ASCENSION Fails To Fly

You had one job, Ascension.

When we first heard about this show, it was in the context of Syfy’s move to re-claim its rightful place as the destination channel for science fiction stories. To that end, new VP Bill McGoldrick had been given orders to invest heavily in “space opera” and “big budget miniseries”. Ascension looked to be a two-fer. A three-night miniseries set in space. On a spaceship.

Only it wasn’t.

At its core, Ascension is just another over-the-top soap opera with fulminating looks, smoldering stares, scheming, manipulative people all with hidden agendas. And no real science fiction until the last half-hour of the six-hour event. Even then, the “science” part of the fiction is based on “morphic resonance” and “punctuated evolution”, two theories rooted in metaphysics and paranormal studies rather than actual science.

Oh, and we get to see Tricia Helfer’s bum. Multiple times. Totally worth the six hours, right?

(insert eye-roll here)

The central conceit of Ascension is a Capricorn One writ large, where a crew of a spaceship doesn’t know that the whole mission is a fake. And despite revealing such at the end of the first night, the show continues to give us shots of the USS Ascension as if it was still in space. Which it’s not. It’s part of a “sociological experiment” intended to bring about “punctuated evolution” — which manifests in young Crystal as precognition and electrokenesis. Of course, none of this comes about until the ship is blowing apart, the oxygen scrubbers have failed, the crew is dying, and the experiment overseers on the outside have started stabbing each other in the backs.

Outside of that, there’s really not much of a story here. The whole thing starts with a murder mystery, wrapped in soap opera tropes folded into generation ship tropes. Class envy, 1960s eugenics theory, and “sexual liberation” are all over the place here. The stewardesses are both prostitutes and spies. The captain is an elected(?) position. There’s a council that decides things, except when they don’t.

In short, it’s a mess.

In between the sex, the lying and scheming, the class warfare, and the extramarital affairs — not to mention the lack of anyone trained in law enforcement or security on the ship — everything aboard the ship was just … well, boring.

And the stuff happening outside the ship — experiment boss with a god complex, super-secret shadow corporation running the whole show, the token lesbian who gets to spout the requisite tolerance lines — didn’t spark anything either.

I never grew to care about anyone on this show. There was no time spent on developing any of the emotional cores of the characters. And that goes to a symptom of other Syfy projects like High Moon, shows that are clearly meant to lead into a series subsequent to the miniseries or pilot movie. The production teams are acting as if the series is a foregone conclusion, which means they can leave questions unanswered and end the whole thing on a massive cliffhanger that makes absolutely no sense at all if there’s no more show.

Miniseries and TV movies should be self-contained, and should tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Because there’s no guarantee you get to tell any more story. Ascension makes this mistake in a big way, delivering a six-hour setup with hardly any payoff. Add to that the predictable death of the one character that had at least a little potential to be someone worth watching, and Ascension is just … what’s the word?

Meh.

Based on the promotions from the network, I had expectations that Ascension would be a story about people living in a closed society on board a spaceship bound for Proxima Centauri. The idea of finally getting a space opera on Syfy had many of us wondering if the network might be turning the corner. Alas, ’twas not to be. This was no better than Caprica + Capricorn One. With naked Caprica Six.

Try again, Syfy.