ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Appealing made-for-TV movie from producer-director Irwin Allen, using props and stars from various Irwin Allen television shows.

The Flying Sub makes a guest appearance from "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", as does the Seaview's captain, Richard Basehart, who plays the president. James Darren and Robert Colbert are on hand from "The Time Tunnel".

The story is set in the future, so all the girls wear minidresses, naturally. Ironically, this is the way skirts were in 1971, so the producers were perhaps suggesting they would just stay this short right into the next century.



There are plenty of big sets and tiny miniatures, all of which gives the film a wonderfully Flash Gordon-like appearance. President Basehart orders Stuart Whitman to take charge of "Pacifica", the undersea city which Whitman helped design. America's gold reserve is being transferred there from Fort Knox, along with a shipment of H-128, a super-nuclear material that's not only radioactive but explosive (?).

Whitman's brother (Robert Wagner) secretly conspires with a band of hi-tech heisters who plan to steal a generous portion of both shipments. Meanwhile scientist James Darren discovers a rapidly approaching "planetoid" made of super-dense material that will collide with the Earth near the underwater city. The gravity from the approaching planetoid causes earthquakes and tidal waves, both of which are depicted with lots of stock footage.

You gotta hand it the producers, they didn't settle for a simple storyline. There's plenty of action, life-threatening emergencies, and destructive disasters; Irwin Allen wouldn't have it any other way.

One of the characters is a genetically engineered "aquatic" man (ala "The Man from Atlantis"). Whit Bissell ("The Time Machine", "Creature From the Black Lagoon", plenty more) has a small part. Despite several illogical plot elements and scientific inaccuracies, the production values are higher than on many theatrically released film's of that era, and the cast of familiar faces makes it fun to watch.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

I loved this movie as a kid, still do. I still have the Viewmaster reels. As a kid, I wanted an Aquadozer model. I still do.

IA used every JII and Gemini XII miniature Fox had, including the ten foot JII. Look behind the woman in the green dress, that is the only known screen appearance of the JII ten footer. The smaller JII's are used as the building in the distance, as well as buildings for Pacifica. The central building in Pacifica is the JII Astrogator with the guts removed, and a new interior to the dome. The mini sub miniature was painted to look like a submarine passenger liner. Other Voyage subs, including the Seaview were used. The Flying Sub interior got a facelift where they went back to the original concept of two reactor walls.

The CBTS pitch film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZrifEjU-H0

Now you know where that beautiful rig miniature that made a brief appearance in the movie came from.

Some of the sets from CBTS were altered and reused as sets on "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes".

David.

[Bud Brewster]

I have a DVD-R of this movie, compliments of Bulldogtrekker. A fun movie. Not sure where he got it. The opening scene in the office shown above includes great shots of the city outside that large glassless window.

Now that I've said that, somebody will post nice screen grabs of that scene so I won't have to get up and find my DVD-R.

I made the picture above from a Youtube video. Gosh, I'm so lazy!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Yes, CBTS had some marvelous production values with its incredible sets & miniatures, loads of action.

However, like all of Irwin's productions there was ample plot holes, scientific ignorance, little character development.

CBTS served as a pilot for a weekly TV-show. I question if you could really pull off such a premise as to make a dramatic series out of this premise.

I think it would be enormously challenging for top notch writers to create interesting stories every week about an undersea city. Just how many sea monster attacks can you have?

Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea & Seaquest ran into the same problems. And they were submarines that could travel anywhere beneath our oceans.

[Krel]

I think it could be done. Pacifica was a government facility (the city manager is government appointed), populated by scientists. And from VTTBOTS, we know that all sorts of villains will want what they are working on. There are undoubtedly other underwater facilities that can be visited. And they have the Flying Su...Uh Aquafoils, so they can go anywhere. The main character was also an IA favorite, the Warrior Scientist, so you know he would be involved in all sorts of situations.

VTTBOTS had two big problems. Constant budget cuts, and the loss of the Fox backlot and it's sets. IA said in the pitch for VTTBOTS, that the Seaview was suppose to be the vehicle that got the characters to where the action takes place. Not the primary location for the action.

David.

[larryfoster]

[Bud Brewster]

I'm kinda with Pow on this one — but maybe not for the same reasons.

SeaQuest had all the makings of an aquatic Star Trek series, but it quickly went right down the proverbial hole in the bottom of the sea because the producers didn't want to learn enough science to make science fiction stories about marine life and deep sea exploration.

