Television: 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea: The Price Of Doom' (1964) (Episodes 1x05)

"The plankton! Anna! The plankton!" With those words, 'Voyage' begins its awkward spiral from a self-serious submarine-set espionage series into a goofy and mockable 'monster of the week' joke with moments of dramatic brilliance. It may never have lost its po-faced attempts at sternness, but they were consistently ruined by the men in the rubber suits and minimalist or non-existent writing. However, this is before all that, back in the monochrome first season, where effort was being made and the cast hadn't inwardly given up. There were still espionage spy stories at this point, and some memorably production values! If only they hadn't had such relentlessly melodramatic episodes titles.

'The Price Of Doom' is a very early episode, and one which combines a German scientist who collaborated during the Second World War, contemporaneous spy escapades, and a horrific plankton monster loose first in an Antarctic base and then on the submarine Seaview itself. Yes, a horrific plankton monster, which was the first of the goofy 'Voyage' monsters! This is the last episode in which the crew could conceivable express disbelief at the appearance of a crazy creature. After this, every expression of incredulity is ludicrous and only adds to the daftness, even when Admiral Nelson picks up his temporary and recurrent lycanthropy! In fact, given the recurrent of at least one of the giant sea monsters (Big Eyes), it becomes increasingly clear that the crew lost it's capacity for long-term memory at some point after this show. In a way it's sad to see a series with such wonderful production values and underwater work turn into something so mockable, but that something else is one of the great 'so bad that it's good' exemplars.

'The Price Of Doom' has its good points, and it is slightly less stern than the norm. It also has the ever excellent and underrated David Opatoshu as a guest star, which is a great boon. It will never, however, escape the legacy of the line, "The plankton! Anna! The plankton!", and maybe that's a good thing. For good or bad, 'Voyage' was a classic, and the plankton monster helped set it all up. Oh, good grief, what is still to come? Perhaps crew-wide amnesia does explain much? Was it the later alien Nelson doppelgänger that did it, in the very next episode? We'll have to wait and see...

O.