Mollie Lane

The Time Tunnel

Season 1

by Gail McIntyre

 

 Perhaps it was a high school or college history class. Maybe it was a movie on a significant historical event. In any case, most all of us at one time or another have mused on the idea of going back in time to talk to notable historical figures and cry out, “Why are you doing this?  Don’t you know what is about to happen?” The Time Tunnel, which first aired on WABC-TV in the fall of 1966 on Friday nights at 8pm, gives us a chance to live vicariously thru the adventures of Dr.’s Tony Newman and Doug Phillips, played by James Darren and Robert Colbert.

The Time Tunnel is part of a collection brought to us by Irwin Allen who was also known as the Master of Disaster. Allen’s television work includes Lost in Space and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.  Allen also produced The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno which appeared in the movies in the early 1970’s. The Time Tunnel is a 10 year top secret project which is in danger of losing its funding because the U.S. Government is not convinced time travel is possible and the project has become too expensive to support. Dr. Tony Newman, in an effort to prove the government wrong, activates the tunnel and sends him back through time to one of the most tragic events in world history, the sinking of the Titanic. This was the pilot episode which features Michael Rennie, who also appears in an episode of Lost in Space. Needless to say, no one on the ship believes Newman when he insists the unsinkable ship will go down in less than 24 hours. Season 1 takes the stars back to the volcanic explosion of Krakatoa, The War of 1812 (which features Carroll O’Connor five years before he would be known forever as Archie Bunker), the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Trojan War.

One of the more interesting aspects of the series is the fact that its appearance is very suggestive of the culture of the 1960’s. Talk about going back in time. Tony and Doug are constantly traveling from one time to another aided by their cohorts played by Whit Bissell and Lee Meriwether. Bissell is no stranger to sci-fi work as he appears with Phyllis Coates in “I was a Teenage Frankenstein” in 1957. Lee Meriwether was Miss America in 1955 and played the Cat woman opposite Adam West in the Batman series. Every time they are transported you see them swirling in a psychedelic maze so reminiscent of time when LSD was in its heyday. The computer room looks very much the way computer rooms looked in the day where a Sperry Univac computer would take up an entire room. There is always a monitor displaying a wavy sine curve similar to the waves that we see on the opening of “The Outer Limits.” The show is as crisp and exciting as ever and keeps you on the edge of your seat.  Tony and Doug, despite being two scientists, give you the impression they could easily out fight Mohammed Ali at Madison Square Garden.

 

  

Fans of The Adventures of Superman might recognize two TAOS alumni in this season. Peter Brocco, who you might recall as Dr. H.L. Ort in The Secret of Superman in 1951 and Crackers in the Clown Who Cried in Season 2, appears in the episode called “Night of the Long Knives,”  where Tony and Doug meet up with Rudyard Kipling and get caught in a battle between British troops and Afghanistan tribes. John Doucette, who plays Slugger in The Birthday Letter in 1951, is almost unrecognizable in the role of Ulysses in Revenge of the Gods, which takes us back to the war between Greece and Troy.

  

The purpose of studying history hopefully is to teach us something, and to learn from those who have come before us so that hopefully we can become better people. This series is a chance to live thru some of the major events in world history and learn without feeling like we are back in a dull history lecture. That’s how I saw it when in 1966 when I was in the 6^th grade. Some things, despite the passage of time, never change.

May 2008