With the Russians moving quickly towards establishing a base on the moon, the Nixon administration is pushing NASA to rush their own programme, against the wishes of Director Von Braun. The government, though, isn’t in the mood to wait.

It’s quite curious that the impression I had of the show’s portrayal of Von Braun for the first half of this episode gets completely flipped on its head as we head into the back half, although it also, in doing so, serves to highlight the very hypocrisy of the government which happily looked the other way with regards to Von Braun’s past historically.

With the Soviets having won the race to the moon, Nixon wants NASA to step up and rush through getting a base established up there before their enemies can. Von Braun is reticent, citing that he wants it done properly rather than quickly and not appearing convinced by ‘reports’ of the Soviet space programme’s progress. But this is Nixon, not used to being told no, and he and his cabinet start looking for ways to circumvent Von Braun altogether.

That of course gives Ed Baldwin an opportunity to grab himself a place back on the flight schedule if only he’d be willing to reiterate his previous comments to a more official audience. Baldwin is a difficult character to warm to, though as it turns out he’s actually one of the more respectable of his kind, as we are forcibly reminded by one little subplot, but it is genuinely compelling to watch the man struggle with the choice of betraying someone he looks up to or facing the possibility he’ll never go into space again. Joel Kinneman doesn’t get a lot of credit for his acting generally, but he does good work here, making us care about the fate of a character who is more fascinating than actually likeable.

As for Von Braun himself, the show veers oddly on this one, presenting a Von Braun who insists he is against the use of his inventions for military purposes after having witnessed the horrors of World War 2 and his V2 rockets, but then allowing that mask to slip very oddly towards the end. It’s certainly good at showcasing that ability the US government had to overlook certain details when that suited their purpose, and also how manipulative and devious Nixon and his coterie were willing to be when that suited. It does, nonetheless, leave the show feeling a little like it’s sitting on the fence about a man who was a Nazi Party member who worked for the regime and did so in full and clear-eyed awareness of the consequences. It’s fine to point out to us that the government of the time calculated that the fruits of Von Braun’s scientific work and the contribution they made to the space race outweighed (to them) the horrors for which he was responsible and the need to be held to account, but it feels odd that the show almost seems to be encouraging the audience to feel the same sort of ambivalence.

There’s a little more about Aleida and her family as well, which given the nature of the show’s final bombshell before the credits seems to be heading towards a particular direction, but we will just have to wait and see on that one. At present, Aleida’s bits of the show don’t really seem to add much.

Verdict: Oddly ambivalent in tone given the subject matter it’s dealing with, but still compelling enough elsewhere to get away with it for now. 7/10

Greg D. Smith