There was a miniseries on the SyFy channel called "Ascension" that, ostensibly, had the premise of being a murder mystery set on a massive generation ship launched at the height of the Cold War, which sounded fun in theory. 1960s Space Race technology, generations raised on Red Scare values despite the Soviet Union being a distant memory in every sense, a bunch of already-paranoid people trapped with a murderer with safety literally decades away - seems like there's a lot of room for a story there, right? Well, if the words "miniseries on the SyFy Channel" didn't tip you off...

spoiler, not that I recommend ever watching this show

They solve the murder by the end of the second episode, or at least they think they do. The subplot is nonetheless dropped entirely.

Turns out the ship never left Earth. It's in an underground bunker. The entire thing was a ploy to trap America's greatest minds in a self-contained generational think tank and steal all the super-cool technology they invent. Which also eliminates the 1960s Space Race aesthetic because the ship is now, by design, more technologically-advanced than modern Earth, leaving... exactly none of the original hook intact.

Except two episodes later they reveal it wasn't even that, it was actually part of a top-secret government eugenics program designed to breed telepathic super-soldiers, and the show ends with a child super-soldier using her nascent psychokinetic powers to teleport all the bad guys into space for realsies. And the real murderer is some guy we'd never even heard of working for the, again, top-secret government eugenics program, and his motives were... Either never explained, or explained after the part of the show where I stopped watching.

So anyway, a show that actually stuck to that premise would probably make for a pretty compelling yarn.

[–] Alcyonaria@piefed.world 4 points 5 hours ago

God this show pissed me off with how silly it got

[–] ButteryMonkey@piefed.social 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I don’t want to read your spoiler because I have pretty low standards and enjoy things I probably shouldn’t just for the sake of it being novel; why do you not recommend it? Like is it at all any good and just disappointing how the plot was handled or bad generally?

[–] goldteeth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

It's a show that relies a lot more on plot twists than actual plot, and they're the sort of twists that heavily recontextualize the story in such a way that everything that happened prior is rendered kinda irrelevant and thus never followed up on, which kills a lot of the narrative momentum before it even really has a chance to build. There's maybe one halfway-decent "oh shit" reveal followed by a long series of "huh?"s and a big final "where the fuck did that come from?". And by the time it's two or three twists in, anything that seemed unique about the concept gets sidelined in favor of some increasingly credibility-straining political intrigue with token sci-fi elements.

And in general I kinda thought they did a poor job of making the spaceship feel like a spaceship, making the descendants of the Red Scare people feel like descendants of Red Scare people, and making the 1960s Space Race technology feel like 1960s Space Race technology, but in that annoying way where it's clearly not from a lack of budget, just from a lack of imagination. It's all just some very generic people with generic sci-fi technology living in a generic sci-fi city that just so happens to be shaped like a spaceship. And it's one of those shows where the main plot (term used generously) grinds to a halt every couple act breaks so everyone can fuck and backstab each other for no reason other than the characters that aren't part of the plot right now need something to do. And then the whole thing kinda just... stops.

All in all I found the whole thing dull, generic, more than a little frustrating to watch and harder to get invested in the longer it went on. The main characters weren't all that relatable, barely likeable and not particularly memorable; the mystery at the very heart of the premise was handled in a way that made it very uncompelling, and the ending fails to justify about 70% of the story that preceded it.

[–] ButteryMonkey@piefed.social 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

It kinda sounds like the same overall problems that 1899 had.. I watched that knowing the “big reveals every episode that makes everything pointless” problems (from comments much like yours) and was just as disappointed as I expected to be by that aspect, but it was still pretty good imo (probably blessed by lowered expectations), and I’m curious what another few seasons could have done after the big end reveal.. I’d probably have given it another season of my time. It was actually pretty well done, imho, all things considered. But then I have admittedly pretty low standards.

Although maybe this has lower production quality, by the sound of it. Any show that has to shoehorn multiple sex scenes when they don’t need them is just.. mmrf.. uncomfortable. So I expect to be uncomfortable.

I’m gunna give it a go with open eyes, I hope to be as disappointed as you were! Thanks for the detailed reply! I can’t wait to know exactly what you mean! :D