Synopsis/Details
Story Summary:
The New Eden series asks and answers that important question, “Will we let technology terminate us or teach us?” through the eyes of the 18-year-old heroine, Eva.
The story begins with a frustrated Eva struggling to escape her sister’s shadow and feeling powerless when she examines the world around her. It’s not until a summer program, where she joins her beloved Grams, an award-winning scientist who lives on a high-tech science vessel called the New Eden, that Eva begins to see a new vision for her world and herself.
The shipboard experience immerses Eva and her student group in companionship, creative learning, and the inevitable conflicts of youth. But as the group dynamics settle down, a storm ushers in new excitement. But it’s more than a storm. It’s a much bigger Event.
Struggling to understand what happened, the New Eden passengers soon learn they may be the only survivors of a cataclysmic Earth event. Then, a literal beacon brings new hope; the VP of the U.S. survived and must be rescued from the Cheyenne Mountain Complex.
But the rescue expedition turns deadly as the shipmates realize not all the ills of humanity have been washed away. A standoff ensues, and Eva finds her own power just in time to change the course of humanity’s future.
In the season Pilot, the world begins with Eva and Grams having a normal afternoon watching movies in Gram’s cabin on the futuristic cruise ship New Eden (the location is not entirely clear for a while). The mood shifts dramatically at the one-minute mark as Eva looks out the window and sees something coming. From there, Eva’s world is rocked dramatically, both literally and figuratively. The pilot flashes to a quick and chaotic scene on the ship’s bridge before going black.
We then go back in time to Eva’s life before the New Eden, catching a clever glimpse of the daunting headlines that describe this near-future world and hearing Eva’s voice convey her frustration and powerlessness, which drive her character. The scene ends with an explosion that brings us back to the moment of “The Event” onboard the New Eden. We flash back and forth from Eva and Grams in Gram’s cabin to the bridge –an action-packed, thrilling ride –until it is over.
The pilot continues sequentially, with Eva and Grams as the primary characters, interacting with the Captain and Crew along with Eva’s student group, as they learn bit by bit (in real-time as it's being understood by the Captain), what has happened. In a frightening scene, a rumble introduces the unexpected arrival of some air force pilots, who bring information and data that is analyzed by DDAVID (the New Eden’s AI system). We learn bits and pieces, and he posits a theory that we don’t quite learn in the pilot.
(Spoiler alert: They all eventually learn that a missile fired towards the U.S. from somewhere in Asia was deflected by U.S. military defenses and detonated in Antarctica. The next few episodes reveal that the instantaneous liquification of Antarctica triggered a cataclysmic chain reaction of unprecedented proportions: the sudden melting of 6.4 million cubic miles of ice shifted the entire weight balance of the Earth, the poles flipped, and continents shifted and sank. All this turmoil created massive tsunamis and unheard-of wind speeds. And if that’s not enough… The residents also learn the true nature of their home: the New Eden is not just a vessel for scientific research. It’s a prototype for another ship—code-named The Ark—being built to house the President and key government officials in the event of nuclear war or other devastation. With The Ark not yet completed, the New Eden assumes the role and speeds towards Washington, D.C.)
Towards the end of the pilot, Eva and Grams realize that some sort of Doomsday event has occurred, and New Eden is on a rescue mission to retrieve the President of the United States. But we don’t know the extent of it, and the rest of the New Eden residents haven't been told yet.
The pilot ends with Eva wishing she could go back and tell her parents some things. She flashes back to the day she got on the ship. Here we see the first glimpses of her student group characters, whom we’ve already interacted with some in the pilot. This is their “before” world. Poignantly, as she watches her parents wave goodbye and say, “I love you,” Eva narrates ominous words and regrets, which conclude the pilot.
The second episode goes back in time to when Eva is introduced to the New Eden and the jaw-dropping technology aboard, its crew and mission, and her classmates—a group of six gifted students of all nationalities and walks of life. The Captain sets the tone for the summer program, emphasizing that they are not like typical cruise ship passengers who are seeking to escape the world. He tells them, “Here on the New Eden, we are trying to save the world”—words that come back to haunt him in the Season Finale. Here Eva learns more than breakthrough science (though there is that). She consorts with Grams, butts heads with Mei, and struggles with an attraction to Eli. Tension and drama arise from these entanglements. An impending storm ushers in more drama and a cliff-hanger.
The remaining episodes deal with the Event and its aftermath, while also flashing back to the backstories of all the main characters in their “Before” worlds. As we move forward in time, the residents and crew are left scrambling and questioning in the aftermath, eventually learning “The Event,” as those onboard soon refer to it, turns out to be a world-ending catastrophe.
Over the course of a week, the residents personally witness the devastation of The Event. On their journey to D.C., they stop at the mountainous island of St. Thomas, where they find only remnants of a TV tower, mangled, jutting out of the sea. Next, they continue on to Washington, D.C., where they face the horrifying fact that the whole East Coast is submerged; the Appalachian Mountains, the only visible land, are now an island. With a full understanding of the situation now, the entire population of New Eden goes into mourning.
Then a beacon pings their systems, and they make contact with a group who has survived: the VP of the U.S., the SECDEF, and a few others are alive, sheltering high in the Colorado mountains in the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. The discovery brings new hope and spurs a rescue mission, easing sorrow and giving everyone a goal to focus on. On its new mission, the New Eden traverses the United States across the sea, which has flooded most of the continent up to the state of Colorado. When they arrive, the crew—along with a few student groups—set out in their high-tech amphibious vehicles on their respective research and rescue missions. Eva’s group inadvertently stumbles into the domain of “doomsday preppers” who have also (barely) survived the Event in a reinforced compound in the mountains. But instead of welcoming them, their paranoid leader takes the group hostage in exchange for access to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. During a tense standoff, shots are fired, killing Grams and injuring Eva.
Safely back at the New Eden, Eva recovers in the state-of-the-art medical facility while her friends, closer than ever through their shared experience, await her waking. When she does, she learns that the SECDEF plans to annihilate the prepper group, which includes a number of innocent women and children they befriended while at the compound. Eva, despite her weakened state, bursts into the control room and, just in the nick of time, stops the killing by delivering an impassioned plea to the Captain, Crew, and Council Members, reminding them of the Captain’s own words. Eva convinces them they have the power—and the obligation—to save the world, by rejecting the old ways of thinking that destroyed it.
