| “ | General Seal: I agree to extract all the inf-f-formation from the enemy. And on takeoff - I'll shoot'em down with a missile! Psychiatrist Cat: But... General Seal: No 'but's! Thought I was crazy, huh? Thought I was pa-pa-paranoid? But I was right! I predicted it from the very start - alien invasion! Psychiatrist Cat: And bubonic plague and a seabed plug! General Seal: Those were working versions... But I'll save the peacefully sleeping citizens of our heroic motherland! W-wipe out all the al-l-iens. And their rep-p-ptiloid quislings. |
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| ~ The seal and the cat arguing in Space Dogs: Underwater Space. |
Admiral Tyulenev, also known as General Seal, was planned to be the main antagonist of two early drafts for the third Space Dogs movie. He is a Soviet Armed Forces general obsessed with weaponry, assigned to command the heroes during their Black Sea expedition. After the discovery of an advanced underwater city, he becomes convinced of its residents' hostility and plots to destroy it.
Biography[]
Mystery of the Aquapolia[]
Tyulenev is hinted to have a military past, during which he got hit on the head twice, which likely contributed to his present-day unhinged behavior. In 1974, he was assigned by the Soviet government to supervise the operation to investigate the source of mysterious signals in the Black Sea, performed by Belka, Strelka, Lenny and Kazbek. Though he felt begrudged over commanding "criminals", he was forced to accept the job. The five animals, accompanied by the Psychiatrist Cat from the first movie, were deployed to the sea, and Belka, Strelka and Lenny descended on a submarine while the rest remained on surface. Tyulenev secretly asked the command to authorise the use of deep water mines if necessary.
On the bottom of the sea, the animals discovered Aquapolia, an ancient city inside an alien ship, the crew of which attempted to rescue dinosaurs 65 million years ago, but sank on takeoff, with the dinosaurs evolving while living inside it. Receiving the news of the discovery, the admiral requested military aid from Moscow, but received command to find out as much about the underwater city as possible first, in spite of Belka insisting that Aquapolia is a peaceful nation. Eventually, the government sent both the parts needed to repair the alien ship to let it take off and a photon cannon for Tyulenev to use in case of danger.
After receiving Lenny's video of what seemed to be a monster roaming the city, Tyulenev, convinced of the presense of "enemies and traitors", prepared to bomb the underwater city, even if it meant killing his subordinates. Kazbek and the Psychiatrist Cat attempted to stop him, but were defeated and tied up. Seeing a vessel rise from the sea, the admiral fired at it and destroyed it, but it turned out to be an escape pod manned by the "Koala", the alien ship's long-lived pilot who attempted to escape alone. He survived and began emitting positive energy with his mere presense, causing the admiral to decide to quit the army and move to Tyumen to his mother's. He later watched the aliens' ship take off and fly into space with a smile.
Underwater Space[]
General Seal is first seen as part of a council discussing the recently discovered underwater object, believed to be a sunken ancient city. During the council's conference, was convinced of the object's threat to the Soviet Union and suggested bombing it, but the rest of the council agreed to send a team consisting of Belka, Strelka and Lenny to investigate. Later, when the Psychiatrist Cat attempted to convince the council to send Kazbek there as well, he opposed said decision due to Kazbek having earlier attacked the cat for luring his friends into a trap, but was ignored once more.
The crew was deployed into the sea, with General Seal carrying a number of missiles with him. After Belka, Strelka and Lenny discovered that the rumors of an ancient city were true, he continued suggesting destroying it, convinced of it being a threat. His unhinged behavior caused Kazbek and Psychiatrist Cat to team up to save both the city and the aquanauts from the general's wrath. Even when the government agreed to cooperate with the aliens in exchange for their advanced technology, the general insisted on blowing up their spaceship.
After receiving a video from Lenny that purportedly showed residents of the underwater city training for military action, the government made the General Seal the commander of the operation, giving him access to lethal force, with the Psychiatrist Cat only barely convincing him to wait a little more. Ultimately, he came to a decision to get as much information as possible from the aliens and destroy them at launch. When called out by the cat for being ready to kill Belka, Strelka and Lenny, however, he, posing as Kazbek, sent them an order to come to the surface immediately, but Belka deduced that it wasn't Kazbek.
When the general was ready to fire, a bubble surfaced, and he hysterically shot at it. Said bubble contained Belka, Strelka and Lenny, who landed on the general just as he was about to launch a missile. A fight broke between the General Seal and everyone else, and as it appeared that he was restrained, he managed to press the launch button, but Lenny hit a lever that redirected the missiles away from the city. When the ship surfaced, the general expected the residents to attack, but instead they performed a dance number, making everyone from Earth follow their examle, as they never had evil intentions in the first place. As they flew away, the general claimed that he always considered them "cool". He was later present when the psychiatrist told other officials of the gifts received from the aliens, expecting one of them to be a bomb.
Personality[]
In both scripts, the seal general is portrayed as a trigger-happy and paranoid individual who sees a threat to national security in anything alien to him. Even when there was no or little-to-no evidence of Aquapolia's hostility towards the surface world, he believed its people to be scheming and sought to wipe them out. He wasn't even concerned about his compatriots' fate, only backing off from blowing them up along with the underwater city at his allies' insistence. In both scripts, however, the general would have grown kinder by the end, but under different circumstances: in Aquapolia, it was due to his mind being influenced by the "Koala"'s sight, while in Underwater Space, he seemed genuinely touched by the Aquapolians' dance number.
In Underwater Space, General Seal often stutters when he's nervous, and has to hit himself with his flippers to say full words.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Tyulenev would ultimately be retooled into a character that made it into the third movie's final script, Space Dogs: Return to Earth. There, he was a heroic character named Jonas, and was Lenny's uncle living in Cuba rather than a Soviet military official.
- General Seal is an atheist, yet is ironically diagnosed with a God complex by the Psychiatrist Cat.