seaQuest: The Regulator

Originally aired: November 14, 1993

The synopsis says that the air conditioning breaks down and the crew gets so nasty that Bridger is forced to use third party, potentially pirated parts. He has to call on The Regulator (It's capitalized that way.) to bring order to the galax- er, ship. The Regulator will do this by giving everyone a capitalized article. Lucas will be The Lucas. Bridger will be A Bridger. Ortiz will be An Ortiz. When that doesn't quite work, he will shoot purple lightning from his article, and then the chimp on his shoulder in the still on the DVD menu (I am not making this up.) will shoot purple lightning out of its right hand and throw the Senate and Hitchcock's van at Darwin.

Or that's the way it would happen in my head.

Universal bump. Again. I just saw this when the DVD menu loaded. This exact bump. Come on.

seaQuest, 1500 km from Madagascar. Muscular hands grip pipes overhead. They're attached to Hitchcock and Krieg(?), who are tugging the pipe. They're sweaty. Ford looks on, sweating. All are out of uniform, wearing undershirts and tank tops. Hitchcock wants to know who designed it. Bridger from offscreen tells us he did and it was going to be the sauna.

The pipe comes down in Hitchcock's hands. She's very greasy and oily. She jerks something out of the pipe. A thermal chip. It's a fifty cent item they don't have in stock. Thirty crew members bunk on that deck. They'll have to double bunk.

Maglev. People pushing out of it. Crocker stops them and lectures them about behaving in proper order. Column of twos. Redshirts up front. Crocker marches them and knocks on a door. Two guys are in with O'Neil, who comes out with a toothbrush in his mouth. Krieg pleads that his quarters are exempt because of valuable items inside. Crocker asks if these two guys can't be trusted. Krieg pleads that security is needed. Crocker summons up a large, intimidating black man and a big hispanic-looking fellow. His top security men. Krieg smarts to the camera: Great, just great. This might actually be funny.

Credits. Will they be extended credits again? Spoil me, Universal! Spoil me rotten with your credits cheese. Give it to me! Give it to me! I want it all and I want it now.

The ship. Reedy Indian music is playing in Krieg's quarters. One guy is meditating and moaning his mantra while the other is doing those push-ups where he shoves himself off the ground, claps hand, and does another. Krieg gets up and yells that they're being loud and waking him up. He's the superior officer. The burly black fellow says he lost count because of that. By the way, Krieg's UEO underwear are a t-shirt and boxers.

Ward room. Bridger is watching a UEO infomercial about the chip they need. He's about to fling some food off his spoon at the screen. He puts it down when Krieg comes in. Ben in and asks who Bridger bunks with. Lucas.

"That's nice, a little father-son thing going on?" Bridger says it beats Krieg's bunk buddies. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the analogy that Lucas and Bridger are also now bunk buddies. They only ever show one bed in Bridger's room. How does that work? If they hang a hammock, who gets it? This is not explained. Also, how do they handle changing? Does Bridger have a private head they could use? For the rest of the crew, it's fine to assume they're not in mixed-gender pairs and are of an age, etc. None of this is addressed, and these omissions would make Child Welfare suspicious. What is Lucas learning on that boat? What kind of discipline?

On the phone a badly stereotypical Indian man answers. He's giving Bridger and Krieg the runaround about part numbers, dashes, and that heonly confirms orders. Does not ship. He also does not transfer messages. The supervisor is a southern-drawling white man...Charles Butch. Ok... The racist cop, er, supervisor smarts off about how it's not a vital component. They hang up. If it makes that scene any worse, I think the guy playing the Indian is a white American.

Bridger says he could get a nuke in an hour. They have drive-through service for those. Krieg floats going off the books and seeing The Regulator. Bridger says the man is a thief. A thief. A thief. There's no proof. Boats disappear and he sells off their spare parts. He finds them...before they sink.

