For All Mankind Recap: Starships Really Were Meant to Fly

For All Mankind
The Sirens of Titan
Season 5 Episode 7
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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You know how in Star Wars, some insignificant little toady of a space Nazi marches into frame, salutes smartly, and says, effectively, “Lord Vader! [Exposition, exposition, exposition, exposition]!”? That’s what every single one of the tedious SDM/Happy Valley Steering Committee meetings is like. I get it; a six-month time jump necessitates some effort to bring the audience up to speed on events since the last time we saw our heroes and villains. The way it’s executed here is, regrettably, as groan-inducingly clunky as it is efficient. Not that my summary is going to be full of rhetorical sparkle, mind you: The gist is that SDM has managed to hold on impressively well despite the Earth-to–Happy Valley embargo and despite repeated sabotage raids carried out by the MPK, which is now functionally Helios’s in-house army.

In the first of several Happy Valley Steering Committee meeting scenes, we learn that the ISN leaders are reluctantly withdrawing their material support for their philosophical comrades. They have to avoid a war back on Earth now that M-6 nations are suspicious of ISN quietly helping out Happy Valley. The loss of ISN support will require further rationing, making the crops in the base’s agriculture domes (colloquially, ag-domes) even more vital now. It’s good that Lee has all the teen Marsies on a strict rota of crop tending and fertilizer spreading. Well, all of the teen Marsies except Alex, who somehow seems never to appear on the night shift schedule. The other kids razz him, but it’s all in good fun. This is so wholesome! 

Far less wholesome: the raids that Mad King Dev Ayesa has been delegating to Palmer and the Peckers in an effort to get Miles and his colleagues to yield to the M-6 and give up their silly little dreams of autonomy. Palmer’s announcement that he and his team have stolen nearly all of Happy Valley’s medical supplies is far too triumphant for a man with zero ethical legs to stand on and seemingly no concerns about what peril this will likely cause his fellow human beings. I keep thinking about how, with the crops flourishing in those ag-domes, SDM-controlled Happy Valley is getting closer to attaining Dev’s dream of a self-sustaining Mars, minus deporting everyone back to Earth in order to have a full do-over with Meru. 

The Peckers’ smash-and-grab raids are not enough — SDM hasn’t budged at all, but Dev thinks he knows how to strike a single, definitive blow to their resistance. With a bit of timely help from someone at base operations, Palmer and his team can bypass Happy Valley’s security system and destroy some of the ag-domes, which will force everyone there to face the impossibility of their fight. Dev framing this attempt at inducing mass starvation as being helpful, or even heroic, is chilling. This is why we can’t have nice things! 

The Marsie teens know nothing of the strike Palmer & Co. is about to unleash, and set their own, actually good, surprise plan in motion. Thanks to wink-wink, nudge-nudge hints dropped by Lily and Gulsara, we’ve been led to believe that Lily has planned something sexy for Alex’s gift. The reveal that his gift is a very enthusiastic, goofily charming surprise flash mob set to Nicki Minaj’s “Starships” is a delight. That’s genuine surprise you see on Sean Kaufman’s face in this scene; in our conversation a week ago, Ruby Cruz confirmed that Kaufman “saved his first reaction for a take.” Cruz is a flash-mob veteran, having participated in one set to “Gangnam Style” when she was in middle school. As for why Lily orchestrated one for Alex, Cruz said, “It was the time when you wanted to do something special for someone, but also slightly embarrass them, which I think is Lily and Alex’s dynamic.”

Even Lee is in on the joke, emerging from the cornfield like some interplanetary Shoeless Joe Jackson to first scowl at the kids, then dive into a bit of Psy’s signature pony dance. Yet more wholesome fun! We love this! Right up until the moment it all goes to hell, when the roof of the dome cracks, then is ripped off and starts falling to the ground below as the kids and Lee claw their way to the doors to escape all the heavy, sharp debris. We see the horror unfold in little flashes from Alex’s perspective as he sits in shock, watching one friend receive CPR with Lily in tears beside him, and Gulsara dead beside Lily.

