IR TV Review: STAR CITY - EPISODE 5 (“Bite Your Elbow”) [Apple TV]

The MacGuffin of any season is about seeing how a series of actions can unravel and initiate a path that can only lead in ruin for someone (or many). The interesting element of Ep 5 of "Star City" entitled “Bite Your Elbow” is that it has many different facets working against each other towards a common disaster. The crux here for a secret KGB agent is that she is trying to mitigate the damage her investigation but in doing so permeates herself in further. She thinks she is doing the right thing while it is simply setting up a reversal of human nature. In trying to protect the reputation or even life of a cosmonaut's wife she in a way betrays exactly what is happening.

As always Chief Designer (Rhys Ifans) is trying to tip toe around the edges to get what he wants. His ambition in the face of a crushing paranoia from a clearly cornered Colonel Roskova (an always terrifying Anna Maxwell Maerin) who caused disaster before can only point to more problems. The aspect is it only becomes a piece of luck which can outweigh the other decisions that are happening. The final moments of the episode show the joy even though what it took to get there perhaps undoes the whole thing. But it is interestingly lined up with history even in its alternative form because of a single image that still permeates the internet (even if this is an alternate timeline). But "Star City" continues to be a unique psychological play on the nature of advancement when there are controls and too much power placed in politics. But again those have always been the rules. It just depends what society can overcome them. B

By Tim Wassberg