What Were They Thinking?

This section of the site is devoted to those moments--we've all seen far too many of them--that make us go "huh?" Those moments when you wonder if they left out a page of the script. When you consider the possibility that the Voyage creators operated a little too freely under the theory of "finished is better than perfect." When you wonder whether the scripts were edited at all, and are certain that no one did the slightest bit of research on the uncertain areas. In short, when all you can say is "What were they thinking?"

Season Three

The Plant Man

The "what were they thinking" moment here happens while Crane and Sharkey are trapped in a sealab's storage compartment by a deadly piece of vegetation. What can they do? Well, they can find something in that compartment to distract the monster. Ah, here it is, thinks Crane, pulling out a jug of sulfuric acid. He takes off the cap, leans over and takes a deep sniff of the contents. He wrinkles his nose a bit--that's sulfuric acid, all right!--and he and Sharkey use it to make their escape. The problem is that sulfuric acid is, well, an acid! If Crane had taken that kind of awhiff of it, he'd have done a lot more than just wrinkle up his nose.

The Mermaid

Crane fishes the mermaid out of the ocean. For all he knows, that's the only place she can breathe (at any rate, the viewer never sees him try to determine otherwise). Yet when he takes her to the lab, he puts the unconscious creature in a tank that appears to contain no water. Now, I know Crane isn't really a scientist, but surely he had a goldfish as a child, and thus some idea of what happens to a "fish out of water?"

The Shadowman

In this episode, the Shadowman appears on the understaffed (six crewmen are running the ship) Seaview and begins taking over the men. First to go is Chip, and Crane follows not long after; the last to be taken is Kowalski, and by the end of the show no one is left but Nelson, who of course saves the day on his own. So far, so good. Then, after the Shadowman is defeated, all the crew return to themselves. Kowalski asks Nelson what happened to the Shadowman. "What Shadowman?" wonders Crane, who remembers nothing since he was taken over. However, when Nelson tells Chip to radio the military with what they've learned, he leaves immediately to do so, no questions asked--but he was the first taken, and should therefore know even less than Crane. What's going on here?

Season Four

Savage Jungle

Here the alien would-be invaders plan to cover the Earth with plant life and convert it atmosphere to carbon dioxide, thereby making it an environment that they--but not the people of earth--can survive in. However, as most of us learned in high school biology if not earlier, plants create oxygen. If the Earth is covered with plants to the point of being one big rainforest (apparently the aim of the aliens), there would be plenty of oxygen being poured into the atmosphere. Somehow, the aliens' plan doesn't seem particularly well thought out...

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