Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (TV series)

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Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
Cover art from the 2006 DVD release of the 1st season of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea showing stars Richard Basehart (l) and David Hedison, with the submarine, Seaview (center)
Format	Science fiction
Created by	Irwin Allen
Starring	Richard Basehart David Hedison Bob Dowdell Henry Kulky Terry Becker Del Monroe Arch Whiting Paul Trinka Alan Hunt Richard Bull Paul Carr
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	4
No. of episodes	110
Production
Running time	Approx. 60 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Original run	September 14, 1964 – March 31, 1968
External links
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was a 1960s American Science Fiction television series based on the 1961 film of the same name. Both were created by Irwin Allen, which enabled the movie's sets, costumes, props, special effects models, and sometimes footage, to be used in the production of the television series. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was the first of Irwin Allen's four science fiction television series. The show's main theme was underwater adventure.

Voyage was broadcast on ABC from September 14, 1964 to March 31, 1968, and was the decade's longest-running American science fiction television series with continuing characters. The 110 episodes produced included 32 shot in black and white (1964–65), and 78 filmed in color (1965–68). The first two seasons took place in the then future of the 1970s. The second two seasons took place in the 1980s. The show starred Richard Basehart and David Hedison.

Contents 1 Show History 1.1 Pilot Episode 1.2 Season One 1.3 Season Two 1.4 Season Three 1.5 Fourth and final season 1.6 Series theme music 1.7 Differences from the feature film 2 Cast 3 Episode list 3.1 Season One: 1964–1965 3.2 Season Two: 1965–1966 3.3 Season Three: 1966–1967 3.4 Season Four: 1967–1968 4 Other media 5 Popular culture 6 Show's pro and cons 7 DVD releases 8 Notes 9 References 10 External links

[edit] Show History

[edit] Pilot Episode

In the pilot episode "Eleven Days to Zero", which was filmed in color but shown in black and white, the audience is introduced to the futuristic nuclear submarine Seaview and the lead members of her crew. Most notable is the designer and builder of the submarine, Admiral Harriman Nelson (Richard Basehart). We also are introduced to the Nelson Institute of Marine Research (NIMR) which serves as a support structure for the Seaview. We learn, not for the last time, that the series is set in the then-future of the 1970s. The pilot episode tells the story of how Lee Crane (David Hedison) became the Seaview’s Captain. At the end of the episode, we learn that the series will be about the adventures of the Seaview and her crew roaming the seven seas and visiting many exotic locations. The Seaview and her crew's primary task in the series will be to probe the mysteries of nature and fight forces that threaten the survival of the United States and the entire world.

[edit] Season One

The first season began with Admiral Nelson and the crew of the Seaview fighting against a foreign government in order to prevent a world-threatening earthquake, continuing with a foreign government destroying American submarines with new technologies in The Fear Makers and The Enemies. The season also had several ocean peril stories in which the Seaview crew spent the episode dealing with the normal perils of the sea. Two examples are "Submarine Sunk Here" and "The Ghost of Moby Dick". ^[1] The season introduced the diving bell and a mini-submarine, as well as the first alien story and the first sea monsters. The season ended with the Seaview crew fighting a foreign government to save a defense weapon.

In the first season, the gritty, atmospheric, and intense series featured story lines devoted to Cold War themes, as well as excursions into near-future speculative fiction. Many episodes involved espionage and sci-fi elements. While aliens and sea monsters, not to mention dinosaurs, did become the subject of episodes, the primary villains were hostile foreign governments. While fantastic, there was a semblance of reality in the scripts. Most fans and many critics believe that the majority of the series' best episodes aired during this season. They also believe that the more real world tone that the series took during this year stands up better than that of the next three seasons.

[edit] Season Two

The second season began with a trip inside a whale, and saw several brushes with world disaster. The season ended with a ghost story, one of the show's few sequels.

Due to ABC's demands for a somewhat "lighter" tone to the series, the second season saw an increase in monster-of-the-week type plots, yet there were still some episodes that harkened back to the tone of the first season. The second season also saw a change from black and white to color. The beginning of the second season saw the permanent replacement of Chief Jones with Chief Sharkey, due to the death of Henry Kulky, who portrayed Chief Jones.

