Initially, Syfy’s The Ark is a tough trip — and never solely as a result of the premiere episode opens with a catastrophic occasion that destroys a lot of the spaceship it’s set on, together with most of its passengers.
Its premise feels borrowed from numerous different sci-fi tales. Its heroes appear to have been plucked half-formed from a manufacturing unit of drained tropes. And its tone is off by some means, as if showrunners Dean Devlin (Leverage) and Jonathan Glassner (Stargate SG-1) haven’t but determined whether or not to lean into the grimness of its survival drama, or into the jarring uplift of its credit theme.
The Ark The Backside Line A bumpy begin finally smooths out to a enjoyable trip. Airdate: 10 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 1 (Syfy)
Solid: Christie Burke, Richard Fleeshman, Reece Ritchie, Stacey Learn, Ryan Adams, Shalini Peiris, Pavle Jerinic, Christina Wolfe, Tiana Upcheva
Creator: Dean Devlin
But simply because the ship’s crew start to rise to the event, so too do their collection’ disparate parts. The Ark might by no means be admired for its thematic profundity, or its courageous concepts, or its nuanced character growth. However by the fourth hourlong episode despatched to critics (of a 12-episode season), it finds its personal groove as a little bit of thrilling, undemanding enjoyable.
To The Ark‘s credit score, it is aware of completely properly that its narrative is well-trod territory, and subsequently doesn’t waste time overexplaining. The specifics are these: 100 years sooner or later, Earth has change into so uninhabitable that humanity’s final hope lies with the colonization of different planets. What we’re watching is the primary such mission, comprising 400 navy personnel, scientists, engineers and different fastidiously chosen craftspeople to blaze a path for different civilians to observe.
However when catastrophe strikes, the 150-ish survivors discover themselves yanked out of cryosleep a yr early with only some weeks’ value of meals and water to maintain them. As a result of the incident additionally worn out all the excessive command, management falls to the three highest-ranking navy officers on board: charismatic Lt. Brice (Richard Fleeshman), formidable Lt. Lane (Reece Ritchie) and levelheaded Lt. Garnet (Christie Burke) — the latter of whom steps as much as change into the ship’s de facto captain, to apparent resentment from the opposite two.
Beneath such panicked, determined circumstances, the present’s lead characters vary at first from unmemorable to unlikable. Lane’s darkish mutterings about “survival of the fittest” paint him as borderline villainous; ditto Cat (Christina Wolfe), a self-absorbed influencer whose knee-jerk response to extreme (and severely mandatory) water rations is to flout the principles with a soothing bathe. However characters ostensibly designed to be successful additionally really feel miscalibrated. Scientific wunderkind Alicia (Stacey Learn) fills the stereotypical function of the nerd who talks an excessive amount of when she’s nervous, however The Ark overshoots the mark in order that she lands initially as exhaustingly mannered quite than amusingly quirky.
Nonetheless, if The Ark struggles at first to put in writing folks value liking, its saving grace is an adeptness at spinning tales that make us root for his or her survival regardless. Put one other means: You don’t want to like a fictional particular person to take pleasure in watching them give you loopy or artistic methods to wriggle out of near-certain doom. At a time when far too many TV tasks invoice themselves as 70-hour films or no matter, The Ark strikes a refreshing stability between season-long mysteries and episodic thrills. It’s by no means quick on plot: At one level, its crew is making an attempt concurrently to determine what hit their ship and remedy a homicide and keep away from an asteroid area — all whereas working via grief, exhaustion and mutual suspicion. But The Ark‘s crisis-of-the-week construction retains the pacing brisk and straightforward to look at.
Right here and there, The Ark may think of The Martian with its curiosity in artistic problem-solving. (There’s even a dorky scientist, performed by Ryan Adams, who figures out develop veggies utilizing human waste as fertilizer.) Or perhaps there’s a little bit of Battlestar Galactica within the insularity of its inhabitants and within the relentlessness of these existential threats. However this present has no comparable ambitions of musing about human nature or commenting on real-world occasions. Its mission in the beginning is to entertain, which comes with its personal advantages. Its lack of curiosity in being too brainy, too deep or too “sensible” — in taking itself too critically, in different phrases — permits it to throw within the type of reveals that would finally push The Ark towards weirder and wackier territory.
And though the present’s occasional makes an attempt to inject intercourse and romance into its drama stay awkward (amongst its cringiest moments is Cat, newly appointed the resident psychological well being specialist, all however waggling her eyebrows as she tells Lane and Brice, “I’ll take you two individually, or each directly”), some humor and camaraderie do begin to shine via across the third episode. Time will inform if the forged ever absolutely jells right into a cohesive ensemble,however I discovered it simpler to heat to the characters as they warmed to one another and to their new roles on this makeshift society — particularly Kabir (Shalini Peiris), the terminally exhausted physician, and Felix (Pavle Jerinic), the principled head of safety.
By the fourth episode, The Ark is clicking properly sufficient to ship its boldest outing up to now. Because the crew members fall one after the other to a mysterious ailment, every begins to see eerie hallucinations representing their darkest fears or their dearest fantasies. Then, as if that weren’t sufficient, the collection makes use of that chance to drop a significant, amusingly absurd reveal, and to trace at one other. The gamble pays off: Not solely do the visions deepen every of the foremost gamers simply as we’re lastly beginning to care about them, in methods each humorous and heartbreaking, however the escalation had me cheering them on of their race for a remedy. By the top, I discovered myself gleefully yelling on the tv over the cliffhanger. Not unhealthy for a collection with such bumpy beginnings.
