Time Tunnel

The Time Tunnel first appeared on TV when I was 11 years old, and it has been four decades since I have seen any of Tony's and Doug's adventures. Thanks to the Starz Action Channel, I've recently had the opportunity to view a few of the episodes once more. Yes, it's a little more goofy than I thought all those years ago, especially when story lines start to turn around the appearance of aliens. But the show is also much better than some of the younger critics seem to be saying.

How so? Well, think about the assumptions behind the Time Tunnel. The producers of this program ASSUMED its audience, back in 1966, had at least a passing familiarity not only with the history of the Titanic, the Alamo, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and Custer's Last Stand but also ASSUMED its audience was aware of the outlines of the story of the Trojan War, the War of 1812, the Siege of Khartoum, and the Dreyfuss Affair--and remember this was long BEFORE the making of PAPILLON. Imagine an hour long TV series today turning one of its plots around the Dreyfuss Affair! It couldn't happen. Today's audiences haven't heard of Dreyfuss and can't even tell you what CENTURIES Pearl Harbor or the American Civil War took place in.

As strange as it may sound to the ears of the contemporary TV viewer, the truth is the Time Tunnel was geared towards a much more sophisticated audience than today's viewers, who are illiterate in their own culture and history. Could a TV series today do a story about the attempt to assassinate Abraham Lincoln--in 1861! The ability of the producers to take this all but forgotten historical incident and turn it into a hour long story could only have worked had the 1966 TV audience been well founded not only in the history of the American Civil War but in Lincoln's assassination in 1865.

The fact is the Time Tunnel could not work for today's dumbed down TV viewers. You can't assume they know what they had for lunch yesterday, much less the history of their own nation or Western Civlization. It's so much easier--and necessary--to develop films and TV shows around cartoon heroes with no baggage and no grounding in all that nasty history.

Having grown up in the 60's, I have fond memories of those Irwin Allen adventure series; Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants, and of course The Time Tunnel. Here we have Tony and Doug, trapped in endless time travel, as they tumble week to week to a new adventure, which always happened to be a key moment in history. Gettysburg, Pearl Harbor, the Titanic, Jericho, you name it. Meanwhile, the hapless scientists back at the base are constantly turning dials to bring them home, saying, "I'm trying to get a fix on them..." I always liked the vivid theme music, and of course you could see that those blinking computer props were recycled from the aforementioned series.

Saw the show this morning on the Encore network. I remember being 14 when it came out and loved it then. Today was the first episode (Titanic) and I enjoyed it all over again. Yes, much has changed in technology as far as broadcasting is concerned but the mystery and intrigue of time travel will always be there. The concept of the big time tunnel whereby Doug and Tony are visible on a large screen probably was a forerunner to big screen TV's of today. What I really found intriguing is that when the show was produced in 1968 the budget for the fictional project was $7 billion. What an enormous amount then and yet today that amount for a budgeted gov't project is still huge.

Some of the episodes, as I remember, get a little corny (especially when they travel to the future) but shows where they try to effect great events in history are integral to our desire that if we could change history we would seek to steer the Titanic away from the iceberg, persuade Lincoln not to go to Ford's Theatre, and re-route JFK in the motorcade...

I was 9 years old when "Time Tunnel" came on the air, and to an impressionable kid, this series was not so much a stretch as it would be when you're older. I used to love Friday nites on ABC, IIRC the lineup was Green Hornet, Rango (w/Tim Conway), Time Tunnel, Pruitts of Southampton (w/Phillis Diller). Memory is a little weak on the exact order, but I think that's close.

From the moment I saw the slide they put on just before the show began that said "The Time Tunnel, IN COLOR!" I was jealous of everyone that had a color TV (we had an old 21" B&W Olympic brand TV from the 50's). It wouldn't be until years later that I could see it in color. I was never that crazy about "Land of the Giants" or "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", but I never missed "Lost in Space". I never understood as a kid why TT was cancelled (What do kids know? I was just upset my favorite show wasn't on anymore!)

Over the years I would see it pop up once in a great while on some UHF station where I lived in Florida (WTOG-44 in St.Pete in the early 70's). I didn't see it again for years until it reappeared on SciFi. I taped almost all the shows but missed a few. Now I keep hoping for them to come out on DVD as I keep reading, but they still haven't appeared.

I always especially loved the theme music at the beginning of the show, and used my cassette recorder in the 70's to get the theme music so I could hear it when I wanted (no vcr's then!). Sure the show inspired disbelief, but it's pure escapism. Even as a kid, I wondered out loud why they always landed where trouble was about to begin. It didn't matter though, it became my favorite show of all time and still is. I watched it on it's premiere night in 1966 and when I see "Rendevous with yesterday" it takes me back like a Time Tunnel to 1966 and laying on the floor in front of that old TV and being mesmerized by the effects and story...it's like listening to an old song and remembering the time and place where you heard it the first time.

I think it will always be a classic, even if it got (unjustly) cancelled after it's first season. Obviously, I'm not alone, with all the websites devoted to it and all the comments in forums, it will live on for a long time to come. I hope the DVD's come soon.

Believe it or not, both "The Time Tunnel" and "Star Trek" debuted in the same week, back in 1966...and for a 13-year old comic-book loving SF fan, the TT premiere, placing our heroes on the doomed Titanic, beat Trek's 'salt-sucking-monster-disguised-as-a-wife" first episode, hands down! Irwin Allen obviously thought he had a winner with the time-traveling concept. Leads Robert Colbert and James Darren were very familiar faces to TV audiences, with Darren still idolized by a legion of fans from his "Gidget" movies (He told me, several years later, that he hoped the series would finally establish him as an 'adult', capable of the same range he'd displayed in "The Guns of Navarone"). Gary Merrill and Michael Rennie as the first guest stars certainly added luster to the Titanic episode, as did a wonderfully intricate main set (with the famous Op Art time portal), a supporting cast including pre-Catwoman Lee Meriwether and veteran character actor Whit Bissell, and, best of all, the extensive 20th Century Fox film archive to 'lift' stock footage from (giving the show a MUCH more expensive look than the series' tiny budget could have supported).

Unfortunately, while "Star Trek" improved in subsequent episodes, the opposite was true for TT. The series faced the fundamental incongruity of time travel as a film or TV subject; EVERYBODY from the past, by necessity, had to speak understandable English! Seeing Greeks and Trojans, bedecked in ancient armor, conversing in 20th Century American English, was pretty jarring! Even worse, the plots soon became painfully predictable. Our heroes, try as they might, could NOT change history, so you knew, each week, that they would either have to allow a tragedy to happen (like Pearl Harbor, in one of the series' best episodes), or that their actions would serve to keep an event aligned the way we currently remember it. When you add a minuscule 'per-episode' budget, insanely short shooting schedules, and the overworked Allen often unavailable to supervise the series or to 'stand up' to ABC and demand improvements, TT never really had a chance.

Still, you had to respect Irwin Allen for attempting to make something more profound than "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" (which had deteriorated into campy 'rubber-masked monster of the week' hokum), and "Land of the Giants" (which quickly wore out it's novelty value). While TT failed, many 'baby boomers' still remember it fondly...and that isn't a bad legacy for a one-season show!