With the release of the dvds,this show has never looked better!! WOW! I just wish Fox had released LIS Season 3 with the same quality :( ,Now as far as Voyage goes,I love it and the actors,but is it me or is Richard Basehart sort of a weak actor? At least at times. I know he has a good reputation as a great one. David Hedison,who does a marvelous job,has said this of him,and has mentioned in so many words that he was honored to be working with Richard..

With the release of the dvds,this show has never looked better!! WOW! I just wish Fox had released LIS Season 3 with the same quality :( ,Now as far as Voyage goes,I love it and the actors,but is it me or is Richard Basehart sort of a weak actor? At least at times. I know he has a good reputation as a great one. David Hedison,who does a marvelous job,has said this of him,and has mentioned in so many words that he was honored to be working with Richard..
Basehart was one of the best actors around. Period. If he appears" Weak"(I never thought so), It's because he was bored with the"Monster of the week" Material in the later seasons. When the show started, As I am sure you know, It was a completely different animal. Great scripts, Great writers.

I just received Season 3, Vol.1 earlier this week and watched the first 4 episodes. It was the writing, not the acting which major-league sucks. Season 1 was terrific, season 2 was pretty doggoned good, but season 3? A glowing, electronic rock with the voice of the LIS Robot trying to take over the world? THAT was bad writing.
David Hedison was very correct in his interview in the Season 2 DVD interview; the show would've survived much longer had they continued stories in the same vain of the first 2 seasons, but the show was utterly sunk (haha) by scripts featuring the Lobster Man, The Rock Man, the Fossil Man, the Crab Man (eeew), the This Man the That Man...
Oh well, I'll collect all 4 seasons because I'm such a stinkin' "completist".

I'll get all four seasons too. Because I love the show. Yes, even the really bad ones. I am currently watching season 3 set 1 myself. Some nice underwater footage of the Seaview and Flying Sub.

Hence the affectionate title Voyage To The Bottom of the Ratings. :lol:

I still love the show, regardless.

Ok I'm not too familier with season 1,so I'm not too familier with Mr. Basehart in them.I'm sure he was legendary.,because I was so drawn to the color(WOW GREAT PRINTS!)of season 2 and after. Now next question,I saw a promo pic of Hedison and the famous LIS cyclops costume and they were posed in a boxers stance lol,was the cyclops in one of the VOYAGE episodes? .

I think that still was just a joke on the Irwin Allen productions at Fox; in fact the Cyclops must be one of the only Irwin Allen props that didn't circulate between LIS and Voyage.

I find Basehart interesting to watch because he tries to bring some kind of human touch to very weak material. Basehart did a lot of film noir in the Forties and Fifties and that's probably where you'll see his best work--and he's also a superb narrator. Now I'm a childhood fan of 'Voyage' so I too was always more drawn to the color episodes; that said I've sat through the black and white ones and while they are for the most part more intelligent and thoughtful than the color episodes, they're still not exactly great television--Allen was interested in action and special effects, period. I find very very little in the way of character work in 'Voyage' (although I do find Terry Becker's performance as Chief Sharkey consistently hilarious--for me he was kind of the Dr. McCoy of the show, but I don't think any of that was on the page--it was just Becker trying to keep himself entertained by putting some exasperated comic spin on his lines). The stories were for the most part designed to get a special effects gimmick on screen (and this is true in the first season too, which boasts giant whales and giant manta rays and other underwater fauna just like the color episodes), not to reveal character.

I was able to grab Season 2 Volume 2 at Best Buy for 17.99, figuring I could use it for reference on a Flying Sub & the Moebius Seaview.

Let's just say I'll scour the net for reference material from now on. I have to agree with jbond's take on the show. The stilted acting, lame writing and bland, lifeless characters make it impossible for me to get all the way through an episode. Yet the opening sequence and FX shots are very cool.

I think my problem with the show is that I wanted to like it more than I actually do...

Oops. Please delete.

Don't get me wrong--I love the Sixties look, the music and the miniature shots and that's more than enough to get me to buy the DVDs at least through season three...

Oh, I know what you mean. I'm still a dyed in the wool LIS fan even though from a technical standpoint, it was probably the stupidest drivel on the tube back then.

And though I still like LOTG, acting doesn't come much more wooden and stilted than Gary Conway's portrail of Steve Burton.

I dunno why, I just can't seem to latch onto VTTBOTS the way I did with Allen's other shows. That's what I meant...I really wanted to like it...it just aint happening, y'know?

If Richard Basehart was good enough for Fellini he's good enough for Irwin Allen.

I recall an interview in Starlog with either Conway or the other male lead dissing Star Trek's acting: "Talk about wooden!" But he comes off as more humble on the LOTG DVD interviews.

