Season 2, Episode 2
Prod #: 8203
TIME BOMB
Written by: William Read Woodfield & Allan Balter
Directed by: Sobey Martin
Guest Stars:
Ina Balin: Litchka
John Zaremba: Admiral Johnson
Richard Loo: Li Tung
Naval Intelligence has gotten word that the Russians have developed an ultimate weapon. Admiral Nelson is assigned to go in under cover to verify the information. The reports are a ruse to start a "regrettable but necessary" war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Using Nelson as the trigger by injecting him with a "cesium solution," and luring him close enough to a nuclear reactor, the resulting detonation would plunge the superpowers into a devastating nuclear war.
In the 1960's, espionage tales were an obsession in the United States. Thanks to the then-new James Bond movies, television was littered with spy programs, most notably The Man From U.N.C.L.E. It's impossible to overstate the influence of Bond in American culture, as spies were popping up in comedies, dramas, variety shows, cartoon, novels and comic books. All of the UK television imports were in the form of espionage series (The Saint, The Avengers, Secret Agent/Danger Man, etc.). Voyage was always connected to espionage and the Office of Naval Intelligence, which made it easy to tap into that hunger. However, there was a difference between the sober, dry, deadly plots of the first season and empty, cartoonish shows like this.
Whereas the first season spy episodes were more in the dark "Danger Man" vein, for this first episode written by new writing team William Read Woodfield and Allan Balter, Voyage is transformed into an U.N.C.L.E./ James Bond wannabe. There are not one, but two scenes of elaborate spy gadgets being explained and demonstrated (and most of them don't warrant that much attention).
Nelson meets Comrade Litchka (the beautiful Ina Balin) and is instantly smitten by her, leading to some very tame double entendre. Crane gets in on the act also as he flirts with Katie, his contact at NIMR, who apparently has a double job as Nelson's secretary and field agent for ONI. Nearly every line of dialog between the two is intended to be "witty banter" however it falls horribly flat. Richard Basehart, while one the greatest acting talents in cinema history, seems uncomfortable in his romantic role with a woman twenty three years his junior. The nature of the series, as well as its target audience, kept the romance to a minimum. Beyond gentle flirtation and a quick kiss, there's little steam here. Amusingly, Nelson apparently strikes out. After a few moments of kissing, the scene dissolves to the middle of the night. Litchka emerges from her upstairs bedroom and walks to the couch where we see a sleeping Nelson.
An unintentionally hilarious scene closes out the first act. As Nelson leaves Naval Intelligence, a "child" wearing knickers and a space helmet shoots a "ray gun" at Nelson. A little boy's voice is heard saying "bang, you're dead, mister, you're dead!" Nelson finds this amusing, pats the "boy" on the head and walks off. The "boy's mother" takes the gun (not revealed to be a cesium injector" and sticks it in her purse. The "boy" removes his helmet (apparently unconcerned with witnesses) to reveal it's really a middle aged midget. The moment is played as a shocking revelation, but the real shock is that this was taken seriously. It was more appropriate for Get Smart.
The attempts at capturing the spy movie tropes continue as Katie lures two Soviet guards to her side by flashing some thigh. Actress Susan Flannery, woefully miscast here, mugs shamelessly, pantomiming and gesturing grotesquely. She is utterly unconvincing as a temptress and nobody is convincing as secret agents.
Scenes which should be tense are rendered laughable as Nelson wanders apparently aimlessly through the streets of Russia (it seems as if he made no travel plans beyond parachuting into the USSR). First he is picked up by the secret police for wandering the streets after curfew. Basehart and the unidentified actors speak plain English with no attempt at an accent. The danger is quickly diffused when the police simply want to give Nelson a lift to Gorob, his destination. Once there (the city set is identical, so it could be the same place) Nelson runs into two Russian soldiers who look like trouble when they knock off Nelson's sailor hat. Nelson throws a punch, the big Russian ducks and - whoops, all is well! They're just a couple of drunks! At least one actor tries an accent, but again Basehart just plays it in his natural voice.
