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Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Production
information and notes by Mark Phillips Story synopses, Mike Bailey |
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| The Mummy Original Airdate: February 5, 1967 (Find the cool mouse-over on this page.) |
| Seaview is charged with transporting a mummy to a middle-eastern nation in the hopes that the return of the national treasure will help stabilize that nation and prevent a war from breaking out. (???) It becomes obvious early-on that Crane is being affected by whatever lies within the mummy's sarcophagus; he suffers from repeated fainting spells. |
Nelson
relieves Crane of his duties that he might recover and places Chip
Morton in charge. Morton
doubts they can complete the mission on schedule, but vows to try. Just
as it looks like they're making headway, the mummy emerges (Its sarcophagus
is remarkably clean inside for having contained a mummified corpse
for over three thousand years. Just look at that fresh lining.) |
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The thing lumbers around knocking out crew and attacking Captain Crane as he sleeps. Crane manages to get off several shots at the thing (they have no effect) and is found unconscious by Nelson and Morton who have been alerted by the gunshots. Doc orders more rest for the ailing captain, who remembers nothing of the attack. Apparently under the mummy's direction, Crane secretly shorts things out in the circuitry room, sending Seaview to the bottom. |
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Soon, a shadowy figure sneaks into the circuitry room and changes settings on Seaview's direc-tional equipment. Nelson later discovers that they are hopelessly behind schedule due to incorrect readings. |
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| He orders the Flying Sub, now their only hope for delivering the Sarcophagus on time, readied for flight. A crewman soon interrupts the mummy, again out of his case, wrecking the Flying Sub's controls, and is killed. Crane secretly causes more trouble in the circuitry room, sending Seaview to the bottom. Repairs are effected and Nelson now realizes he has a saboteur and a murderer on his hands, but is beginning to have suspicions about both Crane and the Mummy, and that perhaps there's a link between them. He lays a further trap in the Flying Sub and catches Crane, under the influence of the mummy, planting an explosive. Crane is subdued and doc administers a tranquilizer as per Nelson's request that will keep him "out" for 24 hours. |
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| About this time the mummy goes on the rampage through the sub and Nelson orders all power routed through the starboard hull cable. Just in time, a staggering jolt of electricity puts the seemingly supernatural mummy back to eternal sleep. Crane returns to normal and the sarcophagus is flown to its destination. |
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Mark Says: Another
budget saver with a seedy-looking mummy who has all of the charisma
of a Egyptian sand flea. It’s such a lumbering,
dehydrated entity that its brief romp through the Seaview’s corridors
produces neither chills or suspense. |
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Mike Says: The Mummy is on screen very little which is why some of this episode works fairly well. A budget saver? Yes. But (have I mentioned this before?) it's amazing what great music cues (Bernard Hermann) can do to lift a stupidly written, bare-bones genre story from the muck. Style distracts from a lack of intelligible content. As is the case with this kind of show, one must ask how the hulking creature manages to get from point A to point B on any one occasion without being seen. Although The Mummy's motivations are never even hinted at in the script, Mike's VTTBOTS Zone caught up with the well-aged guest star at Boris's Monster Disco at an after-hours party earlier this year and put the question to him: "I dunno," he said, "they never told me. I just did mummy stuff -- knocked some people around, killed one or two ('I can't remember how many for the sure,' he told the interviewer) and smashed some stuff up." |
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