Bridger goes back across the hallway to his quarters and Lucas is in a black jersey with red sleeves, rocking out to a hair band on air guitar. I think Jonathan Brandis had some experience doing that. Bridger leaves without comment. He tells Krieg he doesn't want to know anything about the details. He walks off and Lucas sticks his head out, smiling and asking what happened. Krieg gives him the ok sign and says it worked like a charm.

So we're picking back up the Lucas as Krieg's sidekick in criminal hijinks plotline? You know it's not a bad one for Lucas. It's clever, cheeky, but definitely something a kid like him in his situation would do. It works too since Krieg is a one-dimensional snarker and schemer. Lucas is just opportunistic, but that's enough.

Regulator's dungeon. He says someone cheated him. The Regulator has a huge, deep voice. He complains about being brought the rear end of software. An ape in boxers and a sweatshirt covers its head. There's moaning and flash-smacking off screen. Also grunting. The parrot in the cage even looks away. I don't know what The Regulator is doing, but it's got to be pretty hard core for a parrot to freak out. The Regulator says his victim is standing in the way of progress. The camera pans over The Regulator's The Stuff. There's a globe. An old compass, what looks like a pair of battery packs for a professional-grade camera.

Victim claims that the software is all classified and he risked his neck. I think he risked more than that by opting to come to The Regulator's The Punishment Dungeon with the bad news. More slapping flesh. Victim wishes for hands to be taken off him. We pan over more junk. A celestial globe, one of those with the earth inside and constellations on a transparent sphere around. The parrot's croaks are blurring in with whatever is happening to the victim. We pan over and see a pair of tower computer cases with a TV hooked up on top of them. It's showing some sort of DOS-based spreadsheet software. The pan comes over another celestial globe in extreme close up. That's how we know The Regulator is The Evil.

The Regulator tells us that the software is The Worthless to The Him. Do people typesetting Bibles have trouble with the capitalization, because it's killing me. You just know if they forget to refer to Yahweh's navel lint as The Lint, someone's going to get burned at The Stake. The Lint shall not be mocked. What kind of blasphemous, perverted psychopath would mock The Lint. Certainly not this Midnight Wanderer, who has nothing but The Respect for The Lint whether The Lint of The Father, The Lint of the Son, or The Lint of the Holy Spirit, for they all have The Navel unless they Don't. I leave the matter to theologians.

Victim: "It's exactly what we agreed on!"
"Exactly? What do you know about exactly?"
"You still owe me the money."

Dude, seriously. Let it go. You're in The Punishment Dungeon, which is lit by russet lights that make the place look like it's bleeding. It also seems to be a cave, and has stuff that might be roots or vines or a ratty old shirt hanging down amid all its nautical memorabilia. The Regulator's The Punishment Dungeon can only be one place: Crocker's stomach. This is the most character development he'll get all series.

"You've got all you're going to get."
"There are people above me!"

The Regulator lets out this grand, moustachio-twirling "YES! And I'm one of them." I swear I am not making this dialog up. Not even a little. More slapping of flesh and the victim wincing and gasping. I think this guy had a real future in adult entertainment. Maybe both of them.

"YOU CHEATED ME!" The Regulator The Roars. We finally pan to a black gloved hand holding someone by the throat as The Regulator The Repeats that he has been cheated. The victim, a generic guy in dark clothes, is holding The Regulator's The Fist with one hand. That may seem unfair, but I heard The Regulator The Lost The Other The Hand to the expert swordsmanship of Christopher Lee.

The victim protests as the Regulator (yeah, I gave it up) roars again about being cheated and pitches the guy into a tiny swimming pool. Is it one of those with the wave generator in one end so you can swim in place? Maybe that's how the Regulator got to be strong enough to pitch a grown man into it, one-handed. Big splash. The Regulator tells him to dive back to his boat and calls him a bottom feeder. Apparently this is a tiny moon pool. One of those generators that makes your hair stand on end, the kind with the big metal sphere on top, is sitting right next to it. I'm pretty sure that isn't safe.

