Originally aired: October 3, 1993.
So back during WWIII there was this Dr. Mengele type that made bioweapons for several powers. I call bull. There really are such people, but anybody with that kind of knowledge has their movements tracked and tracked well. One of my mom's professors used to be an engineer on a nuclear submarine. Just for ordinary working knowledge of a submarine reactor he had:
1) A list of countries he was forbidden from visiting
2) Every time anybody did a background check on him it came back all red flags and he had to call up the Navy and request permission to disclose information about himself
3) The last time he tried to travel, they just confiscated his passport.
And that's ordinary guy type security. A bioweapons genius like the guest star of the week would get at least that. I don't believe that he could go off the grid without a manhunt, let alone work for multiple countries at once.
But ok, the wars ended in 2010 and the nations that employed him decided to do a truth and reconciliation thing and handed him over to the UN. The UN in turn tried him and built a prison in the Arctic where he was kept, apparently frozen most of the time. That's sort of a stretch. He can clearly live through the freezing. They sentenced him to life. So are they going to hold him until his frozen, slower-aging body finally dies? They also deleted every record on him and burned the hardcopies. I don't believe that with 1993 technology, let alone what would be available in a future you could foresee from 1993. Not even pictures survived. Just the name. Dr. Zellar.
Turns out the power plant blew at the prison. It's on fire. So the warden and the prisoner, the only survivors, get transferred off by seaQuest. Only they make sure we know within the first 5 minutes of the show that the guy who says he's the warden is really the prisoner. He cut off the warden's fingertips to graft on top of his own and use to pass the ID check.
So he gets loose on the ship and hijinks ensue. He holds the ship ransom with a toxin he claims to have manufactured and wants Bridger and Ford to fire their nukes on UEO headquarters to start the war up again.
By the way, one of Zellar's hits was to wipe out a scientific expedition in the Indian Ocean headed by Westphalen's brother. Lucas finds this out when he discovers the one file left on Zellar, part of the testimony against him. Lucas does this after Bridger catches him playing some kind of 3D combat game where he's fighting a poorly-rendered skeleton with a sword, using some kind of controller that he wears as a glove. Most of the graphics in this show aren't quite retro-future yet, but that really is.
So Ford and Bridger decide that in order to save the ship, they have to launch the nukes. They do this under Zellar's observation and they do indeed have two keys to launch. This is stupid. Worse, it's actually idiotic. They were just talking about scuttling the boat to stop him and the spread of this toxin (They can't seem to decide if it's a weaponized bacteria or virus or if it's some kind of super chemical weapon.) and now they're caving for what? Self-preservation? Totally out of character. We get some good drama as no one can stop the launch and the missiles fire, though. Everyone on the bridge loses it.
Back in the missile control room, Bridger wants the toxin handed over. Zellar laughs and tosses it to the floor, where it shatters. Ford tried to catch it and gets a face full of death. Only not. He doesn't die instantly, so they assume it's a fake virus. Zellar helpfully confirms that it is. Bridger tells him shucks, those were disarmed nukes programmed to just plunge into the ocean after X minutes of flight too. Gotcha.
Then Westphalen charges in. She's got a gun and she wants Zellar to beg for his life. He's chuckling and telling her to get it over with. He's killed a lot of people and he can't be expected to remember her brother. She shrugs and pops a vial of stuff out of her pocket. Now he's freaked. I guess death by bioweapon isn't fun.
I think Homeland Security is probably reading this blog now.
He starts begging, and she tosses the contents of the vial in his face. He starts to scream, until he realizes that he isn't dying. Gotcha again.
This is all done very well. It has a cat and mouse aspect about it, even if it is hard to believe Zellar knows places to hide from the crew of a sub after being on board for a few days when they live there. The dialog isn't very creaky for once, and Bridger doesn't have a speech about feelings. The crew are believably afraid of this guy, which stands to reason if he was the terror of the world when most of them were in high school.
But the epilogue does not work. When he found out they were going to the arctic, Krieg bought a load of thermal underwear for the crew, planning to sell them at a profit to his captive audience. Lucas found out about this early on and apparently turned him in to Bridger. End of the show, Krieg and Lucas are hand-washing the underwear and have to personally deliver it to various stations. Lucas asks why he's being punished, which is a pretty good question. Bridger explains that he hates people who take advantage of others (Krieg) and he also hates people who find out about this happening and then turn the perpetrators in. What? So what was Lucas supposed to do? Demand a share of the profits? Would that have been better? Or silently stand by? I think this is supposed to be a "don't be a tattletale" thing, but it makes no sense. If that were the case, then why is Krieg being punished for something Bridger would have to not consider a serious infraction in order to care more about Lucas ratting him out than Krieg doing it in the first place. If it's supposed to be some kind of induction into the Navy code of silence, then that still raises serious questions about what Bridger is trying to teach Lucas. If it's meant to be a team builder, then it's uncharacteristically individualist. Nobody but Krieg and Lucas are doing it. Furthermore, Bridger is generally ambivalent at best about Lucas becoming militarized. So what the hell?
I have a feeling there was supposed to be a bigger subplot here, but it got cut. There are no deleted scenes to help me figure it out. But maybe the writers had a solid episode come out with no major clunkers and didn't know what to do so they fixed it until something broke.
