The only one that stood out was Episode 4, entitled "Games," which managed to deliver sharp suspense for most of its duration, still unfortunately marred by a cheesy climax, which became a staple of the series. Looking back at the first season's 23 episodes, I wouldn't say they're awful in fact, I found most of them just plain and mediocre. The show was also clearly intended for a family audience, hence the mostly light tone and lack of any material that might come across as potentially offensive this must almost be entirely attributed to Spielberg's presence, as I cannot imagine Rockne S. Seemingly 3/4's of the episodes attempt to deliver an important "lesson," but this tends to come off as self-consciously heavy-handed and corny. Unfortunately, Seaquest is cluttered with too much vanilla-bland writing and cheesy dialogue. This would all be perfectly forgivable if the show actually delivered on its fantastic premise. From the start, Seaquest was clearly aping ST: TNG, what with the UEO/Federation parallels, the captain/ship's doctor romance, and the brilliant but annoying teenager who served no other purpose than to draw in a younger demographic (even though Jonathan Brandis, RIP, was a better actor than Wil Wheaton, I still found Lucas far more irritating than Wesley Crusher). But the series never came together like it should have. I also liked John Debney's main theme, which is actually kind of catchy. The series even occasionally delivered its share of high adventure and mild suspense. The f/x and sets, very "90s" in look and style, were quite impressive for its time and are still passable enough today that they don't often distract the viewer. Scheider, as always, does a great job of playing the fatherly authority figure/everyman role that I'm sure he's grown used to. Certainly, there's a handful of bright spots to be expected. Watching season 1 again, it's a bit tougher to imagine why I was so fond of this show in the first place. With all these ingredients, I just knew this was going to be a sci-fi classic and given how undemanding a sci-fi fan I was back then, this show won me over from the start. Seaquest caught my attention for three particular reasons: the premise of an undersea world was immensely appealing, the series was being executive produced by none other than Steven Spielberg, and the star of the show was one of my favorite actors, Roy Scheider. Yep, those were the days, back when I found myself glued to the television, eagerly watching and awaiting the newest episodes of shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, The X-Files, Earth 2, Sliders, The Outer Limits, and NBC's Seaquest DSV. I was a bit of a sci-fi nut growing up, so you can imagine the joy I experienced when sci-fi on the small screen made a strong resurgence in the early to mid 90s.
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