For All Mankind's spin-off Star City unexpectedly explores the origins of a character featured ever-so-briefly in the parent series.

A compelling paranoid thriller, the "For All Mankind" spinoff peels back the Iron Curtain to examin the Soviet Union's highly secret space proegram.

The spinoff is tense and melancholic speculative fiction about what may have happened if America lost space race — told from inside the Soviet Union.

As Star City co-showrunner Ben Nedivi explained to us, the For All Mankind spin-off is essentially an origin story for the latter show's biggest villain.