'The Ark' Creators Talk Hit New SYFY Series
Dean Devlin and Jonathan Glassner, creators of the new SYFY hit 'The Ark', talk inspiration, characters, and more.
Having just lived through a global pandemic which kept us indoors due to a threat that moved invisibly through the outside air, it’s easy to draw similarities between real life and the newest hit for SYFY channel, The Ark, which centers on the survivors trapped aboard the titular space vessel. The series opens as they awaken early from cryogenic sleep to discover that much of the ship and all of its top commanders have been wiped out. Still, according to the show’s co-creator Dean Devlin (a veteran of sci-fi classics like Indepence Day and Stargate), the parallels between real life events and space fairytales are intrinsic to sci-fi storytelling as a whole.
“The world just went through a life or death situation. And rather than the entire world coming together in harmony to overcome it, you saw that under stress, there were a variety of different reactions and different opinions,” Devlin told Sling TV in a recent Zoom interview. “That’s the thing that I think that you get in a pressure cooker like The Ark: Every decision is life or death and everybody’s opinion gets stronger, because of the fear of what could happen if they make the wrong move.”
Even if we draw our own comparisons, a show like The Ark isn’t going to invoke the type of “too-soon” dread that certain viewers may find in post-pandemic sci-fi like The Last of Us. Devlin emphasizes that although the show’s trapped-inside setting may resonate with the times, its themes are more universal.
“[Co-creator] Jonathan Glassner and I are optimists, and we do believe that ultimately, the best of people rise to the occasion,” he says. “But the road to it is often bumpy. We’ve seen this in so many different situations. And The Ark gives us the opportunity to talk about the different philosophies of approaching life and approaching crises’, and of leadership. What I like is that within the concept, we can do it without being specific about what we’re talking about, so that there is more common ground to discuss it.”
To emphasize these more humanistic themes, Devlin and Glassner decided to put the characters into conflict with one another, rather than an extraterrestrial threat.
“People ask us occasionally, who is the antagonist in this show. And our answer is always: Space,” Glassner says. “This is not a show where it’s alien of the week or foreign planet of the week. It’s much more grounded in, ‘Can man survive in space’? And ‘Will man be their own worst enemy, or work together to overcome it?’ In a way, it’s sort of the whole historic story of humankind.”
To build tension and suspense, the showrunners wanted to add ambiguity to The Ark’s central characters, and subvert the audience's expectations.
“I think part of the issue we have watching television today is that we’ve all seen so many other shows,” Devlin observes. “So on one hand, Jonathan and I wanted to do something that was more of a throwback, something that felt more like the science fiction we grew up on and loved. But at the same time, we didn’t want it to become overly predictable. So we decided to create characters where you’re not sure who’s going to develop into our heroes and who’s going to develop into our villains, and how these conflicts are going to morph. We’re hoping that will create a more compelling story than something that’s more clearly defined as to who’s good, who’s bad, and what we’re going to deal with every week.”
If you’ve seen the first few episodes, you know how well The Ark pulls this off. If you haven’t, check out Devlin and Glassner’s description of the characters below and catch up on demand. New episodes of The Ark air Wednesdays at 10pm ET on SYFY (available with Sling Blue or Orange + Blue).
