Anyone planning to watch Ascension?

qquake2k said:

I watched the first episode on demand. It was awful. It's not science fiction, it's a soap opera. And a pretty bad one at that. And I absolutely could not believe the surprise at the end of the first episode (I won't ruin it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet). No, I won't be watching any more of it.

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It got a lot worse! Tricia Helfer's skinny dipping scene wasn't enough to save it.

That was the most awful thing I have watched in a really long time. I hate spoilers, but in this case, it think it would probably be a favor to anyone who hadn't seen it yet if you just went ahead and "ruined" it for them. Terrible!

That said, if you don't want spoilers, don't read any further.

----------------- SPOILERS ---------------


After the first "twist" at the end of episode 1, I really wanted to give up on this thing. That really pissed me off! A plot twist is supposed to leave you feeling intrigued and curious about the new direction of the movie, but this one just left me thinking, "No! Go back to the other movie! I want to watch a space travel movie, not a crappy version of a Lost-style Dharma Initiative experiment!"

I really felt cheated and mad. But since I had started this thread, I felt like I should at least watch one more episode. It only got worse! Fortunately, I supplemented episodes 2 and 3 with plenty of adult beverages, and that kind of took the sting out of it.

What the hell was the end? They've created a "Star Child" that has creepy visions, and when she becomes terrified and enraged she is able to send people to their deaths on alien worlds? That is just inane. This final stupid twist at the very end was made all the worse by the fact that as soon as the scene cut to the guy on the other planet, and before you could even start to absorb what it was supposed to mean, the channel did that thing where they shrink the picture to the side of the screen, roll the credits at triple speed and talk over the end with an ad for something else! I felt sort of like a waiter had brought me a covered dish, placed it before me, lifted the lid for just an instant to reveal a steaming dog turd, then slammed the lid shut, whisked it away, and moved on to the next course like it never even happened! I didn't even have time to think "WTF?" before it was gone! I guess they felt they couldn't get it off the screen fast enough!

This whole thing made no sense to me whatsoever. Supposedly all of these scientists and geniuses --- the best minds in the entire country --- were put into this bogus starship with the idea that by concentrating them all together in one place, out of contact with the rest of the world, they would evolve new technologies and maybe even a new emergent species. But aside from the "star child," the show really doesn't show any evidence of that happening. These people are no more evolved than the rest of us. In fact, they've managed to form a really crappy society aboard their ship. The daughters and granddaughters of these geniuses mostly aspire to become high-class whores. The men are mostly concerned with petty power plays. They've got a fairly stratified caste system, with an underclass of below-decker laborers and a social elite of council members, officers and stewardesses. Most of them don't care at all about the mission. I also didn't see any reference to any kind of technological research or development going on aboard the ship, although supposedly they've been the ones to develop some of our key technologies, like MRI. You just have to take their word for it, because there are no scenes showing anything like that in the show.

I could go on and on, but that would probably count as just more of my life I'm never getting back.

Rob Campbell said:

It got a lot worse! Tricia Helfer's skinny dipping scene wasn't enough to save it.

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No, it wasn't enough to save it. I appreciate that they included the naked parts, and they should have had about 5 times as many of those, but did that skinny dipping scene make any sense? It looked like it was supposed to mean something more than just a chance to see her butt, but I don't know what it was. If they were just looking for a way to have gratuitous nudity, they should have had a Stewardess group shower scene or big sleepover pillow fight. And then maybe some guy could show up with a pizza.

Memo to North Korea:

You should have hacked SyFy's computers and demanded they scrap Ascension.

JRThro said:

The ship is under constant 1g acceleration. Ascension uses Orion-style nuclear propulsion. They even mentioned Project Orion very briefly in passing.

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The one thing that bugs me about this is that the ship is shown stationary and silent all the time. I would think that an Orion drive would create a fair amount of rumble and vibration when under thrust. Also, at points in the trip, the drive might be turned off or there would be periods of higher acceleration during the launch, or zero G, or a turning maneuver. At some point, there would be some kind of maneuver that would not feel like constant, steady, 1g earth gravity. And they would have no way to simulate that and maintain the illusion.

MClark said:

I recorded it, started watching it this afternoon and feel asleep.
I just deleted it without watching the rest.
Pretty bad.

M

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You did the right thing...

JRThro said:

My wife could not believe how mad I was when they revealed the plot twist.

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Man, I was mad!

michigander said:

watching tonight in the garage while glue dries

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If it is the kind of glue you can sniff, you should probably have a few snorts before you start the show.

MaxQ said:

My assessment so far...

1960's......Madmen in space....

"Sex is the only currency on this ship..."

"Escort them to their sleeping pods!!!

