Search - Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea - Season Three, Volume Two on DVD

So bad it's good.

Sally Foster | Redwood, CA USA | 05/09/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I really enjoyed Kenneth Sohl's three star review of season three, titled "The Downhill Slide". However, I think that, while Mr. Sohl did an excellent job of pointing out some of the awful episodes and recycled plots, he missed out on a couple of things that actually put season three over the top, and which transformed it from just plain bad, to so bad it's good.

For example, the recurrence of Admiral Nelson's little werewolf problem was not just a rehash of the first werewolf episode. No, the season three episode went much further than that. In the first episode, Nelson became a werewolf by traditional means - wolf bits man, etc. In that episode the werewolf curse was cured by treating Nelson for rabies.
In the outstanding season three episode, Nelson becomes a werewolf again, this time because his hand was exposed to radiation. When the doctor points out to Nelson that the rabies treatment won't work a second time, it would appear that all hope was lost. Not so, however, because the crew miraculously discovered, just in time, that giving Admiral Nelson the bends cured him of the werewolf curse. If only I could have been in the same room with the writers when they came up with that ending, it would have been a priceless experience. Wolf bite = werewolf curse. Rabies treatment = cure. Radiation exposure = reoccurrence of werewolf curse. Bends = cure.

I also noticed that in season three the submarine has some kind of really dramatic damage done to it for nearly every episode. The location of the damage is usually in the circuitry room, with the missile room coming in second, and the nuclear reactor following close behind. Regardless of the target there is at least an explosion, or a fire, usually electrical, per episode. In a couple of episodes the nuclear reactor goes critical.

The episode with the flame creature is a truly classic episode. The crew fights the flame monster for three quarters of the episode, with no idea how to beat it - until a super smart mad scientist guest star tells them how, right before he's killed by the creature. Honestly, a crew that spent nearly an entire season putting out fires on the submarine, couldn't figure out how to destroy a creature made entirely of flames?

About that nuclear reactor, you know the expression that some things are better left to the imagination? It certainly applies here. The Seaview nuclear reactor is in the middle of a room that men walk in and out of without any sort of protective clothing. There was one episode where they used protective clothing that looked like freezer suits, and which didn't fully cover the neck or all of the face. The cooling rods for the reactor, which are highly radioactive, and therefore deadly, are in the middle of the room, out in the open, and in one episode Nelson actually adjust one of the rods by hand. But that's not the best part, the best part is the nuclear reactor itself. I'm not kidding here, it's a microwave oven. I'm not going to describe it here, if you want to know exactly what it looks like, go look at the one in your kitchen, there's no difference. It even opens like a microwave oven.

There's a great line in the mermaid episode. Crane, who's seen an ungodly amount of aliens, sea monsters, a mummy, a few ghosts, a werewolf, along with evil dolls, and wax men who've attempt to take over Seaview, not to mention Nazi's coming back to life, and let's not forget the episode where he traveled to Venus. Crane, the guy who has seen all of that actually states when he sees a mermaid that it's "the most fantastic discovery ever made". However, given the fact that the crew ran across aliens on a daily basis, but in a three-year period had only seen three females, maybe Crane meant that the discovery of something female was fantastic, regardless of whether or not it was a mermaid.

There was one episode that I missed the beginning of, and from where I started I thought the plot was about Crane mutating into a monster, with some kind of horn on his forehead. However, after restarting from the beginning, I realized that the hideous mutation was in reality an exceptionally large zit on Crane's forehead that was not very well concealed with stage makeup.

I enjoyed the episode with the white ape (which looks suspiciously like the Mugoto from the Star Trek episode "A Private Little War"). The episode opens with two guys on a deserted island. When one of them walks up behind the other, the other says "Oh, it's you". On a deserted island, who else would it be???

I really enjoyed the first two seasons of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. And I've really enjoyed season three, but not at all for the same reasons. I like season three because it so firmly fits into the "so bad its good category", which is why I'm giving it five stars. However, if you're the kind of person who doesn't enjoy truly awful shows, you might want to steer clear of season three, and stick to the other seasons.
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