Deep Submergence Writer

“The twenty-first century – mankind has colonised the last unexplored region on Earth: the ocean…”

Anyone remember that? Ah, you all remember that. It was only…17 years ago? Shit—yeah, it wasn’t that long ago, just 17 years, come on…Well, for those of you pretending not to know what I’m talking about and those of you too “young”…apparently…to know anything that isn’t on a streaming service, that’s the opening narration of one of my all-time favourite TV shows – seaQuest DSV.

“…As Captain of the seaQuest and its crew, we are its guardians – for beneath the surface, lies the future.”

I love the ocean—I’m fascinated by the ocean. seaQuest helped instil that. Funnily enough it didn’t make me want to join the Navy or anything — even as a kid I was pretty sure the Navy wasn’t quite like what I saw on the show and I instinctively knew I would be terrible at discipline and following orders — but it helped cultivate a huge interest in marine conservation, biology and a lifelong love of whales and dolphins.

There was something about seaQuest that acknowledged and channelled the wonder and awe that comes with the ocean.

That’s what made it more than “Star Trek underwater” – it took advantage of its environment in its visuals and its “science eventuality rather than science fiction” approach gave it an interesting story angle. It had a plausibility to its science that didn’t rely on technobabble; it had a respect and admiration for the largest unexplored region on Earth and the mysteries hidden in its depths. It also had Roy Scheider and really, that is a tough casting coup to beat. The show had…let’s go with gallons—the show had gallons of potential.

But when you’re one of the most expensive shows on television, quoted by Michael Ironside as like making a Hollywood movie every week, you don’t get to be steered by your potential.

You’re steered, unfortunately, by the money that’s being invested in you. seaQuest DSV was designed as a mega-budget, mega-merchandised super-hit. It was designed by committee — and in terms of world-building and futurism, it was designed beautifully and to the letter, so much of the world behind and of the UEO never even appearing or referenced on screen — and run by committee…and the people on that committee and the vision they had were changed whenever the ratings dipped. The focus noticeably changed three times along with the show runner during the first season alone, yet the show managed to maintain a relatively consistent look and feel; it changed completely in its second year, abandoning the science-eventuality mantra and the high-necked uniforms in favour of something decidedly more Irwin Allen On Crack, Roy Scheider with a beard, and an attempt at injecting some rather awkward (and not to mention quietly misogynistic) Sexy into the ocean, as well as focusing on the aliens introduced at the tail end of season one…otherwise known as The Most Unnecessary Plot Move In A Show About The Ocean, Ever.

Then came season three, when the show was massively overhauled and shifted ten years into the future, becoming seaQuest 2032.

Roy Scheider left; Michael Ironside joined. The largely ridiculous alien-centric second season finale was kicked under the carpet. The political landscape was changed; the UEO was losing in a war against the Macronesian Confederation and the show took on a more militaristic and war-like tone, delving deeper into the potential of the future Confederate world that had been set up from the beginning. It was like, suddenly, after the massive stumble and fall of season two, the show had found out how to capitalise on everything it should have been from the start. It did a few fun “proper” sci-fi episodes involving time travel and the like which were oddly out of place now the Irwin Allen wet dreams of season two had been left behind, but I ultimately loved 2032 as much as I loved season one, for different reasons but ultimately for the same reason of it reaching for its potential – I don’t hate season two, but it isn’t the show I loved, at all, because it wasn’t trying to be the best it could be. How could it be with a note from the network that they’d like to see more episodes “on land”?

It’s set on a SUBMERSIBLE vessel. That’s the POINT. 2032 course corrected, but it was too late – the show was cancelled mid-way through season three.

A decade or so later, Ron Moore gave the world the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. He took a beloved and overly expensive TV show from another decade and utterly reinvented it; he maintained design elements, he maintained the plot and characters but tonally reinvented it, changed the characters in unexpected and improved ways, moved them, deepened them; he ran with it in such a way that it redefined serialised TV science-fiction—it redefined television at the time.

I watched the BSG initial miniseries in awe and immediately my brain said – “this is how you get to write seaQuest.”

