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Rating: - THE SEAVIEW STILL SAVES THE DAY
One of the great things about DVD is that classic television shows can be not only recalled but watched again. Some of them upon second viewing make you think "Did I really think this show was good?". But then again others make you realize that the shows you enjoyed from your youth were not just memories but were actually good shows. VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA is one of those series.

As with the previous releases of the series, SEASON 4 VOLUME 1, holds up as well as the rest. The improvement of color over black and white is an obvious one when comparing to season one. But the characters have now had a chance to develop on screen and become familiar to us all. Too bad the series left the air not long after.

The sixties gave us some of the greatest science fiction television ever seen. As early as THE TWILIGHT ZONE and moving forward to THE OUTER LIMITS we had anthologies that held our attention. And as for serialized tales, we had the original STAR TREK and more. No person helped this era out more so than Irwin Allen.

Allen was the creator of some of the most remembered sci fi series from the time including THE TIME TUNNEL, LOST IN SPACE, LAND OF THE GIANTS and of course VOYAGE. Each of these series has had a release to DVD and have had the opportunity to give those of us children of the sixties the chance to relive those moments that held our attention each week, an hour at a time, as we watched incredible worlds unfold before our eyes.

As for VOYAGE, the story mixed a combination of military and peacenik in one. It told the tales of the submarine Seaview, a high tech sub designed and operated by Admiral Nelson (Richard Basehart), a man who sees great things for the future and who uses his sub not as an offensive weapon but as a means to an end to help people around the globe.

Along with Nelson are several main characters. The main one of these was Capt. Lee Crane (David Hedison), his second in command. While Nelson offered an elder statesman, Crane was the young eye candy to draw in girls, a man of action who took control when needed. Robert Dowdell as Lt. Comdr. Chip Morton, Del Monroe as Kowalski and Arch Whiting as Sparks helped round out the all male cast as they tackled world crises around the globe, saving the world over and over again.

This particular season gave us a number of items to be concerned about opening with an episode that showed the Seaview tossed about was a volcano was about to blow cracking the world in two. Vincent Price paid a visit to the Seaview as a puppeteer who took control of various crewmen. A well loved plot device of the sixties, the ability of a bad guy to transform his appearance to do harm to whoever he chose was used. And time travel was brought into the picture again as well.

VOYAGE played out like STAR TREK taken to inner space instead of outer and with an all male crew instead of one more integrated. But then TREK was in the future and VOYAGE in the present. Scenes of both ships being tossed about due to either underwater explosions or photon torpedoes gave us the cast tossing themselves about from side to side of the set. One could expect anyone from either cast feeling comfortable changing sets.

For me it was glorious to watch as the flying sub once again lifted off out of the bottom of the Seaview and broke surface to fly across the sky. Like many I was lucky enough to have purchased the Aurora model kit and make my own flying sub to take a place of honor on the top of my desk. To find one today means a prolonged ebay search and paying an arm and a leg. Better it remains a fond memory.

Not so this series. It no longer has to be a memory. Instead it is something that can be enjoyed again and again. And it can be shared with my son and later perhaps my grandchildren.

One of the best things that we can take with us, those of us who watched these shows when they were fresh and new, is the sense of hope that they offered. Rather than a post apocalyptic world of bombed out buildings and survivors clad in furs and remnants of clothing, we were shown a world where we could use science to help build a better world. We were offered a world where not just races and genders got along but aliens as well. Wouldn't it be great if the world had that same sense of hope once more? Perhaps sharing these old television shows might just be the first step in that direction.

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