Apple TV's Star City Is An Origin Story For A Surprising For All Mankind Character
by Jeremy Mathai · /FilmThat's one small step for man, one giant spoiler for Episodes 1 and 2 of "Star City."
"For All Mankind" might be ending with its sixth season next year, but the space race is only heating up in "Star City." Even if the spin-off/prequel series to the original Apple TV hit might be sliding under the radar a bit, don't let that stop you from getting sucked in by a very different show from what space enthusiasts are likely used to. Best described as the bureaucratic dysfunction of "Chernobyl" meeting the paranoid Cold War thriller vibes of "The Americans," "Star City" is set concurrently with the first season of "For All Mankind" and tells the story of the historic moon landing from the Soviet Union's perspective — and, as it turns out, from that of a surprising character featured ever-so-briefly in the parent series.
Meet Anastasia Belikova (Alice Englert), the first woman to step foot on the moon in this alternate-history universe. Her character was glimpsed way back in Season 1 of "For All Mankind" (then played by actor Rita Khrabrovitsky) through grainy, black-and-white news footage. Portrayed as yet another humiliating setback for NASA and the United States at large after losing the race to the moon, this event otherwise doesn't linger long in the minds of most viewers. Indeed, we had the exploits of hot-shot pilot and scene-stealer Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) to focus on instead.
Not so in "Star City." Here, Anastasia's origins are explored over the course of the show's first two episodes (and beyond), adding all sorts of surprising layers to her personality, backstory, and her harrowing mission to the moon that we never could've anticipated. The result is a fascinating example of a series filling in gaps that fans may not have even known existed.
Star City's most interesting character so far is Anastasia Belikova, the first woman on the moon
"Star City" is actually serving as an origin story for another Soviet-era character with much larger ties to "For All Mankind" in the villainous Irina Morozova (Svetlana Efremova), the shadowy head of the KGB who's played in her younger and more idealistic years by Agnes O'Casey, but equal weight is placed upon the storyline anchored by Anastasia Belikova. For the first time, we get an inside look at how her placement on the moon mission Luna 16 was actually not the original plan. Headstrong and reckless comrade Yana Akhmatova (Niamh Algar) is the top choice along with Valya Markelov (Adam Nagaitis), but the former ends up a victim of state surveillance and accused of treasonous activity. The prim-and-proper Anastasia, by comparison, is considered much more pliable and willing to put country over anything else.
This is the beginning of what makes for the most complex and nuanced arc in the early going, where our unnamed Chief Designer (Rhys Ifans) is given scant days to bring Anastasia up to speed — something further complicated by Valya's obvious misgivings towards this sudden intruder. But she soon proves her worth in the vacuum of space, showing a sense of fearlessness and tenacity during the mission's first significant malfunction while in orbit around the moon. After narrowly surviving that ordeal, she again stands up for herself and her cosmonaut predecessor Yana by going totally off-script from her Soviet-sanctioned speech after touchdown.
Where all we saw in "For All Mankind" was an anonymous cosmonaut lifting her visor and smiling at the camera from the moon, "Star City" turns Anastasia into a full-fledged character — one perfectly capable of leading this story. New episodes hit Apple TV every Friday.