Star City | Apple TV (Spoilers)

[Kraig]

Yeah i'll happily live in the decadent West, where i will be lied to too but at least the supermarkets are full and i don't have to smuggle music into my country

I loved the anecdote of either Brezhnev or Gorbachev, who visited a western Supermarket during a diplomatic visit ( i forget if it was the US or somewhere in Europe) and seeing all the shelves overflowing with goods of all kinds knew that communism would lose in the end.

You may be thinking about Boris Yeltsin, just before the Berlin Wall collapsed, visited Johnson Space Center in Houston, and stopped by a supermarket in Clear Lake, TX.

 

[FPAlpha]

You may be thinking about Boris Yeltsin, just before the Berlin Wall collapsed, visited Johnson Space Center in Houston, and stopped by a supermarket in Clear Lake, TX.

That was it, it was long ago that i read about that.

 

[Kraig]

That was it, it was long ago that i read about that.

It was also the time I stopped working in the aerospace industry in SoCal. Got my career changed just before the Star Wars SDI was going to wind down. The programs I was working on were going to be phased out, and the commercial side of things was also winding down.

 

[Fresh Linon Snuh]

Ugh, File this one away with garbage like cop shows and The West Wing. It's my own fault for learning about the Soviet space programs on my own when I was a kid I suppose.

 

[tenmei]

Welcome to reality comrade not your American happy propaganda world.

To paraphrase Juliet Stewart, "In America, you endure Winter, in Russia, Winter endures you ..."

Ugh, File this one away with garbage like cop shows and The West Wing. It's my own fault for learning about the Soviet space programs on my own when I was a kid I suppose.

Oh my, aren't you cheerful. The show is in an alternate timeline, Episode 3 is now a whole four years past the point of divergence of Korolev living past Januart 1966, so do bear in mind that what you learned about the real space program in Russia won't he relevant here. It's not meant to be a documentary or a docudrama, which is why we appear to be getting a manned Venera mission in 1970.

 

[Shawnster]

I'll join the line of people struggling to watch the show and this episode did little to boost my experience.

Everyone is so miserable on the show - arranged marriages that make no one happy, a strained marriage including infidelity, spying on people, Soviet style population control and intimidation and i haven't even mentioned the actual villain characters yet.

I wonder why the producers and writers thought this show would be a good idea and that people would love it? There is precious little to root for in this show, it is so drab and desaturated that it sucks out all the joy it tries to maybe create.

I'm really enjoying it. Of course, I really enjoy dystopian stories.

For those of you that are finding this a slog or a grind and are bailing on the show, what is your age group? All over the place or born after the collapse of the USSR?

That was it, it was long ago that i read about that.

Even longer ago that I lived through it. At least via news coverage.

Ugh, File this one away with garbage like cop shows and The West Wing. It's my own fault for learning about the Soviet space programs on my own when I was a kid I suppose.

How has your knowledge of the Soviet space program soured you on this show?

 

[FPAlpha]

I'm really enjoying it. Of course, I really enjoy dystopian stories.

For those of you that are finding this a slog or a grind and are bailing on the show, what is your age group? All over the place or born after the collapse of the USSR?

I'm 50 so i had front row seats to watch the downfall of the Soviet Union but being a teenager i didn't fully grasp the cultural, social and political importance of it.

I distinctly remember the day the hardliners started the coup and tanks were shelling the buildings. I think it was a Saturday or Sunday morning in Germany when that happened and i had the TV on watching it but my parents hadn't watched the news yet that day. When i walked into the kitchen to my parents and my dad asked me what's up and i told him nonchalantly that the Russians were shooting at each other he nearly ran me over to see the news and couldn't believe that i failed to grasp the significance

 

[Kraig]

I'm not finding it a slog. I'm in my late 60s, and was in the USN during the Cold War. We were constantly shadowed by CCCP ships and bombers. We would lose the ships after dark, and our F-14s would "escort" the bear bombers away from us. The ships would return the next day, we almost ran over one when it tried to interrupt flight operations.

 

[David cgc]

I’m not finding it a slog, though it is definitely grimmer than most things I watch. More like the fake Battlestar Galactica from that CSI episode than what Battlestar Galactica was actually like. I don’t have any firsthand memory of the Soviet Union, I was born only a couple years before the Berlin Wall came down.

 

[trash80]

I'm 50 so i had front row seats to watch the downfall of the Soviet Union but being a teenager i didn't fully grasp the cultural, social and political importance of it.

I distinctly remember the day the hardliners started the coup and tanks were shelling the buildings. I think it was a Saturday or Sunday morning in Germany when that happened and i had the TV on watching it but my parents hadn't watched the news yet that day. When i walked into the kitchen to my parents and my dad asked me what's up and i told him nonchalantly that the Russians were shooting at each other he nearly ran me over to see the news and couldn't believe that i failed to grasp the significance

I'm a similar age, i remember watching the coup footage on TV and writing in my diary that night that i thought we were all about to die in a nuclear war. Ah, those were the days!

 

[FPAlpha]

I'm a similar age, i remember watching the coup footage on TV and writing in my diary that night that i thought we were all about to die in a nuclear war. Ah, those were the days!

