seaQuest: Better than Martians

Originally aired: January 2, 1994

We open on a montage of doctored stock footage of 50s-era rockets launching and red-tinted footage from the Apollo missions to the Moon. I understand what they're trying to do, but it's such a transparent copy and paste job that they just don't pull it off at all. It turns out this is a news broadcast from Earthcast News. The guest star voiceovers about how his mission was to map the Martian polar ice and how some people said it was a waste of money that could have been better spent elsewhere. I hear you, guest star. Mapping the Martian poles could be done by satellite. In fact, we sent one to do it. The extra expense of sending humans and safely returning them is very questionable. Guest star voiceovers that these people have a point. Thank you, guest star.

Then he says it's ok because it's a PR event. Not really, he says it's an inspiration to a generation of explorers to spend three years of their lives with three other people in a tiny man-can in space. One wonders how they passed the time. But he means it's a PR event. I don't necessarily object to heightening the profile of science or that sort of thing, but four hundred billion dollars? Granted that's 1993 money. Given our current situation, by 2019 that will only buy a homeless kid a cheeseburger with no cheese or meat.

We pan off the screen to show everyone on the bridge, or every extra they could cram in there plus O'Neil and Ortiz. Everyone is gaping at the broadcast like they've never seen the news before, or they're about to see the first steps on Mars at least. We know they're not, since it's clear from the broadcast that the "Martian" footage is all a year or two old. So why do we care? Why do they care? I don't think a lot of people would still be awestruck by the Moon landing footage in 1972, and isn't that about what we're talking about here? Crocker wanders in and tries to say something, probably about Texas, to Ortiz. Nobody is moving.

We cut to somewhere on the lower decks where the science contingent is doing the same thing. Or rather a much smaller group of extras is. Lucas wanders up in a grayish jersey and checks out the chest of a blonde extra that looks older than Hitchcock, and not in a good way. Then again, how long has Lucas been stuck under water? At some point, anything with breasts must start to look good. If he ogles Crocker in the finale, I'll give the writers credit for thinking of this.

Krieg comes up and sticks a finger under Lucas's chin, pulling it towards the news because...why? And isn't that the most insulting way possible to redirect somebody's attention? Jonathan Brandis's chin comes to an extremely fine point and Krieg could have cut his finger off, but that's beside the point. I can believe him being this condescending, but for Lucas to just take it is a bit much. Did he learn his lesson about standing up for himself last episode or not?

Krieg loses interest and Lucas's eyes go right back to the jumpsuit stuffers on that woman pushing forty. That's not really fair. She's probably twenty-five, but by Hollywood casting standards she's downright homely.

We cut again, to the Ward Room. Ford is punching things into his laptop-like thing as if it were an adding machine. The camera pans across a pile of folders and crap to Hitchcock, who is spellbound by the TV. Ford looks up at the TV and becomes intensely interested himself because TVs in 2019 must include photon-administered cocaine or something to get that level of fascination out of so many people at once.

Water outside. CGI Darwin is clicking and swimming. Stock footage of a reef. We pan over to cgi divers as Bridger and Westphalen voice over. Nathan is all into the reef. Look at that reef! The growth is incredible! It's like they rammed a huge hand full of reef viagra into its throat and we're not going to invent that until next season after we fight the giant crocodile! OMFG! LOL!

Westphalen wants to go back in. She says Nathan only wants to stay out to avoid something. Nathan agrees and gives up on it.

