Alternate histories generally do much better as novels rather than TV series or films. Some exceptions are SS-GB, based on Len Deighton’s book of the same name, and Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. Both scenarios imagine Nazi Germany winning World War II and were exceptionally well-made, fast-paced, high-quality dramas.
Two recent TV series entries in the alternate history genre prove that caring about the details and being fanatical about remaining true to both our timeline and the fictional timeline pays off with huge dividends.
Apple TV’s For All Mankind (FAM) has run for five thrilling seasons and is booked for a sixth and final season tentatively scheduled for a mid-2027 release. Forget the cultural nonsense (a closeted lesbian as president married to a gay man) and immerse yourself in the rich characterizations and the intense rivalry between the Soviet Union and the U.S. space programs.
Did I mention that in the FAM timeline, the Russians land on the Moon first? That singular act not only gave the Soviets a massive boost of national confidence, but led to other breakthroughs that strengthened rather than weakened the Soviet dictatorship. That strength becomes the basis for Star City.
How the Soviets got to the Moon first is only hinted at in Star City, a tense, cold-blooded sci-fi spy thriller, also on Apple TV, that trades the optimism of its parent show for a bleak, paranoid look at the Soviet space program in a paranoid country. The Soviet Moon landing a few weeks before Apollo 11’s is simply accepted as fact, with no sense of how the Soviets won the race. That small omission can be forgiven because the rest of this nightmare scenario is truly high-quality TV.
Critics widely praised it as a gripping, high-stakes expansion of the FAM universe. Told from the Soviet point of view, in Star City, the Americans are the bad guys and Soviet paranoia has a logical basis. Of course, the Communists misinterpret many American actions, which feeds their paranoia.
The action in Season 1 takes place in the 1969-71 timeframe. The high-risk trip to Venus, planned by the Chief Designer, played with great humanity and brilliance by Rhys Ifans, knows that the Central Committee will never give the go-ahead for the mission and hides his intention from all but a few engineers and astronauts.
The Chief Designer is never named. We also saw the nameless Chief Designer in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, appearing in the film as a laughing, bald-headed stand-in for insufferable Soviet superiority. The real “Chief Designer” of the Soviet space program was Sergei Korolev (Sergei Pavlovich Korolev). During his lifetime, his identity was kept as a closely guarded state secret by the Soviet government to protect him from potential assassination by foreign intelligence and to maintain state security.
In Star City, the Soviet apparatus of oppression is the star of the show. The Communists never let anyone breathe without their knowing. Everyone—I mean everyone—is followed, recorded, and surveilled. The most terrifying character on television today is Anna Maxwell Martin, who plays KGB Colonel Lyudmilla Raskova. A cold-blooded killer, torturer, and intimidator, Raskova stands in the middle of a web of Soviet oppression that uses all the tools of state intimidation and fear to maintain a level of control that is unbearable to citizens. Instead of fighting it, they try to stay out of its way as much as possible.
Her quiet, fanatical devotion to the Soviet state (and her own career) makes her casual brutality and scheming seem not only logical but necessary.
Raskova is a composite character, but she represents the logical extreme of socialism. How many times have we heard from socialism’s apologists that the reason it’s never worked isn’t the system; it’s the people who run the governments who are the problem. Castro, Pol Pot, Lenin, and Mao—these were the “wrong” people to be leading any country. The theory of socialism is sound and will work if the “right” people are implementing it.
The logic of oppression leads inevitably to socialism as a national economic and social template. There simply is no better way to control people than mandating the actions of the citizenry based on what’s “good for everybody.” Imposing controls on how people act is only the beginning. In order to impose socialist dogma on the people, the state must control how they think as well.
This means censorship to ensure homogeneous thinking, surveillance to ensure “proper” actions, and punishment for anyone who steps outside the socialist boundaries established by the government through anti-state thoughts, words, and deeds.
Putting someone in jail for listening to rock music? The Soviets outlawed rock as “degenerate.” Certain writers who published “dangerous” ideas were also locked up.
Young people enamored of socialist ideology should think long and hard about the kind of society created by adopting socialist principles. They are not only unrealistic, but they’re also impossible. Human beings do not act the way that the socialists say we must act to create their utopia. Until we do, the imposition of socialism will always—always—result in brutality, poverty of mind and spirit, oppression, and death.
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