https://zr.ai15.me/images/2026/06/26/Star-City-2026--RECAP-000.gif [Source](https://tv.apple.com/us/show/star-city/umc.cmc.2l8p785osmtmiyk64bh6tfde1) https://i.imgur.com/PGNq5Ek.png Star City season one episodes one and two gets you into the deep end of paranoia, and I was not ready for how fast this thing gets dark, its like For All Mankind on an alternate universe but really dark. It all starts with Alexei Leonov putting his boots down on the moon for the Soviet Union and rather than the crowds cheering, we cut to his wife getting dragged out of bed in the dead of night by the secret police. They haul her into mission control in a complete panic, thinking her husband is dead or arrested, and then she looks up at the screen and sees him standing on the lunar surface, nobody told her anything until that exact second. The official public celebrations through broadcasts and state displays are all out there but behind the walls of Star City the atmosphere feels suffocating right from the start, especially when they hand the Chief Designer a medal for being the hero of the space program and then immediately take it back to keep his identity a secret from the Americans. He is not even allowed to leave the country for his own safety and he just has to sit there in the shadows while the government exploits his work to push their agenda across the world and keep the grip over the soviet population. You can feel this heavy dread hanging over his head and every single scene because the sky is always this overcast gray that makes the whole country look sad and oppressive, and nobody inside those walls is celebrating freely because if you are valuable to the state, they own you completely and you have absolutely zero freedom. The whole thing plays like a government thriller more than any kind of space adventure, every conversation carrying this edge that somebody could say the wrong thing and just vanish. Even the celebrations in mission control feel like they are operating under a lid, like everyone is relieved they beat the Americans but watching their own mouths at the same time. The first two episodes nail that feeling and its like they all have limited amount of oxygen to talk because the human cost behind all those big historical moments is the actual story and watching people work under that kind of surveillance is a lot more interesting than any rocket launch. - IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32140872/ - Platform: [APPLETV](https://tv.apple.com/us/show/star-city/umc.cmc.2l8p785osmtmiyk64bh6tfde1) https://i.ibb.co/d0vBMxKX/a2c69e52b5c8.png

Rottentomatoes Rating

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https://i.ibb.co/k2nqt1sW/56cc0852cf62.png [Source](https://tv.apple.com/us/show/star-city/umc.cmc.2l8p785osmtmiyk64bh6tfde1) The spy shit is fucking dope even thought is very raw and nothing fancy, nothing James Bond like, but we get this whole subplot with a young woman named Irina who works at a surveillance center, yeah like an entire room of woman just transcribing conversations, just listening to audio tapes of the cosmonauts having private conversations in their apartments. The whole system turns neighbor against neighbor, which we see when her coworker gets a big promotion just for reporting that a highly trained cosmonaut named Yana made a phone call mentioning her brother Ivan, who supposedly works for an underground anti government paper. Yana is literally the best pilot they have and she was the one destined to be the first woman on the moon, leading the training jumps out of the airplane without any fear, but she still gets pulled into a dark room and beaten into a false confession just to satisfy the state and make them stop. Irina actually does some digging and sneaks out to a cemetery to find out that baby Ivan died as an infant, meaning Yana is completely innocent and the government made a huge mistake. When Irina takes this proof to her boss, a woman named Colonel Raskova who they call the Night Witch, you think they might actually fix the situation and let Yana fly the mission. You might thought this would turn into a rescue but turns super dark when Raskova takes Irina down to the prison cell where Yana is begging for her life and hands Irina a gun to execute the innocent woman to prove her loyalty to the party. Irina freezes up and cannot do it, so Raskova just walks up and puts a bullet in Yana on the spot, cold as ice and tells the room the state does not make mistakes. You get a very clear picture of how expendable these people are no matter how talented they might be and surviving in this world means either doing terrible things or being on the wrong end of them. The show keeps the space race stuff and the internal KGB terror running together really well side bise side like they competing for what generates more dopamine for the audience because you end up more worried about who is listening to which conversation than whether any rocket makes it into orbit. https://i.ibb.co/0jvGBw5Y/742801672c2f.png [Source](https://tv.apple.com/us/show/star-city/umc.cmc.2l8p785osmtmiyk64bh6tfde1) https://i.ibb.co/RpsZgYNL/50cf3b306f31.png [Source](https://tv.apple.com/us/show/star-city/umc.cmc.2l8p785osmtmiyk64bh6tfde1) There is some stuff that feels clunky though, like when the backup cosmonaut Anastasia Bellakova crash lands back on Earth after her moon mission, and the capsule ends up in the middle of a Siberian plateau. She steps out of the smoking capsule to take a breath of fresh air, and suddenly a massive bear stands up on its hind legs out of nowhere to roar at her, which just feels completely ridiculous for a show that is trying to be grounded. The co pilot Valya just shoots a single rifle bullet at this giant beast, and the scene moves on without showing the body, making the whole bear encounter feel like a cheap trick that did not need to be there at all. Then the pacing feels all over the place when Anastasia gets forced into an arranged marriage with Sasha, a pilot who is actively cheating on another man's wife, just so the state can present them as the perfect Soviet couple on a worldwide press tour. They get sent to Paris, and Anastasia gets approached in a bathroom by a woman offering her a chance to defect to the Americans, which sounds like a cool spy moment on paper. However, you could see where things were heading right away, because it was obviously just another loyalty test orchestrated by Raskova to see if Anastasia would betray her country. The whole fake defection setup just felt like unnecessary drama that we already knew the answer to, especially since the state literally introduced Anastasia to a physical double of herself earlier, threatening to replace her entirely if she stepped out of line. The Paris trip just dragged on without adding any real tension, and it took away from the much more interesting space engineering problems they were dealing with back at the base. I wish they had spent more time showing the psychological toll of her being forced to marry a guy she does not even like, instead of wasting time on these predictable loyalty tests that end exactly how you expect them to. It is just frustrating when a show builds up such a great paranoid atmosphere, and then relies on tired tropes like a random bear attack or an incredibly obvious undercover sting operation, to try and keep the audience engaged. When you have a government that literally dictates who you have to marry and where you are allowed to travel, the tension should come from that lack of control, not from a random French bathroom encounter that feels completely staged from the jump. https://i.ibb.co/BKZvCNsp/06ac507957d6.png [Source](https://tv.apple.com/us/show/star-city/umc.cmc.2l8p785osmtmiyk64bh6tfde1) https://i.ibb.co/FkwzTd6p/6235778e614f.png [Source](https://tv.apple.com/us/show/star-city/umc.cmc.2l8p785osmtmiyk64bh6tfde1) There is some stuff that feels draggy though like when Anastasia Belikova crash lands back on Earth after her moon mission and the capsule ends up in the middle of a Siberian forest and she steps out of the smoking capsule to take a breath of fresh air and suddenly a massive bear stands up on its hind legs out of nowhere to roar at her, which just feels completely ridiculous for a show, it feels like a distraction but its fine, making the whole bear encounter feel like a cheap trick that did not need to be there at all. Then the pacing feels all over the place when Anastasia gets forced into an arranged marriage with Sasha, a pilot who is actively having an affair with a married woman, just so the state can present them as the perfect Soviet couple on a worldwide press tour, by the way this woman is his comrade pilot, this thing is a web of treason one after another. They get sent to Paris and Anastasia gets approached in a bathroom by a woman offering her a chance to defect to the Americans, which sounds like a cool spy moment. You could sense where things are going because it was obviously just another loyalty test orchestrated by Raskova to see if Anastasia would betray her country. The whole fake defection setup just felt like unnecessary drama that we already knew the answer to, especially since the state literally introduced Anastasia to a physical double of herself earlier, threatening to replace her entirely if she stepped out of line, I was really really hoping she was with the Americasn. The Paris trip just dragged on without adding any real tension and took away from the much more interesting space engineering problems they were dealing with back at the base. If only they had spent more time on the psychological toll of being forced to marry someone she cannot stand instead of burning screen time on a Paris bathroom. When you already have a government that tells you who to marry and where you are allowed to travel, that is where the real danger should come from, not a random French bathroom encounter that is obviously staged from the second it starts. https://i.imgur.com/uwwnjtd.png

