The Ark, S01E03 “Get out and Push”

“An asteroid is headed for us!“

No. It’s not. By definition it’s not. Whatever’s out there that’s gonna
smack you right in the face and hopefully kill you all, it’s not an
asteroid. The second word said on this episode is wrong.

Ian, that scene from future episodes we keep seeing about the lightspeed
engines, she’s now saying “near lightspeed“

So they are traveling ridiculously fast in normal space and relativity is
attached.

Our reluctant heroes are chatting about their options. The guy who
shouldn’t be captain, but thinks he is, wants to use the solar sails. The
ginger robot says they’re too far from a star. Duh. So he says that they
should divert the power into the almost light speed engines which were shut
down from overheating because they had drained the coolant, so that makes
no sense, and everybody just ignores what he said anyway. Suddenly alarms
go off, indicating an asteroid is coming at them (it’s not) And they’re all
scared and stuff.

I don’t think the writers, and I use that word very loosely, have taken
into consideration the fact that they are stopped dead. They are a light
year from the nearest asteroid. And they’re an awfully small target.

By the way, I finally got a good look at the whole ship, and all the
rotating sections are rotating the same way, which means the damn thing
should be precessing in the opposite direction. Also, the way it’s turning,
last week when the guy got speared by the narwhale, they were on the aft
section. Which means they got starboard wrong by any definition.

Oh, yeah, they say that if they don’t get the engines back up to near
lightspeed, they’ll miss Proxima B. Why? They’re stopped dead in space.
It’s not like Proxima B is much of a moving target. This is like your car
breaking down in the middle of the Mojave desert and you saying that if you
don’t get back up to 55 miles an hour you’re going to miss Los Angeles. No,
you’re not. You might miss a scheduled arrival time but you aren’t gonna
miss the city. Neither of you is going anywhere.

Oh my God. The ginger robot is asking the only surviving navigator if he
can find a closer star system for them to go to. There’s not going to be
anything closer than Proxima B. That’s why they’re going there. It’s the
closest place to go!

The only one who knows how to fix the engines is the same woman who is the
only one who knows how to fix the water reclamation unit. Not to mention
she’s the one who broke the engines in the first place.

Glasses girl gets both god and science wrong.

It’s the Ark’s drift that is moving it in front of the asteroid (which is
in turn coming at them at tremendous speed). They are drifting? When did
that start? And Shirley they must have some sort of thrusters. If they move
the thing a mile in any direction, that should do it.

There’s an incredibly stupid commercial about how comic book companies
don’t hire Black people. It doesn’t actually end with anybody saying that’s
wrong or the guy whose story it is getting a job. He just says his mother
was nice about it. WTF?

Close-up of the Ark. Ian is so lucky to be able to watch this in 4K!

The idiot doctor (who slept through somebody stealing all her drugs on the
other side of a curtain) says that she has to do a physical on the guy
whose hand was eaten away by space diamonds because his file was corrupted.
They have six hours to live. And she’s insisting she needs to do physicals.

Hey! They’re finally in the gigantic room where they got the pre-lift off
peptalk! It’s all full of comfy couches where people are sitting and
chatting like they were in a shopping mall before the stores opened.

The odds of being hit by an asteroid just drifting in space are one in
700,326. Because that makes sense.

Actually, the odds of you being hit by an asteroid 4/5 of the way between
Earth and Proxima B are absolutely zero. Also, they got so tired of saying
Proxima B that now they just call it Prox B.

With four hours to go it occurs to them that they have shuttles. Lots and
lots of shuttles, or just a few with unlimited fuel supplies since they
were going to use them to take all 300 people down to the planet. Also,
another shot of the ship from below shows there are domes all over the
place facing in all different directions.

Turns out there’s only one shuttle. The shuttle isn’t berthed, it just
hangs down below from the super structure. Which means you don’t have to
uncouple it from the ark. You can just use the engines as they are. There
would be no possible reason to unattach it, and fly around and look for a
place on the Ark to shove and use it in a way other than it was intended. I
haven’t watched the next segment yet, but I am taking bets.

The shuttle won’t start! It turns out various people have been scavenging
it for parts to fix other systems. And yet it didn’t occur to any of them
that it was actually there. Also, there doesn’t seem to be any way to get
to the shuttle from the Ark in the first place.

The parts are not plug and play which means they’re going to have to
re-calibrate everything even though they’re taking the original parts and
putting them back where they got them in the first place and even though
they’re talking about stuff like fuel hoses.

Plan C is to blow a hole in the hull and let the escaping air pressure push
them out of the way. Because they don’t have airlocks I guess.

Luckily the missing shuttle fuel hose, a standard 1 foot length of
translucent plastic hose available at any auto parts store they have in
Serbia, attaches right underneath the command chair so they don’t have to
build another set. But the shuttle doesn’t start so the pilot tells the
guy who is trying to fix it to stop fixing it because… I have no idea. Nor
do I have any idea why he thought it would start when there’s a guy right
next to him still fixing it in the first place.

