Summary
Star City identifies the mole and builds a lot of tension around the character in multiple ways, but the human component at the core of Irina and Tanya’s dynamic remains the most compelling thread.
There’s something oddly sexless about Soviet Russia, isn’t there? This very much isn’t the point of Star City, which is an alt-history spin-off about the Space Race, but it’s impossible to watch Episode 3, “Bad Dancer”, without noticing. Everything’s very grey, including the sex lives of its characters, several of which are monitored by conflicted intelligence agents who have to listen to how uncomfortably familiar moves provoke fake cramps. There’s a lot of interpersonal drama bundled up in how loveless all these relationships are.
But I’ll grant you space is the more pressing concern. Star City is the home base of a flourishing Soviet space program that has just beaten Uncle Sam to the moon, but that’s only half the journey, at least as far as the Chief Designer is concerned. As in any totalitarian state, the relationships are secondary. But they’re very much there if you’re looking for them.
There’s no wonder Tanya feels neglected by Valya. He’s never in the house, always out on secret projects, and her only reprieve is black market American records, which aren’t even allowed. Valya is adamant about not doing anything to earn the ire of the state, but he’s much less invested in doing anything to spice up their love life or make Tanya feel better, which Irina can obviously overhear, even if she’s still duty-bound to report the drab details.
Throughout “Bad Dancer”, it becomes obvious why Valya is the way that he is. He’s the secret mole for the Americans, teased in the premiere. There’s no wonder he’s stressed! But that isn’t the sign of a great spouse, either, since it isn’t just him who’s liable to pay for his treason, but Tanya, too. Her heart might not be in it, but with Sasha heading to the moon, she’s stuck with Valya and his scheming.
When the Chief Designer and Sergei rope Valya into their secret mission to man a flight to Venus in the midst of all the hustle and bustle of the lunar projects, it’s a further complication for a man who’s already fraying at the edges. Now he’s basically stuck in the middle of a project that is guaranteed to be discovered by either the KGB or the Americans. It’s a race within a race.
You can feel Valya coming apart at the seams all throughout Star City Episode 3. Sasha is no help, really, especially given the familiarity of his sex tips, but it’s Sasha who almost ends up paying the price for Valya’s scheming in a roundabout way. There’s an accelerated moon mission on the docket, and Sasha, as a reward for getting married at the state’s behest, is manning it with Arseni. What seems like an honour, not just landing on the moon but also building the beginnings of a base on it, is really a death trap, since the vessel is discovered to be transmitting a signal to the Americans on account of a bug that has been placed inside. When the Chief Designer discovers this, he takes it to Lyudmilla, who advises rebooting the system to kill the transmission.
While this seems fair enough, the Chief Designer is pretty clear that it may produce a fatal error, and indeed it does. This creates a fairly effective but oddly muted suspense sequence late on, during which Sasha and Arseni only have one brief chance to dock. Arseni’s quick thinking makes sure Sasha is able to do so, but he loses his own life in the process, pretty needlessly. The mole – Valya – is now not only responsible for leaking intelligence, but also the death of a cosmonaut. The search to uncover who’s at fault will only intensify.
Despite this being the most obvious and immediately compelling thread, there’s a much more human contour to what’s going on with Irina and Tanya, especially with the former now crossing professional boundaries to protect her charge based on personal feelings. I suspect that will be blowing up in someone’s face sooner rather than later, too, and even though it’s less dramatic than the mole subplot, it speaks to a more human heart beating at the core of the setting, which is a better justification for this spin-off than the intricacies of Soviet lunar modules. That’s if you ask me, anyway.
