Ark II

This is a great 70's classic that everyone should have seen when they were growing up at that time. If you like futuristic movies, you will love this. Kind of like "Earth 2" and "Damnation Alley".

I remember this show vividity as a kid growing in the late 70's where a band of folks ride around in a Land Rover in the post nuclear age helping out folks who were in dangerous situations(mostly in some episodes themselves from great danger) and this show was one of the half-way best outta the bunch Saturday Morning series that were produced by Filmation Productions the same company that produced shows like Isis,Shazam!,Space Academy,The Adventures of Thunder,Run Joe Run,and Jason Of Star Command (which was also an animation studio). Most recently,these shows are making a comeback and TV Land has them from the LOST archives of the 1970's. I caught an episode of this series one evening during TV Land's "Kitschen" shows with Martin Mull and Fred Willard(who hosted) and believe me the episode they showed from this series was hilarious!

I used to watch this! I remember thinking that it coulda been better-as the premise was certainly interesting enough-but being a Filmation production, it hadda be Moralistic and edJooKational too! Seriously, it was fun-had a talking chimp, typical '70's Multicultural/U.N. style cast, Jim Backus and Helen Hunt as cool guest stars, the jet pack and blinding light weapons were neat too. It looked like they shot this in the Mojave too. Pity the poor cast and crew, eh? No big trailers THERE.

This Saturday morning TV series was set in the 25th century of earth.The world has been ravaged by wars & ecological pollution.One group of survivors who were technologically superior wanted to help out the rest of humanity.An immense vehicle called Ark II was constructed to go out into the world with a highly trained team & bring aid,comfort,& education to those less fortunate.Critics have found this show moralistic,preachy,& cornball.It could be those things at times,but I'm a sucker for a show that is about helping other people with no hidden agenda by the good guys.The Ark II group risked their lives each week in a world that could be hostile & unknown.They carried no weapons,tho they had hand held devices that could temporarily blind an opponent.As with many Sat a.m. series we were saddled with a kid sidekick & an animal,Adam the chimp.Neither a plus to the show.The Ark was futuristic & formidable looking,with hi-tech labs & gadgetry onboard.They also had use of a jet-pack.There was plenty of location filming that gave the series a sense of really being out in the world.It was not a perfect show & did not have the mature scripts we would come to see on such later Sat morning shows as Captain Power & Hypernauts.But it was a series that said there is both good & evil within mankind,here was a community that wanted to perform positive,humane works to benefit others.It spoke to our nobler nature,instead of being just another action/adventure program with little thought behind it.Can we ever have too many of these kind of shows?

I saw this series from the age of 8 to nearly eleven years of age. I hated the tortured morality of the dialogue, but loved the 'Logan's Run' aspects.

I left the US before the end of the run, and missed the show on arriving in Australia, as it never screened here. As kid shows go, it didn't have the music of 'Jonny Sokko' or the adventure, dialogue and crisp story lines of the original 'Ultraman.'

The poor production values of the time, poor dialogue, poor action and little adventure was more than made up for by the need to opine for a better world, with better people. It sort of made me want to be a better person.