Welcome Back The Ark fans,
The second episode of season two begins when the series main characters including Captain Sharon Garnet (Christie Burke), Lt. Spencer Lane (Reece Ritchie), Lt. James Brice (Richard Fleeshman), Dr. Sanjivni Kabir (Shalini Peiris), Angus Medford (Ryan Adams) and Alicia Nevins (Stacey Read), Eva Markovic (Tiana Upcheva), Security Chief Felix Strickland (Pavle Jerinic), Sasha Novak (Milos Cvetkovic), Jelena Griff (Tamara Radovanovic), and Naomi Spencer (Jessica Yemi) have been found surviving the disaster at Proxima B.
Poor Kelly Fowler (Samantha Glassner) has also survived for the time being, but was discovered to be a Failed Experiment as we delineated in our analysis of the first episode of season two. Kelly’s mother, Evil Evelyn Maddox (Jelena Stupljanin) has escaped to Trappist-1D leaving her daughter and our heroes to deal with new challenges dealing with arrival of new crew members from Ark-15.
We at TeamWHR are concerned about low ratings of only ~250,000 per episode so far on SYFY. Why? Because we desire more seasons of The Ark. Even SYFY is concerned about the last pure scripted science fiction space series on television, placing the first two episodes on YouTube to raise viewership.
Kill or Be Killed:
As Angus is being hurriedly wheeled into the Medical Bay with a very worried Alicia Nevins accompanying him with James Brice is watching. Who is the new guy hurrying along with the gurney? He has no time to wonder because The Ark he calls home is in a state of chaos. There is somewhere he has to be so he and Spencer Lane, who also is in the corridor wondering what the heck is going on, head off down the hall to meet Garnet arriving with several new people.
Lt. James Brice is the first one of the Ark-1 crew to question whether the new people from Ark-15 can be trusted.
It looks as if James is going to be a bit of an agitator, or perhaps a stickler for details. No doubt so will Felix Strickland, who has lost his husband on Ark 3. Felix is still very upset about it and therefore does not trust the new people from Ark-15 either.
William Trust arrives to speak to Captain Garnet. Trust, not the most trustworthy person on Ark-1, says that he wants to help. Why? Because he knows the most technical capabilities about the Arks. What could possibly go wrong?
Next, Sharon Garnet draws Spencer Lane’s and Trust’s attention to the fact that Kelly Fowler is now on board of ARk-1. Kelly is not exactly flavour of the month. This is especially true with William Trust who Kelly doesn’t like at all. However, Dr. Marsh (Jadran Malkovich) and Kimi Joma (Díana Bermudez) who know that Kelly has been abused by Evil Evelyn.
Seems that Kelly is responsible for the death of two of the women he loves. William Trust is so angry at her presence that he lunges for her. This is helping? The fact that he is stopped by a security person and he doesn’t fight to get at Kelly suggests that he was more bark than bite where Kelly is concerned. He was more interested in complaining that she was on the same ship as he was. Kelly is removed to the Med Bay. My reaction is, “what about the bomb in her head?” Could it be a possible future end of her life in heroic style? Nope.
Trust, Garnet and Eva Markovic walk toward the front of the ship as they discuss the need to get to FTL. When they arrive, they discover that the FTL system is damaged beyond repair. At least, for right now. The new doctor, Dr. Marsh, is busy in the Med Bay when Kelly is brought in and restrained on an examination bed. Marsh objects. To him, she is a victim. Spencer doesn’t agree and demands to know why she has a bomb inside her head.
Marsh explains that the bomb is a failsafe in case Kelly goes off the rails. Spencer immediately gets the wrong idea assuming that Kelly was not supposed to do all the damage she had done. Marsh explains that Kelly was designed to be an “upgrade”, or a better designed human, as her mother wanted.
Meanwhile Kelly is now awake and overhearing everything. It turns out that her mother wanted superior humans to do her bidding, and only her bidding. Meglomaniacs are not a good choice for changing the world. This is another situation that could go wrong at any moment.
Eva, Brice, Strickland, Spencer and Garnet arrive at the Mess Hall to discuss the new people. Brice is not happy to see new person, Kimi there with Alicia. Captain Garnet explains she is that to answer some questions. James Brice is a real hothead in this episode. He wants to know why they would give free access to the new people to key areas of the ship. Because, Eva says, she has lost almost all of her engineers and needs replacements. Makes sense. Naturally, Strickland agrees with Brice. Kimi should have found a way to stop the attack on Ark 3. Kimi explains that under Maddox, she didn’t know who was a loyalist. The people who escaped with Garnet and herself were not loyalists because when Maddox called for them to rise up and stop the escape, none of them did. So now what about Kelly whom everyone except Garnet and Marsh are seeing as a murderer. They will hold a trial. The penalty for murder is death, offers Strickland.
A council meeting has been called. Kimi and Trust are in attendance With the usual people; Garnet, Eva, Spencer, Brice, and Alicia. Kimi calls Brice handsome. Brice takes offence assuming she’s cozying up to him. Her explanation is that pretty people are seldom smart. Brice is offended once again. Brice tells her that he’s not pretty, she’s pretty, proving her point. I’m sure that lots of viewers are going to wonder if these two will end up getting a room. It seems likely. Next up, they need spare parts, so how do they get them? Spencer suggests that there are spare parts on Ark 3 so that is where they should get them. They will need to Jerry rig a system from the back of the Arc to the front to get them into FTL. Trust tells them he could do it but it requires a space walk and he does not do space walks. So, as usual, Trust is both useful and not useful. He does end up doing the space walk and doing the repairs, but he pukes in his space suit and cuts himself from his tether so that Garget has to rescue him Trusts wonders why she didn’t just let him die in space. Yeah, why didn’t she? She certainly has a lot of patience.
In the Med Bay, Angus is finally conscious. He chats with Alicia. Just as they both lean in for a kiss, he passes out. Star crossed lovers who just don’t seem to get a chance, I think. Dr. Marsh complains that his other patents were near death and William Trust is his neediest patient. This again lets us know that Trust is the most difficult person on the ship We also learn that Marsh has removed the bomb from Kelly’s head. Because he feels he owes it to her, Marsh decides to be her defense during the trial. Strickland is the prosecutor and Garnet is the judge. Kelly immediately pleads guilty. That wasn’t the plan, says Marsh. So, Kelly reluctantly agrees to plead not guilty. We then learn about her behaviour on Ark 3. Kelly had been basically turned into a cyborg who murdered lots of people because Maddox programmed her that way. The fact that Kelly is feeling guilty about what she has done makes me wonder why no one seems to be concerned that Kelly could become suicidal. But then, if she ended her life, that would solve a great many problems. Captain Garnet decides that she is guilty of murder, but because of what her mother did to her, Kelly won’t be killed. She will be incarcerated until they can decide how to fix her. She ends up in what passes for their brig, a smelly bathroom that has been altered.
Since they no longer have access to the Bridge, Captain Garnet tells everyone that the cramped Engineering section will have to do. They begin the jump to FTL. They seem to be doing fairly well, keeping it at 84% integrity, which I assume is good. But not so good as the moment they think they are safe, everything goes haywire. They lose power. Once it comes back on they discover that the Warp Bubble has collapsed and they have picked up something – a life form? Tune in next time to see what the crew does during the third episode aptly named “Anomaly”.
Thanks to Kenn for staging images for my review and analysis of this episode of The Ark, the featured videos, and, many thanks to you for stopping by WormholeRiders News Agency!
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Regards,
