Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for For All Mankind S5E5, “Svoboda” (written by Kira Snyder and directed by Svlvain White)
The cold open of For All Mankind S5E5 shows Irina (Svetlana Efremova) being taken to prison in Siberia in 2003 and follows her 19 months there. Perhaps this reinforces the brutality of the Soviet Union, if we needed such reinforcement. Or perhaps it is meant to garner some sympathy for Irina, though by the end of the sequence we are also reacquainted with her brutality, as she threatens to have her guard’s entire family killed if he doesn’t let her go. Apparently she was able to find out a bunch of information about him by communicating in Morse code through taps on a pipe.
Regardless, Irina goes free, and by 2012 she is working security for Kuragin and arriving to Mars as a part of their delegation. Aleida (Coral Peña) is by no means happy to see her, and we get some chilly dialogue between the two as Aleida monitors the Titan mission. This ends with Irina asking about Margo (Wrenn Schmidt) without using her name. Aleida seems to blame Irina for Margo’s imprisonment as she says Margo is “just peachy.” I don’t know if that’s exactly accurate, but I’m not going to offer any defense of Irina since I think she’s an irredeemably bad person.
The Titan mission seems to be going fine, but the same can’t be said for things on Mars. After Alex (Sean Kaufman) and Lily (Ruby Cruz) leaked documents about plans to automate operations on the red planet in last week’s episode, protests have broken out. Aleida confronts Dev (Edi Gathegi) about the fact that he kept her in the dark about these plans, confirming that Dev knew about them. He argues that automation was always inevitable, and that at least this way they get a say in how it will go. I don’t think Aleida is buying that, but, more importantly, she can’t run the company if Dev keeps doing stuff behind her back.
Dev confronts Alex about leaking the files, and chastises him for making a childish decision, which leads Alex to quit his job at Helios. What’s interesting here is that Dev apparently would have let Alex keep his job. Beyond that, he’s shielding the young man from the authorities. I guess that’s out of a feeling of loyalty to the Baldwins, but the details are unclear. Dev told the M-6 and Kuragin that he knew who was behind that leak. Are they really going to accept a lack of punishment?
Palmer (Myk Watford) pressures Miles (Toby Kebbell) earlier in the episode, saying that he knows Lily leaked the documents but needs to know who gave them to her. This leads Miles to pressure Lily to give up her source, which she adamantly refuses to do, and all of this occurs in separation from the scene with Dev and Alex. So, does one hand know what the other is doing? Are Lily and Alex in the clear due to Dev’s influence, or is there more on this front to come?
Lily and Alex are both involved in the protests, which boil over at the end of For All Mankind S5E5. Lenya (Costa Ronin) tries to diffuse them by going to the crowd and making nice, but asking people where they’re from is a tone-deaf approach. It’s no surprise that someone says they’re from Mars, and that the crowd starts yelling in Lenya’s face.
This leads the governor, in consultation with Irina, to decide to crack down on the protestors. He institutes a curfew and tasks the MPK with dispersing the crowd, telling them to arrest anyone who resists. Thus, they assemble in riot gear to do just that, but they are outnumbered as people fight back.
Alex gets hit with a baton, but seems to be OK. Lily, on the other hand, appears to have been knocked unconscious. Miles arrives in time to see this happen, which leads to him beating a cop with a baton. Guns come out, and a couple of protestors are shot, but at least one gun ends up in their hands, as we see Gerardo (Salvador Chacon) brandishing it as the group pursues the MPK, who have begun to retreat.
An officer urges Lenya to flee to a secure location, but he refuses, and as the episode ends we seem to be a step away from a coup.
In other news, Boyd (Mireille Enos) learns in S5E5 that her partner Fred (Tyler Labine) worked security for the Kuragin night shipment when Yoon Tae-Min died, and when she confronts Fred about it, he basically admits that he killed the man. He claims it was unintentional, and that he’s been trying to help Boyd. He was even trying to help her when he hit her in the head with a pipe. Boyd says she’s going to tell Palmer, but Fred tells her Palmer is the one who told him to scare Yoon in the first place, and they’re about to go try to quash the protest, so this thread doesn’t unspool any further in “Svoboda.”
If nothing else, this information does help to weave the various strands of For All Mankind Season 5 together. Yoon was threatening to leak information about the automation plans. Kuragin has been working to carry out those plans at night, and has had the signoff of both Helios and the M-6. So, the work hasn’t been illicit so much as top secret, even as it has involved workers with a shaky legal status (Craters) and military folks getting some extra money through private contracting.
We just brought all the worst parts of Earth to Mars, huh?
“Svoboda”
For All Mankind S5E5 seems to confirm that Dev has been planning Meru as a city for a select few, be they wealthy individuals who want to live there, or people who get in through the grace of the powerful (like Alex). Maybe he also has plans for further scientific research, but the plans for automation would make the Martian proletariat otiose.
I can’t help but take the side of the workers here, even if, in a more reflective mood, I can see certain arguments in favor of automation. This kind of innovation could be used to increase human freedom—to give us more time to do what we want to do with ourselves—so it’s unfortunate if instead it tends to undermine it by depriving people of the means to live the life they’ve chosen for themselves.
The title of this episode (“Svoboda”) means freedom, so perhaps we should reflect on what that means at a deeper level. If the protestors succeed in seizing power, should we cheer, or does this risk ruining the whole project when it comes to life on Mars?
See you next week.
