Comfort films

This weekend I spent my time in the bedroom, or bathroom, or bedroom again. And while dealing with an unwelcome intestinal illness-- apparently not associated to cough-- I indulged myself in secret past time that I've ritualized over the last 15 years. You see, every time I'm really sick-- really truly, puky, fevery, sick, I haul out my old vhs tapes of a favorite tv show.

This show was canceled in the middle of the third season, and has been critically panned as implausible and farce-ical (word?) once Spielberg and scheider maneuvered away from it in the second season. But I can't help my love for Sea Quest. Sea Quest DSV, SeaQuest 2032, whatever it's name, that's my indulgence.

It's true that the first season was refreshing, a new 'starship enterprise' underseas, an inner world voyage instead of an outer space adventure. Plausible (for an imagined future of 2021) story lines captivated audiences on Wednesday nights at 7 ( I still remember when it was on, in 1993). In fact, on Halloween, 1993, the crew became entangled with a ghost ship on the bottom of the ocean. I stayed home to watch this, avoid taking my little sister out to trick-or-treat, and avoid friends who wanted to play Ouija board.

Yes, Jonathan Brandis was on the show, yes he was hot in that 90's young-grunge look that we were all trying to perfect at 14 (well, it was easier to pull off a flannel shirt and 'jesus shoes' than a hypercolor tshirt, don't you agree?) Yes, I had a crush on him. Yes, I had an overactive imagination that led me on my own episodes at night, zipping through the worlds oceans, (Lucas) discovering young girls (me) in distress on abandoned science outposts in the mariana trench, or even, jumping into the second season, leading Lucas Wolenciak 10miles below the earth's crust begging a female crew member to "hold me, just until I get to sleep" (he drew the short straw, and with only 4 seats available for the one shot rise to the surface, he was supposed to die down there at 16, never been you know what).

When season three began, in 95, and the crew had just returned-- 10 years in the future-- from fighting a war on a distance water planet, transported by aliens and brought back to a new age of society, fans were upset. Plausibility was clearly gone. It was interesting when whats-his-name Luke Skywalker turned out to be an interstellar traveler (who took seaquest to that distant planet), but still, ratings declined and the show ended before the season was out. I was offended. When SciFi channel ran the episodes in syndication the next year, I tried to tape as many as possible (hence the vhs tapes).

You may be thinking, she's a Trekkie geek at heart, a weirdo, a truely strange one. If you'll indulge me in my posting, here's why I cling to this (albeit poorly edited) show. In 1993, my father died. He was sick for 3 months, and then was gone on March 25th. When SeaQuest started, I was in the midst of my withdrawal, and sorrow. The show gave me an outlet to imagine multiple, fanciful, futures, because I couldn't bear to imagine a realistic one without my family. I even wrote a few of the dreams down, but don't ask as I won't share them. Some early work must never see the light of day, no matter what editor thinks that a juvenalia collection may do to a writers reputation and prestige.

I think I return to this show, when I'm ill, when I'm weak, not because it was a fantastic critical achievement, misunderstood by all, but because in the years when I was the most fractured from my mother and sisters, these characters provided a bit of a familial spot for me. Every week, someone almost died, but never did.... except for the unlucky, unknown, crew members no. 5 & 6, say, eaten by evil plants, or killed in alien gunfire. I needed that resurrection each week, I suppose.

And so now I'm almost to the end of Season 2, when Roy Scheider signs off, and the alien troubles begin. Season 3 changes to a man-made war, with major characters dying, and the inevitable intrusion of reality when you remember the object of your teenage obsession killed himself after making a few made for tv movies with Melissa Joan Hart. You never know if Captain Ford and Lt. Henderson ever got it on, really, or what the cancelled episode would have been about, that day in 1995, that wasn't aired because of some current crisis (I can't remember what it was).

A fitting end to the escapist machinations of my teenage brain--- oblivion--- a story without resolution. And so I watch, and am comforted by my weakness of years past.