Star City Review: For All Mankind's Thrilling Spin-Off Weaves Thoughtful Sci-Fi With Cold War Paranoia

For All Mankind's alt-history concept always leaned more toward wish fulfilment than plausible world building. In the Apple TV show's alternate 20th century timeline, the U.S.S.R. beat the U.S.A. to land on the moon, adding a new sense of urgency to the space race. NASA retaliated by bulking up its astronaut program, training a cohort of women whose success created a cultural domino effect. Over the coming decades, race and gender equality progressed at a much faster rate than in our own universe, accompanied by dazzling technological advances. By the 1990s, humankind had settled on the moon and Mars, and the U.S.A. had a lesbian president — a pair of achievements that still feel totally out of reach in our own version of the 2020s. Unofficially, the show's goal was to create a realistic route to the utopian future of Star Trek, and at times it felt like propaganda for a version of America that never had a chance to exist.

The new spin-off Star City turns back the clock, revisiting the early years of this timeline from the other side of the Cold War. Beginning with the Soviet moon landing in 1969, we're introduced to the U.S.S.R.'s space program in a very different atmosphere from For All Mankind's glossy, optimistic approach, focusing just as much on Cold War paranoia as on the exploits of the Soviet Union's heroic cosmonauts.

Where For All Mankind's aesthetic was all upbeat Mad Men-lite, Star City is darker and more mournful. Masterminded by the same core team of screenwriters (Ronald D. Moore, Ben Nedivi, and Matt Wolpert), it still delivers thrilling moments of sci-fi competence porn, as the cosmonauts and their support teams cheat death on the cutting edge of the space race. But this time round, those scenes take place within a more oppressive atmosphere, replacing For All Mankind's soapier elements with tight psychological drama.

9.0

Star City

at Apple TV

Like

• A gripping balance of Cold War paranoia and science fiction,The beautifully chilly Soviet production design,Replicates the thrilling pace of For All Mankind,An excellent ensemble cast

Dislike

• Its plot may wind up feeling constrained by the existing timeline of For All Mankind

Leading the ensemble cast, Rhys Ifans channels a downbeat Gary Oldman as the space program's clever but underappreciated Chief Designer, constantly chafing against invasive orders from his government overseers and the KGB. Beneath him in the hierarchy are a younger generation of cosmonauts and scientists, all striving to further their careers in a secretive military base known as Star City. As the U.S.S.R. draws ahead in the space race, the city's security grows tighter and tighter, rightfully concerned that double agents are leaking Soviet innovations to NASA.

Star City's casting department did a stellar job, populating the show with versatile character actors who look the part for an unglamorous historical drama. British TV fans may recognize Anna Maxwell Martin (Line of Duty) as the Chief Designer's antagonistic co-lead Lyudmilla Raskova, a terrifyingly ruthless KGB officer who oversees the surveillance office at Star City — an airless basement full of young women at typewriters, transcribing hours of audio recording from bugs planted in people's homes.

The ambitious Irina Morozova (Agnes O'Casey) is among this group; a clever new hire who is determined to impress Raskova. To prove herself, she must report back on the private lives of cosmonaut Valya Mironov (Adam Nagaitis) and his wife Tanya (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis), leading to some uncomfortable choices as Irina tries to climb the ranks of a fundamentally destructive institution.

At the risk of making too many comparisons to For All Mankind, it's interesting to see how these two shows line up as works of feminist science fiction. The first couple of seasons of For All Mankind focused heavily on the idea of women achieving greatness and disproving the biases of a sexist environment, ultimately changing the world for the better. However, Star City begins with a different set of cultural norms.

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In the early 1970s, the U.S.S.R.'s mission control HQ is still very male-dominated, but there are plenty of women working elsewhere in Star City, particularly within the KGB offices and the women's cosmonaut program, where the charmingly awkward Anastasia Belikova (Alice Englert) emerges as a key character. By Episode 2 we already have a nuanced understanding of the gender dynamics at play, in a setting where some women have more career options and face less overt misogyny than their U.S. counterparts, while others face very similar obstacles, like Tanya Mironov's frustrating existence as the wife of a top cosmonaut.

In many ways, Tanya's husband Valya is one of the most likeable characters in the main cast: a well-intentioned commander whose competence outshines his brash and immature best friend, Sasha (Solly McLeod). Yet Valya has a very obvious blindspot when it comes to his wife's happiness, failing to consider how stifling it must be for her to live within the confines of a military research base. There's a painfully stark contrast between the close-knit community of NASA families in For All Mankind, and the isolation experienced by women like Tanya, who aren't even informed when their husbands go to space. Meanwhile, Anastasia Belikova's success as a cosmonaut becomes a double-edged sword, promoted less for her abilities than for her perceived loyalty to the Soviet state — an achievement that leaves her trapped in a different way.  

Star City soon establishes itself as an ideal kind of spin-off, replicating the strengths of its predecessor while thriving as a standalone drama. Fans of For All Mankind's more technical side may balk at its emphasis on spycraft over science, but there's an obvious reason for that storytelling choice. We already know the general timeline of the space race for decades to come, so this show must focus on events that weren't visible outside of the Soviet Union. That conundrum led Star City's writers to invent a gasp-inducing secret venture within the U.S.S.R.'s space program, which becomes a core storyline for Season 1.

American pop culture doesn't have a great track record with balanced depictions of Soviet life, but Star City succeeds by avoiding obvious pitfalls (e.g. fake Russian accents), and by drawing a line between the flaws of the Soviet system and the ordinary people who existed within it — much like how NASA's first female astronauts had to fight against their own system, in fact.

Despite its more serious tone as a psychological thriller, Star City's creators stick to the same strengths that made For All Mankind so appealing. Workplace drama and secret love affairs balance their screentime with satisfying sci-fi problem-solving, with a big enough production budget to really luxuriate in the retro technology and architecture of its setting.

Premieres: Friday, May 29 on Apple TV with a two-episode premiere, followed by new episodes weekly
Who's in it: Rhys Ifans, Anna Maxwell Martin, Alice Englert, Adam Nagaitis, Agnes O'Casey, Josef Davies, Ruby Ashbourne Serkis
Who's behind it: Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert (co-creators and showrunners), Ronald D. Moore (co-creator), Nick Murphy (director)
For fans of: For All Mankind, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Soviet history documentaries
Episodes watched: 5 of 8