The Regulator grumbles to himself as his boots clank up metal steps. He complains about dealing with the twenty-first century equivalent of the Flat Earth Society, which I'm pretty sure is the same people. Maybe it's just me, but the Regulator seems like the kind of guy who votes for the same party as they do. Is he a Log Cabin supervillain? He picks his ape up and sets him in a chair. The phone is ringing. The Regulator instructs his ape to sit there and act tough.

On his screen, we see Lucas and Krieg giving each other a pre-call pep talk. Their POV shows us the ape smiling. Lucas is holding a technological something in his hand. It's probably meant to be some kind of PDA. Ben introduces himself and starts to say where he's from. The Reg interrupts with the declaration that Ben is buying, selling, or gone. Ben is buying. Mostly that thermal chip but also some loafers, and maybe a slightly-used condom for the kid. I made up two of those. Lucas is looking on during all of this. The angle is a bit funny and makes it look like Lucas is actually watching something just past the back of Ben's head. Krieg gives up the ship's position when asked, and thus breaches the most important piece of security any modern-day sub has. The rule back in the Cold War, which may still hold, was that at best three people on a sub knew where it was, and maybe one or two more at the Pentagon. Lucas fiddles with his PDA.

The Reg lists his price. Five hundred credits, a tank of nitro, and a two hudnred pounds of bananas. Krieg starts to protest and the chimp reaches for the remote, the same thing every sane person did as soon as they saw the chimp on camera. He caves instantly. Way to negotiate, Ben. Did Hitchcock even let you keep your underwear in the divorce? Lucas is cracking up silently over Ben's amazing show of backbone. Ben only protests that he doesn't often get that many bananas. Potassium is not valued on seaQuest, ever since Lucas threw a huge brick of it in the moon pool and for a week afterwards the mess hall served this funny-tasting, rubbery meat. About the same time Darwin was lost for a while. When he came back he didn't even recognize Bridger for a while. The Reg will take whatever Krieg gets, since the food is just being demanded to show Krieg who the boss is. The boss is the guy with the Punishment Dungeon, or as he likes to call it, the Pleasure Prison.

The Reg says, "blood". Krieg says he knows and repeats the word.

Close up of a screen showing seaQuest's docking pod things. It looks like it two or four shuttle bays around its sides, each one roughly spherical with several mooring points. So you go inside the ship's shuttle bay, dock in, and then get out. Krieg is there and wants to know if they're ready with the nitro. A redshirt tells him that as soon as Slave- er, Regulator One is docked they'll pass it over. Hitchcock and Crocker are also present.

Krieg vaults over a railing because the actor did stuff like this as a kid or something, pulls out an envelope, and leafs through what must be the money inside. Crocker and Hitchcock give him a dirty look. Crocker says Ben is wound up a little tight. Easy for him to say. The Reg can't take him to the Pleasure Prison without turning him inside-out first. Ben pleads that they don't want to short the Reg. He has a reputation. Crocker says he puts his pants on just like the rest of us, and Crocker should know because the Pleasure Prison is his stomach. Ben smarts that Crocker hasn't seen his pants. Of course not. Back in Crocker's day, seeing another man's pants could get you kicked out of the Navy.

The inner doors of the airlock open and the camera closes in on metal steps. Music swells and I don't think we're supposed to have it figured out yet, but it's the ape standing there. The Reg steps out, his black leather boots in the lead and a brown leather duster hanging down over them because they couldn't quite give him a cape with a straight face. Music of majestic doom plays as we pan up over his blue pants, black belt, black gloves, and beige and blue pinstripe, double-breasted button-down. Turns out the Reg is a slim fellow that could use a shave. Long brown hair, really round, dark, gogglesque glasses, and a cowboy hat. The ape is on his shoulder now. He lets it down. Ok, he just picked it up to carry it down the stairs? Why?

Krieg comes up to him and welcomes him aboard, but the Reg just keeps walking, forcing Ben back. He stammers and hands over the money. The money has green outlines but a dark blue picture in the middle, like somebody took real US dollars and poured blue ink over the picture of the president...which might be what happened, but they look a bit small for it. The Reg takes the money out of his hand. Guys with Pleasure Prisons in the bellies of old salts can afford to be a bit grabby. Ben wets himself. He points at 138 pounds of bananas, every one they have on board. The ape is already in front of them. The Reg looks at the crew.

