User reviews

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 recently stepped upon this gem from the 70's It is entertaining some times in a cheese way. But with a strong messages.

The modern sci-fi could learn a thing or two with this true gem.

A kind of odd gimmicky show reminding me of congealed oatmeal touted as a continental breakfast. We are given a talking chimp, a flying jet pack, the cumbersome Ark II vehicle (complete with ripped-off Star Trek sound effects), and a multicultural crew lead by a hippie-looking bearded blonde Ubermensch. These elements beg lots of questions that are never answered ever in the show. The stories are barely interesting and the acting is about as expressive as wood paneling. Add the repetitive elevator Muzak meandering in the background and you have an ambient sleeping aid. Tack on a moral for every show and you can't say it stinks without feeling guilty. I say this show stinks. Now I feel guilty. Because of all this awfulness served up as sci-fi slop wrapped in crass, insincere morality, the show has a negative appeal for me. I love hating it. It represents the low end of the 1970's, that I grew up in, with all its pallid leftover hippie "save the world" regurgitation. At least the characters' teeth look white when they fake smile. I think I'll go watch an episode now.

I remember this show from when I was a teenager. Of course as a teen, I remember how hot I thought the Asian babe was in my pre-pubescent way. Now I realize she couldn't act her way out of a wet paper bag, and not surprisingly, this is one of her few IMDb credits.

Okay, long and short of it, this was the bad old days of the 1970's, when animation was too expensive to do for kiddie shows, so they got no-name actors to drive around in a really cool RV visiting all these people dressed in rags and eating dirt, apparently. I think it was trying too hard to be cool, with a multi-racial cast and giving the characters biblical names.

The show also featured appearances by washed up actors working for Booze money, including Lost in Space's Jonathan Harris, Gilligan's Island's Jim Baucus, and Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet.

Today's kids are much luckier, the writers actually treat them like they have brains.

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 seeing this on repeat in the late 70's, early 80's. I though it was so cool. It is a TV take of the Damnation Ally concept, but I just really love the RV -the ark 2. looks like a Seeker (Space Academy TV Series) on wheels!!! It had everything, including jet packs!!!!!!!!

O.k., so the production values were not brilliant, not bad for the time, but the idea was great and I beleive would be worthy of remaking. Suprisingly, it hasn't seen the light of day for at least 15 years ( and Australia is the world capital on cheap repeats!!!) and it has been very difficult to find any details on it, or prove that the show even actually existed!!!! Definatly worth a look, especially for true sci-fi fans, especially fans of the time period (i.e. Logan's Run (TV) and Planet of the Apes (TV)) Keep an eye out for it!

The world as we know it has come to an end and two dudes, a young woman and a talking chimp are in a fancy space age bus attempting to re-start the human race.

I watched all 15 episodes as a child in the 1970s and I re-watched all 15 episodes in 2014 (on YouTube). Made by the makers of Shazam! (1974), I still like this show after all these years.

I almost view Ark II as a sister show to Shazam! As both shows deal with a large vehicle, with two or three people inside, driving around helping people in need. However, Shazam! Is set in the 1970s and Ark II is set in earth's distant future.

If you are a fan of the Planet Of The Apes TV series (1974), Star Trek (1966) and Lost In Space (1965) you will get a blast out of Ark II as the series has cross overs to those shows.

Both Shazam! And Ark II also have very good music cues playing over the shows that are so good you end up playing the cues in your head days after watching the episodes.

It is too bad Ark II has only 15 short 23 minute episodes as after watching the whole series back to back...the whole thing sort of comes and goes too fast.

13 of the 15 tales are very good. Also, unlike many shows of the period, the series survives repeat viewings very well.

And finally, unlike Lost in Space (1965) and Star Trek (1966), we are not stuck in a studio all the time - this has location filming with a great craft (the Ark) seen all the time! This is one of the very best looking shows of the 70s, better looking than related 70s show - Land of the Lost!

ARt II was as silly as it was great entertainment for children. Yes, the show oozed with Biblical themes and moral issues but it was smarter than most programs today. That might be because today more children have access to technology that can deprive a developing imagination.

I don't think many children saw Ark II as adults saw it at all. Most kids watched the show because it had a cool looking van and it was set in the future. Not because they were dictating moral standards....It might seem that way today since we have become so desensitized.

Here is hoping that ARK II comes out on DVD one day soon. it wouldbe nice to see it live on and inspire some other young artist to graduate from Yale University....oops was I talking about me:(

I loved this show when I was a kid. Basically the premise was a group of scientists were driving around in the land rover vehicle from "Damnation Alley"(repainted white). They fended off bad guys and post apocalyptic disasters while helping people rebuild after a nuclear holocaust (at least I think it was nuclear).

