Script, Brave New World (301), Treatment

It is that time again for the seaQuest MPS Blog, with this week focused on the scripting development of the third season opener, Brave New World.  Quite soon after they learned that the show had been renewed, the writers would start to outline a few episodes for the next season.  They put together treatments, a couple of pages per episode that describe the major plot points and help sell the ideas of the episode.  I have them for Season Premiere (Brave New World),  Kingdoms of Fire and Ice (In the Company of Ice and Profit), The Tunnel Project (Destination Terminal), Second Chance (Second Chance), Flowers for Dagwood (Unmade), Reunion (Reunion), Outbreak (Equilibrium).  Although the episode treatments I have for the third season are undated, based on the timing of the longer beat sheet and first draft script for Brave New World, I imagine these treatments come from May or early June 1995.

The three-page, and creatively titled, Season Premiere treatment has some interesting differences from the final episode: Hudson is Captain Oliver Hollenbeck, Bourne is Commander Alexander Bourne-Burundie, the Spector sub-fighters are Lysander-class SSKN-9, and the Macronesian Alliance is the New Southern Alliance, oh and the year is 2028.  Missing for six years seems to make more sense than missing for ten years.  I never did buy the whole, we have been missing for ten years and our already a few years old sub is still able to compete with newer models.

The basic pattern of the episode is there in this treatment, opening with an underwater battle, the Alliances is about to get control of the Pacific, Hollenbeck strongly interrogates Lucas, seaQuest personnel appear in strange places with no memory, seaQuest is in a cornfield, they get her back in the water, the Alliances moves to take Nexus, Lucas finds Bridger, and Bridger, Hudson, and the seaQuest free Nexus.  There are certain parts of the story missing, e.g., no grandson for Bridger, no swimtube entry into the Nexus colony.  The treatment specifically notes the deaths of Smith and Ortiz on Hyberion.  It also suggests that the Alliance got rich from mining and aquaculture, no mention of weapons like subduction and particle liquefaction.  Instead, the Alliance and Bourne-Burundie became "the voice of a new Southern Hemisphere, tired of living by Northern Hemisphere's law," reading more like political-economic-ideological expansion, rather than the more military-driven imperial expansion seen in the final episode.

First page of the three page treatment for Season Premiere (Brave New World) 

Next Time on the seaQuest MPS Blog: June 13, 1995 Beat Sheet for Brave New World.