The three episodes of For All Mankind that I watched last summer during Apple TV’s free weekend were great, but I never found time to dive into the four (now five) seasons of that acclaimed alt-history science fiction series (based on the idea that the USSR got to the moon before the US). However, when the spinoff series Star City started this May, and some people whose judgment I trust said you didn’t have to have watch FAM to understand this show, I gave it a try. It turns out they were right, that was a great decision, and this is a great show!
It definitely helps if you’ve read or watched some Cold War spy fiction previously, but I think I’d have been fine even if I hadn’t watched S1 E1-3 of FAM. I absolutely love the character developments and the plot convolutions in this 8-episode show, even if a few circumstances seemed slightly unlikely/sentimental. It’s unknown so far whether there will be a second season, but I can see it ending as is, without feeling dissatisfied, even though several people’s fates are left hanging. However, I do hope for at least one more season.
FAM is told from the US/Western perspective, but Star City looks at everything from the Soviet Russian point of view. The series starts with a woman being woken up in the middle of the night by grim-faced men, being given barely time to dress and then driven from her apartment to a mystery location. This sets the tone for the series, but surprise! It’s actually happy news, because her cosmonaut husband is about to become the first person to walk on the moon, in 1969, and they’re taking her to the mission control center in Star City, the home of the space program, to watch.
My understanding is that the divergence point in this alt-history is the idea that Sergei Korolev, the early head (Chief Designer) of the Soviet space program, did not die after unsuccessful surgery in 1966, which in real life contributed to the cancellation of Russia’s moon-shot program, but rather lived and kept driving the Soviet crewed space program to the moon and beyond.
The Chief Designer in this show is a complex man, designated a Hero of the Soviet Union but not allowed to use his real name (because, the state says, he might become a target), undaunted by a previous stay in the gulag and convinced that because he’s on the side of Science the apparatchiks will listen to him, excited by new engineering feats but bored with the state-mandated plan to follow up with a moonbase instead of exploring other planets, and proud and protective of his “eagles” (the cosmonauts) but willing to put them at great risk with untested, unauthorized, secret new systems. He also has a sweet relationship with his wife.
He is nearly constantly at odds with Lyudmilla Raskova, a former Night Witch pilot and now the head of the KGB (state security) at Star City. Her job is to root out spies and dissidents and to implement state policies, which are basically to use the space program for propaganda, so she and the CD are constantly trying to achieve dominance over each other. Later events in the series show, however, that despite her ruthlessness, she is not the worst person who could be in this position.
The next character to shine in the premiere is Irina Morozova, a junior KGB agent who starts out as a transcriptionist listening to recordings from cosmonauts’ bugged apartments. She realizes that the KGB made an error in arresting a star cosmonaut as a spy, and takes the evidence of this to Raskova. Since I’ve read a lot of spy novels and watched The Americans, an excellent spy series about Russian agents in the U.S. in the 1980s, I knew what was going to happen when Raskova said she was going to “fix” the mistake, although it was a shock to Irina. One of the really interesting character arcs in this series is watching Irina’s evolution from a single mother who’s still rather naive, despite some traumatic earlier experiences, into a woman who can harden her heart and do terrible things, both for what she sees as the greater good and for career advancement.
Also in the premiere, viewers meet Yana Akhmatova, training to be the first female cosmonaut; Anastasia Belikova, another cosmonaut with less experience; Valya Mironov, a highly respected cosmonaut who trains the others; Tanya Mironova, his restless wife, a frustrated musician who hates tiny, restricted Star City; Sasha Polivanov, a hotdog hound dog of a cosmonaut; and Sergei Nikulov, a brilliant young engineer with unconventional ideas. Later in the show, Lakshmi Chadha, a biochemist, becomes important. This is a great set of characters who have some really impactful highs and lows, and they are portrayed by great actors who can convey huge emotions even with small changes in their faces and postures. But even the minor and recurring characters are really interesting.
Because I listened to The Incomparable podcast’s discussions of these episodes after watching each one, to get a little more context, I became aware of the eventual fates of some of these characters before they happened, because of what the podcasters mentioned about them in relation to For All Mankind (which extends decades past the currently narrowly focused Star City). This didn’t spoil my enjoyment of Star City, however, because it was fascinating to see what decisions the characters made and how things played out. There were still lots of astonishing surprises, and some very satisfying fruitions of my expectations.
It’s fascinating to see how the spy plots interact and interfere with the space mission. Espionage turns out to have unintended fatal consequences, constant surveillance poisons some people’s lives as others basically shrug and go on with living, major upheavals in personnel demonstrate that engineers are not interchangeable cogs, and desperation leads to some truly dramatic actions. Despite the oppression of the state, people still care for each other and make great sacrifices for each other.
In fact, love plays just as important a role in this series as engineering does. It seemed that Irina was pushing herself because she loved her daughter. The cosmonauts are a tight-knit bunch who trust each other and occasionally risk themselves for their comrades’ sake, and so do the engineers, sometimes. Romantic love blossoms in unexpected places, and several people take enormous risks to protect their partners. One man breaks immediately when a father figure is threatened.
MINOR SPOILERS: I adore the story of Anastasia and Sasha. Ordered by the state to marry (to tame Sasha and to normalize Anastasia’s image), they quarrel a lot but eventually find companionship and comfort in each other. When Anastasia realizes that Sasha is in great danger, she breaks all the rules to go to his rescue. I’m a bit dubious about the unexpected allies she finds, and I don’t think the timing would have worked, but I’m willing to wave all that off because of what a great story it is. (I am hopeful that patriarchal sexism will lead to a pardon for Anastasia, at least, as the apparatchiks may conclude that she is obviously a woman after all, crazed by love.)
MAJOR SPOILERS: Then there’s the tragedy of Valya and Tanya. She had dabbled with dissidence before meeting him, and an American agent exaggerated her involvement to coerce Valya into acting for the U.S. This put a secret strain on their relationship, what with poor Valya being miserable all the time, and Tanya turned outside their marriage for comfort and distraction. When Irina figures out that Valya’s a spy, she warns her friend Tanya to run; then Tanya betrays her trust by warning Valya, while castigating him for ruining her life (not knowing her role in that). Valya escapes, sacrifices himself for friends, and has a moment of triumphant joy; Tanya is last seen happily strolling in Paris, being tailed by a KGB agent. It may be tempting to blame Tanya for Valya’s downfall (and thereby that of the Chief Designer), but she really didn’t do anything wrong in the beginning; she had just wanted to listen to smuggled Western music!
END SPOILERS.
Star City is a great science fictional spy series with some really compelling character arcs and love stories. Once again, it’s not necessary to have watched For All Mankind in order to understand and appreciate this show, although it helps to be familiar with some Cold War spy tropes. I think this will be a strong contender next year for the Hugo Awards for Best Dramatic Presentation (episodes for short, or the entire series for long).
Content warnings: State-sanctioned murder, torture, beatings; surveillance; censorship; blackmail/coercion; betrayals; fatal accidents; murderous intra- and inter-office politics; sexual situations.
Comparisons: The Americans (6 seasons, 2013-2018); Andor (2 seasons, 2022-2025); various spy novels by Helen MacInnes, John le Carré, Len Deighton, etc.
Disclaimers: None.
