The Ark: Season One

April 1, 2023 10:51 AM - Season 1 (Full Season)

100 years in the future, humanity must leave Earth. Ark One heads toward Proxima Centauri b to establish the first colony, but the crew is awakened during the journey after disaster strikes.

The Ark airs on SyFy and streams on Peacock in the US.

posted by Etrigan (34 comments total)

Did I only start this because I was isolating after a positive COVID test? Yes.

Is it an improbably attractive young crew in improbably soapy situations? Yes.

Is it nevertheless an enjoyable way to spend an hour a week? Oddly, it is.

If you like your shows to have at least one "Holy shit, this changes everything!" moment per episode, then you'll like this nonsense.
posted by Etrigan at 10:53 AM on April 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

great recommendation, Etrigan. I find the further I go into this terrible timeline, the more I need some fun fluffy drama to distract me!
posted by supermedusa at 12:13 PM on April 1, 2023

I so so wanted to like this - I'm especially fond of the security chief and his sidekick (who spent the first three episodes just looking scornful before she finally got a line of dialog) - and I tried to overlook the scientific errors, but then they had a science error that directly contradicted their own damn premise, and I had to nope out. Damn shame.

I'm referring to them finding a star system on the way to Proxima Centauri. Prox is their target because it was the closest star system to Earth. Where the hell did this new star system come from?
posted by Mogur at 3:55 PM on April 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

This show is so, so, so terrible and yet weirdly addictive. The plot is awful. The acting is horrendous. The effects are mediocre for 1999. The “science” embarrasses my 13 year old son it is so shoddy.

And yet we never miss an episode.

And I just know it will end on a giant cliffhanger and get cancelled.
posted by fimbulvetr at 4:28 PM on April 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

We've been catching bits of this, here and there. What I've seen suggests that it is very low-budget, it sorely wants to be Battlestar Galactica and it's better than I would've expected from seeing Dean Devlin's name in the credits. (I know he was involved with The Librarians, which people seemed to like, but I still think of him as one of the Independence Day/Godzilla '97 dudes.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:03 PM on April 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

You are my people here who feel the same way about this awful cheap lame show that I just can't stop watching.
posted by seasparrow at 8:38 PM on April 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

I got excited for a moment because I thought this Ark was this instead.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:34 PM on April 1, 2023

Did we learn nothing from The Starlost?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:29 PM on April 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Happy to not be the only one watching this because it's stupid rather than despite.
posted by Marticus at 10:01 PM on April 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Devlin's name doesn't throw up a flag for me because of Leverage, but the '90's Saturday afternoon syndication vibe is strong with this one. I am enjoying the plot at all costs, characters are developed on the fly, relationships come from a pachinko machine oracle, zest of it all. However, I will never recommend this series to anyone who does not suffer from the same brain damage I must obviously have, because, oh boy, this is just an enjoyable, endless, series of WTF.
posted by Ignorantsavage at 8:04 PM on April 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I dunno if anyone else here has listened to the podcast "Let's make a Sci-Fi", but not only are the similarities of The Ark incredibly similar to what that group of comedians came up with for their "serious sci-fi show", but after listening to that podcast I can't help but think The Ark had a very similar fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants development process.
posted by fimbulvetr at 10:42 AM on April 4, 2023

It's no 'Aniara'.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 2:24 PM on April 5, 2023

12-year-old me would have loved it, don't get me wrong...but 12-year-old me loved The Starlost.
posted by Mogur at 4:28 AM on April 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Episode 10, "Hoping for Forever": Apparently, they killed the only competent denizen of Ark 15 before he could tell his buddies "Make sure they don't do the exact same thing to us that I'm about to do to them."
posted by Etrigan at 10:47 AM on April 6, 2023

Have only watched the pilot, but that was promising. It's bad, but so earnest and self aware.

Having a bunch of easy on the eyes characters certainly doesn't do it any harm.
posted by porpoise at 5:58 PM on April 9, 2023

This is crazypants awesome!
posted by porpoise at 10:14 PM on April 9, 2023

I love how at ep 7 they go full on 'Fallout' style experimentation!
posted by porpoise at 7:22 PM on April 10, 2023

Episode 11, "The Last Thing You Ever Do": Ark 15 people continue to be foolish. Hackers save the day. It's all very heroickal as we head into the season finale next week.

And this soap bubble of improbability has been renewed for a second season.
posted by Etrigan at 10:52 AM on April 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

Lorrrrrrrrrrrrrrd this is not good. I _think_ it's almost into the stage where you start hollering at your TV that they're being stupid, which takes it past bland lack of amusement into, like -

• What the chicken-fried fuck are you knuckleheads doing this time? Oh just a little uncontrolled explosion in the men's shower room? sure sure, got it
• Oh good, they found a new way for Nevins to be annoying, I was afraid that well was drying up.
• It's a good thing the actress that plays Garnet has naturally thin lips, so she can draw them tight when she's making a tough decision every 10 minutes.
• Man it's _also_ a good thing the transfer hose is super strong, so the shuttle could use tiny little squeezy gripper feet to ... not accelerate the ark, instead just uh stretch the hose like a rubber band I guess?
• Wait, how the hell does gravity work in this show? I thought the rotating sections were the usual centripetal force artificial gravity but uh I guess not? So are they spinning the engines because they like the Coriolis effect in their maneuvers? And both in the same direction, for extra torque fuckery. _Awesome_.

