The Hindi web series Rocket Boys, which was very well received when it began streaming in 2022, is all set for Season 2, which starts streaming on Sony LIV from Thursday, March 16. The series is created by Nikkhil Advani, directed by Abhay Pannu, and produced by Siddharth Roy Kapur, Monisha Advani, and Madhu Bhojwani for Roy Kapur Films and Emmay Entertainment. Rocket Boys is a fictionalised version of the story of Dr Homi J Bhabha (Jim Sarbh), who engineered India's nuclear programme, and Dr Vikram Sarabhai (Ishwak Singh), who established the Indian Space Programme. Set between the 1940s-1970s, other important characters in the series also include Mrinalini Sarabhai (Regina Cassandra), Dr APJ Abdul Kalam (Arjun Radhakrishnan), who pioneered modern Indian aerospace and nuclear technology, and who would go on to become the President of India, and the then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (Rajit Kapur), who supported these scientists.
"The conscious decision that we all took, was that let's not get bogged down by the legacy of Dr Homi Bhabha and of Dr Vikram Sarabhai. If we are taking the audiences into the 1940s, then they are Homi and Vikram, not Dr Sarabhai and Dr Bhabha, so let's treat them as genuine, very young men who are trying to chase a dream. That's what Season 1 was about," Monisha Advani told Variety magazine. "Geopolitics takes over in Season 2. It's about (India's) first nuclear test, which happened in 1974, and what each of our characters actually contributed, as well as held back. It is much bigger in terms of scale, their ambition has become much bigger, much larger. And the stakes become larger because the CIA gets involved," Advani added.
Roy Kapur said, "The inciting incident for Season 2 is the fact that Jawaharlal Nehru is now no more. You've got a 17-year-old, very fledgling country. It's very hard for a lot of people of our generation, or younger than us, to imagine a country that has just been unified and is coming into its own and has only ever known one leader, suddenly adrift. You've got a new set of political philosophies in place now, which therefore restrict the access that our scientists had to the seat of power, and therefore leave them in a situation where they and their dreams and their vision are now vulnerable to the dictates of the new political age. You see the rise of Indira Gandhi as well, and what her contribution was to what happened between the 1964 and 1974 period. So it's a very interesting, intense, dramatic, and thrilling 10 years that the whole Season encapsulates," Roy Kapur said.
Roy Kapur and Advani do not rule out the possibility of a continuation of the story. "The premise of the show was about renaissance men, about people who did extraordinary things. Sid and I have, in our moments of weakness, discussed it. But in moments of lucidity, you say 'no, let it be over now,'" Advani said. "If this particular story had to continue, of course, it would be about India's nuclear programme and space programme, and the men and women who took it forward from 1974 onwards into the present day," added Roy Kapur.