Syfy's Ascension Miniseries

[Vendikarr]

Faking this entire endeavor is just so infeasible I am really having problems with it all.

I can see they using the radiation protocols for lift off, since it seems apparent that when they are locked in their pods that they are administered oxygen along with some type of sedative. Knock them out and a 'launch computer' handles everything.

But the first decade leaving the solar system would be particularly hard to fake. Logic dictates that they use slingshot maneuvers around planetary bodies to both course correct and increase velocity. Given the set up we saw for the exterior of the ship, faking orbital insertions around planets could not be faked. "Piloting" the ship for that first decade would have to have been handled by people in the know.

 

[cylkoth]

"Piloting" the ship for that first decade would have to have been handled by people in the know.

It does make sense to assume that a handful of the original crewmembers were in on this deception. Faking all this would require several people on the inside to cover as many bases as possible. Dr Mole isn't old enough to have been an original, so at some point, someone had to have brought him in on it. For him to so easily commit murder(s) to protect the secret, speaks to an overwhelming belief in this project, so his indoctrination had to come from someone he respected or looked up to.
Again, a more intereting avenue to go down than wasting time on the teen angst of his daughter and her Down below boyfriend.

 

[Christopher]

But that wouldn't make much sense. Operating a spacecraft is delicate and dangerous work. Logically, you'd want your ship to be crewed by people who are fully trained in its operation...

Remote navigation/autopilot/run by a machine/computer, all with discovered/classified technology.

That still makes no sense. Technology can break down. You want people onboard who are skilled enough to fix the machines or do their jobs for them.

But the first decade leaving the solar system would be particularly hard to fake. Logic dictates that they use slingshot maneuvers around planetary bodies to both course correct and increase velocity. Given the set up we saw for the exterior of the ship, faking orbital insertions around planets could not be faked. "Piloting" the ship for that first decade would have to have been handled by people in the know.

Alpha Centauri is pretty far south of the ecliptic. A ship aimed for it wouldn't go past any other planets in our system, unless it took a roundabout course. Maybe there's some value to that if you wanted to take advantage of Jupiter's mass and momentum for a boost, but I'm not sure Jupiter would've been in the right position for that in the early '60s. (At the time of launch, it would've been in the opposite direction, more or less, and would've taken a few years to come around to a more suitable position, although it's possible the ship could've taken several years to reach Jupiter's orbit.)

 

[dub]

But that wouldn't make much sense. Operating a spacecraft is delicate and dangerous work. Logically, you'd want your ship to be crewed by people who are fully trained in its operation...

Remote navigation/autopilot/run by a machine/computer, all with discovered/classified technology.

That still makes no sense. Technology can break down. You want people onboard who are skilled enough to fix the machines or do their jobs for them.

Exactly. There would be a few insiders on board who know the ship well enough to do repair work or pilot the ship manually if needed.

 

[Christopher]

^And the rest would be dead weight? Why the hell would they bother? Having the passengers not know they're on a ship might make for an interesting story, but I don't see a single reason why the planners of such a project would find it remotely desirable or useful. Any component or passenger on a spaceship needs to serve a vital function, and it's not enough just to be cargo. The occupants would have to be able to pull their own weight, or there'd be no reason to have them aboard. If you just want a population base for eventual colonization, just use a gene bank like Interstellar did.

There have, of course, been countless stories about generation-ship passengers who've forgotten their origins ("Universe," The Starlost, etc.), but that was after hundreds or thousands of years and usually in the wake of some disaster. None of the ships were actually designed to work that way.

 

[Guy Gardener]

They were trying to breed a telepath that could power/activate, the celestial translocator buried in the bottom of the the reservoir that is probably of alien design. If it is of alien design and they dissected the aliens that used it to get to Earth, then the human scientists know that the fast return button they need a telepath to push will take "them" back to the aliens homeword, or at lest a world the aliens can survive on who must have had similar requirements for life that we do.... So if the plan all along is to build an off world colony, they're still going to need colonists hardenened and trained, hell, born for this missin to conquer space, so they might as well build theses astronaut pioneers on the Ascension while they're building their telepath.

Remember, if this is technology controlled by the mind, rather than powered by the mind, that means that Christa's brain is more sort of a key turning the car engine on than a horse pulling the car.

I'm waiting for the conspiracies that Melmacians are all alien warlord to be scared of.

There was maybe 2 or 3 flash back episodes set on Melmac in the entire run of Alf.

What are the odds?

I would have used straffing runs by cyclon raiders form the original Battlestar Galactia, or a phone sex line infomercial.

