Flipper (TV Series) A Dolphin in Time (1967) User Reviews

Where's Bud?

[mitchrmp · 7/10 · 30 November 2012]

For once, Porter admitted that there are just some things Flipper cannot understand. To Flipper, sharks around humans mean danger, so when Scott Emson tries to study sharks, Flipper mistakes an attack coming and kills the shark, thus messing up Scott's whole assignment. He explains to Porter and Sandy who lock him up in the pen.

But Bud...Well, Bud is all dressed up in nice pants and a long shirt. It looks like he was coming home from school. I thought Sandy said he was at the dentist, but I could be mistaken. But then why wasn't Sandy in school? I don't know...confusing! then there was the carbon monoxide poisoning incident...

Yet another oceanographer in trouble

[wrxsti54 · 5/10 · 12 June 2014]

Coral Key Park seems to be a magnet for oceanographers. This is the umpteenth episode featuring one starting with the very first episode ever shot (the pilot shot in 1963 - SOS Dolphin). Flipper interferes with a shark repellent trial and so aggravates the scientist that he persuades Porter to have Flipper penned for 2 days. Right after Sandy pens Flipper, he and Porter are radioed an urgent Coastguard rescue call where they find a diver suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. It turns out his own on-board air compressor used to fill his own air tanks had a leaky hose ingesting the CO from the exhaust.

The oceanographer, minutes before this diver was afflicted, came by the couple's boat and, to save a trip all the way into Coral Key, borrowed a tank that turned out to be contaminated. The revived diver advises Porter and Sandy of this fact and they race off to find the scientist. He is not at his research vessel and so begins a frantic search in a race against time to find his skiff and then the scientist.

Meanwhile Bud returns home from school (all dressed up in long pants) and has no idea why Flipper is penned and lets him out. Flipper senses danger and persuades Bud to follow him in the skiff. Flipper and Bud arrive just as the scientist is getting ready to dive and Flipper tries everything to dissuade him including a rare scene where he leaps into the boat. Bud tries to make Flipper behave and the scientist gets all the more angry and dives anyway. Pretty soon Porter and Sandy pull up in the launch and Porter immediately dives with Flipper to find the now unconscious scientist passed out due to the CO inhalation. Porter and Flipper bring him to the surface just in time and revive him enough for him to realize the formally pesky dolphin just saved his life!

A clichéd plot line going back to the underwater science experiment and injured diver well yet again.