CBS airs the 11th episode of Filmation’s live-action Saturday morning science fiction series Ark II.
Ark II explores a desert area bordering something that the local call “the forbidden zone,” where Jonah and Ruth watch as two men are prodded into the zone and vanish without a trace. When a third person is forced toward the zone, Jonah dons the jet pack and stops him from entering, demanding to know what’s going on. He learns that the leader of the young man’s village, Kane, has decreed a brutal form of population control: a lottery is held to determine which member of the community will be banished to the forbidden zone to ensure that there are enough resources left for rest of the village. The seemingly random bursts from a volcanic steam vent choose those who will be banished… except that Adam finds evidence that Kane has control over those burtsts, ensuring that those who oppose his laws are always the ones to be exiled. Ruth slips into the next party of exiles sent into the forbidden zone, and she finds herself in a strange dark voidi with the others who have been sent there against their will. But how can Ruth and the others be retrieved?
writtten by Phyllis & Robert White
directed by Ted Post
music by Yvette Blais & Jeff Michael and Horta-MahanaCast: Terry Lester (Jonah), Jean Marie Hon (Ruth), Jose Flores (Samuel), Zitto Kazann (Kane), David Goldmund (Steven), Eric Boles (Borg), Jim Boles (Benjamin), Lou Scheimer (voice of Adam)
Notes: Samuel’s laser gear uses advanced 25th century Nixie tubes to display numbers. Two weeks after he made it dangerously obvious that he couldn’t drive the Ark, Adam has mastered the controls of the Roamer.
LogBook entry by Earl Green