Star City (2026): Plow Deep - S01E07 - RECAP

Took me a while to catch up both on episodes and posts, its not easy trying to keep up with a 9 - 5, trying to stay active on HIVE daily, plus projects on the side and work out, you might go insane, but I finally did it, after a long day at work sat down to watch Star City episode 7, and I feel like they just giving us hope too early, I think they should have let this run the mystery a bit longer. The Colonel opens with a status report loaded with exposition, explaining how the tragic deaths of the Venus crew last summer got covered up as a simple training accident by the state, and now the program has traded deep space for spying on American targets from the Salyut 1 station. The whole situation is a mess, dropping canisters of surveillance photos back to Earth, one of them landing on American soil and leading to George Bush calling them out on the news. The new guy in charge is Radimir Petrovsky, a former high ranking KGB officer who now runs the facility through fear and intimidation instead of inspiring his engineers, basically not a Chief Designer. Raskova pays a visit to the OG Chief Designer and he is the one that tells her that that ideas require inspiration and do not just form out of thin air, right afeter getting escorted out and replaced as lead engineer by a guy named Stepanov but most importantly he doesnt want his sit back as he understood its all in vain as the state will do as they pleace when ever they want. It is sad watching this facility stripped of its dreamers, replaced by men who doesnt share the vision and passion, that is one of the skills of the one as Chief Designer. I do not usually mind a slow episode, but watching this show trade the stars for dirty government spying feels like a lot of the wegith for the series and I hope they do not stretch this depressing mood for too long because some of it I bet hits a little too close to most people in real life burochracy.

• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32140872/
• Platform: APPLETV

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The part of this episode that got me the most excited was the whole cat and mouse game between Irina and the Colonel Raskova, watching two smart characters try to outthink each other without a single punch thrown, at the same time its like they pay tribute to each other. Petrovsky tries to pull Irina onto his side to take down the Colonel, so he sends her to the apartment late at night pretending she is just dropping off surveillance files. The real plan is for Irina to plant a bug while the Colonel is busy checking on something, when you are a spy you are good at creating distractions and pull in our out people of your space, but as soon as she gets a minute alone she notices a photograph sitting on the shelf. She soon asumes the boy in the picture is the Colonel's son, who turn out lost during the war, and that tiny detail completely shifts the power balance, tipping Irinia into Raskova side. Seeing that hidden vulnerability makes Irina rethink her entire loyalty to Petrovsky, and she confesses the whole bugging plot to the Colonel right there on the spot. I loved this twist, because the Colonel does not even panic, she just calmly instructs Irina to go ahead and plant the bug anyway, turning her into a double agent who keeps reporting back to Petrovsky while secretly working for the Colonel instead, thats such a baller move by the writers because to be a double agent is insane considering now you got to cover up from both sides. The actresses sell it with subtle looks and I am betting this alliance ends up being the key to taking down Petrovsky by the end of the season, and even get Raskova a bit away from the state guidelines and more into the space program, its a big swing but I think there is a chance it happens.

As always with any of my recaps, I do have some complaints about how they moved Sergei and Anastasia into position, because their scenes felt like checking boxes to inject logic into the script rather than natural storyline, I have mention this before how some things are just a bit too convinient for my taste. Sergei is demoted to a desk job in a basement doing tedious paper math, so miserable he tries to pass a letter to a coworker to get a teaching job at a university in Kazan because he cant stand been there anyremo. The next morning his coworker does not show so he smelss something is up, and Sergei comes home to find his apartment sacked, they were looking for something, there it was his letter sitting on the couch as a silent threat to stay in his lane. It works and it is a fast way to remind us he is trapped, it works so well, I really enjoy when they say things with action rather than a lot of dialogue and drama. After that sad moment where Sasha leaves for "training" and both look at each other knowing its not training, Anastasia is back living on a farm, waking up her drunk father and fixing tractors while drowning in grief over her dead husband Sasha, well who everyone assume is dead because thats the entire purpose for this episode. Deputy Chairman Tarasov shows up late at night after an event they had to promote Star City, has a drink and pressures her to command the new Salyut 1 mission because her return to space would help counter the public relations disaster with the Americans. She knows she is being used as a political pawn to cover up the spying, but smiles and agrees anyway, and the next day she is already on a bus to the launch pad at Baikonur, skipping real preparation or training, it was insane they did that, not even For All Mankind pull such missions. We do get a beautiful shot of the Soyuz rocket launching above the clouds, and seeing Anastasia smile as she looks out at space is a great moment, but it needed a few more scenes showing her actually wrestling with the decision to go back to the agency that got her husband killed, the same agency that ended her carrer and turn her into a prisoner.

Even when they start picking up the space stuff, it still feels more like a Cold War espionage thriller because we know that no matter if they are in Venus, A Space Ship or on Earth, they state can cut their oxygen down anytime they want, like those old tense spy movies where enemies are forced to cooperate without a second option. The Colonel realizes she is losing control of the facility and leaves the base in street clothes to visit the former chief designer, who is living under house arrest, pulling turnips while KGB guards watch him. He hates her for letting the Venus crew die and taking his life away, and refuses to help her fix the image compression problem at first. But the Colonel knows exactly which buttons to push, warning him that Petrovsky is going to tear Star City apart piece by piece and destroy everything they built together. The old man finally gives her a lead, pointing to an algorithm on the Venera computer that could downgrade high resolution images for transmission, offering it as a possible starting point for the spy satellite feeds, because two bitter rivals sharing secrets beats complete annihilation by a worse villain. The drab clothing and the constant feeling that someone is listening behind every door really sell the atmosphere, and it makes you appreciate how these brilliant minds were just tools for a government that would toss them aside the second they stopped being useful.

The episode had some pacing issues, also the ilumination and lighting on this episode got me fucked up, I know they trying to bring up that Soviet Union grim enviroment but thats too much darkness. Things do speed up during some of the scenes speciall when Sergei talks his way into the communications room with help from Stepanov and gets on a private channel with Anastasia up on the Salyut station, while he is checking his numbers the episodes tells you he have found something, but they cover it up so well that you got no idea what is about to go down. He asks her to tune a frequency receiver to a specific frequency and she detects a signal that comes back as compressed data. Sergei starts doing the math in his head looking at a calendar and he realizes this data is structured using his exact Venera 7 image compression algorithm, and I guess the date confirm it because he probably calculated the date they left and probably how much time it takes for that same data to travel through space. Only one other ship could ever transmit that exact code, so the Venera 7 spacecraft must have survived the explosion after all and is heading back to Earth right now, Im very curious what kind of explanation they going to give use because an internal explosion not only might destroy a bunch of things but also take them off corse. That twist is crazy, it completely flips the tragedy from episode six, because someone from that crew could still be alive up there keeping the ship running. The episode ends on a great shot of the spacecraft coming in from the distance, but here is the biggest twist, will this be a rescue missiong? the big escape for the survivors? or an annihilation mission? because now we got to consider Raskova position towards the current Chief Designer, turns this entire situation into a huge political headache for the leaders who already told everyone they were dead. I am giving this episode an 7.5/10, because despite the rushed desicions, announcement around Anastasia it pulls off a reveal that changes the direction of the season. I cannot wait to see how they handle this next week episode, because if Sasha or Valya are still breathing, the Soviet government has a lot of explaining to do and I just pray they are, even better if they both alive because there is also their own internal conflict after Valya confesses been a spy to his best first Sasha, that might lead to Sasha confessing he was fucking Tanya, its hilarious where all this is going.

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Rating: 75/100

Originally posted through scrobble.life/tv.