Caemeron Crain
The following review contians spoilers for Star City S1E1, “The Eyes” (written by Ben Nedivi & Matt Wolpert & Ronald D. Moore and driected by Nick Murphy), and S1E2, “A Bear on a Chain” (written by Andrew Chambliss and directed by Nick Murphy)
When Apple announced it would be making a spinoff of For All Mankind called Star City, showing the space race from a Russian perspective as opposed to an American one, I wondered whether the series would justify its own existence. Now, having seen the first two episodes, which premiered on Apple TV on May 29, I have to say I’m still wondering.
A few things are odd about Star City. In the real world, Sergei Korolev, the lead engineer for the Soviet space program, died in 1966, and his survival in the alternate timeline of For All Mankind would seem to be central to the USSR reaching the Moon first in this story. Rhys Ifans would seem to be playing Korolev in Star City, but the series is withholding the name. Instead, everyone refers to Ifans’s character as Chief Designer. Through two episodes, I’m not sure why this is the case.
Further, For All Mankind has always done a good job with its presentation of non-English speakers, using subtitles and so on. It makes sense that you wouldn’t want to make Star City entirely in Russian with English subtitles, so I understand the decision to have the characters simply speak English. What I continue to struggle with is that they don’t even have Russian accents—they seem to be British—but maybe that’s just me.
Narratively, Star City S1E1 (“The Eyes”) runs through Alexei Leonov becoming the first man on the Moon and Anastasia Belikova (Alice Englert) becoming the first woman on the Moon, but the series quickly shows itself to be more interested in the repressive political climate of the USSR than it is in space travel.
As the series begins, Irina (Agnes O’Casey) has recently started a job in the surveillance department at Star City. She catches the attention of her superior, Lyudmilla Raskova (Anna Maxwell Martin), and it would seem a major arc of Star City will involve seeing how Irina grows into the woman we know from For All Mankind.
In something of a parallel to this, a young Sergei Nikulov (Josef Davies) impresses the Chief Designer, and by S1E2 (“A Bear on a Chain”), Sergei has been brought into doing covert work pertaining to Venus. It’s definitely illegal, but he isn’t in this for Mother Russia so much as the love of the game, and this tracks completely with the older version of the character we know from For All Mankind.
Anastasia is forced to marry another cosmonaut, Sasha (Solly McLeod), at the end of her celebratory tour, and it seems like those dynamics will be relevant as the story progresses.
Meanwhile, the Chief Designer is being forced to focus on the plans to build a base on the Moon before the Americans can, and we know he’ll fail in this endeavor. A wrinkle worth noting is that the Russian plans have been stolen by the US, and Irina’s subplot relates directly to the question of who the Soviet mole is. I don’t think we know the answer to that question from early seasons of For All Mankind, but feel free to let me know in the comments if I’m wrong.
Overall, Star City is entertaining enough, but nothing in the first two episodes feels necessary. I’ll remain on board with the deepening of Irina and Sergei as characters in this story, but I hope some details might feel relevant to For All Mankind Season 6 or give us significant insight into events that occurred in previous seasons.
