seaQuest: Whale Song

I feel chatty tonight, so let's try a recap post. I'm doing this cold. First time I'm watching this episode since the 90s.

Originally aired: February 6, 1994

In the teaser we have the rotted carcass of a whale up on a beach. Only the bones are bleached, yet it looks like they tried to make it look like the bones still had traces of meat on them. That's one confused prop department. Cut to stock footage of a ship, which might actually be a whaler, reeling something in that might actually be a harpoon. Something that may be a wounded whale reels in the water.

Some people on a sub, one of whom is the child of Dom Deluise. I think it's Peter, but I'm not up on my Brothers Deluise except for that Daddy's contracts must stipulate they have to appear in any show he guests in eventually because I don't think I've seen one of them that could act. But I find Daddy Dom annoying too. Maybe I'm a bad judge of these things. Peter will be back next season as a regular. He has a mullet this time.

The guys on the sub discuss how the ship they're watching is a Scandinavian Whaler and it has a catch. So they need to tell their boss, who is brooding alone in his cabin. Also none of them sleep anymore. The boss angsts about how they could turn this ship in, but nobody cares. Because this is seaQuest and the environmentalists are always the villains. Peter Deluise suggests that he's willing to do whatever it takes and the boss wants him to only say that if he really means it. So Peter pinky swears on his mullet and stubble that he really really for gosh, cross-his-heart-and-hope-to-die-stick-a-needle-in-my-eye, means it. Boss tells him to get some sleep, which is kind of assy since they just said no one on the boat sleeps.

More stock footage of the whaler and yeah, it's a real whaler. The sub watches it doing its work and then torpedoes it. We get a good shot of the periscope and a cgi explosion erupts amidships on the whaler. We cut back to the sub before anybody is supposed to notice that there's no smoke and very little fire or foam or anything. Boss says to the boys that they have crossed over. Now they can start their career doing cold reading on the SciFi channel. Solemn looks on the sub.

Credits.

By the way, I caught an episode of Seven Days last night. I think Don Franklin just really is barrel-chested. He's got the same look about him there as he does when he wears his UEO khakis.

Krieg esposits to us about having a perfect orange. It's so perfect. It's so perfect. It's great. It's an orange. He says it's not a real orange. It's a synthetically perfect, engineered fruit. It's no good. He wants one that's bruised or has half a worm in it. Krieg grew up in the old days, back when you could get food poisoning in the military and the crusty surgeon would just kick you in the head a few times until you puked and saw stars. Krieg is complaining to O'Neil, Ortiz, and Ford.

O'Neil tells us it's just breakfast and Krieg should eat his damned eggs already. Ah, but they're not eggs. O'Neil points out that they don't have cholesterol or fat. Krieg rises and starts ranting about how the ship never needs to resupply. All its food is grown in a lab. Who knows what's in it? Uh, I think as the guy who handles all the supplies Krieg should have a good idea. Who knows what this stuff is doing to us?

Ford says he likes it. Of course Ford would. Ford is a mass-produced, genetically engineered stock character. Krieg points out that he doesn't have any breakfast, but Ford just got off watch. he came into the mess, looked at everyone's food, sat down, and let Krieg rant for a while about food. Clearly the man isn't hungry. Krieg is told that it's just food, but he holds up the meat patty and says it's not real meat.

O'Neil, and I like Ted Raimi but he's really annoying in this scene, expositions to us that raising cows was outlawed because of their methane farts damaging the ozone layer. I think some of the writers just really hated environmentalists. Every one of them on the show is a nutball, a psycho, or both. I mean, let's leave aside whether or not bovine feces are an ozone depleter. This is a real theme of the show. We never meet a good environmentalist except for Bridger and we never get to see him being one. He just says he agrees with the aims, but not the methods, of the crazies. The idea seems to be that the real environmentalists are those who fight other environmentalists, who are actually nuts and want to destroy humanity for the sake of a tape worm and salmonella.

Noyce is talking about weather patterns in the North Sea. It can be rough, but three ships in a month or so? And all the ships are whalers? He's on the phone with Bridger. Bridger wants to know why he gets to do this job. Whaling has been illegal since 2000 in seaQuest. Noyce says that so is smoking cigars in restaurants but people still do it. And you know what kind of people? Evil people. They want to steal your teeth and sell them to motivational speakers that honeymoon as voodoo priests. Also they get together once a year in a big convention and make toasts to "Pure evil!" and kicking puppies.

Noyce is talking about how they have trade agreements with these whaling nations. I guess this isn't the UEO anymore, it's just the US Navy. Why would the UEO, a transnational organization, have trade relationships with nations? Anyway, Noyce tells Bridger that he'd better bring a coat and a launch will be waiting for him. But this is a captain's dilemma episode. Are they writing out Bridger or the rest of the cast?

Krieg is on the phone with somebody. The guy on the phone tells him that he will not supply any red meat, real eggs, or alcohol. Besides, Krieg still owes him for the interactive video headsets. That might actually be a reference to a previous episode. Those were stolen, Krieg claims. But the guy on the phone knows that he traded them for a still. I know nothing about brewing, but I could make a still. It's not that complicated. Why did Krieg have to trade apparently expensive video helmets for some buckets and metal tubing? Is he just that dumb?

Phone guy tells Krieg that you can't brew beer from engineered barley. They bred the buzz out of it. Another theme of the show: scientists are always ruining our fun. Krieg claims that two pounds of ground beef is a medical emergency and gets hung up on.

Stock footage of the Pentagon cuts to Bridger in his khakis striding badassedly through a trapezoidal hallway. Two uniformed guys open the doors for him. Bridger walks into the office beyond, all spit and polished. He salutes crisply and a balding, gray-haired general sort grabs the descending hand, pats it, and looks meaningfully into Nathan's eyes as he smiles. They're just going to go up to this place in the Appalachians and watch the herd for a few weeks. Just the two of them.

Grabby General says he wants to keep it informal since they're old friends. Nathan doesn't think so. Bridger gets introduced to two other old military guys and Grabby tries to ply him with liquor. They're off-duty and all that. The two other generals are cutting into a very red piece of meat and suggest Nathan try it. Bridger objects and Grabby sighs about him following the rules. Grabby wants to be called Frank. Then the guys talk to Nathan about seaQuest and science. They ask him if he misses war, but Bridger does not. He wants to know why he's there.

Oh, we lost some whalers. Bridger points out that they were breaking UEO law. Grabby doesn't care if they were floating whorehouses. It's an outright act of aggression. And you know, Grabby has a small point here. These ships were sunk, presumably with loss of life. The fact that they were breaking the law doesn't change the fact that this is murder and piracy on the high seas. Bridger has had a stiffer back about this kind of thing before, albeit with the bad guy stealing his toy boat maybe other variables were in play. Are we meant to believe that Bridger is ok with murdering whalers? That doesn't seem consistent with past characterization. Then again Bridger did punish Lucas for not breaking the rules.

The generals give Bridger the order to hunt down and kill the sub. Bridger tries to bow out, but Grabby says he's got the right boat. Bridger does not catch on that it's being implied he will be removed from the ship if he refuses this mission. Grabby chases off his cronies, gets himself a drink, and repeats the orders.

Nathan protests that the seaQuest is armed with nuclear weapons for search and rescue purposes. Earlier it was science. What will it be next? Next on seaQuest: the waltz competition! Grabby tells Bridger that he will end the careers of everybody on the boat if Bridger refuses. He has twenty-four hours to decide. Bridger gives him the fuck off salute and leaves.

This is an interesting piece of setting. Apparently the military personnel aren't really UEO people. They're Navy people on loan to the UEO. So the US can still blackmail them like this.

A launch returns to the ship like in the credits. Docking bay. Ford welcomes Bridger back. Bridger asks where Lucas is. He needs Lucas badly. He's been in withdrawals. Sorry, that's where my brain went. It gets worse.

Ford says Lucas is sleeping, he thinks. Bridger demands he be roused. I can see the scene now. Lucas is masturbating with Darwin looking on. Darwin says something and Lucas loses his train of thought. He gets up, pants down, and cusses out Darwin. He whines that he can't do it with Darwin watching and then Crocker throws the door open.

"God damn, Lucas, again?!"

Ford and Crocker share meaningful looks.

Bridger's room. He's stroking a model of the seaQuest. There's a knock and it's Lucas. He's wearing his rainbow bath robe and a yellow t-shirt, but he only has one lock of hair out of place. No pillow creases. He doesn't look sleepy at all. He tells Bridger he was having this "dream" about driving these girls to the beach on a motorcycle. Nathan hopes Lucas was wearing his "helmet". Lucas says he just had his underwear on. Bridger promises to let him get back to his "dream" as soon as possible. The boy wasn't asleep.

