For All Mankind Season 5 Episode 5 Review: Svoboda

Given Helios’s secret plot to fully automate the Mars base revealed at the end of “Open Source,” it’s more than a bit strange that For All Mankind Season 5 Episode 5, “Svoboda,” opens with a lengthy flashback that takes place on an entirely different planet and is focused on a character that has very little to do with this particular story.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Eagle-eyed fans undoubtedly spotted a glimpse of Margo’s former KGB handler, Irina Morozova (Svetlana Efremova), in the photo of the Kurigan delegation headed to Mars, but it’s unlikely that anyone expected this hour’s cold open to be dedicated to her experiences in a Soviet gulag following the Goldilocks asteroid theft.

To be fair, it’s really not entirely clear why we needed to watch Irina endure 18 months of torture and brutality. Her violent imprisonment doesn’t really reveal much that we don’t already know about her — that she is an intelligent survivor with a violent streak of her own (as evidenced by her threats to have her guard’s entire family killed if she isn’t released). 

But, with the Russian-set For All Mankind prequel Star City on the horizon, perhaps the series writers felt we needed a reminder of the horrors the USSR was more than capable of in this timeline, where they’ve remained in power into the 2000s. At any rate, Irina is now working security for Kuragin and is in Happy Valley ostensibly for the talks about the forthcoming Space Elevator project.

But while Irina is gleefully getting her digs in at everyone from Aleida to Mars Governor Polivanov and his wife, Natalya (Olga Fonda), the base itself is roiling with tension. 

The Mars workers, naturally, are furious about the idea that they’re going to be cut off from their livelihoods and homes in the name of boosting Helios and Kurgain’s profits. While many of the higher-ups are eager to identify who leaked the documents to the press in the first place, protests have begun to break out, often centered around the memorial to Ed that was erected after his death.

Alex, for his part, is proud of his involvement in the leak, and doesn’t bother to deny it when Dev corners and calls him out on it. He thinks his grandpa would be proud of him, and you know what? He’s right.

Ed would have been in the thick of this protest, insisting that Mars is more than an outpost to make rich people richer. It’s a good thing he’s instilled that same belief in Alex, and although this episode ends with a group of Marsies and Peacekeepers fighting in the streets, it’s still hard to argue that the boy shouldn’t have done what he did.

Dev is bizarrely laissez-faire about the whole thing, but his willingness to go along with the automation scheme has never made a tremendous amount of sense. He used to be as dedicated to the long-term success of Happy Valley as Ed was, and his entire personality this season has revolved around making his million-resident city a reality.

What does it matter if automation can help Dev build his dream city faster if the world has collectively decided that Mars only matters as long as it can be efficiently stripped for parts? Who does he think is going to live there? The former workers he forced to return home? A different crop of humans he’ll somehow convince to move there? W Is Mars about to become just another enclave for those who can afford it, rather than for the people who’ve built and kept the base running all these years?

And, as long as we’re running down the list of disappointing former heroes, it’s probably time to talk about Miles. What a let-down he’s turned out to be. (I feel so vindicated that I never really liked him all that much back in Season 4, to be honest.)

At any rate, it feels more than a bit hypocritical of him to be so judgmental about Lily’s involvement in leaking the files, particularly when the show hasn’t really delved all that deeply into the deals he clearly made in the wake of the riots he was involved in a decade ago. Miles has clearly been trading information to Taylor for a very long time, and it seems worth considering what else he may have told him over the years. He did escape the kinds of consequences that Ed, Lee, and Svetlana were all forced to face, despite being as involved in the Goldilocks situation as any of them.

The installation of a base-wide curfew sends the MPKs out to face a crowd of rowdy protestors who refuse to back down. Violence has felt inevitable throughout most of this hour, but it’s still shocking to see the protestors square up without protection or weapons of any kind. The sequence is loud and chaotic, rapidly descending into increasingly brutal violence on both sides. 

For All Mankind isn’t shy about the ways that the default setting for many in positions of authority is to immediately default to violence, and it’s genuinely uncomfortable to watch grown men wail on defenseless women and children in the name of what is essentially corporate interests. But as gunshots ring out and Ed’s memorial is destroyed in the subsequent fighting and turmoil, it feels as though nothing on the base will ever be the same. 

Stray Thoughts and Observations

•  I always suspected Boyd’s partner was a creep! But the scene in which she confronts Fred about his involvement in Yoon’s death is great. 
• Aleida openly hating the hell out of Irina every chance she gets warms my heart.
• I’m very afraid that Natalya Polivanov is going to get killed in these riots because I’m finding her and her husband entirely too cute. 
• Ed would, in fact, be proud of Alex for being the first one to yell “Mars is Ours!” back at that awful Palmer.

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New episodes of For All Mankind stream Fridays on Apple TV.

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