Prop, UEO Hat, Daggers (201), The Fear that Follows (202)

Good morning from the seaQuest MPS blog.  Yet more hats here on sQ MPS, with a UEO hat featured in numerous episodes.  I only grabbed images from the first two second season episodes, Daggers and The Fear that Follows, but anytime there were UEO soldiers in the background, chances are some of them were wearing this type of hat.  I have commented on Daggers before when I posted an early script, but as for The Fear that Follows, talk about a mix of things that just do not come together.  Yea, the aliens from Such Great Patience, but they seem different.  They are no-longer exploring, but looking for the beginnings of life (?), because they are dying (?), and they think the beginnings of life might help them with their death (?).  Oh, and lets throw in some Native American mysticism, because that will be cool.  Even though the season one episode made it clear the aliens had made it here a million years ago, somehow they also returned and chatted with Indians who were around in the last thousand years.  Also, lets arrest Darwin, that would be a good way to open the episode.  Oh, and lets make everyone forget what happened with a little time travel.  Seriously, too many half-baked ideas.

The UEO hats on the show were simply a black military-style hat with a UEO patch sown on.

As seen in Daggers, with UEO 'soldiers' wearing the hat while guarding the GELFs.  I use soldiers in quotes, because of the second season's lax attitude to military protocol.  Seriously, you are prison guards and you are playing video games?   A great seaQuest drinking game, when the UEO or seaQuest military personnel act like they are not in the military; no salutes, no standing to attention, lax uniforms, etc.  At least they got that right in the third season.

Below the jump, a few more shots of the hat and people wearing this hat style in the show

Director's Set Kit Sketch, Playtime (205)

Up today on the seaQuest MPS Blog is a Director's Set Kit Sketch from the second season's Playtime.  I do not own this piece, but found the image somewhere online.  I do not remember where it came from right now, so if it belongs to you, say something and I will give credit, link to your site, etc.

Playtime was another acceptable, not too good but not too bad second season episode.  It does feature one of the common issues with the second season, which is that the show is called seaQuest, but most of the action in this one takes place on land.  In the episode, the seaQuest receives a child's voice message asking for help and is sucked into the future.  In that future, there are only two people left, because of an epidemic and the fact that everyone started relying on computers.  The computer that controlled everything was Centsys, which was the thing that brought the crew to the future.  The computer wanted the seaQuest crew to destroy it, so that the remaining couple would have to work together, rather than just playing computer games.  Video games that feature giant robots that fight each other through the abandoned cities.  Of course, there is no discussion about the genetic problems of this Adam and Eve situation.

Director's Set Kit Sketch of the Centsys computer terminal with a VR video game chair on the bottom left.

And here is how it was realized in the episode

This comparison shows that it was pretty close between what the set designers gave the director to plan out their shots and what was finally realized on set.

Below the jump, a few more shots from the episode.

Script, Sympathy for the Deep, August 16, 1994 (203)

Good morning from the seaQuest MPS Blog with today's entry featuring the first blue revision of the second season's Sympathy for the Deep.  This was one of those second season episodes that were just about acceptable, but nothing close to special.  It was about an underwater colony where the people suddenly go crazy.  Come to find out, scientist Shelton had invented a devise to remove all the negative feelings from people, and now that evil is somehow a sentient being releasing waves of evilness.  Unlike many second season episodes, much of this one actually takes place underwater, but it is just not deep in characterization or writing.

Here is the blue revision of Sympathy for the Deep.  Although this was the third episode shown in the second season, it has the first production number.  One of the ways you can tell these early season two episodes are how little Henderson was in the show.  This is because she was one of the last characters added in the second season.  An interview with Kathy Evison confirms this, where she noted "They wrote me in almost as an afterthought to introduce another woman into the show. Since the first few scripts were written before my character even existed, that's the main reason why I just had an 'Aye, aye, Sir! ' here and there in early episodes."

Sympathy for the Deep does feature a complicated machine making half a cup of coffee.  Coffee was really expensive in the seaQuest universe, not only do you only get half a cup, but no free refills either.

Below the jump, a couple more pages from the script, featuring a change of scenery, a deleted piece of technology, and comparison to images from the actual episode.

Storyboard, Dream Weaver (215)

Greetings again from the seaQuest MPS blog, and today is a storyboard from the second season episode Dream Weaver.  This is a storyboard by Mark Simon, whose book I mentioned yesterday.  It covers the scene where Dagwood first finds Ortiz hiding from the alien, then smells the alien, he and the alien growl at each other and fight, before the alien gets shot multiple times and just wanders away.

In sum, Dream Weaver was a rip off homage to movies like Predator.  In the episode, special guest star Mark Hamill is an alien refugee who is being hunted by a predator-like alien whose embryo pod, for some reason, attaches to seaQuest.  What follows are lots of dark corridors and hunting, with a few jumps, fights, and laser blasts.  Not bad, not great, very middle of the road.

Below the jump, higher resolution photos of the storyboard and some comparisons to the shots in the finished episode.

