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Irwin Allen had a checkered career in TV. While the
first season of many of his science fiction/fantasy shows
were terrific and fun (if often filled with bad science),
the shows would increasingly become silly and featured hackneyed
plots reminiscent of the worst "Z" movies. "Voyage to the
Bottom of the Sea" was an exception until the latter part
of the second season. Allen frequently would front load
his shows with great visual effects, production designs
and guest stars and the quality of the shows would quickly
veer off matching the increasingly mentally challenged episodes
that filled out the quota for the rest of the year. ***
"Voyage" set sail with the first half of season two
having decent (if increasingly unbelievable) scripts and
nice high quality production values. During the second half
of season two star Richard Basehart was unavailable for
three episodes (he had a gastric ulcer probably from reading
the scripts) which would have allowed producer Allen to
shake the series out of the doldrums. Instead, we got a
pair of solid actors (Gary Merrill and Peter Mark Richman)
swimming in the shallow end of the script pool. Perhaps
the writers were suffering from hypoxemia which might explain
the really, really bad stories that were like bad sores
on this once interesting show. ---
Image & Sound:
As with the previous sets, Fox has done a terrific job
making sure that "Voyage" captures the bright colors of
the show. Detail is quite good and the mono soundtrack is
augmented by a so-so stereo remix. ---
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