Seriously, SyFy? Seriously?

"Too many cooks spoil the story."

I don't even know where to begin with this one.

Maybe I was a sucker for believing the buzz that this was going to be the next Battlestar Galactica, but after suffering through three nights of Ascension all I have to say is, WHAT. THE. FUCK.

The premise of the show that SyFy was throwing out was that this was going to be a story of the passengers and crew aboard a Generational Ship secretly launched in the 1960s en route to Proxima Centauri. Instead, at the end of the first night we found out that wasn't it at all; it was some kind of secret, elaborate, possibly psychological experiment run by some shadowy organization that may or may not be affiliated with the government.

The fact it was cast with a group of B-, C-, and D-List actors should've thrown up red flags. But then, prior to the BSG reboot, how many people had really heard of Jamie Bamber, Mary McDonnell, or Trisha Helfer? And speaking of Ms. Helfer, her presence in this production initially led me to believe this might not be a complete waste of my time.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Mess doesn't even begin to describe Ascention. Too many storylines. Too much unnecessary soap opera drama that didn't make any sense in context to begin with. The "ship" has been in "space" for fifty plus years, and sexual dalliances and interpersonal tensions are just now coming to a head?

Obviously trying to piggyback on the popularity of the Mad Men aesthetic, we have retro 60s fashions and vacuum-tube television technology, but it's interspersed with LCD displays and advanced MRI imaging. WHAT?

Paging continuity! Please pick up the white courtesy paging phone!

Okay, to its credit SyFy did come through with enough eye candy to at least keep me coming back, even after I felt like I'd been bent over at the end of night one and thoroughly penetrated (and not in a good way). I mean there really wasn't anything else on…

And just to make sure the story is current and culturally hip, there's the requisite lesbian character—but not part of the ship's complement—because—it was explained that on board the "ship" there are no homosexuals. (It was "launched" in the 60s, after all.) No homosexuals? Have they figured a way to breed it out of the genome in only two generations? Even with the current, very conservative 3% metric, with 600 souls on that "ship" there should be at least 18 boys and girls who aren't interested in pushing their genitals up against those of the opposite sex.

By the time we got around to night three and had learned of the onboard prostitution ring, the simmering class warfare, and the fact that the guy whose father engineered this whole psychological mindfuck (the experiment itself, not the miniseries) apparently isn't producing results—whatever they might be—fast enough for the shadowy organization overseeing and apparently financing this endeavor. Much drama ensues as it appears he is to be removed and put six feet deep into a cornfield somewhere.

But then BOOM! The "star child" (yes, she was really called that) who somehow knows this is all an elaborate ruse, manifests her power and we learn that this is the whole reason for the 50-plus year charade being perpetrated on the passengers and crew of Ascension.

Really?

How many tired tropes can you stuff in one show, SyFy?

Anyhow, as things start falling apart and apparently the 50 years of peace our "travelers" have enjoyed draws to a close, the lawyer from Ally McBeal (yeah, that guy) regains control of the project just as the shadow organization orders the extraction of the star child from the ship and sends in a standard thug from central casting to bring the girl out.

More drama ensues as thug-from-central-casting reaches star-child and another semi-important character who was having an affair with the press-on-beard guy's wife arrives just in time to engage in a bit of rolling around in the muck. Star Child is having none of this and fully manifests her power, making both of them disappear.

Cut to her rescuer finding himself on an alien planet (with a double sun—of course—but apparently not Proxima Centauri), and everything fades to black.

So in short…