https://i.imgur.com/r0yj9oi.png I 110% locked in for the rest of the season, already had plans to binge this one because watching the Soviet system go with this insane protocols to protect its secrets is a story that actually hooks you and keeps you wanting more, at the moment Im writting Im still watching. The first real satisfaction moment was when Anastasia finally lands on the moon and instead of reading the strict propaganda script she was handed, she goes off book to thank the patriots who died before her, including Yana. The state immediately cuts the broadcast feed in a panic and you just know that small moment of freedom is going to cost her dearly, which is exactly why the state tightens its grip on Anastasia afterward and forces her into that staged marriage as part of managing her public Soviet image. Then there is Irina, who goes completely off during an interrogation in Germany, throwing hot coffee in a prisoner face to get him to give up information about someone trying to smuggle something into Star City, this was her first time and she does have this image of an antihero or at least she cant decide what she really wants to do. She goes from a desk worker who froze with a gun in her hand to someone torturing people without blinking is such a damn good twist to her character and it makes sense in the worst way because that environment does that to you. Raskova cranking up the surveillance on everyone in the compound sets up a suffocating situation for the next few episodes, because nobody is safe when the secret police decide to squeeze. The production quality is fkn awesome, its an AppleTV, the performances are strong across the board and putting the danger of space travel right next to the absolute terror of state control and conspiracy everywhere you look at makes something really special. I give these first two episodes a solid 8/10 because this is a solid start for the foundation of a conspiracy thriller that actually takes itself seriously, they deliver. https://i.imgur.com/uwwnjtd.png https://i.imgur.com/AbuDA6i.png https://i.imgur.com/NFNfXhz.png #starcity, #appletv, #spaceexploration, #alternatehistory, #conspiracythriller, #sovietunion, #moonlanding, #spydrama, #televisionreview, #episodeone, #episodetwo, #scifidrama, #coldwar, #secretpolice, #cosmonauts, #kgb, #spaceprogram, #tvblogger, #seriespremiere, #astronauts, #lunarlander, #deepspace, #surveillance, #paranoia, #tvshows Posted Using [INLEO](https://inleo.io/@skiptvads/star-city-2026-the-eyes-a-bear-on-a-chain-s01e01-02-recap-6sg)

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