I haven't seen episode 3 yet, but since there aren't many "space" shows on now, it's providing a fix. "OK" is the best thing I can say about it.
Spoilers THE ARK (2023)
- Thread starter Skipper
- Start date
Similar?
It's not that bad. Out of ten or twelve regular and recurring cast members, you've got the biracial, South Africa-born Reece Ritchie, the Zimbabwean Stacey Read, the Sri Lankan Shalini Peiris, and the Afro-British Miles Barrow. Still, the complete lack of East Asian cast members bugs me.
Also, this is from the same creators as The Outpost, which was a fun show, but had absolutely no LGBTQ characters in its entire run as far as I recall. So far there's no evidence that this will be any different, though we're only three episodes in.
No, The Starlost was a "generation ship whose inhabitants have forgotten they're on a generation ship" story. This is closer to the old pilot movie Earth*Star Voyager, or Ron Moore's failed pilot Virtuality.
Uh... not really. I mean, Voyager was always on mission until the 3rd act twist. Voyager wasn't even a colony ship, it was on a round trip. But I do have a feeling that Earth Star Voyager's third act twist is going to be mirrored in this series. You can almost see it coming. Just like you know Life Science Girl's new boyfriend is about to go Dr Smith on the crew.
If anything, I think the show mirrors Stargate Universe the most.
But man, is the production quality bad. I mean, SGU and even Dark Matter looked better than this show. And how long ago was that? I mean, the CGI is iffy at best and the sets look like cardboard with 3D-printed buttons glued on. The only thing that has held my interest is the break neck speed and the fact that they're not drawing out the story like SGU's early episodes.
BTW, I think if Neil Degrasse Tyson watched that ship spin around in the last episode then he might actually just drop dead. And did not one single person tell the writers that the ship's engines don't have to be constantly on for the ship to be moving forward?
Yeah, that was really noticeable. Especially when they make a point to show that the bridge isn't in the ring. I don't know, maybe you could explain it away by saying that the artificial gravity is a power hog and the spinning ring is a power saver during the hibernation part of the trip?
At one point they want to deploy a solar sail and they suggest uncharted planets may be near by. So it's possible they're passing through a solar system?
But nothing excuses that shuttle spinning the Ark around in a perfect 180 and speeding up to that comet, especially when the whole episode points out that the Ark and Comet are initially speeding away from each other.
And did nobody notice that Jasper is "Trevor" from The Play Goes Wrong?
I didn't say it was the same, I just said it's closer to that than it is to The Starlost, because it's a colony ship on a mission of several years rather than a centuries-old generation ship whose inhabitants don't even remember they're on a ship.
I guess in terms of having an ensemble of clashing characters stuck on a starship, yeah. That wasn't as much as a disaster-survival narrative as this is, though. It's similar to Netflix's Lost in Space in its emphasis on characters figuring out clever solutions to the weekly crises, which is the part I enjoy.
Yeah, that's been bugging me. I think they said they're 5 years into their trip and have one year left. If they're 5/6 of the way there, they should either be coasting or decelerating.
Maybe, but it's not our job to explain these things, it's the writers' job. If that were the intent, they should've established it onscreen. As it stands, it just looks like they didn't think things through.
Except they said in episode 3 that their target is "Prox B," and they're traveling slower than light on a 6-year voyage. So their target must be Proxima Centauri B, and there are no star systems between Sol and Proxima Centauri.
Not really speeding, though, since the comet approached gradually over several hours. Their relative speed was actually extraordinarily low for a random encounter between interstellar objects. Normally you'd expect any two such objects to have such a great difference in velocity that any rendezvous would be over in a fraction of a second. So it's more like they were moving at nearly the same speed and direction, but the Ark was fractionally faster and caught up with the comet. Which is a hugely improbable occurrence, but the only way to make sense of the encounter as depicted.
But yes, the way the velocity-matching maneuver was depicted, like a cop car making a screeching U-turn to chase a perp, was ridiculous.
I don't understand why so many writers of space shows make no effort to research space. I mean, space isn't some magical fairyland -- it's actually out there, as physically real as anyplace on Earth, and we have a good understanding of how it works. If someone writes a story set in Paris, they'd research the geography and culture of Paris so they don't make any obvious howlers. They understand the need for verisimilitude. Even if a lot of readers or viewers won't know enough about the subject to tell the difference, the creators still make an effort to know their subject, at least usually. But the way most TV and movie creators handle outer space is akin to saying that the Eiffel Tower is a million miles high, made of noodles, and just across the Mississippi River from Antarctica.
Watching it, and it's ok so far, but really wish it had at least partially avoided the 'lord of the flies' in space thing that so many shows want to do. No one is professional, or even has basic qualifications. Most of they wouldn't have even been allowed on the ship. If this was the 'best and brightest' they were trying to save, better to just quietly die and not inflict that on the galaxy. So everyone's got an attitude and shitty behavior, no particular experience, secret pasts and hidden agendas... ugh.
Hoping they get over it and mature a little, but not optimistic about basically high school pissing match in space.
Hoping they get over it and mature a little, but not optimistic about basically high school pissing match in space.
To be fair to the show, the whole point of it is that most of these people were civilian passengers, or really more like cargo, just being shipped to the destination in cryogenic sleep. They were never meant to be awake on the ship, except very briefly on arrival as they were revived to be shuttled down to the colony planet. The actual crew, the people who were qualified to do this, were mostly killed in the accident, and the surviving junior staff and civilian colonists have had to take over. It's like those airline disaster movies where the cockpit crew dies and the flight attendants and passengers have to land the plane.