So back during WWIII there was this Dr. Mengele type that made bioweapons for several powers. I call bull. There really are such people, but anybody with that kind of knowledge has their movements tracked and tracked well. One of my mom's professors used to be an engineer on a nuclear submarine. Just for ordinary working knowledge of a submarine reactor he had:
1) A list of countries he was forbidden from visiting
2) Every time anybody did a background check on him it came back all red flags and he had to call up the Navy and request permission to disclose information about himself
3) The last time he tried to travel, they just confiscated his passport.
And that's ordinary guy type security. A bioweapons genius like the guest star of the week would get at least that. I don't believe that he could go off the grid without a manhunt, let alone work for multiple countries at once.
But ok, the wars ended in 2010 and the nations that employed him decided to do a truth and reconciliation thing and handed him over to the UN. The UN in turn tried him and built a prison in the Arctic where he was kept, apparently frozen most of the time. That's sort of a stretch. He can clearly live through the freezing. They sentenced him to life. So are they going to hold him until his frozen, slower-aging body finally dies? They also deleted every record on him and burned the hardcopies. I don't believe that with 1993 technology, let alone what would be available in a future you could foresee from 1993. Not even pictures survived. Just the name. Dr. Zellar.
Turns out the power plant blew at the prison. It's on fire. So the warden and the prisoner, the only survivors, get transferred off by seaQuest. Only they make sure we know within the first 5 minutes of the show that the guy who says he's the warden is really the prisoner. He cut off the warden's fingertips to graft on top of his own and use to pass the ID check.
So he gets loose on the ship and hijinks ensue. He holds the ship ransom with a toxin he claims to have manufactured and wants Bridger and Ford to fire their nukes on UEO headquarters to start the war up again.
By the way, one of Zellar's hits was to wipe out a scientific expedition in the Indian Ocean headed by Westphalen's brother. Lucas finds this out when he discovers the one file left on Zellar, part of the testimony against him. Lucas does this after Bridger catches him playing some kind of 3D combat game where he's fighting a poorly-rendered skeleton with a sword, using some kind of controller that he wears as a glove. Most of the graphics in this show aren't quite retro-future yet, but that really is.
So Ford and Bridger decide that in order to save the ship, they have to launch the nukes. They do this under Zellar's observation and they do indeed have two keys to launch. This is stupid. Worse, it's actually idiotic. They were just talking about scuttling the boat to stop him and the spread of this toxin (They can't seem to decide if it's a weaponized bacteria or virus or if it's some kind of super chemical weapon.) and now they're caving for what? Self-preservation? Totally out of character. We get some good drama as no one can stop the launch and the missiles fire, though. Everyone on the bridge loses it.
Back in the missile control room, Bridger wants the toxin handed over. Zellar laughs and tosses it to the floor, where it shatters. Ford tried to catch it and gets a face full of death. Only not. He doesn't die instantly, so they assume it's a fake virus. Zellar helpfully confirms that it is. Bridger tells him shucks, those were disarmed nukes programmed to just plunge into the ocean after X minutes of flight too. Gotcha.
Then Westphalen charges in. She's got a gun and she wants Zellar to beg for his life. He's chuckling and telling her to get it over with. He's killed a lot of people and he can't be expected to remember her brother. She shrugs and pops a vial of stuff out of her pocket. Now he's freaked. I guess death by bioweapon isn't fun.
I think Homeland Security is probably reading this blog now.
He starts begging, and she tosses the contents of the vial in his face. He starts to scream, until he realizes that he isn't dying. Gotcha again.
This is all done very well. It has a cat and mouse aspect about it, even if it is hard to believe Zellar knows places to hide from the crew of a sub after being on board for a few days when they live there. The dialog isn't very creaky for once, and Bridger doesn't have a speech about feelings. The crew are believably afraid of this guy, which stands to reason if he was the terror of the world when most of them were in high school.
But the epilogue does not work. When he found out they were going to the arctic, Krieg bought a load of thermal underwear for the crew, planning to sell them at a profit to his captive audience. Lucas found out about this early on and apparently turned him in to Bridger. End of the show, Krieg and Lucas are hand-washing the underwear and have to personally deliver it to various stations. Lucas asks why he's being punished, which is a pretty good question. Bridger explains that he hates people who take advantage of others (Krieg) and he also hates people who find out about this happening and then turn the perpetrators in. What? So what was Lucas supposed to do? Demand a share of the profits? Would that have been better? Or silently stand by? I think this is supposed to be a "don't be a tattletale" thing, but it makes no sense. If that were the case, then why is Krieg being punished for something Bridger would have to not consider a serious infraction in order to care more about Lucas ratting him out than Krieg doing it in the first place. If it's supposed to be some kind of induction into the Navy code of silence, then that still raises serious questions about what Bridger is trying to teach Lucas. If it's meant to be a team builder, then it's uncharacteristically individualist. Nobody but Krieg and Lucas are doing it. Furthermore, Bridger is generally ambivalent at best about Lucas becoming militarized. So what the hell?
I have a feeling there was supposed to be a bigger subplot here, but it got cut. There are no deleted scenes to help me figure it out. But maybe the writers had a solid episode come out with no major clunkers and didn't know what to do so they fixed it until something broke.
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