Was it a cost saving idea or ...??
shareI've mentioned the "too many cooks" thing before, but it fits again, as many new shows suffer from the same problem.
Instead of having one person or a small group come up with ideas, every producer (and on modern shows there are a LOT of them) wants his/her input, and most of them have no concept what the show is really about or what they're doing. So you get screaming plants, unfrozen crocodiles, glowing poop and the like (or chimpanzees, the go-to yock-fest/attention-grabber idea that almost every show sinks to.) SeaQuest was no different in that far too many 'cooks' added everything and anything to the idea until it became unrecognizable from O'Bannon's original idea (see Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.)
No fate but what we make. -Terminator II
It wreaks of network meddling. I'm going to say X-Files came out the same time as Seaquest, and became very popular. I can picture network heads in a board room going "hey that x-files show is doing really well, lets just do that".
shareI read somewhere that they started with a basically science-oriented show in the first season, changed to science fiction in the second and finally to just plain action fantasy in the third. It was all an effort to gain more viewers. It never occurred to the network bigwigs to give the show a different time slot so it wasn't competing with Lois & Clark for demographics that had a lot of overlap.
shareI think it had to do something with the success of "Xenia: Warrior Princess" and "Tarzan" [both in syndication at the time].
Actually, that has to be the only reason.
man, hearing Xena and Lois and Clark makes me miss the 90s shows and being a kid in this time (Hercule and Lois and Clark were my faves). But I agree. I watched SeaQuest, I think by accident, and saw 'Brody' from Jaw in it so watched and loved it. It's a shame when executives try to make a show something it isn't. I definitely liked the 1st season the best.
shareRatings..
shareFrom what I gathered, there was a lot of studio meddling and in-fighting behind the scenes;particularly between the cast and crew. Kind of like with Sliders but not as bad.
shareRoy Scheider publicly bad mouthed the show. And that 2nd season was AWFUL.
The show never got above 70 in the Nielsen ratings for any of it's 3 seasons.
It had a decent demo's which notched it a 2nd season.
Surprised it ever went to achieved a 3rd one.
But it did.
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Came here to read up on the boards of all my favorite shows and I completely forgot there was a season 3. I think I completely blocked it out of my head. I don't think I watched it because i hated the finale of the 2nd season.
shareIt's available on Peacock. Season 3 is actually pretty good, but it's not very "fun".
shareI bought the first 2 seasons on DVD about 2 years ago. maybe I'll think about watching season 3 just to watch it. maybe I'll appreciation it more now that in my teens.
shareThere's some fun.
--The special effects are surprisingly better than they were in the first two seasons.
--Jonathan Brandis becomes an "ensign" and gets #2nd billing.
--Roy Scheider returns for 3 or 4 episodes.
--"Second Chances" is one of the best episodes of the entire series.
I never got around to watching this show, but didn't it have Joxer the Mighty in it? He's very tidy, you know.
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