SeaQuest DSV/2032 was a show I saw in the late 1990s. What I remember is 1) that it’s about the underwater adventures of a submarine and 2) has Stacy Haiduk (whom I had just seen playing a vampire in Kinded: The Embraced which was a tv series I was obsessed with for a bit back then) playing one of the supporting characters and 3) Stephanie Beacham playing the Doctor and 4) being profoundly disappointed that the good Doctor didn’t look (so, no big hair that screamed “RICH”, thousand dollar make-up, designer clothing and fur coats) or act anything like Sable Colby from The Colbys soap opera (also played by Stephanie Beacham) 🤣
I’ve now re-watched 6 out of the first 7 episodes (I quit the episode with the kids about 15 minutes in, it was so bad) and man, the stories are… not great. The plots are so simple, but worse than that, the writing is simplistic. There’s never a deeper thought anywhere to be found! It reminds me very much of Star Trek TNG but it’s missing all the nuance and deeper thoughts. There are so many interesting opportunities that the stories could explore a thing, or make a statement, or even consciously decide to not make a statement but the show doesn’t even notice them. There’s nothing here worth seeing the first time, never mind the second, as far as the stories and plots go.
The acting is okay, nothing great but nothing too awful either. They have some notable guest-stars (Roscoe Lee Browne, Yaphet Cotto etc.) and of course, Roy Scheider was a big star and plays the main character, the Captain of the SeaQuest. And there’s Ted Raimi, who will forever be Joxer from Xena to me. But I can’t remember whether I saw Xena or SeaQuest DSV first, so have no idea which character came first to me. Anyway, so far there’s almost no meat to any of the characters either – nothing new added since the pilot. Oh, and there’s the token kid/teenager who just happens to be a genius, of course, and whose parents dumped him to be SeaQuest’s problem, because apparently the only way to keep the kid in check is to trap him in a submarine underwater.
The interesting thing about the series is the setting: an advanced, huge submarine with minority military and majority scientists crew and which keeps order in the underwater world and investigates mysterious things or is sent to close stations down and find surprises on them. The setting is awesome! The seas are colonized and people are living in underwater stations. It makes me wish very much there’d be a show with the same setting but with much less simplistic story telling! The feel of the setting is the same I get from space adventures! I’m also very interested in the political system of the world, how that world differs from our current times – the hints the show gives say: considerably!
Everything seems to happen and be located in the moon pool room, with the Bridge being the other notable location. The Doctor, who says in the pilot that she’s a medical doctor and head of the sciences, also appears to be an expert in everything in addition to being a medical doctor. Often it would make sense to have another expert in an entirely different field to handle the explaining/thinking either she or the genius teenager is doing. The show does make a point of there being lots of scientists from lots of specialties being on board, after all! But no, it’s always the Doctor or the genius kid. And the science talk never sounds quite convincing – unlike in TNG, which somehow managed to make the invented science sound real and plausible.
I’m not sure whether the show is supposed to be for adults or children. All the main characters are adults, several of them middle aged and there’s only one kid. But the story telling is horribly simplistic, with nothing going on below the very surface level of the stories.
Another weird and interesting note is that the SeaQuest design, the boat itself, looks very much Minbari or Vorlon (from Babylon 5) to me! Both the shape and lines of the boat and its skin pattern. Every time SeaQuest the ship is shown, my brain automatically goes “that’s a Vorlon ship!” and then “oh wait – it’s not B5 i’m watching!” According to IMDB, SeaQuest DSV and Babylon 5 both started the year 1993. Oh, and the military crew jumpsuits are almost identical to what McQueen wears in Space: Above And Beyond.
I’m not sure I can keep watching – the stories are so simplistic, I don’t get anything out of them.
