DOOMSDAY ISLAND Airdate: Feb 26, 1967 Writer: Peter GermanoDirector: Jerry Hopper Guest Stars: Jock Gaynor (Lars)

By StuOz :

In what can only be described as Voyage's most flamboyant moment, in the Seaview missile room, a very LIS-looking bright orange amphibian  creature breaks out of a giant egg and puts his hands around the head of a crewman in an attempt to kill him.

The picture then fades out to the opening theme music. Lars, the leader of the amphibians from Scorpius, another star system, plans to destroy the Seaview and take its reactors to hasten the maturing of the giant eggs. You guessed it, another alien invasion! Tim Colliver's 1992 Seaview book says of this episode "Doomday Island sets yet another record for the series as it reaches a new low in all- round horrendous episode". How can I enjoy ALL of this series so much and yet another big fan says things like this?

Am I perhaps making these colour shows sound better than they are? Doomsday Island could be called childish and low budget but if you look really look hard and if you really like Basehart, the guest bad guys, effects, music, etc, well, you really don't care about the holes in the script, budget problems, etc.

That is me and if my reviews can change the mind or open the mind of just a few new young viewers to Voyage, well, my job will be done. Girls and Boys, Ladies and Gents, something that saved Doomsday Island and several other colour episodes of Voyage was the "make something out of nothing" mentality.

The ability to dress up an average script with the odd good line, bits of good acting, a Seaview effect, a flying sub effect, an alien, guest star, a music score, or whatever. If these bits of showmanship can't get you hooked and you simply demand a quality Star Trek/ Outer Limits story, well, you will have a problem with much of colour Voyage. In 1997 LIS's Mark Goddard came to Sydney, Australia and told a room of 200 people "Voyage and LIS had exactly the same monsters, we had that orange alien on LIS (The Phantom Family) and after filming they (the crew) would wash it down with a hose and send it down to the Voyage set"

Mark was amused by this and so was I and the other 199 people. Is this LIS connection what makes this episode so good? Perhaps. Also, the bright orange colour of the aliens (looks red to me but I think I am a bit colour blind?) is something that seems to grab the eye. Also, the wonderful stock music scores played over simple scenes like the alien walking out of the missile room or walking around an empty control room.

And the flamboyant intro described above is something that makes the whole hour worthwhile. The Creature From The Black Lagoon never did it like that, we see bits of the creature in the early stages of Lagoon, we never see all of him at the start, but Voyage went for the more memorable way of introducing the creature to viewers.

 Lars speaks very s-l-o-w-l-y, like he is still learning our language, that works for me. This is two monster shows in one. We have the talkative Lars on the island with Crane and Kowalski, and the silent orange alien on the Seaview causing mild horror and destruction. This is a packed episode, unlike the later year three episode - The Deadly Cloud - which almost never leaves the Seaview and the alien scenes run for a total of about five minutes.

The Deadly Cloud seems empty (but good) compared to Doomsday Island. Richard Basehart sometimes seems amusingly dis-interested in this episode (note the scene where he talks to Chip about the crew vanishing from the control room) and other times Basehart acts like he is in a 1940s Hollywood melodrama (the ending). I was never that big on Terry Becker in year two but in year three he added some realistic light comedy to the series, "What do you think this is (the missile room), a Coney Island shooting gallery?", that was needed in the un-realistic shows like this.

Thanks Terry. Del Monroe is great as always. If you wish to watch other colour Voyage episodes that did great job of dressing up an average script, I would go with Time Bomb, The X Factor, The Monster From Outer Space, The Deadly Creature Below, The Monster's Web, Graveyard Of Fear, Leviathan, Monster From The Inferno, Deadly Invasion, No Escape From Death, The Deadly Cloud, Fires Of Death, Cave Of The Dead, Terror, Secret Of The Deep, etc. BUT BE WARNED, these episodes often require a few repeat viewings before they grow on you. Thank you.

Special Thanks To StuOz For Another Fine Review.