joshua tyler issued
Spaceships are one of the best things in science fiction. When done right, it becomes a cultural icon like the USS Enterprise.
It doesn’t matter if your ship is ugly or not. Sometimes ugly is exactly what you want. Ships like Serenity and Millennium Falcon look intentionally awkward and clunky. Give them that aesthetic and they become lovable underdogs you want to root for.
Sometimes ugly and stupid is just ugly and stupid. When a fictional spaceship design is terrible, it’s usually because the spaceship in question is part of an equally terrible science fiction project. But somehow the worst sci-fi spaceships ever made aren’t some of the worst sci-fi pieces ever made. It’s in a kind of excellent new sci-fi series called ark.
ark has aired its second season, but it is not yet clear whether the show will air its third season. Produced by SyFy and streaming on the Peacock app. ark It has had modest success. When a program like this ends, spread, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Discoveryand Star Trek: Lower Deckswhich is one of the few space science fiction shows still in production.
Before we look at the horrifying exterior of this flying nightmare that is the main setting of the show, we need to explain why it exists.
ark premise
ark The film is set in a future where Earth is rapidly becoming uninhabitable. The why and how of this isn’t really important and isn’t fully explored in the show. The important thing is that humans need new homes. So the Ark program was devised to build a ship that would take us somewhere else.
The series begins aboard the Ark-One, flying through space during a mission. The crew was at anchor for a long voyage when disaster struck, killing most of the command crew. The survivors awoke, leaving only junior officers and civilians.
The show follows their journey to reach their destination while overcoming obstacles. It’s basically a redo of the now largely forgotten 1970s sci-fi series star lost.
Arc One’s terrible design
If you look at Ark One’s interior, you might not think it’s such a terrible ship. The interior design is conventional and futuristic, with white as the main color.
Sure, this bridge looks like an office computer on a folding card table, but it’s easy to overlook. These issues are less noticeable when photographed from the correct angle.
Where Ark One turns into a disaster is in its appearance.
The aesthetic flaws in this design could be dismissed as an attempt at realism. That excuse doesn’t work, because that’s not what’s happening.
For example, a rotating ring might appear to exist to create gravity through centrifugal force. it’s not. This is where the stasis pod was kept. Once everyone wakes up, they can never enter that section of the ship again. Instead, the crew spends all their time in parts of the ship that have no gravity to create a spin, but still appear to have enough gravity in those parts.
So why does the ring rotate? I don’t know, they’re just there and no one on the ship mentions them.
That’s the case with most of Arc One. Nothing about it is helpful. arcs Heroships are a bunch of non-specific pieces stuffed together for no reason. The people on the ship don’t seem to know much about the outside of the forward command area and the very strange biodome that resides above it.
By the way, the biodome also makes no sense. When they ran out of food, the crew decided to grow crops there. Because it’s a big vacant lot. Why was there a large, empty, exposed dome-like area on top of the ship? It’s never brought up.
Domes were not originally designed for plant growth because they are not transparent enough to let light through. Those who designed the ship decided they needed to stick a large empty dome on the ship, which was completely exposed and easily damaged.
It is also unclear why the ship had a stasis pod, or why the entire crew was sleeping inside it. When you wake up due to an accident, you can apparently activate your ship’s hyperspace drive and go just about anywhere in a matter of days or hours. In fact, along their journey they encounter other equally ugly and stupid arcs. All of them have a fully active and awake crew.
I think if there’s one good thing about Ark One’s design, it’s that it’s certainly unforgettable. Bad spaceship designs are usually bad because they’re boring or conventional. The design team may not have put much thought into it, but Ark One isn’t boring.
Ark One’s failed aesthetic goes viral
They also encounter another type of ship that is ugly in a completely different way. It looks like a flying brick with a weapon pod attached to it. At least there are no rings spinning around pointlessly.
This brick ship was created for season 2 of. ark. By then, the show’s producers should have known that the ship they were designing was horribly ugly. That knowledge should have prompted a significant change in direction. Instead, they kept Ark One’s existing aesthetic and painted it on a space-traveling concrete block.
Ark showing off his ship with bad music
I mean, Arc One is stupid, ugly, and makes no sense. Normally, with a ship this bad, a standard sci-fi drama would try to hide it. In the end, it may have been unavoidable due to budget issues. After all, they made a bridge with a folding table.
no.
The team is ark I think this is a good ship. We know that because they created an opening credits sequence dedicated solely to showing off the show’s terrifying ships. And somehow they managed to find music that sounds just as bad as Ark One looks.
Why bad design is a big problem
Ark Ones Design is a huge problem for the show, and impossible to resolve at this point, as nearly every moment of every story takes place on board the Ark One. That’s a shame. Because, as I said at the beginning, regardless of how stupid this ship is, ark It’s not that bad.
I could even see the show becoming great with a few more seasons and tweaking things. But it’s nearly impossible to convince someone to watch it when the first thing they see when they turn it on is this bad.
At least the shuttle isn’t terrible.
The Ark does other things right too.
I would like to stop complaining here and let the team work on it. ark some praise. I think this is the worst ship design in science fiction history, but bad music aside, the show team’s use of it is great.
Arc One is always bright and easy to see. There are no cheat shadows to hide malicious CGI. Space shots abound and are well composed.
ark It does a great job of showing the audience what’s going on both inside and outside the ship. The show is particularly good at using exterior establishing shots to focus the audience on where the action is happening on the ship. Episode by episode, much of the show’s direction is top-notch.
Don’t blame the special effects team for Ark One’s problems. They are doing the best job they can in the face of such terrible design. It’s Ark One’s design that’s problematic, not the show’s execution.
This problem is even more frustrating. If the ships were in good shape, their use could have resulted in some of the best sci-fi space scenes ever shown on television.
What went wrong? The ship’s designer tells us
But the wish does not work out, and the ship is not good. From the moment someone first put it down on paper, it wasn’t good. So what actually went wrong here?
The ship was designed by Randall Groves, who gave several interviews and seemed unaware of the embarrassment he had caused. Mr. Groves claims that the design was the result of scientific precision, apparently not realizing that nothing about the ship is accurate.
Reading between the lines, it seems like the original plan for the show was for the crew to be in zero gravity on part of the ship. However, when it came time to shoot, we didn’t have enough budget. ark With that disabled, artificial gravity was applied to the entire ship.
Unfortunately, they also didn’t have the budget to update the ship to fit the new, more budget-friendly script. That might explain why Ark One doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t explain why it’s ugly.
Groves said he thought deeply about the following films: star wars, silent running and black hole Check out the atmosphere to see what this future world will be like. Star Wars isn’t out, though. silent running It is meaningful as a reference. The ship in this movie is also a contender for ugliest sci-fi monster.
Groves said he also aimed to blend the “clean aesthetic” of SpaceX ships and equipment with hints of maritime design. So is it Elon Musk’s fault?
Give the Ark a Chance
how ark Bringing a hero ship this stupid and ugly to TV will probably always be something of a mystery. Do your best to ignore it and watch the show anyway. Because, really, ark It’s kind of good.
In an age where the options for new space sci-fi on TV are so limited, even if the spaceships are stupid and ugly, it’s still worth supporting.
