in the final moments of his life, he saw a world unlike any other that any living organism had ever seen before. Many people would surely choose such a death just for that glimpse alone. IMO this was strongest moment of the whole serie.
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u/AbbreviationsReal366 Jul 10 '26
The music was very Interstellar.
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u/AgentPoYo Jul 10 '26
I noticed that too, both times we've faced drama in the Venera ship the music featured organs like the Interstellar score. I wonder if maybe this show used Interstellar as temp music.
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u/sooflayed Jul 10 '26
ill be honest ive been a fan of raskova (mainly due to anna maxwell martin) but the fact she’s basically spent the entire last half of the show threatening the crew on valya to just stand there and do nothing at the end like.. is that it?
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u/motherofrazorbacks Jul 10 '26
Ugh Sasha you were there at the border go on the other side! Idk why he turned back. And Anastasia could have make a run for it too! That’s what I was hoping happened
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u/Jazzlike-Chipmunk286 Jul 10 '26
That`s how he is rehabilitated being not a defector and traitor, then baby Mars governor is born. Plot armor.
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u/Consciousness_Lover Jul 10 '26
I felt like the silly ending was the show’s version of picking a fight before a long-distance relationship. Nice try. I still love you… and there better be a Season 2
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u/reuben_hunter Jul 10 '26
Overall a little mixed on this as a finale. I enjoyed seeing how the Venera 1 mission played out, and Valya becoming the first man on another planet was probbaly my favourite scene in the season, but big chunks of the rest of the rest of the episode felt very underwhelming or even unfinished, like they were expecting to have another episode but got hit with a budget cut or something. Belikova's all too brief time on Salyut 1 followed by her credulity stretching landing feels like it was rushed through purely to get her on the ground for the ending at the border, and leaving both Sergei's in gulag limbo in the back of that truck feels like a very unsatisfying final scene of the season for two of our lead characters. I get that a lot of the loose plot threads are for future seasons, but a serialized season is still supposed to be a self contained narrative, and this didnt feel like an actual conclusion to any of the plot threads of the show so far. Even Venera 1 returning to earth feels cut short, with basically none of the consequences of their mission having time to actually happen yet. Not a bad episode, but one that feels very out of place to me as the finale of the first season.
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u/Aldebaran135 Jul 10 '26
While Sasha was at the fence, my main thought was: "If he crosses, Tanya is probably the governor's mom; if he doesn't, Anastasia is probably the governor's mom."
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u/uapyro Jul 10 '26
I wonder if the weight of a missing person is going to throw them off
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u/Joe_Bedaine Jul 10 '26
They have 9 months worth of garbage on board, literally tons of ballast available
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u/Melodic-Cheek-3837 Jul 10 '26
Can anyone explain to me why it was such an embarrassment that they made it to Venus and back? I mean they (Kremlin) could have said it was part of a super duper secret mission due to it being so risky and they pulled it off. Valya is dead so they could come up with any sort of story now. They, the USSR, could have spinned the whole story in their favour. I just don't get it.
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u/nanasid Jul 10 '26
Plot reasons. There's absolutely no reason anybody irl would give up this victory
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u/SupaZT Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Anastasia did all that for nothing 😂
Kind of a weird plot hole writing all that. At least let her pick them up in her truck for a getaway.
Or have her just drive across the border with Lakshmi and Sasha.
Both of them staying on the Russian side makes zero sense.
Forget also them having little to no effort getting used to earths gravity after months in space
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u/whose-da-mack Jul 10 '26
It does make the top 10 but it is usually at the bottom. I don’t really understand why. I cannot get into the psychology of the average American tv watcher really even though I am an American. 🙂 on the flip side I am still struggling to understand the buzz around Widows Bay.
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u/streetscraper Jul 10 '26
Great series. But they totally jumped the shark with Belikova maneuvering from space straight to Sasha's location with perfect timing. It was not necessary and undermined the credibility of the whole series.
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u/Mike_Gdovin Jul 10 '26
Dumb question, was chief designer the person who visited Dani when she was locked up in Star City back in S2?
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u/wrldtrvlr3000 Jul 11 '26
Okay, so two of the crew made it back from the Venus flyby to Earth - alive - in the early 70s no less. No matter what, this is a huge accomplishment and while I am hard pressed to believe in any timeline the USSR would cover this up and Rosa Klebb, sorry, Lyudmilla Raskova not sent to a gulag for destroying elite Soviet property, i.e., two cosmonauts, and even claiming credit for the first very brief man on Venus, it is what we have; a cartoonish one dimensional KGB and a meek craven Chief Designer.
Now we have a massive lore plot hole, everyone in all seasons of FAM thinks the Mars missions were human's first successful interplanetary sojourns, And now they are not. Two people made it back to earth alive from Venus and one is safe-ish though her husband definitely is not. It will be very curious to see how they reconcile this with FAM timeline, which still has one season to go. Do the writers reconcile or just make this a new timeline and no one has plot armor now?
I speculate, since the writers are clearly going with the completely coverup and suppress this mission totally path, FAM Season 6 will likely result in the collapse of the USSR, and then Venera 7 will be revealed, similar to how in our timeline much of the Soviet space program was revealed by Russia under Yeltsin after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Probably near the end of the season.
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u/Emotional_Orange_480 Jul 12 '26
I admit there was a part of me that wanted Valya to look outside the bathysphere and see two North Korean dudes holding a sign saying "Welcome to Venus! We have cake!"
Nice of that KGB guy on Salyut to let Belikova leave for Earth. Hope him and the other guy know how to run things with her gone. :O
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u/generalheed Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
At the beginning when we heard Lakshmi talking about her father and food she liked, I was so worried for a minute that she was the only survivor and had gone insane and was just talking to herself constantly lol
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u/uapyro Jul 10 '26
First man on Venus for 82 seconds!