Ben introduces Crocker and Hitchcock. Hitchcock, being little more than a support structure for a pair of breasts, sticks out her hand and says it's nice to meet him. He takes her hand and squeezes it a little, saying it's his pleasure. The Reg smiles. He has a soft voice and might have been faking a British accent.

He hands over the chip, then pulls back. He wants to see the boat. Crocker gets in the way and complains about security and nobody to conduct tours. The Reg asks if he looks like a tourist and Crocker, who might know about his history of trashing hotel rooms from that time he went off on a bender in Crocker's esophagus, says that would be an insult to tourism. The Reg asks if there's any room on the ship for just a little bit of human kindness. Ben, still standing in a puddle of his own urine, shuffles and smiles nervously. Crocker maintains that it's Chief Crocker. You know, Reg, the guy is your landlord. Crocker says the Reg isn't dressed to board the goos hips Lollipop.

The ape runs off into the ship and Crocker, being an idiot, chases after the simian that can't possibly be a serious security risk. The Reg, Hitchcock, and Ben follow. It vanishes around a corner and Crocker is stumped. Does he know the Reg is squatting in his stomach? Crocker asks if the Reg has thought of using a leash. Maybe later, once Ben is cleaned up. Crocker turns on the phone and is about to call it in and Ben stops him. Crocker spots the ape and the Reg calls after it. Its name is Verne. They chase it down some stairs, with the Reg now in the lead.

They run into a redshirt. Crocker asks if he's seen anything unusual. Redshirt looks at Reg. Reg looks at redshirt and asks if that's a trick question. Heh. Crocker lets it go and continues the Reg's tour. The monkey flips down from the ceiling and goes off in the other direction.

Moon Pool. Lucas's chest is wearing a Marlins jersey, white with greenish pinstripes. He's holding a large white card with a silhouette of an ape on it. Could that be a set-up? By the way, in the closeup here you can see Lucas is holding the card with his thumb and two fingers. His middle finger is out far enough that I wonder if Brandis was having a bad day and wanted to poke some fun at the camera guy. He says "ape". Darwin says "ape." Lucas's other shirt, now that the card is out of the way, is a dark royal blue sort of color. It's a shade or so darker than seaQuest blue. He gets another card. We still haven't seen his face. It's a sailboat. Darwin says "boat". We're on Darwin now. The next one is "man". I'm not sure what was on that card. I'm not sure I want to know.

Lucas says very good and flops the cards down on the edge of the pool. One has "man" written on the back in case the teenaged genius forgot what a boat or an ape or a man was. It wasn't visible before, but now you can see that the cards are laminated. Smart. Granted, that was probably props thinking about retakes, but anything you would use around Darwin and the pool should probably be laminated if you want it to last. Especially people.

The camera pulls out and the next card is dolphin. Darwin ignores Lucas and calls the dolphin "Darwin". Lucas tries to correct him. Westphalen is taking notes. Lucas says he can't believe they have to reprogram an entire language database. Oh, was the vocorder fried in last episode? Is this real continuity, or did they just happen on a generic bug. Lucas's hair is less gravity-defying this episode, by the wya. Westphalen tells him to be patient. Lucas thinks Darwin is teasing him, which is probably true. I'm amazed if Lucas didn't get teased by the crew every day. You'd think the resident child geek would get a lot of grief on a ship that probably has a lot of recent football stars on board. I have seen adults behave like that.

Lucas talks into the vocorder about how they have to re-establish the language base. Darwin isn't buying it. Oh, we get to see the "man" card. It's a muscular guy with a flat-top haircut. Westphalen fliped it up, and she's pointing at the guy's ass. She tries to associate the man card with Lucas to demonstrate the distinction between a general and a particular. Darwin agrees that Lucas is a man and Darwin is a dolphin. Now everyone' shappy as the Reg walks in. Westphalen spots him and hurries over. Lucas spots the Reg and proclaims him "very cool" in the pose that makes it into the credits.

