The Time Tunnel

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The Time Tunnel
Genre	Science fiction
Running time	52 minutes per episode
Creator(s)	Irwin Allen
Starring	James Darren Robert Colbert Whit Bissell John Zaremba Lee Meriwether
Country of origin	Image:Flag of the United States.svg United States
Original channel	ABC
Original run	September 9, 1966–April 7, 1967
No. of episodes	30
IMDb profile

The Time Tunnel was a 1966-1967 U.S. color science fiction TV series produced by Irwin Allen that lasted for one season of 30 episodes. It was produced by 20th Century Fox for the US ABC television network.

"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."

1 The series
2 Novel versions
3 After the original run
4 Remakes
5 Episodes
6 Movies excerpted
7 External links

[edit] The series

(l to r) Lt. General Heywood Kirk (Whit Bissell), Dr. Tony Newman (James Darren), Dr. Ann MacGregor (Lee Meriwether), Dr. Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert), Dr. Raymond Swain (John Zaremba)

The premise of the program is based on the existence of Project Tic-Toc, a top secret U.S. government effort to build an experimental time machine known as "the Time Tunnel". With the costs of the project approaching those of the entire U.S. space program, a young physicist, Dr. Tony Newman (James Darren) turns the machine on and sends himself back in time in an attempt to prove that the Time Tunnel project funds were not wasted. In so doing, Newman becomes "lost in time". In an attempt to rescue his younger friend, Tic-Toc scientist Dr. Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert) enters the Time Tunnel as well. But the time machine was not built to handle two people travelling in time; it malfunctions, making Newman and Phillips' return impossible until repairs are effected. As the series progresses, the two time travellers are swung from one period in history to another, allowing episodes to be set in the past and future -- but always ending in a cliffhanger as a preview of the next episode. The final episode ends with no resolution.

Image:Tt3.jpg

By luck (or lack thereof) the travellers, Tony and Doug, frequently found themselves thrown onto the precipice of major historical events: on board the Titanic before it hits the iceberg, in Pearl Harbor before the Japanese attack, on Krakatoa before it erupts, and so forth. They would try to warn people about the event, or try to prevent it from happening, while the Time Tunnel crew (led by two scientists and a military general), who once gaining a "fix" can view through the Tunnel the action taking place in the different timeframe, would try to rescue the travellers before the historical calamity befell them too.

The series never really established a consistent time travel model, but for the most part it seemed that while these major historical events could not be altered or prevented (although Tony and Doug rarely stopped trying), the lives of individual people caught up in those events could indeed be changed by the actions of the travellers or the Time Tunnel crew.

The base for Project Tic-Toc was huge and located underground in the Arizona desert, with no visible entry, similar to the Krell machine in the movie Forbidden Planet -- some shots in the first episode introducing the facility parallel those in the movie. It easily provided Doug's period clothes and a copy of the newspaper showing the sinking of the Titanic for the first episode. Further, the date at which it was operating was stated as 1968 -- which would have been in the near future (two years) as far as the initial audience was concerned.

The production basis of the show was the large number of period dramas made by the 20th Century Fox film company. Even black-and-white shots of the Titanic sinking were tinted to fit them into this color production. Only a few actors were costumed for a given episode, interspersed with cuts of great masses of people similarly dressed from the original features. The plots were not noted for historical accuracy, but then neither were the original films.

Certain episodes featured aliens who wore costumes and carried props originally created for other Irwin Allen television and movie productions. Prop sets were similarly re-used. These were fewer than it appears, since these episodes were later re-run often on secondary market. Only in episodes 18, 24, 28, 29, and 30 did aliens appear; only the second and third of these were set in the far future.

