History Recap / ChernobylS1E5VichnayaPamyat

* AnAesop: Legasov delivers the show's thesis statement during the trial:
-->'''Legasov:''' When the truth offends, we lie and lie, until we can no longer remember it is ever there. But it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.

* VillainousBSOD: At the trial, Legasov reveals that the AZ-5 SCRAM system, which is supposed to shut down a nuclear reactor if something goes wrong, had the opposite effect, and Dyatlov gets one of these. The look on his face, as he realizes that the failsafe never would have worked, shows that he finally grasps what his actions led to.

-->'''Shcherbina:''' I'm an inconsequential man Valera. That's all I've ever been. I hoped one day that I would matter, but I didn't. I just stood next to people who did.\\
'''Legasov:''' There are other scientists like me. Any one of them could have done what I did. But ''you''... Everything we asked for, everything we needed. Men. Material. ''Lunar rovers?'' Who else could have done those things? They heard me, but they ''listened'' to you. Of all the ministers and all the deputies, the entire congregation of obedient fools, they mistakenly sent the one good man. For god's sake Boris, '''you were the one who mattered most.'''

** Akimov and Toptunov try to review the sequence for the rundown test, but find many of the steps are crossed out. They are then told to follow the crossed out instructions. During the trial, Khomyuk compares this to Yuri Gagarin being told nothing of his mission into space until he's on the launchpad, with nothing more than an instruction manual he's never seen before.

* TheSocialClimber: Before meeting with Bryukhanov, Fomin merrily tells Dyatlov that once the reactor test is completed, there will be promotions for everyone! Bryukhanov will head to Moscow, Fomin will take his place as chief administrator of the power plant, and ''someone'' will have to replace Fomin as Chief Engineer, and it could be Dyatlov or Sitnikov. Fomin squeezes every last drop of enjoyment out of letting Dyatlov know that Fomin holds his future in the palm of his hand, and out of watching Dyatlov swallow his pride and humbly ask to be considered for the position - unaware that he is hardening Dyatlov's resolve that the test must be completed that night, come hell or high water.

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: A grid controller in Kiev asks Chernobyl to delay the test in order to satisfy evening demand. Both Fomin and Dyatlov agree that they can simply wait.

April 1986. It's a normal enough morning in the town of Pripyat. Yuvchenko is playing with his son. Sitnikov is outside with his wife and daughter. Dr. Zinchenko is enjoying a swim. Vasily and Lyudmilla Ignatenko are out shopping and talking to some neighbors. And among all of this, Dyatlov is on his way to work. In Bryukhanov's office, Fomin confides in Dyatlov that their boss is in line for a big promotion which will likely lead to them in turn getting promotions -- just so long as Dyatlov successfully completes the safety test scheduled for that afternoon. An irate Bryukhanov then arrives in the office and complains that the grid controller in Kyiv has forbidden Reactor 4 from being fully reduced to the 700MW power level required for the test until the end of the day, in order to ensure that monthly productivity quotas are met. Fomin reassures him that's it's not a problem, and that they can keep the reactor at half power, 1,600MW, until that night. Dyatlov leaves to get some sleep ahead of the now-rescheduled test, while Bryukhanov excuses himself, leaving Fomin to admire the office he believes will soon be his. None of the three men are aware that they've just set off the chain of DisasterDominoes that will lead to the worst nuclear accident in history.

* FailsafeFailure: During the trial, Shcherbina explains that the reactor has three diesel-fuel backup generators to provide power to the pumps in the event that the power to the plant itself is disrupted. However, they take one minute to be brought up to speed, which would have been enough for a nuclear disaster. Such a serious design flaw was what necessitated the safety test in the first place.

->''What is the cost of lies?''

* FourIsDeath: The safety test that caused the explosion was the fourth attempt to finish the test, occurred in Reactor 4, and happened during the fourth month of the year.

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: Legasov seems reluctantly willing to accept hiding the known failure of the cooling rod design so long as the government makes good on its promise to fix them in the other nuclear power stations. When it becomes clear that they have no intent to actually follow through on correcting them for fear it could expose their cover-up, he spills the whole truth at the trial.

* ButterflyOfDeathAndRebirth: Shcherbina notices a small [[HopeSproutsEternal green]] caterpillar in the exclusion zone, showing that life has not been completely eradicated, immediately following him talking about his own impending death.

* HopeSproutsEternal: Shcherbina finds a green caterpillar living in Chernobyl one year after the accident, representing the beauty of life and how it will always find a way to survive. Animals in the Exclusion zone aren't too different save for a shorter lifespan.

* HungByHisOwnPetard: Legasov seems reluctantly willing to accept hiding the known failure of the cooling rod design so long as the government makes good on its promise to fix them in the other nuclear power stations. When it becomes clear that they have no intent to actually follow through on correcting them for fear it could expose their cover-up, he spills the whole truth at the trial.

-->'''Shcherbina:''' The first time they tried it, they failed. The ''second'' time they tried it, they failed. The ''THIRD'' time they tried it, they failed. The fourth time they tried it . . . was April 26, 1986.

* ForWantOfANail: Chernobyl is ready to conduct the safety test during the day shift, whose technicians had been trained to run it. Then a grid controller in Kiev asks them to keep running for an additional ten hours to satisfy evening demand.[[note]]In reality, this was because another power station had unexpectedly gone offline.[[/note]] Both Fomin and Dyatlov agree that they can afford a ten hour delay.

