When Dianne Duane was a Guest at a recent UK SF Convention, she was asked about her work on the novelisation of SeaQuest DSV. She and her husband (author Peter Morwood ) informed the audience that while they worked on that particular adaptation they flinched every time the fax machine beeped - because they knew it would be yet MORE rewrites for them to do! Believe it or not, that happened to them eight times a day for over two weeks!
When the show and the novelisation were eventually released, Dianne and Peter were often told how disjointed the script was, and how superior their version was - and little wonder, with so many rewrites and revisions to the original!
This pretty much sums up DSV - a show with no clear-cut concept behind it, no real idea of what it was or where it was going (until the 3rd Season, when it was cancelled half-way through).
The cast changed regularly - Stephanie Beecham dropped out after Season 1, and Roy Scheider only popped up a couple of times in Season 3. However, the actors who stayed around helped make the show worth watching. Pretty-boy Jonathan Brandis and the nerdish Ted Raimi had a certain charm - a pity the former has disappeared from our screens, while the latter is now known to fans of Xena: Warrior Princess as Joxer the Mighty.
Michael Ironside's role in Season 3 was typical of the typecasting he suffered - one only has to look at Starship Troopers to see how he made a career out of it.
The guest-stars became even more impressive in the final Season. In Season 2 we saw Mark Hamill, last seen in Wing Commander games - but Season 3 actually had Michael York as a recurring villain!
However, even with all the changes made in the 3rd Season, the series was still cancelled. That is a shame, especially when one considers the success of the vastly inferior Star Trek: Voyager series - but the legacy of SeaQuest's bumpy take-off was enough to drag it under, even at the end.
seaQuest [Season 1, Episode 1]
The Devil's Window
Shown 19 Sep 93
seaQuest [Season 1, Episode 2]
Treasure of the Mind
Shown 26 Sep 93
seaQuest [Season 1, Episode 3]
Games
Shown 3 Oct 93
seaQuest [Season 1, Episode 4]
Treasures of the Tonga Trench
Shown 9 Oct 93
seaQuest [Season 1, Episode 5]
Brothers and Sisters
Shown 17 Oct 93
seaQuest [Season 1, Episode 6]
Give Me Liberte
Shown 24 Oct 93
seaQuest [Season 1, Episode 7]
Knight of Shadows
Shown 31 Oct 93
seaQuest [Season 1, Episode 8]
Bad Water
Shown 7 Nov 93
SeaQuest DSV [Season 1, Episode 9]
The Regulator
Shown Nov 1993
Reviewed September 2000
For a Rockne S. O'Bannon show, this is surprisingly good. Of course, anyone who has seen Farscape lately will not be surprised at all.
The episode starts when the crew discover one of the thermal regulator chips has blown out. This is a good excuse to show Stacey Haiduk in a skimpy, sweaty vest - even though the Captain is apparently unaffected by the heat. He orders that the crew evacuate the deck and double-bunk. Even the Captain has to let Lucas (Johnathan Brandis) bunk up with him.
The officers are desperate to get a replacement component. There is a nice piece of satire when they vid-phone the supply depot's Customer Service department. Instead they have to resort to a black-market salvage dealer called The Regulator. When he was a teenage genius, like Lucas, he developed a liquid-based aqualung - like the one used in The Abyss. In fact, at the end of the episode the technical advisor (Dr Bob Ballard) tells us that in RL experiments, one man breathed liquid for 45 minutes!
Stephanie Beecham pops up briefly.
seaQuest [Season 1, Episode 10]
seaWest
Shown Nov 1993
Reviewed 12th May 2001 [Saturday]
SeaQuest is called to an underwater mining colony run by an unruly Aussie played by David McCallum (Man From UNCLE). McCallum is a bully who pushes around poor unfortunate miner David Morse ( Green Mile ), who must be ten inches taller and ten years younger!
Stacey Haiduk goes undercover as a sexy lounge singer, and we get a happy ending. SeaQuest removes Democracy and restores Capitalist Oppression.
SeaQuest DSV [Season 1, Episode 11]
Photon Bullet
Shown 19 Dec 93
Tim Russ ( Star Trek: VGR ) is a retro 1970s hacker dude with a dodgy pencil moustache. He recruits teenage hackers to help work on his Internex - they can chat with avatars, using voice-activated computers. Seth Green ( Buffy ) is another hacker, whom Lucas befriends. Of course, he is never seen again.
Lucas impresses everyone by playing 3-D Tetris. Of course, voting and banking are all done online. The plan is to use insanely powerful computers (user-interfaces!) to Make the world better. The morals are silly - SeaQuest is military, and its crew are killers.
Seaquest [Season 1, Episode 12]
Better than Martians
Shown Jan 1994
Reviewed First Week, October 2000
The world is overjoyed with the success of the first manned mission to Mars. Meanwhile, Bridger (Roy Scheider - Jaws (1975) ) and Stephanie Beecham go SCUBA diving with Darwin the Dolphin. Bridger hates futurists, as he calls them - those who want to explore space instead of the oceans.
However, something goes wrong during the astronauts' re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. Bridger's boss (Richard Herd - V ) is ordered by the US President (an African-American) to recover the pod. Meanwhile the local ruler, the Montanyard President, orders his General (Aki Aleong - V ) to rescue the astronauts before Seaquest does.
Seaquest [Season 1, Episode 13]
Nothing But the Truth
Shown 9 Jan 94
SeaQuest has a skeleton crew. There is tension between D'Aquino and Franklin.
SWAT thugs hijack it - very stupid! The Government refuses to enforce its own laws against pollution. The Leader is an ex-UEO environmental officer, and Tim Kelleher ( Dark Skies ) is the nerd.
