The full two-hour production was broadcast on PBS, Watertown, N.Y. on 2007 March 25 without commercials.
Intriguing plot. It took a while for me to realize that that the genre was supernatural, requiring some suspension of belief. Gradual subversion of most of the crew by the spirit of the submarine was well done. What was not made clearly enough in the movie is that the submarine went through a time-warp... twice; the first time, gradually back into the WW II period and the second time, rapidly, when the submarine encountered the peculiar electrical storm. Time-warp explains the attack by WW II vintage Me 109 aircraft mid-way through the movie and the sudden re-emergence of the sub back to 1981 for the final attack on the, by then, Soviet naval base. It also explains why the sub could sink enemy (German) vessels, including another submarine, without triggering WW III.
I'm not sure about British subs but US subs certainly had radar later in WW II. Unfortunately, the movie sub lacked a radar antennae. A minor quibble.
Yes, subs did sink other subs, usually when one of them was on the surface. However, the last German sub sunk by combat in WW II was by a British sub whilst both were under water. The British captain was a master at tactics and working out fire control coordinates. (The last German sub to be sunk in WW II was by HMCS New Glascow, a frigate, which was unaware of the sub and accidentally rammed it whilst the latter was partly submerged and trying to sneak to its home port.)
Incongruities:
As pointed out by others, chlorine gas is produced by sea water entering batteries, not by shorting them out. Shorting out the batteries would have caused failure of the electric propulsion and the sub could not have run under water. Okay, maybe only some of the batteries were shorted out.
WW II torpedoes had safety devices to prevent them becoming armed or the torpedo engine starting whilst they were still in the torpedo tube.
How was it that the captain and the professor could continue inside the sub without gas masks after the crew had been forced to abandon it because of chlorine gas?
Worse, at one point, after all the crew except the captain has abandoned the sub, the professor re-enters the submarine via the conning tower, whilst the sub is submerging, in order to fire the scuttling charges (explosive charges intended to deliberately sink the submarine in order to avoid capture by the enemy). All he had to do to sink the sub was to leave the conning tower hatch open as the submarine submerged.
With a little thought and expert advice the producers could have avoided or glossed over these incongruities. As it was, incongruities in the second half of the movie spoiled the mood that was well established in the first half of the movie.
Intriguing plot. It took a while for me to realize that that the genre was supernatural, requiring some suspension of belief. Gradual subversion of most of the crew by the spirit of the submarine was well done. What was not made clearly enough in the movie is that the submarine went through a time-warp... twice; the first time, gradually back into the WW II period and the second time, rapidly, when the submarine encountered the peculiar electrical storm. Time-warp explains the attack by WW II vintage Me 109 aircraft mid-way through the movie and the sudden re-emergence of the sub back to 1981 for the final attack on the, by then, Soviet naval base. It also explains why the sub could sink enemy (German) vessels, including another submarine, without triggering WW III.
I'm not sure about British subs but US subs certainly had radar later in WW II. Unfortunately, the movie sub lacked a radar antennae. A minor quibble.
Yes, subs did sink other subs, usually when one of them was on the surface. However, the last German sub sunk by combat in WW II was by a British sub whilst both were under water. The British captain was a master at tactics and working out fire control coordinates. (The last German sub to be sunk in WW II was by HMCS New Glascow, a frigate, which was unaware of the sub and accidentally rammed it whilst the latter was partly submerged and trying to sneak to its home port.)
Incongruities:
As pointed out by others, chlorine gas is produced by sea water entering batteries, not by shorting them out. Shorting out the batteries would have caused failure of the electric propulsion and the sub could not have run under water. Okay, maybe only some of the batteries were shorted out.
WW II torpedoes had safety devices to prevent them becoming armed or the torpedo engine starting whilst they were still in the torpedo tube.
How was it that the captain and the professor could continue inside the sub without gas masks after the crew had been forced to abandon it because of chlorine gas?
Worse, at one point, after all the crew except the captain has abandoned the sub, the professor re-enters the submarine via the conning tower, whilst the sub is submerging, in order to fire the scuttling charges (explosive charges intended to deliberately sink the submarine in order to avoid capture by the enemy). All he had to do to sink the sub was to leave the conning tower hatch open as the submarine submerged.
With a little thought and expert advice the producers could have avoided or glossed over these incongruities. As it was, incongruities in the second half of the movie spoiled the mood that was well established in the first half of the movie.