Paul Fix is the guest star of this episode. The great sheriff of Northfork, Micah, on The Rifleman, could play many roles. He could look really old and beaten down, like he does in this episode, or pretty chipper and tough as he did on many movies and on The Rifleman. One thing you could always count on was that he delivered a solid performance and he was always a good person playing a good guy!
The Time Tunnel was a pretty sketchy show that usually did not do much research into the science that they were talking about. It seemed like most of the time, they just winged it. A perfect example is when Whit Bissell is asking the scientists whether or not the time tunnel machine can create any cosmic magnetic interference with Halley's Comet, and nobody knows anything.
Sam Groom plays a junior scientist to Dr. Ann McGregor (Lee Merriweather), and Dr. Raymond Swain (John Zaremba). When Groom begins to explain a possible side-effect of the magnetic interference, Whit Bissell tells him to shut up, or be demoted. That was a pretty lame way for a scientist to get verbally abused on a science show.
Whit Bissell played Lt. Gen. Heywood Kirk, and since he was in charge, and not a scientist, they used his character to blow off science and to do things that had no scientific explanation, and to otherwise turn what could have been a scientific science fiction show into fantasy garbage. Whit Bissell was basically on the show to bully the scientists and order them to do stupid things that they told him were dangerous.
It seemed like about half of this episode was spent on a screen shot of a flaming orange fireball that was supposed to be Halley's Comet. Having had the benefit of seeing Halley's Comet when it came by the Earth in 1986, and knowing that it never looked like a giant orange fireball, this episode seems even dumber than it is.
Another flaw is that James Darren keeps telling everyone that there are 200 miners trapped in the mine, and every time there is a shot of the miners, there are less than fifteen in a small room. It is pretty awful and ridiculous.
The best thing about this episode is that there are a ton of Western actors in it. Besides one of the stars, Robert Colbert being a Western actor, there was James Westerfield, a long time supporting actor, Paul Carr, Sam Groom (who was a guest on Gunsmoke a couple of times), Paul Fix, and Wesley Lau (a guest on The Virginian, Big Valley, Gunsmoke, Have Gun-Will Travel, Wagon Train, etc., and who also had been an L.A.P.D. Detective on Perry Mason).
Aside from the horrible special effects of the flaming orange ball, and the lack of any science research, the episode is entertaining thanks to the good actors!
