With all three Mars missions underway and racing to be the first to make it to the Red Planet, all the stops are being pulled out. But pushing your luck in space isn’t always the best idea…

So, it’s all change – Ed, Karen, Danny, Bill Strausser and a bunch of others are at Helios, Aleida is flight controller at NASA and the Russians are clattering along behind both American missions, all striving to be the very first to make it to Mars. But racing in space isn’t necessarily the best idea, as everyone is about to find out.

As we enter the episode, Helios is well ahead, and looking to make it comfortably to Mars first, with Ed bragging to Dani over the comms all about it. What comes before a fall again? Yep, turns out that NASA’s mission might have a few tricks up their own sleeve and that causes some tensions down on Earth. That nice-guy, ‘we’re a collective’ persona that Dev has been radiating insincerely since he first showed up? It breaks here, in two very fundamental moments within the episode. The first relates to the possibility that his endeavour won’t be the first to Mars. The second – well we’ll come to that but it’s very ugly.

Danny meanwhile is struggling with the fact that the movie about his parents’ sacrifice is such a pop culture reference – even to people who, as Ed puts it, should know better. The real issue here though is the beginnings of that simmering tension we just know will bubble over soon. Ed has no idea exactly who it was that Karen cheated on him with, and Danny is getting increasingly visibly fed up of Ed treating him as a son. That kind of tension festering in a normal environment would be bad. Millions of miles from Earth in a pressurised container? Can only get worse.

Lest the Americans think they get to have all the fun, the Russian mission pulls out a trick of its own to challenge for the lead, but when it goes spectacularly wrong, it’s DJ Kelly, who’s been entertaining all three missions with broadcasts of her favourite tunes, who gets tipped the wink first. As things go south very quickly, Helios and NASA are faced with a difficult choice. It’s here that we see the true depth of the camaraderie and respect that exists between Ed and Dani, regardless of what else might have transpired between them. And then that second moment of Dev’s mask slipping happens, and all bets are suddenly off.

As the three-way race to new frontiers turns into a whole confused mess of rescue attempts, with ground control powerless to do much given a five minute delay between their transmissions being sent and received, events escalate fast. For All Mankind has never been shy about the potential consequences of things going wrong up there in the big black, and nor is it here. It also ends on the very cliffhangiest of cliffhangers, so be prepared for some tense waiting for the next episode to start.

Verdict: Suddenly, it’s all about the space stuff, as the show reminds us just how much more dangerous the emotional, human stuff is liable to make everything up there. 8/10

Greg D. Smith