So it is with The Time Tunnel: Season One. The show ran for roughly a season and a half starting in 1968. To recap the show for any of you that weren’t on hand to see the original, or to tune in on various reruns, the United States has set up a huge time travel research facility in the middle of the Mojave desert, sinking billions of dollars into harnessing the ability to send researchers into the past and then to bring them back again. The only hitch is that they haven’t worked out how to retrieve test subjects. After the government threatens to shut down the project if it can’t deliver, one of the scientists, Tony Newman (James Darren), decides to go back in time to prove that the project is on the right track. When he lands on the deck of the RMS Titanic, it becomes necessary to send another physicist, Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert), to rescue him. While they’re successful in getting off the doomed ship, the Time Tunnel engineers succeed only in dropping them into another historical hotspot.
To fans of the series, it represents a valid effort by network television to tell science fiction stories against a broad historical backdrop. The shows were always thought provoking because their dramatic action was derived mainly through the historical events taking place. It was also fun to recognize the long list of character actors who checked in from week to week (including Michael Rennie (The Day The Earth Stood Still) and Carroll O'Connor (All In The Family). To its foes, it is a premise that grows old after a few weeks worth of episodes, mostly because you know without a doubt that Tony and Doug simply aren’t going to be allowed to make it back to the present and that their locations and challenges will become goofier and goofier. The show also drew heavily upon historical footage taken from other feature films and television programs, material that sometimes seems out of place next to the original footage shot for the show.
To set the record straight, I happen to be one of the former crowd – a rabid fan of the show. Purchasing Season One and watching the pilot episode took me back many years to a much younger version of myself as he watched the original airing in the company of his siblings, drinking Coke and eating Cracker Jack lying on the living room floor. The show was cool then, and it’s pretty much cool now, for me anyway. The DVD packaging is professional looking, the menus are easy to navigate, and the resulting programs are very clean and polished. My only complaint is that the sound levels sometimes jump wildly from section to section, sometimes quite reasonable, then jumping up to the point that it hurts my ears. This was especially noticeable in The Day The Sky Fell In (where Tony and Doug arrive in Pearl Harbor … on Dec. 6, 1941, of course). The music rampaging over the bombardment of the US fleet just about made my ears bleed.
The bonus material would have been much more engaging if some of the segments had employed a voiceover to describe what’s going on, especially during the section where you can view home movies Irwin Allen took while on the set. Regardless of whether it was a star of the show, member of the crew, or a TV historian, such a voiceover would help provide background on who the people are in each scene, and possibly anecdotes about what they did on the set or their contributions to the finished program.
The concept art gallery section shows early sketches of the Time Tunnel sets, the surrounding complex, and various logo treatments for the credits sequence, and other segments.
Anyone who grew up enjoying The Time Tunnel or any other of Irwin Allen’s other programs, such as The Land of the Giants or Lost In Space, will be glad to know that various studios have plans to bring them back to the big (or small) screen. For true fans of the show, or those who are merely curious, find out what all the fuss is about by checking out The Time Tunnel, Season One.
