DISCLAIMER: This recap of The Ark season premiere episode, “Everyone Wanted To Be on This Ship,” contains spoilers. Proceed at your peril.
Welcome, sci-fi lovers! The Ark is here to fill that science-fiction-sized hole in your heart. The new series from Dean Devlin (Stargate) and Jonathan Glassner (Stargate SG-1) is a briskly-paced thrill ride brimming with nostalgia. It’s reminiscent of the ’90s and early aughts sci-fi fare. While “Everyone Wanted To Be on This Ship” isn’t a perfect pilot (not many pilots hold that distinction), it whets the appetite and stokes the fires of interest. It’s not light on the action and isn’t afraid to send viewers tumbling headfirst into its world. Immersive sci-fi is the best.
Ready to delve into “Everyone Wanted To Be on This Ship”? Let’s get to it.
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We open on Ark One, wherein a screen bears the words “Impact Warning.” We see a line of cryogenic pods on the ship as said ship begins to shake. A beam falls from the ceiling and crashes into one pod, knocking Lt. Sharon Garnet (Christie Burke) out of cryostasis. After engaging her compression suit, she notices a hull breach and moves to wake everyone in the cryo pods. Garnet informs Lt. Spencer Lane (Reece Ritchie), and he helps her clear the area.
While everyone flees the scene, the ceiling caves in, and another beam crushes the pod containing Commander Susan Ingram (Lisa Brenner). Baylor Trent (Miles Barrow) rushes to her side and cries out for her. Garnet leads him away, citing that it’s too late to save her. Meanwhile, the remainder of the crew activates their compression suits and dons helmets, as there’s no oxygen in the ship. Everyone starts floating simultaneously due to the lack of gravity. After getting Baylor out of harm’s way, Garnet locks the cryo pod bay. We see it succumb to outside forces as debris flies into space.
Garnet spots an obstruction in the external wheel that helps the ship move in space. She releases said obstruction, which gets the wheel spinning again, and activates the gravity. Lastly, Garnet engages the ship’s life support system, so everyone can breathe again without wearing a helmet. Well, that was a perilous first five minutes.
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Garnet and Lane decide to inform the commanders in the other cryo bay. Unfortunately, the impact Ark One received knocked said bay off the ship. It’s gone. Thus, no one’s in charge. Dr. Sanjivni Kabir (Shalini Peiris) tends to the crew post-terrifying structural catastrophe. She assists Angus Medford (Ryan Adams), who works in agriculture, when he struggles to walk after sleeping in a pod for five years. Garnet visits the med bay while hunting for Lt. James Brice (Richard Fleeshman).
She spots Brice soaking in a tub. Since he’s the highest-ranking officer along with Garnet and Lane, he’s needed to help lead. I’d like to note here that this character is Scottish and charming. I might not survive. After he dresses, he meets Garnet, who informs him the commanders are dead.
Then, Eva Markovic (Tiana Upcheva) charges the helmets. Harris Beckner (Dominik Cicak) sneaks into the room with her, even though nobody’s supposed to see them together. There’s a rule about couples voyaging together on the same Ark. A message over the comms orders everyone to meet in the mess hall, interrupting Eva and Harris’s secret kiss.
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Next, Angus meets Alicia Nevins (Stacey Read), a sweet and loquacious young woman specializing in waste management. Garnet, Lane and Brice bring the crew up to speed regarding their situation. Something struck their ship; they lost the cryo bays, the commanders and high-ranking officers are dead, they lost quite a bit of storage space, including most of their food supply and have limited water at their disposal. Oh, and they’re a year away from arriving at the planet they’re meant to colonize with only enough food for six weeks. In short, sh*t’s hit the fan.
Garnet delivers an inspiring speech to raise morale. Their superiors have trained them to terraform an alien planet to save humankind. They’ve got this! Lane’s not a fan of Garnet taking charge. I sense we’re in for some good ole-fashioned internal conflict among leadership. At the funeral service for the fallen, Jasper Dades (Chris Leask) asks Baylor about his relationship with Susan Ingram and why a commander was in the cryo bay with the plebeians. Angered, Baylor storms off.
Brice commends Garnet for her motivating speech the night before. Like Lane, he seems to take issue with Garnet declaring herself the captain. Garnet reminds him that she’s the only one who stepped up to the plate. That’s a mic-drop moment, kids.
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Angus chases after Garnet with a request — a potentially life-saving one, at that. Jasper receives his meal in the mess hall, which looks like a square chip. Everyone will get two 500 calorie-chips per day along with their water rations. Yum. Meanwhile, Angus shows Garnet something in the storage bay. He brought a container full of soil. An unauthorized item, to be sure, but one that’ll change the game on the food front. Garnet claims they have enough power and light to cultivate a farm in the storage bay, where Angus can grow produce.
Cat Brandice (Christina Wolfe) sneaks into the women’s locker room to shower despite Garnet’s explicit instructions not to use water for bathing. Felix Strickland (Pavle Jerinic), head of security, catches Cat in the shower. She tries to seduce him for water, but he’s not having any of it. There’s something ominous about him. This feels like a horror-thriller moment.