The missing power coupler is returned! Why did they think it would start
without that? Luckily it attaches right behind the command chair so they
don’t have to build another set. But the shuttle still won’t start.

Until the pilot kicks it! And it starts! And then it stops again.

In the shower room, where they’re going to blow a hole in the hull because
there aren’t any doors that open to space like airlocks, the worthless
cargo people are having a dance party. The ginger robot beats them up and
gives them three seconds to clean up their mess and get out. Of course,
they just leave without cleaning up any mess because three seconds.

They’ve made a fertilizer bomb out of the people they’ve gotten killed so
far because there are no explosives on the Ark because why would you
possibly need explosives to start a colony on an unknown world? They attach
the bomb to what is clearly not an exterior wall.

KA-BOOM!

They blow a hole! Now that we can see the explosion from the outside, it
comes out from what should have been the floor. But they stuck the bimb on
the wall. Which means they’ve got gravity going at 90° to how it should.
Also, I don’t think I’d have blown a hole in the rotating section.
Certainly not my first choice. And certainly not without calculations, as
to when to set it off!

Hey, the nerdy botanist who built the bomb looks just like Boz in RIPTIDE!
Think he’ll build a robot next?

They decide not to make a ship wide announcement that they’re setting off a
bomb, because that would scare people more than a big kaboom out of
nowhere.

It worked, the asteroid will now miss them by 586 m.

Meanwhile the shuttle pilot has fixed the shuttle and run all the way to
the command deck to tell them he’s ready to use the shuttle to move the
Ark. Because he’s forgotten they have an intercom.

Girl with the glasses, in the nose of the ship, suddenly realizes the
“asteroid“ has a tail. She runs to the bridge to tell them the asteroid has
a tail! Because she’s forgotten they have an intercom.

It’s a comet! And they get entirely wrong why comets have tails. Anyway,
that means it’s made of ice and ice is made of water and therefore the
comet is drinkable. But how can they get the water? They have “miles and
miles” of ship to ship refueling hose aboard! What? Why? There isn’t
another ship. And their engines are nuclear. What the hell were they going
to pump through refueling hose? And why have they been cannibalizing
working systems for hose?

They must match speed and course with the comet! But how? They don’t have
engines! They think about this for a while because they’ve all forgotten
the shuttle. Already.

OMG. Girl with glasses explains that the tiny shuttle can get the ark
moving at the fantastic velocity of the comet because they’re in space. And
I quote:

“Lieutenant Brice is using the shuttle like a booster rocket to accelerate
the Ark up to the comet’s velocity”

“OK but how can something so small get us moving so fast?”

“We’re in space. There’s no gravity, no friction or resistance. Size
doesn’t matter, just force.”

Apparently there’s no mass, either. She goes on to explain further and even
cites the laws of physics. As Bugs Bunny once said “I never studied law“.

The accelerating shuttle can only bring the ark up to 87% of the comet’s
incredible velocity. But that should be enough for the miles and miles of
fueling hose to hook them together and drag the Ark up the rest of the way.

Oh my God. My eyes and ears are starting to bleed.

When Bryce detached the shuttle from the ark, he accidentally pushed the
Ark the other way, and now the incredible strain will tear the shuttle
apart! But in the meantime, they are pumping water. I have no idea where
they’re getting water from because, you know, comet made of ice.

Also, the other end of the fueling hose in the ark is just open to the
compartment the people are in and pouring water that’s splashing on them
because it’s moving water so it must be safe to drink.

There’s a lot of drama as the people on the ark think 97% of water capacity
is OK but Brice holds out for 100! Then he starts the engines while he’s
facing the wrong way but they don’t actually do anything until he turns
around. And the asteroid, I mean comet hurdles away from the Ark, even
though they had matched speed and velocity, because… Oh, hell I give up.

They all just start drinking the water. No reason to test it.

Ginger robot slinks away. Hot blonde finally shows up. She throws off her
clothes and has another non-naked shower scene, this time with water.

But why did Ginger robot slink away? Oh, I bet she’d shoot off sparks and
explode if she drank water.

They recover some of the stolen drugs, which were apparently being used in
the shower party. Now the overtired only doctor left alive on board can
have a drug problem!

Hot blonde wears a wig to cover that her head is all one big burn from
getting caught in a UV storm a few years ago. Luckily it didn’t affect any
part of her that’s not covered by a wig.

We find out there is a rule that no existing couples could be on the same
ark because genetic diversity. Because that makes sense.

With five minutes to go, Cox cable locks up.

During the lock up, the guy who wants to be, but shouldn’t be captain got a
secret video from the guy who was murdered in the first episode. It shows
the ginger robot killed a guy in a bar who was trying to rape her. That’s
the big secret? Who cares?

Next week nobody mentions almost lightspeed engines. And apparently they’ve
completely forgotten that they are now going the wrong direction at the
incredible velocity of the comet.

--
The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it is still on my list.