The Apple TV show For All Mankind is one of the best science fiction shows of the past decade. It’s set in an alternate version of history where the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union never stopped, resulting in technological advancement being far ahead of schedule. We have video calls by the 1980s, electric cars are widespread by the ’90s, and we have a manned base on Mars by the early 2000s.
Each season of For All Mankind skips forward in time, which gives the series a wonderful sense of scale. However, the show has lost some of its power as it’s gotten closer to our modern era.
Happily, Star City is here.
What happened to For All Mankind?
It’s still a good show, but…
For All Mankind has always had a reputation as a realistic sci-fi show. Producers used archival footage from NASA operations from the 1970s as reference points, thought through how artificial gravity might be created in an outer space hotel, and imagined realistic problems you might encounter if you’re trying to mine for water on the Moon. All of this went hand in hand with believable character drama, as the cast of characters grew older and sometimes aged out of the show.
That formula hasn’t entirely held up the further into the future the show has gone. In the most recent fifth season, set in the 2010s, we spend most of our time on the thriving Martian colony of Happy Valley, where the citizens are agitating for independence. Maybe the problem is that a lot of the original characters have cycled out of the show, and their replacements aren’t quite as compelling. Or it could be that the producers aren’t as adept at imagining future technologies as they are at repurposing existing ones. Whatever the cause, the fifth season was the weakest yet, even if it was still pretty good.
But Star City picks up the slack. This prequel series aired its eight-episode first season in 2026. It takes things back to the beginning, starting in 1969. Only this time, we see this imagined space race from the perspective of the Soviet Union instead of the United States. We have a (mostly) new cast of characters, repurposed technology, and a very exciting new energy.
Star City is a paranoid spy thriller in disguise as a sci-fi show
Fear and loathing in the Soviet Union
Star City takes place in Star City, an actual town where the Soviet government (and now the Russian government) trained astronauts (called cosmonauts). Like For All Mankind, Star City engages directly with actual history, even as it twists it. For instance, Rhys Ifans plays Sergei Korolev, a real person and the driving force behind the Soviet space program. Sergei is borderline-obsessed with sending probes to Venus, which reflects the Soviet Union’s actual preoccupation with the planet from the 1960s through the ’80s.
Of course, Star City punches things up for the sake of drama, using the alternate timeline conceit as an excuse. We meet characters like Valya Mironov (Adam Nagaitis) and Sasha Polivanov (Solly McLeod), two cosmonauts who end up on a manned mission around the second-closest planet to the Sun.
But the biggest way that Star City stands out from For All Mankind is in its recreation of the Soviet surveillance state. While For All Mankind tends to have an optimistic view of humanity’s future, Star City is a very bleak sort of show. Sergei has to be given commendations for his achievements in secret lest the Americans are spying on him. A character like Anastasia Belikova (Alice Englert), who in this continuity is the first woman on the Moon, can’t enjoy her accomplishments, because the Soviet government quickly sets about using her as a weapon in a PR war and forbids her from going back into space.
Characters are spied on by their own government constantly, and the air is thick with a sense of fear and paranoia. Star City is a sci-fi show, but it also feels like a spy show, and an excellent one. More than anything else, this element is what makes Star City feel like a show that had to be made, rather than an attempt to capitalize on the success of the original.
Whither Star City?
Could it run parallel to For All Mankind?
The upcoming sixth season of For All Mankind will be its last. The idea is to skip ahead to the 2020s, which will bring the show in line with our own time. That seems as good a place as any to stop.
But it’s not clear what will happen with Star City. Will Apple TV make six seasons of this series, showing us what was happening in the Soviet Union in the ’80s, ’90s, ’00s, and beyond? There’s definitely more to explore, but thus far Apple hasn’t made any official announcements.
Do the right thing, Apple
Hopefully, Star City gets more seasons, because there’s a lot more to mine out of this eerie paranoid vibe. Considering Apple TV’s history of making excellent sci-fi shows, it has a real shot.
- Release Date
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May 28, 2026
- Network
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Apple TV
- Showrunner
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Ben Nedivi, Matt Wolpert
Cast
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Rhys Ifans
Chief Designer
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Anna Maxwell Martin
Lyudmilla Raskova
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Agnes O’Casey
Irina Morozova
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Alice Englert
Anastasia Belikova