The accounting of the damage done, as presented at the Happy Valley Steering Committee meeting that follows in the wake of the disaster, is bleak. Dima reports one dead, seven injured, and two critically injured. I haven’t seen him this shaken since season three. Bless him for having the moral clarity and presence of mind to put the kibosh on Ger’s threat of finding the password-furnishing double agent and trying to kill a bunch of people at Helios. (I swear to Mars, the god of war himself, if it turns out that the password was “Admin” or “admin1234,” I am going to become the Joker.) Without the crops in six of the ag-domes and the emergency rations destroyed in the raid, they now have just two weeks’ worth of rations to draw on. Anyone who was on the fence about leaving on the next available shuttle will now feel a fire lit under them to get back to Earth. Miles flatly refuses to cave to the M-6, and Boyd has to ask him how sticking to their guns would even work at this point. So Dev was right, but at such a terrible cost that I don’t think anyone can or should take him seriously as a leader ever again. Even Palmer is horrified by having had a hand in this. If he wants to just stay holed up in his own personal Helm’s Deep, that’s his business, but kindly leave everyone else out of it.

The mess on Mars is nothing, though, compared with what the Sojourner-T crew has been living through. The cold open sees them bearing witness to the destruction of KOSMOS-1 and the demise of everyone aboard. I had never heard the phrase “Saturn’s gravity well” before this episode and hope never to again. Thinking, even briefly, about how, after all of their desperate attempts at problem-solving come to nothing and their terrible end is certain, has me in tears. Their captain’s voice is anguished, but not even the tiniest bit wobbly as she asks Walt and his crew to share farewell messages to everyone back home and on Mars, a degree of stoicism I am grateful not to have to attempt. Unlike most disaster scenes, this is hushed and reverent, as one group of scientist-adventurers offers their profound respect and comfort to another, in silent vigil. It’s a classic example of what For All Mankind is capable of at its best, and we get a second example at the end of the episode (hold that thought). I’m willing to accept these scenes as atonement for the ham-fisted inelegance of the exposition-via-fractious-meeting scenes.

Following the destruction of KOSMOS-1, Aleida brings her crew up to speed on what went wrong, explaining that in their haste to launch their mission to Titan, Kuragin’s planning team didn’t catch a fatal calculation error, which led to the ship’s velocity being too high to safely enter Titan’s atmosphere. In her vidmail, Aleida asks the crew to review the attached risk assessment and leaves the decision about how to proceed in the capable hands of her crew. She’s by far the most trustworthy person on Mars; her blunt-zero tolerance for bullshit has become an even greater advantage and source of integrity than she realized. Before even looking at the new data and flight plan, Walt has already made his decision: They’re going to return to Mars. Kelly is aghast at this news, but Walt is the captain; he was a little leery of this mission to begin with, and the decision rests solely with him. The risk is too great, and he won’t be responsible for the deaths of five more people. I feel for Walt at this moment. His decision and rationale are obviously correct … and also, he is kind of a drip, so he’s in a prime position to be undermined by an equally decisive and apparently way more reckless person.

Between scenes, Kelly goes from recording a consoling vidmail for Alex, saying that she’s on her way home and will see him soon, to surreptitiously installing an alternate trajectory sequence to ensure that they miss the window for the back-to-Mars burn and to force them to try to land on Titan. I blame/thank the spirit of Ed Baldwin for this development. So now Kelly is a mutineer? I guess? It’s exciting to see her piloting feats, and to see everyone as they take their first, hopeful steps on Titan, but this whole “I am the captain now” line of thought and behavior does not bode well. 

On Mars, however, everyone is blissfully ignorant of Kelly’s sabotage and gets to enjoy a substantial win as a full collective when Miles urges Aleida to broadcast the feed from Sojourner-1 to the entire base. This entire sequence is so thrilling: Kelly’s subterfuge, Miles’s point that “Everyone deserves to know what’s happening!,” Lily and Alex dashing to MOCC, and everyone’s giddy celebrations of their crew’s success — all of it is wonderful.

Houston, We Have Bullet Points

• In earlier episodes, Miles has been so uncomfortable when fellow Marsies have saluted him with their fist-over-heart sign of respect. Here, as Miles pleads with Aleida for help with getting a shuttle ready to take Happy Valley residents back to Earth, moderates arguments at steering committee meetings, and races to MOCC with his bold broadcast idea, it’s clear how much he’s grown as a leader. 

• Another thing to keep an eye on: Irina’s apparent recruitment of Lenya as an adversary/alternative to the current Soviet president, Korzhenko. Lenya had been his protégé, but now, Korzhenko, anxious about how firmly the tide has turned against him, is blaming Lenya for his own failures. Lenya needs to decide whether he’ll throw in his lot with Irina’s pit of vipers, with a view primarily toward getting Tasha out of danger, or whether he’ll just serve out however long his confinement turns out to be up on Mars.