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The Ark

Ark on Syfy

Credits

Cast

Network

Reviewer

Paul Asay

TV Series Review

It wasn’t like the Ark One was exactly a pleasure cruiser to begin with.

It left Earth when the ol’ gal had just another 70 years of life (at most). The ship was then pointed toward an alien world of uncertain prospects, a desperate gamble of a desperate people—one of several hail Mary passes lobbed into space.

But even with that grim backstory, the Ark One has had more than its share of bad luck en route. A good chunk of the craft—and two thirds of its people—were killed with a year left in space. The survivors are learning how to live and lead on the fly. And with a new crisis cropping up literally every week, the stress level is a wee bit high.

“I got to be honest,” says Lt. James Brice, one of the ship’s de facto leaders. “I really thought that traveling faster than the speed of light was going to be a little more fun.”

So did we.

Traitors on the Lost Ark?

Lt. Sharon Garnet has appointed herself as the ship’s commander. Not that the competition for the job was all that robust. Brice and Lt. Spencer Lane are the only other officers to survive the cataclysm (whatever it was), and she didn’t allow them time to consider advancement opportunities before she grabbed the reins.

But she’s no dictator; not yet, anyway. Garnet has installed something of a leadership council to guide the ship through its myriad crises.

In addition to Brice and Lane, the council includes Alicia Nevins, the 19-year-old brilliant-if-overly-loquacious head of life support; Felix Strickland, the stoic head of security; Eva Markovic, who heads up the maintenance and engineering team; and Dr. Sanjivni Kabir, the ship’s much-in-demand doctor. Other characters, including agricultural wunderkind Angus Medford and the somewhat mysterious Baylor Trent, get some screen time, too.

But time is something the ship has, paradoxically, way too much of and way too little of. The ship might run out of water at any moment. Or food. Or air. Or hope. And if all those issues are resolved, there are more mysterious threats both outside and inside the ship.

Inside? Yes indeedy. And perhaps it’s not surprising. After all, the Ark One was the hottest ticket on Earth for a while. And a few people—or more than a few—weaseled their way on board without authorization. Most are pretending to be someone else. And one pretender is on the bridge itself.

Ark, the Series’ Problems Bring

If you took the DNA of the original Star Trek and paired it with the early seasons of CW’s The 100, you might get something like Syfy’s The Ark. Like Star Trek’s Enterprise, the Ark One is going to where no one has gone before (and experiencing weekly crises as it goes). Like The 100, it has conveniently done away with most anyone who might bring seasoned wisdom to the party—leaving the ship (and show) filled with scrappy, telegenic youngsters (relatively speaking) learning the ropes along the way.

That may help explain some of the show’s own youthful indiscretions.

While The Ark sticks to modern basic-cable standards (it also streams on Peacock), you’ll still hear plenty of foul language on board, including the s-word. Romance, as you might imagine, is in the air—more so in some episodes than air itself. The Ark flirts with nudity (without quite showing anything critical) and can get violent at times as well. Death is always on the table—though overt gore, thankfully, is not.

The Ark comes with a bit of intrigue, too. It’s far from the worst sci-fi show to make the jump to our streaming space. But it’s far from the best, either—its engines mired with often one-dimensional characters and melodramatic storylines. And if you think that Ark One might whisk you away from mediocre television, you might want to wait for the next ship to board.

Episode Reviews

Feb. 1, 2023—S1, Ep1: “Everyone Wanted to be On This Ship”

A disaster strikes the Ark One—literally—forcing the crew to wake up from suspended animation a year early and rescue the ship from total disaster. But when the immediate crisis is averted, it’s discovered that two-thirds of the crew, including almost all of its officers, were lost. Worse yet, most of the food and water is gone, too.

The Ark One does have a spare water recycler on board—one that had been intended for their final destination, but which may be converted to use aboard the ship. Until it is retrofitted, though, water use is strictly rationed: No showers allowed. This doesn’t stop one female crewmember from sneaking into the shower room and disrobing. When a security officer shows up, she invites him to watch her. Nothing critical is seen, but the camera does spy the female crewmember’s bare back and the side of her breast, and we watch as she lathers up her shoulders and upper chest. In an earlier scene (before water was thought to be a problem), a male crewman lounges in an ice bath. He grins as he’s hoisted out, his anatomy on full display. (We don’t see anything, but a female crewmember does, and she obviously likes what she sees.)

Two characters kiss, and we learn that one of them essentially lied to get the other one on board. There’s a possible intimation of another inappropriate relationship as well.

As mentioned, two-thirds of the ship—about 300 people—died in the initial disaster. We see at least one in her cryogenic pod, lying lifeless. The floor of the pod bay buckles and debris rains down from the ship’s roof. Six more apparently die when the ship’s life-support system breaks. (We see lots of folks suffer from oxygen loss.) The ship’s gravitational system fails, too, sending crewmembers hurtling into walls. When it reengages, they fall to the ground. Someone’s throat is slit. People sometimes collapse due to their atrophied muscles.

We hear about, or hear rumors of, several people who’ve smuggled themselves aboard the ship under false pretenses. Characters lie and mislead. There’s some discussion of using human waste as fertilizer. Someone disables a lock aboard ship and credits his “misspent youth.” We hear two uses of the s-word and a number of other profanities, including “a–,” “h—” and the profane British crudity “bleeding.” God’s name is misused six times, including twice with the word “d–n.”

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Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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