Chernobyl review: Science deniers are an old breed

It’s hard to imagine how things could get worse than a nuclear reactor exploding, yet somehow Chernobyl’s “Please Remain Calm” raises the stakes.

The second episode of Chernobyl paints a world of poison, where everything from an empty fireman’s coat to the air itself is laden with menace. The radiation is spreading; more and more people are experiencing its effects, and the options on how to stop it are running out.

The HBO mini series fist episode set the scene. Now we are now getting a real sense of the scale of the disaster, and its impact not just on the immediate vicinity but on the world. 400 miles from the Chernobyl plant, merely opening a window for the first time in the morning lets in enough radiation to set off an alarm. Once news of the leaking reactor reaches the world at large, children in Frankfurt, Germany are kept indoors to avoid being exposed to radiation.

Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård) makes this observation while grimly staring down at a group of school children in Pripryat, walking home from school in the open air and none the wiser to the danger. It’s the juxtaposition of experts offering dire warnings about the severity of the disaster and the forced nonchalance of the initial government response that forms the thematic backbone of this episode.

Chernobyl – Episode 2 – Stellan Skarsgård, Jared Harris. Photo: Liam Daniel/HBO

Many experts, little traction

Shcherbina and Legasov are already wonderful foils for each other. Legasov the principled scholar who cannot stop himself from undermining Shcherbina’s authority when his expertise demands it. Shcherbina the charming yet cynical politician who is slowly (and then very quickly) convinced of the true seriousness of the situation. Getting more of their dynamic in future episodes would be great; especially now that they’re bound together by a mutual long-term death sentence.

There’s something so deeply satisfying about watching competent, knowledgeable people attack a problem. That of course makes it all the more infuriating when their efforts are foiled by bureaucrats with a political agenda.

Legasov (Jared Harris) is joined by Ulyana Khomyuk (Emily Watson) as the voices of reasonable panic about the nuclear disaster. Watching them both trying and failing to convince their higher-ups of how dire the situation is nothing short of agonizing.

Each time their reasons are deeply flawed—they are either misinformed by their subordinates, refuse to believe that the worst has happened, or intentionally try to hide the truth in order to protect themselves.

“I prefer my opinion to yours,” a government official says bluntly to Khomyuk.

The moment Shcherbina arrives at Chernobyl, he is presented not with an accurate report on the situation, but a list of who is to blame—tying back in with Legasov’s narration in the first episode: “In these stories, it doesn’t matter who the heroes are. All we want to know is, who is to blame?”

Chernobyl – Episode 2 – Emily Watson. Photo: Liam Daniel/HBO

A better question: What have we learned?

Distrust of science, a government which responds far too slowly to a crisis, and powerful people who would rather serve their own interests than the good of the world are all themes still painfully relevant today.

From the ongoing crisis at Flint to the looming planet-wide disaster of climate change, we are in an era seemingly little different than 1986 Soviet Ukraine. This episode was a sharp critique of the modern response to large-scale disaster as well as the historical one. The scientifically-backed evidence of a nuclear physicist is tossed aside in favor of the opinion of a man who used to work in a shoe factory. In response to Khomyuk’s proclamations of very-real doom, he says “This is why no one likes scientists.”

It is easier, of course, to simply hand-wave the terrifying insights that science can grant into the future—especially when there is still time to do something about it. The possibility of failure is even more terrifying than the certainty of it. In Chernobyl, many officials seem willing to lie to themselves about the true nature of the accident until it becomes so bad there is nothing they can do.

Chernobyl – Episode 2 – Nadia Clifford, Adam Nagaitis. Photo: Liam Daniel/HBO

“You made lava?”

Luckily, or rather through determination and a willingness to get arrested, Khomyuk manages to reach Legasov and inform him of a whole new level of danger. Putting out a burning nuclear reactor is, as you can probably imagine, not a simple task. Legasov’s solution is to drop sand and boron on it by helicopter, seeing as water would vaporize without a chance at lowering the temperature. This endeavor is made more difficult by the fact that the helicopters cannot fly directly over the reactor without extreme danger, as the pilots of the first unfortunate drop attempt tragically discover.

And after the regimen of sand and boron has been continuing for some time, Khomyuk informs Legasov that in approximately two days all of that liquefied red-hot sand is going to cause a second explosion which will immediately kill millions and poison many more for decades to come.

Of course, from our comfortable standpoint in the future, us savvy viewers know that no such explosion took place. However, this revelation begins what will become the next chapter of horror and tragedy in the saga of Chernobyl: the three power plant workers who must don radiation gear of questionable effectiveness in order to journey into the flooded heart of the plant and pump the water out before the burning sand-lava melts its way to it.

The final sequence is terrifying; the three plant workers, muted by their thick radiation suits, fumble their way through water that grows steadily deeper as their Geiger-counters tick furiously higher. We know as well as the characters that it’s a suicide mission; and yet we’re trapped with them in the darkness within that inescapable dread.

It’s dread that Chernobyl utilizes so effectively; the knowledge of what’s to come and the inability to do anything about it. As the series continues and the tragic course of history unfolds, it’s a certainty that the dread will only get worse.

Chernobyl continues next Monday on HBO.