Trust and the Residue of Romance
THE ARK – Season 1 Episode 2 – SPOILERS
Head of Security Felix Strickland
Self-appointed Acting Captain Sharon Garnet (Christie Burke) is caught poking around the storage closet where Malcolm Perry (Chris Leask) was murdered. This makes Head of Security Felix Strickland (Pavle Jerinić) suspicious, because the access history for that closet was deleted by someone. Only four people have security clearance high enough to access that data, and Garnet is one of them. Garnet later displays excellent brawling skills when she helps Kirkland break up a fistfight in the mess hall, but it is doubtful that makes him any less suspicious of her.
Two things Garnet says in the course of the episode are notable. Alone in her quarters while gazing wistfully at a photograph of herself and an unidentified person, she says: “I really wish you’d taken the cryopod next to mind like I asked, ’cause right about now I could really use some counsel from someone who understands my situation.” Then later in the story she comments: “We need to get the engines back up to near light speed or we won’t reach Prox B before a one year’s journey turns to ten.”
The event that woke everyone from stasis must also have slowed the ship considerably.
Captain Lester (Ana Sofrenovic) and Lieutenant Commander Susan Ingram (Lisa Brenner).
A flashback reveals that Garnet was brought onto the ship at the last minute by “someone high up”, and that might (or might not) be William Trust (Paul Leonard Murray), the guy who designed the entire Ark program. At Ark One‘s pre-launch ceremony, James Brice (Richard Fleeshman), Spencer Lane (Reese Ritchie) and Baylor Trent (Miles Barrow), have this conversation:
BRICE: “I thought Trust got fired from his own company because he went crazy.”
LANE: “Most geniuses are a little crazy”
TRENT: “If it weren’t for him, none of us would be here.”
BRICE: “I guess. But he went from genius saviour of mankind to a guy with a god complex. He shouldn’t be speaking for the mission anymore.”
Tamara Radovanovic as Jelena Griff.
Later in the episode, Brice, who might have a bit of a death wish, goes against orders and takes a risky spacewalk in an attempt to figure out what interrupted Ark One‘s mission. (External cameras went offline for the event, but mysteriously returned to functionality afterward.) Brice says that the damaged area of the ship looks “like it touched the sun”. Crystals embedded in the damaged areas are diamond-like in appearance and when hand-squeezed disintegrate into a corrosive substance that reacts with Brice’s glove. The glove dissolves, but the substance does not react with the skin of his hand. It could be a naturally-occurring type of space rock, but the stuff might be a weapon that is activated by pressure (perhaps the pressure of impact), and is designed to selectively destroy inanimate objects, but not people.
Angus Medford (Ryan Adams) interrupts a council meeting to suggest that remains of the recently deceased should be recycled rather than ejected into space. Strickland objects, pointing out that, if the bodies are used (after composting) to fertilize food crops, eating those crops would constitute cannibalism. (His argument seems spurious, since dead bodies furnish nutrition for most plants somewhere along the line.) Though Lane agrees with Strickland, Garnet calls a vote, and the bodies are sent to the compost heap.
Eva (Tiana Upcheva) met (will meet?) the very romantic Harris (Dominik Čičak) in Belgrade’s Kalemegdan Park. | In 2020, six Chinese windmill palm trees were planted in front of the Cvijeta Zuzorić Art Pavilion (located within Kalemegdan Park) . Authorities said that these palms will survive there only because Serbia’s climate has warmed significantly in recent years due to climate change.
Recycling is important on a spaceship. The hunting knife that was used to kill Matthew Perry was disposed of by being dropped into the ship’s water tank. It eventually caused a flexible water line to burst, making it imperative that the water reclamation unit be made functional. (The device had been mothballed until arrival at Proxima B.) Eva Markovic (Tiana Upcheva) should be supervising this, but Eva is unable to work because she is grieving the death of her lover whom she had smuggled onboard (see Episode One). The Ark Program prohibited couples from being together on the same Ark, probably in an attempt to avoid this sort of situation. Fortunately, Cat Brandice (Christina Wolfe) is a psychologist, and manages to soothe Markovic sufficiently to get her out of bed and working on water reclamation. Garnet drafts the reluctant Dr. Brandice into service as “Head of Ship-wide Mental Health”.
Season One of THE ARK can be streamed on PEACOCK.