I remember that was a real concern, up to this point i don't think there was a coup or civil war in a nuclear nation, much less the size and power of the Soviet Union. I think the Americans and everybody else went to very high alert and were watching very carefully what happens.

I wonder why Hollywood never made a movie or a TV show about that event or the downfall of the Soviet Union in general, i love good political thrillers with a little bit of action here and there.

I don't remember as much from FAM but did "their" Soviet Union soften up somewhat or was it Stalinist Communism all the way through?

 

[Fresh Linon Snuh]

How has your knowledge of the Soviet space program soured you on this show?

Put bluntly, that the USSR was not the evil oppressive empire that we're led to believe it was in the West due -in part- to media like this show, and the "dourness" we associate with that place and time has more to due with the country facing repeated existential threats from other nations attacking them and environmental factors dating back thousands of years than overall mismanagement or a culture of fear; etc.

For me, these issues supercombine like a Needler explosion from Halo in this show to make it's presentation almost comically cliche. It's sort of like noticing the "yellow piss filter" to denote a setting's location being in Mexico, but more grating. Or just as grating, I dunno that's a really irritating visual look. Probably why I never got into Tony Scott's "Man on Fire"

Disclaimer: I don't mean any of these comments as a personal insult to anyone except to perhaps various unnamed hollywood producers who are of course too busy inhaling mountains of cocaine and doing ketamine to be posting here

 

[Shawnster]

I think it was a Saturday or Sunday morning in Germany

Location is another factor I did not consider with my question... Thank you!

I wonder why Hollywood never made a movie or a TV show about that event or the downfall of the Soviet Union in general, i love good political thrillers with a little bit of action here and there.

That is an excellent question.

I don't remember as much from FAM but did "their" Soviet Union soften up somewhat or was it Stalinist Communism all the way through?

Feels like a Gorbachev style softening. Glasnodt. I think it's mentioned in background scenes, but I don't remember which season.

 

[tenmei]

Feels like a Gorbachev style softening. Glasnodt. I think it's mentioned in background scenes, but I don't remember which season.

From what we know so far, the Russian Presidency runs as follows ...

1964 to 1982 - Brezhnev
1982 to 1984 - Andropov
1984 to 1986 - Unknown
1986 to 2003 - Gorbachev
2003 to 2012/13 - Korzhenko

Gorbachev is overthrown in Season 4 by the hardliners of the old establishment, led by the anti-liberalist and anti-reformist Korzhenko, who was a Communist hardliner. He's then removed in Season 5.

Time for pro-Gorbachev Lenara Catiche to make a return?

 

[tomalak301]

For those of you that are finding this a slog or a grind and are bailing on the show, what is your age group? All over the place or born after the collapse of the USSR?

I was born in 1984, so I was really young during the collapse of the USSR. I don't think that has anything to do with this show just being really boring though.

 

[FredH]

I wonder why the producers and writers thought this show would be a good idea and that people would love it? There is precious little to root for in this show, it is so drab and desaturated that it sucks out all the joy it tries to maybe create.

Because it’s an interesting dystopian drama, and isn’t supposed to be a Hero Story about a world we wished we lived in?

I mean, it’s not exactly the first one ever made, nor is it like such haven’t sometimes made tons of money.

 

[FredH]

Ugh, File this one away with garbage like cop shows and The West Wing. It's my own fault for learning about the Soviet space programs on my own when I was a kid I suppose.

Who wants that well-remembered, popular, moneymaking crap, anyway?

 

[Jayson1]

I am loving the show so far. I think this is the best stuff from the franchise since season 1 of "For All Mankind" or at least season 2 or 3. I like how dreary and colorless the show is. fitting the tone of the show very well.

As for comedy. Maybe they will show us a young Yakov Smirmoff. In this universe though he joined the space program. Likes to crack jokes with his comrades. "In space nobody hears you scream. In Russia that is KGB's job."

 

[Shawnster]

Anyone else watching this also watch PONIES on Peacock?

I'm gonna get confused which show is which

 

[Lord Garth]

Finally had time to watch the third episode. I'm really enjoying this slow burn. It's helping to let me immerse myself into the world of a Soviet Russia with a more successful space program.

The show has a lot of ambience. I'm still learning all the names, but I feel bad for the woman who has to listen in on all the goings-on with a cosmonaut's wife and her American music.

The top-secret mission of going to Venus caught me by surprise. The surface of Venus, from what I understand, is 900 degrees Fahrenheit. How can anything survive it?

The public mission, the one heading back to the Moon, the danger caught me by surprise because I wasn't expecting it, even though I should've, and I didn't expect to see one of the cosmonauts die, the way they did, in the vaccum of space.

The cosmonaut who didn't go into space, I suspect he's not as lucky as he thought he was, as the end of the episode heavily hints him. His going to a piano concert and seeing that pianist perform reminded me of when Margo used to play the piano.

I love the decor and the set design of this series, along with the desaturated color palette.

This episode wasn't as harsh as the first two. Three episodes in and I already feel like I'm in a lived-in universe with this series, all by itself. But because of the slow burn, I can see how each would probably blend into each other, similar to Better Call Saul. Over there, seasons ended at a stopping point and the next season picked the story right up where it left off. So, staying in the 1970s is the right move for this show.