Monday 3 November 2014

Television: 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' (1964-1968) [Revised]

Very few television series had the personal impact that 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' had on me. Long before 'Star Trek' was back in reruns on BBC Two, 'Voyage' was on Channel Four, who were gleefully running all the worst episodes in the Sunday morning graveyard slots, along with Diana Rigg in 'The Avengers'. Historically, 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' is well known for all its worst elements, for all the men in rubber monster suits who dominated two thirds of its run, for the dimwitted behaviour of the crew, the total seriousness of all the performances even in the the midst of utter lunacy, and the 'Seaview rock and roll' as crewmen lurched from side to side on set in no way that corresponds to the exterior shots of the submarine Seaview. On many levels it was total rubbish and budget-starved gibberish, but the whole thing is saved by one inescapable fact: 'Voyage' is also often one of the most fun and imaginative television series you could hope to see. We could also supplement this fact with the high end underwater production values and special effects that became its headlining merit for at the least the first few seasons.

It may have been nonsensical, but 'voyage' has one thing that it can hold over its smarter and better-made step-cousin 'Star Trek', and that is the freedom to be utterly bananas at any point it wants to be. 'Star Trek' was by far the better show, but it did live within the boundaries of its own reality, with little license to ever get outside that box. 'Voyage' morphed into strange variants of itself with every season, and stuck to no continuity of reality other than what was happening in any given episode, with the crew being relentlessly surprised every week at whatever madness had engulfed them. Submarine interior over-run by jungle? Check. Admiral Nelson has turned lycanthropic but been cured by a deliberate case of 'The Bends'? Yep, we can do that. An espionage story? Why not? Atmosphere on fire, and we'll put it out with nukes? Okay. The catch all response was to try it out, except in the third season, when ever week was a rubber monster or mad scientist incident, with Captain Crane brainwashed inevitably as the topping on the cake. Crane must have been brainwashed so many times that it was ridiculous to think he had anything left in that cranium at all...

I'm writing this in the wake of watching the last of the one hundred and ten episodes, and completing one of the greatest and daftest DVD marathons of recent history. It's over now, and that's a sad thing. There will be no more criminally bad twisting of the submarine by a hand just off screen, nor will the incredibly uncredible flying sub crash into the ocean any more, like a slab of rock doing a belly flop. It's done. Until the DVDs get cracked out again at some indeterminate future, of course.

'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' was the brainchild of one Irwin Allen, first in feature film form, and then as this television show. Allen, who was the science fiction shlock king for a period in the 1960s with this, 'Land of the Giants', 'The Time Tunnel', and 'Lost in Space', saw that he could reuse a lot of the best special effect shots of the movie, recast the whole endeavour, and make a great looking science fiction show about a futuristic nuclear submarine and its crew. He may or may not have been partly inspired by a pilot for a show called 'Star Trek' that finally emerged in February 1965, or vice-versa. It's hard to tell. What emerged was a deadly serious dramatic television series focussed on espionage stories for its first season, so serious that it became so openly mockable as to be absurd. Irwin Allen, was in the words of David Hedison "totally humorous", and so were his series. To be fair, many dramas were deadly serious for a long, long time on US television, with 'Maverick' and 'Voyage' contemporary 'The Man From UNCLE' being rare examples of a more naturalistic tone before 'Star Trek' destroyed the mold of how to make genre television. Just to make sure no humour got into the mix, stars Hedison (Captain Lee Crane), Richard Basehart (Admiral Harriman Nelson), and the supporting cast played it so seriously that even the semi-regular end of episode jokey wrap up sequences would fall to the ground dead on arrival. That was all part of the fun!

'Voyage', as stated previously, had a different 'typical style' each season. In the monochrome first season, it was espionage and even featured women occasionally. Colour arrived with second season, as well as the influence of the super-hit 'Batman' (finally coming out on DVD soon), and so a healthy mix of 'monsters of the week' got wrapped in with spy stories, mind control and idiotic evil scientists. In the third season all traces of womankind got eliminated as did the expense of significant guest stars and the madness was ratchetted up to eleven as legions of monsters cascaded on to the submarine Seaview every week, with Crane being mind controlled on a regular basis, and Nelson becoming ever more exasperated while actor Basehart despaired for his very future. Finally, in the fourth season, and on a greatly reduced budget, the show reverted to some kind of a balance of episode types and credibility, but too late for the ratings and it got cancelled ironically after one of its strongest episodes. In fact, the fourth season is probably the first or second strongest season of the show, proving that ratings mean nothing for series quality, if we didn't know that already.

Oh, 'Voyage', you were silly. Nelson's handpicked crew often were so stunningly incompetent or slow on the uptake that you wondered how they passed the navy tests, but at least they could be relied upon to be serious at all times, which was something. Very often the most sensible person on the submarine was one of Seamen Kowalski or Paterson, both of whom seemed capable of fixing everything with no hesitation. Chief Sharkey, the only non-commissioned officer functioned mainly as an exposition monkey, and first officer Chip Morton had the grand honour of stolidly commanding the ship because Nelson and Crane were too busy most of the time being brainwashed, turned into monsters, or being ingenious to cover up for Nelson's terrible judgement in choosing scientists to run his installations. It was a fun, fun series, with only two or three episodes being so bad as to be unwatchable. Of those few stinkers the one that sticks out as worst by far is 'The Hear Monster', in which the Seaview is apparently menaced by a heat monster played by a bunsen burner on a small cart. Let us not finish on a low though, for this was one of the most imaginative series of the 1960s, however terrible it might have been at times. There was a freedom to be writing on a show that wasn't expected to make sense, and it must have been intoxicating at times, especially as they almost always wrapped up the plot with a brief handwaving explanation in the last thirty seconds.

I'll miss 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea', at least until I rewatch a few, but now it's time for something else: 'The Invaders' is coming! Or 'Quincy, ME', or even the long awaited 'Star Trek' rewatch.

O.

No comments:

Post a Comment