The Reg is very interested in the talking dolphin. Should he steal it? Should he kidnap the boy genius that make it possible? Both could hang out in his Pleasure Prison until he found a buyer, but it might be hard to find someone who wants Lucas for his brain. Certainly some of the writers aren't interested. Westphalen says the experiment is classified. Lucas gets up and introduces himself. He sticks up his hand, fingers splayed. The Reg interlaces his fingers and proclaims, "So it is, partner. Westphalen watches the gesture with all the trepidation the audience is feeling. Lucas is spellbound.

The Reg tells him that he shouldn't hold creatures against their will. Crocker says to look who's talking. Lucas protests that Darwin is free. He goes out to feed. The Reg says Lucas is on the edge of the future and should not the let the uniforms stand in his way. I think the Reg's glove had some happy drugs on it, because Lucas looks dazed. Once the Reg is gone, Lucas declares him absolutely superb. Westphalen blows this off, which gives Lucas a smirking reaction shot.

Hallway. Bridger walks out of the maglev and the ape sneaks in. Bridger says him and says "Excuse me, when did I agree to do a show with a damned ape? I only work with rubber aquatic lifeforms, not real apes. And by work with, I mean I shoot SCUBA tanks off in their mouths and watch them explode." Bridger phones Crocker and informs him of the monkey. Crocker says he's on his way.

The ape gets out. Back in the moon pool, Lucas shook off the happy drugs and resumed his work with Darwin. The ape comes in and climbs up on a stool. Darwin says "ape". Lucas looks at his card.

"No, this is a cow."
"Ape! Ape!"

Cut to ape showing his teeth. Lucas starts to say something and then spots the ape that climbed up on the stool two feet away from him unnoticed until now. It shrieks. Lucas gasps and falls off his stood. He lands on cold, steel deck plates extremely softly, catching himself with no visible signs of impact or shock. Considering he had to fall about two or three feet, I call padding. Westphalen calls security and tells Lucas not to move, because the ape could be rabid or have HIV or just be strong enough to use him as a pez dispenser. Wide shot of the pool crew rushing over.

Crocker and the Reg arrive. The Reg gets the ape on his shoulder and tells everyone to back off. He pulls out some kind of grenade or something. In the background, Bridger walks into the shot. He comes in. The Reg puts his grenade down and takes off his glasses. He smiles and says hi. Bridger says, "Hello Leslie." Looks are exchanged. Bridger gets the reason for his presence. Reg hands over the chip. Bridger recognized the ape and complains about it keeping bad company. he asks what else Leslie has. A phone comes out. Hitchcock looks abashed and collects it. Crocker orders the Reg and his monkey to follow him out.

Lucas seems sad to see Reg go. At the dock, Reg gives a winning smile as he leaves. What did he steal from Crocker. Turns out it's Crocker's gun. Crocker orders the redshirt to stop him, but the Reg is already separated and on his way. Can't they just close the outer door to keep him in? He tells his guys to get into their speeder subs to give chase.

CGI of the Reg's ship going away. Verne hands Reg the gun and he muses about what it does. I think it's a gun, dude. He reads on its side that it's a stun gun. Then their sonar goes off and he knows the chase is on. Crocker is trying to phone him and asks if he can hear. Leslie says not anymore and turns his phone off. They fire a warning shot and the speeder subs are right on him.

Bridger gets on the phone to Crocker and asks what's wrong with him. He'll burn more fuel than the cost of replacing the gun. Theft is the price of doing business. Bridger orders him home. On Regulator One, it's all smiles.

Hallway, the bunk buddies are departing. Krieg walks out and smarms it was great having his new bunk buddies and they can stop by any time. Ford and Crocker walk up to him. Turns out Bridger wants to talk to Ben.