Moon Pool. When are we going to hit the credits? The redshirts are all mooning over the news broadcast still, even though it's only showing a news ticker in Times Square or somewhere. Westphalen comes up in her pink wetsuit. No pink was visible on the cgi divers, who were mostly flippers with leg-shaped tinting. Nathan comes up and he's wearing the standard seaQuest blue-on-black wetsuit that we have previously only seen on Lucas back when he wanted to go to the Library of Alexandria. The ratings were terrible this season. Did they throw more money at the show in hopes of it helping, or is that the same wetsuit Lucas was in? Brandis and Scheider did look to be the same height, and Lucas never zipped fully up so we could tell if it was big on him. Do all the men of seaQuest have to wear that one wetsuit? Do they draw lots to see who gets in pink if two guys have to go out at once? And wouldn't that get nasty? I mean, I understand that people usually wear something under a wetsuit at least to cover the sex organs but a whole crew of two hundred in one wetsuit? The back of the season two box has the whole cast in no less than three visibly different cuts of wetsuit. I guess when the UEO rebuilt the boat they figured that one suit was getting pretty skanky.

Westphalen mentions that the astronaut is apparently a friend of Nathan's. She's afraid that renewed interest in space travel will slash their budget. They'll trade living reefs for a few alien rocks. Nathan says the pendulum will swing back eventually. Bridger phones O'Neil and suggests that they listen in on "his old friend Scott". O'Neil hops to it because everyone wants to get in on the dirty calls Scott is making to his wife on the ground right now.

Breaking into the secure channel takes O'Neil exactly two keystrokes to accomplish. Would that even be on the UEO network? Is there no concern that their tap could be putting static on the channel? Or is Bridger trying to cut off contact with the capsule as it glows red across a generic shot of the ocean from space in hopes that NASA will lose track of Scott and he'll drown alone in the sea, saving Bridger's budget? You decide.

Space capsule. Scott is talking about coordinates and I don't care. The capsule is pretty spacious, with a domed ceiling, two floors, several vertical panels with red lights cycling inside, control panels, and at the bottom are a couple of people in quad seats. There's a Chinese woman (perceptive) a woman in a bowl cut who I think is supposed to be European or Russian or something, and Scott who is American by gum.

The technobabble ratchets up and the camera tilts as things go wrong. In the Moon Pool, Lucas looks concerned. Then Scott proclaims to Houston that they are toppling. They technobabble in emergency mode. Nathan tells Scott to get his act together. Cut to cgi capsule way too small to fit all that stuff inside it. Mission control loses contact. Concerned faces all around on the ship. The feed cuts out and the news is back in time for the reporter to declare everything to be going A-OK. Bridger purses his lips.

Credits. The cheesy curtain of bubbles before Scheider's headshot is less than impressive. I just noticed that right before Westphalen's card, we have a shot of one of the more phallic launches entering the seaQuest. Coincidence? You be the judge, Gentle Reader.

A newscaster is telling us about the tragedy. Noyce is on the phone. Welcome back, Admiral Noyce. Kidnapped anyone lately? Noyce is explaining that Scott got some control back about thirty miles up, but they crashed in the Andaman Sea off the coast of Burma. Bridger says this is ten hours away. Why can't Noyce send some jet helicopters? Does he mean a gyrodyne? Noyce points out that since the capsule hit at six times the safe speed, it isn't exactly bobbing around. Bridger did not think that his submarine might be sent after a submerged space capsule? Noyce expositions that we have some hope because a buoy went up from the capsule ten minutes ago. It can only be turned on manually, so someone had to be alive to turn it on. It's also tethered to the capsule by a wire, so when Lucas, Ford, Westphalen, and Krieg are all marooned in a hurricane they can find it and nearly get electrocuted, but Crocker will bust out his sea shanties and everything will be fine.

Noyce says they have no recovery assets in the area and I know what he means, but isn't the entire purpose of his call to send seaQuest to do the recovery because it is in the area? Was he just phoning to discuss his latest bedroom conquest with Bridger? You see I had her legs up and spread wide and then rattlesnakes started coming out! My god, it was the most horrific thing I had ever seen. It was sickening. She must have had a thousand of them. Hitchcock chimes in that it was more like ten, and Noyce is a total girl for freaking like he did.

