TV Meme: Day 1 - An Unfairly Canceled Show

When I first spotted this on Rachel's Reel Reviews I was immediately interested, and when Nick at Random Ramblings of a Demented Doorknob also jumped in to participate I thought it would be a great time to finally get my blog up and running again.

I posted the directions of this 30 Day Meme last week and I took some time to think about my answers carefully. I have been an avid television watcher for a long time now, and as I have said in the past, I probably watch too much television. But, for some reason my answers to most of the questions kept coming back to somewhat new shows - I just don't really remember loving too many shows when I was in grade school that weren't cartoons or something of that nature.

Anyway, let's get started.

This is pretty interesting that this would be the main topic on Day 1 of this meme as I have stated in the past how much I hate when shows get canceled prematurely. I have major problems each Fall season as I think about which shows I may want to watch because, for the most part, a lot of the new shows won't last until January much less the entire season. Shows just don't get the leeway they were allowed in the past; they aren't given time to find their audience - if they stink out of the gate in the ratings department they usually get axed.

I have spoken about this before, but a few of the shows that I feel were yanked far too quickly were:

• Standoff
• Las Vegas
• Saved
• Playmakers
• Traveler
• Freaks & Geeks
• Undeclared

And those are just a few. But, the show that always jumps out to me as being unfairly canceled perhaps actually should have been canceled. But, only because the show that it once had been was no longer and it had been changed to something that was not watchable.

SeaQuest DSV was my new Star Trek back when it originally aired in 1993. It starred Roy Scheider (of Jaws fame) as Captain Nathan Bridger. He took command of the Seaquest DSV, much like Kirk of the Enterprise, but instead of being in outer space it was located in the ocean.

Jonathan Brandis was another huge character named Lucas Wolenczak, a brilliant teenager who actually created a device to speak and understand dolphins - including his pet dolphin, Darwin.

The show added a couple new characters in the second season, including the Deluise brothers Peter (Dagwood) and Michael (Tony Piccolo). Dagwood was a GELF (Genetically Engineered Life Form) and Piccolo had gills implanted so he was able to breathe under water.

I remember the first two seasons of the show as being very entertaining. I would always look forward to watching it each and every week. However, the show made a huge change in the third and final season - including losing all but three of the original cast members, Scheider being the major loss - which is why I have sort of claimed that season three is not really SeaQuest (in fact the actual name of the third season is SeaQuest 2032) to me and that this show was pretty much canceled after its second season - when in fact the show was finally canceled after the horrific third season.

It really is too bad because the concept was great, not too many series had been developed under water - and much like Star Trek (which only lasted three seasons itself) could have become something after the show was complete. However, that never happened and the two main characters - Brandis and Scheider - have both passed on so the show and any possible movies are also dead.