Ah SeaQuest, such grand memories! Captain Bridger was a surprise find at Time Zone Toys. I kind of always wanted to get him to companion with Darwin the dolphin (shown below). SeaQuest toys are pretty much forgotten, and have little value, so I had no problem freeing him from his mint-ness.
Playmates Toys action figures in the early/mid 90's were probably the best realistic replications of TV show and movies characters of the time. Way beyond the frozen muscle bound men of Kenner's designs. Playmates had a good amount of articulation, and with pretty good human scale proportions. The head sculpts balanced more to the cartoony side, but the likeliness was still really good. Its a shame the toy lines eventually fizzled out, or I guess Star Trek stuff bombed out in sales.
To reminisce, I watched a few of the old SeaQuest episodes on Netflix yesterday. It was surprisingly still pretty good for your standard 90's sci-fi show format. You could see the show cost a pretty penny with really nice set designs and special effects for TV. The writing was a bit corny though, with too many explanations for why things are the way they are for the audience to catch up. The show was set in 2018, which was waaaaay too close for what they imagined the future to be.
The first episode was really silly, with a rouge semi-retired Captain Bridger being forced back into deciding if he wanted to serve again as Captain of the SeaQuest. The late Roy Scheider does a convincing act of wanting absolutely NO part in the job , but at the very end seems to do a 180 and go, "Okay I will, weeeee!"
The Captain's dolphin friend Darwin, is also kidnapped in the first episode to serve aboard the SeaQuest. I always thought that was kick ass cool, especially the complexity of the set designs featuring a live dolphin. Then again some fans will cringe, as Darwin always ends up saving everyones butt (and if it wasn't Darwin, it was the wiz kid Lucas, again cringing some fans.)
The show made about three seasons, to what I remember season 1 being really good, season 2 forced by network executives to be more stupid, and season 3 set ten years later being more stupid (Or was season 3 a short season, and then SeaQuest 2032 its own thing?). Whatever the result, I have found memories of Season 1, and enjoy watching all the episodes about; the one with the virus, the one with Atlantis, the one with the prison escapee, the one with the gem, the one with the aliens etc...
I hope to find Lucas Wolenczak next as he might be the lamest action figure ever made.
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