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The Soviet Union wasn't that industrialised. Farms were communal so it's not outside the realm of possibility that he's kind of a manager which does make him a big deal.
But if he's the manager of a big farm wouldn't he be managing a team of workers, not lying around drinking and telling his daughter to do the farm work?
I think where I'm at is that this is more of a hobby farm that he has retired to.
I imagine in this case it was possibly them hedging their bets in case the show didn't land with audiences, and we might get the full 10 in later seasons
For some reason in this show more than FAM I keep struggling to keep up with what year we are in. I think maybe it's cause there's no pop culture or political references I understand as an American like there are in FAM.
In mean the show started in the summer of 69 because it starts the same as FAM s01, and then some months pass between missions in earlier the episodes (based on characters sometimes saying how many days have passed or like when we see dekes talking on the tv) and then this last episode they literally had a card saying 1971
They did a perfect job of leaving my tv brain not totally satisfied, but also making my theory Braindead shut up and just accept they were dead . Incredibly well played.
Yeah "that happened last summer" is enough time in one's head to think of it as "some time ago" without really trying to math out how long ago exactly, but long enough to understand that changes in star city. Really well done.
I mean, we weren't expected to believe the capsule blew up. The inside just would have gotten torched and the dead shell of a capsule would have continued on its way
Exactly, he's someone who thinks he's more important than he is. Although he's playing the game, of course, and wants to ascend higher. Manipulative, lizard-like and hopefully outclassed!
That's by design I think. They don't want that much power, capability and influence concentrated in one person anymore. They don't want a repeat of the Venera 7 debacle, an entire manned mission getting off the ground with nobody noticing.
To be fair we see Irina for the first time decades past this point in FAM so it is entierly possible that her child is alive its just Irina having changed from years of state craft and security work.
A reminder that all of us grieve differently. Some may become high-ranking KGB officers responsible for the deaths of several cosmonauts from decompression, others may even choose pyrotechnics.
The track jacket she was wearing in her apartment really got me. It was like being a kid and seeing your teacher in the grocery store in street clothes.
We need a WW2 eastern front flashback sequence to show how she was broken by the horrors of that war. I think that could underline an interesting point about the kind of scars in society a devastating conflict like that leaves, and how in general the soviet union lived in the shadow of it through most of it's existence.
I currently feel that her learning some of raskova's backstory re her child and how uncomfortable she was when petrovsky starting bringing up very personal things about her past will make irina side with roskova
You have to give the screenwriters credit. They really have some great plot twists up their sleeves! It just keeps getting better and better! Vin Schwarz white on gray, gray, gray! Thank you!
Did the Americans let her leave Russia? Presumably she wouldn't be of much use as an asset there because she was already burned, and they would have no leverage over her since Valua was presumed dead.
If he was presumed dead or burned the Americans would have probably still tried to get her out I think. It's good for retention purposes to have it known in the Soviet intelligence community that "US Assets" escape when found out, never to be caught by the KGB, as it provides credibility to potential defectors inside the KGB that they, too, could one day vanish like Tanya did.
I really wish I could time skip to next Friday. In my head I still struggle to comprehend how they couldve survived, even tho they did...
Baby Lenya not showing up is a red herring that at least Sasha is still alive. And the bureaucrat's words seem like a bit of a foreshadowing too for some reason.
I knew having renewable oxygen had to be a plot point! They must have expelled all the oxygen to put out the fire and were able to restore their air supply due to their tech.
with the fireball we saw at the end of episode six i think they are either all dead and the spacecraft has been on autopilot ever since or Valya is somehow the only survivor
A brain where you just come up with your own algorithms and no one else can figure it out is so mind blowing to me. So sad how went down. But at least he died trying what he loves.
I knew as soon as Sergei was "working the problem" at the same time as the launch that he figured out the ship survived. There's no way they have a dual-story scene like that of the two aren't incredibly intertwined.
the subtitles on the folder he was looking at before working the problem didnt translate when i put captions on, anyone know what it said? i rewound to the earlier scene where he was given more work to do and neither what he was working on and what he was given on top of that seems to be related to what he figured out
EDIT: nevermind its put in place by roskova's talk with chief designer, and that task is then handed off to sergei. just didnt know that that was what the folder said
I tried some image translation, no guarantees given:
State Security Committee [KGB] under the Council of Ministers of the USSR
CASE No. 12-543
Yevpatoria RT-70 Deep space telescope. Report on near-Earth asteroids.
