Space Gen: Chandrayaan Review: TVF’s Moonshot Feels Like a Step-up but Misses Something

On January 23, 2026, Hotstar dropped a TVF-produced retelling of India’s most successful space feat yet, ‘Space Gen: Chandrayaan,’ and if you’re wondering whether it’s your time or not, I am here with my review to help you out.

Space Gen: Chandrayaan, to put it in short, captures the very essence of the event. It’s packed with passion, carries the touch of TVF-styled filmmaking, and tells you a story of passion, public scrutiny, media trials, and love for the nation in just 5 episodes. If I have to review the show in one sentence, well, Space Gen: Chandrayaan recreates the same emotional impact as it was felt by over a billion Indians when C3 successfully landed on the Moon’s South Polar region.

Now, Let’s Dive Into the Plot a Little Deeper

So, those of you who haven’t kept up with India’s C3 mission, it secured so much attention from the world due to the nature of its goals. India was trying to land on the Moon’s South Polar region, where no other country had reached before. It was not just a mission, but a space race deciding the future of the global space industry forever.

The show takes inspiration from the event and recreates the story with some fictional freedom. Here, we see Arjun Verma, played by Nakuul Mehta in the lead role. Arjun and his team had suffered a loss with Chandrayaan 2’s failure, which led to brutal media trials and public scrutiny.

The whole chain of events became mentally tolling for everyone in the team, and things got worse when Russia, China, and the USA joined the race as well. That is when Chandrayaan 3 was planned after taking lessons from the previous mission. 

And those of you who don’t know how it went, I will not deliver spoilers. Give the show a shot, it’s worth your time. There are only 5 episodes, and the episodes aren’t long either.

Space Gen: Chandrayaan has Some Familiar Cast Members With a Special Cameo

Nakuul Mehta has left a mark on the screen as Arjun Verma, a scientist who mentally suffered the most throughout the show. With him, Shriya Saran as Yamini, Prakash Belawadi as Sudarshan Ramaiah, Gopal Datt, Nitin Rao, and more. However, all of these lead characters are fictional and only exist to display the story with creative freedom. The show uses this approach to showcase the aftermath of C2’s disaster more comfortably. 

As for the cameo, if you’re familiar with Indian OTT’s popular faces, you will know who I am talking about and will leave that out for you find yourself.

But, Let’s Talk About the Elephant in the Room!

While the acting is solid, the representation felt a little off-balance. If you know the history, you know the real heavy lifting for Chandrayaan-3 was done by a leadership team predominantly from South India. Centering a North Indian lead felt like a “Bollywood-ification” of a very specific regional triumph.

Also, the aesthetics were too clean. The team looked… groomed. We are talking about sleepless scientists running on caffeine and anxiety, not models ready for a close-up. I missed the raw, unglamorous vibe of actual genius minds at work. It felt less like a high-stakes lab and more like a well-lit studio, which took away from the gritty realism the script was trying to build.

Behind the Scenes: Making of the Mission

If you’re still on the fence, here are a few production secrets that might tip the scale:

• The Brains Behind the Launch: The show is created by TVF founder Arunabh Kumar and directed by Anant Singh. The writing team (Shubham Sharma, Nitin Tewari, and Prashant Kumar) reportedly spent months researching the “gap years” between 2019 and 2023 to ensure the emotional continuity felt authentic, even if the characters were fictionalized.
• Real Family on Set: For lead actor Nakuul Mehta, the emotion wasn’t just in the script. He recently shared that his wife, Jankee, and son, Sufi, frequently visited the sets, grounding his portrayal of Arjun Verma with real-life family stakes.
• Budget vs. Box Office: One of the show’s most talked-about themes is the cost-efficiency of Indian space missions. The production design deliberately highlights how ISRO pulled off Chandrayaan-3 with a budget (approx. ₹615 crore) that was significantly less than the production budget of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (approx. ₹1,300 crore).
• Filming the Void: Unlike previous space dramas that relied heavily on sterile VFX, Space Gen used practical sets for the Mission Control Room sequences to heighten the claustrophobic tension felt by the scientists during the “15 minutes of terror” landing phase.

Now, My Rating?

Well, I am not too happy with the VFX, but that’s, I guess, now a habit with Indian OTT shows. Most great stories are being crushed by the limitation of great VFX. There were moments of space which could themselves be a standard for the industry, but it’s probably the budget, or the limitation of tech that came in between. But I am looking forward to seeing TVF do wonders as Space Gen: Chandrayaan is a feat that definitely feels like a step-up for them.

That said, the pacing did catch me off guard. Some moments felt a little abrupt, particularly in the final stretch. The transition from the “15 minutes of terror” to the celebration felt like we skipped a beat of emotional release, almost as if the show was rushing to meet a runtime deadline rather than letting the magnitude of the victory breathe. 

It’s a tight 5-episode run, but honestly? It earned a 6th episode just to let the characters (and us) soak in the win.

Ultimately, despite the sterile lab coats and the shaky CGI, the show works because it gets the heart right. It’s a solid weekend binge that reminds you why you looked up at the sky in 2023.

Where to Watch

Space Gen: Chandrayaan is streaming exclusively on Disney+ Hotstar.

Is Space Gen: Chandrayaan Worth Watching?

Yes. Despite the shaky VFX and representation flaws, Space Gen: Chandrayaan succeeds where it matters most—the heart. It is a solid, patriotic binge that effectively dramatizes the anxiety and triumph of India’s greatest space victory, earning it a 3.5/5 recommendation.