Hacker Cinema
The Ark
2023 · TV series · 52 min episodes · 3 seasons
Created by Dean Devlin
100 years in the future, planetary colonization missions have begun as a necessity to help secure the survival of the human race. The first of these missions on a spacecraft known as Ark One encounters a catastrophic event causing massive destruction and loss of life. With more than a year left to go before reaching their target planet, a lack of life-sustaining supplies and loss of leadership, the remaining crew must become the best versions of themselves to stay on course and survive.
2 negative1 neutralfrom 3 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
4 comments on Hacker News
It's not that bad, based on what I've seen of Amazon's track record. If it's like The Expanse, it'll be really great (though Expanse s4-6 wasn't quite as good as s1-3 IMO, with s4 being the weakest; it seemed like the budget was kinda low there). On the other hand, if it's like Rings of Power, it'll be visually fantastic but with an uninspired story and an overall bland, paint-by-numbers feeling.
The place where something can be either a masterpiece, or utter trash, is the SyFy Channel. SyFy is where s1-3 of The Expanse came from. But it's also the company that recently gave us "The Ark", which is possibly the worst sci-fi TV show I have ever seen, and that includes some seriously ridiculous TV shows in the 1970s and 80s. And somehow, they've even ordered a second season for this vile excuse for sci-fi.
I think that's already happening - I recently watched The Ark and was struck that it's unusual for a number of different writers who all seemed to have scraped popular movies and tv series for the totally erroneous mistakes typically made, where as one normally sees where the writers of the script have tried to paint some science fantasy as plausible in their construct. About the only original mistake I can recall thinking well that's a new one, was Helium reacting with something -- but I dare say it's not like I can recall every sci fi show's problem spots.
Minor correction: "The Ark" is a SyFy/Peacock show, not Netflix. My apologies to Netflix for naming them as having made what's probably the worst sci-fi show ever.
Interestingly, I found the show that "The Ark" is loosely based on, a 70s show called "The Starlost". It's available on YouTube for free. Anyway, it was widely panned too, even named on someone's "worst sci-fi shows of all time" list. I've only seen one episode but it's already notably better than "The Ark" despite being 50 years old now (and not because "The Starlost" is great either).
Oh please, lots of great cultural creations had a profit motive. You think "Blade Runner" was made without any desire for profit? Or "2001: A Space Odyssey"? Or Peter Jackson's LotR movies? Those were enormously profitable.
And Rings of Power was not that bad. It's not as great as the LotR movies, sure, but it's better than the Hobbit movies. (But not as good as some of the Hobbit fan edits.) And it's a LOT better than the new Netflix show "The Ark". What a turd, and a huge disappointment coming from some of the people behind Stargate.