by The new sci-fi survival series, The Ark, launched on the SyFy channel this month, bringing us the latest space adventure from Dean Devlin and Jonathan Glassner’s hit Braintrust.
If those names sound familiar, that’s because the prolific couple have been instrumental in the resurgence of the sci-fi genre over the past three decades. Devlin co-wrote the screenplay for 1994’s Stargate and directed Independence Day, Godzilla and Geostorm. Glassner helped adapt “Stargate” into the TV show “Stargate SG-1” and revived “The Outer Limits” for new audiences from 1995 to 1998.
Borrowing from upbeat, retro-style space series like Farscape and Andromeda, The Ark follows the mission of Ark One, a colony starship 100 years in the future that suffers a debilitating anomaly along the way – a Goldilocks Planet where the human race could thrive after Earth was somehow declared unfit for continued existence.
This mid-flight disaster leaves hundreds dead in their wake, and the surviving crew must band together to sort out the command structure, personal melodrama, repairs to their massive ship, and dwindling life support supplies if they are to survive another year in space before arriving at the Finish.
The Ark stars Christie Burke, Reece Ritchie, Richard Fleeshman, Stacey Michelle Read, Ryan Adams, Pavle Jerinić, Shalini Peiris, Christina Wolfe and Tiana Upcheva. For more of the best upcoming TV shows, check out our guide.
Space.com spoke to Devlin about creating The Ark with Glassner and his narration with hope, filming the complex production in Serbia, working with the international cast, and why fans should hold on to their sets while The Ark progresses his harrowing 12-episode odyssey.
Space.com: What were the most important elements of this project when you were signed to write and direct?
Dean Devlin: There’s a lot of science fiction out there today and the trend seems to be very dark, very outlandish, very grounded. And I think that can make for compelling television, but I just feel like there’s a lot of it out there. I went at it with the eye, if I got my chance to do my spaceship tv show what would it look like? In a way it’s a throwback to the things I fell in love with, and not just the obvious ones like Star Trek, but things like Silent Running and Omega Man as well. I worked with Jonathan Glassner on a series called The Outpost and he, like me, has roots in Stargate. He also wanted it to be about the characters and avoid doing a laser combat show or an alien of the week show. Let’s take all the tropes of this genre, build on it, and then take it to a place you wouldn’t expect.
Space.com: Can you talk about the elaborate production design of The Ark and its colony spaceship?
We’ve had a lot of conversations about it, especially with our designer, Randall Gross, who made The Librarians and Leverage for me. The ship is a character in the show, and since it’s a show about people in a closed space, we have to think about what it’s going to be like for our audience to live in that space all the time. On the one hand, we wanted some of it to be semi-claustrophobic, but we didn’t want the show to be Das Boot. So we needed bigger spaces like the observation deck which is two stories high with this huge window. We wanted an area that has organic life and is based on nature, and yet there is the bowels of the ship and the engine room. We’ve tried to have enough different locations so you don’t feel stuck somewhere.
Space.com: What were some of the production challenges and rewards of filming The Ark?
Well, we’re filming the show in Belgrade, Serbia. Jonathan and I had done The Outpost there and we fell in love with the talent there. The crews are spectacular. You have such tremendously talented people in front of and behind the camera. Because we were there we were able to broadcast this from many different countries across Europe. So we had a truly international cast that probably couldn’t be afforded in the United States.
As a side effect, all these actors from Canada, UK, Germany and Spain left their families, friends and agents to come to Serbia, where they were somehow tied to each other. When they weren’t filming, they went out to dinner and on the weekends they hung out together. That’s how these relationships developed, not unlike those that develop in front of the camera.
Space.com: How did the real-world excitement of the burgeoning space industry and NASA’s upcoming Artemis lunar mission impact your world-building?
The version of the future the show portrays is an offshoot of this trend of billionaires wanting to control space. We currently have an abundance of billionaires building spaceships and I don’t see that trend abating. In our future we have a fictional billionaire named Trust who designed and built the Ark program and it is a combination of space privatization with a world government trying to colonize, citizens being invited on board and a private military that is accountable to no one. This is our vision of what possible space exploration might look like after many generations of billionaires would own space companies.
Space.com: How does The Ark’s brighter, more upbeat story arc continue to evolve into a show that will continue to draw viewers?
The kind of science fiction I grew up with all had this hopeful message about the human spirit. And often they talked about very real issues that are happening today, but they took it out of the specific and more into the conceptual. “Star Trek” was really about the Vietnam War and race relations, but they never said that outright. I find that science fiction lends itself to talking about the human condition, so I’m just an optimist.
“The Ark” is a show about a group of people who all want to survive, but have philosophically different ideas about how to do so. And those differences will either destroy them or find a way to come together. Where people will be surprised is how the characters develop and where they go. Stay tuned and try it!
Space.com: What excites you as a creator and storyteller after 30 years in the industry?
I have two children and they are getting past the age at which I can tell the bedtime story. But that was my favorite part about being a father. When I was young my father was a film producer and he always gave this parallel that films and television are bedtime stories. Some more intense, some more whimsical, but it’s all to transport us to another life or situation. I really enjoy telling stories, whether in the theatre, on TV or on the internet. It’s a beautiful art form.
Discover new episodes of SyFy’s The Ark on Wednesdays at 10pm ET and stream the following day on the Peacock streaming service (opens in new tab).
