Ascension

A little more about Tricia Helfer's new Space series for Syfy

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I think she does better in S-F roles or out and out 'femme fatale' type roles so this one should be pretty good, we can hope.

If the star ship is on only a 100 year flight then the destination must be pretty close. Of course they could postulate a 'warp drive' or 'sub-space continuum' to get around the speed of light limitation. At 'only' the speed of light, 100 years won't get you very far in even galactic terms let alone inter-galactic.

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don't forget this starts tonight Dec 15th and is a 3 night event.

won't miss it.....

I should wait until seeing all 3 parts before critiquing it, but so far it strains credulity to such a degree that it's hard to know where to start. Yes, I realize that it's fiction but it's science fiction and that requires a higher standard of believability not required of vampires/zombies/demons/magic/etc. So I'll wait until Thursday......

Seems soap opera-y but is beautifully filmed. I did guess the plot twist even before seeing the people all tucked away in their radiation-prevention pods. But certainly interesting enough to see it to the end.

I was surprised to see Lauren Lee Smith playing the investigator sent to investigate the murder. One of my favorite actresses. She works mostly in Canada and I hadn't seen her in any series since Mutant X but she has done American TV, just not shows that I watch.

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One scene that got a chuckle from me and probably other 'old-time' SF'ers, was the scene in the cafe where she and the other investigator were discussing the disappearance in 1963 of 'famous scientists', two of which they named; Alfred Bester and Fritz Lieber. Here's why it was funny:

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Meanwhile the 12 year old girl seems to have "powers" beyond  normal and the Director seems to think that what his father predicted is coming true, hinting that maybe she is the next step in human evolution.

But all in all this is pretty entertaining if we can get past the basic premise of being able to build that ship in 1963 (how long before that must they have started?) They keep the 60's vintage TV screens, but have a "chip" reader that would have had to be solid state to hold that much video and solid state electronics for storage purposes weren't developed by then....

Overall...entertaining. But What a strange, strange ending. I think the bad guy was better off than the good guy.

This story is entirely beside the point of course but it was written before they saw the show....

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But the show did put a whole different spin on the classic S-F 'generation ship' story. They did leave a lot of plot holes; for example the director's father had the idea that a group of people isolated long enough would eventually produce someone with superhuman powers. What evidence did he have for this ? But anyway after about 38 years in isolation a girl was born (12 years old after ~50 years) who began to display those qualities.

After 'seeing things' that no one else could and burning out the 'ships' electrical system with a massive display of electrical generation we come down to the final results and the 'payoff' for the whole experiment which was to find a method of space travel not dependent on the impractical chemical rockets of then (and now) , leading to the "strange" ending.

She is able to harness forces that transport people apparently nearly instantaneously to interstellar distances. So there we see the XO sitting on that desolate, rocky, muddy planet, inexplicably with a breathable atmosphere. And we are left "only" with these questions : Are her destinations predictable and controllable ? Would her abilities be viable outside the ship ? Where does the electrical energy come from ? Given that the XO is now all alone on some planet, somewhere, can she get him back to Earth or will she have to send more "colonists" to help him start the 'terraforming' process (mentioned earlier as the method that would be used when they reached Proxima Centauri). Already having a breathable atmosphere is a big step in the terraforming process which is usually the first step in making a planet livable in classic S-F stories.

Shooting Lauren Lee in the eye was totally unnecessary but all in all the story was innovative.