Alicia finds Angus in the thick of setting up his eco farm. She’s excited by the prospect of eating fresh produce. However, they’re currently redirecting a good portion of the ship’s power to fuel the light sources needed to sustain the farm. Angus asks Alicia for necessary products (ahem, excrement) for fertilizer. Baylor watches an old video from his family while Lane encourages Baylor that this opportunity to bring life to an extraterrestrial planet is what they make of it. Suddenly, the lights shut off.
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Lane heads to the storage bay, where he confronts Garnet. According to him, she had no right to make a call of this nature. Redirecting power, moving cargo from the storage bay to other parts of the ship and implementing a farm that might not yield anything. That requires water, something of which they have precious little. Lane believes these decisions must be vetted through all three lieutenants.
Thus, they form a council that meets on the bridge, including Dr. Kabir, Eva (who works in engineering), Felix, Lane, Brice and Garnet. Naturally, Lane is outvoted as far as growing produce is concerned. Later, Baylor visits the doctor for a physical. He reveals he’s having trouble breathing. We hear an alarm blare and the message, “Life support warning. Oxygen depletion alert.” Uh-oh. That would explain the breathing thing. Dr. Kabir hands him a mask while she leaves to grab their helmets.
Meanwhile, Eva, Harris and the engineering team also activate their compression suits and make a beeline for their helmets. Unfortunately, the door closes behind Eva when she scoops up a helmet, separating her from the rest of her crew. The door to the med bay also separates Baylor from Dr. Kabir as the ship goes into lockdown. On the bridge, Garnet, Brice and Lane attempt to run diagnostics to ascertain the problem. However, diagnostics is malfunctioning, like everything else on the ship. The trio attempt to find someone who can remedy the diagnostics and life support issues. Brice yells very Scottishly. I look forward to seeing this side of him for every crisis from here on out.
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Baylor finds an oxygen tank inside the med bay. Eva explains to Harris that the helmets on her side are charged, while the ones Harris and the others grabbed are depleted. Garnet and her co-leaders discover that Jasper Dades can fix the life support problem. She calls out for him. Lane and a few other crew members conduct a ship-wide search to pinpoint any technical anomalies. Jasper hides when he hears Garnet’s message. However, Felix finds him.
Baylor tweaks the lock pad to unlock the door to the med bay. One of Eva’s crew members collapses, so Harris removes his helmet to save his teammate, much to Eva’s dismay. She urges him to conserve as much air as possible. Felix brings Jasper to the bridge. Jasper pretends his helmet is malfunctioning, so he can’t “hear” what Garnet and the others are saying. Apparently, Jasper Dades created the diagnostics system, so he should be able to fix it.
Baylor and Dr. Kabir reunite and head to Eva’s location while Jasper makes a go at remedying the situation. Then, he blurts out that his name is Malcolm Perry, not Jasper Dades. He snuck his way onto Ark One and replaced the real Jasper, persuading the latter that he was assigned to a different ship. Felix carts Malcolm away.
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Harris, breathless, tells Eva he loves her. This sounds an awful lot like goodbye. Harris falls unconscious. Meanwhile, Alicia and a few others arrive on the bridge to potentially solve the issue. Alicia reveals the diagnostics is stuck in a Barstow Loop. She successfully navigates the system out of said loop and runs diagnostics without impediments. Garnet orders Lane to head outside to fix the problem. We see it’s a breach, which Lane seals up quickly. Huzzah! Thankfully, life support returns 100 percent, along with the ship’s oxygen stores.
Later, the med bay is full of patients needing Dr. Kabir’s medical magic. We see her tending to Harris while Eva watches. Unfortunately, Harris dies. On the bridge, Garnet and Brice promote Alicia to chief of life support. Bye-bye, waste management.
Garnet visits Malcolm, who they locked in a storage closet. She reveals a tribunal will decide how to punish him. She’s pushing for the death penalty. He impersonated a much-needed crew member. Malcolm explains everyone wanted to be on the ship, so there are undoubtedly more than a handful of stowaways on it. Malcolm unearths a memory from a pub in Jacksonville, Florida, to save his skin. He describes what sounds like Garnet, except the woman’s name is Denise. This woman killed a man in a bar fight. Malcolm not-so-subtly threatens to disclose what he saw that night. Garnet shuts the door in a hurry.
Next, the council assembles to discuss Malcolm’s fate. He admitted to impersonating Jasper Dades. Dr. Kabir argues that Malcolm should be allowed to defend himself. Felix leaves to bring the prisoner to the bridge. However, when he arrives, he finds Malcolm dead with his throat slit. Dun-dun-DUN!
Finally, we see Garnet sitting in her quarters, crying, while the camera pans out to show us Ark One in all her glory.
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What do you think struck the ship? Did Garnet kill a guy in a bar in Florida? Will Garnet and Lane eventually have hate sex? Honestly, my money’s on “yes” for that one. Only time (and more episodes) will answer these questions.
The Ark drops new episodes every Wednesday at 10/9c on Syfy.
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What I do: I'm GGA's Managing Editor, a Senior Contributor, and Press Coordinator. I manage, contribute, and coordinate. Sometimes all at once. Joking aside, I oversee day-to-day operations for GGA, write, edit, and assess interview opportunities/press events.
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