Ark II

Did You Know?

• Guest stars included Jonathan Harris, Malachi Throne, Jim Backus, Geoffrey Lewis, Philip Abbott, Robert Ridgely, Helen Hunt, and Robby the Robot.
• Helen Hunt appears in the episode 'Omega.'
• Actor Daniel Selby auditioned for the role of Samuel, but Jose Flores won the role.

Series overview

The opening titles, narrated first by executive producer Lou Scheimer under the pseudonym Erik Gunden and then by Terry Lester as Jonah, summarized the show's backstory. The racially mixed cast included Terry Lester as commander Jonah, Jean Marie Hon as Ruth, José Flores as Samuel, and a chimpanzee named Moochie, owned and trained by Darrell Keener, who responded to the name Adam and was voiced by Lou Scheimer. Inspired by Noah's Ark, the characters were given names from the Hebrew Bible. The series was set in a post-apocalyptic 2476, after Earth's civilizations had been decimated by waste, pollution, and warfare, falling back to a Dark Ages-like state. Surviving scientists trained three young people and the chimp, capable of speech and abstract reasoning, to search for remnants of humanity and reintroduce lost ideas while traveling in the high-tech Ark II. The show mentions a headquarters and that the crew are scientists; Jonah is referred to as both commander and captain. Each episode began and ended with numbered log entries narrated by Jonah. Like other Filmation shows, Ark II delivered a moral lesson, but it was presented in the epilogue log entry rather than by characters breaking the fourth wall.

Production

Filmed in the summer of 1976, the show was shot mostly at Paramount Ranch near Malibu, with high-speed Ark footage captured on the Rogers Dry Lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base. Two episodes were completed each week. According to Lou Scheimer, the chimpanzee Moochie was often angry and aggressive due to abuse from his trainer, behavior that the cast and crew sometimes witnessed.

Technology

The most iconic element of the series is the Ark II vehicle, a six-wheeled mobile lab and RV with a futuristic look. This 44-foot prop featured a fiberglass body mounted on a 1971 Ford C-Series cabover, a creation of the Brubaker Group. A common misconception credits Dean Jeffries with building it; Jeffries actually constructed other sci-fi vehicles, like the Landmaster from Damnation Alley, which people often mix up with the Ark II. Later, the front section of the Ark II prop was repurposed as the nose of the Seeker spacecraft in the Filmation shows Space Academy and Jason of Star Command. The series also included a jetpack called the Jet Jumper and a smaller four-wheeled all-terrain vehicle named the Ark Roamer. Built by Brubaker from a modified Brubaker Box kit car (based on a 1968 Volkswagen Beetle chassis), the Ark Roamer was stored in the rear of the Ark II.

Home media

BCI Eclipse LLC, under its Ink & Paint brand and a license from Entertainment Rights, released Ark II: The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1 on November 7, 2006. The 4-disc set included many special features, with episodes presented uncut in their original production order. Unlike many in-house Filmation DVD releases by BCI Entertainment’s Ink & Paint brand, this series was sourced from the original NTSC film elements, with correct speed and pitch. Savor Ediciones, S.A. released Ark II: La Serie Completa as a 4-disc Region 2 DVD box set on May 20, 2009. This release contained only the episodes with no bonus features, and the soundtrack was the dubbed Spanish version without the original English soundtrack; the discs are encoded in PAL video format.