The third episode of Star City brought another lunar launch into the sky — this time, with catastrophic results. Plus, Irina Morozova (Agnes O’Casey) found herself in an unexpectedly close encounter with Tanya Markelova (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis). Warning: Spoilers forStar CityEpisode 3, “Bad Dancer,” ahead!
The episode, set in 1970, saw Tanya enjoying a brief moment of true joy as she listened to a contraband (and limited-use) version of The Guess Who’s “Undun,” before her splendor was rudely interrupted by Valya (Adam Nagaitis), who was frustrated by the new moon mission with Sasha (Solly McLeod). After, the record couldn’t play clearly again, and Valya was left feeling remorseful over his mistreatment of his wife. So, he did the absolute worst thing he could do, which is take advice from Sasha on how to please her — not knowing, of course, that Sasha knew exactly how to please her. When he arrived home and began to pull Sasha’s “maneuver” on Tanya in bed, she was shocked.
As Ruby Ashbourne Serkis explained it, Tanya was “absolutely horrified” when Valya did to her what Sasha did. “With Tanya and Valya, they keep trying to connect, but they just keep missing each other. And I think that moment is terrifying. It’s a bit of, ‘Well, f**k, does he know?'” she told TV Insider. “It’s a pretty messed up thing to do, and I think it’s kind of, ‘What’s [Sasha] up to? What’s he trying to say?’ So, I think she’s shocked and horrified.”
Adam Nagaitis agreed, adding, “That’s not Valya’s way. When you’ve taken advice from the macho guy on how to [have sex with your own wife], that’s a big mistake because Valya is not that. Valya, just don’t take advice from your macho friend would be my advice.”
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Overhearing it all, of course, was Irina, who decided not to report on Tanya’s use of contraband records.
Of that decision, Agnes O’Casey explained, “I mean, she spends hours and hours listening to Tanya live her life, and she kind of falls in love with her in lots of ways… She’s everything that Irina is not. She’s free, she’s unbound, she’s sensual. She’s kind of unburdened by the pain that Irina has experienced in her life before Star City. And she’s funny. Irina loves Tanya… She just cannot help but protect Tanya, even though that is the last thing she should be doing.”
The two surprisingly came face to face in the market, and it turned out that Irina’s daughter was one of Tanya’s students. This led to her going into the apartment that’d been the center of her audible universe and seeing the scenes of the crime for herself to match with the conversations she’d listened in on…. Though Tanya had no idea, of course.
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Elsewhere in the episode, the Chief Designer (Rhys Ifans) tapped a deep-sea vessel for his Venus mission and recruited Valya to bring some trustworthy crewmembers into the fold, and Sasha and the other astronauts launched for the moonbase mission but couldn’t land due to a spy signal necessitating a power reset that set them off course — and he was horrified to see that despite saving the ship, he lost a crewmate in the process. We also learned, thanks to Valya’s Hail Mary trip to Moscow with Tanya, that he was the one responsible for attaching the signal to the ship and has been working on behalf of a mysterious enemy of the U.S.S.R.
So, it’s not just she who’s come undone — everyone and everything is.
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