Storyboards, Mark Simon's Storyboards: Motion in Art

A short post today on the seaQuest MPS blog.

Yesterday I posted a page from the pink revision of the Daggers script.  This script featured a deleted sequence with Brody being chased through the prison colony and diving into a tunnel with an escape pod.

What is really cool is that Mark Simon's Storyboards: Motion in Art includes numerous storyboards and production drawings from seaQuest, including the a sketch of the above-discussed deleted tunnel.

I encourage you to pick up Simon's book.  It is one of the few recently published books to have anything about seaQuest in it.


Next Time on the seaQuest MPS Blog: A framed storyboard from Dreamweaver.

Script, Daggers, July 10, 1994 (201)

Today on the seaQuest MPS Blog is an early script revision of the second season premiere episode Daggers.  Daggers seems like a placeholder title to me.  "Well, it is about the daggers revolt, so lets call it Daggers until we come up with a better title...ahhh the titles are not onscreen, so who cares."  Not to mention the "credits to be determined," which becomes Jonathan Falls.  This has to be a pseudonym, because I can find nothing else by Jonathan Falls on IMDB or elsewhere online.  Perhaps this means that the episode was a team effort of the entire seaQuest writing staff, or perhaps whoever wrote it was displeased with how the episode turned out and wanted to Smithee it.

Scripts for seaQuest used the standard color revision system, so after the writer's draft, you had white pages, pink pages, and then blue, yellow, and green, before starting again with second white, and so on.  This is a pink revision from July 10, 1994, suggesting it is still early in the process.  The episode was shown on TV on September 18, 1994, so there was only a couple of months between scripting and the finish product.  The quick turnaround always impresses me with TV production in comparison to movies.

What is a dagger you ask...

Yep, this is the introduction of Dagwood and the other Daggers, or GELFs.  In fact, Daggers is essentially a second pilot for seaQuest, now being shot in Florida, and introducing new characters, a new science fiction focus, and even a new ship, the seaQuest II.  Several of the new characters are interesting, if drawn on standard tropes and written broadly two-dimensional for much of the season.  And yes, there were some really terrible episodes in the second seasons, but Daggers was not too bad.  It had some story issues...the super-duper military sub that the GELFs steal that only has a couple of rounds of torpedoes.  Seriously, rather than think of a good way to end the showdown between the seaQuest and the GELF's sub, or perhaps have both ships actually battling it out with torpedoes and explosions on your Sunday night action-adventure series, the writers get out of the situation by having the daggers run out of torpedoes and seaQuest using nothing but intercepts.  The episode also spends too long on the underwater shenanigans with the GELFs invading UEO headquarters.  Yes, we see you are filming underwater and have little personal sub toys, but get on with it.

The new bridge set, however, was very cool...

Below the jump is another page from the script showing a deleted sequence and a pictorial comparison to the final sequence in the episode.

For Your Consideration Video/VHS, Splashdown (221)

Next up on the seaQuest MPS blog is the first of my "For Your Consideration" videos.  Back in the days before Blu-Ray, DVD, and digital download there was this big boxy thing called VHS.  The idea of being able to buy an entire season was still a dream, with perhaps two episodes per tape if the show was even released at all.  The UK and some other European countries got commercial video releases of seaQuest, the US did not.  With videos, the picture was not great and the sound could be spotty, but they were perhaps a little better quality than old cable TV reception.  In fact, where I lived experienced a massive thunderstorm when Splashdown first aired, rendering the picture and sound a snowy and hissy mess.  Yes, you might say not being able to watch this particular episode was an improvement....talk about going off the deep end, if the deep end was kidnapped and forced to fight on another planet involving a huge amount of people you never see on screen because the extras budget had already been used up that season.  Contrary to what some might say, there were some decent episodes in seaQuest's second season, but Splashdown was not a highlight.

You don't remember Splashdown, it was the episode were the seaQuest was stolen by a flying saucer...

 

 To fight in a civil war because the aliens did not have advanced underwater technology...

But wait, they have mines, and there goes the seaQuest DSV 4600 II...

Not that anyone on the show every remembered it was actually the second seaQuest as they had destroyed the first at the end of last season.  Grumbles over.

As for the promised VHS tape, "For Your Consideration" videos were sent out to the members of various entertainment award organizations like the Emmys to drum up votes for particular episodes of a TV show.  The show's producers would pick an episode they were proud of and thought they could win in particular categories.  They would push for things like best show, best actor or actresses, etc.  So, for the season two finale of seaQuest, what were the producers proud of?  What did they think they had a chance of winning?  They were aiming high for either Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing or Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing.  Still, the secondary market in these tapes meant I was able to get some better quality episodes years before the show was released on DVD.  And no, unlike things like producer's cuts or other internal videos, this "For Your Consideration" VHS has not extra footage, it is just the finished episode as shown on NBC.

Below the jump are a couple of larger resolution photos of the "For You Consideration" video.