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Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files - Volume 03

Mega-City One, 2101. The city is recovering from the rule of the insane tyrant Cal and, as usual, it's up to the firm and unyielding vigilance of Judge Dredd to make sure stability is maintained. But with his niece Vienna being targeted by criminals, crime rising in the city hab blocks, and a vast invading army of flesh-eating spiders headed towards the city, Dredd has his hands full. And that's before the sinister Judge Death arrives from another dimension...

The previous two volumes in the Complete Case Files series presented two different sides to the Judge Dredd mythos. Volume 01 was mostly stand-alone stories with little linking material. Volume 02 is divided into two huge arcs, The Cursed Earth and The Day the Law Died, with only a few standalone stories. Volume 03 is, once again, mostly stand-alone stories, although these are now usually mini-arcs of 2-4 issues apiece, with the occasional one-off strip.

This approach, coupled with a greater interest in worldbuilding and continuity (things that were more optional in the first volume) means that the omnibus covers a lot of ground. Several Judge Dredd core concepts are explored here, such as city fads that the population of Mega-City One latches onto to avoid going totally insane, with "boinging" (jumping around the city in indestructible plastic bubbles) the first to be investigated. We also learn more about Mega-City One's TV stations and what kind of shows are popular, and we get several arcs in which the city is under threat from a vast horde out of the Cursed Earth, being, er, druid-led hippies and killer insane spiders respectively. In another story, Dredd joins forces with a talking cat (genetic engineering, natch), fights horror-themed robots running amuck (Dredd vs. the Hunchback of Notre Dame is an underrated face-off) and has to take part in an international incident as Mega-City One has to evict Sov-Block warships from the Black Atlantic off the coast. Smaller-scale stories see Dredd having to deal with the introduction of the most amazing-tasting chocolate in the history of the city, and dealing with a super-genius child whose parents did not set appropriate boundaries (this story gets a sequel a mind-boggling thirty years later).

But the volume saves the most memorable story for almost last. Dredd's most iconic, famous foe is Judge Death, a semi-incorporeal being from another dimension who killed his homeworld's population, ensuring justice by making life itself a crime. Dredd has to join forces with Psi-Judge Anderson, arguably the second-most-iconic judge in the whole franchise apart from Dredd, to take down the enemy. This is a foe so formidable that it's hard to see how Dredd can plausibly win, and to their credit the writers realise that as well, and come up with a novel solution that doesn't resolve the situation permanently, but puts it on hold for another time (in this case, Volume 05).

Those looking for another long-running, epic arc may be disappointed not to find one here, but this collection of shorter arcs is head-and-shoulders better than Volume 01. The stories are funnier, the satire is sharper and the world is feeling more consistent. This is still far from Dredd at its best, but we're certainly well on our way to getting there, and it's satisfying to finally meet Dredd's most formidable adversary, and one who will continue to plague him for decades to come.

The Complete Case Files Volume 03 (***½) contains every Judge Dredd story printed from Prog (issue) 116 to Prog 154 of the comic 2000AD, published from June 1979 to March 1980. The stories are set in the years 2101 and 2102. The writers in this collection are John Wagner and Pat Mills. The artists in this collection are Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Mick McMahon, Brendan McCarthy, Ian Gibson, Garry Leach, Ron Smith, John Cooper and Barry Mitchell.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Person of Interest: Season 2

Harold Finch and John Reese continue to use the predictive powers of the Machine to help people in trouble, but a new factor has entered the equation: Root, a skilled hacker with an evangelical belief in the Machine. Whilst Root goes deep undercover to track down the physical location of the Machine, New York becomes a battleground between the feuding criminal gangs, the police and HR, a shadowy cabal of corrupt police officers and public officials.

Person of Interest's first season was a solid, if slow-burning, introduction to the series. It set up the central characters and premise, and gradually complicated the premise as the series drove on. Serialisation was embraced only slowly, as some apparently one-off characters became recurring allies, enemies or potential frenemies, with the main focus remaining on the mystery-of-the-week.

