Late Night Blogging: The Time Tunnel

The Time Tunnel: "Secret Weapon" (November 28, 1966)

Lost in time, Tony Newman (James Darren) and Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert), land behind the Iron Curtain on June 16, 1956. 

These temporal sojourners soon receive messages from Project Tic Toc technicians of “critical importance.” 

Under orders from the U.S. government, they are to act as American undercover operatives -- Williams and Smith -- working on the Russian equivalent of the Time Tunnel. 

That device is at an early stage of development, when a capsule is still being used to test travel inside the vortex.  

Spearheading the project is Professor Biraki (Nehemiah Persoff), who claims to be a friend of the U.S. but secretly hates our country and all it stands for.

He wants to use the Americans as guinea pigs in a time travel experiment. His superior, General Hruda (Michael Ansara) doesn’t care if they live or die, so long as the experiment is successful.

Soon Tony and Doug realize that the Russian tunnel is a death trap because it has not accommodated a “radiation bath.” 

When they go into the tunnel, the two American scientists risk being trapped between time periods in a kind of “time limbo…’

“Secret Weapon” is a routine, slow-paced episode of The Time Tunnel (1966); one that is entirely humorless, and truth be told, without much value in terms of dramatic interest.

In fact, “Secret Weapon” plays in large part like a bad episode of Mission: Impossible, with series leads Darren and Colbert recruited to work on the Warsaw Pact equivalent of Project Tic Toc and ferret out the true motives of its lead scientist, played by Persoff.  

But unlike M:I, there’s no real cleverness to the plot, and no pay-off at seeing a villain tricked and out-maneuvered. There's no real excitement at all.

The first portion of the episode is interminable and not really related to that plot. It involves Tony and Doug trying to receive a message from home base, one sent on a big Lucite brick called an “F-5” probe. 

This device allows Project Tic Toc to deliver messages to them, but malfunctions and explodes.  Three such devices are sent, while Tony and Doug try to interact with it.

This prologue slows the story down considerably, and is an odd plot device. How come Project Tic Toc can sometimes communicate directly with the missing scientists, and at other times must resort to sending these probes?  Why are the first ten minutes of the episode given over to repeated attempts to interface with the probe?

After this narrative blind alley, Tony and Doug motivate nearly nothing in terms of the action. They are forced to participate in a deadly experiment and determine if Biraki is playing a “double game” to sabotage the U.S. and forward his own country’s research. They agree to the experiment, and are nearly killed before being zapped to the next time period (1861 and the assassination of President Lincoln.)  What do they learn?  How do they impact the mission?

There's no real drama here, because these questions are not addressed.  

Nobody in this episode -- outside of Persoff and the bald, menacing Ansara -- displays any sort of character or humanity at all.  

In Project Tic Toc and on the mission, everyone is colorless and bland, totally lacking anything of color to say or do.  Say what you want about the characters of Lost in Space (1965 – 1968), another Irwin Allen series, but at least they have distinctive traits that separate them from one another. Tony and Doug are totally interchangeable.  

The Time Tunnel is all high-tech wizardry (for the 1960s), no humanity. 

Basically, the hour consists of two teams on the same set (slightly re-dressed) pushing dials and reading monitors of the tunnel. The dialogue is unintelligible jargon about “radiation baths,” experiment “A13,” "F-5 probes" and so forth.

The most intriguing aspect of “Secret Weapon” is the fact that other nations have near-identical Time Tunnel technology, which means that Tony and Doug could one day find themselves battling a kind of temporal cold war against foreign agents. 

In the wrong hands, we are told, the time tunnel is a “threatening weapon.”  Certainly this is true, and it would be interesting for the episode to note how America intends to defend against its eventual use, or better deploy identical technology.  But even the Cold War parable here seems to be on mindless automatic pilot, with no real ethical, moral stance beyond the fact that the U.S is good and the Russians are evil.

The Time Tunnel Spin to Win Game

The Time Tunnel Novelization

Pop Art: The Time Tunnel (Gold Key Edition)

The Time Tunnel GAF Viewmaster

Board Game of the Week: The Time Tunnel (Ideal)

Theme Song of the Week: The Time Tunnel (1966 - 1967)

Advert Artwork: The Time Tunnel Edition

The Time Tunnel: "Rendezvous with Yesterday"

"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..."