The most important change in the series occurred during this season when a slightly redesigned Seaview was introduced, along with the Flying Sub. The Flying Sub was a yellow, two-man mini-submarine with passenger capacity, that could leave the ocean and function as an airplane. The Flying Sub was referred to by the initials FS-1. The futuristic craft greatly increased Seaview crews' travel options. The Flying Sub was launched from a bay in the lower part of Seaview that was apparently built between Seasons One and Two. The Seaview’s private observation deck from the first season was never seen again. The Seaview’s eight observation windows became four. The Seaview’s enlisted men were also given more colorful uniforms (red or light blue jumpsuits), evidently to take advantage of the changeover from black and white to color. The officers and petty officers, however, retained their khaki works from the first season. The traditional sailor uniforms worn in the first season were only seen in stock footage from the first season and on characters who were newly filmed to match up with that footage. All these changes occurred between seasons. The Flying Sub flying submarine would wind up being the most recognized element of the series, even more so than the Seaview herself.^{[citation needed]} The Flying Sub was showcased in the show's closing credits for the entire season.

[edit] Season Three

The third season of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea ran simultaneously with two other Allen-produced television series: the second season of Lost in Space and the premiere (and only) season of The Time Tunnel.

The third season began with Dick Tufeld of Lost in Space playing an evil disembodied brain from outer space. The season continued with a werewolf story that is one of the few episodes to inspire a sequel. In one episode, the Seaview’s officers and crew encountered Nazis who believed World War II was still ongoing. The third season only had two espionage stories and one ocean peril story that were reminiscent of the first season. One of those three stories was about a hostile foreign government trying to steal a strange new mineral with the aid of a brainwashed Admiral Nelson. This espionage story was the end of the third season.

The final two seasons cemented the shift towards paranormal storylines that were popular in the late 1960s. Mummies, werewolves, talking puppets and an evil leprechaun all walked the corridors of the Seaview. There were also fossil men, flame men, frost men and lobster men.

[edit] Fourth and final season

The fourth and final season of Voyage began with Victor Jory playing a five century old alchemist. After a few episodes there were revamped opening credits. Near the end of the fourth season, there were three unrelated stories of extraterrestrial invasion in three weeks. There were two time travel stories in two weeks. The second of the two had the Seaview going back in time to the American Revolution. The episode ended with the Seaview returning to the present and sailing into television history.

Ratings for the fourth season took a significant drop as the season progressed, but were not drastic enough for ABC to immediately cancel a fifth season for the series. During renewal discussions between Allen, 20th Century Fox and ABC, Allen instead proposed replacing Voyage with Land of the Giants. Based on a proposal consisting of only a reported two dozen pre-production concept paintings, ABC accepted Allen's proposed new series, and Voyage was cancelled.

[edit] Series theme music

The series' main theme, "The Seaview Theme", was written by Paul Sawtell.

[edit] Differences from the feature film

The television series and the theatrical movie do not share the same continuity, and the series was never intended to be a continuation of the movie, but rather a complete 'reboot' using some of the same characters, introducing new ones, and dispencing with others that hadn't quite worked out in the film. Among the many differences between the two continuities:

• Captain Crane is not with Seaview during the beginning of the submarine's history. In the opening scene of the TV pilot, Seaview’s captain was Captain John Phillips. During the episode Captain Phillips was killed and replaced with Captain Crane. The episode makes it clear that Captain Crane had never been assigned to Seaview before, though he had previously served with Nelson on Nautilus. He is only on loan from the Navy for this mission. At the end of the episode he transfers to the Naval Reserve and is assigned to Seaview permanently. In the film, Lee Crane was with Seaview during its trial runs. He also seems to have had something to do with building the submarine.

• The movie submarine is named the USOS Seaview and the TV series submarine is named the SSRN Seaview, which is more in line with the naming conventions for US Navy submarines.

• Admiral Nelson's secretary in the feature film, Cathy Connors, is not in the television series. In the feature film, Cathy Connors worked on board Seaview, but in the TV series, The Admiral seems to have a long list of secretaries who work on land, are basically interchangeable and never seem to last longer than an episode.

• Captain Crane has no fiancée in the television series at all. We see him flirting with women a few times but no woman serves the role in his life that Cathy Connors did in the movie. In the movie she is Captain Crane's fiancée and they are talking about getting married. In the TV show there is no fiancée and the idea of Captain Crane getting married is never even discussed.

• There was no Nelson Institute of Marine Research in the movie. In the film Seaview is under the authority of the Bureau of Marine Exploration which, according to the novelization of the movie, is part of the U.S Department of Science. The Institute was introduced in the pilot episode as the place where Admiral Nelson works on land and where the Seaview docks.

