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seaQuestered.
How am I supposed to teach my children to be discriminating TV viewers when
obnoxiously dull programs such as SeaQuest DSV are being palmed off as family
shows? "Family oriented" does not have to mean a show is written
weakly.
Last year, the stories were interesting, although they tended to be rather
dull. Captain Bridger and his crew more often than not seemed to be chess
pieces being pushed around by the writers. But the science was usually
solid.
This year, after a promising start, SeaQuest has fallen into an even worse
malaise than in the previous year. The new producer promised a greater emphasis
on the science fiction elements of the series. Even though that promise has
been kept, the scripts have been muddy, confusing, and in some cases, downright
incomprehensible. The tension levels are so low they are almost imperceptible.
This year, I wouldn't even go so far as to call the characters chess pieces,
they are more like checkers.
Hints of a dark, ugly world occasionally turn up in SeaQuest. The
environment has been damaged to the degree that oxygen must be manufactured,
genetic engineering is severely restricted due to some horrible mistakes (the
Daggars), there are hints of global power blackouts, tiny republics have
extraordinary power. There's a wealth of material on this show to be explored.
But they don't want to examine this dark world. They lean instead toward bland
stories of internal United Earth Organization crises, which in all honesty were
told better in the first season.
Admittedly, there have been a few nice touches during this second season.
The two hour season premiere dealing with the genetically engineered life forms,
or GELFs, was a fairly dramatic story of a group of people seeking equality.
Athough the tactics the Daggars used were not acceptable, the story adequately
dealt with their frustrations. Darwin the dolphin, who is normally handled as a
talking Flipper, was featured very well in the episode that brought the return
of the aliens. But a few nice touches here and there cannot bring about a solid
show. It needs consistently strong writing, which SeaQuest is not getting.
The weakness we see in SeaQuest is quite baffling. Steven Spielberg is a
co-producer and it was created by Rockne S. O'Bannon. Both of these men know
what it takes to make, if not good science fiction, at least watchable science
fiction.
I really want to like SeaQuest DSV. It has a lot of dormant potential. But
we really could have done without the much publicized reworking of the premise.
SeaQuest needs to be torpedoed.
Robert
Parson
This article originally appeared in the November 1994
issue of LogBook: The Zine
Reprinted with the permission of Robert Parson. © 1994, 2001
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