Ascension "Night Two" Review: Think of the Children!
The problem with the second installment of Ascension was that it had entirely too much going on, especially for the middle section of a miniseries that, realistically, should be hurtling toward a conclusion of some sort. I acknowledge that Ascension is aiming to be a full series and that it would like to lay out everything it wants to do should it earn the go-ahead, but I felt a little crushed under the weight of the new elements introduced in "Night Two." Worse still: None of them were all that interesting. In fact, some parts of the episode were outright head-scratching with regard to why the writers thought it was a good idea to shoehorn so much material into a herky-jerky second act.
I'll just dive right in and begin with the biggest head-scratcher of the all: Christa and her visions of the past and of current events, not to mention her other ESP-like abilities. I just... I don't get it. Ascension already has a strong-enough premise behind it with Harris monitoring the experiment and the drama surrounding the people who are actually part of the experiment. The show has plenty of material to explore, so a moppet who has visions just feels like a weird swerve into another show.
Let's run it down: She's able to sense potential threats, like the inoculations and the milk; she can detect the cameras that monitor everyone on the ship; she has dreams and mental flashes about world events like the Kennedy assassination, 9/11, and a "neverending war in the desert." Why she has these powers is a big mystery, as is whether they're the true endgame of the Ascension operation.
Christa's abilities and the possibility that her abilities are a goal is a bit much. It's as if Ascension's writers included them as a means of injecting more science-fiction flavor, now that we know the ship isn't actually in space. A multi-generation government conspiracy with unclear intentions mixed with class insurrection and sexytimes in a pressure-sealed tin can apparently didn't provide enough story options, and so now Ascension has tossed in a kitchen sink for good measure.
To the show's credit, "Night Two" made sure to lay the groundwork for the ESP stuff; it wasn't just Christa's spooky visions and concerns about a man in white gloves and a welder's hood that set it up for us. The revelation that Harris's dad was using a Kennedy education initiative to abduct kids indicates that not only was it an attempt to guarantee there were bright kids on the ship in the first place, but that the elder Enzmann was selecting kids who displayed a predisposition to ESP. Couple that with the ship's genetic matchmaking, and it's pretty likely that the objective of the Ascension project was to eventually develop some ESP kids for the U.S. government to use against its enemies.
This parapsychological element fits firmly within Ascension's Cold War interests, but it's also the least fascinating aspect of the series, a weird, creepy-kid-shaped distraction that takes away from the genuinely more interesting class and political struggles aboard the ship. I'm not sure where it can really lead with only one more installment to go, but I certainly hope it doesn't involve Christa fulfilling her promise to lead everyone out of Ascension herself.
The second bit of newness introduced in "Night Two" was Kreuger, a discharged military investigator contracted by Harris's boss to look into the murder on the Ascension and keep an eye on Harris. Kreuger is, for better or for worse, a necessary evil to keep the stuff in the bunker moving along, and to build up the conspiracy angle. Her purpose is essentially to receive Harris and Director Warren's exposition about the project; otherwise, how would we, the audience, learn anything about it? Harris already knows it, and Harris's right-hand man, Carillo, is too big of a mid-management toady to really care all that much, even if he's only slightly less in-the-dark than Kreuger is. It'd be expo-speak for the sake of expo-speak, instead of just thinly veiled expo-speak.
I'd probably be less harsh on Kreuger if the nature of a miniseries didn't demand very quick plot movements on her end. She'd only barely started her investigation, but instead of getting into a tug-of-war between Harris and Warren, she took a third option and went right to the author of a conspiracy theory blog focusing on the 70 scientists who'd gone missing or were killed just before the project began in 1963. Harris and Warren are both shady to be sure, but there's no sense of conflict on Kreuger's end—all we got from her was that, after a day or two of dealing with it, she was ready blow the whistle on the whole thing. "Night Two" did quick work to justify this response, in that Krueger was intended to appear principled and ethical; after all, she came out as gay to the U.S. military and was discharged as a result. But I think the quick work was just too quick, and so it contributed to the odd rushed feeling that surrounded the entire episode.
And it was, indeed, rushed. The search for Crouch, the No Future Bomber, progressed at a very brisk pace, and it wasn't even really a search. James gave up Crouch to Gault in one quick conversation, in exchange for a word of recommendation to the officer apprenticeship program. Problem solved! Sure, Gault had to go down to Deck 23 to stop Crouch from detonating another bomb, but since the episode swerved very quickly to Christa, it felt more like an afterthought and a way to ensure that the more violent impulses of the class issue aboard the ship would continue chugging along now that Stokes is no longer onboard.
it's all sort of maddening, because there are glimmers of more noteworthy stuff peaking through all the clutter. Gault's investigation into the Year 31 Launch Day celebration yielded an compelling new wrinkle, as did Robert as the OH SO VERY OBVIOUS inside man who's working for Harris. Indeed, the concern that people aboard the ship will discover they aren't in outer space should be a big source of tension on Ascension. Crouch's bomb that could've damaged the bunker's observation platform and revealed the outside world was more engrossing than any other part of the episode, but it was quickly pushed aside, and that's just too bad.
Meanwhile, I wish that some of the ship's other goings-on were more interesting, notably Nora and James's doomed romance and the power struggles between Viondra, her stewardesses, Denninger, and Rose, but both storylines are currently either too boring or too amorphous to matter. I don't exactly care whether Denninger loses the captain's job at this point, and that much-ballyhooed council doesn't feel like enough of a tangible presence to really matter, beyond the fact that they want Jackie to stay on as a stewardess.
Hopefully Ascension's conclusion will offer up some excitement and interest, but I have my doubts.
"SPACE" DUST
– "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to this mission to which we're bound. One people, under God, for the hope and future of humanity."
– "We are the shepherds of the flock, guardians of the birthless. We vow to give ourselves, body and soul, to our colony. We are wife, mother, and caregiver to all."
– Harris is in love with Juliet, the doctor on the Ascension. He gave his wife the seahorse necklace that Juliet was wearing, as an anniversary gift. He insisted that his wife keep it on during sex. He is creepy.
– "It's hard to imagine a world without civil rights, sexual revolution…" "...Vietnam. 9/11. Those earrings that look like hockey pucks." "Or people like me." "Homosexuals? You were left out by design. It's not a matter of prejudice, you understand, purely practical."
What did you think of the second night of Ascension?