But that's just me.

 

[Greg Cox]

Don't you know? The crew of Ascension invented phone-sex hotlines. It's one of the many technological innovations they developed during their epic voyage.

 

[JD]

I had theory about the whole psychic powers thing. What if instead of trying to create a person with psychic powers, they were simply trying to make something that was already there more powerful. Perhaps in this world back in the 60's or before, someone found out that there were already people with weak psychic powers, and they decided to make them stronger. So they decided to use Ascension as a way to get a super psychic from the people who already had powers. All of the kids that they kidnapped already had very weak powers, or the potential for them, and so they were hoping that if they got them all to breed with each other they would produce someone like Christa. Perhaps the birth computer is actually finding the people with the strongest powers, or the greatest potential for these powers and pairing them up.

 

[Vendikarr]

I had theory about the whole psychic powers thing. What if instead of trying to create a person with psychic powers, they were simply trying to make something that was already there more powerful. Perhaps in this world back in the 60's or before, someone found out that there were already people with weak psychic powers, and they decided to make them stronger. So they decided to use Ascension as a way to get a super psychic from the people who already had powers. All of the kids that they kidnapped already had very weak powers, or the potential for them, and so they were hoping that if they got them all to breed with each other they would produce someone like Christa. Perhaps the birth computer is actually finding the people with the strongest powers, or the greatest potential for these powers and pairing them up.

I think this goes with one of the things the honeytrap lady said. Kids were tested and enrolled in special schools and then disappeared. Whatever testing was done must have been to look for genetic markers or other observable traits to indicate a possibility for telepathic or telekinetic abilities. So all these children were put on the ship, and bred together for three generations. Given her age, Krista may have even been a 4th generation child if adults with the same traits had been recruited..

Which may have been enough for pre-existing traits to manifest into full blown psychic ability.

I wouldn't be surprised if Lorelei was a less advanced psychic herself. Dead Lorelei did 'tell' Krista about something under the pool. And since she appeared to Gault as well as Krista I don't think she was just a manifestation of Krista's mind.

 

[dub]

^And the rest would be dead weight?

They would be selected for various purposes and talents. Because of the classified nature of the mission and the technology, there are only a handful of people on the mission who actually know what's going on. The rest had to be taken (to their family and friends the appearance is they died, were involved in accidents, etc) to preserve the secrecy of the mission.

Why the hell would they bother?

I'm glad you asked. The big "twist" is the project planners are actually aliens and this is a giant experiment on humans.

 

[Christopher]

^And the rest would be dead weight?

They would be selected for various purposes and talents. Because of the classified nature of the mission and the technology, there are only a handful of people on the mission who actually know what's going on. The rest had to be taken (to their family and friends the appearance is they died, were involved in accidents, etc) to preserve the secrecy of the mission.

But the idea I'm objecting to is that the people on the ship itself would not know they were in space. That's what doesn't make sense to me. What has preserving secrecy got to do with that? They're already off Earth; who are they gonna tell?

Why the hell would they bother?

I'm glad you asked. The big "twist" is the project planners are actually aliens and this is a giant experiment on humans.

That's only been done about a million times before. A twist should be something that isn't predictable.

 

[dub]

You win.

I bet those words have never been posted on trekbbs. There's a little unpredictable gift for ya!

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Now that's a twist.

The other guy wasn't there, just Gault. They disappeared together, but only Gault reappeared.

Yeah, I said that. Presumably he appeared on some other part of the planet, but who knows? The question is, if they left together, why didn't they appear together?

Also, it's not Alpha and Beta Centauri, it's Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B.

That's true.

I know you meant that as an analogy, but steampunk refers specifically to Victorian-styled retro-SF. The term for retro-60s would have to be something else. Atompunk? Googiepunk?

I know. I was the one who suggested Atompunk back on page three. It doesn't quite do it for me, though. Maybe Atomicagepunk. Or, better yet, Atomagepunk.

I felt just the opposite. I found her wide-mouthed gaping to be ludicrously overplayed.

Not at all, especially not for a kid.

But the first decade leaving the solar system would be particularly hard to fake. Logic dictates that they use slingshot maneuvers around planetary bodies to both course correct and increase velocity. Given the set up we saw for the exterior of the ship, faking orbital insertions around planets could not be faked. "Piloting" the ship for that first decade would have to have been handled by people in the know.

