Forgotten Television: The Time Tunnel

Two American scientists are lost in the swirling maze of past and future ages, during the first experiments on America’s greatest and most secret project, the Time Tunnel. Tony Newman and Doug Phillips now tumble helplessly toward a new fantastic adventure, somewhere along the infinite corridors of time.

In 1968, deep under the Arizona desert, exists a massive 800 floor complex employing more than 12,000 specialized personnel with the single goal of creating a time machine. Project Tic-Toc is a top-secret government experiment building the Time Tunnel, called that due to its appearance as an elliptical passageway.  Heading the project is Dr. Douglas Phillips (Robert Colbert), Dr. Anthony Newman (James Darren), and Lt. General Heywood “Woody” Kirk (Whit Bissell) and assisting them is Dr. Raymond Swain (John Zaremba) and Dr. Ann MacGregor (Lee Meriwether).  After spending 10 years in building and testing, the Time Tunnel still has not been tested by a human being and the American Government is thinking of shutting the very expensive project down. Senator Leroy Clark (Gary Merrill) is sent to Project Tic-Toc to witness its progress and to make a final decision.  He gives the team an ultimatum, attempt human testing within 24 hours or lose their funding.  Dr. Phillips refuses but while they are showing the Senator the rest of the facility, Dr. Newman uses the Time Tunnel on himself throwing him back in time to the sinking of the Titanic.  When Newman is locked up and would most certainly be killed when the ship sinks, Dr. Phillips goes through the Time Tunnel to help him.  The two attempt to persuade the captain of the ship (Michael Rennie) to alter course and when that doesn’t work, they try to send for help earlier but that also fails. When the ship does hit the iceberg, the captain finally believes them, and they attempt to save as many passengers as possible.  Back at Project Tic-Toc, the remaining team can watch and hear what is happening to the two scientists and can pull them from their current timeline and drop them in another, but they have not figured out how to pull them back to their own time.  Eventually Tony’s and Doug’s life is threatened by the ships sinking and Dr. Swain must pull them from the timeline, sending them somewhere and sometime else.

The Time Tunnel was an American science fiction television series created and produced by Irwin Allen which ran on ABC from September 9, 1966, to April 7, 1967.  The only season consisted of 30 episodes and besides the Titanic, Tony and Doug become participants in events such as Pearl Harbor, Krakatoa, Custer’s Last Stand, King Arthur, and the Battle of Alamo.  Most of the episodes take place in the past, a few take place in the future and even encounter aliens. Most of the episodes involved one or both of the scientists being captured, escaping, being recaptured and their eventual removal from that timeline.  The opening music sequence was composed by the great John Williams.  The series used a lot of stock footage and most of the filming was done around Southern California, which made a lot of the exterior shots throughout the series look similar.  The series did win an Emmy Award for Individual Achievements in Cinematography.  The show ran on Friday nights at what was considered the “Friday Night Death Slot” but actually pulled in solid ratings.  ABC even called The Time Tunnel one of the few successes of a disastrous Schedule. But The Time Tunnel was dropped in favor of The Legend of Custer which lobbied to have Allen’s series dropped and the network acquiesced, and Time Tunnel was cancelled.

I did not see The Time Tunnel in its initial run, because I wasn’t born yet, and unlike Lost In Space I do not remember watching it in reruns.  As much as I like Dr. Who, I am not a fan of time travel shows and the circular logic involved with changing history makes me dizzy. In addition, the show, like most shows from this time, was formulaic.  Basically, the same plot every week with just the locale and characters changing.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and I do enjoy the simplicity of the shows from this era. All that being said, this was an enjoyable show, the actors were well chosen, handsome and engaging allowing for a good connection to the audience.  I think the show did well in its Friday night slot as it appealed to multiple demographics, history buffs, science fiction fans, and romantics would all be satisfied by the shows engaging premise.

Like many other Irwin Allen series, the show lived on in other media, long after cancellation.  Novelizations, comic books, DVD and Blu-Ray, record albums, games, coloring books and a view-master set.  In addition, two remakes were attempted.  In 1976, a television movie with the same title was produced by Irwin Allen and 20^th Century Fox Television as an attempt at a pilot for a new series based on a story by Rod Serling, which dealt with a viral outbreak in New Orleans with the only known cure having been lost in the Chicago Fire of 1871. Due to litigation, the series could not be picked up by the studio. You can watch the movie under the title Time Travelers. The second was an unsold pilot made in 2002 for the Fox network.  This was developed in conjunction with the Irwin Allen Properties and lists Sheila Allen as one of the producers.  This pilot was darker and more serious and delt with an energy project that had the unintended consequences of creating a time storm which altered historical events.  A team must travel through the tunnel like structure that anchors one end of the time storm and fix the errors that it has caused in the timeline which has affected the present. Because the other end of the time storm is moving, they have a limited time to fix what is wrong and return or be trapped in whatever era they are currently in. The series was not picked up in favor of Joss Whedon’s Firefly.