Recap / Endeavour S 6 E 02 Apollo

I didn't ask for a transfer. I don't know why I'm here any more than you do.

The puppet episode.

July 1969. As the highly-anticipated Apollo 11 moon landing draws near, Morse finds himself investigating the death of a promising young astrophysicist and his girlfriend, who worked for a TV puppet show. Their deaths seem to be a result of a tragic car accident, but when the clues start to point towards foul play, Morse enlists the help of an injured Fred Thursday to uncover the truth.

This episode contains examples of:

• Added Alliterative Appeal: Jeff Slayton was clearly going for this with one of his earlier shows, Benny the Banana Boy.
• Always Murder: Averted in the case of Christine Chase, who really did die due to an accident (she fell down the stairs at the Wingqvists' wife-swapping party). What makes it look suspicious is that everyone at the party did their best to try and cover it up in order to preserve their reputations. Adam Drake looks like an aversion at first, but that car did not crash accidentally ... although he wasn't the intended victim.
• Awful Wedded Life: The Humbolts' marriage may look fine on the surface, but it really isn't.
  Isobel Humbolt: [on a tape-recording] Everyone thinks I have the perfect life. I suppose, looking at it from the outside, I do. Perfect marriage, perfect husband, perfect children, perfect house. But, every morning I wake up, I just want to scream.
• Chekhov's Skill: Hildegarde Slayton's mechanical knowledge, which is mentioned early on, proves crucial to cracking the case.
• Comically Missing the Point: Strange has never heard of Jacqueline Susann (at the time, a best-selling novelist) leading to the following misunderstanding when he's questioning Hildegarde Slayton:
  Hildegarde Slayton: A solitary supper, and then I took Jacqueline Susann to bed.
  Strange: [awkwardly] I see ... and where might we reach Miss Susann?
  Morse: Um ... I think Miss Slayton is referring to a novel by the popular authoress of that name.
• Death by Woman Scorned: Although she kills the wrong person. Hildegarde Slayton was Adam Drake's former lover, he having left her to pursue a relationship with Isobel Humbolt. She cut the brake lines of Isobel's car in order to kill her, but Isobel lent Adam her car keys to enable him to get rid of Christine's body after she accidentally died at the wife-swapping party.
• Foreshadowing: Bright refers to the pelican in his road-safety commercial as "an albatross round my neck" as he is repeatedly mocked on account of it. However, that campaign will prove (quite literally) to be a life-saver in "Deguello".
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Specifically, by cutting the brake cables on Isobel Humbolt's car in the hope that she'll die in the resulting crash. It doesn't work out how Hildegarde Slayton planned it, though, as Adam Drake ends up driving it.
• Mundane Solution: Favoured by Ronnie Box — Adam Drake killed Christine and then killed himself by crashing the car. Turns out, it's much more complicated than that.
• Murder by Mistake: Hildegarde Slayton wanted to kill Isobel Humbolt so that she could get back together with Adam Drake. Her modus operandi — cutting the brake lines on Isobel's car — did not take into account the fact that Isobel might lend her car to someone else ... that someone else being Adam.
• A Party, Also Known as an Orgy: The Wingqvists host wife-swapping parties, complete with the men putting their car keys into a bowl and the women then selecting keys from said bowl to determine who has sex with who. Mrs Trellis, their cleaner, comments that after one of these, the house resembles "the last days of Sodom". Isobel Humbolt uses the parties as a cover for her affair with Adam Drake (the other guests presumably being otherwise distracted so as not to notice that she always picked Adam's car keys out of the bowl).
• Remember the New Guy?: Mac, the mechanic at the Castle Gate police station car pool who points out that the car's brake lines were cut, is evidently (and, given what he does, unsurprisingly) known to the main characters. This is the only time he's shown, though.
• Ripped from the Headlines: The Apollo 11 moon landing forms the backdrop of this episode. Hence the title.
• Ship Tease: The Humbolts' kids run away, and are found by Morse and Joan. The son innocently asks if they can be his parents now.
• Shout-Out:
  • Part of the plot revolves around a film studio producing a Supermarionation-style TV puppet show called Moon Rangers.
    • Jeff and Hildegarde Slayton, the brother-and-sister team behind the show, are named after Donald 'Deke' Slayton (NASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations at the time of the moon landing) and based on Gerry and Sylvia Anderson (although they were married).
    • A map of the Lunar surface displayed in the show's control centre set clearly features an installation very reminiscent of Moonbase Alpha.
    • A mute character in Moon Rangers is reminiscent of Marina from Stingray.
    • Among the puppets and props in the Slaytons' office, there's a model of Lady Penelope's house.
    • Moon Rangers is described as "Bonanza in Space", which echoes the description of a certain other space-based show as "Wagon Train to the Stars".
  • Mrs Trellis, the Wingqvists' cleaner, is named after the correspondent of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.
  • Morse mocks Joan's outfit by comparing her to a supporting character in Doctor Zhivago.