It would be worse than that. The gravity during the journey can be explained by constant acceleration, but how do they fake the initial acceleration of launch (either from the ground or orbit) or the inertial changes during a gravity assist or the microgravity during the maneuver to reverse direction and decelerate at the mid point of the mission (which really should have happened one year before this story)? They'd have to find an excuse to knock out the whole crew during all of these, which they'd be hard pressed to do.

Come to think of it, how did they get the people into the ship? Did they pretend that the facility was a launch silo? With Mission Control twenty feet from rockets powerful enough to reach escape velocity? The whole thing becomes more implausible the more we try to justify it.

 

[Guy Gardener]

This Island Earth (1955).

You boys like to call this "the push-button age." it isn't. Not yet. Not until we can team up atomic energy with electronics. Then we'll have the horses as well as the cart.

 

[Morpheus 02]

^^ Now that's a twist.

The other guy wasn't there, just Gault. They disappeared together, but only Gault reappeared.

Yeah, I said that. Presumably he appeared on some other part of the planet, but who knows? The question is, if they left together, why didn't they appear together?

Also, it's not Alpha and Beta Centauri, it's Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B.

That's true.

I know. I was the one who suggested Atompunk back on page three. It doesn't quite do it for me, though. Maybe Atomicagepunk. Or, better yet, Atomagepunk.

I felt just the opposite. I found her wide-mouthed gaping to be ludicrously overplayed.

Not at all, especially not for a kid.

But the first decade leaving the solar system would be particularly hard to fake. Logic dictates that they use slingshot maneuvers around planetary bodies to both course correct and increase velocity. Given the set up we saw for the exterior of the ship, faking orbital insertions around planets could not be faked. "Piloting" the ship for that first decade would have to have been handled by people in the know.

It would be worse than that. The gravity during the journey can be explained by constant acceleration, but how do they fake the initial acceleration of launch (either from the ground or orbit) or the inertial changes during a gravity assist or the microgravity during the maneuver to reverse direction and decelerate at the mid point of the mission (which really should have happened one year before this story)? They'd have to find an excuse to knock out the whole crew during all of these, which they'd be hard pressed to do.

Come to think of it, how did they get the people into the ship? Did they pretend that the facility was a launch silo? With Mission Control twenty feet from rockets powerful enough to reach escape velocity? The whole thing becomes more implausible the more we try to justify it.

Have we seen anyone over the age of 60? No one with a clear memory seems to be around.

ALso, being a TREK fan...I am able to let some things go if the overall story is good (like Darmok)

 

[Christopher]

ALso, being a TREK fan...I am able to let some things go if the overall story is good (like Darmok)

That's the problem, though -- it wasn't all that good. The interesting parts were swamped by the weak, implausible, cliched, and soapy parts.

 

[EmoBorg]

I actually liked the show but i got 2 questions.

a) The first generation that went onboard the ship, were they volunteers or were they forced to go on that ship after being selected.

b) Did the first generation know it was some kind of sociological experiment to develop new technologies and hopefully produce a psychic being or did they really think that they were going into space.

 

[Vendikarr]

I actually liked the show but i got 2 questions.

a) The first generation that went onboard the ship, were they volunteers or were they forced to go on that ship after being selected.

b) Did the first generation know it was some kind of sociological experiment to develop new technologies and hopefully produce a psychic being or did they really think that they were going into space.

I believe A is a combination of both. For B the conaensus seems to think most were in the dark of the true nature of the mission but some had to know to make the deception work.

 

[Guy Gardener]

A. You can't volunteer for something you don't know about. Conscription? maybe a nebulous choice like in the matrix "Red Pill or Blue Pill". Of course if it's Kennedy himself asking you to chose between the red Pill and the Blue Pill. Only a real asshole is not going to take Jack's Red Pill. 30 children were kidnapped.

B. No one was supposed to know. But the script suggests that there was always a man inside making sure nothing went balls up.

 

[Greg Cox]

I was curious about how Doctor Bryce, "our man on the inside," got recruited to spy on the others for the project. I mean, presumably, he was born on the ship like everyone else and didn't just show up one day without explanation. Was he raised or recruited by the original "inside man" when he was growing up aboard the ship? And how did they possibly convince him to spend his whole life pretending that he was stuck out in space somewhere? What sort of incentive did they offer him to play along with the deception for the rest of his natural life?

Also, what was the Project planning to do once the ship finally completed its century-long "voyage" and the folks aboard expect to arrive at the other planet. Granted, that problem was still 55 years away, but you have to figure that there was some endgame in mind--unless the Project's designers figured that they'd have enough super-psychic teleporters to make the mission "real" by then.