Bridger's room. He walks out of his private bathroom in a robe, with a towel around his neck. Lucas is on the floor, rolling something up. So Lucas had to sleep on the floor. Bridger says Lucas has his room back. Lucas asks how Bridger knew Leslie. Bridger observes that Leslie impressed Lucas, who agrees that he was pretty outrageous in dialog that could never work today.

"That's not always a good thing, Lucas."
"Well maybe I should put on a jumpsuit and snap to every time you breathe."

This is one of the very few times the series actually touches on this, so far as I remember. Lucas does not want to be here. This is some kind of punishment to him, albeit with perks. Bridger turns around and demands to know what Lucas just said. He looks like he's thinking about whether or not Nathan Bridger is gonna have to choke a punk.

"I think I said yes, sir." Bridger lets it go. He tells Lucas to get the Professor hologram up. Ford, Westphalen, and Krieg pile in. He asks for a bio of the Reg. Turns out he got his PhD at seventeen. Leslie was a leading aquanaut of the Nineties. Turns out Leslie was involved in some experiment to get mammals to breathe water. He got drummed out of science for trying to attach some kind of water-breathing lung to a mammal to advance his theory of spherical evolution. What? But apparently even after getting kicked out of science he had the cachet to design and build the first undersea colony. It failed. No colonists. Then his houseboat burned down. He sent a suicide note to the New York Times. Lucas pauses the playback because... I don't know.

Bridger summarizes. He's a genius who failed at his every effort and then faked a suicide to escape the ridicule of his peers. Lucas can sympathize. Turns out Bridger met him at a grocery store six years ago. Lucas wants to know what spherical evolution is, and I guarantee this will make no sense. Leslie wants to find the center of the universe. Lucas is into it. Apparently the genius can't spot BS a mile off. Bridger's tone pretty much says it's a crock. Lucas looks slightly chastened but more embarrassed. Bridger didn't actually answer his question.

Exterior shot of seaQuest. Regulator One comes up under it. Apparently they don't use sonar. He and his ape are eating the bananas. Reg spots Darwin coming out of the ship and shoots a net at him, which Darwin swims right into. Reg One slips away.

Pleasure Prison. Reg is ranting about how Darwin is more exceptional than him, and he's a genius. He thinks Darwin is a member of a superior species. It seems he thinks Darwin know show to actually speak English. Leslie thinks Darwin understands, even if he can't speak. He goes on about searching for the truth. Reg things the truth might be beyond his grasp, and he could accept that.

Lab. Westphalen is playing with a sponge with electrodes in it. Crocker, Lucas, and Ortiz walk in. Lucas is wearing a gray shirt with a gray and blue jersey over it. They tell Bridger Darwin is missing and has been gone for twelve hours. Westphalen asks about sharks. They didn't find any. Bridger orders them to keep calling for him. Lucas sways and has his hands clasped. He's upset.

Lucas asks if that's it, if they're just going to keep on working. Westphalen tries to distract him with a sponge, but he's all about Darwin. She wants to use sponges to filter the water.

"Yes, but since Darwin's gone maybe I can use this to wash my car. If I ever get a car." He glares at Bridger as though Bridger decides these things. "If I ever get off this whale!" Bridger that's enoughs him and tells him to come along. He gets on the phone and has Krieg come to the ward room with his supply binder.

Ward room. Bridger wants the Reg's phone number. Lucas asks if the Reg could help find Darwin. No, he probably took Darwin because we're trying to teach Lucas that nonconformity is not cool. I notice that while the Reg might have made some bad calls, there's no sympathy at all for what drove him to it even though Bridger did a similar deal when he ran away from the world. Hypocrisy much?

Lucas says Leslie would not take Darwin. Bridger thanks him for an observation based on two minutes' experience. Lucas brings up Reg's animal rights speech and cites the example of Verne. Bridger says it's the least he owes Verne and calls up a clip. Because Verne's the "mammal" so vaguely referred to in the bio earlier.

Leslie is on the phone and wants his dolphin back. He preaches about conducting experiments on animals and hangs up. Lucas is very bothered now. Ah, the vocorder overheated. Bridger wants Lucas to find the data in single bytes if he has to. They're going to scan for Darwin's frequency in the phone call.

