Recently I got back into watching old TV
shows.
Well, that's a lie. I never really
left. What I should say is that I got out of watching TV shows on
VHS tape. The DVD revolution has hit me hard and aside from
watching a lot of must-see cult movies that are now available on disc,
I was also taken away with TV shows on DVD. They're
addicting. No commercials, truly uncut (another bane of
commercials), and in a good condition. And since most of my TV
shows are copies from friends--perfectly legal, they copied them for me
from the original broadcast--their condition was bad to begin with,
horrible when you go from watching a digital representation on a disc.
Kinda like today's subject. But I'll
get to that later.
Sadly, the downside to TV shows on DVD is
that while a lot of them are coming out, a few aren't. Those few
is what powers this site. At the time of this writing the only
two Irwin Allen produced shows are available on DVD in some form:
Land of the Giants through Columbia House and Lost in Space.
There have been hints of The Time Tunnel but according to
TVShowsonDVD.com, still no solid word yet. Today's subject is
still in limbo. Which is a damn shame, since the quality of
VTTBOTS episodes range from very good quality in Season 1 to horrible
in Season 4. A good example is the final episode "No Way Out" in
which both copies I have has a very nasty negative splice in the ending
credits. The sad thing is my direct copy is from The Sci-Fi
Channel circa 1999-2000, the other is from some independent TV station
in the '80s. Exact same damage. These episodes are in truly
rough shape.
Anyway, today's experiment is the first
color episode that the show ever had. Unfortunately, the episode
itself isn't much to write home about. The story begins with a
beautiful Russian scientist using the Seaview's remarkable capabilities
as the first submarine with windows to find the diving bell of her dead
lover. After the first expedition down in the diving bell Apple
fails thanks to whale migration, Admiral Nelson (Richard
Basehart) takes her down again where they find the bell. Some
really dull acting occurs--typical Russian/American ideological blather
that was only beginning at this time and ended around 1990 if memory
serves--and is interrupted as Captain Lee Crane (David "Al" Hedison)
reports another whale is flying by, a really huge and fast one.
As the Apple is pulled up to the Beautiful Russian Scientist's regret,
it's too late...the whale swallows the Apple whole. As if you
couldn't guess that from the title. Come on, I'm not a religious
man and I saw it coming!
The rest of the episode consists of Crane
and the Seaview trying to get Nelson and the BRS out of the
whale. To their credit, they do the most simple approach:
drug the whale with a torpedo-sized hypodermic (okay, it's a 'warhead,'
they weren't goofy enough to spend time creating a miracle device) and
swim down the whale's gullet with a rope to pull it out before the
Apple runs out of air. After a lot of suspense and commercial
breaks, they succeed in pulling the Apple out of the whale without
killing the giant creature. Everybody's happy, and the episode
ends. Now, in episodic television it's easy to do plots like
this: take a problem and spend most of the time going about the
solution. On that part the episode succeeds: aside from a
few boring points it does keep you from getting bored. However,
special effects do provide a few moments of disbelief, as I shall list
now to demonstrate the bullet-point option on this Mozilla composer:
--Zbu