TV Review : ‘Seapower’ Explores Oceans’ Impact

“Seapower: A Global Journey” is no afternoon at the beach. It’s public television’s richly diverse six-part voyage across the world’s oceans.

Narrated by Leonard Nimoy, this is a captivating, globally visionary exploration of human dependence on the seas--at present, historically and into the future.

Weekly one-hour episodes, beginning tonight, are each tautly framed around subjects such as seaborne commerce, U.S./Russian/British naval forces, mapping the ocean floor, the gnarly question of ocean possession and, in the amusing “Passage to Paradise” (July 26), dream-seekers on luxury cruisers pursue their fantasies.

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Employing six directors, executive producer Leo Eaton (who wrote many of the episodes) is especially good at juxtaposing archival and historical clips with crisp, contemporary material that can absorb your eye with stunning images.

Structurally, the programs artfully slip among past, present and future with a scope that advances the basic thrust of the series: that the ocean is our new frontier and the fate of our planet depends on entering the 21st Century selflessly mapping and monitoring the ocean for its food, raw resources and energy.

Tonight’s opener, “Lifeblood,” explores how the search for oil defines the rise and fall of empires as the access to grain, gold and copper once served the same purpose.

“Ruling the Waves” (July 12) is a daunting post-Cold War illustration of the plight of Russia’s huge submarine fleet (currently twice as large as ours) and the depressed state of its seamen and its navy.

But for Americans grumbling about plant closures and foreign competition, “Trade Winds, Trade Wars” (July 19) is an eye-opener. Suddenly economics no longer looks fuzzy. Focused on an Asian cargo ship’s journey around the world, the material dramatizes not merely the peril to the U.S. of low wages and off-shore labor but, crucially, how modern shipboard container transportation has literally shuttered American plants.

The ocean has had its economic and political advocates before. But seldom has the camera lens carried us so spectacularly from the China Sea to the Arctic Ocean and told us what it all means to our lives.

* “Seapower: A Global Journey” airs each Tuesday, beginning tonight, on Channel 28, 9 p.m., through Aug. 9.