Roy Scheider Called seaQuest DSV “Childish Trash” After NBC Turned Spielberg’s Underwater Star Trek Into a Monster-of-the-Week Show

Space might be the final frontier, but there’s something utterly captivating about the ocean’s depths that keeps fascinating the minds of sci-fi geniuses generation after generation. Remember when James Cameron became so enamored with the Mariana Trench that he broke a world record by solo diving nearly 7 miles down into it in 2012? H.P. Lovecraft was into something with all his stories about the allure of the deep.

When you look at it, the bottom of the ocean is just as alien as space, to a certain degree. Knowing this, what if someone came up with a Star Trek show that explored the depths instead? Rockne O’Bannon wondered the same around 1992, and Steven Spielberg loved the idea. Probably because “Sea Trek” would be a bit too on the nose, the crew decided to name their creation seaQuest DSV – and after a strong debut, it did go straight to the deeps… of the Nielsen ratings. In fact, the working title was Deep Space, but that changed once Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was announced. With Star Trek having just turned 60, it’s a good time to revisit the show that tried to take its premise underwater.

RELATED: Star Trek Just Turned 60 — Its Secret Twin Stars Russell Crowe, Not a Starship

What Was seaQuest DSV About? Inside Spielberg’s Grounded Ocean Sci-Fi

The show (set in what was then the near future of 2018) focuses on a world in which humanity has depleted its land resources. Now, the oceans of the world are colonized, and the United Earth Oceans Organization serves as a United Nations-style government and peacekeepers. seaQuest DSV premiered on NBC on September 12, 1993, starring Roy Scheider as Captain Nathan Bridger and Jonathan Brandis as teenage computer genius Lucas Wolenczak.

From the beginning, seaQuest DSV separated itself from most sci-fi shows on TV. While many of its competitors focused heavily on science-fiction elements, seaQuest opted for a more grounded take on marine exploration. That was one of the reasons why Spielberg fell in love with the project. Famed oceanographer Dr. Bob Ballard even served as the show’s technical advisor in Season 1 and hosted the marine-trivia segments at the end of episodes.

The realistic focus also attracted the attention of Roy Scheider, who already had a long history with the sea, and with Steven Spielberg, thanks to his starring role in the classic Jaws. Realism was seaQuest’s main appeal – but that wouldn’t last.

RELATED: 12 Best Scary Opening Scenes In Horror Movies

Why seaQuest DSV Season 2 Turned Into a Monster-of-the-Week Show

Season 2 marked a point of no return for seaQuest DSV. NBC pushed for the showrunners and writers to captivate a younger audience. To do this, the crew had to say goodbye to the painstakingly realistic world they had created and turn the series into a “monster-of-the-week” sci-fi serial with heavy sci-fi tropes.

Giant sea monsters, extraterrestrial encounters, the god Neptune, parapsychology… Season 2 felt like an entirely different show. Series star Roy Scheider was blunt about it, calling the new direction “childish trash” in a 1994 interview. The cast and crew grew irritated with the new direction, and soon, the group grew apart. The Season 2 finale even had the crew abducted by aliens and dragged into an alien civil war. Spielberg and Scheider left the series as soon as Season 2 ended (though Scheider returned for a handful of Season 3 episodes) – but NBC still demanded another season. This is the point where things get extremely weird, as seaQuest’s Season 3 skipped forward ten years into the future.

Why Was seaQuest DSV Canceled? The Season 3 Collapse

Without Spielberg or Scheider, the show was a ghost ship. Now rebranded as seaQuest 2032, virtually nothing of the original series was left by this point. Only Jonathan Brandis, Don Franklin and Ted Raimi remained from the original main cast, with Michael Ironside taking over as the more militaristic Captain Oliver Hudson. NBC ordered a third season of 20 episodes or so, like the other two seasons. In the end, only 13 episodes came out.

The season was cut short when ratings kept sliding and NBC realized the costs vastly outweighed the rewards. Complex CGI set pieces and practical sets reportedly turned seaQuest into one of the most expensive series on television (its first season alone was estimated at around $30 million). Bleeding money on an audience that didn’t actually enjoy the show in its current state, the network finally pulled the plug. Frequent preemptions for NBC sports coverage didn’t help matters either.

Though the show abandoned its scientific roots, seaQuest DSV inspired more than a few future marine biologists who fell in love with Season 1’s realistic approach to oceanography. (A deep-sea ecologist has even been rewatching and evaluating the series episode by episode for The Mary Sue.) Flawed as it was, the show was undeniably ambitious. (For the record, Rotten Tomatoes gives Season 1 a 46% Tomatometer score from 13 critic reviews, alongside a 71% Popcornmeter audience score.) It’s a shame the network meddled with what could have been a classic worthy of being the “underwater Star Trek” Spielberg and O’Bannon always wanted.

Where to Watch seaQuest DSV

seaQuest DSV is currently streaming with a subscription on Peacock (check the Rotten Tomatoes listing for the latest availability), and the complete series is also available on Blu-ray from Mill Creek Entertainment.