Lucas has a seat and we cut to a wide enough angle to see his legs. He's wearing some kind of sleep pants or something. Dark green. Nice color, really. I have a hoodie about that shade. Bridger opens up all the great work Lucas has done and Lucas says but there's still more to do. For an unwilling captive on the boat he sure is happy to be there. Bridger says that this has been a great experience to help him decide what to do with his life.

Lucas, absolutely beaming and wide awake, says that this is what he wants to do. Does he mean the military? Science? Just living on the boat? Well maybe he does, maybe not, Bridger floats. Lucas asks if he's being fired. No. But he's being thrown off the boat. Lucas is struck. Brandis managed a little blush there, or maybe it's the makeup. Hard to tell.

Did he do something wrong? Just tell him and he can change! I think we have to accept that Lucas's character arc this season is complete. The ship is his home now. Bridger says it's not Lucas, it's him. He just can't go on cavorting with a teenager like it was legal. People are going to talk, despite the fact that Lucas has continually played hard to get and Nathan can't get past first base. If I were Lucas I don't think a leather-faced old man would do it for me either. Does that mean I'm gay? Does the gay panic defense work if you beat the crap out of yourself, don't actually have a problem with gay people, and aren't actually afraid at any point?

Bridger says he's resigning. Ford will be in charge for the interim and after that, Lucas might not want to be there. Lucas asks what happened at the Pentagon. Bridger tells Lucas the plot. Bridger can't take sides on the issue of executing people vs. whales, since both are illegal I guess. Lucas says that the means might justify the ends and I'm not sure if he's defending the hunt and kill order, or the pirates. Bridger isn't sure what he's going to do and for now he's doing nothing. He's quitting. But Nathan wanted Lucas to hear it from him. Lucas blows him off and storms out, slamming the door. It makes a very wooden sound, just like a metal hatch.

Bridge. Nathan has his resignation letter in Ford's hands and like every other TV person that ever lived, he cannot accept a resignation order. Nathan tells him that his last order is to send it up the chain immediately. He wants to be ashore at first light. He says the boat is no longer his home and they shake hands. Ford calls him Nathan. Crocker is astonished and doesn't want to shake hands. He's holding out for a grope he doesn't get. Bridger walks out. I bet that letter never gets sent.

Moon Pool. Bridger is back in his clothes from the pilot and explaining to Darwin that they will be leaving. Westphalen shows up. She's not in uniform either. She has a tank top, a shirt over it hanging open, and blue slacks. When prompted, she says she doesn't know if she would resign but for Nathan it's the right thing. He thanks her. They start to hug and end up kissing.

Dramatic music plays as another whaler gets in the sites. If we need to be reminded that they're pirates now, Peter Deluise is wearing a white shirt with black horizontal stripes. The sub fires on the whaler. A cgi torpedo misses the whaler, goes right beyond it, and blows up a much bigger ship. It looks like a huge ferry or a cruise ship. The ship is real, but the explosion is CGI. I refuse to believe they could not see that ship behind the other ship when it clearly had to be close and is much larger than the whaler. This is a contrived crisis.

The pirates tell us it's a cruise ship. And the pirate boss gapes.

Nathan is walking along the beach as sad music plays. He's back on his island and listening to a radio report. This is the fourth terrorist attack, and the first time a luxury liner was targeted. How long has he been on the island? Bridger shakes his head and sighs at the news. Then it cuts to telling us that Clinton celebrated his birthday at his home in Arkansas. Darwin jumps in the ocean and Bridger spots him and shakes his head.

Close up of a hand lighting a candle with a match and blowing the match out. It's pirate captain. He closes his eyes and bows his head in front of a collection of lit candles. He walks out and sees the others. One asks what they will do now. Captain Pirate doesn't understand the question. Peter tells us that this is way beyond activism. No, they're just a news blip. Someone will win the lottery or whatever and everyone will forget. Captain Pirate maintains that you're either a soldier or a victim. The others suggest that no, now they are as bad as the bad guys are. It's wrong.

Pirate Captain makes the point that a suitcase bomb and one delivered by jet aren't all that morally different. Ok. Peter Deluise says they're going to leave their captain. And do what? Surrender. They're victims, not soldiers. Whale song plays on the soundtrack.

Bridger is at some kind of palatial resort with a reflecting pool. Same clothes still. It's the home of Nathan's connection, Malcolm. He's from an older episode that I can't be bothered to look up right now because this one is fairly decent even if the plot is completely stupid. Nathan wants to know who is sinking the ships. Malcolm says he's not in that game. Bridger for the first time articulates a sensible point when he says that if he has to pick between people and whales, people win. So...why did he resign again? Nathan says Malcolm knows who did it. He says so did Nathan.

News footage on the screen. A Maximillian Scully was lost at sea. The newsman says maybe it was an assassination. Stock footage of a Greenpeace boat. Malcolm expositions that Scully was blown up by his own bomb and his face is all burned up...which means he has cosmetic scars. He came to Malcolm to borrow money for an old Russian sub that three men could man. Malcolm didn't raise the alarm because he had no idea a guy that liked to blow up whalers would start blowing up whalers again if given a sub that could blow up whalers. Malcolm talks about how people like them like to disappear sometimes. Nathan, Malcolm, the Regulator, and Scully.

The ship. Krieg is hustling along with a bundle. He calls for Lucas as he enters his room. For reasons I prefer not to speculate upon, Lucas's robe is neatly folded up and resting on a stack of boxes. In Ben's room. Turns out Lucas is hiding in the vent. Why? He's a stowaway now. He's dressed in a navy blue turtleneck and a white jersey, which is a pretty good combination. He has to stow away on the ship while Ford is still in charge? Ford would kick him out? Why?

Ben has food, but Lucas isn't hungry. Ben says that Lucas can't sneak around the boat because apparently Ben was supposed to take Lucas to the surface and drop him off. But Lucas says Bridger isn't coming back and he doesn't care. Now when did Lucas develop this powerful attachment to the boat sans Bridger? We've never seen him really be friendly with the guys he's supposed to be friends with.

Ben tells Lucas Nathan did what he thought was right. Nothing. Ben maintains that if Lucas is discovered he's in big trouble. Not a problem, Lucas will say he blackmailed Ben. Something about smuggling beef on board. Ben unwraps the beef, a frozen solid hunk of plastic that the camera is careful not to get close to. Lucas asks how it's coming. Not good. It's been frozen at absolute zero since it was outlawed. So for at least several years this meat has been frozen...and they want to eat it?

Lucas suggests a microwave. If anybody smells it, everyone will want a piece. But it's dead cow! And you haven't lived until you've had it cooked over an open grill with melted cheese and mustard and relish like his father used to make him. This is making things worse. Ben remembers beef from his childhood and Lucas has never had it. So it's probably been frozen for going on twenty years.

Ford calls all off-duty officers and Ben tells him hands off the beef. Lucas says that's no problem. By the way, they all went to the docking bay because Bridger is back. Ford never sent the letter. This is stock dialog for a stock scene for a stock plot. The writers are giving us some good character moments, but they're really phoning in the rest.

We cut to someplace with men cheering as two men in different colors of spandex fight each other. The camera pans to a fat man playing with a pair of joysticks. He's playing Scully. The men in spandex are real actors fighting, but they go all hologram and disappear after the green guy beats the beige guy. That's a very clever way to portray realistic holograms. If only they thought of it for the pilot. Or watched an episode of Star Trek with the holodeck gone awry. I know this is meant to be near future, but if you can get photorealistic, dynamic, 3D holograms like that then there's no excuse for having the Professor in a curtain of mist.

Scully wants to play again. Fat guy says he's played it to death and he's owed a beer anyway. So they get one at the bar. Scully is feeling him out for a job on a whaler. Fat guy is suspicious. They go back and forth about how the pay is good but the Sea Commission will lock you up for life for...whaling? That seems a bit extreme. I could see maybe a minimum security prison term, but life? Anyway Fat Guy decides to hook Scully up. Scully has much better scars in this scene.

Back on the boat, Lucas sneaks into the Moon Pool and turns on the vocorder. He calls Darwin. They start to have a talk and Bridger walks in on them. Apparently he ordered Lucas off the boat. That's not how I interpreted the conversation, but ok. Lucas stammers that they went ashore but Lucas told Krieg he was going to get a tattoo and join the Italian Navy and they would make him wear a speedo and get his entire body shaved except for his head. They'd make him oil up before every shift on duty and as the youngest and prettiest guy on the boat... At this point Bridger gives up.

Lucas explains that the ship is his home. Bridger says he came back because he missed Lucas. Lucas missed him too and does a good job of looking choked up before they hug.

Cut to Krieg's, where he's putting the meat on a grill. He's singing to himself and wearing a Florida State sweatshirt and a backwards baseball cap. Right next to the meat, on top of the grill, is a stainless steel bedpan. I'm not kidding about that. Ben has his hand on it. He throws a few paper packets into it. Then he goes and pulls out a signed bat he starts slicing on with a knife. For fuel, I guess.

