ASCENSION
is an original mini-series that was shown on the SyFy channel in December 2014. The show, although originally six episodes, was
shown in three parts over consecutive nights.
The basic premise is that in 1963 a generation ship
was secretly sent towards Proxima Centauri on a hundred year journey. The story begins 51 years into the trip,
supposedly with the second generation in command. (Come to think of it, there
didn’t seem to be anybody over 50 on the ship – surely the people who started
the journey would’ve been in there 20s or 30s at that time, so some would still
be alive and not doddering idiots to be
hidden in the ship’s equivalent of an attic?)
There are also scenes on Earth involving the people who are running the
Ascension program.
First, I want to make the point that I don’t want
to dwell on the highly dubious morality of using hundreds of unknowing people
as guinea pigs in an experiment, being willing to gas them if things go wrong,
and for the head of the project to expect to be summarily taken out and killed
when he’s replaced as project head. I
will not say much about the plot but only mention in passing that it was soap opera-ish
with gratuitous nudity and explicit sex.
Instead, I will try to concentrate on the story from a science fiction
point of view.
Back to the story.
In Part 1, several things don’t seem to add
up. For one, the ship doesn’t seem to
rotate to provide gravity. If the ship rotated the “walls” of the cylinder
would be the floors, not what seems to be floors in a normal building. For another, the group on Earth seem to get
information about what is happening on the ship almost immediately, where it
should take about 2 years since the ship is about halfway to Centauri. And how could such a huge ship have been
launched in 1963 without anyone noticing? (This was also a problem in the movie
Interstellar.)
Then, at the end of the first part, we learn the
truth. It’s a fake, a simulation.
But the people supposedly on board the ship must believe they are headed
for the stars. This, of course, answers
the second and third points in the above paragraph. There’s no communications time delay because
the Earthlings are standing right next to the “ship,” and there never was any launch to keep
secret.
But this doesn’t solve the problem related to
gravity. Of course, the ship isn’t
rotating: it’s not a ship. Gravity is
just like on Earth (because they are on Earth).
But wouldn’t the ship people realize something is wrong? Surely there must have been scientists in the
original group. And it can’t be
accelerating at 1g because I calculated that the velocity after 50 years at 1g
exceeds the speed of light.
In Part 2, we learn that the best and brightest were
recruited for the “trip.” Didn’t they
notice that there was no launch? (I can
hear the first captain: “Wow, that was a really smooth launch – I didn’t feel
anything!”) And how did they even get
the people on board in a convincing manner, since the “ship” is inside of a
building? You see a ship, but no
rockets! The ship people would’ve had to
have been drugged, put on board and awakened after the ship had been
“launched!”
Harris, who’s the son of the program’s originator,
now heads the program. He says that the
program has paid for itself, because of things these ultra-bright people have
invented, such as MRI. Now, I can
imagine them working on the theory behind MRI, but where would they get the
material (metal, etc.) and the means to manufacture it? (We actually see one on the ship in Part
3.) We also see someone using a
primitive type of tablet sized computer (this is probably what they refer to as
a stenotab). Again, although they
could’ve gotten the ideas for smaller and smaller computers, as was happening
in the real world, there is no way they could’ve obtained the materials and
manufacturing facilities to make the integrated circuits and other components
of a laptop or tablet (or even a desktop).
Remember that in 1963, computers were huge, not personal, and couldn’t
do very much compared to today’s small devices.
Similarly, although there are regular books in the library, videos seem
to be on a card smaller than a DVD.
Either the writers don’t know much about genetics
or great progress has been made in that science. There are no love matches on the ship:
couples are paired by the computer. In
one scene it is implied that the pairing is genetic, in a later scene a
character mention sending in his “profile” (genetic profile or simply their
version of match or eharmony?) In the 1960s, genetic testing had not been
invented. Even now, we do not even have
a definition for “genetic compatibility” much less have a way to test for
it. All you can really do is make sure
that the potential mates do not both have a recessive gene that combined can
lead to disease, for example, sickle cell anemia.
In Part 1 I wondered how they achieved population
control since it was mentioned that a baby can’t be conceived until someone
dies. The birth control pill was fairly new in 1963, but it is possible that
they would have some aboard. However, in
Part 2 we see that a girl has a contraceptive implant and in Part 3 we learn
that they get them at puberty. But here
on Earth, research on subcutaneous implants wasn’t started until 1966 and not
marketed until the 1980s. So was this
something else they invented on the ship?
The ship is supposed to be going to Proxima
Centauri. That is, of course, the name
of a star, not a planet. Nothing is
said, or seems to be known about any planets around that star. And yet, that doesn’t seem to bother
anyone. They’re blithely preparing to
terraform a planet not known to exist, using some bulldozers and seeds brought
from Earth.
In Part 3 things get even weirder. In Parts 1 and 2 we have seen a teenage girl named Christa who seems to know things before they happen and shows other paranormal gifts. Harris says that she’s the goal of the experiment. According to his father, it would take three generations to reach “morphic resonance.” Morphic resonance is a crackpot theory of Rupert Sheldrake. If you’re interested, you can read about it at: http://skepdic.com/morphicres.html
In the final climactic scenes things are going to hell
on the ship, and Harris says: “They will go to the stars.” Then Christa saves
one of the crew by focusing real hard, creating electromagnetic whatever, and
teleporting him to … wherever. So what’s
the plan? She’s going to teleport
everyone and their equipment to the same wherever? Not to
belabor the point, but note the spelling of her name.
So much for the improbabilities of the story. There are plenty of problems with the part on
Earth, including the difficulty of keeping a project with so many people
involved secret for over 50 years. One
wonders if the President knows about it.
I just want to make a few general comments before
ending this and allowing the show to mercifully fade from my memory.
One general problem, is that the writers don’t seem
to have given any thought to what would’ve been taken on the ship or made
there.
It’s well known that wherever mankind goes and
whatever organic material is available, some means will be found to create
alcoholic beverages (see for example the TV series M*A*S*H). But it makes no sense to take up room on the
ship with bottles of wine and fancy wine glasses.
Cloth would be at a premium and clothing would be
utilitarian. It is inconceivable that
this valuable resource would be used to make evening gowns and high heeled
shoes and men’s formal wear. There is
also plenty of cosmetics on board including lipstick and nail polish. (At one point, one girl says to another: “I totally want that lipstick back.” Amazing that Valley talk developed
independently on the ship.)
Even the set design for the ship wasn’t
consistent. Mostly we see a vertical
cylindrical plan with ring-like floors and vertical stairs. But sometimes we see a very long hallway
which wouldn’t fit into the ship.
And then there’s the problem of the mole. Somehow Harris has an inside man on the
ship. He has a high position and is
married and has a young adult daughter.
How can you sneak someone on board when there are only 600 people? Wouldn’t someone have wondered “who the hell
are you and where did you come from?”
The only way to have an insider would be someone from the beginning who
knew it was a fake. But such a person
would have to have been well over 70 and this mole definitely wasn’t.
To conclude, my husband thought that the show’s
rating of LSV (language, sex, violence)
actually stood for laughable, stupid, vulgar.