Star City will be different from For All Mankind in one exciting way

Apple TV’s alt-history series For All Mankindbegins in 1969 with Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov landing on the Moon, beating the Americans in the Space Race. Every season since has jumped forward 10 years to show the ripples of that change throughout history. Season 5, which is currently airing, is set in a version of 2012 when thousands of people live on Mars. Now, For All Mankind’s creators are going back to the beginning of their story in Star City, a spinoff focused on the Soviet space program. But this time, they’re in no rush to push the timeline forward.

“Our intention is not to jump a decade each season with this show, but to keep telling a propulsive story set in the '70s,” co-creator and co-showrunner Matt Wolpert tells Polygon. “To not have to think about what our characters are doing 10 years later and have to age our poor actors, being able to just pick up when the next season starts the next day or a week later, it sounds like a dream to us.”

Image: Apple TV

Wolpert became fascinated with the Soviet space program when making For All Mankind. The main series has visited Star City, the base of the Soviet program, but it’s mostly been focused on NASA scientists and astronauts. A big part of the appeal of Star City was the opportunity to tell a very different story than their main show, which has become increasingly speculative science fiction.

“Being in the world of this sort of Cold War paranoid thriller was really an exciting, different challenge for us, telling the story of these cosmonauts and engineers who all lived in this isolated city and were together with the intelligence officers who were monitoring their phone calls and listening to every conversation,” Wolpert said. “[We’re] capturing that sense of paranoia and not knowing who to trust.”

The first two episodes of Star City premiere on Apple TV on May 29. New episodes release on Fridays through July 10.