Star City’s Soviet secrets make space feel dangerous

Apple TV’s “Star City,” a spin-off of “For All Mankind,” sends viewers back to the early Space Race—where the Soviet space program’s biggest threat isn’t just space, but secrecy, surveillance, and state control. From the “Chief Designer” role of Sergei Korolev

By the time Alexei Leonov plants the USSR’s flag on the lunar surface in “Star City,” the moment should feel triumphant. But the show has already trained you to notice what’s missing.

The opening is set on the Soviet side of the Moon race. and it’s not packaged like a public spectacle. Even in the early episodes, there’s no warm-up hype for what Leonov is about to do. His wife doesn’t know where he is. She only finds out he’s far from home when KGB agents arrive in the dead of night. escorting her to mission control.

That isn’t celebration. It’s control—delivered in silence, in shock, and with an urgency that doesn’t allow for questions.

“Star City” goes out of its way to build that pressure into everything. Mission control is overseen by Sergei Korolev in the character of “the Chief Designer,” played by Rhys Ifans. The real Korolev—an engineer born in Ukraine—was widely pivotal in the early days of space exploration. overseeing the development of the R-7 rocket (derivations of which are still in use on Soyuz spacecraft). the Sputnik program. and the Vostok program. In the early Space Race exchanges. the USSR beat the USA in most of them. with first satellite. first man in orbit. first woman in orbit. and first spacewalker all coming from the eastern side of the Iron Curtain.

And yet, even his closest colleagues in the Soviet Union reportedly didn’t know his name. During his lifetime he was referred to simply as “the Chief Designer.” The reason wasn’t mystique—it was fear. Communist Party officials. paranoid about Cold War rivals in Washington making an assassination or defection target out of him. kept his identity tightly controlled.

The spin-off makes that lived secrecy feel like it has teeth.

In the show’s world. the space program runs on a strict need-to-know system where practically no one needs to know. Even the base of operations itself is treated like state property with a hidden location, unknown beyond the chosen few. The contrast is deliberate. While NASA’s equivalents—Cape Canaveral (then Cape Kennedy) and Houston—were already well established in public understanding by the late ’60s. “Star City” keeps its Soviet infrastructure locked behind walls.

For all the weight given to Korolev’s influence. “Star City” places an even sharper focus on Lyudmilla Raskova. played by Anna Maxwell Martin. as the true power in this version of the Soviet program. Raskova leads a vast surveillance operation that includes Irina Morozova (Agnes O’Casey). who. in later seasons of “For All Mankind. ” will run Roscosmos. Raskova wants more than compliance. She wants visibility into people themselves—she says she wants to “know what every person is thinking before they think it.”.

That line lands like a threat because the show has already shown what happens when the state decides your thoughts are suspicious.

When the cosmonaut Yana Akhmatova (Niamh Algar)—high-flying but outspoken—is falsely accused of spying for the Americans, it becomes easier for the system to execute her than to exonerate her. Raskova states the logic without emotion: “We do not arrest the innocent.”

The atmosphere isn’t limited to accusation and punishment. It stretches into performance. When first woman on the Moon Anastasia Belikova (Alice Englert) delivers a speech that veers away from a government-mandated script. the authorities threaten to replace her with a more compliant lookalike ahead of a publicity tour to Paris.

That detail matters because it reshapes what “space achievements” mean in this universe. Even Armstrong’s “One small step…” speech—mentioned here as being misquoted in the show’s framing—starts to feel less like history and more like something the state can manufacture.

The tension becomes physical too, with cosmonauts living closer to the edge than their astronaut counterparts. In “For All Mankind,” astronaut Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) complains that NASA’s safety-first approach cost America the Moon. “Star City” answers that complaint with an image of comfort—and then a sequence that takes it away. Belikova’s interior suggests no expense has been wasted on comfort. but her transfer to the lunar lander demands a precarious spacewalk to enter the tiny vessel that will carry her to the Moon.

The show repeatedly frames that willingness to risk people as part of the job. The cosmonauts are treated like the human equivalent of Laika—sacrificed, if necessary, for the good of the wider populous. The ambition doesn’t soften. It sharpens.

After the Soviet flag is planted on the lunar surface a second time, “Star City” moves into talk of Soviet missions to Venus and building bases on the Moon—future ambitions staged inside a present built on surveillance and fear.

Most of the show remains fiction, and it’s careful to acknowledge where the real history ends. The real Sergei Korolev had died long before the timeframe of “Star City.” The spin-off is tied to “For All Mankind”’s central rupture: Korolev’s death during surgery is described as the “Sliding Doors” moment that sets the alternative timeline in motion. “For All Mankind” creators Ronald D. Moore. Matt Wolpert. and Ben Nedivi identify Korolev’s 1966 passing as the point where their fictional universe diverged from history. with a theory that if Korolev had survived. the USSR would have maintained its advantage in the Space Race and beaten Apollo 11 to the Moon in 1969.

Over five seasons (to date). “For All Mankind” has extended that idea deep into the 21st century. turbo-charging space exploration to the point where thousands of humans call Mars home. “Star City” goes the opposite direction—back toward the early days before the parent show leans fully into its later. more science-fiction world.

It also leans into secrecy as a theme, not just a set design choice. In one interview context included here. co-showrunner Ben Nedivi explains the research process behind the Soviet program for “For All Mankind.” He points out that so much of the concept started from them and from the US. and that with the Soviet space program “nobody really knows so much at all. even now.” He links that to secrecy—saying it’s what made it so intriguing.

The result is a show that makes you look harder at a familiar kind of drama. Instead of treating the Space Race as a straight-line race of heroes, “Star City” frames it as a system that can break people—then demand they keep moving.

The first two episodes of “Star City” are available now on Apple TV. New episodes debut on Fridays. Five seasons of “For All Mankind” are also available on the platform.

Star City For All Mankind Apple TV Sergei Korolev Soviet space program KGB Lyudmilla Raskova Cold War Alexei Leonov Yana Akhmatova Anastasia Belikova Apollo 11