Scully is alone in his sub, tracking the whaler he found out about.

Extreme close up of Krieg's burger. All that meat, and there had to be five or six pounds of it, for a single burger? He's fondling it when the alert sounds. It sounds nothing like the normal klaxon, so for a second I thought he set off a fire alarm. But it's just your usual battle stations thing which results in a large band of people marching into the bridge with Westphalen, still out of uniform, at the head.

Bridger tells the crew the stats of the Russian sub. What happened to all these extras? They just walk into the bridge and vanish. Does Weatphalen even have a bridge station?

WHSKR display panning over coral and a whale. Ortiz tells Bridger and they tail the cetaceans. They technobabble and Hitchcock gets a reaction shot. They found the sub in about thirty seconds of effort.A cgi sub chugs along. Bridger babbles course instructions and wants the weapons armed.

Lucas comes into the bridge. The doors are open despite always being closed during alerts. He walks right over to Bridger and explains that he's scared. So's Bridger, so Lucas should go back up Ortiz. This is not the first time the kid's seen combat. Why is an obsolete sub so scary?

Scully spots the seaQuest. The whaler too. He fires on the seaQuest and scores a hit which shakes the ship. Now the bridge doors are closed. They're taking on water. A door closes itself to contain the water. Scully turns to run and Bridger sends Crocker over to arrest the whalers. In mid-fight? The ship takes one shot and knocks the propeller off the Russian sub. Lucas was afraid for this?

Scully refuses to answer the phone, so Bridger gets in a sea crab to go over. He tells Lucas to take it eash and Lucas, who looks slightly embarrassed now, tells him the same. This is the part of the episode where Bridger talks to the crazy guy.

Scully's ship. Bridger walks in on him with his candles. Scully thinks Bridger is there to kill him. Bridger hopes not. Scully cocks his head to show off his scars. He complains about how things shook out. Bridger tells Scully what he is doing is wrong. Scully thinks he's a hero and he has to do it. He starts in on a speech about being frightened for the world, the sea, the whales. He wants to make the final sacrifice for the cause.

Bridger tells Scully he needs to come back and go to jail. Max says that's killing him. But that's ok, Bridger lets him have a moment along with his ship. Max goes right for the torpedoes. He opens a tube and the camera looks at him from inside it. Bridger hears the sound of the tube firing. Scully shot himself out it. Given the dialog, that was no surprise. Bridger goes home and stalks up to the bridge.

He shoots the sub and it cracks in half and blows up. Everyone is very sad. Lucas goes down to Bridger, who tells him to get to sleep. Lucas wants to know if Bridger just killed a man right in front of him. No, that was Scully's choice.

Cut to Scully swimming in the ocean, because the bends would never get him.

Cut to Krieg's burger. He puts some mustard on it as the door gets knocked on. Bridger comes in and thanks Krieg for letting Lucas stay on board. Lucas is like a brother to Ben. Bridger gets this priceless look on his face and says he hopes not. Then he smells the cooked meat behind Ben's back. It's a cheeseburger. A real one. Illegal. Bridger takes it out of Krieg's hands and walks off into the hall with it.

In the hall, Nathan goes to the garbage, looks both ways, and takes a big bite. Another. Then he throws it away.

The End.

As a Captain's Dilemma episode, this is just a complete failure. Scully is totally, obviously in the wrong. Even if the whalers are in the wrong too that does not make him right. I just can't believe any person with a head properly screwed on would have problems with that and indeed Bridger is the only guy in the whole episode who seems to. Since we've seen Bridger repeatedly make it clear he's not going to kill people in the name of the environment, or even gravely inconvenience business, this sudden indecision makes no sense. I care about the whales too, but it's in no way clear to me how they are so important that they could justify acts of piracy and murder. Especially not such as continue unabated even after civilians get in the way. I know there are real people who try to ram and disable whaling ships, but even they aren't sinking the damned things. There's no explanation for how the most extreme and crazy part of the environmental movement is suddenly mainstream in the future, especially considering how it wasn't when Schraeder wanted to turn off all the factories all of two episodes ago.

But as a character episode this serves as a good conclusion to Lucas's arc for the season. I know he never really acted like a prisoner on the seaQuest, and in theory he decided to stay some time ago, this is the first time we really get resolution to it. It's also the first time we see him and Bridger both admitting that they care for one another in a father-son sort of way. In the face of Bridger's personal rejection, Lucas tells the guy he greeted with "who the hell are you?" that whatever Bridger saw as wrong with Lucas, Lucas could change. That's a huge distance. On Everwood, this sort of arc was the whole point of the first season.

We don't spend enough time on it, or with Lucas, for it to have the same impact here. Worse, Lucas vanished for the previous episode and the show has focused on other characters for a while now. The writers didn't earn the good conclusion by building to it and developing the character arc consistently over the season (and this is 16 of 23 so it's a bit early anyway) but once they decided to give us some closure and progress on Lucas's relationship to Bridger and the ship, they did a decent job with relatively few scenes and dialog. Bonus points for establishing that Lucas isn't just looking for a father figure. He stays when Bridger leaves. They don't really sell us on it, but he stayed despite Bridger because he feels at home with and apparently cares for others on the crew.

This would have gone so much better with the deleted scene from Nothing But the Truth too. If that were present, I could buy that Lucas was still a bit fragile with the whole battle under the seas business. There he turned to Westphalen, who Bridger kissed this episode. I know it's not really in the genre, but those three could have made an interesting family-esque dynamic. It would possibly have done a lot to ground the show in its goofier moments. Plus it puts the reason the teenaged girls were supposed to watch in the featured position. Except for standing around, being the doe-eyed victim a few times, and flashing dimples, they didn't really write Lucas as a teenaged sex symbol. I know he was probably on Seventeen or Tiger Beat or whatever, but at least so far they haven't really trotted him out in tight clothes and he's only had one spotlight episode that was really about him.

seaQuest: Greed for a Pirate's Dream

This is in my head now that I just made a comment on it, so I probably better do it now before I forget the episode again.

Remember that large, pompous scientist from early in the season? The one that wanted to shove a suppository into a magma tube? Well he's back because it just popped out, shot in a beautiful arc across a not-really-deserted island, and landed. So he's back to retrieve it and get its data.

On the island are a band of treasure hunters. They want the French crown jewels. If you're not up on the story, rioters stole the lot during the revolution. Most of the collection was recovered, but then France sold them off in 1885. So the notion that you could find a large Tower of London-style collection buried somewhere by pirates in the late 1700s (This is the timeframe indicated in the dialog.) is daft. If you want to see a notable piece, the Hope Diamond is surrounded by gawkers in Washington. It was cut (Yeah, there was a bigger diamond.) from one of the major pieces.

So there's this band of treasure hunters and the seaQuest comes to the island, minus Bridger and Lucas, to get the "magma buoy". It's top secret for reasons that are never made clear. Is volcanology a major security issue in the future? Since the suppository landed on the island, odds are it's going to explode pretty soon. Ford tries to warn off the treasure hunters, but they aren't hearing it and he's not backing down on the secrecy thing. Much wringing of hands ensues, including one of the loopier treasure hunters firebombing a launch and marooning Ford, Krieg, the guest star (he didn't have to change his clothes!) and some redshirts. So they're all going to die, except they're not because Westphalen illegally takes command of the ship and orders torpedoes fired on the magma tube to open it up early and release the pressure short of the island.

There are two uncompelling conflicts in the episode. The first is Ford's desire to save the treasure hunters vs. the need (never explained) to keep the suppository secret. This is treated like a huge command dilemma for him, but no effort was made to set it up. They tell us that the magma buoy is very, very secret. Ok, but why? Not one line of dialog explains why Ford should want the secret kept except that he's a mindless drone with his orders. We either have to believe that, or believe Ford is some kind of amoral, careerist monster, to think this is a serious dilemma for him.

The second conflict is entirely about the treasure hunters, guest stars we have never seen before, will never see again, and thus don't care about. One of them is very obviously cracked, another has an unrequited love affair. Big deal. They have to decide to give up the dream they've invested years in (none of which we have seen) or risk their lives for what for most of the episode is not a credible threat to them.

Then it ends with a save that lets everyone win. Ford does the right thing. Westphalen saves them. The treasure hunters get their treasure. No one has to give up anything and everyone wins. We close with a crack about how the UEO says Westphalen only needed five torpedoes, not nine, to save everybody. Who is going to pay for them?

Weak. This show has a very bad habit of undermining its own good ideas and this episode is no exception. It's hard to care about the treasure hunters because we're never given a motive aside eccentricity and greed. It's hard to care about Ford's dilemma because it's a no-brainer. With some dressing up and a few changes, the episode could be much stronger. There's no reason the guest stars needed a perfect ending. They could have gotten away with one identifiable piece to vindicate themselves but at the cost of a few lives. That would have put some teeth in the greed in the title.

