Altered Voyages SF Elements

One change some were hoping for hasn´t happened: seaQuest and ABC´s Lois and Clark are still opposite one another on Sunday nights 0 with Fox now throwing The Simpsons into the same time slot. "I have always tried to focus my attention soley on the job I have," Burke says, "and not on where it´s marketed or sold. I find most guys who spend a whold lot of time worrying about what the other guy is doing aren´t doing their own jobs as well as they ought to. I hope they keep seaQuest on the air, I hope it plays well, but when they start talking about demographics, and time slots, and reaching frequency, and all that stuff, my eyes spin in my head."Eastlake has an impressive background in both action-adventure shows, including Street Justice and Hawk, and the highly regarded The Equalizer. On that unusual, intelligent series, Eastlake was the story editor during the 1986-87 season, wrote seven episodes, winning the Mystery Writers of America´s Edgar award for Best Television Episode. He also wrote segments of Murder, She Wrote (coincidentally, opposite seaQuest on Sunday nights), Airwolf, and "V."He knows science fiction, and is perfectly comfortable with calling seaQuest by that honorable label. The show, Eastlake says, "is trying to do science fiction/action, but most of the episodes have a strong human component, a strong allegorical, emotional or moral component, depending on the story. I grew up on Robert A. Heinlein, a wonderful social anthropologist. What I´ve always loved is social science fiction; I think the different cultures Isaac Asimov would create, or the military cultures David Drake creates, or Andre Norton. I read everything Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle write, including the right-wing allegories.Burke started as a broadcast journalist and producer of documentaries; in 1986, he began as a writer and story editor on Crime Story, later becoming supervising producer on Wiseguy. He created the submarine-less UNSUB for NBC, and created and executive-produced Tribeca for Robert DeNiro´s company of the same name. Because Universal had treated him more than fairly, when they asked him to take over seaQuest, he agreed even before he knew what the show was about. Burke came aboard seaQuest partway through its troubled first season, and got mixed signals from Amblin Entertainment and NBC."When I got here," says Burke, "I was told I was doing a family drama - adventure, action, a sort of family-oriented show. I was touted off one direction, then touted back on it. There were many different points-of-view as to what the show should be. The consequence of that situation was that the show didn´t quite know what it was the first season; that always happens unless the person with the passionate vision is driving it."The perception of science fiction was very different among the various people involved. For me, science fiction is The Twilight Zone - contemporary moral dramas and dilemmas that we face as society and individuals right now, places in the context of another world or another time. There´s another camp that thinks science fiction is anything with a guy in a rubber suit who disintegrates before your very eyes. It´s really a little of both, I guess."During season two of seaQuest, Burke has nothing at all to do with the stories the series will be doing; instead, he´s concentrating on the show´s physical aspects. "I´m very committed to trying to make the Florida environment work, because it takes us physically underwater. I can put all my actors in futuristic SCUBA gear and and really see them function underwater. I´m trying to encourage those in charge of the scripts to utilize the water environments as much as possible. I will then polish out what comes to me in terms of making an outdoor location work. We are a show about the sea; we are a show about being outside in some ways, even if it´s underwater - and now we can do that."But he does go along with the idea of making the show more science fictional. He feels the first season´s best episode was the one in which the seaQuest found an alien ships, although like almost everyone else, he also thought the one about the Alexandria library was excellent. "That was Steven Spielberg´s idea, a very good show. Boy, please put that in writing, because there were people who liked that script who got down on the show when it was finished because there was no overt aggression."Burke directed one of the other best episodes himself, the one in which the crew has to confront a South American dictator. It did have some, um, repercussions, Burke laughs. "I´ve just been writing a letter to the ambassador from Brazil, who was not real happy." Burke will be directing at least one second season episode as well. "I think it´s very important for people who do what I do to have a sense of the problems on the set. It´s a gargantuan effort to get a show done in severn or eight days. So, I´ll do it once to get to know the crew, to get them on a first-hand, first-name relationship with me, and so I understand the vagaries of their faily business, as it applies in this environment." Les Sheldon and Bryan Spicer, who between them directed all the other best shows of the first season, will also be returning.