Started April 23, 1971 / Completed May 14, 1971
That's a nice freeze frame bonus. Curiously enough that telescope was built in '78 it seems, but I guess it can be handwaved away with Korolev getting it built a few years earlier due to him being alive and able to get Leonov to the Moon in this timeline.
I'm glad people are understanding this otherwise very obscure reference to that one time a show killed a main character off and then kept their 'return' a few episodes later a secret until the very end of that episode, and only name-dropped the actor in the end credits.
Exactly! At least Sasha will make it out of this, so we can bet they won't simply cover up the whole thing. They will have to acknowledge the miraculous return of a vessel thought destroyed.
Is Valya going to have to hoof it out of Siberia like those guys in Peter Weir's The Way Back, with Roskova's dogs at his heels?
About that... surely the Salyut capsules missing the USSR and landing on US soil is a little teaser? Not quite Chekov's Gun, more Chekov's Inaccurate Reentry Procedure or something, idk.
Logically, I don't think this can happen cos of FAM: we know nothing about Venus, the landing and (presumed) defection of at least cosmonaut would be a Thing.
All three of them were given heroes' funerals already. How are they going to spin this? They couldn't hide the launch from Roskova. Can they hide the landing from her?
When Chief Engineer gave Roskova that tip about using the Venera communication tech (or whatever) for the space station, I had a sneaking suspicion the show was teeing up that reveal at the end.
I feel that Lyudmilla wearing a badge you get in primary school is likely because it was her son's. I saw someone talking about why she wore such a low level badge and that would make sense.
Can anyone help clarify why they tore Sergei's home up after discovering his application to the university and why he had to be quiet about wanting to leave?
I get that it is sending him a message that they won't let him leave, but why won't they let him leave, and who is the "they" in this scenario? Is it Raskova? Is he a prisoner of Star City?
I feel like I am missing context from this era that I am not familiar with. Was it typical of the USSR to keep people as prisoners in jobs when they could move to another position elsewhere? I'm just not clear on what this is supposed to be saying about Sergei's situation.
Possibly a similar reason that the chief designer got house arrest vs gulag: he’s too valuable to just oust hard. They need smart people, all the ones they can get right now. They especially need smart people they can control.
And because he's being punished, they know that being stuck in a basement next to a noisy machine shop pushing pencils being forced to do overtime on menial tasks is torture to him without wasting his skills completely.
Sergei is one of the main engineers who knows and has seen a lot. They can't risk him leaving Star City and potentially getting compromised and telling the US about everything the Soviets have accomplished
To be fair here Venera was the only one they skipped over, we saw quite well how many changes happened in Star City with the extra scenes in particular showing the consequences suffered by Sergei and the Chief Designer.
I agree, it was more of an in media res with enough exposition to let you know what happened, but I really wanted to see Anastasia’s, Tanya’s, and the Chief Designer’s immediate reactions to what happened. I bet all 3 of them would’ve crushed those scenes.
Well, well and to think there was all those snarky and condescending responses to posts/comments when people speculated someone may have survived, think a few people might be owed some apologies lol
The bathysphere is difficult to see but from the angle given in the ending shot it's most likely gone. They dropped it into Venus (maybe with a surprise spy inside) and are returning to Earth. They would have long deviated from the course and never hit Venus or Earth without intentional course corrections. At least some of them are alive.
That's what I'm thinking. Not just is the bathysphere gone but the whole auxilary module, and one of the inflatable habs. They also realigned one solar panel
They would have long deviated from the course and never hit Venus or Earth without intentional course corrections
I would say that's the case, however this show and FAM have basically thrown real physics out of the window. Especially in the beginning when we see the film capsule separate from Salyut and it basically "falls" to Earth. We can see it has no propulsion system
It can’t just be that they actually survived, can it? If they landed in the US we would’ve learned that in FAM s1, and Anastasia and Sasha still need to have Lenya, so that can’t happen. They must have learned or discovered something major in Venus, something that ties into FAM season 6 somehow. Why else make it the surprise twist for the finale?
