Les voyageurs du temps

This review comes to you from the future. Having watched this movie in 2019, I hasten to let you know it's a charming movie and enjoyable to watch.

This message is mainly produced for those fans who watched this movie some 8 years ago and earlier. You might come across some other messages from my era as we are able to time travel without moving at all.

Signing off and going back to my time. Goodbye and good luck!

Irwin Allen's "The Time Travelers" is a surprisingly good TV film. As previously mentioned in other reviews, Allen's record with sci-fi might lead the casual science fiction enthusiast to bypass this film. That, however, would be a mistake.

Without going into too many details, the film's slow moving story about present day doctors (in 1976) seeking a cure for a deadly flu virus outbreak just prior to the 1871 Great Chicago Fire (believe me, that is not an insult) builds methodically to its satisfying, if not a bit predictable, conclusion.

Based on a Rod Serling tale, this is the stuff of old style SF that is sorely missed in a lot of today's productions.

The cast is top-notch. The four lead actors, actors Sam Groom (an alum from Allen's "The Time Tunnel," Trish Stewart *, Tom Hallick and especially Richard Basehart provide a warm, thought provoking charm to this small scale but involving tale. One of the nice touches are the bit roles filled by relatively unknown, but experienced actors one might recognize from many of the TV/film productions of the 1970s.

*Stewart played Jane Henderson-- in another review here mistakenly identified Francine York filling that role.

This reviewer highly recommends this small, somewhat obscure film. Fortunately, it can be found on the boxed DVD set to Allen's "Time Tunnel." Incidentally, on that same DVD is the 2002 filmed pilot, an attempt to revive "The Time Tunnel." It too, is VERY satisfying. It is really too bad this production didn't make it as a new TV series.

This is the second attempt by Irwin Allen to do a series about time travel. The only thing that would have been different about this proposed series is that the travelers wouldn't have been lost in time as they were in the "Time Tunnel". All in all this was a pretty decent show, too bad it never did make it to series. I would have loved to have seen what interesting stories they would have come up with.

As a youngster, I was a fan of Irwin Allen's works. "Lost in Space" and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" were afterschool fixtures on New York stations WNEW and WOR. To me as an adult, these shows don't hold up well. "Voyage" in particular degenerated into episode after episode of rubber-suited monsters, alien invaders, evil doubles and mind control in the later seasons, due mostly to chief writer William Welch, who also destroyed any semblance of logic in Allen's "The Time Tunnel" series.

Allen tried to revamp and revive that 1966 time travel series with this 1976 TV movie and pilot, going so far as bringing back Sam Groom as a cast member (he was a regular as the control room technician, Jerry). "Voyage" alumnus Richard Basehart likewise became a Special Guest Star. Trish Stewart later became better known to science fiction viewers as the female lead of "Salvage 1."

As it was, 1976 was a good year for television in general, and ABC reserved Friday nights for science fiction. In the doldrums before Star Wars burst onto the scene and changed the world, science fiction fans weren't very picky, but "Time Travelers" was surprisingly good. The acting wasn't Oscar caliber, but it was certainly serviceable. The plot actually made sense, unlike much of Allen's sci-fi. Also, unlike the Time Tunnel series and more recent shows, it didn't depend on a lot of action. No fistfights or car chases (or rather horse-drawn carriage chases) here. These men were thinkers, not fighters. Nevertheless, the story moves along at a snappy but not frenetic pace.

This was Allen at his best, a fine example of '70s vintage TV science fiction. There's little to no forced humor and precious little technobabble. Morton Stevens's theme is rather dated now, being very "mod" with synthesizers, but still somewhat catchy to those of us who don't care for today's bass-rich, melody-poor music.

Allen had a penchant for economizing, so there really wasn't much in the way of special effects here to distract from the story. Mostly fire footage recycled from the Fox film vaults. There were also the "modern" computers that reused panels of flashing lights, straight from the Irwin Allen warehouse. At least the set design in the period segment, with its ornate Victorian look, seems convincing enough to this layman's eyes.

As far as TV science fiction goes, you can do a lot worse. This is probably due in no small part to Rod Serling's original story. Alas, given Allen's track record, it's a foregone conclusion that this would have slipped very fast and far had the show been sold to a network. As it was, this was far superior to its ancestor, "The Time Tunnel," and also easily outshines Gene Roddenberry's failed TV pilots of the era, "Planet Earth," "Genesis II" and "Questor Tapes."

This movie was shown on the SciFi Channel occasionally, at least until recent years when the channel moved away from showing older movies. It's worth catching for anyone who's sick and tired of recent Star Trek and their "reset button" subgenre of time travel stories.

Update: This, along with the 2002 Time Tunnel pilot, is available on the last disc of the Time Tunnel series DVD box set. Finally, a chance for more people to see just how good this was.

Our beloved filmmaker Irwin Allen was obsessed by time travel as much that had draft the classic series THE TIME TUNNELL a conceptive format where the travelers never returning to starting point, always randomly jumping thru the past and future eras, in this new picture Irwin stablished a new approaching, the travelers always return after a specific task, it sounds a bit conflicting due the series had a huge complex facilities underground of desert, otherwise the small back room installation using the same high advance computers from Time Tunnel is able to a safe returning.

A Rod Serling adapted story takes place at New Orleans in 1976 when a new unknown virus spreading fast cross-country, two doctors assigned to find an immediate cure forthwith, turns out that at Chicago in 1871 a local doctor had found a medicine that proved effective to tackle the deadly virus, strangely there's no records available, thus they are send back at this period of time aiming for got the successful formula.

Although as expect the defiant Irwin Allen would not let it so easy to the adventures, they reach there on day prior the great Chicago fire and the doctor is on duty struggling against the outbreak ongoing, an old acquaintance of us in the casting with Francine York, Richard Basehart and betting in new faces as Sam Groom and Tom Hallick, let it see easy in Irwin Allen's low-profile production.

Thanks for reading.

Resume:

First watch: 1989 / How many: 2 / Source: TV-Youtube / Rating: 6.5.