The Ark Season 1 Episode 2 Review: Like It Touched the Sun
Michael T. Stack
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The chaos elevated, as did tensions, during the second outing of Syfy's The Ark.
The Ark Season 1 Episode 2 saw the murder investigation begin, and the repair of the water reclamation system continued.
But did anyone on the ship make any sort of headway?
The episode ended with almost as much information as the first; nothing.
We are nowhere near knowing who killed the imposter (even though we have our suspicions), and we are even more confused about the original mission.
Lt. Brice, Lt. Lane, and a red shirt (Star Trek reference, sorry) take a space walk to try and figure out what exactly crashed into the ship. Sadly, some debris gave way and killed off the random third man on the mission (hence the red shirt reference).
Lt. Lane also got a concussion, which (we hope) was the cause of his extreme insurability throughout the episode. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Tempers also ran high on Ark One, which led multiple people to snap, including the Doctor.
Dr. Kabir, as she revealed, is the only Doctor left on the ship. She is the only one qualified enough to treat everyone on the expedition. She's overworked, just like the rest of the crew.
Alicia continued her annoying (but somehow charming) ramblings, and she may have even made a friend on the ship, Baylor Trent.
Trent took over her old job in waste management, revealing that his previous job, taking care of the cyro bay, no longer existed after the event.
Alicia and he flirted, albeit very awkwardly, but it was nice to see her get along with another crew member before she got called to attend the funeral.
Alicia: Anyway, I'd be happy to show you around down there. It's really fascinating once you get into it.
Trent: I can't ever see getting into it like you, but hey, who knows! You seem really into it so maybe that'll rub off on me.
Alicia: I'll do my best to rub off on you!
The crew hosted a funeral for their fallen mates, including the murdered imposter. Before the bodies were zipped up, we saw our first murder suspect: Eva Markovic. She spat on the man before they zipped up his body.
The bodies didn't get blasted off into space, though: Angus stopped them. Angus wanted to repurpose the bodies into fertilizer.
While the idea made a lot of sense, some of the crew on the Council raised a fascinating ethical issue. Is it okay to use deceased humans to help grow potentially life-saving food?
Lane (again, hopefully, because of the concussion) became a douchey commanding officer immediately and demanded the bodies get the proper respect and launched into space.
The rest of the Council wanted to discuss the debate more openly. This scene quickly became one of the top scenes on the show, even though it was a short discussion.
Eva offered up that her deceased crewmate and lover, Harris, WOULD want his body used to help continue the mission. The Council managed to get a majority and used the bodies for science.
Shouldn't we think about what the people who died would want? Harris worked in my department and I think he would want to continue to contribute to the mission's success. Isn't this a way for him to do so?
Eva
The ethical question in this scene helped ground the show in something more familiar (ethical issues), almost bringing up something similar to the trolley problem.
The Trolley problem, a popular ethical conundrum, asks: if you are in control of a trolley, where both tracks have people tied up (one track has five people unknown to you, the other has ONE person that's close to you), who would you let the trolley hit?
While this situation obviously vastly differs from a Trolley, it made us and the characters take a beat and consider the gravity of the problem (which the show has yet to make us do).
We appreciated the minuscule amount of debate that this scene brought out of the show.
Following the meeting, Lt. Lane continued to bitch about Lt. Garnet.
He even brought up to Lt. Brice an interesting point into question about Lt. Garnet, which gave us an exciting flashback scene of the ship's launch day.
At first, we thought, oh my gosh! A flashback scene! We need that! Then the scene played out, and it fell completely flat.
The scene gave us bits and pieces of new information about the mission and the individual crew. Sadly, the information ended up being all surface-level, focusing mainly on Lane's distrust of Garnet.
Was the point of this scene to make us also not trust Garnet? Because if anything, it just made our animosity toward Lane grow.
We then witnessed our second murder suspect: Garnet. Oh, so the flashback scene was supposed to start sewing the seeds of distrust? Got it.
Garnet tried to access the logs of who entered the makeshift brig when Felix (the law on the ship) caught her, thinking she had tampered with the investigation.
And, of course, after that, we get the thing we dreaded from The Ark Season 1 Episode 1, the catastrophe of the week!
A water pipe in the biodome area burst, with gallons of water, wasted. Angus also made a terrifying discovery: the knife used to kill the stowaway broke the pipe. The murderer flushed the blade down the toilet, it seems.
Meanwhile, Eva took the time to grieve instead of working on the water reclamation system. Which is understandable; she didn't just lose a crewmate. She lost her boyfriend.
She enlisted the help of Dr. Cat Brandice, who, apparently, is a celebrity doctor, to get Eva to cheer up. Since when did Cat become a doctor?
Garnet later made Dr. Brandice the lead therapist on the ship (after tensions went past their breaking point and a fight broke out), giving her the second and only other crew quarters to conduct sessions.
Cat Brandice: So! Maybe you wish to spend time in this room, I suggest you make an appointment for a session. I'll take you two separately or... both at once.
Lt. Brice: I bet you will.
The chain of command continued to be messy, Lane continued questioning everything Garnet said, and Lt. Brice went against her direct wishes of not doing another space walk.
While the excursion proved dangerous, they found some interesting (and vague) info about what crashed into the ship.
Lt. Brice found a crystal-like substance (minus the compression strength) at the location of the crash. When crushed, the substance turned into an acid that ate through his glove but not his hand.
Luckily, he only walked away with some pretty lousy frostbite. But what was that stuff? Is it man-made? Is it alien? We know as much as they do, which added to the show's intrigue.
After Garnet lambasted Brice, she gave everyone time to sleep. Even the lieutenants. Sadly, that got cut short by Eva Markovic's announcement that she got the system working at 60% (not enough, but something).
She also shut down the engines, though, which creates another problem. More water, no motion!
During these final scenes, we heard from our third and hopefully last murder suspect: Lt. Lane.
Lt. Lane: Unbelievable! One damn knife dumped in a water tank is gonna kill us all!
Felix: How do you know that?
Lt. Lane: What?
Felix: I haven't told anyone where the blade was introduced into the water system. How do you know?
Did Lane incriminate himself? Will there be enough time to deal with these different mysteries in one season? Who knows.
We know that the show's first outing premiered with solid Nielson ratings (for Syfy's standards)., helped by the fact that there is currently no competition (other than franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars) in the space opera genre.
The first episode of a new series often does well, however, and only time will tell if audiences continue to tune in (especially with an abysmal 3.7 audience rating on IMDB).
The show still has a chance to improve, but it lost another episode to mediocrity.
So Fanatics, what did you think of the second episode of The Ark?
Will you still be tuning in?
Let us know in the comments below, and remember you can watch The Ark online here on TV Fanatic.
Michael Stack is a former writer for TV Fanatic..
