With so much focus on the guest stars, the cast often blended into the idyllic background during the early seasons.
TED LANGE: You started out being enamored of the guest stars you really wanted to meet. Then you kind of resented that the stories were always about them. You were going, [sighs] ''Look at that, Richard Roundtree is coming in. He gets a girl.'' ''Who does Mickey Rooney get?'' He's 90 years old and he was doing better than I was doing!
FRED GRANDY: There were times when we had so little to do, it was like being in the federal farm program. ''What are you doing?'' ''Well, I'm lying fallow for a season but I hope for a good crop come fall.''
CYNTHIA LAUREN TEWES: We were there for hello and goodbye day. ''Hello, welcome aboard, you are in cabin 346.'' ''Goodbye, thanks for sailing with us.'' [Then] we'd rent cars, go around islands, and meet on beaches.
BERNIE KOPELL: It was dreamlike in so many ways.
LANGE: Saw the world on Aaron Spelling's dime.

Eventually, the cast lobbied for more screen time. (Lange, Grandy, and Kopell even wrote episodes.) One of the series' more memorable plot twists proved to be season 4's ill-fated romance between Gopher and Julie.
GRANDY: That was a telling show because it's remembered as one of people's favorites. When the producers got wind of that, they said, ''The relationships among these folks are worth exploring as well.''
TEWES: Fred and I had fun. We kissed and went, ''Oh. That's not right.''... [Fans] thought we were perfect together. Of course, that would have involved Julie doing more than kissing a man once, and Julie didn't do that. That's why I loved Julie.

Another crew-centric story lasted a little longer: In season 3, Jill Whelan had been added as sweet-cheeked Vicki, Capt. Stubing's illegitimate daughter.
GAVIN MCLEOD: Aaron comes to me and said, ''I had an idea about bringing a girl on to be his daughter [to see] if we can get the younger kids to watch.'' I said, ''That's a great dimension. But how do I get the daughter?'' He says, ''That woman you were in love with? She was pregnant at the time, you didn't know it.'' I loved working with [Jill] — she was so precious. And that story gave me something that wasn't just fluff. [Whelan, now a singer, declined to participate in this story.]

IV: THE GLOBE-TROTTERS
Filming episodes on real cruises wasn't all fun in the sun. Even basic tasks, like corresponding with the show's L.A.-based production office, posed challenges.
GORDON FARR: Back then, there wasn't ship-to-shore communication where you'd just pick up a phone. You had to go to the radio room. ''Hello, Aaron, this is Gordon. Over.'' [imitates static noise] ''Yes, Gordon, what do you want?'' ''On page 3, line 17...Over. ''
DOUG CRAMER: It was the most adventuresome shooting that had ever been done on a television series on a regular basis. The ship wouldn't change its schedule — we couldn't afford to slow down 1,200 passengers.
GRANDY: We would set off the sprinkler system with the lights. Here you are, all dressed up for dinner and all of a sudden you're getting rained on. There were always people that said, ''You're ruining my holiday!'' or ''I'm going to sue!''
MACLEOD: It was a lot easier shooting on the soundstage. You don't have anybody in the middle of a scene saying, ''The Coral Dining Room is open now.'' Many a good take was ruined because of announcements coming over the loudspeaker. I remember two ladies refused to move their chairs. We wanted to shoot in this area, they said, ''No. We paid for this and we're not going to move.''

Of course, when the show became wildly popular, passengers — and cruise-line executives — didn't seem to mind the intrusion of the cameras as much.
GORDON FARR: In Mazatlàn, we put a note under everybody's door saying, ''Love Boat's going to shoot this ballroom scene. If you'd like to be in it, it's formal wear and you must be there at 4:30 in the morning.'' I figured we were going to be doubling and tripling and really picking angles just to fill this room.'' We had 200 couples in full gowns there!
GRANDY: The longer the show was a hit, the more of a launching opportunity it became for Princess [Cruises]. We were in Miami or St. Thomas, hanging out on one of the aft decks at a bar, waiting to shoot. This guy came up — turns out he was some mid-level executive at Princess. He said, ''I had to come over here and talk to you two guys because — how do I say this? — you guys have made me so rich! I can't believe it! This show is such a hit! We're all making so much money! My God!'' He just went into this paroxysm of euphoria about how successful he was. Then he calmed down and said, ''Sorry, sorry. Do you want a Piña Colada or anything? My treat, obviously.''

An international smash — it was syndicated in more than 100 countries — Love Boat journeyed to increasingly exotic locales. But in 1982, a scary accident occurred in a Turkish taxi: A cigarette ignited some balloons that were inexplicably filled with hydrogen, injuring Tewes, Grandy, and several others; Grandy suffered severe burns on his hands and face.
GRANDY: It shot flames six feet in the air. The reaction by people outside was we'd been hit by terrorists. It was pretty horrendous. At least I went into shock.
TEWES: We had giant pizza bubbles on our hands. I kept saying, ''We need ice, we need ice!'' and somebody said, ''Booze?'' ''No, we don't need booze, we need ice!'' Well, the word for ice in Turkish is buz. I found that out just a few years ago.
GRANDY: They get me to the ship. [The doctor] says, ''I have a confession. I am not a physician.'' He was a first-year medical student who'd essentially conned his way on to the ship to meet girls. He didn't even know how to put in an IV. Fortunately [a crew member] was a junkie, so I got the medication I needed.

In 1983, Love Boat visited the Far East, becoming one of the first American TV series allowed into China.
CRAMER: They had never seen tall, blond American women. We had 10,000 people one day when we were shooting. When John Forsythe kissed Ursula Andress on the Great Wall, we almost got thrown out of China. I was called on the carpet with the film commissioner. It was terrible.
GRANDY: In Japan, we inadvertently threw away one of Harvey Korman's hairpieces in a box of sushi.

NEXT PAGE: ''People always remember, 'Oh, The Love Boat — so sweet.' No, it was about people coming on board, having sex with strangers, and leaving.''