Blues for Roy Scheider

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By Kenn Thomas

Every bit of poorly done popular entertainment has an eternal life in cyberspace. It endures whether it should or not. An example that presented itself on Netflix recently came in the form of Seaquest DSV, a TV series that the on-demand intenet streaming service makes available. A sea-going science fiction show, Seaquest DSV lasted three seasons, from 1993 to 1996, demolishing a promising premise with each episode. It starred Roy Scheider, most known for his role in the movie Jaws, as the captain of a futuristic submarine pursuing adventure in a dystopian future

Something different, right? Most TV sci-fi involves space travel and bug eyed aliens. This show promised to explore different territory—only Irwin Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea did something similar on the small screen—and it fit the burgeoning ecological awareness. It even had a dolphin as a co-star. In fact, the series was based in part on inspiration supplied by John Lilly, the neuro-scientist who developed the isolation-tank and a computer language to speak with dolphins. Lilly popularized the use of the anesthetic ketamine for psychedelic tripping purposes, and explored such fascinating concepts as ECCO–the Earth Coincidence Control Office. Nothing that a TV show could get too close to but impressive that at least the influence was there. (Hollywood took a stab at a Lilly quasi-bio with the 1980 movie based on Paddy Chayefsky’s only novel, Altered States.)

It’s difficult to determine if this inspiration came from Roy Scheider but he certainly chose a role that pushed the envelope. It brought some television idea of John Lilly to the small screen. Scheider’s other great movie accomplishment, All That Jazz, was a quasi-bio pic of choreographer Bob Fosse that included footage of Cliff Gorman as Lenny Bruce. Gorman played Bruce on the Broadway stage and Fosse later directed the movie about Bruce starring Dustin Hoffman.

Moreover, Roy Scheider played the infamous Dr. Beway in the 1991 David Cronenberg movie adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ novel Naked Lunch.. No one would expect what’s really valuable about the lives and careers of Lllly, Bruce and Burroughs to survive TV treatment, but Scheider deserves credit for placing these markers in the more popular mainstream.

So it’s a pity that his work is saddled by association with the silly Seaquest show. Before too long the Seaquest was facing bug eyed monsters from outer space and impossibly stupid time travel episodes. Scheider himself complained in the press ( “Saturday afternoon 4 O’Clock junk for children. Just junk—tired, time-warp robot crap.”) and quit the show after the second season, remaining only for some contractually obligated cameos thereafter.

After the submarine got transported by aliens to the planet Hyperion and many of its crew killed in a laser fight with aliens, it was transported back to Earth ten years in the future. It reappeared in a corn field, which may have been a subtle comment by the show’s own writers. The show became more militarized but the bug eyed monsters and space aliens disappeared and it actually improved a bit. Only one time travel episode happened in tha last season, back to the Cuban missile crisis.

The improvement came not from the absence of Scheider bu that of the executive producer, Stephen Spielberg. Difficult also to ascertain how much Spielberg contributed to the decision making that made Seaquest DSV something less ambitious than Beany and Cecil, but interesting that the more infantile elements disappeared when Spielberg did. Other supporting evidence would include things like the current Spielberg program Under The Dome, just as confused and poorly done.

It doesn’t look like Roy Scheider, who died in 2008 after receiving a bone marrow transplant to treat myeloma, was to blame. He went after a promising role and quit when he saw how awful it became.

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