In terms of characterization Lost in Space is the only Allen series that's worthwhile as long as you look at it as a kid's series with some amusing under-the-radar adult touches (and I'm not talking about Dr. Smith's relationship with Will Robinson)--it has some legitimately funny moments, it was unafraid (like many Sixties shows) to be outrageously goofy, and the interplay between Smith, Will and the Robot was always entertaining--plus the plotlines work in a Little House on the Prairie in Space kind of way. Plus it had the best music of all the Allen shows, mostly courtesy of John Williams.

[QUOTE=jbond]I recall an interview in Starlog with either Conway or the other male lead dissing Star Trek's acting: "Talk about wooden!" But he comes off as more humble on the LOTG DVD interviews.


At the risk of getting flogged and phasered by a bunch of irate fellow trekkers, I'd have to say that I agree with Gary Conway's assessment for the most part; the supporting players' work of DeForrest Kelly and James Doohan was much BETTER than William Shatner, who was the epitome of a "wooden" actor ("We come IN peace").
I'll readily admit that ST had vastly more intelligent scripts than LOTG, but IMHO, the acting, and the SFX for that matter, was better on Giants.
Let the flames begin... :hat:

Shatner "wooden"? He's the exact opposite — one of the most celebrated over-actors in the history of entertainment.

(My pet theory is that the Shatman developed his, shall we say, distinctive acting style from listening to audio recordings of classical drama — on a wowing record player!)

I'd have to say that I agree with Gary Conway's assessment...

The big difference between William Shatner and Gary Conway is that William Shatner played James T. Kirk and Gary Conway played that guy in the red suit. Or was it blue?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=NN3MGN899yE

:D

Shatner's an easy target--it depends on what project you catch him in (he has won two Emmys after all). There are actually many quite subtle moments for him on Trek--it's when the scripts got lousy, especially in year three, that he would get outright terrible. Watch him in "Charlie X" or "Corbomite Maneuver"--or George C. Scott's staging of The Andersonville Trial. The difference between Trek and the Irwin Allen shows (LIS probably excepted) is that Trek gave almost all their characters "character moments" to play--with Voyage and Land of the Giants, it just seemed to be "how do we get out of this situation this week"--there wasn't room for anything else.

There's no doubt the Irwin Allen shows had better special effects than Trek--they had more money and Allen's focus was on the effects. Trek had good people (Richard Edlund, Wah Chang) cranking stuff out with no time or money to get it right.

Why do we always feel the need to compare ANY show from the 60's With Star Trek? First, I have to say I am a "Classic Trek" Man to the core. Having said that however, Dosen't mean I need to compare or say this is better than Trek or Trek is better than that. Irwin Allen's shows and Star Trek are completly different animals. Shatner was VERY good in the first season. It looked as though he used restraint, Later on well we know what happened later on. Now he is a complete clown.I get a kick out of guys who jump on the "Bash Irwin Allen Bandwagon". Allen had FOUR HIT SCI-FI SHOWS IN PRIMTIME TV!!!It's very easy to blame the guy about the scripts being what they were later on. He's dead and Can't defend himself.I believe he did what he did to the shows to keep them on the air.The viewing audience of that Time period Just didn't appreciate good scripts. Voyage was actually #1,#2 In it's first season.

The big difference between William Shatner and Gary Conway is that William Shatner played James T. Kirk and Gary Conway played that guy in the red suit. Or was it blue?


It was a red suit. And of the two performers in question, he was the actor who had an ability to stress the correct word in a sentance of dialog.
Shatner was the one in the blue suit (T.J. Hooker). :o

However, to be fair, both of those gentlemen gave the best performances they could muster from what they had to work with. And yes, I enjoyed Shatner's slumming for a paycheck in "Big Bad Mama". :drunk:

And I enjoyed Angie Dickinson's slumming for a paycheck in "Big Bad Mama" even more.

… of the two performers in question, he (Gary Conway) was the actor who had an ability to stress the correct word in a sentance of dialog.

Had Shatner been in the Royal Shakespeare Academy this might have been a problem.

Bogart, Cagney, Wayne, and Brando all had trouble delivering lines their “correctly” – a shortcoming which did little to harm their respective careers.

… to be fair, both of those gentlemen gave the best performances they could muster from what they had to work with.

Which in Shatner’s case was actually quite a bit.

I’m a huge Irwin Allen fan, but his shows targeted kids, and as a result character development was never their strong suit.

And yes, I enjoyed Shatner's slumming for a paycheck in "Big Bad Mama". :drunk:

Every actor worth his salt has slummed at one point or another. It comes with the territory (just ask Michael Caine).

