episode #06 - Doomsday and Counting

Air Date: 3/1/74    written by Larry Brody, story by Jimmy Sangster    Directed by Jerry Jameson

If anyone can overcome the Cold War, it's Steve Austin, right? He's buddies with a Russian cosmonaut (Gary Collins) who has some grand plans for a united American-Soviet space tech effort to be headquartered on a Soviet island base. Unfortunately, the timing is off: the island is hit by a big earthquake; the cosmonaut's fiancee (Jane Merrow) is trapped below and, on top of that, the automatic security protocol initiates a one hour countdown to detonate a nuclear bomb. Yep, those Soviets - they were serious about security, not so much detente. The episode suggests a big scope where there wasn't any - it's all on a TV budget.  BoG's Score: 6 out of 10
Bio Trivia: Bruce Glover has a small role as a Soviet captain; he was in Diamonds Are Forever as a weird assassin; actress Merrow showed up in a later episode as the same character; she had starred in the British Island of the Burning Doomed in 1967.
Star Trek TOS actor alert: William Smithers plays a Soviet general here; he appeared in  Bread and Circuses