Bridge. Lucas is at a station. They hear dolphin noises in the recording. Lucas wants to know why the Reg would take Darwin. Bridger says of course he does and explains that it's spherical evolution and tells him to come along. You know, they're never going to explain what that means. It just fell on the writers' room table one day.

We see some CGI that informs us a sea launch is exiting the docking bay. Crocker is handing out ear plugs and Bridger is laughing. Lucas wants to know what's so damned funny.

"Are there times when you feel separated from this crew, more like an observer than a participant?"

Maybe when he's breathing.

"Yes." Everyone's adults and he's sixteen. Bridger explains that the normal part of Lucas hangs out with Krieg and Ortiz, getting whacky off their nose candy. The more imaginative part of him hangs out with Westphalen. I was under the impression that working with her was more or less his normal job description. We certainly never see Lucas participating in drill exercises or on a firing range or whatever else the boys do.

Bridger thinks Lucas has a neural drip he can't turn off and some people see that as a behavior problem, probably why his father unloaded him on the seaQuest. Bridger suggests that being on board may contribute to the separation. So he wants Lucas to leave? No. Bridger flatters him about his perspective making him a smart observer. Lucas explains that he was dumped so Dad would not have to deal with him. Bridger floats the notion that without the discipline involved in having to work with people that have to work together, Lucas may develop into a genius too weird for his own good. Why is it that so much of scifi seems bent on normalizing unusual people? I get that this sort of thing might secretly appeal to the outsiders in the fanbase, but there must be enough room in the genre for some romanticizing of eccentricity. Or maybe it really is a bourgeoisie genre dominated by frightened, deeply conventional men.

Crocker interrupts to establish that they are near to the Pleasure Prison. Inside Leslie is talking about dolphins on Greek coins. Bridger knocks and Leslie tells him to go away. They all have earplugs in, by the way.

Bridger: "Verne, we've got bananas!"
Leslie: "Verne, you turn on me for bananas!"

I guess that grenade is sonic, since they aren't worried about it now that they have ear plugs. Lucas accepts that Darwin has been stolen but is puzzled by a screen showing a rotating circle. He asks if this is spherical evolution. Lucas is a genius that doesn't know what a sphere is.

Leslie goes on about how perfection is spherical. The Earth is a sphere. It rotates around the spherical sun in a sphere. Now Lucas says this is incorrect. The orbit describes an ellipse. Leslie goes on about how it started as a sphere and it must come back to harmony in a sphere. You must go back to where you began to go on. Cyclic was not a word in the writers' dictionaries. Leslie goes on about how Lucas is a pioneer, but bought into the mainstream.

"How do you justify stealing my dolphin?"

Spherical evolution. The dolphins came out of the sea and went back in, so they're ahead of us. Leslie insists that Darwin speaks dolphin, not English. Bridger demands Darwin be let go. Leslie pulls Crocker's gun on them and insists Bridger make Darwin talk. Leslie gets rushed and fires the gun, which is a sonic weapon and shatters some glass, hits the ape. Verne is fine, though. Lucas finds the gills on him.

Leslie protests that he heard Darwin talk. Darwin should talk. But what Leslie knows doesn't seem to matter. He lets Darwin go and this scene stopped making sense a long time ago. I get that Leslie is supposed to feel guilty over trying to repeat the mistaken experiment he did on Verne through other means, but the dialog barely touches that.

Lucas asks Bridger to tell Leslie about Darwin. The actual speech mechanism is classified...and Lucas has security clearance? Or is it just assumed that keeping secrets from him is futile? That could be an interesting point. Lucas reminds us of the moral of the story by asking if Bridger thinks he could end up like Leslie too. So Leslie will come back and talk to Darwin through the vocorder.

