After the emotional terror unleashed upon an innocent viewing public through the horrors of last week's final five minutes, we truly deserve a moment of ease. Thank goodness this episode provides a timely respite. While not much actually happens here, that's perfectly fine. (Private to the writers' room: I see what you did there with titles suggesting something entirely different from what actually transpires in "Happy Valley" and "Seven Minutes of Terror." You, the bait-and-switching evil genius authors of my waking nightmares.)
"Seven Minutes of Terror" allows us to shake off the tension in our necks and shoulders, prioritizing the relative leisure of extended character moments and using them to set the chessboard for the second half of the season. As far as the plot goes, it's not as though nothing happens, but the story beats seem aware that their job this week is to establish mood and deepen relationships.
Let's dive right into whatever Danny Stevens is up to. Danny has put himself in an untenable situation by impulsively leaving NASA for Helios in a desperate attempt to avoid the logical consequences of his falling off the wagon. Unfortunately, all he accomplished was exchanging one bad problem for another, which is quite possibly worse than the first problem. By now, even Danny himself is starting to think that perhaps the shame of being publicly known for having an imperfect substance-abuse recovery process wouldn't have been as unbearable as a two-year mission in an enclosed space with his mentor-father figure, who is also the object of his most murderous Oedipal impulses.
Pouring his heart out to Jimmy in a letter-home-style video, Danny reflects that this mission has been harder than he anticipated, mostly because working with Ed makes him whiplash back and forth between guilt and rage on a daily basis. He knows that both he and Ed often have Gordo on their minds, that Ed is trying to fill his late dad's shoes, and that the tender and the furious can't coexist, much less stay in equilibrium indefinitely.
That friction leads Danny to manipulate the guileless and eager-to-impress Nick Corrado into revealing how to get around Phoenix's various password-protection systems. Realizing a few seconds too late what he's done, Nick's face crumples while Danny walks away smirking, ready to put that knowledge to work in his scheme to watch Ed and Karen's private video messages to each other.
It's hard to know what Danny thinks watching these videos will accomplish for him. They aren't helping him get over Karen; if anything, he looks more miserably lovelorn by the second as he witnesses the ease she and Ed share even at a distance of tens of millions of miles. They're also not much use in his working relationship with Ed, but his desire for more contact with Karen is overwhelming any qualms he might feel about hitting play again and again.
This helpless, naive soul is so desperately hungry for a connection that he's engaged in a game he knows he can't win, one that he perhaps vaguely understands. In a heart-to-heart card game with his deceased best friend's son, Danny tiptoes and then strides towards revealing to Ed that he's the one Karen risked everything to sleep with. His desire to confront Ed with this knowledge is palpable, yet he can't bear the thought of a physical altercation, let alone the damage a proud confession would inflict on his own marriage.
As for Ed and Karen's private video messages, do you sense something? After over 50 years of genuine affection for each other and their shared commitment to being good parents to Kelly, there's nothing there. A friendship like theirs can certainly get a bit flirty at times, but they're mature enough to know that flirtation isn't necessarily an invitation to action. A second chance at love? Choosing the stability of their hard-fought friendship over the risk of attempting romance again? The future could go either way for these two, but we could fairly call it a tentative vibe - one with potential.
After the dust has settled from the successful/failed rescue mission, Ed and Dani's contrasting arcs for the season have become more distinct. Who knows what they think about their performances as mission commanders, but there have been so many moments this season when Ed has faltered (or been dead wrong) while Dani has flourished (or been proven right - not that she's an "I told you so" kind of person). It feels as though the show is making a case that her steady, earned confidence is unquestionably equal to Ed's greater spontaneity and risk tolerance. In fact, her expert piloting of Sojourner during the ill-fated Mars-94 rescue mission and her gutsy successful landing of Sojourner's lander are just two more examples of how expertise, experience, and emotional intelligence can combine to work as fluidly and successfully as intuition does at its best.
I think the difference between Ed and Dani is a question of scale. Ed's abilities and mistakes appear more consequential because his performance spectrum is wide. That's largely a reflection of his whiteness: He can take up more space, so he does. That's not territory Dani has been afforded before leading NASA's Mars mission. Still, as we keep seeing, the increasingly long communications lag between Earth and the spacecraft gives mission leaders more latitude to make executive decisions on their own.
When Ed is on form, he's still an exceptional leader, and he couldn't be more right in his video message to Dev and Helios's mission control that Dev's attempt to subvert his authority and decision-making ability dishonored Phoenix's crew and the mission as a whole. Ed and Dani are both still hypercompetitive, of course, but it was reassuring to see in "Happy Valley" how they reprioritized the mutual respect and affection that has undergirded their friendship for so long.
Back on Earth, Margo's taste for the high-stakes world of leveraging her knowledge and authority against the Soviets seems to be developing a life of its own. I'm both into this and filled with trepidation about it. Her bold move of insisting on getting Sergei to Houston as a condition of assisting Roscosmos with their cosmonauts' assignments didn't feel risky, but it was a daring step. She knew director Catiche would agree because what else could she do? Margo had leverage, and Catiche didn't. I'm not sure Margo fully understands the depth of her plan to rescue Sergei and his entire family from the KGB's lung- and kidney-based torture methods. It would be an enormous coup for the U.S. to assist in the defection of the former director of Roscosmos. The expertise and insights Sergei would bring to the table would be one thing; the blow to the Soviets' pride and morale might be the thing that motivates the U.S. most of all.
Margo will need to clear a series of hurdles to get beyond a firm initial "No," but as we've seen, she's very skilled at negotiating relationships with colleagues outside of NASA. Having carried so much water for the armed forces and various presidential administrations, she should have some influence there. And perhaps throwing a slice or two of that sweet, sweet NASA revenue to other federal agencies would help, too.
This raises the question of how Aleida's independent investigation factors in here. She's going all Veronica Mars with her hunch about the uncanny similarities between Mars-94 and a NASA design from 1992 - one can only assume it's just a matter of time before the jig is up. That said, this might be a more dangerous game than Margo's foray into Operation Defection. Additionally, Margo, of all people, knows how tenacious Aleida is, and now that Aleida's suspicious gaze is turning to her NASA colleagues, she's going to suss it out in very short order. Margo thinks she has a good rationale for her espionage, but will that convince Aleida or anyone else in her orbit?
