Star City is a companion to a series imagining a prolonged space race, shifting the timeline to the Soviet Union and presenting events through American and Soviet perspectives. The story centers on Star City, a Soviet equivalent to a major space launch hub, celebrating a moon-walking moment that in the original timeline spurred US catch-up efforts. A key figure, Lyudmilla, writes and delivers propaganda tied to Alexei Leonov’s moon speech while serving as a KGB surveillance colonel. Efforts to expand beyond the Moon toward Mars and Venus face resistance from Soviet leadership, prioritizing competition with the United States. Lunar mission plans are disrupted when a cosmonaut is removed for alleged state transgressions.
"This is the counterpoint/companion piece to For All Mankind, the creation of Ronald D Moore, Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert that posed the question: what if the Russians had been the first people to land on the moon? And what if the space race never ended? That was and indeed is, as it is now in its fifth season and been renewed for a sixth and final one set in the US with the alt-history seen through American eyes. Now Moore and co return with the timeline set behind the iron curtain."
"We join the denizens of Star City (a bit like the USSR's equivalent of Cape Canaveral) as they celebrate the moment that, in For All Mankind, galvanised the US into a massive catch-up mission; their man Alexei Leonov walking on the moon and beaming a speech back to Earth about the tremendous benefits (I paraphrase) of the Marxist-Leninist way of life. Here, we see the words being closely followed by the woman who wrote the speech for him: the terrifying Lyudmilla (Anna Maxwell Martin), a colonel in the Great Patriotic War and now head of KGB surveillance."
"After the mission's success, the chief designer (Rhys Ifans) tries again to get President Brezhnev interested in his plans to fly to Mars and Venus, but the State is firmly against diversifying efforts when there are still American faces to be ground in terrestrial mud. Back to working on the next lunar mission he goes, but even there his plans are semi-scuppered. One of the cosmonauts Yana (Niamh Algar) due to take part in the coming launch is deemed to have transgressed against the State."
Read at www.theguardian.com
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