Looking for the prototypical summer cable movie?

At 6 p.m. today, The Family Channel offers Voyage of Terror.

Note the title.

How many dozens of films has TV produced featuring ``terror'' in the title?

Also, there's ``voyage,'' which easily translates to sea travel.

Tales about terror-filled sea voyages are quite popular of late. Wasn't there a feature film made about the Titanic?

So what is this terror that dominates the voyage?

Deadly viruses are big in terror-movies these days. In this case, it's an Ebola-type, which is threatening passengers on a cruise ship, the Orion Star.

Just coincidentally, an attractive specialist from the Centers for Disease Control (played by Lindsay Wagner) and her daughter are vacationing on the ship.

Some passengers come down with what at first looks to be bad cases of the flu. But the ever-alert Wagner becomes suspicious when one patient dies from severe internal bleeding.

Wagner immediately sends blood and tissue samples to a co-worker at the CDC in Atlanta.

The frightening results indicate the Ebola-type virus is quickly spreading among the scared passengers.

So what's missing so far from this voyage of terror?

Political intrigue.

Enter the president of the United States (Brian Dennehy). But he's blindsided by his national security adviser (Martin Sheen), who has a major grudge against his leader and plans to use this crisis to sabotage him politically.

Wagner, who once portrayed TV's Bionic Woman, is, of course, up to solving the situation. Meanwhile, Dennehy has quickly moved up TV's political ladder; two weeks ago, he was a U.S. senator on a Showtime drama, Thanks of a Grateful Nation. However, Sheen's political star has fallen; he's played the president in several recent films.

The most unusual casting concerns William B. Davis in the role of the dedicated doctor at the CDC. Fans of The X-Files know Davis as the mysterious Cigarette-Smoking Man. Nary a cigarette around Davis in this role.

Voyage of Terror is one of the final escape films to be produced by The Family Channel.