The six-member crew is evenly divided among astronauts and cosmonauts: Dr. Kira Foster , Gordon Barrett and Christian Campbell on one side, Weronika Vetrov , Alexey Pulov and Nicholai Pulov on the other. Their loyalties aren’t as clearly defined as you might imagine, in part because all involved try to treat the I.S.S. as a politics-free zone, but also because two of them are not-so-secretly romantically involved. Kira, a biologist, is the latest to arrive, and she’s brought her mice with her.
We learn a lot about her early on, first from how tender she is with the creatures she’s experimenting on and then from the fact that she doesn’t feel the “overview effect”: a profound shift in perspective experienced by astronauts who’ve had the privilege of viewing Earth from space. Consider this quote from astronaut Mike Massimino, which seems to sum up the experience: “I thought at one point, if you could be up in heaven, this is how you would see the planet.
“I.S.S.” isn’t subtle in its foreshadowing of what’s to come, but it is effective. If it seems ominous when Alexey tells Kira that “it does not end well” when mice are brought aboard the space station and placed in a small enclosure together, well, that’s because it’s meant to be. Ditto an argument that breaks out that same night between him and Gordon about the Scorpions song “Wind of Change.
When Gordon receives orders from Houston to take control of the I.S.S. by any means necessary, he can only assume his Russian counterparts have been told the same thing.
DeBose, in her first silver-screen role since winning an Oscar for “West Side Story” last year , lends appropriate gravitas to her character while also acting as an audience surrogate — her disbelief at what’s happening is meant to mirror our own, as though slowing down and taking stock of the situation will surely reveal it was all a misunderstanding and things haven’t escalated as far as they have.