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George Maharis in "Miss Belle"

JOURNEY TO THE UNKNOWN. 1968 television series.

This British import ran for one season and was produced by Joan Harrison, who worked on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but if this show is any indication she had lowered her standards for scripts considerably for the later series. The majority of episodes not only would have been instantly rejected by Hitch, but are lame by any standard, with weak premises devoid of a final snap or twist. There are very few exceptions. "The New People" is an excellent, creepy, and suspenseful episode [directed by Peter Sasdy from Charles Beaumont] in which a young couple have very strange if fun-loving neighbors; the cast includes Robert Reed and a notable Milo O'Shea. "One on an Island" [from Donald Westlake] features a fine performance from Brandon De Wilde [All Fall Down] in an absorbing story of a young man shipwrecked on an isolated island. It shouldn't work at all but somehow it does. "Matakitas is Coming" stars Vera Miles as a woman who writes about murders for a magazine and finds herself locked in a library that has somehow gone back in time to the night a librarian was murdered by a maniac back in the 1920s. The murderer is creeping about, and so is the victim ... The episode has an excellent premise even if its execution is uneven and a little confusing. Also Miles is a little too perfunctory at times given her character's situation. "Somewhere in a Crowd," with David Hedison [Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea] giving one of his best performances (in a tale wherein the same group of people keep showing up at disasters), would have been one of the series' more memorable episodes were it not for the fact that it's a complete, uncredited rip-off of Ray Bradbury's 1948 short story "The Crowd." George Maharis appears in an unpleasant look at child abuse -- a woman raises her little nephew as a girl -- in "Miss Belle." And there were episodes even worse than that.NOTE: Some of the episodes from the show were strung together to make TV movies. One, Journey to the Unknown, features Joan Crawford as host and presents "Matakitas" and an episode with Patty Duke vacationing at the English seaside at an inn with a strange landlady.

Verdict: Three decent episodes does not a great series make. **.

The Seaview crew must battle a giant lizard in "Night of Terror"

VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA Season 3. 1966.

Irwin Allen's series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea had an excellent first season, a good second season -- and then deteriorated badly. The producer clearly thought of it strictly as a Kiddie show, and figured the children wanted more and sillier monsters over good storylines. Reportedly this was extremely embarrassing to star Richard Basehart, who hated the scripts. There were far too many episodes in which Admiral Nelson (Basehart) or Captain Crane (David Hedison) are mesmerized or brainwashed into trying to destroy the Seaview or each other. The nadir of monsters were the idiotic lobster-like creatures (not to be confused with the Lobster Men of the fourth season) of "Doomsday Island." There were very few memorable episodes: "Day of Evil" combines nuclear reactor problems with an alien impersonating Nelson who wants to create a holocaust. "The Thing from Inner Space" features Hugh Marlowe as a TV host urging Nelson to search for a monster that killed his crew. "The Brand of the Beast" has Nelson turning into a werewolf and has some suspense. "The Day the World Ended" is another suspenseful episode in which all life on earth seems to have disappeared. "Deadly Waters" is a serious episode -- and the best of the season -- in which the Seaview is trapped on the ocean's bottom below crush depth. Seaman Riley was replaced by Patterson (Paul Trinka), and the unnamed Ship's Doctor (Richard Bull) made many appearances, along with Kowalksi (Del Monroe) and Sharkey (Terry Becker). The acting was generally quite good, with Basehart, Hedison and the others playing more or less with conviction regardless of how absurd the plots and creatures were, although Admiral Nelson seemed increasingly dyspeptic (along with Sharkey), possibly because of Basehart's feelings about the series. A big lizard from Allen's The Lost World showed up yet again in "Night of Terror."

Verdict: Way too much silliness and stupid scripts. **.