“The core of the show was always science and that fine balance between human’s survival –
Bob Ballard always reminded me of the extreme arrogance of mankind. The idea that all our weaponry would destroy this Earth –
No, humans would destroy themselves but the planet will keep on spinning. Humbling.
The two characters of Bridger and Westphalen epitomize Ballard’s idea…”
– Philip Segal – Producer/Creator seaQuest DSV
“I spent 18 months creating the Bible with production designer Richard Lewis and illustrator James Lima who was responsible for the entire look of the show including the seaQuest herself. The Bible never delved into story telling as it was our intention to have Rockne O’Bannon build them. Unfortunately the latter part of the development stage prior to sale wasn’t as productive as I had hoped. My biggest regret was not creating the show with a writer that was like-minded. Rockne wasn’t connected to my vision. We didn’t need aliens – we needed to take a deeper look into life under the ocean and all its issues. Arthur C. Clarke got it right with his novel The Deep Range.
We worked really hard to advance the visual look of the Bridge. 30 years ago we still had huge issues with the tech available. No LED’s so control surfaces got hot fast. Expensive projectors to break through the bright studio lights washing out the screens even at lower light levels. The small stand pointed at the front of the set contained a $150,000 Barco video projector for the front screen, today the same luminance would cost around 5k! The corridor (our only corridor!) was one of the most complicated builds ever constructed for a television series. All fiberglass with an acrylic tube designed to allow Darwin to move through the ship held more water than an average swimming pool! Having said that we were asked hundreds of times to let other studio execs tour our sets because they were so stunning. Hard to believe the amazing stage 28 was later torn down.
We spent $250,000 for the great Walt Conti (Free Willy) to design and build Darwin. He made him come alive and worked perfectly from day one, never missing his mark. Darwin never gave us any trouble, but there was one incident when Roy Scheider called to tell me his psychic wanted us to know that Darwin was going to have mechanical problems within a day. Walt came on set to check out the dolphin and found he did have a bad servo!
Roy was a talented actor with a deep passion for his craft. He was always hesitant about doing TV and had been clear about that before we ever rolled a camera. Where it became challenging for us and him was the constant changing of writers. Roy was desperate for a leader in that department and never got there. He was difficult but most great actors can be. It’s just part of the reality of making TV. Jonathan Brandis would ride his bike over to my office at Amblin every morning before shooting and hang out with me. He was such an awesome kid full of life and passion for the art of filmmaking. Gone to soon.
Ted Raimi was so cool. He was exactly the person he portrayed. Every morning on my way to set I would see Ted walking onto the lot in a suit and wearing a tie. He was always sporting a Halliburton metal attaché briefcase. One morning I stopped in my Amblin golf cart (how we got around the studio lot) and asked Ted what he had in the briefcase. Well…he opened up the case and showed me. One toothbrush and one ham sandwich for his lunch. That was it! Genius!
The character of Ben Krieg was a creation of writer Tommy Thompson who had in essence created a job for his friend. That didn’t go well with the new writing team headed by David Burke – Burke was not a good guy and loved to lay waste to anything I or anyone else created. In fairness to him, he apologized for his behaviour years later. We actually became friends.
I was only involved in the first season. The production relocated for season 2 and on one hand Florida definitely offered more of a blue sky look but 30 years ago the talent wasn’t there in front of and behind the camera. We simply didn’t have enough experience working there. Today with the advancement in visual effects the show would have an amazing look. I still think the writing is everything and without enough “life experience” I personally don’t see how you can execute a show like seaQuest. Just my opinion. As for season 3 – If only Patrick Hasburgh actually cared. He didn’t and these changes were nothing more than a ridiculous attempt to distance himself from the core objective of the show. Sad.
In terms of a reboot – I get asked this a lot and I look at this question through a very specific lens – if you take the Lost in Space reboots as an example you can see all the different interpretations of character and plot devices that fans either love or hate – generational differences also play a huge factor – having said all of that I still believe in the concept and I know our future will depend on protecting our oceans – additionally I believe global warming will push us to think more about living in liquid space not Mars..!”
Philip Segal launched sprueVerse in April of 2020 on Instagram and YouTube as a way to connect to his hobby of scale model building, a passion he has had for 50 years. A google search would tell you Philip served as the CEO and Executive Producer of Original Productions (OP), a post he held from November 2012 until June 2017. He joined the company as President and Executive Producer in 2012. As CEO, Segal merged a comprehensive and acclaimed career of achievements in creating, writing, directing and producing highly recognized projects for television. He is Executive Producer of the Emmy winning Discovery Channel Series Deadliest Catch as well as many other fan favorites including, Bering Sea Gold (Discovery), Ice Road Truckers (History) and Storage Wars (A&E). Original Productions produces an average of 250 hours of content per year.
Segal was Executive Vice President of Amblin Television at Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment. He was responsible for the creation of NBC’s seaQuest DSV starring Roy Scheider and Earth 2. Additionally, Segal oversaw production of the Stephen Hawking Documentary A Brief History of Time, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival, The Civil War Drama Class of 61, Harry and the Henderson’s and the highly acclaimed adaptation of Judy Blume’s Fudge. During his 6 years at Amblin, Segal also developed and worked on the creation of ER on NBC which was a co-production of Amblin and Warner Bros.
A long-time fan of the BBC’s popular science fiction series Doctor Who, Segal Executive Produced the Doctor’s eighth regeneration in 1996. In 2000 he authored a book about the production, titled Doctor Who: Regeneration.
Born in the United Kingdom, Segal was raised in Southern California and is a graduate of San Diego State University with a degree in Telecommunications. In 2015, he was named in the top 20 of Reality TV’s Most Powerful Executives by The Hollywood Reporter.
ML