Saturday Mornings: Ark II - The show you never heard of
For millions of years, Earth was fertile and rich. Then pollution and waste began to take their toll. Civilization fell into ruin. This is the world of the 25th century. Only a handful of scientists remain, men who have vowed to rebuild what has been destroyed. This is their achievement: Ark II, a mobile storehouse of scientific knowledge, manned by a highly trained crew of young people. Their mission: to bring the hope of a new future to mankind.
(Voice of Jonah): Ark II log, Entry Number 1. I, Jonah,...Ruth,...Samuel,...and Adam are fully aware of the dangers we face as we venture into unknown, maybe even hostile, areas. But we’re determined to bring the promise of a new civilization to our people and our planet.
This is the opening dialog to ARK II, a 1976 Saturday morning children’s show set in a dystopian future. Yes, you read that right – a dystopian future. What were they preparing us for?
The show takes it’s inspiration from Noah’s Ark, and follows the three scientists (Jonah, Ruth and Samuel), along with their trained chimpanzee Adam, as they explore the word searching the bleak landscape for survivors.
The other star (and namesake) of the show is the ARK II, a hi-tech mobile science lab and living quarters that also carries a jet-pack (called the Jet Jumper) and a smaller wheeled vehicle called the Ark Roamer.
I was 7 when this show came out, and to say I was hooked is an understatement. I had already been seen Logan’s Run Movie (which had premiered 3 months earlier in June) and the 1975 Return to the Planet of the Apes cartoon – so this was right up my alley.
While this show used technology similar too Star Trek (more on Star Trek in the Trivia section), that seemed to come out of a Utopian society, whereas ARK II focused on how the world had gone bad – and put a message out there that this could have been prevented. In fact, as with many Filmation shows and cartoons, there was almost always some type of moral lesson to be learned in every episode.
Speaking of Filmation – once again, as we recently outlined diversity on Saturday Mornings in 1978, this show (two years earlier) really highlights it as well – with a crew of a White male, Asian female, Hispanic youth and a technologically literate animal. It was never overly in your faced and talked about – it just was, and it worked.
I would definitely say this TV show had a great impact on me, and helped me be interested in technology at an early age. The future wasn’t perfect like it was in Star Trek, there were defiantly forces at work such as the aforementioned Planet of the Apes reference and Logan’s Run, and – when you consider the Logan’s Run TV Show and Star Wars came out the next year…I was primed for a place where things were lived in, dirty and broken. If you are a child of the 70’s or 80’s, this will have some nostalgia factor and is a series you really should revisit.
Trivia
The characters in the show are all named after characters in the Old Testament.
The Ark II vehicle was built on the chassis of a dump truck. The dump truck was notorious for constantly breaking down between shots. It was also reportedly hard to operate in crowded areas safely because the placement of the windows was such that the driver of the Ark was unable to see clearly. This is also why there are no nighttime scenes in the show.
The show used a genuine Bell jet-pack and pilot. Filmation secured the services of a jet-pack and pilot for an afternoon, dressed the guy up like Terry Lester, and shot as much footage of him zooming around as possible, footage they later reused repeatedly throughout the series.
Guest stars included Jonathan Harris (Lost in Space), Jim Backus (Gilliagan’s Island), Robby the Robot (Forbidden Planet) and a teenage Helen Hunt.
