Beneath The Surface, Lies The Future

Those were the words spoken for the opening credits of early 90's show, seaQuest DSV. It was touted by some viewers are the underwater equivalent of Star Trek during the airing of Star Trek: The Next Generation. seaQuest DSV was under executive producer Steven Spielburg for the 1st season though he bailed out after that.

The reason I talked about this show was that I just recently acquired the Season 1 DVD collection of this series. It may me remember another similiar show from an earlier era, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, a show aired in the 60's. I happened to catch a few episodes on Sci-Fi channel before while I was in the US back in 2001 to 2002. Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea was also producer to other shows of that time like Time Tunnel, Land of Giants and Lost In Space.

The show's premise was about the adventures of a super submarine funded and created by the UEO, or to be more thorough United Earth Oceans Organization, a new worldwide organizationm which replaced the United Nations by the year 2018. The chief designer and subsequent captain of this fantastic vessel is Captain Nathan Bridger played by Roy Scheider of Jaws fame.

The seaQuest is actually labelled a Deep Submergence Vessel or DSV in short. Its a massive 1000 ft long vessel which happens to be crewed and staffed by a mix of military and scientific personnel since the seaQuest doubles as both a mobile research platform and a peacekeeper of the seas given its array of weaponry at its disposal.

In spite its futurist presentation of the future, the show lasted for 3 seasons total. Reasons for its demise or the idiomatically termed "Jumping The Shark" was caused by a number of reasons which range from lack of support by Spielberg, casting problems, to changes in story direction which started from believable to ludicrous.

The show was pretty much a high inspiration item for regards to the exploration of the Earth's oceans as Star Trek did for space exploration. Regards, such shows fuel the imagination and inspiration for people to explore the world around them. The spiritual successor to seaQuest DSV is this website which I feature in an old post before.