Season 2 basically continues this format, although serialisation is embraced a little bit more. It takes two episodes for the cliffhanger ending of the first season, where Finch is kidnapped by Root, to be fully resolved and this makes for a great storyline pitting talented actors Michael Emerson and Amy Acker against one another, whilst Reese (Jim Caviezel) tries to keep up on the still-incoming numbers with the help of Detectives Fusco (Kevin Chapman) and Carter (Taraji P. Henson). Along the way they acquire a dog, Bear, who quickly becomes an integral part of the team, and help a conman named Leon, played by Emerson's Lost colleague Ken Leung, who becomes a reluctant ally.

The throughline of Season 2 seems to be "let's make the team bigger," with some episodes seeing Finch, Reese, Fusco, Carter, Leon and returning ally Zoe (Paige Turco) joining forces to deal with cases, which can be a bit jarring after the more claustrophobic first season which was basically the Finch 'n' Reese Show. Most episodes don't require this level of all-hands-on-deck though, so the show develops multiple subplots such as a new love interest for Carter, Beecher (Sterling K. Brown) and a new criminal conspiracy storyline involving Carter, Fusco, returning occasional frenemy Elias (Enrico Colantoni) and the shady Alonzo Quinn (The Wire's Clarke Peters). In fact, the acting firepower of the season is impressive, with Peters and Brown particularly impressing.

The show does a good job of developing these subplots whilst keeping the main storyline ticking over, with a surprisingly light touch. I was expecting Root to play a much bigger role this season but her appearances are sporadic, and more impactful when they do take place. The stories-of-the-week are quite entertaining, though at times they do feel they're feeding off a big book of TV stock premises, such as the main character and a female lead having to go undercover in suburbia to uncover a hotbed of murder and mayhem, or the mob hitman who falls for his target. Still, these stories are usually well-executed.

The season takes a huge upward swing with its sixteenth episode, Relevance, which introduces Sarah Shahi as government assassin Sameen Shaw (with as sterling guest turn by Ebon Moss-Bachrach as her partner), whose number is picked up by the Machine. Uniquely, the story is told from Shaw's point-of-view exclusively, with Reese and Finch showing up without much warning. The clever script plays with and breaks the conventions of the show, and Person of Interest's tendency to pull its punches to keep the mass audience happy goes out the window. Shaw is a sympathetic and wronged character, but she is also resourceful and ruthless in a way that makes even Reese look amateurish. Shahi's performance is absolutely outstanding, and the twists and turns in the plot make this easily the best episode of the first two seasons. Making Shaw a regular after this (though it takes a few episodes for her to come back) is a no-brainer.

The season ends with an impressive two-parter which blows open a lot of the show's premise. We learn what's been going on with the Machine in the presence, and what happened to Reese and Ingram after turning it over to the US government. Root makes her long-awaited move and the value of having Shaw on the team becomes clear, with the show building to a big cliffhanger, even if maybe it hedges its bets a little so as not to make a return to the status quo impossible.

Still, Person of Interest's second season (****) is a sharp improvement on the first season's promise. Expanding the cast is a good idea which brings more storylines and ideas into play, and the show admirably mixes some good serialised plots with some inventive episodes-of-the-week (though there's a few rote ones as well). The show's improvement in quality impresses. The show is available on physical media and streaming worldwide.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Citizen Sleeper

In the distant future humans can digitise their consciousness and place it in android replicants, "Sleepers." A Sleeper escapes indentured servitude on a freighter and finds themselves on the Eye, a large space station formerly controlled by the Solheim Corporation but is now contested between several factions. A former trade union turned civil authority, Havenage, uneasily shares the station with a criminal operation named Yatagan. The Sleeper must navigate between these factions and find some way of escaping the station and living a good life.

Citizen Sleeper was originally released in 2022 and attracted significant acclaim on release. The game can be summarised as part roleplaying game, part survival resource-juggler and part adventure game. The game is smoothly minimalist, playing entirely from a map of the Eye space station, occasionally with character art displayed whilst conversations are held.

The story unfolds over multiple days. At the start of each day, you roll a series of dice. The results of the dice can be applied to different activities, such as doing a day job for money, investigating the station to further the storyline or hacking into the station network and uncovering the secrets of its long-dormant mainframe (evading ancient security programmes in the process).

Citizen Sleeper's storyline feels quite tight at the start but then starts sprawling in numerous different directions. There are multiple ways to escape the station, different factions to align with, and a dozen or so significant characters you can develop relationships with, some of whom can help you, others hinder. Some characters are antagonistic but can be won over to help you; some are initially friendly but have hidden, darker agendas you might deal with.