I do like that the cast is suitably international for an international project. Even if the navigator looks like the illegitimate lovechild of The Deep from the Boys and Michael Keaton. On the other hand I guess looking at the full cast makes me wonder if this is a some kind of Eastern European co-production, which makes it easier than when Hollywood tries to be international, right?

Weird. I mean, it isn't _good_, but it's compelling? But not in a good way? I'm conflicted about this, but I'm maybe invested in it at this point after _three whole episodes_. I do keep kind of ticking off the Stargate Universe plots at they speedrun through them on the Ark, though.
posted by Kyol at 9:14 AM on April 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

Even if the navigator looks like the illegitimate lovechild of The Deep from the Boys and Michael Keaton

... oh goddammit.

On the other hand I guess looking at the full cast makes me wonder if this is a some kind of Eastern European co-production

Yeah, it's shot entirely in Serbia.
posted by Etrigan at 9:30 AM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh my gawrsh $STUFF reacts with helium which is a byproduct of the CO2 scrubbers.

Has anyone on the show even done high school chemistry?
posted by Marticus at 1:44 AM on April 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Has anyone on the show even done high school chemistry?

I guarantee you there's one writer who raises his hand gingerly at some point in each episode and the showrunner just says "I don't want to hear it, Frank." without even looking at him.
posted by Etrigan at 6:03 AM on April 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

Episode 12, "Everybody Wins": A nice little not-quite-cliffhanger sets up the next season pretty well. Unsurprisingly, they didn't kill off anybody yet, as even Evil Girl gets a throwaway "She's in a coma" line.
posted by Etrigan at 7:13 AM on April 20, 2023

I guarantee you there's one writer who raises his hand gingerly at some point in each episode and the showrunner just says "I don't want to hear it, Frank." without even looking at him.

"It'll increase engagement, Frank. Stuff it."
posted by Kyol at 1:53 PM on April 20, 2023

Yeah, it's shot entirely in Serbia.

Which is mildly interesting, in that so were seasons 2-4 of The Outpost, which had Dean Devlin as an Exec Producer and also starred Reece Ritchie and Tiana Upcheva, and which was of a similar good-naturedly pot-boiling and cheesey consistency.
posted by Sparx at 5:56 PM on April 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Science! (motherfuckers) aside, I enjoyed this for what it was.

The ending was kind of my favourite ending for this kind of thing (some people are good, many are bad, majority are sheep who can be swayed by the assholes) - and we're all fucked.
posted by porpoise at 7:49 PM on April 20, 2023

And we're all fucked because the good people keep saving the bad people.
posted by Etrigan at 5:37 AM on April 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I'm not even that far along in the season, and I'm regularly going "welp, I guess you get mulched for fertilizer then, thank you for your contribution" when someone or another is an ass or just generally anti-survival. I mean, they aren't doing a very good job of making them have redeeming characteristics like Dr Rush in SG:U. Sure he was an ass, sure he got everybody stuck where they were, but he was also busy keeping the crew alive. At least until Eli got up to speed, anyway.
posted by Kyol at 11:50 AM on April 21, 2023

Thank you all for being here. It's so poorly made, sets are cheesy and improbable, the writing is mostly perfunctory with bits that are kind of good, and the acting is uneven. Plot holes, bad science, etc. The casting is pretty decent. Evil Lady is one step removed from the Evil Lady in Power Rangers. And I cheerfully kept watching.
posted by theora55 at 7:16 PM on April 23, 2023

Ah, I finally finished it off, and maybe it got a bit stockholm syndrome-y for me at the end there, but it kept things ticking along at a fun little clip and was bad enough that it invited audience participation. DID YOU KNOW: Evil Redhead is the daughter of one of the producers. That's always a great sign. And the actress who played Susan Ingram (the original captain? I think?) is Devlin's wife. Klampkin's disease is literally one of the writer's names - Kendall Lampkin.

Honestly I spent the last few episodes afraid they were going to kill off someone I liked since they seemed to be a bit freer with that early in the season. I mean, maybe Evil Redhead was your favorite character, but she could recover! And I think they kind of left it in a reasonable position for next season to have an external adversary rather than trying to keep the local yokel shitheads around on the bridge in perpetuity.

I mean, it's easy to roll your eyes and think it was terrible and all, but if you compare it to even pro-am (like church and etc) productions, it's still competently assembled, it's just competently assembled out of the cheapest materials available. Like, put my dumb ass on either side of a camera and you won't end up with anything nearly as amusing. I always sort of wish I had the knowledge to figure out how something like this gets 90% of the way there and maybe just needed better writers to take some of the edge off? And looking at the writer's room, maybe that's basically it, Devlin uses his position to get people their first credited gigs on a major tv channel.

So... Yeah, I'm looking forward to the second season, regardless of how ridiculous it is.
posted by Kyol at 7:31 AM on April 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

Well, a planet exploding due to fire... I think the writers' room is probably overrepresented by ten-year-olds.
posted by Marticus at 5:24 PM on April 26, 2023

It's a shame, because now I wish I could remember the "hard" sci-fi about a tidally locked planet with an atmosphere. Probably Niven.
posted by Kyol at 6:59 PM on April 26, 2023

It's a shame, because now I wish I could remember the "hard" sci-fi about a tidally locked planet with an atmosphere. Probably Niven.

Robert J. Sawyer did a trilogy featuring dinosaurs living on a tidally locked moon.
posted by Etrigan at 7:13 PM on April 26, 2023

I guarantee you there's one writer who raises his hand gingerly at some point in each episode and the showrunner just says "I don't want to hear it, Frank."

Mitchell & Webb explain.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:41 PM on June 14, 2023