I'm debating how I want to handle future episodes. A lot of the recent crop have been stinkers that are fairly hard to write about. Watching them twice isn't helping. I think I might do recaps on episodes that have something going for them, or some particularly funny gaffes, and just do reviews like this or the earlier entries for more mundane episodes. That still provides the recaps when it's fun for me, but lets me move on gracefully when they aren't. The guys at TV Without Pity must have incredible stamina.

More seaQuest coming tomorrow or the next day

I just watched another and boy it stank. It's one thing to call ordinary TV mostly melodrama. It is. The good guys win, the bad guys lose. Everything is neatly tied up. Only a few shows get away from that for any length of time and while seaQuest might have been ambitious with its CGI back in the day, its writers didn't go on many adventures. This one coming up is another of those where literally everybody, including the hapless guest stars, gets everything they really wanted in the end.

Also Bridger barely appears and Lucas has a single cameo. If I were feeling charitable, I'd say the writers wanted to pare down the cast for an episode so they could focus on a particular character. But the fact of it is that a lot of episodes this season have been absent multiple main leads. The last one has Bridger in a cameo, no Westphalen in the final cut, and no sign of Ortiz or O'Neil. That's half the principal cast. This one ships Lucas and Bridger off and has no Hitchcock even though she logically should be there. This is looking a bit like everyone put in for a few vacation days at once and the show dealt with it by writing around them.

seaQuest: Nothing But the Truth

It's the middle of the night and I'm sitting here with a Coke in one hand, a warm blog, and the PS2 I ended up using mostly to play DVDs (not my wisest investment) humming happily along. It must be time for a seaQuest review, only a day late.

Originally aired: Jaunary 9, 1994

The synopsis informs us that the villain of the week (And we never see any of them again, I don't think.) is Colonel Steven Schraeder, an "intense environmentalist." Who writes this crap? He's a fictional character. He's not going to sue you if you call him an ecoterrorist. If real world ecoterrorists were going to be offended by the portrayal, I don't think the circumlocution is going to fool them. They'll still release all of Universal's captive monkeys, most of whom are actually human children they've kept locked underground since the Thirties and thus aren't really children anymore, but they've been stunted and deprived so badly that they make the cast of a reality show look well-adjusted.

Universal bump. Again. I was never inspired to say mean things about Universal until I had to watch their ad droppings twice before every episode of a forgettable and often poorly-written but sometimes well-acted mid-90s Trek ripoff.

We open on the same exterior shot of the seaQuest we always see. That's not totally fair, most scifi shows recycle this kind of footage a lot. A few months ago I read some commentary from Wil Wheaton where he pointed out that everybody liked one shot from the first season of a ship sitting alongside the Enterprise that they reused it every time they thought they could get away with it. Even an all-CGI ship like seaQuest or Babylon 5 tends to recycle that kind of footage. Anyway, the caption says we're in the South China Sea, west of the Philippines. So what, the Spratly Islands?

That might make for a good episode, but they would have to tell 85% of America all about them. And then explain how there are two Chinas involved. That would lead to teaching history and geopolitics that does not revolve around the American protagonist which is the impetus for all action by all actors everywhere. People would be confused, and no TV show is going to take that kind of risk.

We come into the boat to a voiceover of Hitchcock telling Ford that he needs to make a decision, because he's been offered his own submarine. Riker doesn't know if he wants to take it because he's getting so much out of serving under Picard, like tips on how to pick the right size of speedo and how to maintain the diverse ecosystem living in the thick forests of his chest hair. Not that I'm suggesting this whole subplot was ripped from TNG. Ford is nothing like Riker, after all. Riker's that creepy middle-aged guy who thinks he's a sex machine and drives around in a convertible wearing a Hawaiian shirt half-open. He pulls up next to girls barely out of high school and leers, "Hello...Ladies...." Ford's an idiot, but he doesn't watch reruns of Magnum, PI to learn pickup lines.

Ford opines that the ship isn't a real submarine. It's a sausage with a propeller. I think that means it's a male-only crew and Ford isn't ready to explore that side of himself yet. Hitchcock is selling the thing like a skeevy condominium salesman and anyway, since when are these two close enough that they discuss Ford's career? I don't recall it being established that they were anything other than coworkers? Is Hitchcock just inserting herself here to show that Stacy Haiduk managed to dredge some real fake enthusiasm out of herself for once. By the way, both are in their UEO khakis, which makes Ford look a bit barrel-chested.

Ford cites all the opportunities he gets on seaQuest. Bridger lets him be captain most of the time, which I think means Nathan spends a lot of time playing with his dolphin and making macaroni art. He only really comes out to do stuff about once a week and he's only on the bridge for five, ten minutes tops. That would make some sense, but wouldn't being a real captain count for more than playing pretend on seaQuest? Oh yeah, and when there's a crisis Ford is always the first one to arrive. That's a point I wouldn't make too loudly, Jonathan. People might notice and start wondering about why you always seem to be knocking back tequila and Cheetos with the guest stars right before they get it in their heads to flip out and shove a suppository down a volcano, kidnap a dolphin, lure Lucas away from Krieg's van, or hide all the women's wetsuits while "mysteriously" leaving behind slinky one-piece deals in their place.

Hitchcock is unimpressed, pointing out that she can leave her rattlesnakes in his bed at any time. So shall we hear the case for leaving then? Ford smiles and stares at her chest. He says it's his own command. He wouldn't have to listen to Bridger's swimwear and pubic hair shaving tips, which gets a bit awkward. Also, he can only smile insincerely at so much macaroni art.

The pair get paged to the bridge. Krieg is the only guy there, and he's in his khakis too. Bridger is on the phone. Ford reports that the experiment is ready to go and only seven are left on board. Ford promises he shall join Bridger on the aircraft carrier shortly. Bridger's in front of a big screen, two round lights, and a curtain of well-spaced Christmas tree lights. I guess in the future, the Navy shops the Boxing Day specials at Walmart. Ford suggests that maybe Bridger should help them spruce up the place, but Bridger whines about how nobody on the ship will even talk to him about the removal of body hair. Not even that one old guy with an enchanted forest sticking out of his t-shirt. Seriously, that thing's so hoary the magical gnomes have opened a Home Depot. There's a special on latex paint.

By the way, there's a science vessel or something that's lost rudder control and is calling for help. Could Ford pick them up, or torpedo them or something? Whatever it takes to shut them up, since their signal is bleeding over into the reserved frequencies for dolphin porn. All this screaming about starving and sinking and cannibal pirates attacking. A giant crocodile and aliens too. Anyway it's a downer. Ford says they'll get right on that, after they finish washing out their ears.

Bridger turns sideways towards the camera and changes the subject. He says that is Ford is leaving them, he's going out in style. He'll be the only man that got a chance to sink the seaQuest. Until Bridger does it in like eight episodes. Hitchcock is chuckling and I know she's supposed to look amused but the actress isn't selling me on it. It looks more like the director is holding up a goofy stuffed animal behind the camera.

Ford asks if Hitchcock can "maneuver this beast by herself." She's been waiting two years to try. She wanders off to polish her steering wheel and Ford glances at Krieg. There's an awkward silence and then Krieg says if Ford says, he shall not sign Krieg's officer review. I guess that means Krieg is fired? Reassigned? Just not promoted? Now I know in real militaries you can sometimes get away with passing up a promotion once, like Ford will do in the foregone conclusion to his subplot, but I think we need more exposition about what this really means to Ben. It's not clear. Apparently being reassigned is the main consequence. Ford maintains he has the right to choose his own staff...but wouldn't this actually be Bridger's thing? I don't know.

Ford says it's nothing personal, but Krieg asks how else he's supposed to take it. I don't exactly get this. They still haven't said if Krieg would just be passed over for promotion, reassigned, or if he would actually be kicked out of the navy. Krieg's such a generic character that I really think he would fit on any ship. He doesn't have the impression of having any roots on seaQuest. He definitely doesn't seem very invested in career advancement. So does he care because he's out a job?

Krieg says Ford can't fault his work, so it must be his style. Ford says it's about character, so yes. I wonder if Krieg will redeem himself in Ford's eyes by the end of the episode.

Hallway. Lucas is playing with the vocorder while Darwin sits in the tube. Lucas is wearing a red turtleneck and his red on black jersey. What is that thing made out of? Maybe it's just because it's in that hairy zone where it's too bright to work well with the cameras, but it halfway looks like the top of a red wetsuit on Brandis. Maybe the lighting is obscuring the real fit, or maybe the wardrobe people picked something a size and a half too small for him. Keeping the teenaged girls watching, or just bad color choice? I swear, the thing looks like it's half made of spandex or something. You can just see in profile where he must be shaving. Makeup is usually better at hiding it.