Your Sleeper requires food and energy, meaning you sometimes have to make tough choices on whether to do more activities or spend dice on sustenance. But if you take too long, you can start losing dice (representing your growing weakness). The numbers you roll on your dice also have different application. In general, the higher the number the better, but some tasks require you to precisely match a number and you can't do anything without anything else, meaning you may have to wait a few days and several rerolls before accomplishing that task.

Your character does level up periodically and you get new abilities such as being able to reroll dice once a week or being able to tackle specialist tasks.

It's a compelling mix of interesting systems, complicated further by various ticking clocks, such as a character completing their own mission before they are ready to help you or until pursuers catch up with you on the station. Things stay just on the right side of being overwhelming, and the game is generally fair with you about keeping your character informed about what's going on and what possibilities there are for things to do next. However, the game can also be relatively ruthless in shutting down the possibility for hedging your bets: once you commit to a course of action, some other possibilities are invalidated.

With a single run of the game taking less than eight hours (depending on your choices, you might wrap up one in maybe four), it's short enough to encourage multiple replays and it can be surprising to see how your choices can impact the game. One playthrough might see you developing a major quest to discover your original human identity; in another, this might barely be mentioned as a factor in the story. One run might see you explore the entire station and visit every location, the next might see you leaving the station with half the map still in darkness. Your impact on the story is considerable, and fascinating.

Obviously this is a low-budget game, but the production values are quite impressive. The graphics are minimalist but atmospherically effective, the soundtrack is superb and the writing is quite compelling. Most of the NPC characters are well-written and engaging, and the game does a good job of holding your attention and making you make tough choices, with the consequences for failure being usually as interesting as those for success. Citizen Sleeper does a lot with not a lot of resources.

That said, the game can feel a bit punishing, especially near the start, and occasionally too reliant on the RNG number gods to progress to the next part of the story, resulting in bursts of wheel-spinning. The game is still short enough that this is not a major problem, but it can be a source of occasional frustration.

Citizen Sleeper (****) is a fascinating and well-written game, with a lot of substantive choices to make and encouraging of replays. The game is available on PC, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Xbox One and Series X/S, and PlayStation 4 and 5. A sequel, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, was released last year.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

New China Miéville novel gets cover art and blurb

China Miéville's enormous new novel now has cover art and an expanded blurb.

"From the bestselling, award-winning master of uncanny fiction comes a defining work, twenty years in the making – a deeply moving, decade- and continent-spanning epic of grief, global tumult, and grim conspiracy.

"Maur’s life has been shaped by an unbearable loss. But in the aftermath of what is an apparently ordinary tragedy, deeper, stranger questions arise . . . Their answers may lie within the dark heart and darker history of an old soldier who shares Maur’s obsessions – and is violently pursued by the same unknown, unquiet forces.

"So begins The Rouse, a book unlike any other: at once a sprawling saga of a bloody century, and the intimate story of two lives, their loves, regrets and secrets – and a terrifying journey into infinite mystery."

The Rouse, all 1,264 pages of it, is currently due for publication on 17 September 2026.

Blogging Roundup: 1 November 2025 to 31 March 2026

 

The Wertzone

News

• Tor Books release the rights to The Sword of Shadows series by JV Jones, allowing new publishers to come on board or self-publishing

• Ultra-long web saga The Wandering Inn to get physical releases starting this autumn

• For All Mankind renewed for sixth and final season

• Peter Jackson to produce yet another frankly unnecessary Lord of the Rings film

• Firefly animated TV series in development

• Hulu passes on Buffy the Vampire Slayer sequel series after shooting a pilot

• Two missing Doctor Who episodes recovered

• Cast of Firefly tease possible reunion

• Red Dwarf co-creator returns to franchise after thirty years with new novel

• Royal Shakespeare Company confirms launch of Game of Thrones: The Mad King for Summer 2026

• Pinnacle Entertainment launches Deadlands 30th Anniversary Kickstarter

• Baldur's Gate TV series in development at HBO from Last of Us team

• Sales of A Song of Ice and Fire surpass 100 million

• Hugh Cook's epic Chronicles of an Age of Darkness series returns to print

• Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere setting picked up for adaptation by Apple TV