Seaquest [Season 1, Episode 14]
Greed for a Pirate's Dream
Shown 16 Jan 94
Bridger (Roy Scheider - Jaws (1975) ) is away - again. Stephanie Beecham gets Bridger's lines.
David Marciano and a crew get Magma Run. They dig for buried treasure, Bonet's treasure - the crown jewels of France, and Francis Bacon's plates. A buoy survives the Magma and they take it home.
Seaquest [Season 1, Episode 15]
Whale Song
Shown
Reviewed Third Week, October 2000
Richard Herd ( V ) calls Bridger (Roy Scheider - Jaws (1975) ) to the Pentagon. Several UEO-allied ships (albeit illegal whalers) were blown out of the water by a submarine somewhere called the Irish Ocean, and Bridger is ordered to hunt down and destroy the vigilante. Further hypocrisy is blatant: beef is banned on the Seaquest, although the Generals at the Pentagon eat it all the time.
Seaquest is a search & rescue sub, but the Pentagon insists it is used as a hunter-killer in this mission. Yes, the US Navy has no killer subs of its own!!!
The vigilante is played by veteran bad-guy actor Johnathan Banks, though here he is given a quite sympathetic character. Of note, there is a cameo by Peter Deluise - who became a series regular in Season 2. Also, to put things in time perspective there is a reference to Bill Clinton's 72nd birthday.
seaQuest [Season 1, Episode 16]
The Stinger
Shown 20 Feb 94
seaQuest [Season 1, Episode 17]
Hide and Seek
Shown 27 Feb 94
Seaquest [Season 1, Episode 18]
The Last Lap At Luxury
Shown March 1994
Reviewed Third Week, October 2000
The UEO top bureaucrats attend a top-level conference at a newly-opened underwater hotel resort. SeaQuest is on-site for security, and Lucas is guest-speaker at the conference. However, the bureaucrats mysteriously vanish - the only one who does not suspects it is the work of terrorists, and tries to put the UEO under martial law.
Bridger (Roy Scheider - Jaws (1975) ) and his boss (Richard Herd) organise a cover-up that would make the Russian Navy green with envy. Ted Raimi's character is good at CGI, which comes in very useful.
Was the idea of a change in UEO management a bad thing? The UEO is a pretty corrupt organisation - look at the Pentagon's treatment of its own rules about Beef and whale-hunting in a previous episode. Also, bear in mind that the third Season (set 25 years in the future) is set after the UEO collapsed and the world fell into anarchy ...
seaQuest [Season 1, Episode 19]
Abalon
Shown 1 May 94
Bridger (Roy Scheider - Jaws (1975) ) sends token black guy Commander Ford to the bottom of the sea, testing a pressurized suit for work at extreme depths. The TBG thinks he sees a woman who can swim without a pressure suit or oxygen supply. Bridger assumes the TBG is suffering from pressure-induced psychosis, and gives him some shore leave. TBG heads to the nearest bar, and hopes the mermaid will walk in.
By incredible coincidence, the Little Mermaid swims ashore nearby to explore the world above. She goes into exactly the same bar as the TBG.
Rob Youngblood ( Space Precinct ) and another Merman pop up to retrieve the Little Mermaid. They have an anachronistic victorian-looking submarine, but instead of working for Captain Nemo they serve Abalon (Charlton Heston - ) - a scientist who has abandoned the ways of the surface world, but made incredible scientific advances of his own.
The episode's B-story is about Lucas ( ). Like Commander Ford he gets some shore leave and goes after a girl. In this case, he attends a conference on the phenomena of post-adolescence. In fact, the conference is more of a biology practical - a party for tweenage nerds. This is Lucas's big chance to lose his virginity. A girl he likes apparently likes him too, and she will be there. The question is is Lucas ready? Like in As Good As It Gets, when Jack Nicholson's character (a middle-aged man) is told by his love interest you're not ready. Whatever that means.
seaQuest [Season 1, Episode 20]
Such Great Patience
Shown 8 May 94
Seaquest [Season 1, Episode 21]
The Good Death
Shown March 1994
Reviewed Fourth Week, October 2000
At the request of the Amazonia Confederation, a South American ally of the UEO, SeaQuest intercepts a hostile submarine. It turns out that the sub is filled with refugee street children who have been rescued by Dr Westphalen's daughter.
El Generalissimo (Luis Guzman - Bone Collector) demands that the kids be returned to his country. When Bridger (Roy Scheider - Jaws (1975) ) refuses, Guzman has his ships attack the minisub with the kids aboard, along with Stephanie Beacham, the token black guy and the token Oriental. The survivors sneak ashore and hide in the shanty town, but the police find their SCUBA gear and Guzman thinks Bridger sent a hit team.
The Oriental has a Chinese name, but states that his Grandfather was one of the Vietnamese boat people. Luckily for the others he is a martial arts expert and was raised in the country they are trapped in.
This episode simplifies an issue like the street children of Brazil. The children are the result of overpopulation, and they are the main cause of most street or petty crime in the country.
Seaquest [Season 1, Episode 22]
Higher Power
Shown March 1994
Reviewed Fourth Week, October 2000
The SeaQuest is in Australia, and the day has been declared a national holiday to celebrate the opening of an underwater power plant run by Lucas' father. The SeaQuest crew get some much-deserved shore leave. Bridger (Roy Scheider - Jaws (1975) ) gambles with a pal of his, the Captain of an aircraft carrier, on the outcome of a game of beach volleyball between the two crews. Unfortunately we do not get to see Stacy Haiduk in a skimpy bikini, but you can't have anything - err, everything. Whatever.
As you can guess, something goes wrong at the power plant and the SeaQuest has to go in and save the day.
Get your own copy HERE!
