Reviewing Movies

When the voyages of the Seaview were shot five decades ago Computer Generated Images, Blue Screens, and other Special Affects were either yet to be invented or in their infancy. Computers were still more science fiction than fact, data was stored on reel to reel tape drives. Nuclear powered submarines were still rudimentary. The first season of the show was shot in black and white. All this by way of saying that the series is an artifact of its time.

Lacking the kind of technological wizardry we take for granted today this series depends less on the flash-bang of things blowing up and more on character-driven plots and situations. The technical side of things can look clunky, the science grade school, and the villains rather cliché but in contrast to the action-adventure series and movies we see today these episodes have real storylines and we learn to care about the people involved. They aren't there simply to lead us along to the next big explosion or chase scene.

The producers continually recycle the same shots of the Seaview Model descending to the depths among dangerous looking rocks and the shots of a boat that size popping out of the water at a 75º angle are totally unrealistic. One of the anachronisms, I would hope, of the time is the fact that Richard Basehart virtually chain smokes throughout which may explain why he's dead and his partner David Hedison still lives--smoking on a submarine? Proving that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing the final disk has a colour version of the first episode on disk one billed as an unaired pilot, the only difference is rather dated colour.

I picked up Volume One of Season One some years ago and finally got into it the other night. In those days a season had 32 hour-long episodes.  Since I bought the first 16 episodes the entire 4 seasons have been brought to disk. The producers could have easily placed all 32 episodes on four disks but as with the people bringing us Gunsmoke they split each season into two packages. If you don't mind the rip-off this entails you'll enjoy the voyage.