Following Helios' announcement, NASA and the Soviet Union rush to get their respective missions ready for the 1994 Mars window.
Tropes:
- Affably Evil: The KGB agent that threatens Margo remains cordial even while having Sergei strangled right in front of them.
- The Alcoholic: Danny kicked the habit years ago, but is starting to regress as pressures from the upcoming Mars mission — and being married to someone he doesn't really love — take their toll. Danielle, recognizing this, takes him off the mission so he can get himself straightened out, only for Ed to recruit him for the Helios mission instead.
- Allohistorical Allusion: Mars-94 was the original name for Russia's disastrous (unmanned) Mars 96
mission. In our timeline, Russia was at that time in the worst parts of the Yeltsin era and not exactly capable of big feats (The Mars mission was supposed to prove the naysayers wrong - the opposite occurred). As we see in this episode, Russia also needs a leg up to get the (much more ambitious) "Mars 94" launched on schedule - Brain Drain: Helios scoops quite a few NASA personnel for their own Mars mission, including Danny Stevens and Bill Strausser. They try to get Aleida as well, but she declines.
- Call-Back: Karen tells Aleida that unless she joins Helios she'll always be known as "Margo's girl." In Season 1 Margo herself was dismissed by many at NASA as "Wernher's girl".
- Cool Spaceship: All three of the Mars missions. NASA's Sojourner 1, launched from the lunar surface, is a HTOL spacecraft with many characteristics of the space shuttle, in addition to hidden solar sails; Helios' Phoenix is the Polaris hotel retrofitted to include fuel tanks, engines, scientific modules, and a landing shuttle; and the Soviets' Mars-94 resembles a scaled-up Soyuz with a bulkier service module and a glorious Used Future aesthetic.
- Dull Surprise: Margo's reaction to Sergei being strangled is a bit... flat.
- For Want Of A Nail: Ellen beats Bill Clinton in 1992, and becomes the first woman to be elected President.
- I Have Your Wife: When Margo refuses to yield to blackmail, the Soviets threaten to kill Sergei, or send him to a gulag. She initially leaves him to his fate, only to change her mind after returning to the States.
- Internal Reveal: When Sergei fails to get Margo to provide details about NASA's nuclear engine, they are confronted by KGB agents who reveal that she has unwittingly been an asset to them for years.
- Oh, Crap!: Karen's reaction when Ed reveals he's bringing Danny Stevens on the mission, meaning her ex-husband will be spending two years in space with the man she cheated on him with.
- Scatterbrained Senior: Victor confronts Aleida over the fact that her father is clearly developing mental difficulties, from forgetting to turn the stove off to being convinced that the neighbors are stealing from him, all of which are early signs of Alzheimer's.
- Spaceship Slingshot Stunt: Faced with the problem of getting the NASA mission's supplies to Mars ahead of Sojourner 1, Aleida suggests launching them ahead of the upcoming Mars window and sending them to fly past Venus, slingshotting them to Mars a few months before the astronauts arrive.
- Starship Luxurious: The Phoenix, being a former space hotel, has a clean interior and much better food than anything NASA can offer, and its command center could pass for the bridge of the Enterprise at first glance — it even has a Cool Chair for the commander!
- Time Skip: The final scene skips two years to 1994, in which NASA, the Soviet Union, and Helios launch their Mars missions.
- Undying Loyalty: Aleida refuses to leave NASA for Helios due to her loyalty to Margo, despite being offered double her current salary plus benefits.
- Wham Shot:
- Following the Time Skip, Margo gets a call from the President, and we see it is Ellen.
- Also the news coverage of Mars-94 launching, revealing that Margo did in fact help the Soviet nuclear program in return for Sergei's life. The slim chance of the Soviets figuring it out without her help anyway is explicitly confirmed as not having occurred in a later episode.
