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Voyage to the Bottom of the
Sea |
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Deadly Creature Below Airdate: January 9, 1966 |
In the midst of testing an experimental guidance destruct device for use against hostile missiles, Seaview picks up two men who are, in reality, murderous escapees from a Bahaman island prison. Nelson immediately offers to take them to the Bahamas in the Flying Sub and the two realize their goose is cooked. They variously sabotage the diving bell and rake Seaview's controls with machine gun fire, sending her crashing to a deep sea ledge and eventually into the arms of the episode's title Deadly Creature. In due time, these goons hijack the Flying Sub (not a good idea when you don't know how to operate the vehicle and there's a conveniently placed monster waiting in the depths below.) |
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Crane blasts the creature with Seaview's laser and effects a rescue of FS-1 and the two crooks, who shoot Kowalksi in the head as they regain their freedom on Seaview. In a later struggle to escape, Dobbs kills Hawkins instead of the Seaview crew he's aiming for, and then lunges for the escape hatch. Upon exiting the sub, the pressure kills him as he heads for the surface, trying to escape. |
Seaview is left struggling in the grasp of the Deadly Creature and Nelson must risk firing a time-delayed missile into the beast in order to escape. The ruse works and Seaview once again escapes for the grasp of a deep-sea monster. Crane and Nelson are last seen chatting in the observation nose about how perhaps the dumb creature and the two men had no real choice in what they were and how they acted. | ![]() |
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![]() Nememiah Persoff |
Mark Says: Like many year-two segments, this episode juggles two stories at once - desperate convicts who terrorize Seaview and a two-headed jellyfish that is simply defending its turf. A great monster, lots of unpretentious action and suspense, all of which concludes with a thoughtful conversation between Nelson and Crane. | ![]() Paul Comi |
Mike Says: I've never liked this episode for several reasons. Dobbs and Hawkins are not only very bad men, they're crass and stupid. Seeing them confound an entire sub full of trained professionals is not only illogical, it's frustrating as all get-out. If these two lugs can run wild on the world's most advanced research and defense platform, then what chance would the men of Seaview have against an intelligent foe? Everyone should have listened to Kowalski -- the only one to immediately see all the warning signs. But what does Kowalski get for his insight? He gets shot in the head. Director Sobey Martin's lazy work does not add any sorely needed pizzazz to the pedestrian business. In comparison to season one's The Condemned, the infamous Deadly Creature of the title headlines a pointless exercise rather than a riveting story with a point. On top of all this, we once again get to see Seaview jump from thousands of feet beneath the sea to the surface and back down again when the flying sub docks and the editor cuts in surface docking footage instead of submerged. Aye yi yi! |
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Photo of Dobbs
& Hawkins at Seaview plans this
page courtesy NeoLASE |
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