(Pre-written holiday cover)
'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea' was a great and strange television series. Over four years it morphed from over-serious spy show, through adventure series and kiddie monster series and finally came back to semi-serious science fiction. It also went from black and white to colour, and suffered through the incredibly bad influence of the 'Batman' craze in 1966, but it still plodded on and produced a few stellar episodes. This is one of them.
'The Phantom Strikes' is an excellent little theatrical piece, written to show off star Richard Basehart's acting talents, as well as that of the serial 1960s ambivalent villain Alfred Ryder. Oh, Alfred Ryder, you never did any wrong! He plays the ghost of a Second World War u-boat commander, which the Seaview discovers at... the bottom of the sea! First, the u-boat haunts the Seaview, and then its captain does, under the guise of being recovered from the sea as a wrecked sailor. The ghostly Captain Krueger is intent on forcing Admiral Nelson to kill Captain Crane, so that the ghost can claim his body and restart his naval career from that point onward. It turns into a tense battle of wills, as Nelson tries to save both his captain, and the crew's lives that are being threatened as a bargaining chip.
There's something very nice about a two-hander. Yes, the other actors get some things to do, but it is really a two-hander between Basehart and Ryder in almost all the key scenes. There's a classical buildup in tension as Nelson begins to believe the supernatural reality that he had previously hardly dared to admit even as a possibility, and a great ruthlessness to Krueger as he continues to pile on the pressure and unnerve the crew, who unravel almost instantly. To be dar, the selection of the crew of the Seaview does seem to to favour the emotionally unstable and nervously erratic. They can be set off by Christmas crackers on even their best days! In any case, they get very unnerved and add to pressure nicely.
The nicest thing about 'The Phantom Strikes' is the ending, which was retconned by its sequel, where the ghostly Krueger isn't defeated but instead surrenders and moves on, impressed by how much technology has moved on and left him behind. It's a very poetic moment, a theatrical exit, as the phantom walks out through the bow of the submarine and into the depths of the ocean. Yes, the episode is still standard 'Voyage' material for the most part, and very cheesy in places, but it is one of the highpoints of the series and gets respect for pushing further into its strengths than usual. More Basehart usually meant better episode, and that was true here too. Also, alas, it has the usual zero number of women, but that couldn't really be helped due to the naval setting. There were loads of actresses in the first season of espionage shows.
'The Phantom Strikes' is highly recommended for people who can watch old television and not cynically smirk. A great example of the show.
O.
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