Episode 3 of the new sci-fi series Star City has just landed on Apple TV+, and the drama feels worlds apart from the creators’ previous hit, For All Mankind.
For one, it is genuinely unsettling. The series follows the Soviet Union’s efforts to put the first woman on the moon in the 1960s, with Anastasia Belicova (Alice Englert) becoming the first to do so — but at a cost, having taken the place of a comrade who was killed after a false confession. Elsewhere, the head of the KGB, Lyudmilla (Anna Maxwell Martin), is capable of horrifying violence and holds secrets that could change the entire space operation, enlisting Irina (Agnes O’Casey) to conduct surveillance for her.
But it’s The Chief Designer (Rhys Ifans) who is the most fascinating character — and he’s known simply as… well, The Chief Designer. No first name, no surname. He is the lynchpin of the entire operation, simultaneously trying to appease the KGB regime and advance his team’s science with some not-so-legitimate experiments.
So why, when even the outright villains have been given full names, does The Chief Designer remain an enigma? Not only is this by design, but Ifans reveals that he is actually based on a real historical figure.
‘In the US, he would have been a national hero’
“He’s based on a real person, Sergei Korolev, who was the brains behind the Russian space program,” Ifans explains. “Because he was the brains behind it, he was kept a secret and anonymized by the state, and was referred to as The Chief Designer. Were he to be captured by the Americans, it would be the end. And when he died in real life, it was arguably the end of the Russian space program.”
It’s worth noting that Star City is an alternate-history series, meaning the events depicted aren’t exactly how they happened in reality. The Chief Designer isn’t Korolev directly, and major historical moments have been adapted to fit the fictional story.
“In the US, he would have been a national hero while he was alive, but that wasn’t the case in the Soviet Union,” Ifans continues. “I was genuinely intrigued by playing someone who was achieving so much — not just for Russia, but for the world at the time.
“Being someone so hidden away, it was like playing a living ghost. It was some kind of strange purgatory to inhabit. I was interested in exploring what that might do to someone’s psyche. In some ways, it would be devastating not to get the applause, but in other ways, it left him alone to pursue his passion for space travel.”
It remains to be seen whether The Chief Designer will get a more fleshed-out personal narrative or whether his involvement in the series will remain strictly science-based. If Star City gets picked up for as many seasons as For All Mankind, it seems more likely — but if not, the man behind the mechanics may remain an enigma we never fully unravel.
