Individually and collectively, Dean Devlin and Jonathan Glassner have been involved in a huge number of fan favorite sci-fi properties, so it was no surprise that teaming up to create The Ark for SyFy resulted in the network’s biggest debut for an original series in over two years, with the cosmic adventure renewed for a second season long before tonight’s finale.
Over the years, the duo have lent their names to such projects as Universal Soldier, Stargate, Independence Day, Leverage, The Librarians, Freddy’s Nightmares, The Outer Limits, Stargate SG-1, Nikita, Falling Skies, and many more in various capacities as writers, directors, and producers, so they know a thing or two about genre fiction.
Unfolding hundreds of years in the future, the story finds the Ark One spacecraft endure a catastrophic event one year short of reaching its intended destination, leading to the majority of senior personnel being killed. As a result, the untried and untested members of the crew are forced to step up to the plate to work together, survive, and complete their mission.
Ahead of tonight’s season finale, We Got This Covered had the chance to speak to Devlin and Glassner about the show, where we cover the confidence SyFy had in the concept from the beginning, the sense of panic that set in when Star Trek: Strange New Worlds aired an almost-identical episode, whether or not there were any egos on set, what’s potentially coming down the pipeline in season 2 and much more, which you can check out below.
First off, congratulations on a renewal for season 2, after reaching over 6.5 million viewers across all platforms, and SyFy’s best showing for an original series in over two years.
Dean Devlin: Thank you.
Being ordered straight to series is becoming increasingly rare for an original show of this sort of scale, so did you see that as a sign of confidence and belief in the project right from the off?
Dean Devlin: I have to tell you, we had hoped that SyFy would be the place that we did the show for. And from the moment they got on board, they could not have been better partners. I mean, they supported us all the way through it, they were really innovative in the way that they promoted the show, and how they helped build the community behind the show. We feel very grateful for this partnership.
What’s your process for developing and writing a show like The Ark? Do you write the scripts without thinking of any budgetary or logistical issues and work backwards from there, or as showrunners are you always thinking about the resources you’ll have at your disposal?
Jonathan Glassner: Both! We first and foremost want to tell the greatest story, we want to tell the most entertaining story we can tell. And one way to make sure you can afford to do it, is to make that story more about the characters than about the action. So we do that in any way. And as a writer and producer, as opposed to somebody who just writes and lets somebody else produce, I always have in the back of my mind. “But can we do that? No, we can’t do that. So let’s not write it that way. Let’s put it this way.”
Dean Devlin: We’re both very ambitious in the stories we want to tell. But because we also are both directors, we kind of figure out the practical way to do the thing that we can’t afford to do. And for the most part, we feel pretty good about pulling that off. Occasionally we go, “Oh man, what did we do? Why did we try to do that? that was way beyond what we could afford to do.” But I think we’ve had enough experience to know how to cheat when we can’t afford something. But we try to tell the story we want to tell regardless of the confinement.
Given the number of sci-fi properties you’ve both worked on during your careers, was there a conscious effort during development and design to avoid anything that could be deemed as too similar or overly-familiar to any movies or TV shows you’ve each been involved with in the past?
Jonathan Glassner: Yes and no, I mean, everything I’m answering yes and no to! But it’s just no, because we both love science fiction so much, and are kind of paying an homage to a lot of classic science fiction. So there are some, I guess you’d call them tropes, in the show that we’ve seen before, but we tried to do them differently than anybody else ever did. There’s so much out there sometimes, we’ll do something and somebody will say, “Did you see such and such?” And I’ll say “No.” You want to tell him the Star Trek story?
Dean Devlin: You’re actually the first person we’re telling this story, so you’re getting an exclusive! Well, we had actually shot an episode of the season last year. And about two weeks later, Star Trek: Strange New World came out. And one of the episodes was the exact same episode! And I panicked. I called him.
Jonathan Glassner: They aired first, even though we had written it already.
Dean Devlin: Yeah. So I was like, “What are we going to do? We’ve already shot the episode!” And so we went back, and we made some tweaks and changes. It still shared some DNA with the other episode, but at least we were able to make it different. But if I hadn’t seen that before we’d finished the season, we would have an identical episode!
The Ark is an old-fashioned space opera, which is ironically becoming a rarity these days as more shows incorporate real-world issues and politics into the mix. Is largely avoiding that a desire on your part as both creatives and audience members to sit back, relax, and watch the kind of sci-fi show you’d want to see that’s all about strapping in and going for an entertaining ride?
Dean Devlin: That’s 100 percent spot on. I mean, look, I love some of these other shows, I think they’re great. Like The Last of Us, I think, is a brilliant show. But we wanted to do something very different. We wanted to do a show that was a love letter to all the shows that made us want to get in this business in the first place.
And exactly, as you said, we thought rather than the slow peeling of the onion, can we do a show that’s overly packed with a roller coaster worth of fun every single week, so that at the end of each episode, you weren’t ready for it to be over? And that’s really what we set out to do. And that’s been the fun of this.
Jonathan Glassner: We set out to say we want to make a show that is entertaining, that will make people laugh, it’ll put people on the edge of their seats, not a show that is delivering a heavy message, and that, you know, maybe people come away from talking about with all their friends for weeks to come because of the brilliance of the message. Those shows are great, but there’s a lot of those on right now. And there aren’t many others that are on like ours, that are just purely there for fun, for entertainment.
That’s the way it’s gone now, is that the sort of classic, fun sci-fi has become a rarity, which is a perfect opportunity for show like The Ark to come in.
Dean Devlin: Well, you know, traditionally, escapist entertainment is looked down upon as like a lesser art form. But I think when you go through a pandemic, and economic crises, and wars, there’s a real role for escapist entertainment. It’s a different role, but there are there times when life is hard. And all you want is one hour a day that you’re not thinking about all the problems you’re dealing with. And that’s really what our show is about.
