Monday, September 2, 2019

RW286 - SeaQuest Rewatch S01E04-05 - Give Me The Devil






In this weeks episode of The SeaQuest Rewatch, Cory and Tom fight their fears and get a bit dramatic as they discuss season 1 episode 4 & 5 (originally aired as episodes 7 & 2) "Give Me Liberte" and "The Devil's Window."


Give Me Liberte:


While delivering supplies and a fresh crew to a research station, Commander Ford finds the former crew all dead from unknown means which leads Bridger putting the whole team into quarantine until the cause of death can be determined. The stations research logs indicate that they had found something that didn't belong in the deep sea, a space station named The Liberte, which had crashed to earth ten years prior but had never been found. 
While Doctor Westphalen finds evidence of a virus that lead to the research team's death, Lucas, using his hacking skills, manages to find the lone scientist, Guy Peche, that made it back from the Liberte before the crash leaving Bridger and Crocker traveling to France to find him. Although reluctant to admit his past with the Liberte, he eventually goes with The Captain back to the Seaquest. Meanwhile, Commander Hitchcock has her hands full trying to keep the original owners of the Liberte, the North Sea Confederation, from retrieving the crashed station before they can figure out a cure for the virus. 

Peche works with Westphalen to come up with a cure, admitting that they were working on viruses as biological weapons before the Liberte crashed.  Peche’s survivor's guilt and absence from working on the project causes him to be little help and he leaves the doctor to figure things out on her own.  

Bridger confronts Peche and he breaks down, revealing that one other scientist on the Liberte was not affect tee by the virus they had created, but instead had died at the hands of the other two infected scientists. This leads the captain, Crocker and Peche to travel into the Liberte to obtain a DNA sample from the unaffected scientist, hoping he had a natural immunity to the virus. While the Liberte is getting bombarded by torpedos courtesy of the NSC, who are hoping to destroy the evidence that they were working on biological weapons, Bridger and company manage to obtain both the DNA sample and the container holding the virus, resulting in Westphalen creating a cure for the infected crewmembers.

Send Out the WSKRS:


The title references Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty, or give me death" speech which he gave at the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775.
Tim Omundson played Dr. Joshua Levin. He played Cain in a few episodes of Supernatural, was a lead in Psych and later in Judging Amy. He’s also done voice acting work in several Star Wars video games. Recently he was seen in an episode of Lucifer, and was in the TV show musical Galavant as King Richard. He stared in this video short called “Voltron: The End.”

Udo Kier played Guy Peche. He is 12 years younger than Roy Scheider. His first hit movie was “Mark Of The Devil” in 1970, where vomit bags were offered during screenings due to its exploitation of sex and violence. It was eventually banned in 31 countries. He also played in ‘Flesh For Frankenstein” and “Blood For Dracula” in ‘73 and ‘74, leading to him being a cult favorite. He played Dragonetti in “Blade.” He’s still a working actor.

The Devil's Window:


While exploring a black smoker, an underwater volcano, under much protest from Dr. Westphalen, Darwin comes into contact with some deadly new bacteria released when a problem occurs during the experiment. Both Bridger and Officer O’Neill pick up on a telepathic transmission from Darwin and determine that something is wrong with their dolphin crew member. While their visiting researcher Dr. Raleigh Young throws a tantrum that the Seaquest is planning on temporarily abandoning his research due to Darwin's illness, Bridger orders the ship to visit Malcolm Lansdowne, an old friend and specialist who may be able to help Darwin. Unfortunately, all his conclusions only confirm Bridger's fear: Darwin is somehow dying.
It's decided that Darwin is trying to communicate that he wished to not die alone, so the crew sets out to try and find his home pod, using the WSKRS to search for squeaks and whistles that match Darwin's, eventually finding his family and sending him off to be with them. 

With the Darwin problem solved, Bridger, O'Neill and Lucas are all in a funk, having lost their companion. Even Dr. Young, who had been very ornery over the decision to help the dolphin, can feel sympathy for their loss but is glad to be back to his research. Bridger, ever the scientist, works first hand to begin inspecting Young's samples brought up from the smoker, while Malcolm contacts Westphalen to warn them of the deadly bacteria he discovered in Darwin's test results.

Unfortunately, Bridger can't hear Westphalen over the noise and activity in the room and continues to open the sample pod when suddenly Darwin appears, jumping out of the water and knocking the captain into the water, preventing him from becoming exposed himself. Darwin, fully healed, reveals that he has brought with him a special type of seaweed with healing properties due to being grown near the black smoker, and is able to again join the crew again.

Send Out the WSKRS:


Raleigh is played by Roscoe Lee Brown. He played the Kingpin in “Spider-man: The Animated Series.” He was the voice of  Box in the movie “Logan's Run.” He’s done lots of narration and voice over work as well as Animated voice work, and has frequent guest spots in sitcoms and TV dramas. 
Malcom is played Robert Engels, a producer and writer, known for the show “Twin Peaks” and movie “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.” This is his only acting credit, aside from two more episodes of SQ.

Crew health and safety comes before any experiment or research. Researchers are encouraged to have their appendix removed before long deployments as it’s one less potential problem to worry about.

Whats Next?

SeaQuest, as with many shows of the time, was aired out of order. No official production order has ever been released but with a few continuity clues we've come up with our own order. Next up, we'll be discussing the episodes "Give me Liberte" and "The Devil’s Window" which originally aired as episodes 7 & 2.

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