Title:The Time Tunnel
Starring:
James Darren as Dr. Tony Newman
Robert Colbert as Dr. Doug Phillips
Whit Bissell as Lt. Gen. Heywood Kirk
John Zaremba as Dr. Raymond Swain
Lee Meriwether as Dr. Ann MacGregor
Creator:
Irwin Allen
Episodes:
30 x 52 minutes each (approx)
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.
Welcome to a wonderful piece of 1960s cult TV. The Time Tunnel is a fun and exciting 50 minute show that examined the theories and practicalities of time travel.
This one fantastic boxset contains all of the 30 episodes of The Time Tunnel ever made, now for the first time ever available on DVD. It’s a series well deserving of the release. In fact I think it would have been even better on Blu-ray. And with the recent release of other 60s classics such as Star Trek and The Twilight Zone on remastered Blu-ray I’m surprised that The Time Tunnel didn’t receive such treatment as it’s well worthy of being released in HD.
I remember watching The Time Tunnel as a fairly young child, probably from the age of around 10 years old, with my Dad. It would have been when they were re-run on UK TV in the mid 1980s. I’ve certainly not seen this show on TV since. I don’t think that it has really had much airtime in the UK since the mid 1980s which is a shame as it’s a show still worthy of an audience. But just like the original Star Trek or The Twilight Zone it seems that classic TV doesn’t get a place on TV these days. Fortunate then that they have been released on DVD for us all to enjoy. I know I still enjoy this show, classics are always classics… they can even become better with time and familiarity.
At Project Tic-Toc headquarter, a multi-billion dollar government installation buried deep beneath the desert, crack scientists Tony Newman and Doug Phillips are the first men to ever attempt to travel through time. But just like Dr Samuel Beckett many years later… they can not get back home.
Having invented the Time Tunnel – a time machine that allows Tony and Doug to visit anywhere in time and space they are forced into testing it themselves when their impatient government benefactors threaten to shut down the project.
Doug gets stuck back in time as a passenger on the Titanic and Tony goes back also to try to save him. It’s the first of many important historical events that Tony and Doug will get a chance to be part of, but can they help to save the passengers of the Titanic and what effects if any will such meddling in time have?
All the while, back at Tic-Toc HQ, Dr. Ann MacGregor, Lt General Heywood Kirk and Dr. Ray Swain do their best to guide the stranded scientists, all the time trying to fix the Time Tunnel and bring the boys back home.
Best Episodes
As the two scientists are flung around in time and space ending up in many different times and places from 13th Century China to the French penal colony of the Devil's Island in 1895 there are many historically interesting episodes to chose from and there are too many episodes to talk about them all in depth but I do want to bring your attention to some of the very best. I’d like to pick my personal top three favourites, plus the pilot episode that has a special place all of its own.
Episode #1: Rendezvous with Yesterday
Tony steps into the Time Tunnel and ends up in 1912 on the Titanic. I enjoyed this episode as I’d never seen it before and I as a child I had always wanted to see the pilot episode to see how it all began and hear more about the reasoning behind Tony and Doug getting trapped in time. This was a real treat of an episode for me.
In episode # 7: Revenge of the Gods they land in 1200 BC in the middle of the war between Greeks and Trojans.
In episode # 13: The Alamo they end up in 1836, under attack by angry Mexicans at the Alamo.
In the final episode, episode # 30: Town of Terror they are flung forward in time to 1978 where they have to stop aliens from stealing all the oxygen from the planet Earth.
The scripting, direction and acting are all strong. Much stronger than other shows of the late 1960s could have boasted and it really does stand the test of time.
I must admit I have an affection for The Time Tunnel. As a kid, just before the days of Quantum Leap this was a show that captured my imagination and my love of science fiction. I still think that this show is a gem, a cult classic from the 1960s that still deserves to be watched and loved even now 40 years later.
It’s well worth the asking price and your investment into the show. You get well over 25 hours of show for your money so it’s great value.
The Time Tunnel is an action packed show from the mind of Irwin Allen – the TV scripting guru who brought us the likes of cult classics Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space.
Unfortunately much like Dr Samuel Beckett, Doug and Tony never did return home. The show was cancelled at the end of the first series and never got the chance to wrap things up. A classic show such as this should have been given the opportunity to have a conclusive ending but it was the way back in the 60s just to simply stop producing a show if it wasn’t doing as well as the producers wanted, apparently The Time Tunnel didn’t quite cut it and Irwin Allen moved onto Land of the Giants.
