DISCLAIMER: This recap of The Ark Season 1 Episode 4, “We Weren’t Supposed to Be Awake,” contains spoilers. Proceed at your peril.
Welcome back, space travelers! Episode four of The Ark is the show’s strongest outing thus far. Little by little, we’re seeing improvements each week as narrative wrinkles smooth out, the performances strengthen and character dynamics tighten. While the show has its fair share of flaws, it’s still damn entertaining and presents an engaging mystery that deepens week after week.
“We Weren’t Supposed to Be Awake” displays gripping thriller elements and plays with our psyche as the crew questions their reality. It showcases the playfulness of this overarching story and experiments with fun sci-fi tropes. Plus, that Garnet clone bombshell is a delightful twist.
Ready to delve into “We Weren’t Supposed to Be Awake”? Let’s get to it.
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We open with Angus (Ryan Adams) dousing his crops with clean comet water. Another shot features Baylor (Miles Barrow) and other men in the showers. I see what you did there, The Ark. I see you. Suddenly, the engines restart, ensuring Ark One can continue, full-steam ahead, on its mission. Lt. Sharon Garnet (Christie Burke) makes a ship-wide announcement. She reveals the water shortage crisis is officially in their rearview mirror. Lt. Spencer Lane (Reece Ritchie) and Felix (Pavle Jerinic) barge onto the bridge and demand everyone leaves.
Lane shows Garnet the video footage of her killing a man in that Florida pub. Felix takes her into custody and confines Garnet to her quarters. She’s now the number one suspect in the ongoing Malcolm Perry murder investigation. Naturally, Garnet denies everything. Later, Lane meets with Felix and Lt. James Brice (Richard Fleeshman) and imposes himself as the new captain. Oh, he’s relishing this moment. He’s wanted a legitimate means for dethroning Garnet for a while now.
He believes they should announce the Garnet situation to the crew, but Felix reminds Lane that this is an investigation. For now, everything is confidential. Poor Lane. The moment he finally gains power, someone questions his authority. Next, Felix spots something peculiar while walking down a corridor. He sees his husband, Richard (Davor Perunović), standing at the end of the hallway and holding their crying infant. Firstly, there are no babies aboard Ark One. Secondly, Felix’s husband is still on Earth with their son. Strange.
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Meanwhile, Papa Angus names his vegetables and talks to them. Brice observes silently from afar but doesn’t razz Angus too much when he finally speaks. Brice shows Angus the glove he wore when he touched the foreign substance on the ship’s exterior. You know, the one that disintegrated part of said glove and damaged his hand. Brice wants Angus to experiment on it to figure out what struck this vessel. What precisely woke them from cryosleep? Angus insists he’s not a scientist; however, Brice refuses to surrender. So, get to science-ing, veggie boy!
Then, Felix asks Garnet about the video. He presents his theory about what transpired: Jasper/Malcolm threatened to expose Garnet after showing her the footage. Garnet killed him to keep him silent. Easy, peasy. She claims she wasn’t in the pub that night — she was in London, an ocean away. Garnet rattles off the time stamp for the video and urges Felix to corroborate this info.
Next, Brice proposes a shocking idea while walking with Lane in the corridor. They need to dispose of Garnet. She’s a traitor and, clearly, a murderer. It’s high time they take charge of the ship for the good of the crew. Lane is taken aback by Brice’s blatant proposal of, you know, murder. Lane claims they must abide by Felix’s investigation and wait until he finishes it. However, Brice reminds Lane that he outranks Felix. Lane superseded Garnet. Why can’t he go against Felix?
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Felix barges into Cat’s (Christina Wolfe) quarters while the latter paints her nails. He informs her of what he saw: his husband and crying child on the ship. Cat validates Felix’s experience and reveals there’s a case of cabin fever going around. His peculiar account isn’t the first one she’s heard. Cat chalks Felix’s hallucination up to a lack of sleep and encourages him to nap it off. Fully rested, showered and mentally nourished? Cat’s living her best life on Ark One.