• Admiral Nelson's friend and colleague from the film, Commodore Lucius Emory is not in the weekly series. Instead Admiral Nelson has a long line of colleagues who also never outlast an episode.

• The shipboard aquarium that Commodore Emory managed in the film is absent from the TV version of the Seaview.

• Admiral Nelson is about 15 years younger in the television series than in the feature film. He also prefers cigarettes in the series, as opposed to cigars in the film. Admiral Nelson also appears less flamboyant and less critical of those around him in the series than in the film, although it is clear that he does not suffer fools gladly.

• Crewman Kowski (Del Monroe) in the movie became Kowalski once the series started. (He is the only actor to have appeared in both versions of Voyage)

• The television Seaview is given no origin. The audience is told that Admiral Nelson is the designer and builder of the submarine but we see no diving trials. Unlike the movie we are given no background on what the Admiral went through to build the Submarine.

• It is stated that publicly the submarine is owned by the United States Government, and technically part of the United States Naval Reserve, acting on 'permanently detached duty', and becomes part of the "Fighting Navy" in the event of war or national emergency (Which happened several times in the course of the series). This is all immaterial, however, as the series also makes it very clear that the sub is actually at the beck and call of the Secret Service, to be used in covert operations whenever needed. In the movie, the Seaview was never anything other than a Navy Research Vessel.

• In the episode the "The Sky's on Fire", no mention is made of such a thing ever happening before. This episode is a retelling of the movie, albeit with a slightly different plot and guest characters. In the movie, this incident happened during the Seaview's shakedown crusie. In the series, it happened after the seaview had been in service for more than a year and a half.

[edit] Cast

• Richard Basehart as Admiral Harriman Nelson
• David Hedison as Captain Lee Crane
• Bob Dowdell as Lt. Commander "Chip" Morton
• Henry Kulky as Chief Curly Jones (1st Season)
• Terry Becker as Chief Sharkey (2nd–4th Seasons)
• Del Monroe as Kowalski
• Arch Whiting as Sparks
• Paul Trinka as Patterson
• Alan Hunt as Riley (2nd Season)
• Richard Bull as the Doctor
• Wayne Heffley as Seaview Doctor (2nd Season 1965-66, 3 episodes)
• Paul Carr as Casey Clark (1st Season, Recurring afterwards only in stock footage scenes)

[edit] Episode list

Episode titles and dates of first airing, from tv.com Note that two different episodes, 28 and 73, are both entitled "The Creature."

[edit] Season One: 1964–1965

[edit] Season Two: 1965–1966

[edit] Season Three: 1966–1967

[edit] Season Four: 1967–1968

[edit] Other media

• A hardback novel, City Beneath the Sea, authored by Paul W. Fairman, was published in 1965, to tie into the series. It had a different storyline than the episode of the same name. The book should also not be confused with the later Irwin Allen film of the same name. The storyline was about an attempt by a wealthy family to transport the earth's oceans to another planet for re-settlement.

• Western Publishing published a comic book based on the series. Western's comic company, Gold Key Comics put out a series that ran 16 issues from 1964–1970. Most covers were painted, and most had a photo of either Richard Basehart or David Hedison on them. The first issue of the Gold Key comic was a story called "The Last Survivor". The story bought back Dr. Gamma, the villain from the pilot episode, "Eleven Days to Zero". Gold Key's story was the only sequel to the pilot episode. The comic was also the villain's second appearance, but not his final one as is commonly thought: the character was re-cast mid-way through the filming of the pilot episode, and appered in five more episodes in the first season. The character was retired when Werner Klemperer joined the cast of Hogan's Heroes in 1965.

• In 1966, World Distributors, a British publishing company in Manchester, England, published a hardback book called the Annual. The British-made book used the series characters in all new stories. The book contained a reprint of a story from Gold Key Comics. Both books were mostly prose stories with some illustrations.

• Aurora released a plastic model kit of Seaview as well as the Flying Sub during the original run of the series. Both kits were recently re-released by Polar Lights. The Flying Sub model sold more than the Seaview model.^{[citation needed]}

• Other collectables from the show include a Milton Bradley board game with a drawing based on the pilot episode, a school lunch box with depictions of Admiral Nelson and Captain Crane trying to save the Flying Sub from an evil looking octopus. There was also a View-Master slide reel based on the episode "Deadly Creature Below."

[edit] Popular culture

• The popularity of the TV show inspired Mad Magazine to spoof the show, their version being called Voyage to See What's on the Bottom, featuring a submarine called the Seapew.

