The Russians’ sudden takeover of a new NASA mining space prompts discussions about how best to escalate the response, as well as how they obtained the information at all.

It’s rare that the episode title of any show utterly encapsulates all of the various subplots that occur within that episode. But that’s exactly what happens here somehow, even as the central narrative driver – potential conflict on the moon and how best to address it – becomes the least important compared to everything else that’s going on.

First there’s Tracy and Gordo, who are still in this very weird space of trying to be polite to one another while obviously something isn’t right. Gordo, for his part, is actually clearly growing as a person. He’s over his initial shock at Ed having named him for a mission back to the moon, he’s taking things seriously – doing his homework, struggling to get into overalls that don’t quite fit him anymore and attending his classes. The one thing he hasn’t yet managed to do is tell his ex-wife, who isn’t minded to return his calls.

By the time he is able to tell her, it’s during a conversation that fits that episode title quite well, as he tries to set some boundaries for their relationship going forwards following a night in which Tracy can only be said to have taken him for granted. Not only that, Tracy seems to be taking an awful lot for granted these days and it’s interesting to see the dynamic where her fame and success seem to have made her an awful lot more arrogant and unpleasant where Gordo’s fall from grace has made him an awful lot more humble and likeable.

Margo finally screws up the courage to follow up on Aleida and that confrontation is another interesting one. The last time these two saw one another, it didn’t end well and as much as Margo comes waving a white flag, Aledia has suffered too much in the interim to simply forgive her. Again, there’s that sense of re-setting boundaries, as well as an interesting echo of the way in which Margo’s relationship with Von Braun evolved and changed over the course of the first season.

But our main event has to be the Baldwins. Ed is suddenly concerned that perhaps when he was last on the moon the cosmonaut he briefly took hostage might have set up a bug in the Jamestown base because he was so emotionally distracted at the time. Karen is horrified by the revelation that their daughter wants to join the Navy and follow in her father’s footsteps. The unspoken truth is their respective unresolved and unsaid feelings over the death of Shane, which hangs like a cloud over them.

One scene in this episode, which last about fifteen minutes, is honestly one of the most raw, emotionally honest bits of drama I’ve seen in a long time. Shantel VanSanten and Cynthy Wu both deserve epic amounts of plaudits for their earlier scenes as well as this one, but Joel Kinnaman is the real surprise here, exposing the whole gamut of emotions that have always seemed to run so close to the surface without ever emerging in Ed since the show began. His anger, desperation and misery are all potently real, and more raw and real than they were even at his lowest points in Season one. The scene as a whole is impossible to take your eyes from, and will linger with you long after the credits have rolled.

Verdict: The human drama is more compelling, richly realised and satisfying than any of the space stuff. Just superb. 10/10

Greg D. Smith