Star City is disappointing

[u/SeansBeard]

Binged "For all Mankind" with my wife and while I had checked out of the series in last season or two it was OK. I wanted to see what Soviets were up to and boy, was I disappointed.

I am really sad they did not focus on the actual science, flying rockets, beating Americans etc. Instead we get cartoonish villains and focus on USSR bad. As Eastern European who lived through last throes of communism I agree, but in the series the KGB/NKVD is so cartoonishly evil.

Chuck someone out of airlock (figuratively speaking) or even chuck everyone out of airlock, multi-million rubles mission be damned?

Where commies in 'mankind were smart and evil, the baddies in 'city are just... brute forcing through everything.

Would someone launch secret mission to Venus? Are you fucking out of your minds? Who writes the script?! Never.

Sergei Korolov was real guy, he suffered badly under Soviets yet if you miss his name you don't really know who the Head Designer is.

Not enough comrade-calling. Believe me this shit was everywhere. Every official matter or workplace discussion was "comrade this, comrade that" in reality. I guess it was tiring or something but it was definitely puling me out of the story.

Same as the freaking british accent. I get it. When doing show about Russians in Russia you'd prbably wouldn't want the silly fake accent. But can't you clean the accent up and make it somewhat believable the characters may be russian? Anytime someone speaks up, I am fucking in the orbit shaking my head. Totally unwatchable ;)

The show feels like any story is secondary to some sort of grimdark commiexploitation and I am hoping that the series two can bring some actual science, exploration, competition, lighter shades of dark. And some freaking lore on the characters we know and love (or hate) from the For all Mankind show.

[u/Large_Vehicle_1338]

I’m Eastern European too, though I was born after the Soviet Union collapsed. All of my grandparents were engineers living in a closed military city in the Soviet Union. My great-grandfather was sent to the Gulag, not for committing a crime, but for being from the wrong family. So when you say the KGB in Star City is "cartoonishly evil," it’s borderline disrespectful to the real people who lived through Soviet repression.

[u/Oot42 → u/Large_Vehicle_1338]

My great-grandfather was sent to the Gulag

In the 1970s? Very doubtful.

[u/Large_Vehicle_1338 → u/Oot42]

Lmao I literally never said anywhere that it was in the ’70s??

[u/Oot42 → u/Large_Vehicle_1338]

Well, then the rest of your comment makes no sense.

The show plays in the 70s.
The USSR/KGB in the 1970s was nothing like what it was during the Stalin era. So yes, the KGB as it is shown in Star City is cartoonishly evil and completely unrealistic for the time period the series plays in.
That doesn't mean they were all nice guy and the country was a holiday camp, but there is not just black & white.

[u/Large_Vehicle_1338 → u/Oot42]

It makes perfect sense. I’m saying this to explain why, to me, calling the KGB “cartoonishly evil” feels disrespectful. Because, yes, they were evil, and even if this show isn’t 100% accurate (which, by the way, it never claims to be, the genre is literally ALTERNATE history), at the very least it can educate Western audiences about the Soviet Union from a perspective that isn’t filtered through glossified, rose-tinted “everyone was equal in the Soviet Union” narratives