Voyage
To The
Bottom Of The Sea
1964-1968 Debuted in 1964 and ran until 1968. Produced by disaster
master Irwin Allen.
Noted
science fiction author Harlan Ellison was on the writing staff
for a short time, but left after attacking an ABC censor during
a heated story conference. "He said, "Writers are toadies, you'll
do as your told." And I went bananas." Ellison said in 1980, "...I
saw blood red and I just wanted him then! I didn't want to have
to go around anything, so I just took the straightest route, which
was right down the middle of the fuckin' table. ...I tagged him
a good one right in the pudding trough and zappo! over he went,
ass over teakettle, windmilling backwards, and fell down, hit
the wall and Irwin had this big, six-foot long model of the Seaview,
which I guess they had used as a miniature on the series, and
it came off its brackets and dropped on top of him and just busted
this dude's pelvis."
"Voyage
to the Bottom of the Sea has gotten a bum rap. It was a great
show, and had a bundle of spy / intriuge / 'Mission Impossible'
type stories in addition to the later monster shows. Even they
were made believable, due to the superb acting of the entire cast,
especially David Hedison and Richard Basehart. Unfortunately,
the show is currently being shown in a 'chopped up' version.
If
you could have seen the episodes as originially aired, you would
see inter-character personalities, mental anguish, joy, laughter,
romance, suspense, drama, and imaginative special effects... Voyage
had it all. It was Irwin Allen's masterpiece, but because of just
a few bad monster eps (that could have been better) it was judged
as a monster of the week show - and that is just not true. By
the way, one TV's best writers, William Reed Woodfield, later
left Voyage and went to 'Mission Impossible', and his Voyage eps
are fantastic!
Please don't give this wonderful show a bad rap because of a few
bombs. All series have bombs, but loyal viewers ignore them."
- Sincerely, Carol Foss
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