• Blake's 7 reboot in development

• New Malazan novel, Legacies of Betrayal, slated for October 2026 release

• Kathleen Kennedy steps down as the head of Lucasfilm

• Hosting an event with Peter F. Hamilton in late January

• Total War: Warhammer 40,000 announced

• Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic announced

• Brandon Sanderson hits 50 million sales

• Creative Assembly announce Total War: Medieval III, confirm another game announcement for next week

• Tor Books passes on completing JV Jones's Sword of Shadows series, author to pursue self-publishing

• RUMOUR: Something may be up with Half-Life 3

• Paramount shelves the Star Trek "Kelvinverse" permanently

• Mass Effect TV series to be an original story set after the original video game trilogy

• China Mieville announces new novel, The Rouse, for 2026

Features

• RIP Nicholas Brendan

• RIP Dan Simmons

• RIP Rob Grant

• RIP Jean Rabe

• A Preview of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

• Doctor Who Review Index (2025)

• A revised Malazan reading order

Reviews

• Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files Volume 02

• Age of Mythology: Retold

• Slow Gods by Claire North

• Person of Interest: Season 1

• Relics of Ruin by Erin Evans

• A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: Season 1

• Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files Volume 01

• Dispatch

• Pluribus: Season 1

• Empire of Exiles by Erin Evans

• Sniper Elite 3

• Red Dead Redemption

• Doctor Who: Season 26 and the TV Movie

• The Outer Worlds 2

• Doctor Who: Season 25

• Forge of the High Mage by Ian Cameron Esslemont

• Doctor Who: Season 24

• Doctor Who: Season 23 - The Trial of a Time Lord

• No Life Forsaken by Steven Erikson

• Doctor Who: Season 22

Tor Books release the rights to THE SWORD OF SHADOWS series by J.V. Jones

Tor Books have agreed to revert the rights to the first four books in the Sword of Shadows series to author J.V. Jones. Jones had completed the fifth book in the series, Endlords, last year but Tor had declined to publish it. Jones is now free to pursue either publishing the entire series with another outlet, or self-publishing herself.

As has been related before, Jones launched her career in a blaze of success in 1995 with the Book of Words trilogy. Emboldened by a strong critical reception and cover quotes from Robert Jordan, the trilogy went on to sell over a million copies for Warner Books. Jones also published a successful standalone novel, The Barbed Coil, and then started the Sword of Shadows sequence in 1999 with A Cavern of Black Ice. The fourth volume, Watcher of the Dead, was published in 2010. Subsequent major life issues interfered with the writing and publication of further books in the series until she was able to resume work on it in 2017. The writing went slowly due to the demands of the day job, until she was able to leave that job and work full-time on the book in 2024, after which progress dramatically increased.

Jones isn't resting on her laurels, as she has also been shopping around a complete urban fantasy novel, Sorry Jones, and is now some way into the writing of the sixth and final Sword of Shadows novel, A Sword Named Loss.

The reversion of the rights means that Jones now controls the audio, ebook and print rights for her entire body of work. The Book of Words and Sword of Shadows are set in the same world (though you do not need to have read the prior trilogy to enjoy the last sextet), giving a new publisher access to a nearly-complete nine-volume sequence, not to mention two more standalone books.

Whether another publisher would be interested in the series remains to be seen (although I believe some talks have been held), but it does confirm that the remaining two volumes in the superb Sword of Shadows series will appear at some point, which is sure to relieve fans.

Ultra-long web saga THE WANDERING INN to get physical releases starting this autumn

In news to make bookshelves everywhere tremble in fear, the very popular web saga The Wandering Inn is to start getting physical releases at the end of this year.

Written by "Pirateaba," the saga tells the story of Erin Solstice, a young woman who is transported from Earth to a fantastical world which works according to rules almost out of a video game. Erin finds herself in charge of an inn, and growing more skilled in her role as she tries to figure out what is going on, and more about the world she finds herself in.

The saga began publication ten years ago and since then has expended to a mind-boggling 16.2 million words, which is equal to 3.7 Wheels of Time, 4.9 Malazan Books of the Fallen and 9.3 Songs of Ice and Fire. The story has been collected into eighteen unabridged "books" for ebook and audiobook purposes, but these books only cover the first half or so of the complete saga so far.

