''Moby Dick'' is a 1998 American television
miniseries based on
Herman Melville
Herman Melville ( born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are ''Moby-Dick'' (1851); ''Typee'' (1846), a rom ...
's 1851
novel of the same name. It was filmed in Australia in 1997 and first released in the United States in 1998. The miniseries consisted of two episodes, each running two hours with commercials on March 15 and 16 of 1998 on the
USA Network
USA Network (simply USA) is an American basic cable television channel owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of Comcast's NBCUniversal through NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. It was originally launched in 1977 as Madison ...
. This is
Gregory Peck's final on-screen role.
Plot
Ishmael is a young sailor who joins the crew of the whaling ship ''Pequod''.
Queequeg, a Pacific Islander and experienced whaler, meets Ishmael at an inn and joins him in this whaling journey. The captain of the ''Pequod'', Ahab, soon reveals his obsession with the legendary
sperm whale Moby Dick, who bit off Ahab's leg years earlier. Since that day, Ahab has sworn to find and kill Moby Dick himself.
Ahab rejects the repeated pleas of his first mate, Starbuck, to stop chasing Moby Dick because the ship is operating at a loss due to Ahab's apathy towards hunting whales other than Moby Dick and because he fears the captain's narrow-minded pursuit puts the entire crew's safety at risk. Queequeg, assigned to work as Starbuck's harpooner, also disagrees with the captain's mission and engages in passive resistance by completely refusing to do any work on the ship, even throwing down his harpoon when ordered to join a whale hunt.
As months pass by with no sighting of Moby Dick, Ahab's madness becomes more and more obvious. He refuses to assist another ship searching for the son of their captain, who was lost at sea. He forces the crew to drag the ''Pequod'' over ice with ropes and sail through a massive storm. Yet even as their fellow sailors perish and their survival becomes more and more uncertain, the majority of the crew refuses to challenge Ahab, eager to help him claim the prize of Moby Dick.
Finally, the ''Pequod'' locates Moby Dick, and Ahab personally leads a group of men to kill the beast. Despite being harpooned, the whale manages to crush the boat and kill everyone except Ahab. When the captain tries to untangle his harpoon rope, he gets caught and Moby Dick drags him underwater to his death. The ''Pequod'' is rammed and sinks, with Ishmael the only survivor.
Cast
*
Patrick Stewart
Sir Patrick Stewart (born 13 July 1940) is an English actor who has a career spanning seven decades in various stage productions, television, film and video games. He has been nominated for Olivier, Tony, Golden Globe, Emmy, and Screen Actors ...
as
Captain Ahab
Captain Ahab is a fictional character and one of the main protagonists in Herman Melville's ''Moby-Dick'' (1851). He is the monomaniacal captain of the whaling ship ''Pequod''. On a previous voyage, the white whale Moby Dick bit off Ahab's leg, ...
*
Henry Thomas
Henry Jackson Thomas Jr. (born September 9, 1971) is an American actor. He began his career as a child actor and had a lead role in the film ''E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' (1982), for which he won a Young Artist Award and received Golden Globe ...
as Ishmael
*
Gregory Peck as
Father Mapple
*
Ted Levine
Frank Theodore Levine (born May 29, 1957) is an American actor. He is best known for playing the roles of Buffalo Bill in the film '' The Silence of the Lambs'' (1991) and Leland Stottlemeyer in the television series ''Monk'' (2002–2009).
Le ...
as Starbuck
*
Bruce Spence
Bruce Spence (born 17 September 1945) is a New Zealand–Australian actor. Spence has amassed over 100 film and television credits and has also acted in theatre.
Biography
Spence won an AFI Award for Best Actor for his role in the 1971 comedy ...
as Elijah
*
Hugh Keays-Byrne
Hugh Keays-Byrne (18 May 1947 – 2 December 2020) was a British-Australian actor and film director. A former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he was best known for playing the main antagonist in two films from the ''Mad Max'' franchise ...
as Mr. Stubb
* Piripi Waretini as Queequeg
*
Dominic Purcell
Dominic Haakon Myrtved PurcellO'Connor, B,Break Out". ''Men's Fitness''. December/January 2007 Issue; retrieved 18 December 2006. (born 17 February 1970) is a British-Australian actor. He is best known for his portrayals of Lincoln Burrows in ...
as
Bulkington
Bulkington is a large village and former civil parish, now in the unparished area of Bedworth, in the Nuneaton and Bedworth district of Warwickshire, England.OS Explorer Map 232 : Nuneaton & Tamworth: (1:25 000) : In the 2011 census the wa ...
*
Norman D. Golden II as Little Pip
*
Norman Yemm as Carpenter
*
Shane Feeney Connor as Mr. Flask
*
Peter Sumner
Peter Malcolm Sumner-Potts (29 January 1942 – 22 November 2016), professionally known as Peter Sumner, was an Australian actor, director, and writer. He had a long career in theatre, television, and film.
Career
His credits include parts in su ...
as Captain Gardiner
* Matthew Montoya as Tashtego
* Michael Edward Stevens as Dagoo
* Kee Chan as Fedallah
* Warren Owens as Cook
Patrick Stewart took the lead role shortly after making a striking reference to the book, and quoting from it, in ''
Star Trek: First Contact''.
Gregory Peck appeared as Father Mapple more than 40 years after he played Ahab in the
1956 film adaptation directed by
John Huston.
Awards
Gregory Peck won the
Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. The series also won awards for its music and was nominated for several
Emmy Awards.
See also
*
Adaptations of ''Moby-Dick''
References
External links
*
*
{{USANetwork Shows
1998 television films
1998 films
1990s American television miniseries
APRA Award winners
USA Network original films
Films based on Moby-Dick
Television shows based on American novels
Television series set in the 19th century
Films directed by Franc Roddam