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Voyage
to the Bottom of the Sea
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Voyage
to the Bottom of the Sea
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| The Deadliest Game Airdate: November 7, 1965 |
| Crane is with the President at the bottom of the sea on an inspection tour of a new undersea bomb shelter of Nelson's design. General Hobson, whose company built the safe haven is on Seaview along with Nelson, monitoring events. The reactor powering the undersea installation starts to run wild and it becomes apparent that the place is under some kind of electronic attack. The trigger-happy Hobson wants to drop the hammer on the Ruskies now. The President says no--that they have no idea where the attack is coming from. Nelson and company trace the attacking signal to Weymouth Virginia. Meanwhile, the highly placed Hobson returns to Washington, just waiting for the President's demise so he can order missiles fired. Nelson, |
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| convinced the attack is internal and a matter of treason, is out to get the proof. In Weymouth, Nelson and Kowalski close in on a college book shop, the apparent source of the signal. There, they encounter Dr. Lydia Parish who helped design the undersea shelter and who has secretly been abetting General Hobson with his attempted power grab and preemptive war. Hobson shows up to make trouble, but to no avail -- Nelson is able to stop the transmitter in time and the President orders the arrest of the overzealous Hobson on charges of treason. |
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Basehart &
Bochner |
Simon &
Hedison |
Seaview & deadly beam. |
Dalton & books. |
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Mark Says: A lesson in how to disarm a great guest cast. The usually excellent Lloyd Bochner is wasted as General Hobson, and he is limited to standing around and issuing sinister threats with a phony mustache pasted on his face. Meanwhile, the great Audrey Dalton combines beauty and sensuous evil with a promising performance but she’s cut off before she can have much fun. That leaves the capable Robert F. Simon, who delivers a solid performance as the President. Otherwise, an incredibly dreary and boring episode, one of the real snoozers of year two. Even the chase scenes look like they’re out of the Republic serials and scenes in a undersea reactor room seem to go on forever. The episode ends with a whimper, not a bang. One interesting note: this is the only Voyage episode, to my recollection, that actually mentions a contemporary, real-life person (Gen. Douglas MacArthur) and the events surrounding MacArthur’s controversial firing by Eisenhower. |
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Mike Says: To paraphrase a famous line in King Kong, "It wasn't the airplanes that killed the episode, it was writer Rik Vollaerts and director Sobey Martin." |
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