hyped garbage

Good start, but then it gets ruined

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

To be honest - I found this Sci-Fi/Underwater, TV-Adventure series from 1965-1966 to be kinda on the disappointing side.Even though the premise for its stories was actually intriguing and some of the special effects were quite good (while some were totally cheesy) - I thought that the overall presentation of its episodes to be too dry, with there being far too much talk going on and not enough worthwhile action.Though this was obviously a TV program with a fair-sized budget - The show's episodes (being 50 minutes in length) lapsed far too often into a monotony that was just too dreary for my liking.All-in-all - Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea was, at best, just so-so entertainment.

I was just a teenager when this series was popular. I'd lie on the carpet in our living room and watch the plot of each episode unfold on our family's 21 inch black and white Electohome. The special effects were somewhat crude by today's digitalized standards, but they were state of the art at the time. The series centered around the experiences of the crew of the "Seaview", a remarkable nuclear submarine with capabilities far beyond those of the common submarines of the day. It could dive deeper and go faster than conventional undersea vessels and, as if that weren't enough, it could launch a small flying submarine that was as adept at flying in the stratosphere as it was at plying the depths of the world's oceans. The captain of the Seaview was Lee Crane, played by David Hedison. He was responsible for the day to day navigation and operation of the "Seaview". The ship was designed by Admiral Harriman Nelson, played by Richard Basehart. Admiral Nelson was always on the "Seaview" and made the larger decisions regarding the activities and challenges to be undertaken by the ship and it's intrepid crew. The Seaview often encountered monsters during it's explorations and these were my favorite episodes. More often however, the plot of the episode dealt with the larger political and environmental issues of the time. A great series that was about as stimulating as a young mind could wish for.

Created by Irwin Allen, 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea' was a long-running science fiction series based on the hit Twentieth Century Fox movie of the same name. Basically, it told of the colourful exploits of the Seaview, the world's most technologically advanced submarine, commanded by Captain Lee Crane and created by Admiral Harriman Nelson ( Rtd. ) of 'The Nelson Institute Of Marine Research'. Each week, the sub would save the world either from saboteurs, aliens or monsters. David Hedison and the late Richard Basehart brought more to the characters than was ever there on paper. Four seasons were produced - of which the first was the best - and the show was a favourite of mine when I was a boy.Rather than regurgitate the show's well-documented history, however, I want to use this review to recount a personal memory.In the early '90's, Britain's Channel 4 announced that it had purchased the entire run, and planned to screen it on Sunday afternoons in the slot vacated by 'Lost In Space'. I was overjoyed. The last reruns of 'Voyage' ( as it shall henceforth be referred to ) were back in the early '80's, and took the form of sporadic showings of Season 2 and 3 stories such as 'The Mechanical Man' and 'The Lost Bomb' ( I'm referring to the H.T.V. screenings. Other regions may have had different ones ). Particularly exciting was the news that the run included the first season, which I had never before seen. Being black and white effectively precluded it from a reshowing in the colour crazy '70's.So, in 1990, the Seaview set sail again. But there was a problem. In my neck of the woods, we had S4C - the Welsh fourth channel - and they commenced the run several weeks behind Channel 4. Which meant that when English viewers got onto the colour episodes, we were still watching the monochrome ones.Nothing wrong with that, you may think. I was grateful to be seeing 'Voyage' at all. But then The First Gulf War happened. Someone at Channel 4 realised that the episode 'The Magnus Beam' was too close to what was happening in the real world - set in the Middle East, it concerned a madman who wanted to start World War Three by capturing U.S. spy planes, and decided it was not suitable for screening at that time. It was shelved - along with 'The Blizzard Makers', whose only crime it seems was to mention The Gulf Stream several times. The run carried on without them.After the war ended, Channel 4 showed the episodes. All seemed well. S4C then made a staggering blunder. After 'The Magnus Beam', they were to have followed C4's lead by screening 'The Blizzard Makers' before recommencing the normal order. But they didn't. Instead they put on 'Leviathan', the seventh episode of Season 2! I was horrified. The station had managed to omit a dozen episodes ( six from the first year, six from the second ). Any hope I had of building a complete library of 'Voyage' episodes went straight out the window. Amongst the 'lost' stories were classics like 'Jonah & The Whale' and 'And Five Of Us Are Left'. It would be like a comprehensive 'Star Trek' season forgetting to include 'The City On The Edge Of Forever' and 'Amok Time'.Enraged, I fired off a letter to S4C, hoping to obtain an explanation for this act of crass stupidity. I eventually got a reply. The unsigned letter claimed that the decision to skip twelve episodes was Channel 4's, insisting that the S4C transmissions should harmonise with theirs. I didn't buy it. For one thing, they were still a week behind, and secondly, why would an English television station care what was being shown in Wales? 'The Waltons' was also being rerun at the same time, and S4C's reverential treatment of 'John-Boy' and company contrasted sharply with its unmistakable contempt for 'Voyage'. The letter writer concluded by inviting me to take the matter up with Channel 4. In other words, they were passing the buck. They had messed up, and were refusing to even say sorry. I tossed the letter in the bin.S4C weren't finished with 'Voyage' either. A screening of the Season 3 episode 'The Death Watch' was plagued by so many technical problems it rendered the plot incomprehensible. A year later, 'Cave Of The Dead' was displaced by coverage of the Urdd Eisteddfod, never to be rescheduled. None of this would have mattered had the series been available on V.H.S. at the time. It wasn't. I had to wait fourteen years to see the missing twelve, when 'Voyage' was rerun on the Sky satellite channel 'F.X.289''. And then they only ran the first two seasons. If you think the S4C debacle still rankles with me after all these years, you'd be right. My 'Voyage' collection is still missing two episodes at the time of writing. Despite its popularity, Channel 4 have not shown the slightest interest in bringing it back. Admiral Nelson and Captain Crane faced many untold dangers over the years, but one peril even they could not overcome was the general incompetence of television programme planners.CODA: It is now 14th January 2010. I have bought the Region 1 releases off eBay, so the story has a happy ending. Shame it took two decades for me to get there.

1: Nelson orders the Seaview rigged for silent running. In the next scene we see it with its active sonar pinging madly away, as it always does. Seaview must be the most conspicuous sub in the ocean.2: Nelson says they're 3000 feet deep in a trench 8 miles deep. Nevertheless, we see the sub threading a dangerous course between huge submerged pinnacles in the next scene. Seaview was usually running a submerged obstacle course when submerged, explaining the constant sonar pings, I suppose.3: Seaview, sitting on the bottom, is emitting huge quantities of bubbles. Good luck surfacing again!4: Seaview, moving "dead slow", detects the the wreck of another sub a short distance ahead; they can see it with their nose camera. A few seconds later the sub plows right into the wreck for no apparent reason. Great ship handling there, Crane!5: The sub routinely makes emergency surfaces for no apparent reason. The sub explodes out of the water at a 60 degree angle, then smashes down. I'd like to see what happens on board when they do that.6: The sub is often shown at steep angles, in pitch, roll, or both. Yet inside, everyone seems to be walking on a level deck.And yet it's all rather entertaining...