"Starship Down" original concept

[PorthosShadow]

As of writing this I'm watching "Starship Down" and I remember reading the entry in the companion book to DS9 that the original idea was going to have The Defiant going into a water planet and thus this episode would been something like "The Hunt For Red October" & "The Poseidon Adventure". But apparently the under water aspect was rejected to budgetary constraits.

That would make sense if this were the late 80's but "Seaquest" started in 1993 or at the same time as DS9. The whole show (at the first season, lol) was underwater and I seem to remember the effects being pretty good. So what I don't understand is if "Seaquest" could pull of an underwater show every week why couldn't DS9 do it for just one episode.

My only thought is that maybe Paramount was just too stingy to let them do an actual underwater episode. However, despite that its still a very strong episode that just happens to look really cool. I just want to know why they never did the underwater thing when it was clearly already being done.

 

[tomalak301]

Interesting how something like that kinda happened with Voyager and "Thirty Days" a few years later.

 

[PorthosShadow]

Interesting how something like that kinda happened with Voyager and "Thirty Days" a few years later.

Yeah, I originally thought about citeing "Thirty Days" until I looked it up and realized that episode aired in 1998. So money wise I assumed that the CGI or the FX nessessary by 1998 were more affordable than they were in 1995 when "Starship Down" aired. However, I have agree with your possible inference that why did VOY get a cool underwater show and DS9, didn't, hmmm...

 

[MvRojo]

It was probably cost prohibitive when DS9 wanted to do it.

Three years makes a big difference in the world of special effects, especially during the mid-90's. Back in 1995, they were still predominantly using models, but by 1998, they were using the CGI models more.

 

[SonicRanger]

It would have been expensive to flood sets with water instead of CGI gas.

 

[robtclements]

Also, it's definately more economical to do major effects shots (such as a water environment) when the cost can be spread over an entire series (as was the case with Seaquest) than it would be for a one-off episode