Bridger sends Hitchcock and Ford to prepare to chart a course to get there and save the drowning astronauts. The first step is to close all shops in the mall and the three-ring circus. Noyce stays on the line and warns Bridger that he shall be entering Montagnard territory and he should go on military alert. I don't know how to spell that exactly. It's French for "mountain people" I think. Nathan wants to know why, and Noyce pans his camera around the Oval office to show the president, who I think is the same guy who played X in the X-Files. The mean one that threatened to shoot Mulder but then carried his ass out of an exploding train car. Skinner beat him up.

President X explains that there's a war going on over mineral rights and this is now a military rescue. This means seaQuest has been loaned to the US for a while. The president points out that it was our tax dollars that built it in the first place, and everybody on board except for Westphalen is obviously an American, but that is no concern for an international peacekeeping organization and its flagship. Why wouldn't an international ship have an entirely American crew, armed with nuclear weapons and called upon to be totally impartial? I can't see any problem with that at all. The president tells Bridger to do things his way.

Aerial shot of "Southeast Asian Penninsula" which looks suspiciously like a retouched pine forest. We cut to the Montagnard Confederation Presidential Villa, which is a Buddhist temple with a reflecting pool. Probably from Hawaii. A convenient storm lets them fog it up and make the shot a bit murky to hide the fact. Some doors open and the Montagnard president is speaking in precise, Oxford English. He says he's given the president (X, I guess) his assurances. Jabber that's probably one guy on the crew who speaks Chinese, erupts momentarily as a bunch of junior officers leave the president alone with a guy that looks just a little bit like Pat Morita. He's dressed in a Soviet army tunic to let us know he's a bad guy.

Tranh, our general, tells the president he just doesn't trust the United States. But the president says it's a new world. Tranh does not trust the Americans because they tend to stick around and make colonial projects. The president things he's paranoid and would loke to beat seaQuest to the capsule as a PR coup.

WHSKRs fly over seaQuest. On the Bridge Hitchcock and Ford are showing Bridger the map. Westphalen is looking on wearing a fairly big perm. She must have done this since she got out of the water. Where does she find the time? Bridger orders her to quarantine the Mars rocks in case they have any crazy viruses on them or turn out to glow and thus be worth billions to Krieg, who Bridger calls over. Nathan puts him in charge of the rescue and goes over to chat with Ortiz and O'Neil. Then he chats with Darwin. Then Bridger tells Crocker they're on military alert.

The soundtrack cues up a riff of the theme and we montage. O'Neil is holding a book on Vietnamese. Crocker checkes out the armed guards. The montage ends when O'Neil gets the Wayfarer. This is the name of the capsule. Scott is claiming he knows someone is listening as the CGI capsule drifts along. Bridger phones and says that their signal sounds like they're under water. Really? You think? Gee, Bridger, did you think that in going to save a submerged capsule you might actually find it submerged?

Inside the Wayfarer, Scott is helping the Asian woman with the bandage on her head.

"You have a very familiar voice," Scott husks over the radio.
"Nathan Bridger, Scott," Nathan husks back to him. He's almost drooling down O'Neil's neck.

Nathan and Scott trash talk each other and their ships while the situation is explained to those of us who just came in. He's about to put some of his people on when Scott asks about their security clearances. Everyone's cleared except for Lucas and he'll find out anyway even if he's down in the Moon Pool. Bridger asks about signs of life. Yes.

Moon Pool. Lucas is still in his gray jersey and dark turtleneck. So Westphalen's day was diving with Nathan, expositioning, finding out about an emergency, perming her hair, and then going to tend to the emergency rescue preparations? Nice, Kristin.

Lucas is playing with the vocorder and Darwin. He explains Mars to Darwin. Bridger walks in. He observes that Mars is "about a hundred trillion dollars away." Westphalen finds this extremely funny. She and Nathan reminisce about him lobbying Congress for seaQuest funding. That was the night they got the call that his son was dead.

Westphalen pulls up a slide on the big screen and expositions about this being what Scott found. She says it's a prehistoric snail and proves Mars had water back in the old days. You know, I'd say that if an exact fossilized earth species were found on Mars it would say a hell of a lot more than that.