The majority of the special visual effects on Voyage were of a vastly different nature than those of Star Trek.

In fact, most of the effects on Voyage (i.e. the Flying Sub in air or Seaview surface shots or cruising underwater) were achieved through practical means in-camera by utilizing models in pools or water tanks and wire rigs which resulted in pristine, first-generation images, rather than through the many image-degrading optical compositing steps necessary to place the Enterprise in space or in planetary orbit.

Every actor worth his salt has slummed at one point or another. It comes with the territory (just ask Michael Caine).

Or the great Shakesperian-trained thespian Richard Basehart himself, who plumbed new depths (har har) with Mansion Of The Doomed (AKA The Eyes Of Dr. Chaney). :cry:

Hey, even Laurence Olivier did The Betsy...

We wouldn't be talking about this if we didn't all LOVE Irwin Allen shows. I just love them for different reasons than I love Star Trek--although I love both of them for the whole Sixties production aesthetic. And so far, no one has found a way of translating Allen's ideas into something that works for contemporary audiences (even Trek, after a few decades of success, has had trouble in that area lately). The Allen shows were concepts very much of their era, when people were willing to go with fairly goofy concepts (LIS, Land of the Giants) or straight concepts done in a goofy way (Voyage, Time Tunnel).

The Allen stuff started out OK, but just turned to pupe after Batman. Trek died after TOS. The rest are authorized crappy knock-offs. Enterprise was a cheap copy of a crappy knock-off.

Just imagine 20th Century Fox Special Effects/2nd Unit doing the Star Trek Effects.

The Allen shows were concepts very much of their era, when people were willing to go with fairly goofy concepts (LIS, Land of the Giants) or straight concepts done in a goofy way (Voyage, Time Tunnel).

Given the success of Transformers and its ilk I respectfully submit contemporary audiences are perfectly willing to embrace goofy concepts. Indeed, if Irwin Allen was producing today there's little doubt his brand of over-the-top, effects-laden, mega-budget extravaganza would be giving Michael Bay a run for his money at the box office.

I love Irwin Allen because, when I was growing up, his shows captured my imagination like nothing else. Today I find those shows impossible to watch, a fact that does little to diminish my fondness for them.

I never even wanted to listen to the Shatner's "music"... but my wife... not at all a Trek fan, heard it and loved it... so I gave it a listen, and now I'm a fan! I'd give anything to see him perform some time!

My wife is a Ben Folds fan, and he produced shatner's last album... that's how she found out about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eISBTBwWKeE

The Shatner Ben Folds album is great! You have to admire Shatner for just being able to stay in the game--can you see David Hedison, or ANY other TV star of the Sixties co-starring in a highly-rated new TV series, winning Emmy awards and doing an acclaimed contemporary album--this after being the butt of jokes for DECADES? I can't help myself, I love Shatner--the good Shatner, the bad Shatner, and the ridiculous Shatner.

Hey, even Laurence Olivier did The Betsy...And Inchon, the Korean War snoozer financed by the Moonies . . . and the so-bad-it's-just-freakin’-BAD third version of The Jazz Singer, starring Neil Diamond!The Allen stuff started out OK, but just turned to pupe after Batman. Trek died after TOS.I was never a big fan of Next Generation or its spinoffs, but I can't help being reminded of Harrison Ford's line from American Graffiti: "Rock 'n' Roll's been goin' downhill ever since Buddy Holly died."

BTW, is "pupe" a cross between pulp and puke?Just imagine 20th Century Fox Special Effects/2nd Unit doing the Star Trek Effects.I don't quite follow your meaning. Do you mean if TOS had been filmed at Fox back in the ’60s, the effects would have been worse? or better?

the Cyclops must be one of the only Irwin Allen props that didn't circulate between LIS and Voyage.

Can someone tell me.....

Is the big "Seaweed Creature" on Bottom the same suit from the Scottish haunted castle episode of LOS? And is this the same suit from the "Brenda" episode of Night Gallery?

Any overlap between Outer LImits and either show?

Just wonderin'. Love those monsters.

I know there was overlap between trek and Outer Limits. particularly the reworked Horta and some of the background creatures in the "the cage"

and of course a lot of the actors appeared in both.

I think the most blatant/embarrasing crossover was when LOS pretty much raided the garbage cans at Fox and reused some of the "Planet of the Apes" Orangutan masks.

I think the most blatant/embarrasing crossover was when LOS pretty much raided the garbage cans at Fox and reused some of the "Planet of the Apes" Orangutan masks.

Arthur P. Jacobs raided Irwin Allen's garbage can for the J-2 landing struts seen in Beneath the Planet of the Apes. So they're even.