Assignment: Underwater was one of a small group of aquatic adventure series to follow in the wake of Ivan Tors' series Sea Hunt, which had been a massive success in syndication at the end of the 1950's. But as it happens, Assignment: Underwater, which ran for just one season, was much more than a clone of the Tors series, with high-quality scripts and top-notch guest stars, as well as first-rate action sequences and an excellent pair of stars. Bill Williams portrayed Bill Greer, an ex-Marine and an expert diver, a widower living on his boat The Lively Lady with his eight-year-old daughter Patty (Diane Mountford). One of the most experienced divers working on the West Coast, he is frequently hired by the government -- including the police and the Navy Department -- as well as private industry to carry out dangerous assignments, in addition to routine underwater salvage and surveying jobs. Greer's adventures have him coming up against murder, kidnapping, smuggling, counterfeiting, and other criminal activities, just to add to the level of danger that exists inherently in undersea work. The presence of his young daughter also allowed the writers to add a layer of serious complexity to the hero -- Greer may be a top man under the water, but it's also clear in many of the episodes that he's never wholly sure that it's the best thing for his daughter to be raised on a boat at the harbor; and this leaves him with more self-doubt and even occasionally flawed judgement than was typical for an adventure series of this era. The writers also quickly discovered that they could deliver more complex scripts than was usual on shows like this, owing to Diane Mountford's extraordinary abilities as a child actress -- this was most notable in "Panic Off Punta Banda", where she carries more than half the episode brilliantly, while working opposite characters who speak no English and can't communicate with her.
The series was conceived by Frank de Felitta (who was also executive producer) and produced by National Telefilm Associates (NTA), which distributed it nationally in syndication, rather than through one of the major networks. The producer of the series was Bernard Glasser, who brought aboard his longtime collaborators Edward Bernds and Elwood Ullman -- although they were veteran film hands most closely associated with comedy (especially that of the Three Stooges), Bernds and Ullman, working in tandem with writer/associate producer Mort Zarcoff (with additional writing contributions by figures such as future director Tom Gries), flexed their dramatic muscles here to great effect in their scripts. The directors included Gene Fowler, Jr., who had already shown his skills as a dramatic filmmaker with movies such as I Was A Teenage Werewolf, I Married A Monster From Outer Space, and Gang War, Steve Sekely (Day Of The Triffids), and Paul Landres (The Vampire). They were aided in their cause by a guest cast list that included notable and dependable performers such as George Macready, Edgar Buchanan, John Van Dreelan, Carlton Young, Alan Hale, Jr., Chill Wills, John Hoyt, DeForest Kelley, Dan Seymour, Robert Shayne, and Charles Aidman, as well as up and coming players such as George Takei, James B. Sikking, and Barbara Luna, at the outset of their careers. All of this talent in the writing and acting departments also allowed Assignment: Underwater to diverge from Sea Hunt in another important respect -- Tors' series tended to be very didactic about its setting, and often seemed focused on teaching audiences about the sea in the course of its adventures; Assignment: Underwater was more oriented toward drama and characterization, although that didn't prevent the makers from informing us about aspects of diving and the oceans. And taking a lesson from one of Sea Hunt's few structural flaws, this show also relied a bit less on voice-over narration by Williams, and more often. where possibly, allowed the visuals to tell the story by themselves.
