My
Sixty-Year “Voyage”
From
toddler to grandfather, a sci-fi author treasures Voyage to the Bottom of the
Sea
By
Jason William Karpf
Evanston,
IL, 1965. In this college town next to Chicago, a three-year-old was busy transforming
the family apartment. A Childcraft encyclopedia lay flat
on the floor, the end-to-end volumes affording the narrow paths of vessel corridors.
Dinosaurs—the plastic kind—stood at key points, megafauna ready to be found and
fought. An open bedroom door became the centerpiece, its opposing knobs a
clever substitute (by toddler standards) for periscope handles. I had rechristened
the second-floor unit on Seward Street the SSRN Seaview—a tangible,
interactive extension of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, my favorite TV
show.
Before
I watched first-run showings of Star Trek and The Six Million Dollar
Man, before I discovered re-runs of The Twilight Zone and The
Outer Limits, tuning in Irwin Allen’s adaptation of his super-sub movie was
my television touchstone for science fiction. My mother, Elinor, an aspiring
writer who had recently earned a master’s in Radio/TV/Film from Northwestern
University, encouraged my early fandom. As an adolescent, she had consumed
genre classics such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing,
and Forbidden Planet. In the previous year, 1964, she had walked me through
a broadcast of King Kong, the coffee-table book Prehistoric Animals
open as companion text so I could cross-reference the paleo-art of Zdenek Burian with Willis
O’Brien’s stop-motion beasts.
Mom
booked us weekly passage on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (after all,
she let me
redo the apartment in
NIMR aesthetic). Our favorite episode was “Jonah and the Whale,” as we marveled
at Captain Crane and the rescue team spelunking through the giant cetacean’s
gullet to reach Admiral Nelson and scientist Katya Markhova
in the swallowed diving bell. Mom knew how much I enjoyed the
monster-of-the-week episodes, although she openly longed for a nemesis that
would be stealthy and darting versus the lumbering variety. Admittedly, a spry
Lobster Man would’ve been difficult with 1960s practical effects and a TV
series budget.
Mom
made her breakthrough as a screenwriter, and we moved to Los Angeles after my
fourth birthday. I soon reveled in a Hollywood perk that told me I had truly
arrived. Traveling to 20th Century Fox studios just west of Beverly
Hills, we were ushered into a sound stage where I discovered the real Seaview
interior— “real” as in the actual set. While I knew what a set looked like from
Mom’s film studies books, it was startling to see the bridge as a series of
incomplete walls topped by movie lights. My illusions weren’t shattered; I was
simply reminded that Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was a TV show, like
the ones Mom was starting to write.
We
went down a ship’s corridor, stepping over the threshold of a watertight door
just like the crew would, and entered Admiral Nelson’s cabin. Seated at the
desk was Richard Basehart in his khakis. He greeted
me as he would any guest aboard Seaview (e.g., the many statesmen,
scientists, and aliens). David Hedison soon joined us
and asked what my favorite episode was.
“The
one where the whale swallows the diving bell!” I said. Hedison
nodded his approval.
My
fandom for Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea continued in more
conventional ways. I received the Remco Seaview
toy, a stout rubber band stretching through its center to turn the propellor
underwater. I wondered why the hull was bright yellow instead of navy gray and
the lines spoiled by the winding handle at the bow (I finally deemed the protuberance
a new lightning weapon that Adm. Nelson had added to the ship). I played the Voyage
to the Bottom of the Sea board game with Mom, who graciously allowed me to have
the Seaview fleet while she commanded the rogue subs (she won). And I
continued watching the show when it moved to syndication. Even in high school
in the late 1970s, I would catch an episode whenever I could, experiencing early
pangs of nostalgia.
In
the 1990s, it was time for another boy to ship out—my son, Brian. Our house in
Thousand Oaks, CA, had cable service that carried the FX Channel, which
featured Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Now a mature, family man in my
thirties, my nostalgia reached greater depths. Before I drove Brian to
preschool, we would dig into our bowls of cereal and watch early morning airings,
hoping “Jonah and the Whale” would pop up.
New
kids are great way to reconnect with Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea as
I learned all over again when my grandson Mason arrived in 2020. As a really
mature man entering my sixties, I could shape the Voyage to the Bottom of
the Sea experience in multiple ways. Branded attire for Mason (and Grandpa)
was available from a number of t-shirt vendors. Mason outgrew his Seaview
onesie and subsequent tops, putting me in the heartbreaking position of making repeat
purchases. One of these vendors also offered a Voyage to the Bottom of the
Sea fleece blanket, which soon adorned the basement couch.
Accessing
all four seasons of the show was more challenging. Amazon Prime only offered a
season or two, and Roku searches failed to turn up any obscure channels running
the program. Time to resurrect that now-antiquated technology: BluRay. I
dropped unmistakable hints to my wife, Anni, about
the complete series being available on disc, and the box set magically appeared
for my birthday. Naturally, I had failed to read the fine print that it was a
UK collection, unwatchable on our player built for the American market. I immediately
bought a deck “guaranteed” to play media from other countries. Hopes sank
faster the the mini-sub on a suicide mission when the new machine rejected the
first disc. Luckily, Amazon (dealing with the e-merchant this time, not the
network) had an easy return policy and for a few dollars more, I checked the
box for an “all-nations” player. A few days later, Paul Sawtell’s
theme swelled over the TV speakers in the basement (Anni
could hear the cheers on the second floor).
Just
shy of his first birthday, Mason watched “Jonah and the Whale” with Dad and
Grandpa. Our time together since has been at his parents’ home in Colorado,
where they may have a BluRay player (certainly not an overpriced all-nations
model) on a junk shelf in the garage. I’m looking forward to bringing Mason and
family back to our unfinished basement in Minnesota for the unfinished business
of watching many more episodes as attention span has grown along with shirt
size. “Terror on Dinosaur Island,” “The Monster’s Web,” and “The Menfish” will top the schedule. The basement will make a
terrific submarine interior with cardboard boxes for control panels (we’ll draw
on the buttons and switches) and some mailing tubes taped together for a
periscope housing (no ajar door for this little sailor). At Grandpa’s
house, Seaview has berthed for good.
###
Jason William Karpf is an
author and professor. His fan-fiction short story, “Creature from the Dead
Pool,” features Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea cameos and references.
Download your free copy at http://creaturefromthedeadpool.com