In other words, SeaQuest failed because they didn't want the ocean to be the star of the show, so the stories wandered further and further from the initial premise until the whole submarine got carried off by an alien spaceship!

City Beneath the Sea started right out doing that with a story about a gold heist and a dangerously radioactive material and an approaching asteroid that defied all known cosmological laws and did wacky things to the Earth before it ever got here!

I suspect a weekly series would just limp along as nothing more than a soggy soap opera that could easily adopt this catch phrase.

Like the sands on the beaches . . . so are The Tides of Our Lives.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[orzel-w]

[larryfoster]

[Krel]

[Bud Brewster]

I might not be kee-rectly sensin' which way the wind's a-blowin' here, maties, but I gets the feelin' some a ya don't think a series 'bout a city 'neath the briny would work just 'cause the fishin' would be poor.

Not enough big 'uns in these waters, so to speak. Heh heh heh.

'Tis true, we don't need no reg-lar sea beasties smellin' up our submersed mee-troplis. But ya can tell a pretty tall tale concernin' them fabled mysteries of the deep without always makin' 'em about the Big One That Got Away.

No sirree, I'm thinkin' thars plenty a' stories about the trials and tribba-lations uh keepin' the water out, the air in, and all them other challenges that make life interestin' when your next door neighbor is Davey Jones!

Just a fer' instance: kin ya imagine livin' ina glass-domed city that has to worry about what'ud happen if some damn fool launched one a them torpedee's a'gin it?

Blimey, mates! That'ud be enough to make a man ruin a perfectly good wet suit quicker than you can say, "Watch out for that shark, Leftie, or you'll be pickin' your nose with your toes!"
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[orzel-w]

It sounds like you catch my drift, Bud, if I'm reading correctly between those lines.

There are plenty of story lines without resorting to "monster-of-the-week" if you hire good writers (and have the cooperation of the execs who must get their fingers in the pie). MOTW is usually either the last resort when the writers have run out of ideas, particularly when the series didn't start out that way, or due to the input from those execs who imagine that it's what will attract audiences. When I saw that MOTW had become the standard plot is when I lost interest in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. (I seem to remember some equally absurd episode about a pirate's ghost, too.)
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...or not...

WayneO
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[Bud Brewster]

Aye, matie, yer right on course, ye are! And there was one crewmen who was the first to know when somethin' was amiss amidships, you might say. Sink me if that poor fellar Kowalsky wasn't a nachral-born monster magnet!

If there was a beastie aboard that vessel, it set a course straight for Kowalsky and mauled that poor lad below decks somewhere before the rest of the crew had any notion there was a stowaway on the ship.



He was their unofficial "intruder alert". If Kowalsky warnt right were he was 'spose to be, the crew was turned out on the double to searched the ship from top to bottom!

I reckon the crew started callin' it a Kowalsky Alert!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

I was a fan of both Babylon 5 & Deep Space Nine, Krel.

However, neither series remained confined to their respective space stations. Both had spaceships that would allow them to travel in space & to alien worlds.

Star Furies & White Dwarf (I think that was the name) for B5, Runabouts & the Defiant for DS9.

So, I have no objection to having underseas vessels stationed at an undersea city for both practical reasons & exploration.That would allow them to get away from the confines of doing story lines set within the city only.

I still maintain that telling interesting,intelligent,sf stories beneath the earth's seas is a big challenge versus outer space as a setting.

Space offers all types of spatial phenomena to deal with that we can accept or,at least suspend our disbelief,in order to accept.

The Enterprise encountering a black hole & being sent back through time on the episode "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" worked. At least on some level. The Seaquest going into a black hole in the ocean depths just seemed absurd.

Space offers alien worlds & civilizations. Oceans do not.

I've often said that if they ever do another submarine TV series (& after Seaquest DSV I'm guessing that won't be anytime soon) they should have it take place in oceans on alien worlds. That could open up the potential story ideas a great deal.

If the Enterprise is exploring space,wouldn't it be logical that Federation subs would be doing the same with oceans on other worlds? Not that such a premise has to be a Trek spin-off. It can be a totally original show.

Also,I've recently seen some fascinating pix of futuristic cities that are partially above as well as below the ocean.

How about we update the premise? Don't simply have an undersea city; have one city that is above & below the water instead?

[Krel]