HarperCollins are publishing the first two books in physical format, though for space reasons both books have been split into two volumes apiece. These divide as follows:

• The Wandering Inn: Book One, Part One
• No Killing Goblins: Book One, Part Two
• Fae and Fare: Book Two, Part One
• Immortal Games: Book Two, Part Two

The first two volumes will be published on 24 September this year, the latter two on 5 November. Presumably the physical publication of further books will depend on how well these initial volumes do.

The remaining books are called Flowers of Esthelm, Winter Solstice, The Last Light, The General of Izril, The Rains of Liscor, Blood of Liscor, Tears of Liscor, The Wind Runner, The Titan of Baleros, Witch of Webs, The Empress of Beasts, Hell's Wardens, Garden of Sanctuary, King of Duels, Lady of Fire, Archmage's Ire and the forthcoming Couriers Outbound. As noted, however, the collected volumes only cover about 40% of the webnovel so far, itself incomplete with the project projected at somewhere between one-third and two-thirds complete (so maybe around half).

All things considered, if the physical versions are successful, HarperCollins may find themselves publishing over 100 physical books by a single author (and not short ones either) to see this through, which will be impressive.

The physical release will also be accompanied by the first canonical map for the series, depicting the continent of Izril, where the titular Wandering Inn is located (outside the city of Liscor in the centre of the continent).

It will be interesting to see if the physical release brings the series to a wider audience and if HarperCollins will be able to bring the entire series to publication.

Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files - Volume 02

Earth, 2100. Mega-City Two, the vast super-conurbation stretching down the west coast of North America, has fallen victim to a malevolent plague. Mega-City One has developed an antidote, but the airspace over the mega cities is contested, so the only way to deliver the plague is overland, through the radioactive, burned-out wasteland separating the two: the Cursed Earth. Obviously only one man is capable of undertaking this epic journey: Judge Dredd. But whilst Dredd is away, there are those back in Mega-City One taking advantage of his absence...

The first volume of The Complete Case Files introduced the insane techno-hellscape of crime-ridden Mega-City One and its enforcers of law and order, the Judges. It's probably fair to say that volume is not the best introduction to the world of Judge Dredd, featuring as it does overwhelmingly violent action stories designed to appeal to teenage boys in the late 1970s. Subtlety, in-depth worldbuilding and strong thematic development were not high on the agenda, and the franchise showed little of the satirical bite and intelligence that would characterise it at its best. Still, it showed some promise, especially when it delved into Dredd's backstory or moved away from crime-of-the-week capers towards longer narratives, like the Robot Wars arc.

By contrast, Volume 02 is just two massive narratives, with a few one-off stories between, and is immediately much better for it. Much of the first half of the volume is taken up by The Cursed Earth, which runs from Prog #65 to #85, and is the first critically-acclaimed Dredd epic. Heavily inspired by Roger Zelazny's Damnation Alley, it sees Dredd taking a road trip from Mega-City One on the Eastern Seaboard to Mega-City Two on the west coast, bringing urgently-needed vaccines to the sister-city.

Despite being classified as a single saga, the story is really a themed collection of episodes, linked by the device of the journey. Early on Dredd has to deal with mad mutants living in the Appalachians (where Mount Rushmore has been moved for unclear reasons), robotic vampires serving the last President of the United States, Mississippi plantationers using enslaved aliens, a cloned dinosaur theme park in the Rockies where the dinos have escaped and run amuck (did Michael Crichton read 2000AD?), and shenanigans in Las Vegas where the local Judges have gone rogue and become their own Mafia-like gang.

There's definitely a lot more dark satire here than in the first volume, and in fact the volume has to legally omit the most problematic storyline, in which it's revealed the pre-nuclear-war rivalry between local McDonalds and Burger King franchises has escalated into full-scale actual warfare. One infamous scene has a guy dressed as Ronald McDonald executing an employee for spilling a milkshake. Another episode, also omitted, has a mad scientist who looks like Colonel Sanders creating evil creatures based on corporate mascots, including the Green Giant and the Michelin Man. Rebellion did somehow negotiate the rights to use these elements in The Cursed Earth Uncensored edition from a few years ago (now out of print), but The Complete Case Files sadly has to make do without. The episodic nature of the story does mean you don't really notice their absence.

