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    Sydney Sweeney

    Brittany Renner

    Alison Brie

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  • Juliana Paes

    Myrna Loy, 1920s

    SeaQuest 2032

    In the early 21st century, mankind has colonized the oceans. The United Earth Oceans Organization enlists Captain Nathan Bridger and the submarine seaQuest DSV to keep the peace and explore the last frontier on Earth.

    Seaquest was an action adventure / fantasy science fiction / military science fiction series that ran from 1993 – 1996 for three seasons, all of which were as different from each other as they could be and still be part of a serialize television show. The first two seasons featured Roy Scheider of “Jaws” fame as the captain of the titular submarine, the beautiful Stacy Haiduk, the hunky Don Franklin, and teenage heart throb Jonathan Brandis, the last two actually stayed on the series for all three years.  There’s also a animatronic dolphin named “Darwin” who I swear to god I thought was a real animal right up until I was watching the behind the scenes features on the bluray and they showed all the cables and triggers that were set up to make him move and talk.  The first two seasons had stories that ranged from good to terrible featuring plots like “a previous captain is now a bad guy!”, eco terrorists, underwater archeology, aliens, and time travel. Those first seasons also featured Bob Ballard of the Institute for Exploration, who famously took a trip to see the Titanic (and survived!) and has been a huge champion of underwater research for much of his life.  He’d pop on after every episode with some cool facts about things under water during the credits and I have vivid memories of thinking how cool that guy was to know so much about everything I was vaguely interested in at the time, I think I was around 13 when the show first aired!  The show featured a number of guest stars that caught my attention both at the time of airing and now, people like Tim Russ, William Shatner, Seth Green, Charlton Heston, Luis Guzmán, Mark Hamill, Michael York, William Shatner’s mustache, and Brittany Murphy.  The practical effects were all at the top of Hollywood’s ability at the time and the behind the scenes mentions that they had their own in house cgi effect team that could turn things in super quick, and they were also extremely top of the line for the time period.  Season one is more action/adventure and ends with the Seaquest being blown up along with all of it’s nukes at the same time to save the planet by sealing a magma flow deep in the ocean. Seas two picks up a few years later with a new Seaquest being sent out into the world and they introduce the GELFs, genetically engineered life forms, former soldiers that were created for war but then no one knew what to do with them after the wars were over, so most of them were sequestered into a prison camp on an island, all but a ‘simple jack’ forerunner named Dagwood that was a prototype and had nearly no aggression, who turned out to be a terrible soldier but a decent janitor. This is a storyline that was also used in another series from this time period, “Space: Above and Beyond” where it was done much better imho.

    Season two also brought the production of the show from Hollywood to the Tampa Bay area in Florida, which at the time was right down the road from where I was living.  It was super cool to see various landmarks that I knew show up in the show, and they even featured at least one of the local news anchors as a future science fiction news anchor on the show.  They lost Bob Ballard as an after episode treat and they removed the voice over from the main theme, both huge losses to the show’s ability to present itself as anything resembling inspirational or educational.

    Here’s season one’s intro:

    And season two’s:

    Season two ends with the Seaquest being blown up on another planet to stop aliens from invading.  Yes, really.  They went full science fiction in season two and I honestly missed some of the more naivety that season one had.  They had murder plants, rogue AI, and time travel.

    Season three skips 10 years in universe time and somehow the Seaquest is plucked from destruction and planted into a corn field in the middle of the US with no contact from the aliens and we never hear from them again.  Captain Bridger decides he’s done with military work and absconds back to his island paradise (to be seen a couple more times in both friendly and antagonistic roles), and the main theme is changed completely.  They only aired 10 episodes for season three so I never got the time it needed to grow on me.  I think it could have if they were given a full season, but alas:

     

    The third and final season featured some great episodes with follow ups on previous plots, international intrigue, politics, underwater fighter fights, and time travel.  It then ends after killing off one of the new characters introduced that season, introducing another one, and setting the stage for a pretty cools storyline that we’re never going to actually see.  I own the bluray set of the show now, but I’m honestly not sure if this is going to end up being like Avatar: the Last Airbender where I do a rewatch every couple years or more like The Flash television series where it looks really pretty up on my shelf but I have no interest in actually watching it.  I do love the show still and I’m happy to support it by having the set.  Maybe one day they’ll do a SeaQuest 2042 series?

     

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