I don’t review TV series often because it appears this blog is cursed somehow. In the past, any ongoing series I reviewed would suddenly get cancelled. So I’m very torn whenever I want to write about a show that I like. I can either wait for its completion or risk the inevitable cancellation due to “the numbers not being what we expected”. If we could cut this crap of defining good television by the numbers, it would be lovely. Yet, they prefer to do the millionth Big Brother with some of the most despicable people on this planet and treat them like they are puppets and not human beings because “people like to see it”. However, that’s a conversation for another time.
While The Ark is an ongoing sci-fi TV series, I’m not too afraid of the cancelling curse because, to be honest, I’m astonished it went on to have two seasons and a third on the way. If you’ve never heard of The Ark before, I totally understand. I only discovered this series because I woke up one day in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep. A quick browsing through the channels brought me to SyFy, where a show with the same name as the space colony of one of my favourite series (The 100) was on. And to my surprise, I was hooked. Sadly, it didn’t help me to go back to sleep, but it did bring me hours of entertainment.
The premise is very simple. Earth is a ticking time bomb. Continuing to live on the planet is no longer an option. So they built arks capable of interstellar travel to reach other planets and establish new colonies. An accident along the way on Ark One destroyed part of the cabins where the crew were in cryosleep. The high-ranking officials are the ones dead, lost in space with the debris of the ship. The only people left are trainees who now need to hold everything together if they want to survive.
One thing that you can count on with this series is that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Every episode ends on a cliffhanger. Oh, you fixed the O2 tanks? Here, let me then mess with your water supply. There’s always something else happening. They are never at ease. And because the story starts already aboard the spaceship, we also have a lot of things from the past to learn about. There are always new things and new characters that bring something else to the plot. We never see the full picture. This allows for introducing whatever the show-runners want to keep the stakes always high, without slow-developing episodes.
There isn’t necessarily a plot per season. Instead, the characters have an objective each season. The first one is to reach Proxima B, the planet they are travelling to. Then, in season 2, it is to reach Trappist-1D. And for season 3, the crew will travel to Ross-128. With such lovely names, who wouldn’t want to live on these planets? So each season has a direction, but what happens along the way can be very crazy. And the fact that we have no idea what might happen next makes the show so much more dramatic and entertaining.
I have to mention the elephant in the room, the CGI. And the best thing I can say about it is that we can know for certain it’s not made by AI. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be so clunky. The special effects and post-production need a bit of work, but that doesn’t bother me all that much. I’ve seen a dog in a fur coat, or better yet, a second fur coat, being passed off as an alien in Star Trek, the original series. Bad CGI isn’t going to affect my enjoyment all that much. I’m here for the drama, not the visuals. Although that nebula in season 2 was really beautiful.
And one thing that I enjoyed a lot, specifically in the second season, was the storylines that The Ark has in common with The 100. I’m always searching for some of my favourite tropes, and they can be so specific that any little glimpse I can gather is a win. Sadly, The Ark isn’t based on a book. Otherwise, I would be reading it all up. The Ark is an amalgamation of all the sci-fi tropes. If it’s a sub-genre of sci-fi, they have done an episode about it. If not, then it’s probably saved for the third season. And I’m having way too much fun to care if Star Trek did augmented humans better than The Ark does. I’m here for the drama, to be surprised, and to still not get over some characters’ deaths.
I know that sci-fi is a niche genre, and that’s a cross that I have to bear. Cancellations are easy, numbers are low, but the fans are fierce. I still haven’t forgotten what you did to 1899 Netflix… So, is The Ark the next best big sci-fi show like The Expanse? No. The actors, the writing and the special effects are nothing to rave about. It’s all very okay. But the drama is the driving force of it all. It’s so entertaining, and the episodes are so fast-paced that there isn’t space to feel bored. And sometimes that’s all I ask.