The ship shakes and Ford orders it to back up. They've come up on a minefield. It's brand new. So Hitchcock wants to send out divers to clear a path. That would take time. So would going around, which is Ford's idea. Bridger wants to make sacrifices, starting with Krieg and the WHSKRs. Ortiz is upset about his toys, but Bridger promises new ones later.

Scott on the phone. He's saying they're still slowly sinking and they can't abandon ship because the Russian can't be moved. Also, they haven't felt gravity in three years. Westphalen whispers in Bridger's ear that this means their muscles have atrophied. He can't relate until she explains that this is the same reason he needs Viagra or the smell of one of Lucas's jerseys. Bridger promises to drive faster while Westphalen gets on the horn to discuss their condition and tell them what to do.

Ok, Bridger's plan is just to fire WHSKRs at the minefield. Because the ship has what, three? And there are only three mines? Or the minelayer was so dumb that the field got set up so exploding one mine wipes out half the thing? But Ford announces their through, with no toys left. Bridger asks Ortiz how he's holding up. Ortiz hams it up about how they died a good death and his entire job was to run them, so he's on leave until they get back to Pearl. He's going to spend some time in the Moon Pool snorting a ground mix of fish food and cocaine off a dolphin's ass.

Bridger: "Oh, the Nathan Bridger Memorial dolphin coke binge!"
Oritz: "You're familiar with it?"
Rest of the crew, in unison; "We're familiar with it."

Darwin squeals and Lucas laughs this too-loud laugh as he falls into the water.

Bridger makes a plan. The ship shall dive into a trench to get off the map and Hitchcock and Crocker, plus no more than five and no less than three rattlesnakes shall take a launch trailing two hundred feet of those reflective streamers they got for Ford's birthday party. The ones with the pink unicorns and topless women. They're a decoy and are encouraged to skirt the border constantly while seaQuest sneaks away. Eventually they will be caught and killed, but in season two no one will remember them.

He goes over to O'Neil, who is speaking what might be Chinese. Actually it sounds more like random words of French and Spanish with a few chao-chings thrown in. The president would rather yell at X. Bridger suggests that they cut out the middleman and speak directly.

Wayfarer. It's about knee-deep in water. Scott is arguing with Bridger over the phone about the length of their ships. Or the size of their budgets. Scott has the bigger budget, but Nathan says it's all about how you use it and some women, er, governments, prefer a shorter man. Nathan is playing with his nuclear launch key. They get into a fight about little critters. "Four hundred billion dollars for a snail!"

Launch. Hitchcock is on the phone telling Ford that nine ships are on their tail. Crocker says his father fought alongside the Montagnards in Vietnam.

Bridge. They have found the buoy, but without Ortiz's toys they can't pinpoint the capsule. It's thirty miles out still. Bridger orders the rescue launch, er, launched. The same cgi we always see of a launch leaving seaQuest goes out. Launch. Extras in the seaQuest wetsuits, the real ones, are fiddling with something while Krieg is geeking about talking to the astronauts.

"They lived on Mars for a month."
"We live down here for longer than that," Westphalen points out. Her hair is growing larger by the minute. She smarts about comparing hurdling through space in a closet with building a livable habitat underwater. One with free pizza and lots of games. Many kids live there. Wait, that's the bad place that Lucas had to leave last episode. Then she admits she sees her funding vanishing.

Krieg suggests messing with the snail samples, which Westphalen thought was a funny goof.

Ortiz spots a sub coming in. It's putting out a lot of noise. They know where it is, but not who it is. Bridger orders it targeted.

Presidential Villa. Tranh is complaining about seaQuest beating the guys who love next door to the capsule. He mentions that the sub is targeted. The president says it's over and they'll support seaQuest any way they can. Bridger tells Ford that he did a nice job, making the president cave like that. Even though neither one of them knows it. They just know the sub turned around.

