Star City arrives as a tense companion piece to For All Mankind, but it shifts the perspective behind the Iron Curtain and makes the stakes feel harsher from the start. The series imagines the Soviet side of the space race after Alexei Leonov walks on the moon and broadcasts a triumphant speech about the “Marxist-Leninist way of life.”
The drama quickly shows that this is not a glossy or nostalgic view of space exploration. It is a world of surveillance, fear, and permanent caution, where every word can carry consequences and every decision can trigger new danger.
A Soviet space race told from inside the system
The show works as a counterpoint to For All Mankind, which asked what might have happened if the Russians had reached the moon first. That series placed its alternate history through American eyes, while Star City moves the action to the USSR and treats the Soviet program as a pressure cooker.
The setting resembles the Soviet equivalent of Cape Canaveral, but the mood is far colder and more controlled. The result is a story where ambition exists alongside constant political risk, and the dream of reaching deeper into space collides with state power at every turn.
Anna Maxwell Martin gives the series its sharpest edge
At the center of the early episodes is Lyudmilla, played by Anna Maxwell Martin, a KGB surveillance chief with a terrifying calm. She is introduced as the woman who wrote Leonov’s speech, and her presence immediately defines the tone of the series.
Lyudmilla is not written as a simple villain, but as someone who understands the machinery of fear better than anyone else in the room. Her authority gives the drama its most unsettling force, because she can shape careers, punish mistakes, and decide who deserves trust.
A mission success hides deeper instability
After Leonov’s moon landing, the Soviet leadership celebrates the moment, but the victory does not create freedom or confidence. Rhys Ifans plays the chief designer, who tries to push President Brezhnev toward new ambitions such as Mars and Venus, yet the state is not interested in spreading resources around while the race with America remains unfinished.
That resistance shapes the rest of the story, because even the next lunar mission is compromised before it begins. The series treats scientific progress as something fragile, always vulnerable to politics, personal suspicion, and ideological loyalty.
Interrogation, replacement, and the cost of loyalty
One of the cosmonauts, Yana, is removed from the mission after she is judged to have transgressed against the state. Her removal is preceded by a series of interrogations that grow increasingly harrowing without becoming sensational, and she is replaced by Anastasia Belikova, a more compliant but less capable party loyalist.
This shift captures one of the show’s central ideas: competence matters less than obedience in a system built on control. The space program may look advanced on the surface, but Star City shows how easily it can be damaged by fear and political calculation.
Irina and the hidden machinery of surveillance
Agnes O’Casey plays Irina, one of the typists who work in a vast hall transcribing covert KGB recordings of cosmonauts and engineers. Her discovery that Yana was wrongly accused leads her to Lyudmilla, and the encounter changes her position inside the system.
Lyudmilla notices Irina’s intelligence and begins to treat her as a possible assistant, while the search for a mole who leaked plans for a future moon base intensifies. The show uses that plotline to widen its focus beyond one mission and into the wider culture of mistrust that keeps the whole machine running.
Why the series feels so tense from the outset
Star City avoids the smoother, more polished feel that For All Mankind had early on, and it also sidesteps the soapier turns that later affected that series. By placing the story in the USSR, the drama makes the danger immediate and unavoidable, with no illusion that anyone is fully safe.
The show builds anxiety through everyday compromises, private doubts, and tiny mistakes that can spiral into disaster. Even a glance at a top-secret file or a careless line in a speech can become a threat, and that constant fragility gives the series its grip.
The appeal is not limited to viewers interested in space history or alternate timelines. Star City also explores how people behave when trust is absent, how they endure pressure, and what they sacrifice when freedom is out of reach, with each character shaped by a system that leaves very little room to breathe.
