A year four remake of year three's The Fossil Men, but filmed and acted with more all-important GUSTO than Fossil Men. Amphibians have been at the bottom of the sea long before man and now they want to take over the world's oceans with the help of the Seaview and seaman Kowalski.

The teaser for this episode could be described as a defining moment in Voyage. A moment of child-like action/fantasy comic book entertainment that sea Quest DSV (1993) could never do but sometimes wanted to. Is the teaser comedy or action? I don't know but it is pure Irwin Allen (helped by director Hopper) whatever it is. A moment of flamboyance, showmanship, a moment of the Seaview looking good, the Seaview sounding good and monsters acting crazy! The Seaview - "the mightiest weapon afloat" - is sailing the seven seas when all of a sudden it is fired on by a mysterious force. But that mysterious force is nothing more than two part-man, part-fish amphibians who are standing on the floor of the sea firing a sonic cannon that looks like a left over from a Republic serial!

And yes, you guessed it, that cannon brings the not-so-super-sub to the bottom. And when the sub hits bottom the amphibians jump up with joy like they are watching a football game where a point has just been scored. What a moment! Who could of dreamed up something like that? You would have to be crazy or mad or Irwin. The showmanship element comes into play in the use of sound effects.  As the Seaview goes down we hear this hard to describe motor-ish sound that was also used in the Land of The Giants pilot when the earth spacecraft gets sucked into the big green ball in space. Few mention how important sound effects are to science fiction film and Irwin knew how and WHEN to use them. As you might guess, the rest of the episode struggles to match the teaser...

Act one has more explosions than Star Wars and then finally Proto appears on the flying sub and starts talking ... Proto: "Your lives might be valuable to you but they are meaningless to us, I would assume take it now". Crane: "All right, what do you want from us?". Proto: "You have a force, a power, that enables you to move through the waters". Crane: "Our nuclear reactor". Proto: "Whatever name you call it, you will show us how to harness this power to our sonic cannon". Crane: "Sonic cannon? Is that what you used on the Seaview and the flying sub?". Don Matheson performs this scene with all the gusto I demand from Irwin tv and the scene is helped along by stock music that plays on the oddity of the encounter. Another great moment, which means two great moments in one episode. But after this rather early scene, the episode does go down hill a bit as the amphibians spend a lot of time looking rather silly as they walk around the Seaview missile room without doing or saying much of interest.

But hey, Kowalski then saves the episode! This is partly what made Voyage what it is, when one element of an episode turns to crap there is always some other element, in this case Kowalski, who could save the hour. He gets into fights with the Seaview crew and gets to call a guy a "meathead", but it is actually Kowalski who looks, talks, walks in a meathead-ed kind of way and this is what makes the rest of the hour. It is almost refreshing to have Kowalski steal a show and behave like a football player or something. A lot of fun and Del sometimes has a big grin on his face. Is the grin from Del or Kowalski? I would say both as Del Monroe has gone on record as saying that he enjoyed all of Voyage "and the ones he was more featured in" so it is a safe guess that Del was having a ball during The Deadly Amphibians.

 This episode comes near the end of the series and you might find yourself wishing that Del was more featured in all episodes. However, I was not so big on Del when more featured in Black beard, so maybe Irwin did the right thing with Del. This episode has one other star, director Jerry Hopper. Hopper directed many year three/year four Voyage episodes with NOT a lot of time and money to get things just right. But the teaser for Amphibians and the teaser for Doomsday Island proved that Hopper (with help from Irwin) had a talent for directing the outrageous. And being outrageous was a vital element to Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Thank you.