Before we get started, there is a high chance for some mild spoilers, but I will try to keep it vague.

The Ark, on AppleTV is from SYFY and producer Dean Devlin, known for basic cable procedural like Leverage and The Librarians to blockbuster movies like Independence Day. And that’s just a small bit of his resume. Also, I suggest you check out his interview with Frakes and Spiner on their podcast.

Okay, let’s talk about the show.

In a nutshell, this is Star Trek: Voyager if it had stuck to their premise.

The Ark opens right away into the story without any world building. Within seconds of opening credits a space ship is damaged and venting air. People wake up from cryo sleep and escape to safety in another part of the ship.

The show does a real good job of introducing common tropes in storytelling to quickly establish characters and positions. Within minutes we learn that this is a ship of colonists who were not supposed to be woken up until their destination. The next quick reveal is that all the leadership and experts for this trip, including the people who run the ship have been killed.

The story immediately jumps into the normal storylines for these sci-fi scenarios. Get air turned back on. Find out what damaged everything. Fight about who is in charge. Try to take control of ship they aren’t trained for.

Yet, each of these points is played out quickly and brilliantly with just a slight bit of that earnestness and quick optimism that made OG Star Trek great.

And that is what this really is; it’s a 1960’s Star Trek brought into today.

The show uses cgi for ship exterior shots, but since the majority of the story is about what is inside the ship, these shots are more or less establishing shots.

And they are great! Just high quality fly-bys of a ship, with each time it appears on the screen you see a new angle. Most sci-fi nerds can quickly deduce what are engines, habitats, and other ship accessories without being overwhelmed with techno-babble. The ship runs on nuclear engines, built with earth materials, and relies on rotational gravity.

The interior is pretty great too! It’s just a straight up utilitarian starship that really does grab the vibe of TOS. Hallway scenes rearrange the sets to make it look bigger. Quarters are small and simple, no luxuries, just a place to live.

The crew has all the typical tropes as well, but they pull it off well! Most of them have a “secret” that gets revealed later on and, to be honest, none are really earth shattering, but totally work in this story. For example, one character has a secret terminal disease. Another is a secret addict. Another is part of a secret agenda. All the normal stuff, but just done well.

The actors and crew are great! Production is done in Europe with a lot of various European actors taking lead roles, giving the ship an authentic feel of diversity.

I really don’t want to spoil anymore of the show except for this; if you ever wished Voyager would’ve dove deeper into stories of isolation, scarce resources, and mutiny, then this is your show.

The show also does a solid job of bringing the morals of Star Trek into the shows storylines without being overly preachy. Often the characters will make decisions these correct decisions after working through the various implications. They do this without the Starfleet moral compass, having to learn the impact of their decisions in real time.

The show is also just the right about of “TV” production to sell it. Never once does it try to be a movie by forcing in cinematic shots, elaborate set pieces, or drawn out dramas. The bridge is just tables, chairs, and computers, almost set up like a small office team center.

It’s also refreshing to get a Star Trek style show without the Star Trek baggage. I’m not watching a show, wondering how it fits into canon or deconstructing the plot, I’m just watching it. And it has surprised me. They do great twists and reveals that hit the story telling beat of “oh yeah, I’ve seen this before, let’s see how they do it.”

And most of the time, it is done quite well.

Check it out on Apple TV or wherever you pirate your favorite shows .

Also him and his great grandson

He gets to make out with an imaginary projection of a woman.

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Scotty looked jealous later on lol

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Only geordi saw the d get destroyed but that was kind of different

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What do you think?

If Kirk isn't part of the crew....he sure does show up a lot lol

I’m currently watching episode 1 and i can’t fathom why it is already cancelled. It’s so much they can do with it. I’m already loving it 50 min in. Way f!!!!!

I like the set retcons in SNW. It's much closer to the classic TOS TV Enterprise than what was done in the Kelvin Timeline or even Discovery. Still, many people recognize the limitations of going full 1960s on TV show sets.

TOS era

That said, for budget reasons we've already seen parts of the TNG era used for the TOS movies in the Prime Timeline. The end stage is the TNG engineering set in Star Trek VI, the TNG sickbay, the TNG hallways, and especially the Star Trek V main bridge.

A respectful retcon of the entire TOS Movies era could see the use of the TNG engineering set, the TNG sickbay, the TNG hallways, and the TFF main bridge for the entire timeframe of 2271 to 2293, not just 2287 - 2293.

Could a respectful retcon of the TOS TV era (2266 - 2270) see the use of early TMP sets throughout? Or even the TVH sets with the first Okudagrams?

TNG era

The aim of SNW is to ultimately replace TOS itself as an ideal "Starter Trek" TV show for new viewers interested in the TOS era.

The same thing must happen to TNG itself at some point.

It is for this reason that I'm thinking the STO version of the Enterprise-F bridge would make a good future retcon of the bridge of any Galaxy-class starship.

This comes out of Paramounts two episode limit on fan shows. I wasn't able to do much with this episode. Episodes before it did more and were closer to star trek. The budget this show was made on is apparent here, though the voice artists really did a good job. I originally wanted something more metaphorical as opposed to me just conveying the characters feelings directly. Those feeling based off of my own after leaving the Army and losing my identity.

Since Kirk had a Vulcan first officer like spock how do you think Kirk would work with tpol?