Ford wants to know why Lucas isn't in the launch bay with the others. Darwin rats out his plan to stay on the boat. Ford gets to exposition about how Lucas's staying could mess up Bridger's plan to sink the boat. They have these hull siphons to test. I guess they'll pump the ship out if it floods. And these ordinary bilge pumps need to be tested by sinking the flagship out in the middle of nowhere for what reason exactly? This is the biggest plot hole in the episode, I think. No one in their right mind would let Bridger potentially lose the flagship in the name of testing out a bilge pump. They keep old hulks in storage just for this kind of work.

Lucas says they're just flooding the passageways, so he can stay in his room with his porn collection and billions of dollars of valuable electronics that would be ruined if someone forgot to close a door tightly. Which is another reason they would have used an obsolete ship. Lucas says he can stay and record and- Hold it right there, bucko. Ford asks if Lucas was asked to stay.

"Actually [Bridger] didn't ask me for anything."

I think that's a trace of some writer's subplot that got cut. It doesn't seem like a likely thing for Lucas to just say out of nowhere. Was there supposed to be a neglect issue involved? For that matter, why does Lucas want to stay on the ship? If he avoiding something?

Ford segues into asking who figured out how to talk to Darwin. Lucas did. Lucas and Bridger. Ford gives Lucas a look and Lucas realizes that this kind of thing (reckless and stupid risk of the most advanced warship around) is what Bridger came back for. That somehow makes everything better. Lucas smiles and is in a good mood suddenly. That conversation made no sense. We don't know why Lucas wanted to stay around. We don't know why he changed his mind, unless the idea was that he just has to follow Bridger's orders even if they don't make sense at all. You know, that might have been the point. It wouldn't be the first time they looked like they were just trying to habituate Lucas to arbitrary authority for its own sake. Yes, Lucas, obedience must come before thought.

Lucas walks away and Ford opens one of the siphons, which looks nothing like a siphon and everything like a box with an old parallel cable (ok so it would have been new then) inside. He checks the connection and closes it up again.

Launch Bay. Krieg is going over a list and Lucas looks over his shoulder and points out something. Crocker phones Ford to let him know the scientists are safe. Ford wants them brought aboard and drowned in the hallways for the fun of it. Really, if they're already on a launch why would they need to change launches? Do the last seven people have so much baggage to load on yet that they had to send a different launch for the scientists? Ford plays with another siphon and says they're ready to go.

Schraeder climbs up out of the sub, puts his arm around Crocker, and tells him that everything is fine except for this pesky mercenary in black that's going to come up behind and knock you over the head. You know he's never watched the show, because there's nothing above his jawbone that Crocker regularly uses.He falls down some stairs as two more guys in black rush out. Total count of bad guys: 3 goons + Schraeder. Crocker manages to hit an alarm before they hit him again. Two more goons rush up. That's five.

Krieg and Lucas are only now noticing this, even as the goons are rushing over the controls and kicking people. The alarm must not have clued them in at all. Maybe Lucas was confused because he didn't have orders to cover this, but Krieg shoves him and a bag over to one side and tells him to bail. Can Lucas drive a sub? Two more goons rush in as Schraeder orders them to disable communications.

Two more goons, I think. Total nine. They show off their guns as they rush forward. One of the goons sticks some wires into some other wires, turns away, presses a button, and sparks shoot from a control panel. A goon, with sort of jowly cheeks and puckered lips, reports that communications are dead.

Cut to Ford and his phone. He's trying to call, but no one answers. Cut to Hitchcock on the bridge trying the same thing. When she gets no answer she closes the bridge doors and tries to call the surface. She's locking down all weapons starting with sea-to-air missiles.

Credits.

Close up of Lucas's bag. It has his name stenciled on it. Schraeder picks it up and reads the name for us. They really do assume we can't read a lot on this show. He gives the order for his mercenaries to find Lucas. I have to ask where Lucas is supposed to have gone. Krieg shoved him up a ladder that leads to a docking port or something, given all we've been led to believe about the makeup of the docking bay. So Lucas would be hiding in one of the launches?

Krieg is asked if others are loose and lies. So they do a deck-by-deck search. Schraeder tells his mercenaries that anyone who approaches the launch bay should be held for questioning, but no killing. We're supposed to think that makes him sympathetic? He moves out for the bridger with puckery-lipped mercenary behind him. Seriously, I know the actor is trying to look tough or mean or whatever but he's not helping himself by going around like he just ate a giant bowl of lemons.

Ford's in the moon pool telling Katie to rev the engines if she can hear him. Darwin tells Ford about the invaders and Ford hides his cap, grabs a can of air, and plunges into the water. I bet he wishes he'd listened to Bridger's swimwear advice now.

Hitchcock narrates her disabling of the ship for us as the invaders bring the jaws of life to use on the doors. We cut to Katie's POV and the doors are already at least a half-inch open despite the fact that the jaws of life are smoking. I know the doors are meant to be sealed, but they really dropped the ball there. If they wedge open at twenty seconds of the jaws of life, I don't think they'd meet much security scrutiny. Katie reports the bridge being compromised and stares at the doors.

Mercenaries run through the halls and behind them Darwin tows Ford along.

The bridge doors give way and Schraeder turns off the alarm. His guys move on the stations and point a gun at Katie. Lips advances menacingly on her and fondles his pistol. But the geek mercenary is already on it. Schraeder threatens Katie with torture, but she promises she'll lie. Geek tells everyone that they'll have a satellite in ten minutes. Close up on Hitchcock as Ford grabs her wrist. He's in the water. She says she'll be in the water in a second, but he wants her to stay with the bad guys. This is so he can control what they know. He assures this by telling her to always tell them the truth, even if classified. That makes perfect sense. Seriously, he's assuming they can't read the ship's screens?

Lips spots Ford and raises the alarm, pulling Hitchcock aside and shooting into the water. Ford's already gone. Schraeder stops him from shooting more and Katie identifies Ford on request. They check the computers.

"She told the truth!"
"For now."

Schraeder is already on to the winning trust game. He and Katie stare at each other.

Cut to a hallway outside Galley Supply. A sign tells us that we're there. It's guarded and inside are Krieg, two redshirts, and Crocker. One redshirt thinks he has a broken bone. Crocker tells Ben he's seeing double. Ben decides he's going to go out through the air ducts but the turbines would chop him to pieces. Ben says they rerouted the ducts so the turbines are not an issue.

Moon pool. Darwin scares a mercenary, but then the mercenary is charmed and tries to pet him. He reaches out over the water and Ford pulls him in and punches him three times.

Bridge. Geek tells Schraeder they have communications and the UEO computers think it's a legitimate contact. Then he and Lips put their heads together. Lips licks his earlobe a bit, blows in his ear, and tells S (I hate typing his name) that Hitchcock turned off all the controls. The bridge is useless, but S smells very nice. This show has a real problem with this. Every time someone leans in close, it's too close. And why are they pretending this is a secret anyway? Hitchcock knows and the only other people to overhear are their goons.

S comments on how this is all in the manual. But he wants to know if internal sensors are working. Hitchcock says they can run systems checks, yes.

Moon Pool. Ford hauls his victim out of the water. Both are dripping wet. He tells Darwin to watch the bad guys. Ford lugs the body into the isolation chamber and they're both suddenly dry. Soaking wet to dry in thirty seconds. He turns his butt to the camera as someone whispers for him.

It's Lucas down under the floor grating. He comes out and Brandis pulls off some good acting here. He's convincingly scared. Near tears, even. You know, like you would be if you were suffering a home invasion. Ford refuses to answer Lucas's questions and only cares about whether or not he can get ahold of Bridger. They run through some hallways and now Ford notices that Lucas is a wreck.

"Let the fear work for you."
"How?"

Ford gives a speech about the glories of fear. Lucas explains how he was having a panic attack, but he doesn't want to let Ford down. One of the mercenaries almost catches them and they bail, but he radios ahead to another on their path. They come down the stairs and Lucas says the mercenary is right on their tail. Ford has a plan. They hide in a room. This mystifies the goons. One of them wanders into the same room as Our Heroes.

He spots Lucas behind a model body. Ford drops down on him from behind and they fight, but the goon gets the gun on Ford until Lucas pounds him in the back. Instead of prompting him to pump bullets into Ford, this makes him drop his gun and turn on Lucas. Ford flips up and gets on top of the goon, pushing a scalpel to his throat.

We cut to the camera panning up the naked legs of the goon. He's down to boxers, socks, and an undershirt like a good cliche. His arms and legs are tied, and Lucas puts duct tape over his mouth. He's mumbling and Lucas smarts about it being too tight. He rips it off and puts it right back on again. We turn to Ford, who has just finished dressing himself in the goon's clothes.

Ok, there are a total of nine goons here. One is Lips, and he's on the bridge. Another is Geek, also on the bridge. Seven left. Ford and Lucas took out two of them. Down to five. One of those is guarding their captives. So we only have four free-roaming goons that we know of, six that the bad guys care about. Lips is concerned that his men are not reporting in. Imagine, two of them have gone silent.