• Australian TV show Fast Forward sent-up the series as "Voyage to the Bottom of the Harbour"

• Stock footage of Seaview was used in the Wonder Woman episode "The Bermuda Triangle Crisis."

• An often referenced running joke is that in many episodes of the series, characters lurch to camera movements on the visibly static set, to give the illusion that Seaview had sustained impact. British television sitcom Red Dwarf frequently utilized parodies of this gimmick, including an extended outtake of the cast lurching from side to side of the Starbug set at the instance of Craig Charles.

[edit] Show's pro and cons

The TV show had many pro and cons, noticeable in about every episode. Also confirmed in the David Hedison interviews on the DVDs.

• The main set was quite glamorous. It came free, as it was leftover from the movie. This left plenty of money for custom sets in many episodes.

• There was little gratuitous violence.

• The theme and background music were quite good.

• The main characters shared a genuine camaraderie and friendship, not unlike the Star Trek crew, although it was never deeply developed in the series.

On the other hand:

• The directing tended to be stilted and unimaginative. Many scenes started with a static camera shot of a hallway, with nothing happening for a second or three, then a crew member or two would appear, walking slowly and with no expression.

• The special effects, while generally quite good for their time were repeatedly reused. E.g., the shot of the flying sub leaving the water was the same shot every time, sometimes reversed right to left., a first season Seaview, with eight windows occasionally shown in later season stock footage).

• The writing was poor quality. Two or three plot points would be stretched to fill an hour. Plot points tended to be humdrum -- e.g., Seaview wanders into a minefield, mines would go off, Seaview rocks, everybody gets jostled, then the situation resolves, usually for no clever reason. A generically accented villain would strike a crew member over the head, second crew wakes them up: "What happened?", "I don't know" — "where's -Bad Guy-?". Seaview's circuitry room (which had no lock on its door) bursts into sparks, over and over again.

• Plenty of incongruities. They lower a diving bell, but forget to tie the end of the cable to the spool. A bad guy kills somebody by pushing over a free-standing shelf onto them. They are in constant radio and TV contact with the world, even when deep underwater. There are large TV screens everywhere, which are utilized in relatively few episodes. Divers come and go without decompression in later episodes. The circuitry room blows up several times an episode. The computer panels of blinking lights never change rhythm or indicate anything useful.

• The writing of seasons three and four was aimed at juveniles. It did not approach "Twilight Zone" quality, and there were no adult themes (a sign of the times, however).

• The show was very frugal. Quite often there would be important crewmen in a scene, and they'd be given no lines to speak (non-speaking actors get paid much less). In many scenes you can see main characters doing their own stunts and falls, which saves the cost of a stuntman and shooting the scene twice, but is very hazardous to the actors. The diving equipment they got for free by crediting the manufacturer in the closing credits.

[edit] DVD releases

20th Century Fox has released the first 3 seasons on DVD in Region 1 for the very first time. It is expected that Season 4 will be released soon.

DVD Name	Ep #	Release Date	Additional Information
Season 1 Vol. 1	16	February 21, 2006	Unaired B&W Pilot
Season 1 Vol. 2	16	July 11, 2006	Still Gallery (22 images) Blooper Reel David Hedison Interviews
Season 2 Vol. 1	13	October 24, 2006	Special Effects Footage (22:04) Concept Art Gallery (5 stills) Episodic Photo Gallery (35 stills) Publicity Photo Gallery (8 stills)
Season 2 Vol. 2	13	February 20, 2007	David Hedison Interview Still Gallery
Season 3 Vol. 1	13	June 19, 2007	Still Galleries David Hedison Interviews Visitors on Set Letters from Fans "The Rock and Roll" David Hedison 1966 Interview (audio only)
Season 3 Vol. 2	13	October 23, 2007 [1]	Episodic Photo Gallery Publicity Photos TV Merchandise David Hedison Interviews Richard Basehart 1966 Interview (audio only)

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

1. SEAVIEW: The making of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea by Tim Colliver, copyright 1992, published by Alpha Control Press.
   
   
2. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea DVD sets
   
   
3. The Irwin Allen Scrapbook Volume One Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Edited by William E. Anchors, Jr.; copyright 1992 by Alpha Control Press.
   
   
4. TV.Com

[edit] External links

• Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea at the Internet Movie Database
• Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
• Mike's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Zone
• The Irwin Allen News Network: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
• Aurora "Seaview" Model Kit Instructions from 1966 & 1975
• Daffron & Delaney's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea — fan fiction and much more
• Nelson Institute of Marine Research
• Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Photo Vault