Proteus Submarine from “Fantastic Voyage”

Moebius, 1/32 scale

Reviewed by John Miller

Fantastic Voyage is a 1966 American science-fiction film directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Harry Kleiner, based on a story by Otto Klement and Jerome Bixby. The film is about a submarine crew who are shrunk to microscopic size and venture into the body of an injured scientist to repair damage to his brain. Kleiner abandoned all but the concept of miniaturization and added a Cold War element. The film starred Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, Edmond O'Brien, Donald Pleasence, and Arthur Kennedy.

Bantam Books obtained the rights for a paperback novelization based on the screenplay and approached Isaac Asimov to write it. Because the novelization was released six months before the movie, many people mistakenly believed that the film was based on Asimov's book.

The Movie Plot

The United States and the Soviet Union have both developed technology that can miniaturize matter by shrinking individual atoms, but only for one hour. Scientist Dr. Jan Benes (Jean Del Val), working behind the Iron Curtain, has figured out how to make the process work indefinitely. With the help of American intelligence agents, including agent Charles Grant (Boyd), he escapes to the West, but an attempted assassination leaves him comatose with a blood clot in his brain that no surgery can remove from the outside.

To save his life, agent Grant, pilot Captain Bill Owens (Redfield), Dr. Michaels (Pleasence), surgeon Dr. Peter Duval (Kennedy), and his assistant Cora Peterson (Welch) are placed aboard a Navy submarine (Proteus), which is then miniaturized to "about the size of a microbe", and injected into Benes. The team has 60 minutes to get to and remove the clot. After an hour, Proteus and its crew will begin to revert to their normal size, become vulnerable to Benes's immune system, and (in the words of Asimov's novelization) "kill Benes regardless of the success of the surgery."

During the critical phase of the operation, a saboteur knocks out the surgeon and takes control of Proteus, while the rest of the crew is outside. The clot is successfully removed but the Proteus is wrecked and subsequently destroyed by white blood cells. The remaining crew escape through a tear duct seconds before returning to normal size. It’s science-fiction, folks :)

Heavily edited from Wikipedia

The kit comes in a rather large box adorned with very nice art work of the Proteus as well as pictures of the assembled model. This is a big model; measuring ~15in long and ~8in wide. The first impression is one of simplicity. There are relatively few parts considering the size of the model and although the level of detail is sufficient, it is not overwhelming.

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There is little-to-no flash and the sprue gates are (mostly) small and well placed. The parts layout is simple and straightforward suggesting this will be an easy build.

The bulk of the assembly sequences deal with the interior of the submarine.

All of the interior parts and assemblies are glued onto the “floor unit” which is one of the larger internal parts that runs from the bow to the stern. Starting with the pilot’s seat, which is nicely detailed, the builder is instructed to assemble the instrument cluster, control station, air lock, and chart case. These are in turn affixed to the floor unit. The detail on all of the interior components is well done and sufficient for the large scale but a bit on the soft side in some areas.

That said super detailers are going to have a blast augmenting the interior with seat harnesses, instrument faces, placards, and similar fiddly-bits, many of which can be sourced from 1/32 scale aftermarket aircraft detail sets. Included in the interior are various doors and latches as well as the mini-lab complete with crew couch, sink, and centrifuge: very cool:) Unfortunately, a fair amount of the laboratory details won’t be visible when the sub is assembled.

After the completed interior/floor unit is glued into the lower hull, the builder is directed to install the pilot’s bubble and single-piece crew window into the upper hull.

A nice touch is the inner window frame that glues onto the inner face of the crew window thereby adding a huge amount of detail and obviating the need to paint the inner window: nice.

Once the crew window and frame are installed, the upper and lower hulls are joined. The front dive planes are neatly captured between the hull halves. Addition of the single-piece “rudder-fin” and rear dive plane completes the build.

In addition to well written and illustrated building sequences, the instructions provide schematics for decal placement and suggestions for painting and detailing interior assemblies.

This is a really neat kit. The detail is sufficient, the parts count is low, the engineering is straightforward, and the result will be a large and very impressive model. For those of us who were fascinated by the Proteus after seeing “Fantastic Voyage” this model is a huge trip down memory lane and a fun one. Highly recommended!

Review kit provided by my retirement fund, again.

For more on this review visit Modelpaintsolutions.com.

Text and images copyright © 2021 by Model Paint Solutions.

Text and Images Copyright © 2021 by John Miller
Page Created 28 January, 2021
Last updated 28 January, 2021

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