In 1966, innovative producer Irwin Allen created what he later called his favorite tv show production. The set was a massive undertaking, occupying two whole sound stages at the studio, and was the most expensive show made during the 1966/67 television season. It’s the story of two men lost in the corridors of time.
Some 800 stories beneath the Arizona desert, a fantastic, top secret installation containing both military personnel and scientists have been working for ten years on a project involving sending a man back through time and retrieving him.
Taking place in 1968, down in the heart of the complex, we’re introduced to the project director, Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert) and co-director Tony Newman (James Darren), along with General Haywood Kirk (Whit Bissell), Dr. Ann McGregor (Lee Meriwether), and Dr. Raymond Swain (John Zaremba).
The team is showing a U.S. senator around the amazing underground city/installation, and of course, the massive focal point of everything, the giant circular construct that inside, almost appears to reach back into infinity.
The TIME TUNNEL
But… amazing as it all is, after ten years and over 7 billion dollars spent, Washington needs to see results– now– or they’ll cut the project’s funding. They have to test it and send a man back immediately. Tony volunteers to go through, but Doug adamantly says no, as it’s too soon, and the Tunnel hasn’t been perfected yet. He wouldn’t risk a man’s life.
Later that night, the main control room is deserted. Tony, desperate to keep the project alive, sneaks in, sets the controls, and runs into the mouth of the Tunnel. There are miniature explosions and flashes as the Tunnel throws him back in time. I won’t say where, but suffice to say, he’s in danger. (Oh, okay, he lands on the Titanic. See? Danger.)
The rest of the team, alerted to the situation races in and manages to locate Tony in time, as he administered a radiation bath before departure, allowing the team to track his signature. Finding Tony, the team is able to get both audio and visual on him and see his predicament. Because of the imminent danger (pssst, iceberg), Doug must also travel back to the same point in time to help Tony escape.
While the project had now been successful in sending two men through time, the team back at the installation found they couldn’t manage to bring them back, only remove them from their current time and send them to another era. The senator assures them that the funding will continue until both Newman and Phillips are brought back home.
The TIME TUNNEL
It had been decades since I watched the show, but thanks to a weekend marathon on the Decades channel, and then more eps on YouTube, I was reacquainted with this gem. It’s great fun, informative, action packed, and absolutely bonkers. Let’s start with the fact that there’s an installation that’s as big as a city resting underneath the Arizona desert, some 800 stories deep. Everything’s also driven by a humongous nuclear power source. The show features a couple very cool model shots and matte paintings to show us the depth and enormity of this wondrous set up. It is sci-fi heaven. The design of the constructed tunnel itself is beautiful. Science fiction meets pop art, and it really is huge, with the mouth of the tunnel stretching both 25 feet high and wide.
Two arches emerge from the sides of the tunnel to transmit a semi-transparent screen so we have a visual of wherever the guys are in time. Their “cameras” are our cameras. Their microphones are ours. How exactly do they accomplish this, much less send these guys back in time and move them around to different places in different times? Sorry, that’s classified.
But it is pretty damn impressive! I mean, this incredible project, ten years in the making, in *1968*, technically is more advanced than a lot what Star Trek’s Starfleet is able to manage a couple hundred years down the line! When you think about the fact that in one ep, the tunnel sends Doug and Tony a million years in the future, well, Captain Kirk’s got nothing on General Kirk. It is, in effect, time teleportation.
The boys do get around in that *30* episode season, usually landing in some big time trouble that they’ve got to think, talk and/or punch their way out of it. They land on an island– it’s Krakatoa. You get the idea. The team back at the installation did their level best to try to assist the boys whenever they could, sending messages, or shifting them away from danger when possible, etc.
The show did get decent ratings, at least enough for ABC to green light a second season, IF Irwin Allen agreed to cut the budget, which he could not in all good conscience do, if they wanted to maintain a certain level of quality.
When constructing the episodes, Allen focused on a couple of dressed backlot sets and location shots, but for big and grand historical crowd or battle scenes, they utilized the appropriate stock footage from films, which tied everything together. But even with that type of strategic budgeting, it was still the most expensive show on tv.
So, The TIME TUNNEL lasted only one season. Allen has said that if they did proceed with a second season, they would have shifted the focus a bit. They would have the ability to bring Doug and Tony back and forth, but they’d send them on missions to right certain wrongs in history, or fix certain problems or anomalies that surfaced, etc. Basically taking the Quantum Leap approach 25 years before that show began.
There have been at least two attempts at revivals over the years, but they never got past a pilot. Maybe that’s for the best though, as there was a distinct look and feel to the 1960’s sci-fi shows. They were usually more colorful, more impactful, with fantastic visuals, impressive musical scores (John Williams composed the theme song), and of course plenty of wonderfully choreographed fist fights.
The thing is… any production company these days would be hard pressed to even design a look for the Tunnel that could compete with the original. Although, an enterprising studio could always take the approach that that city is still there under the desert, with it’s nuclear power core. Maybe dust off that amazing structure at the heart of it (just rebuild the damn set piece!), and go from there.
How do you go about watching this classic? Well, I think they’ve got a couple volumes available on Amazon, but beware some full season sets and region 2 and don’t play in America, but they alert to you those. Also available on Amazon Prime video, I think you can also buy the series. All but one of the 30 episodes are available on YouTube. However, of the two people that put them up there, there are caveats.
First, because of the lower resolution where they had to grab them from, the picture appears smaller and wedged into a brick framing device, or an otherworldly background. This isn’t really an issue as it’s for the good of the resolution of the picture.
Second, of the two YouTubers who have posted the eps on there, “Greenside”’s eps are fine, but Logan Bianchi has, for some reason, sped them up a tad, resulting in chipmunk voices. go figure. He’s got the majority of them up there with the brick background.
Mind you, I like the show so much, I didn’t let that stop me from watching. And maybe keep an eye on the decades channel to see where they actually run the show, etc. It’s worth the time and viewing.
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