Plot
“The Ark" is a television show set 100 years in the future when humanity has started colonizing other planets to secure its survival. The first mission on the spacecraft, Ark One, experiences a catastrophic event leading to widespread destruction and fatalities. The remaining crew members must transform into their best selves to survive the year-long journey to the target planet, despite the lack of life supporting resources and the absence of leadership. “
Series from SyFy in my experience dont often open strong, I remember watching some of them like The Magicians, Van Helsing, Z Nation just to mention a few, also the plot of this Tv Series is nothing new but it's not always the plot is the characters within the series that makes it special. How many tv series we have seen based on gangsters, out of space, monsters and its the main characters and side stories within that makes it special.
The Ark starts with a ship that has a large amount of passengers to colonize the next planet for humans, the ship suffers damage and the first scene is basically part of the ship falling apart and the passengers start to wake up from their stasis way before planed, this first episode as mentioned really feels like a pilot, on new series its most of the time like that and some of them get cancel before the first season ends.
Cast
- Christie Burke: as Lt. Sharon Garnet, a low-ranking officer who rises to the challenge after the disaster on The Ark
- Richard Fleeshman: as Lt. James Brice, who is responsible for Ark One's navigation systems.
- Reece Ritchie: as Lt. Spencer Lane, another low-ranking officer who believes that only the strongest will make it.
- Stacey Read: as Alicia Nevins, a brilliant young woman who works on the Waste Management team and is underutilized.
- Ryan Adams: as Angus Medford, a young man who excels in horticulture and farming.
Two of these main characters are brought to life by very new rising stars that are just starting their Tv career as their first series with Stacey Read and Ryan Adams, they both fit very well on awkward characters who seem very very smart within their fields and at the same time shy and lost.
Review
This series obviously reminds me of many others and the rules were kinda the same, rationing, death sentence for some crimes within the ship, low oxygen, low supplies, your classic exploration movie where something always goes wrong, very similar to The 100 on The Ark there are very strong leaders like Lt. Sharon Garnet who since minute one of the series took the initiative to get everyone out of their pods and safe them instead of just saving herself, this shows leadership, proclaim herself the leader of the ship since she is the highest rank officer alive, the entire section of high ranking officers dies during the accident that the ship suffers and still no one knows what really happened and latter on when she was publicly called out by Lt. Spencer Lane for taking decisions without consulting the rest, answer him politely and then put him in his place.
This entire process of deciding who is in charge for me was probably the best part of the episode since puts everyone aboard tense since everyone doubts if they will survive and question why this new group of officers are the ones in charge and if they will fit the suit.
The story of the The Ark for now really doesn't bring anything new that other space tv series haven't tell us before, some of the situations within the ship seems a little force or predictable like at first the rationing, then there was a problem with the oxygen (on this one I thought someone was trying to reduce the amount of people on the ship). When the oxygen goes out there was an engineer in charge of the survival system like oxygen and water but it end up that the guy was a pirate, Jasper Dade the man in charge by Chris Leak was not really him, he paid someone on earth to get him in to the ship since the earth was suppose to implode in 70 years at best, when the crew finds out about this put him in “Jail” to then find out someone execute him, in my opinion the person who got him on the ship is still aboard and close to the team in charge, this was very vague for me.
There are many questions to answers and that's ok, I wouldn't call The Ark a home run like The Last of Us but definitely a soft hit to first base, the story is still developing and for a first episode I think its ok, if you like sci-fi movies and lost missions in space then I think this series fits you. There are many other side stories within the series to develop, we have other characters that we don't know much of but later on for sure will play their part in the story
Trailer