Moon pool. Lucas is explaining how the translation program works. Leslie gives it a try. He introduces himself as Leslie. Leslie wants to know if Darwin knows why the dolphins went back into the water. Leslie asks if Darwin can find him the center of the universe. Darwin knows where it is. Oh man, glurge incoming. Where is it? Inside you. Smiles all around as if this was very profound.

This could have been a great episode. The writers seem to have known they were on to something with exploring Lucas's role and the role of genius in society. But the first half of the episode is a light comedy with an absurdly overblown Vader in cowboy drag and an ape doing what simians always do. It mugs, eats a banana, runs around. This is dead air, a comedy that doesn't fit at all with the second half where we have a semiserious exploration of failure in eccentric geniuses. It could have been about Lucas as intellectual, while not being perfect, and the limits of his conventionality and eccentricity. Instead it's got a warped moral about how exceptional people should try to be as much like the ordinary people as possible since apparently their gifts can drive them insane. It doesn't help that Leslie is incoherent for most of the story and actually seems dumber than average, not smarter. He didn't even ask on the boat how Darwin talked before stealing him. You think that would be the first thing to cross his mind since a dolphin's mouth obviously cannot enunciate the sounds in use. I get what they're trying to do, but they lost it in a slapstick first half and an incoherent second...unless they really meant to tell us that Lucas needs to learn that indulging his intellect is a suspect activity. Don't most people learn that in school? I picked it up off the internet somewhere.

This is especially weird since you would think the kid genius in a scifi show is the most likely audience avatar. Let's be honest about scifi fandom. There are lots of people out there who think they're really, really way better than everyone else because of their (fadingly) eccentric taste for imaginary realities. They're the music makers, the dreamers of dreams...except for the fact that most of their supposedly counter-cultural media tastes are really conventional stuff dressed up in funny suits. So much of scifi is moralizing crap and often antithetical to the principles of real science and open inquiry. The Foundation books are about a group of intellectuals who are better than everyone else and mastermind the fate of the galaxy...and are right to do so despite never having been elected or whatever. This is a bit like Ayn Rand, who was a deeply sick woman. They're led by a superhuman precognitive, etc. This surely fits somewhere in the self-image of a lot of frustrated adolescent boys who for whatever reason don't fit in so well with mainstream society.

Don't get me wrong. I like some scifi. But I'm not going to call the genre some kind of revolutionary imaginative artform. It's not. Sometimes it's progressive, sometimes regressive. It can even be both at once. Heinlein could be socially progressive and happily anti-authoritarian, but he could also be a booster for naked authoritarianism and militarism. CS Lewis wrote Christian apologetic as scifi.

Anyway, my point here is that if scifi fandom is what it often presents itself as: a set of proud iconoclasts that think they're better than everyone else, then why am I not surprised that the moral of the story tonight was to be normal instead. I think there's an element of envy here. The nerd wants to be, and should want to be, popular. It's only because normalcy is denied him that he then has to settle for telling himself stories about being the dreamer of dreams. At least that's a subtext I'm seeing in this episode. Maybe it's because I've read about some genuine minority empowerment movements in addition to consuming things meant for middle class kids. I can see a valid distinction between real self-affirming and acceptance of oneself as an individual different from others, but in ok ways, and seeing oneself fundamentally in terms of not being like others but having nothing else on which to orient. The first speaks to a person who is securely and confidently eccentric. He or she is not incomplete or broken for being different. The latter is saying that one must be proud of one's brokenness because there is nothing else and one would be normal if one could.

By the way, I have this same problem with that Futurama episode where the monkey is miserable with the intellect-boosting hat that makes him a genius, apparently because his parents embarrass him, and how happy he is when it's damaged and he has an only average intellect. The Professor offers to fix the hat, but he prefers to remain average. I know it was probably a deliberately warped fable, but I just plain don't like the notion that there's such a thing as being too smart. There's such a thing as being smart enough that other people are upset and threatened by it, but it does not follow from that that these fears are legitimate.

Or it could just be that the writers weren't really scifi people at all but instead Average Joe types who really believe the warped moral because they've never seen the other side of it and are lazy. I can go either way on this one.