There's an economy to storytelling. You can only convey so much in a given volume of time. You need to establish characters, their traits, relationships, their environments and the situations they are in.
This is leaving aside the cash economics of production. This is really overt in FAM Season 1. Leaving aside CGI Space Shoots a lot of it takes place in seven locales...
- Johnson Space Centre (mostly Mission Control, the viewing gallery, lobby, hallways and a couple of meeting rooms)
- Stevens Residence
- Baldwin Residence
- The Outpost
- Jamestown Base, which is basically a single room at this point
- Apollo capsule interior
- The Lunar Surface
There are a few other places, though these are pretty minor and many of them are shot on location. There are also a number of distinctly one episode characters. The Soviets are also like a minute of grainy TV footage and one Cosmonaut on the moon in the last two episodes who does not return.
I don't blame the FAM staff for this in Season 1. They already have an ensemble cast and they laying the foundations for what's to come and at the same time an air of mystery about what's going on behind the Iron Curtain is a powerful driving force. We get more of them each subsequent season as the groundwork has been laid, though this is still largely from an American perspective (even in Star City we see it from Margo Maddison's perspective). Though still it does mean that we get half of the story of this new Space Race.
Giving the Soviet's their own spin off is the logical way to go about this. It's a natural place to expand and it's gives something which is a major part of the setting it's full, undivided attention.
Zor
tvline.com