Meanwhile, Dr. Sanjivni Kabir (Shalini Peiris) struggles to draw blood from a patient in the med bay. After her patient comments on how exhausted she looks, Kabir surreptitiously takes a pill. Dr. Edward Hall (Jonathan English), who’s dead, appears next to Kabir. He remarks on her ability to draw blood and subtly humiliates her. Kabir reminds Hall that she’s the only doctor left now. Hall chose to cryosleep with the other superior officers instead of staying in the survivors’ quarters. So, take that.
On the bridge, Brice incessantly presses Lane to take out Garnet (and not to dinner). Lane urges him to keep quiet. Suddenly, the real Brice appears behind Lane and asks the latter to whom he’s talking. Lane’s hallucinating Brice and this version wants to kill Garnet. Methinks this is Lane’s subconscious communicating its desires…
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Next, Lane and Brice hear a man screaming and repeatedly punching a wall with blood-soaked knuckles. They carry him to the med bay, where Kabir restrains him. Everyone finally acknowledges the elephant in the room: these hallucinations are a ship-wide epidemic. The question is, what’s the cure?
Then, Alicia (Stacey Read) and Baylor have their first date in the mess hall. Alicia’s nerves kick into high gear, especially when she hallucinates her mother (Ebony Feare). Alicia excuses herself to the bathroom while Baylor starts chatting with a hallucination of Susan Ingram (Lisa Brenner). Susan asserts that Baylor shouldn’t waste his time with Alicia. He must enlist folks to their cause. The mission is all that matters. She encourages Baylor to become buddy-buddy with Lane. He seems like he’d be the most sympathetic to said cause. This all sounds shady as sh*t.
Alicia calms her anxiety by splashing water on her face and breathing deeply. Her mother can’t be here; she’s on Earth. However, her mom reappears behind her, insisting she must leave Baylor in the dust and focus on more noble pursuits. Felix searches for the time stamp Garnet gave him while fending off the sounds of his crying baby. He finds what he’s looking for, confirming Garnet’s information and her alibi.
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Next, Brice hallucinates Kabir, who binds him to a chair and whips out a syringe. She claims she will administer a complete blood analysis to get to the bottom of Brice’s spotless bill of health. Brice screams, leading Alicia to shake him back to reality. Meanwhile, Garnet discloses her story to Felix. She impresses the importance of keeping what she says under wraps. It’s confidential. We learn Garnet is a clone who had a twin, Denise. Dr. Hall supervised Sharon (Garnet) and Denise’s growth, injecting them with various hormones to see how they’d react to them. For example, Sharon was injected with a tardigrade protein.
Sharon and Denise grow up in a lab, getting poked and prodded under Hall’s watchful eye. Once they got older, Denise started reacting poorly to whatever Hall injected into her system. Sharon reveals she found Denise’s body after returning from London, right before the launch of Ark One. Garnet divulges that her presence on the ship constitutes one last experiment. How will she fare on a new planet? After hearing Garnet’s story, Felix releases her. She’s now cleared of charges. Christie Burke’s vulnerability in this scene is beautiful to witness.
Later, to Lane’s dismay, Felix accompanies Garnet to the bridge. He’s even more irritated when Garnet and Felix won’t reveal why she’s no longer a suspect in the murder investigation. Everyone fills Garnet in on the situation. More and more crew members are falling victim to hallucinations. The med bay overflows with them.
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Eva (Tiana Upcheva) finds a welcome visitor in the showers with her. A hallucination of Harris (Dominik Cicak) joins her. Eva reveals how much she misses him before they share a kiss. After showering, Eva meets with Cat for her therapy session. Cat urges Eva to admit her role in Malcolm/Jasper’s death, a.k.a. confess to his murder. Cat draws out a somewhat vague confession from the engineer before she procures a curved blade and slits her throat. Our fave therapist/influencer flees her quarters, screaming.
While in the hallway, Cat runs into the real Eva, who claims she was en route to Cat’s room for their session. Cat tells Eva she’s canceling all sessions for the foreseeable future, clearly shaken from her hallucination. Angus experiences his own hallucinatory event when he interacts with a fancy-looking Garnet in his garden. Oh, someone has a crush! Fake Garnet gives Angus the idea to check the comet water during this interaction. Angus barges into the med bay to reveal his revelation to Kabir. Unfortunately, he loses consciousness and starts seizing.