-opening narration to Irwin Allen's temporal opus, The Time Tunnel (1966-1967)

Love him or hate him, it's fair to state that producer Irwin Allen boasted a unique and distinctive take on science fiction television throughout the 1960s. His genre programs are undeniably kiddie-oriented, but they also reflect (in an almost reflexive, unthinking way...) a major philosophical conflict of the epoch.

In particular, Allen's adventurous cathode ray tube fantasies straddled the line between almost hysterical "techno-phobia" -- the fear that new inventions (like nuclear weapons or computers) would annihilate us outright, or at least put us out of work -- and, oppositely, the age's burgeoning Camelot/Kennedy-style "can do" optimism. This was, after all, the dawning of the Apollo Age; a period in which America's space program would achieve what was once believed impossible: a trip to the moon.
If you gaze across the wide array of Allen's TV programming from this age, you can detect how this unusual conflict plays out in various forms and colors. In Lost in Space (1965-1968), the future man of 1997 was able to reach the stars in advanced spaceships (such as the Jupiter 2) and build robots with human personality and individuality, but the first space flight also became hopelessly and irrevocably lost in the stars.

In Land of the Giants (1968 - 1970), the same conflict between techno-phobia and techno confidence was also present. In that series, man has developed (by the far-flung year of 1983...) high-tech "sub-orbital" spaceships like The Spindrift...but it still plows through a storm and ends up marooned on a planet of giants.

And in The Time Tunnel (1966-1967) -- which has aptly been described as "Lost in Time" -- mankind has developed the technology to conduct time travel at a top-secret facility (a huge subterranean complex in the Arizona desert...). 

But the behemoth, when activated, almost immediately misplaces two scientists (Dr. Doug Phillips and Dr. Tony Newman) in the corridors of time. 

Permanently.

On one hand: technological achievement and advancement. 

On the other, technological terror plus error. 

What these Irwin Allen speculative programs seem to tell us, I suppose, is that humans boast the intellect and skill to create amazing devices; but not the wisdom, perhaps, to adequately control them.

Of all Allen's storied sci-fi series, The Time Tunnel was perhaps the least successful on its original sortie. It aired for just a single season of 30 hour-long episodes on ABC. Broadcast from September 9, 1966 to April 7, 1967, the series involved the aforementioned scientists -- Newman (James Darren) and Phillips (Robert Colbert) -- tumbling (literally...) through various historical (and future!) time periods, a circumstance which enabled the series to frequently re-use footage and costumes from such films as Titanic (1953), The Buccaneer (1958) and Khartoum (1966).

Despite this crafty, cost-saving measure, the Time Tunnel pilot was still one of the most expensive ever produced at the time, costing a then-whopping $500,000 dollars. You can readily observe where all the considerable expense went in the pilot episode: there are some amazing matte-paintings of the Time Tunnel complex. The whole facility looks like it was outsourced to Krell construction workers. 

Also, the Time Tunnel control room set is vast and impressive: a testament to 1960s-style futurism. There are banks of giant computers with lots of blinking lights, reel-to-reel tapes, and that massive, whirly-gig tunnel itself taking center stage. The visual effects are opulent too, particularly views of the lead actors somersaulting through a moving, glittering temporal vortex.

The Time Tunnel's first episode, "Rendezvous with Yesterday" (written by Harold Jack Bloom and directed by Irwin Allen), features guest star Gary Merrill as Senator Clark, a budget-obsessed politician who visits Project Tic-Toc (location of the Time Tunnel device...) in the Arizona desert. The colossal underground complex, which houses over 12,000 technicians and stretches over 800 floors, has already cost the U.S. government a whopping 7.5 billion dollars. This is simply unacceptable!

"Is time travel worth it?" Senator Clark asks pointedly.

The response from Dr. Phillips is that time travel is "potentially the most valuable treasure man will ever find."

Still, the impatient senator isn't convinced that time travel is a worthwhile endeavor, and he demands a demonstration of the not-yet-operational time tunnel. Scientist Tony Newman impulsively complies and -- without permission or preparation -- jumps through the machine.

The result? Lots of smoke and explosions. And then Tony lands on the HMS Titanic on April 13, 1912, just hours before the "unsinkable" liner is destined to strike an iceberg and go to a watery grave.

