“They were the punk rockers of space travel,” declares Rhys Ifans.
That’s the Welshman’s assessment of the Soviet space programme, the details of which he delved into for his intriguing new thriller, Star City, which imagines what might have happened had the Russians beaten the Americans to win the space race and never stopped venturing out into the stars.
Delving into the culture of secrecy and surveillance that defined a certain era of the Soviet Union, the “paranoid” thriller follows the cosmonauts, engineers and intelligence officers in Star City, the military town at the heart of the Russian space programme.
Actor Ifans is at the centre of it all, starring as the brains behind the space programme, the mysterious nameless man only ever referred to as the “Chief Designer”.
Despite the series being a spin-off of sci-fi For All Mankind, and many of the storylines being imagined, plenty of astonishing details are plucked straight from Soviet history, including the Chief Designer himself, whose identity had to be kept secret at any cost.
Speaking exclusively to Radio Times about playing the extraordinary figure, Ifans explained: “I was intrigued from the off, because he has no name – that really is the foundation as to who he is in this show. The foundations of him are based on a real guy called Sergei Korolev, who was literally the brains – the only brains, one could argue – behind the Russian space programme through the ’60s.
“The Russians were way ahead of the game at every turn, and they were doing it for half the budget, with fewer resources and everything. They really were the punk rockers of space travel.
“So the Chief Designer had to be protected from anyone knowing who he was, and just physically kept away from any danger, because to lose him would be to lose vast amounts of knowledge.”
Korolev could not have been more essential to the Soviet space programme, inventing the R-7 Rocket, Sputnik 1, and being involved in missions including Yuri Gagarin becoming the first human in space, and Alexei Leonov becoming the first person to conduct a spacewalk. But his identity was only publicly revealed after his death.
Ifans added: “Beyond learning about this incredible man, who was a Ukrainian, I may add, not a Russian – that’s very important for me and for the world right now to know that – I was just interested in playing a character who was passionate and following his dreams and pursuing his dreams and aspirations and doing that within the system that made that very difficult.”
Elaborating on the culture of surveillance in the show, the actor pointed out: “All these characters live, from dawn until dusk, in a place where you’re not entirely sure you can trust the person you’re speaking to, even your closest relatives, even your lovers. And what that does to the human soul over time, we touch on it in the show…”
Star City creators Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi were immediately enthralled by the mystery of the Chief Designer.
“Here you have someone who is maybe one of the most important historical figures of all time, arguably, and nobody knows about him,” Nedivi told us.
“The idea of having that greatness, that importance, but no one knowing who you are, other than in this little city in the woods, was already a fascinating way into a show and into a character that we hadn’t seen before.
“But then there was another element to him, which was fascinating – part of it was protecting him from foreign influence. But I think another element was protecting the state. They didn’t want anyone to be too powerful – the state would have to be powerful above all else.”
Ifans weighed in: “An individual can’t rise above the parapet.”
But, in Star City at least, the Chief Designer is far from the perfect Soviet comrade, secretly conducting scientific projects away from the prying eyes of Anna Maxwell Martin’s Colonel Lyudmilla Raskova, the head of KGB surveillance.
Wolpert added: “What’s fascinating, I think, about the Chief Designer, is he knows the stakes. He’s been sent to the gulag earlier in his life for almost 10 years and brought back out, and yet he still does his form of resistance through his scientific projects.
“He still feels compelled to try to push humanity forward in his own way. That’s how much he believes in what he’s doing.”
But what do we know about the real-life Chief Designer, Sergei Korolev?
He was born in 1907, in the city of Zhytomyr, which (as Ifans points out) would be in modern-day Ukraine.
But, in 1938, before he ever became the Chief Designer, he was imprisoned after being arrested on a false charge as a “member of an anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary organisation”, which was later reduced to “saboteur of military technology”. He spent a few months of his imprisonment in a Kolyma labour camp.
After his release, he became a famed rocket designer and went on to direct the Soviet space programme. But, while he had plans for a Soviet moon-landing before the USA’s 1969 mission, Korolev unexpectedly died in 1966.
Speaking exclusively to Radio Times, Professor Asif A Siddiqi, a historian who specialises in the social and cultural history of Soviet space programme, explained: “During his lifetime, very few people knew of his existence. Even the CIA had trouble figuring out who he was.
“One reason officially was that, if the CIA found out who he was, they would try to assassinate him. That was the reason [the Soviet state] gave, but I think the other reason was that it allowed Soviet leaders to claim the successes, so Nikita Khrushchev, who was the Premier, didn’t have to share the glories with some other person.
“Obviously, [Korolev] was the head of a pretty large organisation, so everybody within that organisation had access and knew who he was, so they had to sign all these papers, and basically, if you revealed his name, you would be thrown in jail. And then once you were in the team, you saw him everywhere, but that process of getting in the team was very onerous.”
But things went downhill for the Soviet space programme when Korolev unexpectedly died in 1966.
Professor Siddiqi added: “In 1966, he had a regular visit to the hospital, and the doctors discovered he had a tumour in his stomach. So they immediately tried to operate and remove it, but he had a very weak heart and, during the operation, the anaesthesia didn’t work properly, and his heart gave out, so he unexpectedly died.
“Within a day or two they revealed his name, and he was on the cover of the newspapers. Then they revealed that he was the Chief Designer of the Soviet space program and at that point he became useful in death, for the propaganda machine again – now they had the actual face of the space programme, which was useful.”
For Siddiqi, Korolev’s death was at the heart of why the Soviets were beaten by the Americans to the moon.
“I think his death was a fatal blow to them being first,” he explained, “because his successor was not very good, and not as charismatic and I think [Star City] captures that pivot nicely.”
He added: “There were many other structural reasons too. I don’t think it was necessarily an issue of technology, it was more an issue of their system not being designed to do something extremely ambitious, in this case, a moon landing, in a quick way.
“They could do relatively simpler things – the first satellite, the first man in space – very quickly, but the level of complexity of getting an actual cosmonaut on the moon was so, so complicated. They could have done it eventually, but the pace of Apollo was insane. There was more money, more people, everything was just more and more and more in America. [The Soviets] just couldn’t compete with that.”
“But I think the most proximate reason was Korolev,” he added.
“I think the Chief Designer’s death was the pivot point, and I think the show does that well, because it asks, ‘What if he was alive?’ Well, if he was alive, then maybe they would have been first.”
Star City will premiere on Apple TV on Friday 29 May. Start your seven-day free Apple TV trial at Apple.
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