Welcome The Ark Science Fiction Drama Fans,
Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it on The Ark!
With the Earth destroying itself through the folly of humanity, everyone wanted to flee the planet and find a new one to live on. But, that also is not certain since little is known about this new world they are heading to.
However, at this moment, our stalwart crew is only interested in surviving. In the last episode, they were rationing water and food while trying to grow more. Exhausted, and still struggling, they have been thrust into a situation beyond their understanding.
While discussing this series with other fans it was pointed out to me that The Ark is using a well-worn trope. A crew of misfits wakes up from sleeping pods to a crisis. This is the plot of the movie, Passengers where people are awakened from cryo sleep this was seen in the final episode of the series, Stargate Universe. Is this a bad thing? No, it’s not. Imagine television or movies where an idea is never used again once it has been used. Eventually, there would be no stories to tell.
During the pilot episode and continuing in the second, Lt. Sharon Garnet (Christie Burke) has taken (assumed) the position of Captain of the ship named Ark-1 even though there are two others onboard of the same rank.
As the leader of Ark-1, Sharon is trying to do what is right for the crew while trying to keep the two senior people of the same rank, Lt. Lane (Reece Ritchie) and Lt. Brice (Richard Fleeshman), happy.
This may be a difficult task since Lane and Brice may not be easy to please and appear to have their own agenda to let Sharon take the lead and then criticise her for whatever.
Lane and Brice appear to be getting quite chummy. As they chat about the beginnings of their journey during the episode, we see a Flashback of the first day on board, and are introduced to the builder of the ship, or ships, as we learn, from a huge hologram figure named William Trust (Paul Leonard Murray). It is an interesting name for a guy who seems to be all ego, standing like a Goliath over the crew.
During the group get together, a large map of the Earth is shown. Immense fires are everywhere over the United States.
As always, Canadians and Mexicans have nothing to fear since there are no wild fires shown on those countries. It seems as if only the Americans are about to get charbroiled. Sorry, I had to say it.
NOTE: Click Here To Visit CTV-SciFi Website in Canada
Like It Touched the Sun:
The episode opens with both Lane and Brice and an expendable man on a Space Walk, or EVA outside the ship. They are looking for the damage to The Ark. All does not go well as pieces of debris are knocked off the structure and are headed toward them.
Mr. Expendable, also commonly known as a Red Shirt, is skewered by a javelin-shaped piece of the structure. Another piece has hit Lane in the head and knocked him unconscious. The two survivors quickly return to the ship and head straight to the Infirmary where we discover that the only doctor, Dr. Sanjivni Kabir (Shalini Peiris), is still overwhelmed with patients.
Perky, newly promoted, and chatty, Alicia Nevins (Stacey Read) arrives for her medical appointment. Although she can be endearing, the chattiness can get annoying.
This happens a lot because Alicia, although well meaning in her intent, is often in the way quite often due to her excited nature. This time she starts to get on Dr. Sanjivni Kabir’s nerves and is told directly and bluntly to “shut up”.
As the environment of The Ark heats up, the lack of sleep, and overwork, put everyone on edge. Not far away, crew members are arriving at a hallway where all of the people they have recently lost are about to be sent into space for burial.
This is stopped when Angus Medford (Ryan Adams) arrives. Angus later explains at a hastily called council meeting that the bodies can be composted into fertiliser to help grow the food they desperately need. A vote is taken and the dead are to be fed into the composting equipment.
Eva Markovic (Tiana Upcheva), who has lost her partner mentions that he would have wanted to continue to contribute to the survival of The Ark. This gets to everyone on board emotionally. As well, Lt. Garnet mentions that they still have a murder to solve. It’s good to know that this detail has not been forgotten. CSI: NY, they are not.
This episode provides more information about the backstory of Sharon Garnet, who seemed to just magically appear as she was placed on The Ark by some unknown higher ups.
This creates an air of mystery about her which continues as Felix Strickland (Pavle Jerinic) and an accompanying female crew member, Susan Ingram (Lisa Brenner), who seems to have been given the job of Assistant Security Officer are curious about what she is up to.
Felix naturally wants to know why Garnet is poking around the storage locker where the body of Jasper Dades (Chris Leask), the imposter, was located. He doesn’t accuse her of murder, but he doesn’t rule her out as a suspect. He seems to be a By-The-Book type of guy. Garnet explains that she was looking for the identity of the last person to use the locking mechanism. Shouldn’t Felix have already checked this as the security officer? Maybe he has and is withholding secrets of his own.