When Litchka is ( easily) discovered to be a double agent, there is still little tension or satisfaction. When Nelson confronts her, it's a non-event. He says not a single word, giving her only a cold stare. Contrast this with other episodes where he easily voices his contempt with others or loses his temper when betrayed.
All of this is needlessly complex. A simple plot is cluttered with the "TV spy checklist" of things to dump into the script. They could have dropped the ridiculous "spy midget" altogether and just had Litchka spritz Nelson at her place. The audience already knew she was a double. Nelson is carrying unstable cesium in his system all the way from America to Russia. All things considered, it's lucky he never happened to walk anywhere near the Seaview's own reactor!
Still, even with all of the incident and details crammed in, the episode still apparently came up short. At the start of act two, there's a sequence involving Russian patrol boats directly overhead. Even ignoring the stock footage is of an American ship (from The Enemy Below), the scene is sloppily edited. Apparently only Crane, Sharkey and Chip were the main characters in the scene, but Nelson was plugged in via footage from the episode "Escape from Venice." We first see Nelson and Sharkey at sonar. Then we see Nelson and Chip cross past sonar and stop at the big viewscreen, but Sharkey and Crane are not there. Cut back to Sharkey and Crane and Crane asks Chip a question. Chip is now on the other side of the room by the computer. A reaction shot of Nelson standing by himself appears twice. When the danger has passed, Crane leaves sonar and walks aft, passing by the spot Nelson should be standing in, but he's nowhere to be found. None of this is important to the plot and could be cut without losing a thing. Voyage came up short a number of times in the series and it was usually fairly easy to spot the padding.
On the plus side, the hydro jet race footage was well integrated with the new stuff and seeing Nelson dive off a careening speedboat is exciting and convincing. This is also the episode we learn Sharkey's first name. When Katie calls him Francis, Sharkey is immediately self conscious about it and corrects her with a hilarious "no, Sharkey, everybody calls me Sharkey." It's the one honest bit of character development in the episode. Everybody else seems like caricatures of themselves. Also, the final escape scene as Soviet soldiers fire into the water is thrilling. We can see bullets zipping past the (stunt) swimmers underwater and it adds greatly to the sequence.
Finally, this is the first time the audience got to see the Flying Sub in action. While "…And Five of us Are Left" was actually the real first use of the vehicle, this episode was aired beforehand and FS1 added greatly to the episode. The first few times it's used, the characters take the time to run through a checklist. This would become repetitive over time, but it works well here. Leith Stevens' background score (using some of the Jonah and the Whale theme) is excellent and lively.
The guest cast is made up of familiar faces. John Zaremba, who appeared in the pilot episode and would go on to be Dr. Raymond Swain on Irwin Allen's The Time Tunnel, had a long career on TV and in many science fiction B movies, clocking in over 139 filmed appearances. He died in 1986 at the age of 78.
Susan Flannery appeared in two prior Voyage episodes, a Time Tunnel, as well as having regular roles on The Bold and the Beautiful and Days of Our Lives. She had a notable prime time role on Dallas playing Leslie Stewart, J.R. Ewing's love interest, over eleven episodes in 1981. She is still active.
Ian Balin worked all over the dial until the late 80's (including episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man, Quincy, Battlestar Galactica and many others). She died in 1991 at the young age of 52 due to a rare case of pulmonary hypertension.
Richard Loo played evil oriental agents on many shows of the era, and was equally convincing each time, primarily because he never changed his approach. He died in 1983.
If I seem unduly hard on this episode, it's mainly because the series was capable of a lot better than this. Also, it seems very much out of its comfort zone. Voyage worked best when it used plots unique to the format. Any spy show could have done this episode. There's nothing about it to make it a Voyage-specific story. The first half of the season is littered with episodes like this one, but fortunately many of them worked somewhat better. This episode probably went over fairly well at the time, but today it stands out as a failed attempt at bandwagon jumping.
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