What strikes me about The Ark is the writing - there are some plot holes you could drive a truck through, sure, and the villains definitely have that 'comic book villain' tint to them, but at the same time their behaviour is so *on point*.

This is especially visible with Maddox, and the ways in which she rationalizes her behaviour. They're patterns of behaviour that will look extremely familiar to many of us here; "well, I *had* to seize control, they were fighting for power and I would have let them govern themselves eventually, honest". Rationalizing her unethical grab for power by arguing "I was the most qualified to win the fight".

This is something I am missing from so many stories on TV, where characters are reduced to cardboard cutouts of an archetype, visualizing assumptions about 'human nature' but never actually providing a plausible reason for them to behave that way. When in reality human behaviour is so much more complicated, and The Ark handles that extremely well.

Similar patterns occur for other characters and situations, too, throughout the show, and it often raises ethical questions in a way that reminds me of some Star Trek series - and as seems to be typical for Dean Devlin shows, it frequently questions whether the standard answers to those questions are actually the right ones.

I think someone could plausibly learn from watching The Ark how to identify and deal with abusive personalities, and the trauma underlying them, and that is high praise and something that I think is easy to miss when looking at the show as just another sci-fi space romp.

With all that being said, I do want to note that the show touches on some difficult themes; particularly themes of (parental) abuse. So that is a thing to be aware of when watching it.