Fans of space and alternate realities are living well. Not only is there big-time representation in theaters, the show of shows, For All Mankind, returns this week and was just renewed for a sixth and final season. Beyond that, the team behind For All Mankind is also getting ready to release Star City, a spinoff that tells the alt-history of that world from the other point of view. Since the Soviet Union beat the United States to the Moon, how did they do it?
Of course, that raises a lot of questions both on screen and off. Off-screen, fans are surely wondering how Star City will be different from For All Mankind. Will there be crossovers? How long can the show go? Will it follow the same structure? This week, io9 was among a group of press who visited the set of For All Mankind in Los Angeles, CA, and we spoke to showrunners Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi not just about that show, but about some of those Star City questions too. First off, here’s the new teaser for the show.
The biggest thing that differentiates Star City and For All Mankind is what is actually known about each space program. In the United States, it’s more or less an open book. In the Soviet Union, not so much. So, that was where the issues began.
“The hard thing with For All Mankind was how much was known about the Apollo program,” Ben Nedivi said. “So we had to find our own way. [With Star City] I actually think it’s an advantage. So little is known. So it feels like, even though it’s alt history, I think a lot of people watching the show are going to discover things and go, ‘There’s no way that’s real,’ and they will see. ‘No, no, no. It is…’ They were beating the Americans left and right forever. The fact that the Americans won the space race is sort of absurd considering the level of victories they had.”
Set in the late 1960s and into the early 1970s, Star City will follow cosmonauts, engineers, and intelligence officers in the Soviet Union who took big risks to make sure their country dominated space. However, unlike For All Mankind, Star City will be a more traditional show from season to season, if it goes that far.
“It was very important to us that the show not feel like a companion piece to For All Mankind that is just mimicking,” Wolpert said. “So this is not a show that jumps in time, actually. It lives in the 1970s. Cold War, spy thriller behind the Iron Curtain. And it’s just that era. And it also, creatively, is more interesting because… the beginning of season two picks up right where season one left off. We don’t have to figure out 10 years of life [in between].”
“We’re done with the decade time jumps and the makeup and the prosthetics,” Nedivi said for Star City. “For us, the only reason to do a spin-off is if it feels like its own thing. It feels like you’re really adding a different element. So for us, this show is not only its own show; it’s its own genre. It’s a totally different look, feel. And it really came through.”
Rhys Ifans in Star City. – Apple TV
As for whether Star City’s race with the United States means characters from the first season of For All Mankind will return, don’t hold your breath.
“There are some small things,” Wolpert said. “There are definitely some characters that you might be familiar with from For All Mankind that are characters in Star City. But the overlap is smaller. Again, because we didn’t want people to think, ‘Oh, I have to have seen For All Mankind to watch Star City.‘ And so I think it’s more like Easter eggs for For All Mankind people.”
So even though Star City is set in the same world as For All Mankind and tells the other side of a bigger story, it only tells it in that very specific, 1970s space race time period. Which means, if the show goes multiple seasons, it’ll tell a continuous story without major time jumps.
Sounds like a perfect way to keep the For All Mankind fans satisfied while we wait for the sixth and final season, which we learned goes into production very soon.
Star City debuts on Apple TV May 29, the same day the season five finale of For All Mankind releases. The season premiere of that is Friday, March 27.
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