Unfortunately, the techs at Project Tic-Toc, including the lovely Dr. Ann McGregor (a woefully underutilized Lee Meriwether), can't return Tony to the present. Not even with their high-tech "location probes" or other tools. They are able, however, to visualize Tony's chronological location with a "tele screen." And, as a last resort, the technicians can also yank Tony out of one time period and into to another random one...and hope they get lucky.

It's sort of...a temporal crap shoot.

Back aboard the Titanic, Newman realizes immediately attempts to change the time line by warning the ship's captain, a regal Michael Rennie, of the impending disaster. The captain doesn't believe Newman's stories and voices a variation of a line oft-repeated on this series; something along the lines of: "you don't expect me to believe that wild story, do you?"

One might also note, at this juncture, that Tony seems to have no preparation or schooling whatsoever for the event of actual "time displacement." He's one of the key designers/inventors of the time tunnel juggernaut and yet he has no plan, no philosophy, no agenda whatsoever about dealing with the temporally-challenged natives of other time periods. Apparently on instinct, he simply warns people about the future and is immediately incarcerated or beaten-up for his trouble (another tiresome convention that is repeated throughout the series).

Now, my point here is simply this: whether or not time can actually be altered, why does Tony want to change the flow of time at all? 

Was the time tunnel constructed so that the American government can interfere in the past? 

I mean, if the captain of the Titanic had actually listened to Tony's warning and averted the nautical disaster, some several hundred additional souls would have survived the maiden voyage and thereby altered Tony's entire time-line (since he is born in 1938, after the Titanic accident).

Let me make this even more basic: what if one of those "new" Titanic survivors caused a car accident that killed Tony's Mom before she gave birth to him? See my point?

Besides wanting personally to survive the Titanic disaster (and I don't blame him for that...), what could possibly motivate Tony to reveal the details of the future to the denizens of 1912? 

When Doug returns to the past next, he mindlessly adopts the same plan. He even brings a newspaper from the day after the disaster to convince the Captain of Tony's veracity. I mean...jeez, what's the end game here? Saving the Titanic? Changing the course of 20th century history? Altering the time line? What?

Closely examined, the motives of the characters in this story make no sense. By my reckoning, Tony and Doug should be focused on one thing: keeping a low profile and escaping the disaster. They don't need to be sounding alarm bells, and they sure as hell don't need to commandeer the Titanic's radio room! One might expect more dispassion and weighing of variables here. Especially from two genius scientists, right?

It occurs to me while watching The Time Tunnel that the series would have been much more interesting if in stories like "Rendezvous with Yesterday," the heroes had to preserve the flow of time as they had already experienced it. Wouldn't it have been more interesting if Tony and Doug landed on the deck of the Titanic and realized it wasn't going to sink at all? That they had to aim it at an iceberg themselves, to ensure that their histories remained sacrosanct? I realize there would be moral questions there, but they'd still be "heroes" in the conventional TV sense, since they'd be preserving our chronology.

Oh wait, this was the premise for Voyagers! (1980)...

Anyway, I'm not trying to be dismissive of The Time Tunnel. It is what it is: a product of the time period from which it arose (the 1960s), and for a very specific audience (children). It's harmless escapist fantasy, nothing more...and if you saw it as a child, I'm sure you would get a nostalgic rush watching it. 

That established, it's not a very smart series by today's standard (and remember, Star Trek was a smart series, and it also aired in 1966). Oh, there's definitely an occasional moment of real drama here, such as the instance in "Rendezvous with Yesterday" when Doug and Tony must inform the captain of the Titanic that he is destined to die that very night. However, for the most part, time travel mysteries and human emotions are curtailed, slighted, or outright ignored in favor of James Bond-ian fisticuffs and action. It's all cowboys, Indians, soldiers, spies, aliens, and disasters. Color! Action! But not much real characterization or drama.

During the over-two-dozen episodes of The Time Tunnel, Tony and Doug visited the "Crack of Doom" (don't laugh...), the volcanic eruption at Krakatoa on August 27, 1883. They went to Pearl Harbor on December 6, 1941 (but didn't encounter the U.S.S. Nimitz there....) They experienced the French Revolution first hand ("Reign of Terror), averted the (first) assassination attempt on Abraham Lincoln ("The Death Trap") in 1861, witnessed D-Day ("Invasion") at Normandy, met General Custer ("Massacre"), Billy the Kid ("Billy the Kid") and...Robin Hood ("The Revenge of Robin Hood.")

