Almost Worthless: Diver Dan

Before Spongebob Squarepants, before Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, there was a little children's TV show called Diver Dan. I have admit that when I first saw the DVD cover, I thought of Scuba Steve from the Adam Sandler movie Big Daddy. I'm not sure if Scuba Steve was influenced by Diver Dan because Adam Sandler wasn't old enough to see the series when it aired in 1960, but I guess it's possible.

Anyway, Diver Dan was a Philadelphia-based kids' show that came in 7-minute episodes. (Because, you know, it's today's kids who have such terrible attention spans.) The human stars were Frank Freda as the dashing diver and Suzanne Turner as the mermaid Miss Minerva, but the real star was voice actor Allen Smith, who did voices for Howdy Doody and a lot of other shows. Smith voiced all of the fish puppets in Diver Dan.

So. Fish puppets. Mermaids. Diver Dan. Let's watch.

In case you couldn't tell, Diver Dan was shot in front of a huge aquarium. Those are living fish swimming around in the background. It's such a simple idea, but it gives the show a visual style that truly sets it apart from other kids' shows of the time. The other elements of Diver Dan are more conventional. The puppets have a certain old-timey charm both in their voices and construction (especially the one with the cigarette). Miss Minerva is cute. The diver himself doesn't have much of a personality. That's okay, though, because the show that bears his name isn't really about him. Diver Dan's just a convenience. He's like a repair man. Stuck in seaweed? Diver Dan will figure a way to get you out of it. Then he'll leave you alone.

The real reason Diver Dan's diving in the first place is surprisingly interesting. He's there to dispose of nuclear bombs by throwing them into undersea volcanoes, although the only time it's explicitly described is in the above clip. I did some research to see if this method had any basis in reality, and if so, why it's not common knowledge. Unfortunately, Diver Dan's work is only a theory that had been abandoned years ago. It must have been really cutting-edge in 1960, though. It may have been like the sci-fi shows of that era that depicted moon landings before one had even occurred. Underwater nuclear disposal was probably expected to happen at some point.

That's why although the show itself isn't exactly compelling, the aquarium and the nuclear waste-subplot make it somewhat progressive. There's not a lot to build on with seven minutes an episode, but I'll give it credit for its interesting details. Like most of the DVDs I review, this one is neither good nor bad. It just is. It could benefit from some kind of visual restoration, but for a dollar, you get what you pay for.