Granted, a more plausible ship design would've accounted for the always-significant risk of impact in interstellar space. Instead of having all the command crew in one section, they should've been evenly distributed throughout all the cryogenic compartments, so that no more than a fraction of the qualified personnel would've been killed in an impact.
The engines push the ship to light speed without the crew turning to paste.
It's not a reaction drive.
Well, this week's episode is basically The Ark's take on Star Trek: "The Naked Time," with a psychoactive agent altering the crew's mental states in a way that allows revealing things about their characters -- right down to the agent turning out to be spread through water. It was pretty effective at deepening a number of the characters, though a lot of it was devoted to advancing the mystery and conspiracy arcs, with it turning out there was a secret cabal intending a different mission for the Ark. Also, Garnet's a clone and an Augment, which comes as very little surprise.
And I'm pleased to see that this show isn't repeating The Outpost's relentless heteronormativity, with security chief Felix turning out to have a husband he left back home. Ironic, since Felix's actor Pavle Jerinic is one of several The Outpost cast members who are regulars or semiregulars here, along with Reece Ritchie (Lt. Lane), Tiana Upcheva (Eva Markovic), and Tamara Radovanovic (Jelena Griff). Anyway, Felix is becoming my favorite character, a man of real integrity and decency.
While most of the episode was fairly good, it ended with one of my least favorite cliches, the discovery of something alien made of an element not found on Earth's periodic table. Earth and the Solar system were formed out of the same nebular matter as the rest of the stars in the galaxy, intermixed from the remains of generations of earlier stars. So it should all be made out of the same stuff. It's conceivable that some younger stars might have synthesized relatively stable transuranic elements beyond the current limits of the periodic table, but they'd probably be extremely rare and short-lived and have limited uses.
And I'm pleased to see that this show isn't repeating The Outpost's relentless heteronormativity, with security chief Felix turning out to have a husband he left back home. Ironic, since Felix's actor Pavle Jerinic is one of several The Outpost cast members who are regulars or semiregulars here, along with Reece Ritchie (Lt. Lane), Tiana Upcheva (Eva Markovic), and Tamara Radovanovic (Jelena Griff). Anyway, Felix is becoming my favorite character, a man of real integrity and decency.
While most of the episode was fairly good, it ended with one of my least favorite cliches, the discovery of something alien made of an element not found on Earth's periodic table. Earth and the Solar system were formed out of the same nebular matter as the rest of the stars in the galaxy, intermixed from the remains of generations of earlier stars. So it should all be made out of the same stuff. It's conceivable that some younger stars might have synthesized relatively stable transuranic elements beyond the current limits of the periodic table, but they'd probably be extremely rare and short-lived and have limited uses.
I've not seen the latest episode, but I don't believe that was stated in the first 3 episodes.
The engines are clearly shown blasting exhaust out the back, so it's meant to be a rocket-type drive, but the writers and filmmakers completely ignore the physics of reaction drives. This week, the engines go back on and the occupants of the ship don't even notice until there's a PA announcement about it, so they feel no thrust.
I am aware of the premise, just think it’s a bit of a tired cliche itself, and one we’ve seen many times over. Based on the characterizations so far, I don’t really buy these folks as the best and brightest that could be sent for a species-saving colony mission either. Way too many personality issues, and everyone’s got a secret mission or agenda to work against.
Not sure it matters much, as it doesn’t seem like the kind of show that will last more than a season or two, but not much for compelling storylines so far other than just basic survival. Hoping they can find a groove, as so far it’s a crappier version of what we got with SG:U, but at least that one found it’s voice (only to be cancelled as it did so). And that one had SG weight behind it.
basically just saw this as a movie called Voyagers but with a better budget…
I never expect originality from Dean Devlin.
That occurred to me, but on the other hand, the Ark project does seem to be a corporate operation, in which case terrible decision-making on the part of the planners seems altogether plausible. Just look at Twitter lately.
The Ark's creators are the co-writer of the Stargate movie and the co-creator of Stargate SG-1.
This show is...not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but it has somehow managed to rope me in, in spite of it's many flaws. And after listening to this interview with Dean Devlin, I figured out why. It simply scratches an itch for an uncomplicated, pre ''prestige'' era, old fashioned space opera. Yes, part of me wishes that it were better (I don't need every show to be The Expanse). I'm not 100% okay with some casting choices beyond the Big 3. But it's latest episodes have taken a turn that I wouldn't have guessed early on, and they aren't dragging too many mysteries around for too long-or at least, they're throwing new plot elements at us to keep us distracted.
However you feel about the show, this talk with Devlin done prior to it's launch gives some interesting details on how he felt as the show came together and the challenges he encountered during production..
However you feel about the show, this talk with Devlin done prior to it's launch gives some interesting details on how he felt as the show came together and the challenges he encountered during production..
I just like it. 
Which actors do you like and not like? I really liked Reece Ritchie in Outpost
Unfortunately it's been locked on the Syfy site from episode 5 on, only accessible to people with cable subscriptions. But I think it's also on Peacock, and I've been thinking of signing up to that for a month or so, maybe when the season ends. Any idea how many episodes it has?