Calling All Giant Sea Monsters . . . : Television: Human--and sub-human--stories are missing from the ponderous ‘seaQuest DSV,’ which is too caught up with technological gizmos. However, recent episodes show promise.

Behold!

What NBC’s new “seaQuest DSV” has are an executive producer named Steven Spielberg, famed oceanographer Robert Ballard as a consultant, computer-generated special effects and a sprawling set whose five sound stages depict the futuristic missions of a 1,007-foot submarine that includes a decompression moonpool, a laboratory, a sea-to-surface shuttle, a maze of corridors, a launch bay center, a hologram display in the captain’s quarters and special helmets with which those inside can experience the outside via virtual reality.

What “seaQuest DSV” needs--besides an upper case “S” and a lower case “q”--is a giant squid.

Or a giant octopus--a hideous, terrifyingly voracious sea monster that would wrap its life-sucking arms around this technological tub and make its crew members quake with fear and do you-know-what in their pants.

It needs people stories instead of technology stories.

Just because the year is 2018--and we’re reminded each week that “Beneath the surface . . . lies the future”--doesn’t mean that “seaQuest DSV” has to be ponderous.

It mostly has been just that in a brief life that began Sept. 12 with a bloated, two-hour whale of an episode that was so plodding that its winning ratings should be attributed to public curiosity and interest in Spielberg, whose co-producer here is David J. Burke.

Ratings for the next two episodes sank like a mob victim in cement shoes. Yet NBC cites the show’s continued popularity with the advertiser-coveted 18-49 age group as evidence of its success. And while the third episode trailed the venerable “Murder, She Wrote” on CBS in the important 8 p.m. Sunday time slot, “seaQuest” at least was still atop the Fox comedies “Martin” and “My Girls” and ABC’s hipper, breezier “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.”

Attitude-wise, the NBC and ABC hours occupy opposite poles. While “seaQuest” reeks of self-importance, “Lois & Clark” smacks of self-mocking.

Sunday night, “Lois & Clark’s” despotic Daily Planet editor Perry White uttered a tiny homage to Robert Duvall’s napalm-sniffing nut in “Apocalypse Now”: “I love the smell of fear in the newsroom.” Clark Kent sought his mother’s advice on erasing a bomb stain from his blue tights. And as smitten Lois sustained her obsessive quest to uncover the true identity of Superman, a black hoodlum observed about the Man of Steel: “He can really jump . . . for a white guy.”

“seaQuest DSV’s” Capt. Nathan Bridger (credibly played by Roy Scheider) can really command . . . for a rusty guy.

The steely Bridger had been yanked out of retirement by the Navy to be the Capt. Kirk of a sea-trekking vessel he designed, a massive Deep Submergence Vehicle (DSV) that never surfaces and whose mission is to conduct research and help keep the peace in an age where humankind increasingly spends time under water.

Bridger gets help from his crew of specialists: Commander Jonathan Ford (Don Franklin), chief engineer Katherine Hitchcock (Stacy Haiduk), 16-year-old computer whiz Lucas Wolenczak (Jonathan Brandis) and Dr. Kristin Westphalen (Stephanie Beacham), among others. The seaQuest’s most distinctive passenger, though, is a dolphin named Darwin, whose whistles and clicks are translated into English by a computer.

Episode 1, with Bridger getting his sea legs while battling a renegade sub, was total, suspenseless tedium. Hardly better was Episode 2, which contrasted cold science and Bridger’s compassion for the seriously ill Darwin, virtually a member of the crew. “I love you, Bridger,” Darwin said. “I love you too,” Bridger said. But holy anthropomorphism! After being released into the open sea in hopes that he would recuperate, the rejuvenated Darwin returned to the seaQuest, choosing captivity--and his pal, Bridger--over freedom.

Credit “seaQuest DSV” with giving oceanic depths the respect they deserve in a context of exploration. But what it’s lacking, surprisingly, are the exhilarating qualities--the magic, the wonder, the mystery--that one would associate with such a venture. “seaQuest” often seems so in love with its own flashy repertoire of high-tech gizmos that it fails to sufficiently emphasize the human element so essential for good storytelling.

Episode 3 began promisingly, with special interests fighting for possession of ancient cultural treasures discovered off the coast of Egypt. “These are the children of artists, of poets,” pleaded a scholar worried that greed would return the items to obscurity. “Don’t orphan them again.”

The story’s orphans were its humans, whose conflicts were too quickly resolved and never adequately mined.

But circle last night.

In that evening’s fourth episode, “seaQuest DSV” took a turn for the better when Dr. Rubin Zellar--a genocidal scientist along the sadistic lines of Dr. Joseph Mengele--held the big vessel hostage as part of his plan for mass destruction. Although Bridger triumphed a little too easily over his brilliant adversary, the story offered suspense, danger, wit, good work by Beacham and a cultured fiend of a villain (grandly played by Alan Scarfe) who made Episode 1 meanies Shelley Hack and Michael Parks look like twin Mother Teresas.

No wonder the murderous Zellar looked pleased. “What can I say? I’m one of those few people fortunate enough to love my work.”

What can anyone say? Except ease up on the machines and bring back Zellar. I love the smell of fear in the seaQuest.