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Commander Jonathan Devin Ford was the Executive Officer of the seaQuest and was played by Don Franklin.

Early life[]

Ford comes from a very financially well off family, his father owning "Ford Freeport: Aquacultural Engineering", one of the largest undersea farming companies in the world. He had a bad relationship with his father and brother. Following a sharp raise in the temperature of the water in the South Atlantic in 2022, caused by an undersea mining operation, a Deinosuchus (gigantic prehistoric Crocodile) thawed out and was threatening the local ecosystem and the life of the local people. With the help of his family they stopped to creature and settled their differences. Ford's father decided to take a year off from work and give Jonathan's younger brother Ben the run of the company.[1] His mother is deceased.[2]

Appointment to seaQuest[]

Part of the original seaQuest's crew under Captain Marilyn Stark (2015-2017), Ford was forced to relieve her of command when she disobeyed orders and attempted to attack several other submarines after being ordered to stand down. For 13 months after this incident Commander Ford oversaw a major refit of the seaQuest to have the ship generally geared more towards scientific exploration/research and peacekeeping missions. In 2018, after the refit was complete, Admiral William Noyce was trying to convince retired Captain Nathan Bridger, the subs original designer, to take command and ordered Ford to act arrogant, cowardly and generally unfit for command in an effort to get Bridger to stay on board. Despite the ploy not working Bridger decided to stay on board after defeating Stark during her attempt at revenge. [3]

Early on he was in continual conflict with Dr. Kristin Westphalen, the ship's Chief Medical Officer and head of the science department. After the discovery of the Great Library of Alexandria, in which Ford helped with the Excavation (he being the one who accidentally found it) and was a lot more interested in seaQuest's exploration and research mission and not just the military and peacekeeping aspect. [4]. The character had a romance with Lonnie Henderson in the shows third season, although this fizzled out after Henderson had to shoot someone she used to love in order to save Ford.[4]

Background[]

Commander Ford was portrayed by actor Don Franklin and is one of three actors to remain with the show for all three seasons. Ford appears in every episode except for "And Everything Nice." The character of Ford was originally supposed to have a far different background, originally having him been a poor kid from Chicago who joined the navy to get away from his gang life after witnessing the death of his older brother.[5] Since this was never established in the first year (except for the novelization of the pilot episode and non canon sources such as the others novels and an issue of the comic) this was disregarded for the rest of the series.

References[]

  1. seaQuest episode 212: Meltdown
  2. seaQuest episode 218: Something In The Air
  3. seaQuest episode 101/102: To Be Or Not To Be
  4. 4.0 4.1 seaQuest episode 105: Treasure of The Mind Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "Treasure of The Mind" defined multiple times with different content
  5. seaQuest Operations Manual, 1st Revision (Writers Bible)
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