But that's not my point. My point is that Ford is dressing up like them for what? They aren't so numerous that with the right clothes he can blend in. He doesn't need to strip a guy just to get the radio to listen in on. Aside a cliche, there's no point at all to the scene. I can only assume his thinking went like this:

Whenever we have a guest star on the boat, we make him change into our clothes. if he refuses, we point out that we have guns. This is enough to make most people happy to fly the seaQuest colors and also prevent us from having to deal with the stress of someone being trivially different. But now other people have guns and are in control of the boat. That must mean that I have to change into their clothes or they will shoot me. Yes!

Or maybe the ship has some sort of conformity-inducing field. Lucas is extremely compliant for a person who feels out of place on the boat and who has no peers around, especially being there against his will. But maybe through his training, he has begun to internalize the seaQuest ethos of conformity. His two-shirt ensemble is almost like a uniform and he seems very reluctant to leave the boat until Ford reminds him that doing so would mean obeying the captain's wishes.

It's not that I can't buy that someone in Lucas's position would go native. I've seen enough military people in small groups out in the civilian world to recognize the little bubble they seem to erect around themselves sometimes. On the occasions I've had to interact with them, most were very aggressive about promoting the benefits of the military and trying to talk me into it. I'm not exactly a likely prospect, but it seemed like a reflexive thing on their part. I can believe that being surrounded by them, the Cult of seaQuest is creeping into his pores. Not that he's ever been much of a refusnik in the first place. It would help if they actually talked about this from time to time, though.

Lips goes hunting. Hitchcock demands to know what S is doing. This leads to S speechifying about pollution. Geek goon tells S that they have the codes for various polluters and are working on more.

Galley Supply. Krieg can't fit through the ductwork. Crocker is going in and out. Where are the redshirts?

Lucas's room. He's got a WHSKR set up to phone Bridger. Will they notice it on the bridge? Only if they're paying very close attention.

Bridge. S hauls Hitchcock over to ask her what that laser communication via WHSKR thingie is. Heh. She explains it.

Geek has lumber mills, etc. He's to trade the laser.

Lucas's room. Close up of Brandis's very dainty hands that pans over to the screen where Bridger comes up. Ford clues him in. Bridger says that if the bad guys get their hands on the ship's long-range weaponry... Ford nods. Lucas assures Bridger that he's ok. He's to stay in his room. Lucas also rigged a pager so Ford can use any screen he points it at to phone Bridger.

Lucas asks what Bridger trailed off about. Oh that? That's the fact that if they get the weapons on, the UEO will have to nuke them. Close up of Lucas turning away pensive as Ford goes to find the rest of the crew. Jonathan Brandis had a chicken pox scar or two on his temple, and a little bit of acne that makeup did a fair job hiding. I mean that, by the way. I've seen enough TV where teenaged actors had thick coats of varnish over their faces to notice these things.

Geek found the communication. He traced it to Lucas. Hitchcock pleads that he's just a boy, young and nubile. He looks good in a wetsuit and has the cutest chicken legs. He's very kissable and blonde. Good teeth. That settles it for S. He dispatches a goon to bring Lucas to them.

Galley Supply. The door opens and the crew trip Ford, but Crocker recognizes him. Good thing someone did before they ripped all his clothes off and tied him up like Ben always dreamed of doing. Ford hauls in another guard and tells Ben to take off the guard's clothes and tie him up. Again, why? At least not every mercenary on the ship had personally laid eyes on Ford, but Ben was there when they first came board. I think maybe Ford just likes stripping the clothes off unconscious men. I don't have any special objections to the practice itself, but I do think Ford should be asking first.

Ben and Ford exchange information. Then they phone Bridger. He finally explains the plot. They're using the ship to get security codes for industrial plants. Ford wants to sink the boat, which should scare the bad guys and get them making mistakes.

On the bridge, Geek goon tells S that they have the codes and he just needs to unscramble them. Hitchcock gets up, punches a goon, and hits some buttons. This somehow erases the computer's memory. That means they have to decrypt the codes manually. But the codes are still there. And everything else in the computer's memory. S tells Hitchcock she was stupid. Darwin gives him a dirty look.

In the Moon Pool, Ford tells the guys that they'll disable the siphons so they can't refloat the ship. It'll freak the mercenaries out. They are interrupted by Lucas's yelled protests. Apparently he lives right across the hall from the Moon Pool. That does explain why he's always there, but not why he spends all of season two in a wetsuit there. I mean, does he get up and get dressed just so he can walk over, get undressed in an unseen locker room, and swim with Darwin? Or does he keep his wetsuit in his room and change there, since it's so close? Come to think of it, would a guy in a wetsuit really raise eyebrows walking down the halls of the seaQuest? Maybe everyone has wetsuits in their rooms.

Lucas is taken away and Lips shoots up his room for no reason I can see. The second call to Bridger didn't come from there, so they have to know it's not anything Lucas has in his room in particular that arranged it.

Ben, Crocker, and Ford go into Lucas's shot up room. They're looking for a message from Lucas. Ford finds an LCD screen, looks at it, and goes to Bridger's room. Lucas left behind the serial number of the hologram, which gives Ben the willies. Ford hits his remote and Bridger comes on the screen. He tells us that Lucas left a message in the professor and they both ought to see it, since he's in the hands of the ecoterrorists now. Bridger seems rather unconcerned.

The Professor says Lucas fed him bridge images and searched through the database for matches. This leads to a match with Schraeder. He used to work for the UEO's environment police. By the way, Bridger found out that the codes are all for big polluters.

Crocker swoons, but refuses to be sent to the doctor. Ford sends him to mess up the wiring in the launch bay. Crocker leaves and Ford tells Ben that they shall not count on Crocker. Ben is to be a diversion for their real plan to screw up the siphons and open up the hatches to flood the ship.

Bridge. We see an outline of the seaQuest nowhere as nice as TNG's cutaways of the ship. I don't think it even has an airplane, a VW Beetle, or a single toilet marked on it. S wants to know where the signal was coming from. Hey, maybe the computers have a labeled cross-section of the ship you could use? Lucas looks up at the guy with the gun and lies badly that it's in the Science Section. Hitchcock says it's Bridger's room.

Lucas was visibly tied to the railing before, but now his arms are at his side and he's a foot or two further to the side over Hitchcock's other shoulder. He gapes at her, "Commander!" Nice of the mercenaries to untie him for his reaction shot. As usual, Brandis sells his character's distress and betrayal. He's throwing me off a bit though. He used the same expression a lot in The Neverending Story, Part Two. That was before his voice changed.

Hallway. Voices draw a goon into the captain's room. It's the hologram. The goon starts shooting it even though it's clearly projected on a curtain of smoke. These are supposed to be professional mercenaries? I don't see Blackwater employees even pausing in their various atrocities to fire a gun at a cloud of mist.

I just realized that the Professor also played that Hannibal Lecter-ish serial killer from two episodes of MacGuyver, which I was seeing a lot of about this time in reruns on USA. What bad actress will play Mac's damsel in distress this week? Is he the badass secret agent living on a house boat, or is this one of the episodes where he's a middle aged, single gay man that works for Greenpeace? Either way he never gets the girl, but will probably take Jack Dawson on for some pity sex. Seriously, in a genre where the action hero always gets the girl, Mac's pointed lack of interest in the girls of the week was a pleasant change. I don't think Richard Dean Anderson had a lot of romance subplots on Stargate either...but by then he really was middle-aged and had gone gray. I'd like to see more action heroes that don't have a romance tacked on, to be honest.

Where was I? Oh yeah, seaQuest. Ben waits until the goon turns around with his gun in hand before slamming the door and locking it.

Crocker groans in some ducts.

Bridger phones S. S orders he not be shown on the screen. Bridger asks if he's camera shy and calls him by name. Lucas gives S a smirk. Yeah, he got you. Then the threats begin. Nathan says S has ruined any credibility he had with the Green movement. He can't believe S got other environmentalists to go along. In the future, PETA will be forgotten. S admits to hiring mercenaries.

Bridger says he's cut off S's access to the UEO computers, but S already has the shut down codes he needs. Nathan mentions that they have regulations now. Polluters can be punished. S isn't buying it. He used to work that gig. I guess these shut down codes would disable plants for years and years. Ok, really? What do they do, trigger bombs built into every factory? Seriously, if these are just codes to shut off machinery then they could easily be changed. We change the codes for nuclear missile launches daily. It's all done by computer. Anything that destructive would have already been changed by the time Bridger told S they knew about it.

Nathan points out that cities without electricity, failed agriculture, and so on are going to kill lots of people. S supposedly has a problem with that. But now he doesn't because his motivations make no sense. He's just nuts, like the Regulator.

