The opening titles for each episode, as narrated first by executive producer Lou Scheimer (using his then uncredited pseudonym Erik Gunden), then by the voice of Terry Lester, who portrayed Jonah, summarized the show's backstory: For millions of years, Earth was fertile and rich.

This is their achievement: Ark II, a mobile storehouse of scientific knowledge, manned by a highly trained crew of young people.

But we’re determined to bring the promise of a new civilization to our people and our planet.Ark II had a racially mixed cast starring Terry Lester as Ark II's commander, Jonah, Jean Marie Hon as Ruth, José Flores as Samuel, and a chimpanzee named Moochie (owned and trained by Darrell Keener) responding to the name of Adam and voiced by Lou Scheimer.

The surviving scientists pooled their knowledge and resources, training three young people (and the chimp, who was capable of speech and abstract reasoning) to search for remnants of humanity, reintroducing lost ideas as they traveled the barren landscape in the high-tech Ark II.

Establishing footage of the Ark traveling at high speed was shot at the Rogers Dry Lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base.

The front end of the Ark II prop was later re-used as the nose portion of the Seeker spacecraft in the Filmation series Space Academy and Jason of Star Command.

[3] It is sometimes incorrectly reported that the Ark II was built by Dean Jeffries, who constructed various fantastic vehicles for science-fiction films and television.

Unlike many of the in-house Filmation DVD releases in Region 1 by BCI Entertainment’s Ink & Paint brand, this series was sourced from the original NTSC film elements, with correct speed and pitch.