Two years ago, when NBC announced that it was committing to 22 episodes of an underwater-based series produced by Steven Spielberg, and starring Jaws veteran Roy Scheider, enthusiasm was high. But once seaQuest DSV debuted, it was derided by the critics and largely ignored by the viewers.

The problem, it seemed, was that the show appealed more to Jacques Cousteau than the typical science-fiction fan. "The truth is, if you want really good science fact, you watch something like National Geographic," said executive producer David J. Burke at the end of season one. "If you present it as a futuristic television show, you cannot then deny the basics of sci-fi. To me, great science fiction is literature or drama that takes contemporary issues and sensibilities and places them in a foreign enough environment that we can view them objectively."

"There was no adventure in the first year," added executive producer Patrick Hasburgh. "Whether you're doing Star Trek, High Plains Drifter, Shane, Outland, Road Warrior or even Road Runner, you have to understand that this is drama, that they're morality plays of human characters in conflict with themselves and with certain problems we all recognize. I think that's what the show was lacking. What we said was, 'Okay, this show is boring. Not only is it boring, but it's badly done boring.' We can pretty much do anything as long, as it's scientifically based on some level and we can explain it logically. The whole attitude that 'we don't do science fiction, we do science fact,' bores the crap out of me. I think you take the logic of science fact and you expand it and turn it into science fiction - because that's where the drama is."

After the first season debacle, some minor cast changes were made and the sci-fi/adventure quotient was pumped up. But it still didn't cut ice. While the second season kicked off reasonably enough with "Daggers," which offered the discovery of a colony of genetically altered people, many of the subsequent plots didn't even try to mask their inherent silliness. For instance, in "Playtime," the seaQuest responds to a child's voice that's inexplicably pleading for help through the vessel's computer, leading the supersubmarine into something that's described as an underwater black hole. It travels 250 years into the future, where humanity is about to be wiped out by machines. In "Dead End," a shuttle landing party is caught in a whirlpool that pulls them beneath the ocean floor and into a series of caverns where they have to go up against giant worm-like creatures. One episode later, in "Meltdown," a 200-foot prehistoric alligator is defrosted from a block of ice and is really hungry, wreaking havoc and destruction on undersea mining and farming facilities. "Lostland" deals with a curse from ancient Atlantis; then the ghost of Neptune arrives in "Watergate." Additionally, in a sad attempt to catch The X-Files wave, several episodes dealt with extraterrestrials. "Fear That Follows" has aliens arriving on Earth in search of the beginnings of intelligent life (they didn't find any on the seaQuest); in "Dream Weaver," an evil alien escapes from a fallen comet and in the season finale, "Splashdown," the seaQuest is transported to Hyperion, a water planet where the crew finds themselves in the midst of a civil war.

As a result of all this, seaQuest was decimated in the ratings by ABC's Lois And Clark: The New Adventures of Superman - and it wasn't helped by the very public comments of Roy Scheider, who referred to the change in direction as "childish crap." And yet, the show goes on. Although Michael Ironside (Total Recall, "V" - The Series) comes aboard as the new captain of the seaQuest (Scheider will still make occasional appearances) and the writers are once again revamping their approach, the series still faces significant problems. Chief among them are the bad rep the show has earned and its new time slot: Wednesday nights at 8 p.m., directly against Fox's Beverly Hills 90210.

Prognosis: eternal rest in Davy Jones' locker at the end of the season.