The Titanic–based premiere episode, "Rendezvous with Yesterday" (based on the series pilot), was well written, and featured good production values, albeit with a major error in that the Captain Smith of the Titanic was called "Malcolm" rather than "Edward" or "EJ". The names of the secondary officers are also ficticious and do not reflect the actual officers of the Titanic. Given that Walter Lord's excellent book A Night to Remember was freely available one can only wonder how this occurred. [1]

The quality of subsequent episodes varied considerably. However, some particularly memorable aspects were:

the colorful, dynamic opening credits sequence;
Tony and Doug always reverting back to the same clothes when they transfer, a mod turtleneck green sweater and a conservative Norfolk jacket and tie respectively which were magically cleaned during their passage to the next time frame;
wild historical mishmashes, such as Niccolò Machiavelli getting involved in the Battle of Gettysburg;
classic 1960s "action" sequences, such as hand-to-hand fighting in which the protagonists fall onto their backs and kick-flip their adversaries over them;
the morbid overall premise that no matter where you travel in time, you'll almost immediately be beset upon by hostile characters wanting to do you in.

The Time Tunnel was not really a commercial failure, as it received higher viewer ratings than many other shows of the network. It was picked up for the next year, and four episodes for season 2 were falsely rumored to have been filmed before an abrupt cancellation - after the cast "renewal party" had already been held.

The series won an Emmy Award in 1967, for its Individual Achievements in Cinematography. The award went to L.B. "Bill" Abbott, for his Photographic Special Effects.

[edit] Novel versions

Prolific science fiction author Murray Leinster had published a 1964 Pyramid Books novel titled Time Tunnel with cover art somewhat similar to the television series' Tunnel. [2] This may have formed part of Irwin Allen's inspiration for the series, although the actual plots were quite different — the 1964 novel was set in France, the tunnel was built by a professor, and it only established a fixed connection between 1964 and Napoleonic era 1804. [3] In 1966 Leinster published a juvenile novel, Tunnel Through Time, which may have been a sequel to Time Tunnel.

In any case, in 1967 Leinster wrote a loosely based novelization of the television series, entitled The Time Tunnel and also published by Pyramid. This was followed later in the year by Leinster's TIMESLIP! Time Tunnel Adventure #2.

[edit] After the original run

In 1967, a feature length film, Aliens from Another Planet, was produced using a compilation of three of the TV episodes. [4]

Despite the series having only been on the air for one year, the number of websites and fan reminiscences concerning it attest to the series having made an impression on its audience.

The series was re-shown on American television in the early-mid 1990s, and it was re-shown on British television after the success of the 1997 Titanic movie due to the Titanic-related content of the first episode. It was also parodied by Alexei Sayle as Drunk in Time on British television. In the U.S., it can now be seen on the Encore Action cable network at various times.

The first 15 episodes were released on DVD in North America on January 24, 2006. The second volume, containing the final fifteen episodes, was released June 6th, 2006. It also includes the unaired 2002 pilot and the made-for-TV film The Time Travelers as special features.

[edit] Remakes

In 2002 Fox showed interest in remaking this series. A pilot was produced by Twentieth Century Fox Television, Fox Television Studios and Regency Television in association with Irwin Allen Properties. Executive Producers were Kevin Burns and Jon Jashni. Sheila Allen was credited as one of the producers. It was not picked up in order for Fox to make room in its schedule for Joss Whedon's Firefly.

The pilot had a much much darker, serious tone. The Time Tunnel is a Department of Energy research project. Doug Phillips is the main character, and Tony Newman is now Toni Newman, a female character.

In the new series, tunnel operations has control of the travellers; they are not "lost in time". Still, there is a problem: their initial tinkering caused an accident which changed history. This fact is known only to the people in the tunnel complex when it happened, some of whom emerged that day to find they had no family in the new reality. Episodes in the series were to be about attempts to put things back the way they were supposed to be.

In the pilot episode, a government team goes back in time to World War II in order to retrieve a (very confused) medieval monk displaced by the initial tunnel accident. Doug Phillips meets his grandfather, a soldier who is about to be killed. Doug knows this, but cannot tell him and save his life because it would change history.

The unaired pilot episode is available on DVD from Fox Home Entertainment on The Time Tunnel Season One, Volume Two.

The SciFi Channel (US cable network) announced April 13 2005, that it was going to create a new pilot for its 2006/07 season. Two of the producers of the FOX project, Kevin Burns and Jon Jashni, are executive producing Sci Fi's pilot along with Allen's wife, Sheila. John Turman (Hulk) is writing the script.