There is a problem in the Biodome where Angus Medford is working. The water pipes begin acting rather odd, then explode as, I assume, the pressure is too high. Angus does what he can to stop it, but fails. He later tells Garnet that they have lost about 100 gallons of water that they cannot afford to lose. It’s interesting here that they are still referring to units of measure in Imperial rather than metric. I am sure that one hundred years into our future the United States will have gotten on board with the metric system to join the rest of the world. But then, this series is geared to an American audience. So, what say you? Should measurement be in metric or Imperial on Ark-1?
I would like to note here that the explosion in the Biodome seems to be a metaphor for what is going on with the crew. People are snapping at each other and fights break out.
Upon cleanup, Angus discovers a hunting knife that was blown out of the pipe and could be the murder weapon. It seems that there is to be one major issue after another on Ark-1 while space, and the badly damaged ship appear to be trying to kill the crew. As I shared in my opening paragraph, be careful what you wish for!
Eva Markovic, the crew member who lost her partner, Harris Beckner (Dominik Cicak), has decided that she needs to grieve and is not answering her communications. With a shortage of drinkable water, now, Garnet needs her to be working. It’s bad timing, but she will need to choose another time to grieve. Garnet finds her in a bunk, sobbing.
Sharon enlists the help of Cat Brandice (Christina Wolfe), who we learned in the previous episode is not above manipulation to get what she wants. In this case, she does prove to be somewhat useful in getting Markovic to go to work. However, it is at a price. Lane and Brice are about to lose their cushy one bedroom apartment. Cat needs it as a place to counsel the crew who are having problems adjusting to their new reality. Cat is all smiles when Lane and Brice learn about their new situation.
Meanwhile, invaluable to the crew as the navigator, or not, Brice decides, with Lane’s support, that he is going to do another space walk to get to the bottom of the ship’s damage after the three agree otherwise in a command level meeting.
Garnet has expressly asked him not to go ahead, but he does not listen too well. Outside, he finds the damage, which he assumes is not caused by debris hitting the ship. It appears to be something else. He discovers a fist sized crystal lodged inside the hole. Brice scoops up the crystal and decides to check if it is as hard as it appears.
As he squeezes it, it breaks into shards and begins dissolving his glove. This exposes his hand to cold space causing frostbite as he rushes back to the ship and to the Infirmary. Don’t sign up for the science team, Brice. In the Infirmary, Brice gets an earful from Garnet. Poor Dr. Sanjivni Kabir mentions that she cannot rest. Unlike the others, when Garnet orders that different shifts get five hours of sleep. Kabir, being the only doctor, has an unlimited supply of patients. We know that this is going to go awry quickly when she either makes a major mistake or collapses.
Naturally, with the ambient temperature running hot, people running on lack of sleep and the stress of the situation, a fight breaks out in the Mess Hall. Both Felix and Garnet get into the middle of it and put it down.
Garnet’s solution is to send people to Cat since they do not have suitable facilities for rowdy crew members. It seems that Garnet is quite an adept fighter. What else is she capable of and why was she placed on board? Was the damage to Ark-1 intentional?
Meanwhile, Markovic is working hard in Water Reclamation. She and her team manage to get the system up to 62%, which sounds pretty good to me, but apparently it isn’t.
To do it, she needed to shut down the engine cooling system which also shuts off the engines. So, now they drift.
All of this gets them is a whole four days of drinkable water. Then, they are all dead in space, literally.
So, not only are there interpersonal issues between Garnet and her senior officers, but the crew structure is breaking down, her doctor is running on fumes, and they are about to run out of potable water. Don’t forget that there is also a murder that needs to be solved. The current suspects for the murder are Garnet herself. Does she have something to hide that the imposter was about to expose? Lane may also be a suspect because he inadvertently told Felix that he knew the possible murder weapon was in the water pipe. Markovic also might have a motive because she spit on the imposter at the funeral of the dead crew members. Brice, as a senior officer had the ability to wipe the last user’s information off of the locking mechanism, but seems to have no reason to kill the imposter, that we know of. Finally, we must consider that Felix may have his own secrets.
I close by saying that I eagerly look forward to episode three “Get Out And Push” this week on SYFY in the United States and CTVSciFi in Canada. We leave you until next time with a sneak peek of what will no doubt be an exciting third episode. Enjoy!
Thanks to Kenn for staging images for my review and analysis of episode two of The Ark, the featured video, and, many thanks to you for stopping by WormholeRiders News Agency!
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Regards,