The story is solid, and some of the satire is quite biting, with alien slave Tweak and his story of enslavement in what is effectively the American South (if one reduced to a post-apocalyptic waste) being quite on-the-nose for the late 1970s. We also get a nice amount of worldbuilding by meeting President Booth, the leader of the United States when the third and last world war broke out, and explanations for how Dredd's world evolved out of ours.

If the story has a problem, it can be a little repetitive, goes on a little too long and the defaulting to using explosive ultraviolence to solve every problem can get predictable. Still, the sheer unhinged lunacy of some aspects of the story, like Judge Dredd facing off against a killer mutant tyrannosaurus, is quite entertaining.

The story rolls almost immediately into The Day The Law Died, which ran from Prog 89 to 108. After some odd cases back in Mega-City One hinting that not everything has been running smoothly in Dredd's absence, the city is taken over in a coup by Deputy Chief Judge Cal. Cal initially appears competent, but quickly goes totally insane, enforces the death penalty for the most ludicrous infractions, has alien mercenaries enforce his rule, and appoints his pet goldfish to second-in-command of the city. He neutralises Dredd early on, forcing Dredd to go underground and form a resistance to try to retake the city.

Cal is - fairly blatantly - based on the Roman Emperor Caligula, which may seem random until you remember that the BBC mini-series I, Claudius had been absolutely huge on British TV just two years earlier, with John Hurt on superb form as the deranged Caligula.

The story is again a bit overlong, and suffers a bit from the infamously fractious people of Mega-City One, who normally make the citizens of Springfield, Pawnee and Star's Hollow look quiet and orderly in comparison, going along with Cal's crazy stunts far too meekly. I get the impression the writers agreed and we get a late-story retcon trying to explain how everyone has been put under Cal's spell, but as an idea it's a bit weaksauce.

Instead, the story is mostly an excuse for action and for the development of a larger cast of secondary characters, including the introduction of Judge Griffin, as well as some crazy setpieces and comedic ideas, like Judge Fish, or Judge Schmaltz living up to his name to Dredd's extreme frustration.

By the end of Volume 02 (***½), we're still not up to speed with Dredd at his best, but we're getting closer. The few cases-of-the-week are unremarkable, but the two extended sagas are both solid stories with some great worldbuilding and side-characters. Both stories are probably a bit too padded, and the suspension of disbelief required to accept that Cal would get away with half the things he does before someone shoots him is quite strong, but we're seeing the comic start the development of its satirical bite and darker undertones that will become a much bigger part of its appeal later on.

The Complete Case Files Volume 02 contains almost every Judge Dredd story printed from Prog (issue) 61 to Prog 115 of the comic 2000AD, published from April 1978 to June 1979. Progs 71-72 and 77-78 are skipped because of legal issues (these stories riff hard on MacDonalds, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken, with scant respect for trademarks). The stories are set in the years 2100 and 2101. The writers in this collection are John Wagner, Pat Mills and Chris Lowder. The artists in this collection are Dave Gibbons, Mike McMahon, Brian Bolland, Brendan McCarthy, Brett Ewins, Garry Leach and Ron Smith.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

FOR ALL MANKIND renewed for sixth and final season

For All Mankind has been renewed for a sixth and final season on Apple TV+. The news broke just before the release of Season 5 on 27 March.

The show explores an alternate history of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It starts in 1969 with mankind first setting foot on the moon...but instead of Neil Armstrong, it's a Soviet cosmonaut. Furious at being beaten to the punch, President Nixon orders NASA to double down on beating the Soviets in building a permanent moonbase, orbital space stations and eventually the exploration of Mars. Each season is set in a different decade, showing significant technological and sociological change over the course of decades in this world where the Space Race was not won, but became supercharged.

The show has flown under the radar with the general audience, but has been a quiet hit for Apple TV+ and is, alongside The Newsroom, it's longest-running show since the streamer debuted in 2019.

Whilst For All Mankind is wrapping up, the wider franchise might have longer legs. Launching on 29 May, the same day For All Mankind airs its Season 5 finale, Star City explores the events of the first season or so of the show from the Soviet perspective.