seaQuest DSV

reviewed by Karl Johanson

So I'm watching an episode of seaQuest DSV. (Take your pick of the following. 1: It was by mistake, I was looking for another show. 2: I needed to test my new remote control and one show is as good as another for that. 3: Someone else wanted to watch it and I was stuck in the room with them. 4: Gaby ran off with the remote control so I couldn't change channels or turn it off. 5: I accidentally mistook the episode for one of those Jacques Cousteau specials. 6: I only watched it so I could write this review. 7: It was seaQuest or reruns of The Price Is Right. 8: I only watch it for the scenes of Lieutenant Hitchcock doing her exercises.) In this episode a sub full of scared kids is trapped on the bottom of the sea. On the surface in a life raft is Smart Ass, Dr. Meaningless Polysyllabics, Wesley Crusher, and, Token First Officer.
The Seaview, opps, I mean the Seaquest (is that one word or two?) is looking for the sub full of singing, scared kids and the life boat. To find the life boat they have a floating piece of high tech floating on the surface attached to five kilometers of metal cable. One of the crew men says to the captain, "Hey captain, there's lightning and it might hit the hunk of high tech we've got floating on the surface and wreck it" (although it sounded remarkably like "What's an actor of your calibre doing in a piece of drek like this?") The captain keeps the neat thing on the surface to look for the lost stereotypes crewmen.
Cut to a scene of the scared kids in their sub and the tension building reading on the O2 gages.
Sure enough, just before the hunk of high tech detects the life raft, it gets hit by a bolt of lightning. (The high tech thing, not the raft.)
What happened next convinced me that Gaby must have been chewing on my 68 button TV / Super VHS digitalizing video editor remote control, and that she had hit the "@#$% up the picture in some random way" button with one of her canines. So I grab the telephone and called John and Monica. The conversation went something like this:
Karl: "Hi, it's me."
Monica: "Hi, me."
K: "I think our tv might be busted."
M: "How come?"
K: "Something weird just happened on it. I figured I'd see if it happened on your tv too, which will prove that ours is okay."
M: "Shoot."
K: "Did a lightning bolt just shoot down and hit the high tech floating thing, then, without grounding out into the water, did the lighting bolt spiral down the outside of the 5 kilometer metal cable, where it hit the Seaview, oops Seaquest, and spiralled around the sub as if in some search pattern until it found a way inside where it spiralled randomly about all of the winky-blink panels jumping off on occasion to hit a few assorted crewmen, thus rendering all of the subs neat things inoperative?"
M: "Yeah that's what happened on our tv too. Yours isn't broken."
I said goodbye and went back to watching the episode. A few minutes later the phone rang.
M: "I think there's something wrong with our tv now."
K: "Oh, why's that?"
M: "Did they just say, ‘Hey we can get power from one of the WySKers (an acronym for neat bright glowing robot minisub / remote control sensor things that follow the Seaview Seaquest about looking for lost subs full of scared kids) because they're protected against that sort of thing’?" (italics added for sarcastic effect)
K: "Yeah, they said that on our set too."
Monica and I agreed that it was a good idea for the subs designers to have foreseen a lightning bolt coming down a five kilometer cable and disabling everything on the main sub and for them to have planned ahead and shielded the WySKers from the danger.
The last episode I watched featured a giant squid grabbing on to the Seaview. A giant squid with tentacles that sting people, (believe me, I'm not making this shit up) and bright glowing blue squid poo that gets mistaken for a new gemstone.

Originally published by Under the Ozone Hole Number Seven – March, 1994