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Out of this world! Dean Devlin's 'The Ark' takes off with biggest SYFY premiere in 2 years
The mystery space-thriller has really struck a chord with audiences.
The Ark is proof that folks still love to launch off for a good, old fashioned sci-fi adventure.
According to a new report from The Wrap, the freshman SYFY series from co-creators Dean Devlin (Stargate, Independence Day) and Jonathan Glassner (Stargate SG-1) has become the network's most-watched premiere since the initial rollout of Resident Alien two years ago. In addition, Episode 1 drew in a total of 1 million viewers, "marking the network’s best premiere among adults 18-49 since Chucky’s fall 2021 debut."
RELATED: 'The Ark's young stars on challenge of playing nerd super-geniuses in SYFY's new space thriller
The show takes place 100 years in the future, in a time when humanity (having ruined Earth for good) starts launching missions to colonize other planets. Our species' final hope of survival rests aboard the Ark One, a self-sustaining spaceship carrying thousands of individuals who have nobly volunteered to seek out a new home amongst the stars.
But when the vessel sustains a terrible accident that kills off a good chunk of the people in charge, the survivors must band together (under the newly-assumed leadership of Christie Burke's Lt. Garnet) in an effort to complete the overall objective.
“We wanted off the top to create a pressure cooker,” Devlin, who serves as co-showrunner with Glassner, told SYFY WIRE. “In essence, this ship is a microcosm of our whole world, right? So we wanted to really bake in, as quickly as possible, as much pressure as we could put on these characters. And then after that, it was deciding how slowly do we peel the onion [of revealing secrets about certain survivors].”
"We knew we had to have crises happen, but the crises, in my mind, are only an arena to set the character stuff in," added in an interview for the official after-show. "If all we were doing was watching people figure out a way to get oxygen without knowing them or caring about them, it would get old fast. But when you have these people doing it, who you've come to love and you understand all the baggage they're carrying with them when they're doing these things, then it's more interesting."
Devlin and Glassner are executive producers alongside Marc Roskin and Rachel Olschan-Wilson of Electric Entertainment. Jonathan English of Balkanic Media and Steve Lee are producers.
The Ark airs on SYFY every Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET. New episodes are available to stream on Peacock the day after they premiere. Click here to watch the premiere for free.
Looking for more sci-fi content? Check out shows like Resident Alien, Brave New World, Project Blue Book, Eureka, Heroes, Intergalactic, and more streaming now on Peacock.
