S1E03 - Intro to Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Hi friends! So I have these phases where I rewatch certain shows. Lately I’ve been rewatching Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. And since it’s basically the catalyst that led me to create this podcast, I thought it was only fitting to talk about it first. I’ll be pulling information from my memory and also two really good books. One is by Jon Abbott and is called “Irwin Allen Television Productions, 1964-1970: A Critical History”. I’ve had this book for years, and it outlines each of Irwin Allen’s TV shows from this time period, and gives little synopses of each episode. But there’s often a lot of opinions interjected and dare I say negative commentary.. I mean one of the episode synopses starts with: “A rather shabby episode with little to commend it other than a striking alien” or “A moderately entertaining time-killer, but certainly nothing special”, but overall it’s a pretty good resource. 

I also have an amazing fantastic ginormous beautiful book that I recently gifted myself for my birthday and it’s by Jeff Bond called the Fantasy Worlds of Irwin Allen. It just came out in Nov 2024 and I was shocked that I hadn’t heard of it before. It’s actually really beautiful. Also, very heavy! I remember when it arrived, my husband picked up the package from our building lobby and asked me, ‘What did you order? Books?”. Yeah, he said it with an “s”, plural. He assumed it was more than one because the package was SO heavy. And I remember when I was about to open it, I was sitting on the floor and the package kinda slipped a bit and landed on my foot. I had a bruise for a DAYS. But anyway, it’s now one of my prized possessions! If you go to Youtube, I’ll include pictures of the books if you wanted to see them.

So Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (the TV show) premiered on Sept 14, 1964 and lasted 4 seasons. It was actually a movie first, that came out in 1961 and featured a star-studded cast including Joan Fontaine, Barbara Eden (before I Dream of Jeannie), Michael Ansara (who was actually married to Barbara Eden), Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lorre and Frankie Avalon. I got into the show first and didn’t actually see the movie until a few years later when the Space channel aired it. 

The TV show stars Richard Basehart and David Hedison. Ah, David Hedison, he was actually my first celebrity crush! I absolutely love him and the character he plays, Captain Lee Crane of the submarine seaview. He was actually offered the role in the movie but turned it down. But when he heard about Richard Basehart’s casting, who plays his superior officer and friend, Admiral Harriman Nelson, he decided to sign on for the TV series. So Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was created by the incomparable Irwin Allen, who was born in 1916 and passed away in 1991. He also created Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants and was known as the master of disaster movies, and he produced and directed The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno just to name a few. I’ll definitely do a more in-depth look at Irwin Allen in a future episode!

So in my opinion, the first couple seasons of Voyage are highly underrated. The writing and acting are phenomenal, but I think the show as a whole tends to get overlooked because in the later seasons, the show kind of turned into a ‘monster of the week’ show and the storylines focused less on the types of storylines from the early seasons. So I think for that reason it gets a bad rap. Something similar happens with Lost in Space too, with the first season focusing on the Robinson family as a whole but then turns into a show that tends to focus a lot more on the character Dr Smith, and his relationship with the robot as well as young Will Robinson. 

The following is from Jon Abbott’s book regarding Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and it kind of supports what I’m saying. So he writes:

“Contrary to popular myth, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea featured monsters, aliens and science-fictional concepts from the earliest episodes. However, it is true to say that initially there were fewer of them. The stories started out in a fairly sober and straightforward fashion during the first monochrome season, and then settled into the more familiar and popular monster-of-the-week format of the second, third and fourth colour seasons that most folk remember, returning to many of the same themes and storylines portrayed in the first season, but in a more fantastical manner. The series benefitted vastly from the arrival of colour, at which time the entire submarine was given a facelift and redesign, and in style and execution it looks today as if there were five years rather than six months between the filming of the first and second seasons. The first season had a spartan look and a try-everything-once approach to scripts that ranged from espionage capers to ‘50s-style sci-fi, while the second season looked sharp, glossy, and lavish. The third and fourth seasons suffered from budget cuts and a dearth of fresh ideas, but thanks to the standing sets and expertise employed, still managed to look good and provide the requisite thrills and spills”

So you can see from what he wrote here that the show really did change throughout its run, and although it faltered here and there, it still provided shows full of excitement and fun!

So stay tuned for the next episode where I’ll talk about one of my favourite Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episodes so you can get a better feel for the show!

Until next time, take good care of each other.