Crocker grunts in a duct. Ford plays with a siphon and dodges Lips. Crocker shocks himself.

Ford walks into a room full of 70s-era panels with blinking lights. Lips comes in right behind him but doesn't check behind the table so Ford gets away. He phones Bridger and updates him. This is filler. We already know it all.

Hitchcock points out that they're below the crush depth on S's sub. Where are they going to go? S says they'll get lost in the islands and the UEO's tracking subs are far away. Lucas is tied up next to Hitchcock and gives her a dirty look as she spills more information. S walks away and Lucas demands to know why she's spilling. She has orders, even if Ford might be dead. She must follow Ford's orders until she's sure Ford is dead. This is very impressive to Lucas. He's got some Kool-Aid in the bloodstream, all right.

Bridger phones to give S an update on environmental cleanup. S rants about what chemicals do to people. Nathan says they'll just rebuild on the ruins. Then S realizes that Nathan is stalling him and orders that they get moving. Bridger wants Hitchcock and Lucas to stay on the boat, but they're hostages.

Belly of the ship. Dark hallway. Ford walks up on a big valve. Ben comes up behind him and nearly shoots him. They have an argument about who gets to open the sea valve and Ben quotes regulations. Ben says Katie and Lucas need Ford to save them. Ben can't do it. Ford is convinced and they shake on it, then Ford spots a laser dot on the wall. A goon shoots at Ford and misses. Ford climbs up into the ceiling and loses his gun. He bails and tells Krieg to do the same. Instead Krieg opens the valve and the water washes him and Goon away despite Ford trying to get Ben's hand.

Water rushes through the sea tubes...which for some reason are only half-full despite having more water in the boat. Darwin reports the problem to Lucas. Hitchcock confirms that the ship is flooding and the siphons are not working. Lucas tells Darwin to split and everyone heads for the Launch Bay. They find Ford waiting.

Crocker tumbles out of a closet. S has his goons try to get ready for launch, but everything goes haywire. S gets his arm around Hitchcock and says he doesn't have time for this. He's about to threaten her when Lucas stamps on his foot, stays completely motionless, turns his head to the side, and screams for Hitchcock to run. Where? They're in the Launch Bay. That makes no sense at all. Where on the sinking ship does he want her to go? What would it achieve? Why is he utterly unmoved except for his tone of voice? I get the feeling I'm not the only one who thought that made no sense. Lucas has been reasonably frightened, but he hasn't spent all episode being the doe-eyed victim. He did not need to redeem himself.

Lucas is pulled away and the guy holding him is Ben, because none of the mercenaries would think it odd that a stranger is now amongst them. Ford calls Bridger and tells him that the boat is sinking and the bad guys can't get away. He suggests storming the boat. Bridger says he'll do just that with amphibious troops. Shouldn't they have just called them marines or something?

It will take at least an hour to get through the hatch in S's way. Ford says he'll let S go (even though he can't know how Crocker screwed up the wiring) if he gives up the hostages. Ford says ok, he'll take Hitchcock. No accounting for taste. S asks about the sweet, kissable boy. What about him? Turns out he's gone. To where? The ship is flooding. Ben let him go to his death?

S agrees to the trade and Geek starts complaining about the ethics of the situation. Now? Timely. S runs into his sub and clearly intends to leave his goons behind, but they don't catch on until he's already in his sub and locked up. Ford tells them to get out of the airlock before S drowns them by leaving.

Ford tells Ben to take Lucas and go turn siphons on.

Cut to S in his sub. Bridger phones to remind us that his sub is below its maximum depth. S asks Hitchcock if that's true. Hitchcock confirms it. S says it's the lie he was waiting for and his bad CGI sub leaves the boat. It hits a bump and then starts shaking and groaning. Steam jets from the roof and it smokes and sparks as S protests. Then it blows up.

Epliogue. Ward room. Ford sucks up about how the siphons worked out. Bridger brings up Ford's decision. Ford stays. He likes the boat and the people. Also he has a lot to learn about shaving his body, or maintaining chest hair or whatever. Then Nathan pulls up Krieg's review, which Ford signs of course. In the hallway Ben and Katie are waiting. Ford gives Ben a nod. Ben promises Ford will not regret it, but Katie tells him that Ford already regrets it.

One of the deleted scenes had a much, much better epilogue. Lucas is in the Moon Pool and talking to Westphalen. She brings up recent events and he starts to talk, then gets choked up and huts her instead. Ben has a simple professional problem. His career is in a rough patch. Lucas was really traumatized and that scene would have shown some of it. That could have been a great part of the episode, but instead of learning that Lucas is still dealing we learn that Ben's job is safe. Bad call.

Some of the scenes are clunkers and the plot has holes in it, but this is probably the second best so far, after Photon Bullet. Interestingly, both avoid using the full crew. It's not an original plot. It has some weird writing and bad acting. The villain is again simply nuts. But it succeeds at building some tension, and I think the key is Lucas. To every other cast member, this is an ordinary military situation. Ford is a commando. Katie is a hostage. Crocker is a joke. But Lucas's trauma sells this as something like a home invasion instead of an attack on a normal military target by a band of crazy extremists. It's weird how quickly he gets over it, which might be why the scene with him and Westphalen was cut, but they could have carried that as the character arc instead of Ben's career. For half the episode, it is the character arc. Then we're back to Ben who we don't care about because only his career is at risk.

Maybe some of this is my liking of Lucas. I do like Lucas a lot, when he's actually being a character and not a doe-eyed victim. The writers managed to avoid making him the damsel in distress this episode, but didn't quite seal the deal by getting distracted by Ben instead. I wonder what the script looked like before they decided Krieg's officer review was the selling point of the hour.

More seaQuest incoming

Just watched another one. I realized that trying to watch the episode cold and review it at the same time wasn't working out well for me. I'm ok for the first act or so but then I get more and more harried as the episode goes on. So I'm going to try watching once and then coming back and watching again for the review and evisceration.

So tonight I did the cold watch of Nothing But the Truth. It's Die Hard on a Sub, I think. I've never seen Die Hard, but they filmed part of the second one around here. Mercenaries bought by a militant environmentalist take over the boat while it's got a skeleton crew. Lots of Lucas, Ford, Krieg, and Hitchcock with a much smaller dose of Crocker and all the cameos Roy Scheider could film in a single day, but it's very good for a bottle episode that's just ripping off a movie.

Later tonight or tomorrow I'll do the usual treatment.

Superhero Movie, or not

So the plan was to go to Superhero Movie tonight. I know it's going to be a bad, mass-produced comedy full of cheap laughs and physical humor. I saw the hero throw the old lady out of the path of a bus and into a chipper-shredder. But I've seen one of the more recent Scary Movie flicks on TV and it was entertaining in a cheap laughs and slapstick way. I also just wanted to see a movie. Maybe it would make for a review.

Yeah, that was going to happen. I was going to go to the first evening show, by which time it should be dark and my pasty skin would thus not burst into horrific flames. I would not have to scream and pinwheel my arms as I staggered, flames trailing behind, over to the point where the camera could cut away for a second and then a dummy wearing the same clothes could be knocked into the river. I can take a little pain, but I don't think I have two of the exact same outfit so I would have to set myself on fire in the clothes that go into the river, then strip naked in front of everybody, dress the dummy in the still-burning clothes, and then shove it into the river and go home naked. Maybe I'm just lazy, but that seems like a lot of hassle.

That was the plan until I got on my email and saw that my City of Heroes friends had a planned event and their guy with radiation powers had to back out at the last minute. Others could substitute, but it would have meant that the group was still missing a key component. Plus I'm a sucker. No problem. I'll go to the early showing and be home by 7:30 for the event.

I went on the internet and the internet told me that Superhero Movie is showing at 5:00 and has a running time of about 85 minutes. Once you lop off the commercials at the beginning and embedded in the movie as product placement, we'll be left with Leslie Nielsen and an interchangeable teenage boy in spandex having a five minute conversation about gladiator movies. The scheduling works out.

It's spring now, almost kind of if it wasn't where I actually live. I live by Lake Huron. The warmer seasons all drop back about a month and a half or two months. It can be pretty cold here through June because the prevailing winds come off the still-cold lake. We start to get spring in April and May before they shift, then they do and it's all cold again. When I was little it snowed in late June. Fall trails on and it can be pretty warm during the day up through the middle of October, even into November in a good year, but the nights cool off very fast. Evenings are chilly in mid-August most of the time.

So late March in town usually means it's very bright outside and not quite as cold as February. I haven't braved full daylight in quite a while and I know if I put off seeing the movie I'll probably forget all about it until it's gone. Films do not last long in the two local theaters with their one owner. I've missed some because they were only in town for a single weekend. I got all my layers together, got my Unabomber look going on, and hopped in the car.