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As long as they were going to go that direction, they should have just gone all in. They've got a situation where they've trapped these people without much to do, they've given then a very reliable birth control system, and presumably there are no STD's brought aboard the ship. This show would have been a lot better if the culture had just devolved into ritualized daily orgies.

Well, if anyone watched the show because I brought attention to it with this thread, I apologize. If there is ever any way I can make it up to you, please let me know.

Wayco said:

I recorded the show, read this thread and deleted it without watching it. Thanks for the thread!

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Wish I'd done that.

Oh well... now I know... NEVER watch *ANYTHING* that is a "Sy-Fy Original"...

Because it will suck-- utterly suck-- like the vacuum of deep space itself... suck eternally without mercy, pity, or end...

Later! OL JR

With regards to the star child thingy: they want you to believe that if you coop up a bunch of geniuses in a tube for 51 years with a bunch of sexy girls, evolution will happen faster????????? :confused2: :confused2: That girl was what, 3rd generation at most? Ship was 51 years "in space" and a generation is 20 to 25 years, so 3rd generation at the very latest. I can believe a ship on a long trip in space to a distant planet. I can believe you'd want a lot of smart people. I can believe those smart sciencey dudes need hot chicks :wink:, but in 3 generations, we'll have evolutionary beneficial mutations? I'm no scientist, and I didn't stay in a Holiday Inn last night, but I'm fairly certain evolutionary changes in a species (humans are still a species, yes?) take at least hundreds of years if not thousands....

Adrian (anyone seen a Holiday Inn nearby? I gotta brush up on my science)

jd2cylman said:

With regards to the star child thingy: they want you to believe that if you coop up a bunch of geniuses in a tube for 51 years with a bunch of sexy girls, evolution will happen faster????????? :confused2: :confused2: That girl was what, 3rd generation at most? Ship was 51 years "in space" and a generation is 20 to 25 years, so 3rd generation at the very latest. I can believe a ship on a long trip in space to a distant planet. I can believe you'd want a lot of smart people. I can believe those smart sciencey dudes need hot chicks :wink:, but in 3 generations, we'll have evolutionary beneficial mutations? I'm no scientist, and I didn't stay in a Holiday Inn last night, but I'm fairly certain evolutionary changes in a species (humans are still a species, yes?) take at least hundreds of years if not thousands....

Adrian (anyone seen a Holiday Inn nearby? I gotta brush up on my science)

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An interesting way to address the "cave gap"...

"Ve vill need girls... many girls... of coorse, zey vill have to be zee most attractive, stimulating girlz... I vould say a ratio of ten girlz to every male would be about right... (struggling with arm) MEIN FUHRER! Excuze me, Mizter Prezident..."

--Doctor Strangelove...

Well, 'Ascension' did serve one purpose-- it PERMANENTLY cured me of EVER watching ANYTHING produced by the funny-stuff smokers at "Sy-Fy"...

Later! OL JR

PS... here's some advertising slogans for "sy-fy".

"Sy-Fy"-- neither "sci" nor "fi".

"Sy-Fy"-- because you can't spell "F***ing Stupidity" without "S""Y""F" and "Y"...

"Sy-Fy"-- because you haven't seen exactly how badly a shark can be jumped...

"Sy-Fy"-- we have sharktopus and wrestling-- WTH else do you want??

LOL

And what was the deal with the sea horse necklace? So the clown running the experiment was not only a Nazi, he was a thief? Pointless and stupid!

Rob Campbell said:

And what was the deal with the sea horse necklace? So the clown running the experiment was not only a Nazi, he was a thief? Pointless and stupid!

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After spying on her his whole life using the pervy spycam network, he had an unhealthy sexual obsession with the woman aboard the ship who owned the necklace. So he stole the necklace to give it to his wife so she could wear it during sex, and he could fantasize he was nailing the lady on the ship.

So he was a Nazi, a thief, and a pervert.

A long time ago, I read a book by Frederick Pohl titled Starburst. As I recall, I thought it was pretty good at the time, but a little bit "out there." It's not the same story at all, but there are some similarities. There's a long space mission in which the crew does not know the full truth about the mission. The crew are all exceptionally gifted geniuses. They have a lot of time on their hands to pursue interests like advanced mathematics, physics, philosophy. Geniuses cooped up together with nothing to do but think about stuff come up with some interesting developments.

ThirstyBarbarian said:

After spying on her his whole life using the pervy spycam network, he had an unhealthy sexual obsession with the woman aboard the ship who owned the necklace. So he stole the necklace to give it to his wife so she could wear it during sex, and he could fantasize he was nailing the lady on the ship.

So he was a Nazi, a thief, and a pervert.

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That makes sense, in a messed-up-SyFy-kind-of-way. It didn't add anything to the plot, just shows the producer and writers were counting on sleaze to sell the show.