User Reviews

Attempts on Admiral Nelson's (Richard Basehart) life were obviously commonplace during a four season run of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, but in "The Blizzard Makers", this becomes quite an example of how determined The Enemy (Commies from the East) is in trying to eliminate a threat to them. You see, a specific cause behind a weather anomaly, affecting the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean, sending dangerous wintry weather to the southeastern part of the United States during the summer, is what Nelson and the Seaview are out to uncover and this is not desired by The Enemy. This time representing the enemy is Werner Klemperer (most famous on Hogan's Heroes), as Cregar, operating a cavernous outpost located on an isolated island where their sophisticated equipment/technology can send a signal that intercepts with a buoy that triggers the "weather malfunction" affecting the Gulf Stream. In order to counteract Nelson's attempts to determine the cause, Cregar has climatologist, Dr. Melton (Milton Selzer; I know him from the great Ida Lupino-directed Twilight Zone episode, The Masks) kidnapped, brainwashed through an unusual helmet with wires that seem to give him the ability to command the poor guy to obey his orders, sent through a little transmitter taped to his stomach, with designs to kill the Admiral. Melton is the leading figure in understanding climate/weather and is important in confirming Nelson's theory that the Gulf Stream is being triggered by something mysterious from a certain location point. When two attempts on Nelson's life fail (a chemical explosion on a jet plane; a flammable compound placed in a pen and set to burn him in his Seaview bed), Melton, who has no control over his actions, a puppet whose strings are operated by Cregar, is used as a tool for an even greater purpose and that is to help maroon the Seaview in a specific spot where a nuclear explosion is set to detonate on a countdown. Finding the island outpost, Crane, Curley, and Kowalski will try to stop Cregar, but may ultimately need Nelson's help in interrupting the countdown, or, at the very least, disrupting the masterplan with some ingenious maneuvering using The Enemy's very weapon against them. This episode couldn't hold up to close scrutiny (especially how Crane and company easily escape their temporary prison; not to mention, the rather surreal brainwashing and climate control plots), but I think still has plenty of suspenseful moments where ingenuity and the ability to think on your feet when the pressure's on are important to escaping quite unusual peril. The threat of nuclear annihilation once again finds its way into a Voyage plot; this is the norm for the early years of Voyage where war with the other part of the world was always on the thoughts and tips of tongues of American audiences.