In Review: The Ark (S1 – EP1) Everyone Wanted to Be on This Ship

Synopsis: After suffering a disaster, the remaining crew of the spaceship Ark One must band together to survive.

The Story

When the spaceship Ark One has a collision. The crew awakens and finds that their numbers have suddenly halved. Taking charge is Lieutenant Sharon Garnet along with Lieutenant Brice who is the two most qualified officers on the ship. Their first order of business is to figure out how to survive the rest of the Ark’s journey to the designated planet that the crew is tasked with colonizing in order to try and save humanity. In order to do this the crew must figure out who is best suited to each job. With food rations, an issue Angus Medford who is s genius when it comes to growing stuff goes to Lt. Garnet with an idea. Eager to build up the ship’s dwindling rations Garnet approves the plan without running it past Brice. However, just when it seems that the crew is beginning to organize. The ship suddenly starts to lose oxygen, which is only one of a few problems that the crew of Ark One has to deal with. 

The Acting

The acting performances throughout this pilot episode are pretty solid throughout. Christie Burke hits the ground running as Lt. Garnet and gets a vast majority of the screen time as she establishes the role. Richard Fleeshman proves to be a good foil that Garnet to run up against in his role of Lt. James Brice. The scene where he expresses annoyance at Garnet’s eagerness to approve of Angus Medford’s plan and points out that the foods Medford is growing will need water is a case in point. Hopefully, we’ll see a few more interactions like this as this story is very much one about survival. 

I was also quite impressed with Shalini Peiris in her role asDr. Sanjivni Kabir and look forward to seeing how her character develops. 

Overall

Everyone Wanted to Be on This Ship is a fairly strong pilot for The Ark with some good acting performances and an interesting storyline with the potential for some intriguing character arcs. Where it falls flat is the CGI and Effects. They were somewhat ropey and a little all over the place as have seen more consistently strong CGI in games. Hopefully, this is a temporary issue and will get addressed as the series evolves because it did pull my attention away from the story a little.