For the first time in years, science fiction fans can allow themselves to get legitimately excited that Syfy is heading back into thrilling space drama for their upcoming miniseries Ascension, which boasts microbudget horror profit-master Jason Blum as an executive producer. Syfy revealed the very first trailer for the series, which offers a chilling look at the alternate reality behind the central concept. At least, it offers a vision of what the show might look like, since I’m not sure if everything in this trailer is actually from the show.
The year is 1963, and President John F. Kennedy is making America excited about heading up into space for the first time. Little does our nation’s population realize that Kennedy and others have secretly launched a mission more important than any that have occurred on this planet. The starship Ascension was sent up into space with hundreds of men, women and children, aiming to put human civilization on another planet for the first time, ensuring our survival. You can definitely tell that times are different by the altered version of the Pledge of Allegiance that the schoolchildren are reciting in monotone. (I wonder how much shit they’ll get for leaving “God” out of it.) And just look at this American flag. It’s only got 33 stars on it! And they’re in a weird pattern!
And before we go any further, we might as well get to showing off the starship itself, right?
And now that we’ve seen everything, let it be known that this isn’t even a real teaser. As io9 pointed out when they first got a look at the trailer, none of it is real; only, their version seemed to stop immediately after the Ascension was shown, whereas this one delivers a rapid-pace montage of heightened drama that may actually be real footage from the show. I honestly have no idea, as they just hired the first cast member, Battlestar Galactica’s Tricia Helford, a couple of weeks ago. In any case, it’s a successful preview, and I can’t wait to see where it goes.
As for the plot itself: it’s November, 2014, and the century-long mission is half over, when a girl on board the Ascension is mysteriously murdered, something completely unheard of up there at the edge of humankind’s existence. The more the ship’s crew looks into it, the more it looks like their mission was formed under completely pretenses. Cue the haunting organ stabs.
Find out what Ascension has in store for mankind when it debuts on Syfy this November.
