“Star City” Episode 1 & 2 Review

Apple TV+ knows how to deliver television and it rewards us with another fantastic entry in its repertoire, “Star City”. Debuting with two episode we’ll be briefly covering without spoilers, but we’re enjoying the same beats of quality from the same lead creative team behind “For All Mankind” and it shows. Instead of honing in on space exploration as its primary focus we have a sleuth fold of conflict involving the Soviets.

Truly serving as a spy thriller of sorts we have the side of the Soviet Union in a reimagined world where the USSR won the race to the Moon. It’s a challenge of sorts for the Soviets having to deal with the fact that the Americans have found a way to infiltrate the USSR. It’s a flip around for us because now we’re seeing the struggles that sully depicted from the American point of view from Soviet Espionage now through their lens. 

Starting with episode one “Space and Espionage Thrills” we have the moon mission being executed and the Marxist-Leninist serving us a form of propaganda to the public. The Soviet Union serves as the winner of the space race and this is under the genius of the Chief Designer played by Rhys Ifans who pulls off anonymity excellently. The Chief Designer is a prisoner of sorts in the middle of victory where it feels short lied because the moon landing seems short in the next goal to be accomplished: landing on Venus. However, that takes a back seat when Raskova informs the Chief Designer that the moon base plans have been leaked to the Americans. 

Now tying back to “For All Mankind” we see a younger Irina Morozova played by Agnes O’Casey where she is her younger heyday as a KGB operative. Her assignment is to listen in to cosmonaut Valya Markelov and his wife Tanya played by Adam Negates and Ruby Ashbourne Sekris respectively. 

Now another character to keep in mind is top female cosmonaut Yana Akhmatova played by Niahm Algar who serves as a learning curve to Irina. With what occurs int he episode and without giving too much away we have another female cosmonaut who moves into the story: Anastasia Belikova played by Alice Englert. In “Star City” we have Anastasia being the first woman to be assigned to head and land on Mars. From there we see where she pivots to and that leads us into our next episode. 

Episode two of “Star City” is titled, “A Bear on a Chain” where we follow Anastasia and Valya not heir return to earth and things aren’t going as smoothly. Their return back is shaky due to their capsule having a malfunction setting them off course. This ties into the episode title because where they land they encounter a bear. However, that’s only one point to the episode because once Anastasia and Valya are rescued by their country the intervention begins. Because Anastasia was uncooperative during the mission this ends up going against her. 

On one end we have Anastasia and Valya’s mission being a success and that success is to celebrated by the Soviets with a victory tour. However, the Soviets want to reprimand Anastasia in particular because of her rebellious spirit during episode one’s mission. The way to strike Anastasia is by making her a married woman as she sent to Paris to show that the Soviets remain in full power during the planned victory tour. 

Now let’s not forget our Chief Designer because he’s determined to get to Venus and that ends to some behind the scenes scheming on getting this done.

Now the stage is set and let’s see our next recap on episode three and four in two weeks!