Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for For All Mankind S5E7, “The Sirens of Titan” (written by Jovan Robinson and directed by Dan Liu)
For All Mankind S5E7 picks up six months after the end of last week’s episode. In the cold open, Kosmos-1 contacts the Sojourner as both ships approach Saturn. Kosmos-1 is getting there first, but something in their calculations is off. They can’t slow down to make a landing on Titan, and they crash into Saturn. Technically, they are the first people to make it to Saturn, but they are also dead.
This creates a worry for the Sojourner, since they have plotted the same trajectory as Kosmos-1. Aleida (Coral Peña) informs Sojourner that the problem wasn’t with the trajectory per se, but rather density estimates, and sends up a risk analysis. Walt (Christopher Denham) doesn’t even look at it before deciding to abort the mission, despite Kelly’s (Cynthy Wu) protestations.
But, when it comes down to it, Kelly is motivated by her dad’s lifelong regret about not taking the opportunity to land on the Moon during Apollo 10. She makes last-minute changes to the computer in order to create a situation where attempting a landing on Titan is the Sojourner’s only choice. It’s tense, but ultimately they are successful.
“The Sirens of Titan” begins and ends with the Sojourner crew, but the bulk of the episode focuses on what has become a prolonged standoff on Mars. The ISN has apparently been helping Happy Valley over the preceding months, but have decided to cease doing so due to political pressure. Meanwhile, Palmer (Myk Watford) and other members of the MPK aligned with the M-6 are holed up with Dev (Edi Gathegi) and other Helios staff. They’ve been staging raids through secret tunnels Dev had built, taking food and medical supplies.
Since the M-6 remains steadfast that it won’t “negotiate with terrorists” and the total embargo of Mars remains in place, the SDM has started rationing food. Lee Jung-gil (C.S. Lee) is in charge of the agricultural domes and is the source for estimates about how long the colony can survive. It’s not looking great, even before Dev and Palmer decide to destroy the domes.
They do so at 3am, when they presume no one will be farming, but it turns out that Lily (Ruby Cruz) has arranged a late-night birthday party for Alex (Sean Kaufman) in the dome where they regularly work. All of their friends are there, doing a choreographed dance number. Jung-gil arrives looking stern before he hilariously joins in.
And then the roof is shattered and collapses. One dead, seven injured (two critically).
According to Lee, this leaves the colony with about two weeks worth of food, and even before this event a petition was gathering steam in Happy Valley for people to be able to decide to return to Earth. When Miles (Toby Kebbell) asks Aleida if that would even be possible, she says maybe, but after the domes are attacked, she informs SDM that she’s signed the petition herself.
That’s before Kelly forces Sojourner into landing on Titan, however, and I can’t help but wonder how that landing will affect Martian politics. Miles convinces Aleida to broadcast the transmissions they’re receiving from Sojourner throughout Happy Valley, and when Kelly gets on the comm to inform MOCC that they’ve succeeded (after long seconds of the Sojourner’s signal being lost), everyone on Mars cheers. Even Lenya (Costa Ronin), sitting in his prison cell, can’t help but smile.
Speaking of Lenya, For All Mankind S5E7 gives us some strong indications that Irina (Svetlana Efremova) wants to make him the next leader of the USSR. She basically says as much, and though Lenya scoffs at the idea (given that he is currently a prisoner on another planet and all), I wouldn’t put it past Irina to ultimately make something like this happen. At the moment, things look bleak, with Lenya’s wife, Natalya (Olga Fonda) being coerced into publicly denouncing him. But Tasha tells Lenya she loves him by blinking in Morse code, and the attempt to blame Russia’s failures on Lenya could potentially be flipped around in the future.
The situation on Mars also looks dire. As much as Miles refuses to give up what the SDM has been fighting for, Dev’s move to sabotage the Martian food supply doesn’t leave the SDM many options. Miles hasn’t come up with any by the end of the episode.
Perhaps the success of the Titan mission will change things, even if there’s no direct line that can be drawn between one situation and the other. It wouldn’t be the first time that For All Mankind has resolved a geopolitical dispute through events happening in space. Indeed, the Apollo-Soyuz handshake in the Season 2 finale was arguably one of the series’s best moments.
I don’t know how the Titan landing might lead to a resolution of the tensions on Mars, but I look forward to finding out.
See you next week.