* ArmourPiercingResponse: After being asked by the judge why the reactors have a fatal design flaw, Legasov states it´s the same reason why the entire soviet nuclear plan has other serious flaws that he lists and then:
---> '''Legasov:''' [[CuttingCorners It's cheaper]].

* FourIsDeath: The safety test that caused the explosion on April 26 was the fourth attempt to finish the test.

April 1986. It's a normal enough morning in the town of Pripyat. Yuvchenko is playing with his son. Sitnikov is outside with his wife and daughter. Dr. Zinchenko is enjoying a swim. Vasily and Lyudmilla Ignatenko are out shopping and talking to some neighbors. And among all of this, Dyatlov is on his way to work. In Bryukhanov's office, Fomin confides in Dyatlov that their boss is in line for a big promotion which will likely lead to them in turn getting promotions -- just so long as Dyatlov successfully completes the safety test scheduled for that afternoon. An irate Bryukhanov then arrives in the office and complains that the grid controller in Kyiv has forbidden Reactor 4 from being fully reduced to the 700MW power level required for the test. Fomin reassures him that's it's not a problem, and that they can keep the reactor at half power, 1,600MW, until that night.

March 1987. As he buys a pack of cigarettes, Legasov, whose health is already starting to visibly deteriorate, is called into a nearby car. Its occupant turns out to be Charkov, who congratulates him on his recent speech to Vienna, and tells him that Gorbachev intends to reward him with the Soviet Union's highest honor, the Hero of the Soviet Union -- just so long as he maintains the narrative that the accident was purely the fault of Dyatlov, Bryukhanov, and Fomin at their upcoming trial. After Legasov returns home, he's visited by Khomyuk, who reveals that several members of the Soviet scientific community will be present at the trial, and demands that Legasov lay clear the full extent of the flaws in the RBMK design. Legasov is conflicted, sure that there will be dire consequences if he does so, but also having gotten no reassurances from Charkov in their meeting that anything would be done to fix the remaining reactors.

* EldritchAbomination: The slow-motion shot of the core exploding, [[https://imgur.com/ZMQg7xN tangled mass of graphite rods emerging from the ground]], looks like some sort of tentacled monster emerging from the depths.

July 1987. The trial of Anatoly Dyatlov, Viktor Bryukhanov, and Nikolai Fomin is convened in the abandoned town of Chernobyl. Scherbina is first to give testimony, and he explains the need for the safety test that was carried out on that fateful night 15 months prior. The RBMK reactor is dependent on external power to run its cooling systems, and in the event of the power failing, it would take a minute for the backup power generators to fully kick in, potentially leading to a meltdown. To prevent this, the operators are supposed to divert power from the turbine to run the cooling systems until the backup generators can kick in, and this test has to be completed before the reactor can go on-line. Bryukhanov, Dyatlov, and Scherbina in fact never carried out the test before the reactor went on-line in 1983, but falsely claimed that they had, so that they could get state honors and cash bonuses. The three times they tried it all ended in failure, and the fourth time was on April 26, 1986.

* YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre: During the recess for the show trial in the final episode, Legasov and Shcherbina sit in the abandoned town of Chernobyl and ponder how much good they really managed to do amid the Soviet Union's constant push for secrecy and denial of accountability. When Shcherbina despondently grouses that he never amounted to anything of actual value within the party and is now dying of radiation poisoning with nothing to show for it, Legasov invokes this trope in one of the series' most poignant moments:

'''Legasov:''' There are other scientists like me. Any one of them could have done what I did. But ''you''... Everything we asked for, everything we needed. Men. Material. ''Lunar rovers?'' Who else could have done those things? They heard me, but they ''listened'' to you. Of all the ministers and all the deputies, the entire congregation of obedient fools, they mistakenly sent us the one good man. For god's sake Boris, '''you were the one who mattered most.'''

April 1986. Akimov reacts to the power spike by hitting the AZ-5 button, beginning the insertion of all the fuel rods into the reactor. The already-accelerated reaction rate further increases, instantly vaporizing all the cooling water in the reactor. The increase in steam pressure damages the fuel rod mechanism and locks the graphite tips in place, which combine with the positive void coefficient to begin a colossal chain reaction, ripping the fuel channels apart, releasing more energy, and increasing the steam pressure to unimaginable levels. Perevozchenko, in the reactor hall, sees the fuel caps -- each of which weighs the same as three large men -- jumping up and down, and flees in a fruitless attempt to warn the control room of the impending disaster. Khodemchuk and Degtaryenko watch as the pumps begin to burst open from the overpressure, but have no chance of avoiding the blast that will imminently claim both their lives. The control room staffers, meanwhile watch in astonishment as the power spikes to ''33,000MW'', over ten times what it was designed to operate at, and likely a mere fraction of the actual power output. Finally, the steam overpressure blows the lid off the core, and the inrush of oxygen combines with hydrogen, superheated graphite, and the remains of the fuel rods to produce a titanic explosion which utterly destroys the reactor and most of the surrounding building, scattering chunks of graphite and fuel rod around the immediate vicinity.

* YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre: Legasov and Shcherbina take a moment during the trial recess to assure each other that they were essential at containing the disaster. Particularly affecting is Legasov's reassurance when Shcherbina, terminally ill, talks about how he didn't matter, how he was sent to Chernobyl in the first place because he was an expendable bureaucrat.
-->'''Legasov:''' For God's sake, Boris, you were the one who mattered most.

* CourtroomEpisode: A large portion of the episode is about the trial.

* CourtroomEpisode: Much of the episode is concerned with the trial of the plant managers.