‘The Ark’ season 2 is ‘love letter’ to optimistic classic sci-fi, creators say (exclusive)

As poet Robert Burns once wrote, “the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray,” and so it was for the colony ship survivors of SYFY’s hit sci-fi adventure series, “The Ark,” as they witnessed the destruction of Proxima b, their endgame exoplanet in the debut season’s April 2023 finale.

Now it’s onward and outward with these brave wayward Earthlings as Lt. Garnet and her intrepid Ark One crew search for a hospitable new neighborhood, while their massive vessel steers a course for the Trappist System in the constellation Aquarius with dreams that a happier outcome will soon be written in the stars.

Here’s the official synopsis: “The Ark takes place 100 years in the future when planetary colonization missions have begun as a necessity to help secure the survival of the human race. In season two, after the brave crew of Ark One reaches their destination and finds it uninhabitable, they must survive long enough to locate a new home for themselves and all the ships that follow.”

“The Ark” was conceived by Dean Devlin (“Stargate,” “Independence Day”) in collaboration with co-showrunner Jonathan Glassner (“Stargate SG-1”) as a nostalgic throwback to brighter times when vintage sci-fi TV shows like “Battlestar Galactica,” “Andromeda” and “Farscape” thrived.

Season 2 stars Christie Burke (Lt. Sharon Garnet), Richard Fleeshman (Lt. James Brice), Reece Ritchie (Lt. Spencer Lane), Ryan Adams (Angus Medford), Stacey Michelle Read (Alicia Nevins), Shalini Peiris (Dr. Sanjivni Kabir), Pavle Jenrinic (Felix Strickland), Christina Wolfe (Dr. Cat Brandice), and Tiana Upcheva (Eva Markovic).

“In season one, the kind of fun of the concept is that it’s a group of people who are not leaders that were thrust into leadership positions,” Devlin tells Space.com. “Everybody had to become the best versions of themselves and how many would be able to do it and how many couldn’t. In a way, as the creators of the show, Jonathan and I literally watched our children grow up in season one. So season two is, ‘Okay, they’ve evolved so how do they handle this.’ It really allowed it to go in directions that will not only be surprising for the audience, it was surprising for us as we were developing it. It’s been a lot of fun.”

For Glassner, generating forward momentum and propelling the story in organic ways is paramount to the success of any series, especially in these perilous times.

“It’s always a question of how do you take these characters further and what else is there to reveal about them,” Glassner adds. “We’re going to learn a lot of interesting, deep dark secrets about a lot of them that we haven’t learned yet, and how do they respond to that.”

Christie Burke plays Lt. Sharon Garnet, someone who was reluctantly thrust into command of Ark One after a first season disaster leaves hundreds dead. These fresh chapters allowed her to reach for greater character complexities now that she has a dozen episodes under her belt.

“I feel much more supported in a way, not only for the cast but from the crew,” Burke says. “We’ve done this thing together so there’s a shorthand. I also felt kind of like Garnet. In season one I was trying to prove something and now in season two I’m the best one for the job. A ‘there’s proof in the pudding’ kind of thing. I was also excited to dive into Garnet deeper and see her in different situations that aren’t necessarily the leadership role. So we get to see her in different lights that I don’t think audiences have seen her in yet.”

Located 40 light years away from Earth, the Trappist System is the new season 2 destination now that Proxima b exploded in the season 1 finale. It’s a solar system that contains six or seven habitable worlds, three of which might support life according to the most recent findings.

“My nightmare is sites like Space.com because we will read an article about a planet that they now think is a place we could inhabit or support life,” Glassner notes. “We’ll start writing and we’ll start shooting and then a week will go by and one of the space telescopes figured out that that one is not livable, but maybe the one next to it is. We have to just let it go at that point beach there no way we can keep up.

“Today, with the James Webb Space Telescope out there, they’re finding things everyday, things that contradict each other and what they thought or what we now think and in ten weeks it will be that we won’t think that anymore. I’ve kind of given up on keeping up with it. But it bums me out every time I see a new discovery that disproves something we were thinking was the case when we were writing it.”

Of the utmost importance to Devlin and Glassner in crafting “The Ark” as an engaging family-style entertainment is for whatever science is injected into the show, they want it to have some reasonable anchor in reality.

“So that if a fan wanted to say, ‘Well, is Trappist really a place that could have a livable planet?’ And they could look it up and do their own investigation,” explains Devlin. “Our show isn’t a show about the science. It’s not about how accurate this engine is or gravity. Our show is really about the characters and dealing with some science fiction concepts that we think are fun, and services our greater goal which is to do a show about the human spirit. But if we can base things on researchable ideas, then we feel like at least we’ve planted our foot somewhere in reality, even if we’re not accurately depicting it on the show.”

Season 2 brings that same hopeful attitude audiences respond to during last year’s outing and Glassner wants the series to remain a beacon of sunnier science fiction.

“I think that in the time we’re living in right now there’s a lot of sad awful stuff going on. So it’s important to have some television that’s just pure lighthearted entertainment. Some of my favorite shows are these dark, really meaningful shows that can win Emmys, but it’s not like I’m going to come away from those shows happy and laughing and talking about the show the way I think that people do from “The Ark,” which I think is something that’s really needed right now.”

Keeping the show rooted in an enduring optimism and deflecting more cheerless elements seen in most dystopian narrative gives “The Ark” a brighter, spirited tone.

“We are standing on the shoulders of giants,” Devlin says. “This show is a love letter to the kind of shows that Jonathan and I grew up watching and the kind of science fiction that inspired us. And it’s not necessarily what’s in vogue today. Things tend to be much more violent, much darker, and for more niche audiences. We’re trying to do a different kind of thing. We’re trying to salute the shows that we fell in love with, and yet try to tell them in a way that hasn’t been done before. It’s not easy, but it gives us a very clear direction of what we want to do.”

“The Ark’s” 12-episode season 2 premieres on SYFY on July 17, 2024 at 10 p.m. ET. Episodes stream the next day on Peacock.