Dean, you’re known to be an active tweeter when new episodes air. Engaging directly with fans on social media can often prove to be a double-edged sword for a number of reasons, but so far the response online has been largely enthusiastic when viewers have been tweeting along with you.
Dean Devlin: Look, there are people who don’t like the show, and that’s okay. That’s okay. But the ones that do, when you’re talking about these kinds of shows, it’s a different type of audience for these shows, you know? Like on a normal show, people go, “Yeah, I like that show.”
But there are certain shows like Doctor Who, or Star Trek, and maybe this one, where the audience not only likes the show… I mean, not only the audience who likes the show likes the show, but they take an ownership of it. It’s their show. And when they talk about it, they talk about it like it’s their show.
And these are their friends, they invite over for dinner once a week they’ve been watching. And that’s that sense of community, where they debate over who’s going to hook up with who, and what’s going to happen next. When those people are criticizing the show, I love it. I love it, because they’re so engaged.
There’s a collectiveness to the crew, but there’s also an element of self-preservation in play for all of the characters, is that something we’ll be seeing more of in season 2 now that a lot of the world-building and dynamics have been established?
Jonathan Glassner: Yeah, I mean, they’re not getting to know each other anymore. They know each other. Now they know what they’re playing with, although there will be some new characters that’ll come in that they might not know so well. And now they’ve just got to accomplish their mission, which may be on un-accomplishable. So they’re going to keep driving forward.
Dean Devlin: Jonathan actually said this the other day, and I thought it was really spot on, in that these characters just don’t want to be alive. They want to live. And so it’s an exploration of what is life? What is it what makes life meaningful? What makes it joyful? And they’re trying to find that within this very dark situation. They find themselves in there trying to find the sunshine. And look it’s a very optimistic point of view, but that’s the kind of show we wanted to make.
You’ve got a large cast in place, the majority of whom might be relatively unknown to a lot of audiences, was it always your plan to avoid more recognizable or household names so the audience would identify more with the character than who plays them, something that’s arguably even more integral to the show now that a second season is confirmed?
Jonathan Glassner: Yeah, I mean, it’s a two-fold thing; they needed to be a young cast, because the people that were left alive were the people in the lower-ranking part. And so that, just by default, ends up getting you less-known actors. But also, you know, as soon as you have Jack Nicholson show up as as a lead in the show, then the whole show becomes The Jack Nicholson Show. And we didn’t want to do that, we wanted to be an ensemble with every character important; every character could die, every character could live, you know? It makes it more interesting, I think, for an audience.
Dean Devlin: And I think the advantage of shooting in Serbia is unlike when we shoot in the United States, it’s very hard for us to cast actors outside of the United States, because of visas and expensive travel. But being in Serbia, we were able to get a cast that came from Africa, from Spain, from Germany, from the UK. I mean, it was really great to be able to get this talent pool that wouldn’t have been available to us for the most part, if we had shot this in the United States.
As well as you guys, The Ark also features Reece Richie, Pavele Jerinic, Tiana Upcheva, Tamara Radovanovic, and Paul Murray, all of whom starred in The Outpost at one time or another. As well both shooting in Serbia, was it helpful to bring in actors you’ve worked with before onto another big original series that’s got plenty of action and effects?
Jonathan Glassner: A combination of the two We didn’t know the acting pool in Serbia when we did The Outpost. But as we went along on The Outpost, we met some very talented actors and wanted to keep working with them. So we put them in the show. And then Reece [Ritchie], who came from The Outpost; we knew how how talented he was and, wanted to find somewhere to put him. And when he read for this, this part is very different than the part he played on The Outpost. So when he read for this part, we saw, “Oh yeah, he can do complete opposite character.” We were thrilled to bring him back on.
There’s a lot of subgenres going on as well, with elements of mystery, whodunnit, conspiracy, race against time, and plenty others threaded throughout. With 12 episodes to play with, how do you as writers decide when to incorporate which elements without affecting the tone of the show as a whole, and were there any abandoned ideas you really wanted to include along the way but couldn’t justify?
Dean Devlin: That’s an amazing question. That is an amazing question.
Jonathan Glassner: Yeah, yes and yes! There are some things that ended up on the floor that may show up in season 2. And, you know, the way the way to do a serialized show like this is, we came in at the beginning of the season – this is the advantage of SyFy giving us a full season – because we knew we had time to do the build. And we literally put cards across the board of every character story arc, and every character’s plot arc, and figured out how they line up so that everything happened in the right place. It’s a jigsaw puzzle. It’s challenging, but it makes it work. And it’s a lot of fun.
You’ve both been in the game long enough to know how the industry works, but do you have a finite idea of how long the story of The Ark can carry on – or how long you’d ideally like for it to carry on – if everything goes according to plan?
Dean Devlin: You know, I’ll just tell you this. We love making the show. We’re both guys who are too old to be as nerdy as we are. And older than we should to be as immature as we are! And we got the chance to do a spaceship show. I mean, I think we’ll do it until they won’t let us do it. It’s so much fun to do this kind of show.
And as you were talking about with the cast, the other advantage of this cast is we don’t have one egomaniac in this cast. And while that sounds like, “Well, they shouldn’t be normally that way.” No, it’s not normally like that! Normally, there’s a couple really difficult people, and it makes life hard. This is a show where we so enjoy working with these people. We can’t wait to go do it again. And again and again. So we’ll do it as long as they let us do it.
The season finale of The Ark airs tonight on SyFy, with episodes heading to Peacock the following day, and a second season is on the way.