Keep in mind that Seaquest originally aired in 1993; with the recent "end of the Cold War" and GHW Bush's remarks about a "new world order" ringing in the writers' heads, much of the tone of the series presents a world largely pacified by the benevolent oversight of the United Earth Oceans organization. Seaquest, so the admiral says in the pilot TV movie, has been significantly (although not nearly entirely) demilitarized, and now serves as a peacekeeper.
Season 2 rolls around, and the NBC executives decided they wanted to go after that 'hip, young' demographic which marketers seem to have a gigantic hard-on for. Solution: relocate the show to Florida, change out some of the cast for younger and hotter actresses, give Captain Bridger a beard, spice up the show with more ridiculous plots, and throw the crew ashore half the time so they can show just how hip they are. Uh, right. Seaquest has been rebuilt, and the bridge set has unfortunately suffered heavily; it's now just another generic spaceship - woops, submarine - bridge set. Sigh. They even put in a fucking window.
At the end of Season 2, Seaquest gets abducted by aliens and transported to a faraway world to help win a war, because supposedly these super-advanced aliens can't wage submarine warfare. Uh, right. It turns out that at least one side did figure out this idea of "bombs in the ocean", and Seaquest is effectively destroyed at the end of Season 2.
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Now we come to the actual point of this thread. For years, I'd assumed that the third season represented an even further departure from the first season, which I loved, and that the second season was mostly crap anyway but the third season raped the series even more.
Well, not quite. I've actually sat down to watch the third season and it's alright. It's certainly a hell of a lot better than the second season, and there are probably some folks who would like season 3 even more than the first season. This thread is about what I've been noticing in season 3.
Season 3 begins ten years after Seaquest was abducted to an alien world. Seaquest crewmembers begin magically appearing all over the world, followed by Seaquest herself showing up - in pristine condition - in a corn field.
The premise of season 3 is that, without the supersub to keep everyone in line, the UEO is no longer able to maintain control. Two major organizations have risen to challenge UEO supremacy; the Deon Corporation, typically acting behind the scenes in your usual "ultra-cutthroat evil megacorp of the future" fashion, and the Macronesian Alliance, a cartoonishly sinister 'evil empire' bent on territorial expansion.
The premise itself - that the "new world order" has failed, that folks are going to go right back to what they always do, that 'peace through strength' is sometimes necessary - is not inherently faulty. However, some of the details are: for example, why couldn't UEO build a new Seaquest (or two, or three?) in ten years? One of the episodes blames Bridger for keeping Seaquest a "scientific holy grail", but that doesn't make sense; the plans for the ship would certainly still be archived somewhere, and the ability to duplicate the Seaquest was proven when they rebuilt it for season 2. This is clearly a huge contriviance which could have been done away with by simply calling the failure of the UEO 'inevitable'.
With the more aggressive setting comes a more aggressive mission for Seaquest; she's now a purely military vessel. Captain Bridger steps down (Roy Schieder didn't like the direction of the show ever since Season 2) and Captain Hudson, played by Michael Ironsides, takes command. This is fine, and in fact might well be a welcome change. Unfortunately, the writers forgot that most of the Seaquest crew still around were, in fact, US Navy personnel before the UEO was formed, and so we have - albeit to a lesser extent - the same kind of "oh no the captain's a hardass, waah" conflicts popping up that we saw in TNG "Chain of Command" when the hardass captain took over the Enterprise from Picard. It's disconcerting because you'd expect better out of these characters.
Again, the more hostile setting is fine - but unfortunately, it's pretty clear that some of the writers and/or producers wish that they were writing for a space show. Seaquest now can make her engines light up, and then suddenly the ship zooms off really fast! (hurr) Seaquest now has a complement of, and finds itself in combat with, "sub fighters" - which behave pretty much exactly like you'd expect sci-fi starfighters to behave... only, underwater. They even have pew-pew energy blob weapons, which sometimes get called "torpedoes" (probably a disconnect between writers and VFX production) but really behave just like bloody energy weapons.
Seaquest also has big lasers which are now used against enemy ships. (To be complete, there was an episode (SINGULAR) in the first season in which the XO says "Arming lasers and torpedos" - but since we never saw lasers used in the first season, I'm inclined to call that a writing gaffe from someone who thought they were writing for TNG or some shit like that) I could be wrong but lasers don't strike me as an effective underwater weapon. Similarly, where the original series had slugthrowers and "sonic guns" (which basically just made your ears hurt really bad and serve to incapacitate people), by Season 3 they've given everyone pew-pew energy guns.
Michael Ironside does a pretty good Ironside. But seriously, he's fun. My main quibble is that because the writers made the characters a bit too limp-wristed, Captain Hudson similarly has to be the "hardass with a heart of gold", and sometimes that "heart of gold" gets played up a bit too much.
And, as a final quibble (so far - I'm only halfway through the third season) - the talking dolphin was supposed to be Bridger's closest friend (after the surrogate son that the boy genius provided him) and yet he's still on the boat after Bridger has left. This doesn't make much sense at all. (Actually, to be fair, the producers probably did not want to abandon the investment they'd made in Darwin, both in terms of the audience that liked him and the money sunk into creating the 'talking dolphin' - but that doesn't excuse the fact that it doesn't make much sense.)
So, after that big write-up, you might think I really dislike season 3, right? Well... no, not at all, actually. There are parts which I certainly think are lame, but overall I find it much more watchable than the abysmal second season now, and more watchable than many TNG episodes.
Anyway. That's a lot of
but after watching a few of these episodes I had some comments to share.