I passed a police car headed the other direction and the cop gave me a funny look, but it's bright out. I'm allowed to wear shades in this level of illumination. Drove to the theater with no parking lot except the public lot down by the river half a block away and got out of the car sweating like crazy, ten minutes in advance of the showtime. I walked across the two busy streets, one with a bad blind corner that I try to avoid, and came up on the theater. There's my film's poster, with a guy that's supposed to look like Hugh Jackman in the one corner. Above it are the showtimes: 4:25, 7:00, 9:30.

Thanks, internet. I glanced ahead and saw on the door that they opened at 3:45, which sounds about right for a showing at 4:25. Yeah, it's not a mistake. So much for that plan. Maybe tomorrow. It can't be Sunday evening. I have an event I signed up for in the first place to attend.

Stargate: SG-1. The Ark of Truth

So that's what season eleven would have been like. You know, it was really, really good. If you just saw the movie from '94, ignore that. The Egyptian guys are all dead. Their badass soldiers are friendlies now. The false gods were all overthrown. The friendly aliens from the early seasons are also all dead, but they handed over their technology first. The following is the continuity that matters.

History as we know it on Earth is mostly the same, except that until around 5000 years ago the evil aliens who possessed people ruled as living gods. We successfully rebelled and they left, never to return. Then we went out and found them again, killing their head bad guy in the process. This 1) wrecked their political unity and left them more fighting each other than us and 2) told them not only that we existed but that we had reached a level where handwaves and magic at the end of an episode can defeat them. They were the main bad guys on the series for five years.

They're all dead or in hiding now. Along the way of kicking them out of power, we met some ancient aliens, the Asgard. They're Greys, but pinkish. The Asgard knew us from way back before there was an us. It turns out that millions of years ago, humanity evolved. Millions of years early, that is. This species explored the galaxy, created crazy wild technology, explored at least two other galaxies, made friends with the Asgard, the Nox (who we see rarely), and the Furlings (who we have never seen). The Asgard live in yet another galaxy and seem to have been fighting the evil possessing people and posing as gods crowd. Their tech is considerably better, but they are fighting an enemy in their own galaxy, and also losing the race to keep their species alive. So Asgard help is limited, though they become more helpful as the series goes on.

The Asgard's enemy is the Replicators. They're pure machines that exist only to create more of themselves. Since their numbers are limitless and they feed on energy weapons, the Asgard were pretty screwed against them. They have a mental block that made it impossible for them to conceive of projectile weapons, maybe as a result of all being zillionth-generation clones downloaded into new bodies time and time again. We beat them too, using some of the first humans' technology.

These first humans, the Ancients, were just like us but with more technology. But they were decimated by a great plague which wiped out almost all live in the galaxy. The survivors built the weapon we used to wipe out the Replicators to reboot live in the galaxy. Apparently they arranged things so that the human form would re-evolve. Then they went off and ascended to a higher plane of existence where they live on as energy beings.

But before they did that, they had a bit of a donnybrook amongst themselves. It turns out that the Ancients weren't all sweetness and light. The good guys believed in learning, science, reason, and (and this is the clincher) free will. The latter is philosophically dubious, but it provides a good deal of narrative space for them to still be around and watching, but refusing to help out of respect for our free will. This can fit into their worldview if you allow that one must be persuaded by evidence, not coerced.

The bad guys, the Ori, were Ancients who disagreed. They believed in power for its own sake and wanted to be worshipped as gods because they could harvest the energies generated by that worship to further increase their own power. They created a religion that amounts to a well-veiled Space Christianity (though you could make arguments for Space Islam or any other aggressive monotheism too). Most of the Ori seem to have been located in a distant galaxy, and there they did battle with the Ancients. The Ancients lost the war due to greater numbers (which seems to be why the Ancients lose everything) and the fact that the Ori were harvesting brain-happies to throw at them which the Ancients presumably refused to do. The Ancients made a stand for integrity and proclaimed that they would rather be destroyed than abandon the cornerstone of their beliefs.

The Ancients eventually managed to isolate the Ori in their one galaxy and set things up so that they could not act further against the Ori unless the Ori used their ascended being mojo in this galaxy. They could, however, be invited in by normal beings of this galaxy.

So after the evil false god alien possessors are out of the picture, and the Replicators are out of the picture, SG-1 needs a new villain. That's when the evil Ancients get invented and I have to wonder how many of the writers are some kind of atheist because the Ori religion is very, very dead on. We get to hear it from their own mouths many times. The possessors just cowed people with shows of force and superior technology that they called magic. The Ori actually built up a philosophy complete with priests, promises of an afterlife, hellfire, etc.

Our Heroes discovered an Ancient communications device and accidentally got their brains beamed to its other end in the Ori galaxy. Now that the Ori have a legitimate, mortal plane excuse, they start using all their knowledge to build ships to launch a vast crusade. They create artificial black holes to power gigantic Stargates they can fly ships through and generally get a complete advantage over all we small mortals. They unleash plagues, burn people alive, preach a lot, and show off through their mortal tools, the Priors. A Prior is more or less a guy that the Ori give lots of special powers, but he's not actually ascended so he doesn't break the rules. They they conceive and implant in the uterus of one of Our Heroes their very own Space Jesus. She's a super Prior plus.

In the off chance Kim ever finds this blog, she's going to go ballistic many, many times reading this post. Good thing she doesn't like the internet.

Over the course of the last season of the show find out that one of the Ancients realized that the Ori would come back through those gigantic loopholes some day. So he de-ascended himself and went to work on a weapon that could kill ascended beings, who are otherwise immortal and invulnerable. He was making good progress, but another Ancient caught him and locked him away in stasis.

Our Heroes found him, unfroze him, managed to make the weapon and send it off to the Ori galaxy. All the Ori are killed, but their priors still have powers and Space Jesus survived. Also their armies and ships didn't go away, so the war continues. For that matter, it intensifies since the Priors seem to think that the Ori not setting fire to the Space Vatican like they usually do is a sign of disfavor.

So we're in dire straits. Then Space Jesus dies and ascends. Now she has all the mojo the Ori used to have to share amongst themselves.

Remember that weapon? Turns out that's not the real weapon. Myrddin (Merlin) made that one, sure. But he also created a thing called the Ark of Truth, or at least knew about it if others made it. It's a box, and if you open it it will convince you of the truth of anything it's programmed to. Except it can only do this if the things you program it to convince people of are actually true.

So SG-1 is off to the Ori galaxy to get the Ark of Truth. Along the way, their bosses who have doubts about the Ark enact a plan to make Replicators and unleash them against the forces of the Ori. Only they get loose on our ship instead. This is the main conflict for the action-oriented part of the movie. Meanwhile down on the planet, the science-minded part of the team, sort of, finds the Ark thanks to what they think are memories left behind by Merlin when he borrowed the brain of a team member for a while.

They find the Ark, but are then immediately taken prisoner. The Priors torture them, and Space Jesus and her Space Pope get to dialog menacingly. At this point, Merlin's old foe Morgan La Fey shows up. It turns out she's been posing as Merlin ever since he died for real to help them along. She's come to realize that Merlin was right to want to fight the Ori, but for helping them the other Ancients exiled her. Despite the fact that we mortals did them a big favor by killing off the Ori. The smart guy on the team implores her to help them directly and damn the rules, since it's the right thing to do. She agrees, but Space Jesus has all the power of all the previous Ori. She'd wipe the floor with Morgan. It's up to Our Heroes to crack open the Ark and show the truth to just one Prior. They're all linked, so when that happens every Prior in the galaxy will get the message. This apparently breaks the connection between the Ori and their worshippers.

Then we have our grand, final confrontations and they're excellent. Stargate has always been pretty good at building up the tension for the last five minutes, and this is no exception. Space Jesus's mother distracts her and the Space Pope while the smart guy figures out how to turn on the Ark. It gets cracked open right in Space Pope's face and he's bathed in a white light. Space Jesus claims she still has enough power to burn them all, and presumably given time she can rebuild. The Ori don't seem to have too much trouble making new Priors out of willing hosts.

At this point, Morgan steps in and they have a brief but intense CGI fight. I'm not really doing it justice, but it's an incredible finale and for a fantasy series it comes out with a decent moral too. This is the only time the series has ever succeeded in articulating the good Ancients' reasons for how they believed in a way the audience could buy, but they must have been saving up because it's a rousing success. It amounts to a reason bomb going off and destroying the gods in one stroke. It's even uplifting. Voltaire would be proud.

There are a few clinkers along the way. I'm not sure the Replicator subplot was really worth it. It seems more like an excuse to have some space battles, but the tension is good. I can believe the team's bosses would think of something like that, but it adds more flash than substance. I could have gone for more ascend being telekinesis fights myself, or more speeches about reason and evidence, but it's still a thorough success at what it's trying to do. It's a worth end for the plot that took up two years of shows, and done well enough that it doesn't feel like a long episode or something meant to be cut into several.