Later, Kabir takes Angus’s theory and runs with it. She presents her findings to Lane, Brice and Garnet. The comet water carries an amalgam of elements they’ve been exposed to on Earth. One of said elements happens to be what’s potent in LSD, hence the hallucinations. Kabir hopes to find a solution soon. Garnet accompanies her back to the med bay. She reveals her clone status to Kabir, who claims she already knew. She was primed on all medical records for the crew before departure.
Garnet drank the water but hasn’t experienced hallucinations because she’s a clone. Perhaps Kabir can test her blood to see if it can contribute to an antidote. The pair also bond over Dr. Hall. He was like a father to Garnet while he mentored Kabir. Later, after further research and experimentation, Kabir concludes that Garnet’s blood possesses a protein they don’t have. Lane confronts Garnet regarding what she told Felix. He feels he has a right to know the truth. Garnet reasserts it’s confidential. Even though they’re the same rank, Lane continuously questions her at every move. She’s tired of it.
Suddenly, Lane collapses as the effects of the comet water take hold. Brice and Garnet carry Lane to the med bay. Unfortunately, Kabir is also fighting for her life, unconscious on the floor. They call Alicia into the med bay to examine Kabir’s notes. Alicia believes Kabir was trying to synthesize the protein she found in Garnet’s blood (although Alicia and Brice don’t know it’s Garnet’s). Then, Kabir could add it to the water system to purify it and heal everyone simultaneously instead of injecting the crew individually.
Brice also collapses, succumbing to the same illness as everyone else. Alicia springs into action and does what Kabir set out to do. With the aid of Eva, Alicia adds the synthesized protein to the water supply. Once again, the nerd saves the day. Thankfully, it works, and everyone comes to after the protein eradicates sickness. Kabir thanks Angus for his revelation. Angus claims his hallucination of Garnet fed him the idea. Kabir senses that lil veggie boy carries a torch for our cap.
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Then, before Alicia drinks the antidote, the hallucination of her mother reveals how proud she is of her daughter. Susan Ingram reminds Baylor to forgo his pursuit of Alicia in favor of befriending Lane for their mission. Baylor calls her out on her jealousy and chugs the purified water. Felix smiles at his husband and child before downing the comet water cure. All of these hallucinations vanish. Well, except for one.
Kabir and Cat find Eva in engineering and try to persuade her to drink the water. Harris stands behind her. Of course, she doesn’t want to take the antidote because Harris will disappear. Cat holds Eva’s hand and reminds her that everyone on this ship is real and tangible. They all depend on her. If Eva doesn’t drink this cure, she’ll die. Kabir believes Harris came to Eva as a hallucination to remind her that he’ll never leave her, even if he’s not present physically. Eva reluctantly chugs the water and watches him vanish.
Meanwhile, Angus stumbles across another revelation. He runs onto the bridge and blurts out what he discovered on the glove to the trio of lieutenants. It’s an element that doesn’t exist on Earth. Not only that, but he believes what struck their ship was a weapon. Maybe not a weapon from another human, seeing as they’re the first to get this far in space, but something wielded by a creature or an alien. Dun-dun-dun! If it’s not one crisis, it’s another.
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The Cat/Eva scene wherein Cat hallucinates Eva threw me for a loop. While I eventually identified Hallucination Brice (the others are dead folks or those not on the ship) after a few scenes, I initially thought Eva was hallucinating Cat, not the other way around.
It’s interesting to dissect the meaning behind these hallucinations, as it cleverly reveals more about our core characters. Cat believes Eva is the perpetrator behind Malcolm/Jasper’s murder. Angus likes Garnet. Brice is afraid Kabir will discover why he’s so healthy. Lane wants to dethrone Garnet. Alicia is scared of disappointing her mother. Kabir feels the same way about Dr. Hall.
Who sent Lane the video footage featuring Denise? Is Eva the murderer, or is it another red herring? What or who attacked the ship? Only time (and more episodes) will tell.
The Ark drops new episodes every Wednesday at 10/9c on Syfy.
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