I’d read fan-fiction that tried to ignore season three; that tried to ignore everything past season one’s finale; that tried to carry on season three; that tried to jump forward and carry on the story with a new crew and boat — the beautifully, wonderfully ambitious seaFire ASV — but I wasn’t interested in writing fan-fiction. I read a retrospective article in some junky SF magazine back in the early Noughties saying that perhaps the untapped potential of seaQuest DSV would be explored in a Next Generation at some point…but even that made me think…how? There’s a mess of backstory and mythology that the three seasons kept trying to rewrite for itself – the format BSG introduced gave the opportunity to reinvent entirely. To take all the best elements that never fitted together because they were attempts to fix problems and structure them into one, carefully thought-through show.

So I’ve been dicking about with that. Off and on for…twelve years or so.

It’s 2018 this year – the original seaQuest DSV fictionally began in 2018. The world is nothing like it imagined — the inciting historical moment of the seaQuest DSV future was the world getting bored with the limitations of space exploration and diverting funds to exploring and colonising the ocean instead and, clearly, that hasn’t happened nor the global wars that were meant to end in 2010 — but now, more than ever, I can see exactly how to write this show.

BSG remains a massive influence, but now I’ve got The Expanse books and TV series knocking on my brain as well, which world-build a plausible, gritty, realistic future effortlessly.

I know how to make the show about a broader world – how to expand on that fantastic world-building that was left to be forgotten in the original show bible and create a diverse show with political, ecological, militaristic, exploratory and adventure elements all colliding. It has a massive, expansive cast covering not only the crew of the seaQuest but people at various positions in the UEO, in massive global companies, in opposing Confederate governments – I can introduce Macronesia right from the start.

I’ve sat down with what series creator Rockne S. O’Bannon said about the concept originally and tried to think through and beyond that.

Question: “What happens when humanity colonises the ocean?”
Answer: “We take all our problems with us.”

It’s a show about the ocean but primarily about humanity – it’s about our nature, it’s about opposing ideologies trying to create a new world together; it’s about a world without international law trying to establish it when not everyone has an interest in honouring it; it’s about a diverse, international cast of characters and the various struggles and conflicts they encounter, personally and in broader terms. I’ve gender-swapped in one important case and nationality-diversified to dilute the glaringly Predominantly White Male presentation of the original show, a very 90’s condition that is a truly easy fix when your characters are meant to be from across the world, and I’ve worked hard on building a world with a thoroughly documented history. I’ve essentially written a show bible before I’ve even started. I’ve dropped the DSV – now it’s just seaQuest…yes, with the lower-case S.

Why, you’re asking. I mean—why? I don’t own the rights to it. I won’t ever get it made.

No. No, I won’t. But I have a ton of passion for this project – limitless passion. It’s a project; it’s a spec. It isn’t about getting it made, it’s simply about getting it written. I want to make something amazing out of something I love – I want to honour and expand on the foundations the original show put down. 2018 is the perfect year to get this done and in this era of Netflix and Prime, I can see that it’s a show that could feasibly be made now – a ten episode first season, serialised, the first steps in the brave new world the United Earth Oceans Organisation tries to create out of the mess of inter-Confederate conflicts and the rise of the newly reconstructed Macronesia, plus the first rumblings of a return to the international scene of the elusive Chaodai…all set against the crew of the seaQuest, half military, half science, constantly in conflict with one another ideologically and personally, yet still working towards the same end. And that’s all just the start.

I resolved to get back into writing, properly – and this is how I’ve done it.

I’m 32 pages into the first episode and I’m loving every minute of writing it. I’ve paused to properly plot the first two or three episodes that form a mini origin arc amid the broader story, and incorporate elements from the three or four original episodes I found most inspiring for defining what I wanted this reimagining to be – but I’m working on it constantly. If nothing else, it’s the project that has got me writing again after three years and after genuinely feeling like I can’t do this shit anymore. But I can – I’m writing it and I’m enjoying it and I’m pleased with it. Only a couple of people have read what I’ve written so far but they seemed to like it, they wanted to read more.

So seaQuest has suddenly come to mean even more to me than it ever did. It’s brought me back to life. For beneath the surface, lies the future.

This future. This story. My writing.

My future, it feels like.