TV REVIEW VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

TV REVIEW - VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA.

For four seasons, over 110 episodes, aired from 1964 onwards, the crew of the USS Seaview nuclear submarine were subjected to some of the most preposterous aquatic straight-faced adventures ever presented on television – here was a sub that had adventures of the kind normally only experienced in outer space – monsters, werewolves, and mad scientists, etc.

Most fans remember with rose tinted-nostalgia that the first of the four seasons was less obsessed with fantasy, and went for greater realism – not always so. The science fiction motif was apparent from the outset. In fact, the show was developed from a feature film of 1961, in which the sky catches fire and the submarine crew have to fire nukes into the Van Allen belt to put it out. As a submarine adventure, the film was little more than a reworking of the Disney 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea feature, and in fact Peter Lorre appears in both films. The Voyage film has a near identical giant squid attack to that in the Disney film too.

Director Irwin Allen was an accomplished underwater documentary filmmaker who had gone on to produce several successful, genuinely exciting, if preposterous adventure story shows, The Time Tunnel, Lost In Space, and Land Of The Giants among them. He would go on to produce some of the biggest Disaster movies, such as The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon adventure (the original and best version, as well as its atrocious sequel, Beyond The Poseidon Adventure).

Walter Pigeon played the Admiral of the Seaview in the film. He was clearly called Nelson. His character appears to be killed off at the beginning of the first episode of the TV series, Eleven Days To Zero, (not played by Pigeon, or referred to as Nelson) when a new admiral, Harriman Nelson, played by Richard Basehart, takes over. Nelson is a general-purpose genius; he created the Seaview, - sails on it personally, and has a marine institute named after him too. Quite how he survives with all his chain smoking in the series is beyond me. Robert Sterling plays the Captain Crane in the film.

Basehart was an accomplished Hollywood actor, best known for his role as Ishmael in a production of Moby Dick. He would go on to guest star in many other shows, including Knight Rider (his credit sequence narration being used in the show well after his death).

Second in command was Captain Crane, played by David Hedison, (aka Al Hedison) who had played the mutated scientist in the original version of The Fly. Hedison would go on to be the first actor to play CIA agent Felix Leiter twice in the James Bond films. In the opening scene for his character he has clearly not served on the Seaview before, again contradicting the film presentation.

Another actor, Del Monroe, played Kowalski; the only character (and actor) used in both the film and TV series.

Unlike his other shows, Voyage allowed Allen little opportunity to use actresses. There were no regular female characters, and only a handful of episodes in which they make guest appearances, though there were some women involved. Diane Webber got to play The Mermaid in an episode of that very name.

Though much of Season One featured spies and double agents in fairly typical Cold War stories, the fantasy element was soon they’re too. By episode five (The Sky Is Falling) a UFO is found under the sea. The very next episode, Turn Back The Clock has the Seaview find an island full of dinosaurs. (This enabled Allen to use stock footage from his dire film version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, in which David Hedison had appeared. The dinosaurs are mostly lizards on blown up stock footage to make them look gigantic.

Such recycling of footage was common for Allen, and many scenes used in early episodes of Voyage would be reused later on, to the point of giving viewers serious Déjà vu.

Irwin Allen had a simple motto – ‘If the action flags, blow something up.’

Plot and script therefore seldom made any sense. His shows were shameless undiluted hokum.

Early on, there were some genuinely well-produced thoughtfully scripted episodes. In Submarine Sunk Here, the Seaview blunders into an old minefield and sinks. Much of the story is the desperate effort to rescue the crew, with a genuine sense that the sub matters less than its men. This is a very traditional and claustrophobic submarine drama, on par with the John Mills movie, Morning Departure. This is counter-weighted by The Ghost Of Moby Dick, in which a madman becomes a modern Ahab, and uses the hijacked Seaview to wage his own vendetta against a whale (with some lip-service to Basehart’s earlier role, and a cameo by June Lockhart, a regular star in Lost In Space).

A terrific and downbeat episode is The Exile, in which Nelson is trapped on a raft with a hateful foreign power leader (Russian in all but name) played by Edward Asner. The dissident kills the other crewmen off one by one to save himself, and only he and Nelson are left. When the defector dies, Nelson merely says to the rescuers that he is actually not sorry to hear the news at all and the story ends. It is probably the only time in his career that Allen seems to have a point to make, about human nature and the suggestion that some people do not deserve forgiveness.

Season Two swathe series explode into colour, and there was another great surprise – a refit has given the Seaview a miniature Flying Sub, (arguably one of the best special effects in any such series – there are great shots of the flying sub in action).

Story-wise, Voyage was taking on water fast. In episode one of Season Two, Jonah And The Whale Nelson is swallowed by a whale, and spends most of the episode in a rubber room, supposedly the belly of the beast. Escape From Venice is a landlocked spy story that barely has anything to do with Submarines. Terror On Dinosaur Island features yet more footage from The Lost World. The Sky’s On Fire is virtually a remake of the film, with much footage from the earlier version incorporated. The Shape Of Doom features a giant Whale that has swallowed an atom Bomb, in effect using footage from an earlier episode of the same season. Allen was clearly brought lazy and economical in the extreme. After this, the monsters get increasingly ludicrous. A giant spider attacks the Seaview in The Monster’s Web. In Werewolf the Admiral himself turns into a werewolf, though he is beaten and cured by being lowered to the bottom of the sea in a bathysphere (no silver bullets here). He has a relapse in The Brand Of The Beast. The Terrible Toys sees aliens use clockwork Toys to take over the submarine. The Voyage to the Scraping Of The barrel is reached when we see the Terrible Leprechaun, which is exactly what it says on the tin. The series had now reached a monster of the week level. This would get onto the sub, chase and capture most of the crew, (knocking them unconscious, or hypnotising them into doing its bidding. The last few free men would be locked in a cabin, which would have a convenient large air vent through which they’d escape to find something capable of stopping the creature9s) once and for all. This formula applies to more episodes than it doesn’t.

Voyage was by no means the worst science fiction shows ever aired. Seaquest DSV in the 1990’s had a similar premise, a submarine underwater setting, etc, and despite its politically correct ecology message, none of Voyage’s bare faced cheek or spirit. Voyage had its moments, but overall it was increasingly poor and by the end, just downright silly.

It’s model work, on the Seaview and Flying Sub were excellent, and iconic. The Seaview was used as a general-purpose submarine in stock footage of an episode of wonder woman, and most fans recognised it immediately. Irwin Allen made a cheap TV film called City Beneath The Sea, which, despite no reference to Voyage, makes use of a Flying Sub.

LINKS

My poem TO IRWIN ALLEN.

THE IRWIN ALLEN NEWS NETWORK http://www.iann.net/voyage/

MIKE’S VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA ZONE http://www.vttbots.com/page1A.html

YOAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA ON WIKIPEDIA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irwin_Allen