Vortex
1945: A Navy fighter group heading for a landing at Ft. Lauderdale vanishes into thin air over open ocean. Their disappearance is never solved – yet another mystery blamed on the Bermuda Triangle.
1976: Professor Paul Jordan and his son Scott are part of an oceanic expedition aboard a boat chartered from veteran sea captain Ben Wallace. Their expedition into the Caribbean takes on a sinister turn with the sighting of roiling green clouds on the horizon, even though no storms are expected. Ben tries to steer the boat clear of the raging, unearthly storm, but to no avail – the ship is lost. The survivors make it to shore, but they can’t tell where they are, or when. A loincloth-clad man named Varian appears without any explanation, healing Ben’s broken arm and trying to lead them to safety, but Professor Jordan is cautious about following him. Varian finally confides in Jordan’s son instead: Varian is from Earth in the 23rd century, just another traveler stranded in the Bermuda Triangle, which is an unpredictable gateway in time as well as space. Ben, Fred and one of the women from the expedition find themselves trapped by salty British sailors who became stranded in the Triangle in the 1500s, whose captain will do anything to escape the island. Professor Jordan makes plans to free his fellow survivors, and asks for Varian’s help, but the man from the future insists that he is a pacifist, acting only as a guide. Even if Jordan can recover all the members of his party, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to return to their own place or time.
teleplay by Michael Michaelian & Katharyn Michaelian Powers and Merwin Gerard
story by Merwin Gerard
directed by Andrew V. McLaglen
music by Robert PrinceCast: Scott Thomas (Paul Jordan), Susan Howard (Eve), Jared Martin (Varian), Carl Franklin (Fred Walters), Karen Somerville (Jill), Ike Eisenmann (Scott Jordan), Leif Erickson (Ben Wallace), Scott Brady (Carl), Don Knight (Paget), Ian McShane (Sir James), Gary Collins (Dar-L), Mary Ann Mobley (Rhea), Jason Evers (Atar), Lynn Borden (Enid), Jack Stauffer (Andy), Byron Chung (George), Tom McCorry (Scar), Mike Road (voice of the Source)
Notes: The city of Atlantium scenes in this and the following episode were filmed at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, which had only just been built at the time of filming. Though the series premise was written with travelers from the future and the past in mind, and NBC found the show promising enough to merit a series order, the pilot sees the only instance of adversaries from the past, and over half of the cast was eliminated after the pilot episode. Extra scenes were added prior to broadcast to try to smooth the transition into the series proper, which would focus only on Varian, Scott and Fred, and Star Trek veteran D.C. Fontana and the show’s other writers had barely a month to get episodes written and into production in time for the series’ premiere in February 1977.
LogBook entry by Earl Green
Notes: Actor Brian Patrick Clarke is credited as “Brain.” Roddy McDowall joins the show in this episode, playing a part that was written specifically to attract him to the show. His genre credits already included the Planet Of The Apes films and their short-lived TV spinoff. Writer Harold Livingston also penned episodes of Mission: Impossible, Future Cop, The Six Million Dollar Man and the William Shatner series Barbary Coast, but his most famous genre gig was, of course, the unenviable job of coming up with a coherent script for Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979, a job Livingston didn’t relish as it put him into conflict with Gene Roddenberry (Livingston later claimed that his rewrites were being rewritten and sabotaged by Roddenberry). This episode is contains rare references to the pilot, with Fred comparing the red cloud to the green one in the Bermuda Triangle, and Varian noting that the traveling party is almost as large as the original group of shipwreck survivors. Sil-L conveniently hides for almost the entire duration of the episode, appearing only at the beginning and the end; presumably he was marking his territory in Willaway’s outdoor planters the rest of the time.
The narration was performed by actor Mike Road, who had provided the voice of the Source in the show’s first two episodes.
The “futuristic” model of the Alpha 2 spaceship from Scott’s future is indeed from the future… a few years in the future. It’s a model of the Space Shuttle, attached to its external tank with solid rocket boosters, with an exotic red-and-white paint job. Though the Shuttle’s design was well known in 1977 (if Scott was the child of someone who moved in scientific circles, he really should’ve recognized it), the test orbiter Enterprise was only just getting off the ground for proving flights to test the Shuttle’s ability to glide to a safe, unpowered landing at the time that The Fantastic Journey was on the air. The first Space Shuttle launch wouldn’t happen until 1981. Also, the highly advanced futuristic audio surveillance equipment used by Tarrant’s underlings has a prominently-positioned, highly advanced futuristic parallel port. As the first mass-market home computers didn’t arrive until later in 1977, this would’ve been an exotic piece of equipment to most TV viewers.
Notes: Despite her seemingly pivotal role in the story, Liana isn’t seen much in this episode, reportedly due to actress Katie Saylor’s illness at the time. Joan Collins was still the queen of the guest stars at this point in her career, having already appeared in Star Trek, Space: 1999 and the first segment of the Hammer Studios film version of Tales From The Crypt; Dynasty was still four years away. Guest star Julie Cobb was married to episode director Victor French at the time of production. The Complex’s “robot” minions are a familiar prop: they’re the lower half of a studio camera pedestal, complete with casters to ensure smooth “dolly” movement of the camera across a studio floor… minus, of course, the upper half of the pedestal and the camera, making it unrecognizable to anyone who doesn’t work in a studio. Studio camera pedestals were also turned into robots on 
familiar flying saucer design. Willaway says he once worked for NASA. This is the second episode not to feature Katie Saylor; there’s no mention of Liana’s whereabouts, even though she remains in the opening credits. This was one of the last guest starring roles for Cheryl Ladd before she became one of the stars of Charlie’s Angels, while fellow guest star Gerald McRaney was still a few years away from gaining fame as one of the stars of Simon & Simon. The Innocent Prey is a rare example of The Fantastic Journey trying to step into Star Trek’s issue-based storytelling, in this case touching on the hot-button topic of capital punishment. This was the final episode produced, and it aired nearly two months after the rest of the series.