Krieg phones that they have trouble. The signal buoy wasn't attached. Scott flips out and wants to know where the hell seaQuest is. Nathan helpfully tells him they're in the wrong place. Meanwhile, Hitchcock and Crocker are getting shot at. Lights flash over their faces.

Nathan is explaining to Scott over the phone about how wires can break, but they're locked on to Wayfarer's radio now. Then he starts insulting the ocean. The other launch is down, no signal. Bridger tells the UEO to send out choppers. Then he suggests Ford melt the drive train and burn down the engine room. That's a good way to get to the capsule.

President X is on the phone and wants to know wh Bridger hasn't delivered. Noyce is defending Bridger, but the president doesn't care. X wants to know why Bridger was pulling stunts with decoys. Bridger floats a trial balloon about not getting his crew killed. Small detail. X thinks Bridger threw the rescue on purpose. Lucas cuts in to express his indignation at this.

X thought that was a secure channel. From now on he only meets in the Watergate parking garage. Noyce introduces him to X. Bridger tells him to buzz off and offers to pretend the question was not asked. X lets him go.

Ford is being pensive. This is not how he is supposed to be. He's supposed to be the gung-ho three year old military guy. This is how he was pretending to be in the pilot. Bridger asks if he thinks Bridger is subconsciously undermining the mission.

Ford: "You doubt yourself because others do, because you do."
Bridger: "I know I'm not perfect and today it really worries me."

Ford says if Bridger had really left his friend to die, he wouldn't be asking these questions. That dialog actually made sense.

Bridge. Ortiz and Nathan are looking at the Montagnard anti-sub ships dead ahead, and the submarine also ahead. They figure out that the sub is Montagnard.

Ward room. O'Neil gets the Montagnard president on the phone. Nathan apologizes for their aggressive posture provoking people, and the decoy scheme. Nathan floats the sub laying mines. President M floats an apology, but Nathan says the astronauts aren't safe yet and he needs to go into their waters to get them back. Why is this tense? We have no reason to take the Montagnard's seriously. Even when speaking for themselves their concerns are petty.

President M brings out Crocker and Hitchcock. They'll be his guests until they're sent for. Tranh comes up and explains that the mines and so forth were the only way to slow the ship down. M says Tranh does not make policy. So this is a rogue operation? The writers are really good at undermining their own aims. It turns out the sub is closer than seaQuest. They could still have their PR coup. He orders no more interference, though.

A torpedo interrupts Westphalen's talk with Scott about the ways they can die. Nathan refuses to turn around, but will launch countermeasures. Ortiz, who could not track a capsule earlier, now can track torpedoes. The CGI countermeasures take out one torpedo but not the other, and seaQuest dives out of the way in CGI. One more torpedo an this one takes a fin off the end of the ship. They lost a rudder and propulsion. Who shot? Tranh's sub? Now they're slowed down.

Bridger walks out of the Bridge and sits down on the steps. He phones Scott. They're going to get into their spacesuits and he will not be able to talk. Scott is telling him not to blame himself. By the way, his daughter had a baby. Scott asks Nathan to meddle in his granddaughter's life. Then he says he chose space because he knew it would be the only way to get above Nathan. Lame. He puts on his helmet. Bridger tongues his headset.

Hyper-Reality Probe. Bridger is driving it. Westphalen is on the launch complaining about them being past the point of oxygen toxicity. The astronauts are already dead. The probe reaches the capsule. Bridger spots an oddity. The compartment with the Mars rocks is missing. They start speculating and he's mad because he still thinks people might be alive inside. The probe pans around the capsule. Turns out the Wayfarers blew the hatch and tried to swim for the surface. Bridger throws down his gloves and furrows. Scheider is the only guy selling this scene. Everyone else is just monotone.

CGI of seaQuest with the capsule hanging from it. He reports to X that no bodies have been found. The whole cast is in the ward room with him. I'm sure Lucas is the person X most wants to see. X is after the rocks. They discuss ways to find the rocks, and Lucas says something about ultra-mafic rock. X says they're busy and he doesn't care, but Bridger wants to hear what Lucas has to say to redeem himself to the guy who beat up Skinner.