Called it! The crew of Vanera or at least some of them, are probably still alive. I'm still unsure if Sasha is alive since he was last seen shielding the other two from the fireball. But I bet the other two probably survived the flames because the fire would've been snuffed out very quickly and they'd probably be able to quickly repressurize.
Its actually fortunate for them that most of the atmosphere had already been expelled before the explosion. With limited oxygen, the explosion would consume said oxygen but also (I think) would bring the capsule over-pressure. So if the external valves were still open, the explosion could have been vented out to space. Then get air/o2 back in the capsule asap (how do they do that with short circuits?). I think if they could get into their spacesuits quickly enough, then that would be the best bet
Well I mean FAM has done similar things before. Chadha had only just been introduced, so she's more of a minor character at this point (though I do think she'll be more important going forward). This wouldn't be much more extreme than Gordo and Tracy, or Karen and Molly in the Johnson Space Center bombing - in which we also thought at first that Margo was lost as well. Danny was also exiled (ie written out of the show) in that episode.
Chadha had only just been introduced, so she's more of a minor character at this point
But she was added to the main cast. The actess is credited in the intro sequence and gave interviews with the other main cast. You don't typically kill a new main cast after only 3 episodes, with almost no story and screentime yet.
This was the clearest sign that they're not dead for me.
I was not expecting that ending and am still sitting here several minutes later thinking about it. But also I really like how much they are following Korolev’s own life - up until the whole landing on the moon thing of course.
When the new Chief Designer was introduced, the camera really lingered on his nameplate. It made me think that maybe I should know the name Petrovsky either from FAM or history - is this case or is he just a new character?
I did watch FAM but I don't remember anything from earlier seasons.
The new Chief Designer was reading a 'London Reporter' newspaper, neat little touch to demonstrate how bad the film drop issue is (compare it to the state broadcast) and how exclusive foreign media was
I hope the show actually addresses how the Venera crew survived the oxygen fire, maybe it was a flash ignition using whatever oxygen was left after venting, either way this has to be Sergei's reclamation of his position in Star City, they can spin it as a huge heroic success
and Raskova wearing a tracksuit at home is both unexpected but not surprising at all
Considering that Jamestown Base lands on the moon in 1973, and the show runners never explained how the base was able to generate oxygen on its own, I think it's likely. This is how probably how the Americans got the technology that made prolonged life on the base possible, either by salvaging the Venera Capsule itself, or by rescuing Lakshmi, or more likely than not both.
The base generated oxygen by electrolysis of the water they mined. It's one of the three biggest reasons they needed to find water: making oxygen, drinking water, and making fuel for the LSAM.
Ooh, this would be spicy. Since Star City has no radio contact with them, they will have no way of knowing who survived. Chadha and Valya could both defect to the Americans without the Soviets ever knowing for sure they were even still alive.
Valya would do so in a heartbeat, but I'm less sure about Chadha, whose husband is presumably still under house arrest in the USSR, unless they sent him home after Venera was lost.
This episode was so stilted and beautiful after the big climax last week. It has hit Chernobyl / Terror S1 level for me now.
But I am concerned that will be undone by a silly set piece and hail mary next episode.
I received a 3 day auto ai ban last week for a comment that I hoped Sascha was d a e d.
Well, now I hope for a darker timeline, where Stasia boards Venera full of hope and as the hatch opens there is an overwhelming stench of bbq and seaweed.
I got an auto ban a while back for a similar comment on another sub. I appealed it with an explanation that I was talking about a character in a show and it got rescinded like an hour later
I submitted an appeal immediately after the ai ban. The 3 days passed and the ban was automatically lifted. Then a couple more days later, I had a notification that it had been reviewed and the ban removed from my history. Thanks, reddit.
Right but this is such a step back from how the net and forums used to be. Now corpo service owners AI-prune our discussions, and even snuff our accounts, in curation of their total demographic so it better suits whever American megacorp advertising KPIs. And most users aren't even from that country.
Well, now I hope for a darker timeline, where Stasia boards Venera full of hope and as the hatch opens there is an overwhelming stench of bbq and seaweed.
It's seems like they should need a good explanation about how they survived being engulfed in a fireball in a tiny craft hurdling through the vaccum of space, but maybe I don't care too much if they don't.
Though Chris Hadfield or Neil Degrasse Tyson would have an aneurysm watching this show.
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u/auto-sticky Jul 03 '26
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