WARNING: This review includes full spoilers for Star City season 1.
For All Mankind introduced audiences to an alternate Earth in which the Soviet Union won the space race. In reality, the space race ended there; the series presents a new history in which the race continued, and the United States and the Soviet Union fought for supremacy amongst the stars. The series has been a huge success for Apple, having just concluded its fifth season with a sixth and final on the way.
This led to a spinoff being greenlit that focused on the Soviet side of the story: Star City. The Soviet Union is the enemy of For All Mankind. In Star City, we watch through the perspective of the citizens trying to accomplish their goals whilst being surveilled by their very own government.
The brilliance of Star City is that there are many layers to the stories unfolding throughout the season. The interpersonal dynamics make it incredibly easy to be invested in the show as a viewer. The methodical pacing of the series uses each hour to build the tension from episode to episode.
Starting the series with the Moon landing establishes all of the main relationships that the show focuses on. We meet the cosmonauts who you would think would be living a life of luxury, but in fact are just being used as puppets by the government to help reinforce the Soviet Union’s ideologies onto the public.
They are constantly under surveillance, and while some characters are aware of their circumstances, others learn as the season goes along, and it completely unravels their reality. Characters who should be national heroes are merely pawns to be used by the government. While this is happening, Rhys Ifans, the Chief Designer of the Soviet Space Program, is secretly planning a mission to survey Venus rather than land a base on the moon’s surface.
Throughout the series, the government uses KGB surveillance to locate a mole who is sending information to its enemy, the US government. Agnes O’Casey as Irina Vasilievna Morozova is the backbone of the series. A character introduced as a meek surveillance department employee embarks on an espionage journey and is challenged by her personal beliefs as she tries to survive in her country. She rises through the ranks of the department by first challenging a coworker’s intel and is ultimately responsible for finding the mole living in Star City.
In setting the series in Star City, there is a level of claustrophobia to the show. The KGB is the overarching threat, and each of the main characters is attempting to do what they believe is right, regardless of the Soviet Union’s supremacy. Whether that is Valya Mironov being revealed as the mole because he didn’t have any other choice, resulting in him becoming one of the cosmonauts to survey Venus, where he eventually dies on the surface of the planet. Vayla being revealed to be the mole forces his wife to flee Star City. The rest of the Venus crew return to Earth after being presumed dead, and Lakshmi escapes the KGB after landing, but Sasha gives himself up after Anastasia prevents him from being shot. Agnes settles into her new life away from the KGB, and Tanya now lives her life running from it.
Apple has delivered another exceptional series that not only stands on its own merits but also rewards longtime fans of For All Mankind. If you haven’t watched any of For All Mankind, Star City would be an excellent place to start because the world and the characters that inhabit Star City present a world that only makes this version of the space race thrilling from start to finish.
Catch all of Star City season 1 now streaming on Apple TV!