This show had to have been the inspiration for the Role Playing Game "The Morrow Project", which basically used the same premise.

Filmation Trivia: This was one of many live action Saturday Morning TV shows put out by Filmation in the late 70s. Filmation made a name for itself by making both filmed and animated kid shows. Some of their more famous filmed shows included: Captain Marvel, Isis, Run Joe Run, Space Academy (whose spiffy Star Trek the Motion Picture like costumes were recycled from Ark II) and its spinoff, Jason of Star Command. Filmation is probably most famous for their He-Man & the Masters of the Universe cartoon from the 80s.

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.

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.

Before Mel Gibson took off for Australia and donned a black leather jacket for a post apocalyptic cult film, a dystopic future had a more "optimistic" future in the form of a Saturday morning kids show.

Having spent time in LA during the time this series was shot, I often wondered why a dystopic world resembled the San Juoquin valley. Somehow I had images the Ark II driving down Sunset Blvd to pull into the La Brea tar-pit's parking lot (which, if memory serves, was next to a Hispanic flea-market... but I digress).

It was a neat little show for kids, but, kid depending, it's another hit-or-miss vehicle for the young ones who like their science fiction with a little more zest. Still, Ark II has a kind of primitive whole-hearted charm to it. There will be many a face from 1960s and 1970s era television on the series, as well as many a location shot in and around Los Angeles.

The stories are pretty basic, and the violence never reaches anything above smoke and mirrors, with the occasional LASER blast striking the ground.

It was an interesting show that gave children of the 60s and 70s something to smile at. A bit of the future, good and bad, was shown to the young ones of the time. Today's kids probably will be a bit more demanding, but maybe your kids might like it. Let them have a chance to sample it. The worst they can do is say it's no good.

For me, I can't say I really liked it a whole lot. It was more or less a break from the awful Sid and Marty Kroft offerings that bracketed Ark II (or maybe they were on another channel... I can't really remember). Compared to the other live action kids fair of the time, Ark II was a cut or two above the rest.

An RV in the future - sounds like a fortune cookie message.

There was this creepy bearded weirdie who looked after the kids in the ARK II's 'crew.' Honestly, and I ask this not of the Ark II people, but of the dean of Space Academy and of Jason and the rest of Star Command -- what use are kids in dangerous missions and what the hell were you trying to teach us in the seventies?

Always let the adults wear the jet pack? Always stop for freaky hippies in rags at the side of the road? Drink lots of distilled water? Let the grown-up drive?

Well, definitely that last one. I remember one episode when they let the chimp drive. That damned monkey nearly bulldozed an entire village. I can vouch for that lesson personally. I once let the chimp drive.... Wait, that was my friend Steve... Whatever. It was a good show. Especially when Steve was carted off by the cops.

I haven't seen ARK II in years and so my memory is cloudy as to the moralistic / preaching slant to the show, although I can believe it.

As a child, I remembered loving the 'futuristic' R.V. they traveled in and some of the other gadgetry. I also recall 'Robbie The Robot' somewhere in the mix, although I'm not sure if he was part of the permanent cast.

As I said before, I don't recall the overt dogma of the show, but after watching one re-run of 'Shazam!' recently on TV Land, with it's awful production values and tent-revival dialogue about moralism it makes me thankful that for the most part that era has passed for network t.v.

To many shows were never allowed to reach their potential even though some appealed to the masses beyond expectation. This show was one of them. Decision making at the time was based on pleasing the people in charge I think and not as much about what the people were watching .

Sure, today we can look back and say it was a great show touching many areas of society but were we thinking the same thing when it first aired. I was! A remake or revamped version to be more in tune with today's world would go over well in my opinion. TRY IT! I'd watch it more often than some of the revamped crime shows we're flooded with. Can't anyone tell we're getting tired of cops and robbers, crime science and legal system shows? Everything is teaching kids to be better criminals and/or the rest of the shows teach someone else's version of morality which isn't always the way it really is. How about 'what can be' and less 'what is'? A little hope in the world would go a long way.

but I can't remember the name of it. Anybody remember a similar show like Ark II but with a space theme? Only thing I clearly remember is one of the kids on the show, who I *think* was an alien, was able to see anything colored red thru walls. If anybody knows what the hell i'm talking about, I'd sure like to know the name. I bought Ark II when i saw it in the store thinking this was it but it's not although I do remember this Ark show dimly ( I was 5 when this came out). I know there were tons of these mid warping shows back then but hopefully somebody can jog my memory on this one. Thanks in advance for your help!

Jeff