Yes, before watching The Time Tunnel, I too always thought Robin Hood was a mythical hero, not a historical one, but who's counting? Doctor Who played with this very idea recently, too.  Another episode "One Way to the Moon," landed our wayward heroes on a rocket ship in flight, one bound for Mars...with a saboteur aboard.

As the series wore on, The Time Tunnel increasingly lapsed into empty-headed, monotonous phantasmagoria. The final episode, "Town of Terror" was set in the future year of 1978 and involved strange aliens with tin-foil faces and black capes who, for some unfathomable reason, are referred to as "androids"(!). 

These fishy-looking invaders have taken over the idyllic town of Cliffport, Maine (population 700), where they begin sucking all the oxygen from the Earth. Tony and Doug land in the town and put a stop to the plan, but not before an alien saboteur gets to Project Tic-Toc and starts sucking the air out of the room there too. It takes an inordinate amount of time for the brilliant project scientist, Dr. Swain -- gasping for air -- to realize the oxygen is being depleted.

The last moments of the series are actually the most interesting, at least from a certain perspective. Following the landing in Cliffport, Doug and Phillip are shunted back in time again...to the Titanic. 

Now, on one hand, this return to the beginning was no doubt a lead-in to summer reruns of the first season. However, considering that there was no second season of The Time Tunnel, viewers might interpret this twist of fate to mean that our heroes were not merely stuck in time, but trapped in a loop too. 

Alas, we may never know...

Again, I don't want to rain on anyone's parade here -- and all sci-fi TV has its fans and adherents -- but The Time Tunnel is sometimes difficult to take seriously. The lead characters - Doug and Tony - are about as cardboard as could be, not to mention the most physically fit and physically skilled "scientists" of all-time. Some of the technobabble on the series is inconsistent too. Sometimes the scientists in the tunnel control room can talk directly with the time travelers on a microphone, and sometimes the men can't hear them.

And you have to wonder, too, why are the time tunnel techies always rolling the dice and scrambling these unlucky guys from one time period to another? 

I'll tell you what...if I came from 1968 and ended up in 1978 (as Tony and Doug did in both "One Way to The Moon" and "Town of Terror"), you know what? I'd just call it a day. 

I'd rather live ten years in the future,than risk ending up in 1184 BC ("Revenge of the Gods"), or 1215 AD ("The Revenge of Robin Hood.")

Close enough for government work, and all.

Outré Intro: The Time Tunnel (1966)

In terms of prime-time survival, The Time Tunnel (1966) fared the worst of all Irwin Allen's fantasy sci-fi series of the sixties. It lasted for just one season, and then was canceled.  Despite this failure to thrive, the series is still remembered and appreciated by its fans.

The opening montage of The Time Tunnel -- typical of its mid-1960s historical context -- satisfies on a pure "pop art" level.  

The images are colorful and memorable, and they sell the idea of the series in an easily digestible and attractive way. 

Basically, the series concerns time itself, and two men lost forever in time's endless corridors. 

Accordingly, the montage commences with the time vortex opening and speeding toward us (not unlike the way hyperspace looks in Star Wars [1977] when first broached by the Millennium Falcon.). We become, through our viewership, riders through the tunnel of time.

Next the vortex seems to explode, or at least feature a definable center, in orange.  The orange then transforms to blue...and the blue circle is revealed to be the bottom of an hour glass: another manner by which to tell time.

Next, we see visual symbolism exploring the plight of the series' protagonists.  They are lost in time, and so we see a person trapped in the bottom of the hour glass, as the sands of time pour down upon him and buffet him.

This is a representation of a journey through the time tunnel. You are overcome by time, surrounded by its pathways, and there is no escape.

The sands of time literally bury our hero in the next shot,and he is unable to escape this trap.  Then, the series title comes up, backwards at first (as though we are viewing it from the inside of the hour glass).

Finally, we meet our cast members -- and creator (Irwin Allen) -- and the time vortex recedes, moving away from us. Prepare for another journey through the tunnel/vortex!

Below, you can see the colorful Time Tunnel montage in live action.