Rhys Ifans<\/a>) a special commendation \u2014 not that anyone else knows it, since the ceremony is performed in secret and the medal immediately returned to the government, ostensibly to protect him from American interests.<\/p>\n\n\tThis is the tenor of things on this side of the Iron Curtain \u2014 captured, in the usual onscreen shorthand for \u201cSoviet Russia,\u201d through a gray and grainy \u201970s-style filter. Everything is shrouded in secrecy or glossed over via bureaucratic jargon. Everyone suspects they\u2019re being monitored, and even heroes of the state are fearful of being hauled off for no reason at all.<\/p>\n
\n\tThey are right to be. Star City<\/em> is as much about the KGB\u2019s surveillance department as it is the country\u2019s advances into space. Across the base from the Chief Designer\u2019s team of cosmonauts and engineers, in the visually nondescript but reputationally feared Building 12, KGB official Lyudmilla (Anna Maxwell Martin) oversees teams of young women listening to hours of recordings captured by the bugs embedded on seemingly every apartment on the base, logging every detail about their targets from their toilet habits to their musical tastes to their sex partners.<\/p>\n\n\tStar City<\/em>\u2019s diffuse focus can feel like a lot to take in, especially in early chapters when it\u2019s not yet clear how or how much these various concerns might intersect. And while some of the characters, like the ruthless Lyudmilla or the kindly engineer Sergei (Josef Davies, a dead ringer for his FAM<\/em> counterpart Piotr Adamczyk), are exactly who they appear to be on first impression, many of the others are initially hard to get a read on for being so (understandably) guarded.<\/p>\n\n\tLike Lyudmilla\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Irina (Agnes O\u2019Casey), whose background and goals seem enigmatic even if For All Mankind<\/em> has already revealed where she\u2019ll end up eventually. Or Anastasia (Alice Englert), a green cosmonaut whose blandly patriotic answers to interview questions like why she joined the program (\u201cFor the glory of the Soviet Union\u201d) thrill the top brass but reveal precious little of the woman underneath, to the frustration of colleagues like experienced cosmonaut Valya (Adam Nagaitis) or the Chief Designer.<\/p>\n\n\tBut just as Irina cannot help but start feeling close to Valya and his dissatisfied wife Tanya (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis), as she listens in on the most intimate moments of their marriage day in and day out, I too found myself getting more invested in these characters the longer I spent observing them. Star City<\/em>\u2018s storylines deliver an engaging mix of juicy personal drama, like the tangle of friendships ensnaring Tanya, Valya, Anastasia and fellow cosmonaut Sasha (Adam Nagaitis), and tense intrigue, as Irina pushes deeper into her investigation of a suspected mole on base. When these elements combine, they tend to do so with explosive, devastating results.<\/p>\n\n\tStar City<\/em> never allows us to forget for long the paranoia that suffuses this world as pervasively as air. From time to time, audio of characters\u2019 conversations will switch over to the slightly muddy recorded versions Irina and her colleagues are listening to in Building 12, or cut out entirely where it\u2019s been erased for self-serving reasons. In such a distrustful environment, everything that should be pure or holy or human is crushed under the weight of a state only interested in its own self-perpetuation.<\/p>\n\n\tSo we watch as Chief Designer is forced to sneak his most ambitious plans under the noses of bureaucrats who care only about one-upping NASA. Anastasia spirals into despair as she\u2019s forced to contort herself into an exemplar of Soviet womanhood for an adoring public and an unforgiving publicity apparatus. Irina crosses ethical and legal lines as she evolves from an underling na\u00efve enough to hope the truth might matter (\u201cWe do not arrest the innocent, comrade. Our power depends on it,\u201d she\u2019s informed when she tries to clear the name of someone unjustly accused) to one hardened enough to talk herself into torturing a prisoner.<\/p>\n
\n\tIf For All Mankind<\/em>\u2019s early seasons laid out an optimistic fantasy of what space travel could be, scientific advancement and social progress sweeping ahead hand in hand, Star City<\/em> posits a much darker vision, and arguably one much more in keeping with our own current national mood. It makes for a bleak time \u2014 but some very compelling drama.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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