rockyb61
I really enjoyed the first series (and am enjoying it again on DVD), but it never really stood a chance in the UK. When it first started it had the Saturday tea-time slot (after the sports results and before the evening schedule). I'm not sure about the other regions, but on Granada (NW England) part way through series 1 it stopped being weekly - on one week then missing the next. Then it stopped completely. Some time later it reappeared on Saturday afternoon (going against the BBC's main sports programme Grandstand) and picked up from where it had left off. It then disappeared again. A year or so later, HTV (the ITV franchise for Wales, which I also received) started showing series 3 on Saturday afternoon's, which was seriously confusing for someone who hadn't seen series 2, but they didn't show the complete series. Granada subsequently showed a couple of shows from series 2, but not at a regular time and not for very long. I hope they release series 2 and 3 on DVD just to see what I missed when they were(n't) first shown.
Li-1
I was a bit of a sci-fi nut growing up, so you can imagine the joy I experienced when sci-fi on the small screen made a strong resurgence in the early to mid 90s. Yep, those were the days, back when I found myself glued to the television, eagerly watching and awaiting the newest episodes of shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, The X-Files, Earth 2, Sliders, The Outer Limits, and NBC's Seaquest DSV.Seaquest caught my attention for three particular reasons: the premise of an undersea world was immensely appealing, the series was being executive produced by none other than Steven Spielberg, and the star of the show was one of my favorite actors, Roy Scheider. With all these ingredients, I just knew this was going to be a sci-fi classic and given how undemanding a sci-fi fan I was back then, this show won me over from the start. Watching season 1 again, it's a bit tougher to imagine why I was so fond of this show in the first place.Certainly, there's a handful of bright spots to be expected. Scheider, as always, does a great job of playing the fatherly authority figure/everyman role that I'm sure he's grown used to. The f/x and sets, very "90s" in look and style, were quite impressive for its time and are still passable enough today that they don't often distract the viewer. The series even occasionally delivered its share of high adventure and mild suspense. I also liked John Debney's main theme, which is actually kind of catchy.But the series never came together like it should have. From the start, Seaquest was clearly aping ST: TNG, what with the UEO/Federation parallels, the captain/ship's doctor romance, and the brilliant but annoying teenager who served no other purpose than to draw in a younger demographic (even though Jonathan Brandis, RIP, was a better actor than Wil Wheaton, I still found Lucas far more irritating than Wesley Crusher).This would all be perfectly forgivable if the show actually delivered on its fantastic premise. Unfortunately, Seaquest is cluttered with too much vanilla-bland writing and cheesy dialogue. Seemingly 3/4's of the episodes attempt to deliver an important "lesson," but this tends to come off as self-consciously heavy-handed and corny. The show was also clearly intended for a family audience, hence the mostly light tone and lack of any material that might come across as potentially offensive; this must almost be entirely attributed to Spielberg's presence, as I cannot imagine Rockne S. O'Bannon pandering to younger audiences.Looking back at the first season's 23 episodes, I wouldn't say they're awful; in fact, I found most of them just plain and mediocre. The only one that stood out was Episode 4, entitled "Games," which managed to deliver sharp suspense for most of its duration, still unfortunately marred by a cheesy climax, which became a staple of the series. Of all the shows I mentioned above, this rests with Earth 2 as the worst of the bunch (TNG still the best, of course).Is Seaquest a bad series? For the most part, yes, but I've got too much of a sci-fi slant to hate it. Anyone completely weaned on today's sci-fi shows (Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, Firefly, Stargate, Enterprise) aren't going to find much in Seaquest that would appeal to them. But those who grew up on early 90s sci-fi...well, you've undoubtedly seen this show enough times already to know if it's up your alley or not.
Skerdog
I've been watching the replays of the episodes during Sci Fi Channel's recent marathon, and I must say that I was struck by the "in your face" environmental activism in nearly every episode I've watched so far. The shows are still entertaining, but they border on annoyance with all the holier-than-thou preaching about how horrible mankind is.I am also reminded of how dark the underwater scenes were back then...at first I thought maybe I had a bad TV, but no, they're just dark. Does ANYONE know what the SeaQuest actually looks like?And you'd think with all the flack that Gene Roddenberry took for having Wesley Crusher "save the Enterprise" each week on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" that the producers of DSV would have learned their lessons and cut back on Jonathan Brandeis' (God rest his soul) role.
ninjafruitbat
I really liked the first season of this show, for all it's randomness it was still a nice change. Although it needed more work on the relationships between the characters, the first season's characters were the best. I even liked the much-criticised talking dolphin (what 12 year old wouldn't??)Season two - it was all down hill from there (with the man-eating plant, etc) and you stopped caring. Then they went into space and came back 10 years later with a new name. I stopped watching at this point.Could have been done much better.
