Star City season 1 episodes 1 and 2
I’m so hot and sleep-deprived at this point that this is basically incoherent but here are some thoughts and some of the references in the first two episodes of Star City.
Major spoilers below the cut
Episode 1
Lyudmilla Raskova is utterly terrifying and yet very compelling, I can see a direct line for the same qualities in FAM Irina. The nickname ‘the night witch’ does seem fitting, although the night witches were an all-female night bomber air squadron and she was a tank commander. (Apparently Anna Maxwell Martin knows historian Ben McIntyre and asked him about all the WWII stuff (called the Great Patriotic War in the USSR). Who knew?)
Ooh, Irina did 4 years at Lomonosov (Moscow State University — oldest and largest higher education institution in Russia, I think)
Hats off to the composer of the soundtrack, it’s incredibly menacing — Federico Jusid, apparently.
It’s baby Sergei! Hurrah! And he’s as genius-crazy as an engineer as we know he is 🤩
Omg I love cheering ground control scenes and I miss them in FAM so much. (Quiet awe isn’t the same.)
“We do not arrest the innocent, Comrade.” 🫣😬🫣😬🫣😬🫣😬🫣
I mean, I saw it coming the first time and knew it was coming this time and I’m still as shocked as Irina. (Semi-parallel with the suddenness of you know what happening to you know who in FAM 4x09 is 😢)
I *love* Anastasia Belikova and I would probably die for her. Her moon landing scene is so good. And Valya weeping when she lists the names of those who have gone before 🥹 The names were;
Filosova (Maybe this is Anna Filosova? Feminist writer..?)
Tereshkova (presumably cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova?)
Yana Akhmatova (the one Lyudmilla shot 😢)
@isbtwneotsfbous kindly identified the end song as based on a famous poem ‘I like that you are not in love with me...’ by Marina Tsvetaeva.
ETA this Reddit post has it as “I Like That You Are Not Sick With Me (From the film "The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!")”.
Season 1 episode 2
“Don’t be ridiculous — the state would never pay for our funerals.” Ahahahahaha, he’s funny. And the person I’d want on the other end of the comms tbh in that scary situation, ngl. Very reassuring.
Sergei with the maths… pretty good for on the fly calculation of distance.
Apparently, irl cosmonauts were issued with a machete and handgun as standard for missions to cover exactly this scenario while they awaited recovery after landing until around 2006. 🐻
Irina reading the files and revealing it immediately 🤣
Poor Anastasia — now she’s treated like a doll the state can play with 😭
Another hotel elevator — and it doesn’t have a bug in…? How interesting…
Baby Sergei being so useless at subterfuge is utterly hilarious and very true to what we know of him from FAM. I think the forbidden writer is Nikolai Fyodorov. Does anyone know the music he was listening to? (Also, he seems so lonely 😢)
This bit is interesting — Korolev (inspiration for the Chief Designer) was known to have read it.
Source: Wikipedia
Also interesting on the immortality front, and the fact Sergei’s name has appeared in a possible computer programme or something that has outlived him personally in FAM… Season 6 call-back potential…?
Oh, Irina — she’s going to shoot him anyway…
Poor Anastasia — arranged marriage publicity stunt and not going back up to the one place she felt she could breath…
Yikes.
I cannot wait for the next episodes.
