The Ark (Season 1)
Wednesday, 15 February 2023 01:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queer_scribblingMy family sort of stumbled across a new show on Syfy called The Ark.
Episode 1: Everyone Wanted to Be on This Ship
We knew that the premise didn't lend itself to a totally 100% conflict free show, but there's almost this feeling of not trusting that the incident that starts the show will be enough tension. Ark One is a spaceship in the future, and an unknown event damaging the ship triggers people waking up from their cryo-pods before they were supposed to [one year from their destination instead of two weeks]. Cue escaping the damaged cryo-pod bay, not everyone is un-cryo-ed, and there's serious questions about how they're supposed to make it for a year without the supplies for that amount of time.
This should sound stressful enough to tide us over for a season, or whatever, but so much happens:
The water recycling thing is being worked on; I think it was also intended for planet use. The primary takeaway is that Waste Management is working on this project, which is very important and literally will be life saving. And yet. Do you think that making sort of condescending remarks about the smartest person on the ship being assigned to that division sounds like Waste Management is considered important?
Don't worry, Alicia is a neurodivergent-coded genius (complete with poor social skills and an inability to stop talking) who gets reassigned to Chief of Life Support because she basically knew how to fix a computer problem. (The guy who's identity was stolen clearly wasn't there to fix it.) But, like, it amounted to turning it off and back on, so I kind of feel like we didn't really need an expert to solve this particular problem.
Added on in a comment: The surviving doctor orders different medication injections while trying to save Harris (the stowaway), and there's a very convenient screen with different organ systems that go red during failure. However, his death is presented as 'passed out from lack of oxygen', 'taken to med bay and receives oxygen', and 'heart failure leads to multi-system failure'.
The way it's shown leads - at least for me - to an impression that actually getting the heart going again might have been the answer. It's just that this med bay doesn't include a defibrillator and no one does CPR. Now, I am absolutely not a medical person, and I have no idea what any of the injections called for were supposed to do (... if they weren't just fictional names). It just seemed a bit weird.
Episode 1: Everyone Wanted to Be on This Ship
We knew that the premise didn't lend itself to a totally 100% conflict free show, but there's almost this feeling of not trusting that the incident that starts the show will be enough tension. Ark One is a spaceship in the future, and an unknown event damaging the ship triggers people waking up from their cryo-pods before they were supposed to [one year from their destination instead of two weeks]. Cue escaping the damaged cryo-pod bay, not everyone is un-cryo-ed, and there's serious questions about how they're supposed to make it for a year without the supplies for that amount of time.
This should sound stressful enough to tide us over for a season, or whatever, but so much happens:
- The officers and scientist mentors were almost entirely in their own separate cryo-pod bay, which broke off. This means the majority of the higher ups are dead.
- Three lieutenants were with the people who survived. Cue leadership struggles (i.e. one person making a unilateral decision versus actually communicating with each other, let alone voting on it).
- A stowaway!
- - Due to a series of events, he is among six people who die during a low oxygen event.
- A case of stolen identity!
- - He's murdered by an unknown person at the end of the episode. Which means we now have to figure out who murdered him.
The water recycling thing is being worked on; I think it was also intended for planet use. The primary takeaway is that Waste Management is working on this project, which is very important and literally will be life saving. And yet. Do you think that making sort of condescending remarks about the smartest person on the ship being assigned to that division sounds like Waste Management is considered important?
Don't worry, Alicia is a neurodivergent-coded genius (complete with poor social skills and an inability to stop talking) who gets reassigned to Chief of Life Support because she basically knew how to fix a computer problem. (The guy who's identity was stolen clearly wasn't there to fix it.) But, like, it amounted to turning it off and back on, so I kind of feel like we didn't really need an expert to solve this particular problem.
Added on in a comment: The surviving doctor orders different medication injections while trying to save Harris (the stowaway), and there's a very convenient screen with different organ systems that go red during failure. However, his death is presented as 'passed out from lack of oxygen', 'taken to med bay and receives oxygen', and 'heart failure leads to multi-system failure'.
The way it's shown leads - at least for me - to an impression that actually getting the heart going again might have been the answer. It's just that this med bay doesn't include a defibrillator and no one does CPR. Now, I am absolutely not a medical person, and I have no idea what any of the injections called for were supposed to do (... if they weren't just fictional names). It just seemed a bit weird.