Turns out the Wayfarers took samples form Olympus Mons. It's bound to be highly magnetic, and they have instruments to find that. X is on board and they break off to make it so, with Westphalen calling Lucas smarty-pants. Ford makes sure Bridger is ok.

Cut to the surface, a jungle. A jeep pulls up and Scott gets out. Of course. Even though they weren't anywhere near fit enough to swim to the surface at half that depth earlier in the episode. Scott greets President M. M asks to be included in Scott's book. Tranh wants to hold off on telling the world they have the Wayfarers. He's going to take them to a hospital, cover the bases. M is a sucker.

Tranh asks about the core samples. Scott plays dumb. One of the guards on the other Wayfarers pulls a gun. Turns out Tranh is going to extract a finder's fee for the rocks. Seven figures. Maybe eight. Scott confesses to jettisoning the container when he saw the sub was not seaQuest.

Moon Pool. They're getting Darwin into his SCUBA gear. All the men are in the standard seaQuest wetsuit now. Bridger is wearing some kind of turtleneck that sticks out of the top of the wetsuit. It's in a matching blue. Westphalen is in her pink suit again. If all the science people had pink wetsuits that would be fine, but it's just cheesy that she is the only one. She and Nathan chat about Scott for a bit and then he and Darwin get going.

Underwater. This looks like a real underwater shot. It's very cramped and dark. They're probably in a swimming pool with the lights turned off. Westphalen, in her pink, and Ford are visible. They're holding the big, plastic container that survived reentry. Movement is spotted. It's divers, imagine. They have harpoons. Bridger suggests not provoking them. The new divers arrive speaking Chineseish and for some reason the camera watches Darwin swim by. Darwin pushes one away and distracts the rest long enough for Ford and his goons to...move over and ask that they come quietly? There's no fight. No tension.

Scott thinks Tranh is going to kill them. Tranh is on about the how treacherous the road to the hospital is. Guns are cocked. Lots of them. Tranh jumps. All the guns are pointed at him, and here's President M suggesting it would be better if he drove the Wayfarers to the hospital. M shames Tranh about trying to shame a half billion people for his personal profit. M offers his apologies to Scott and hands him over to Hitchcock and Crocker. Poor bastard. They'll probably eat him on the way home.

In the ward room, M phones to apologize to Bridger. Bridger wants M to host the press conference.

CGI of seaQuest. In the quarantine chamber is a huge snail shell. Scott is in a wheelchair joking around with Bridger about getting Westphalen into space. Bridger introduces Darwin. Top secret project. Right.

This could have been two different episodes. It could have been a rescue, where seaQuest is racing against time to save the victims of the week. You can build tension in those. It's a stock plot and you know they'll be rescued, but it could make for some drama. They didn't pull it off.

This could have been a political episode where there's a real risk of war in antagonizing the Montagnards. But their threat is not built up at all. There's no visible international tension. No need to fear them or what might happen. They could have done that and still made Tranh an interesting subplot, but they did not and he's just a slimy profiteer. The synopsis says that seaQuest's opposition is a drug syndicate battling the local government. Is that what Tranh was supposed to be about? That could have made a half-decent show, but must have vanished in the cutting room floor.

This is just a pure fizzle. It needs tension to work and tension is never built up. We don't know or care about the astronauts or their Mars rocks, which aren't exactly a missing nuclear weapon or whatever. They're important to scientists, but not earth-shattering in the context of the show. We don't know the Montagnards. We don't have any reason at all to be concerned about the ship being loaned back to the Americans. Any of those could have been built into a real plot, or even a whole arc. But instead they're just trifles thrown in to make time. No need to watch this one again.

DS9 is on. It's the one where the crew has a baseball game with the vulcans. Sisko was kind of a psycho about baseball, you know.