A LOOK BACK AT THE TIME TUNNEL

As it’s the final episode of the classic vintage TV series The Time Tunnel  on the U.K. Horror Channel tonight, I thought I'd do a little piece on the show, however, I should point out that just like the series I might not get all the historical facts right!

The Time Tunnel is Irwin Allen’s third television series following on from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space. It comprised of 30 episodes, and was produced between 1966 and 67. It stars James Darren as Dr Tony Newman and James Colbert as Dr Doug Phillips.

Tony and Doug are directors of a secret government time travel experiment, code named Project Tic-Toc, which is housed beneath a vast underground complex, 800 floors deep, and situated in Arizona.  The man in charge is Lt General  Heywood Kirk,( played by Whit Bissell), who is assisted by electronics expert, Dr Raymond Swain (played by John Zaremba) and electro-biologist , Dr Ann MacGregor (played by Lee Meriwether).

At the heart of Project Tic-Toc is The Time Tunnel, a huge receding elliptical tube which creates a pathway to anywhere in time, although, it does seem to be quite a temperamental device. (As seen in all of Irwin Allen’s TV series the futuristic hardware used is prone to spectacularly shorting out at inopportune times during the action. It would appear that the submarine Seaview, the space ships, Jupiter 2 and Spindrift and the Time Tunnel don’t appear to use fuses)

 At the point the audience catches up with Time Tunnel, Project Tic-Toc has been in development for ten years, and has cost $7.5 billion dollars. The opening episode, ‘Rendezvous with Yesterday’, which is set in the then future year of 1968, shows the giant complex with  800 floors deep, joined by walkways and staffed by 36,000 employees. 

The designs of some of these miniatures are direct homages’ to the underground Krel machines seen in the 1956 film ‘Forbidden Planet’.

The Time Tunnel idea itself was inspired by the 1964 film, ‘The Time Travelers’, in which two scientists, their female assistant, and an electrician are transported though a 3-dImentional time portal over a hundred years into an intriguing but ultimately bleak future.

Tony and Doug, spend most, although not all of their adventures in the past, beginning with their first in which they both end up on the ill-fated Titanic ocean liner, shortly before the Time Tunnel transports them into the future and the hold of a spacecraft about to take off to Mars.(This was the ‘teaser’ for the following week’s episode, however the ‘teaser’ at the end of the final episode, ‘Town of Terror’, shows Tony and Doug landing on the deck of the Titanic once again, implying that both the scientists are trapped  in some sort of a time loop.

Extensive use of stock footage and re-used props from other shows were used throughout the series, with only one permanent set, The Time Tunnel main control room.  This was, however relocated to a smaller sound stage following the completion of the pilot episode. The prop computer seen on the set was actually a U.S. Air Force decommissioned Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) system computer. These props turned up in several films and TV series around that time.

Like all of Irwin Allen’s TV series, I watched and enjoyed the series as a youngster living in the UK, but once off the screen it lost some appeal for me .The problem was there was a lack of spin-off merchandise here  in the UK. No toys or model kits to make of the Time Tunnel, or even an annual, something which might have reprinted at least one of the two Gold Key comic stories that fans in America got. 

Nowadays, I get the impression that fellow Time Tunnel fans in America had their pick of vintage games, colouring books and even a Viewmaster set at the time.

This kind of merchandise would have kept the series alive for me. I had my Voyage to the bottom of the Sea and Land of The Giants annuals. Even Lost in Space had one of sorts, although it wasn’t actually based on the TV series, but simply used the TV logo, replacing the original Space Family Robinson title due to a copyright agreement with Irwin Allen’s production.

As far as I’m aware neither of the two paperback books, written by Murray Leinster (a non de plume for William Fitzgerald Jenkins) were widely distributed in Britain, and there were no exclusive UK editions, like we saw for Land of The Giants. 

More importantly for me no British comics published any home grown comic strips, unlike Voyage and Land of The Giants, which would have helped with continuity once the series was off the air.

Over time I’ve managed to find the odd bit of original spin-off material, as well as some contemporary items like the Blu-ray set and the CD soundtrack.  I’ve got the two paperbacks now, including one edition with an alternative cover on the first one which originally featured as the cover of a previous 1964 Murrey Lienster book titled Time Tunnel. Apart from that, there are no other connections with the 1966 TV series.

The Time Tunnel, unlike Irwin Allen’s other TV series had no vehicle to exploit as a kit. The only regular piece of futuristic technology seen on screen was the Time Tunnel itself.  Exciting dioramas from several American kit companies showing scenes from Lost in Space, Land of the Giants and Star Trek for example were produced but no Time Tunnel diorama.

However, a little known model kit was produced by Fugimi  Mokei Co. in 1967, which would have been hard to get hold of at the time.

While it’s still pretty difficult to find, at least these days, there’s plenty of Irwin Allen web sites, which show the kit and give a little information about it.

From what I can gather reading about the kit it was a bit of a disappointment, with very little in the way of diorama, and rather cheap.

The tunnel itself was just a just an elliptical tube with black paper decals to create the receding black and white strips seen in the show.

It was more or less a slide projector, with a film strip showing scenes fed into the back which is illuminated from behind.

Lunar Models did do a limited run of the kit using resin rather than plastic.

Re-watching it these past few weeks, like all of Irwin Allen’s series, it’s certainly still a glossy and entertaining show.

Cue the opening narration (voiced by Dick Tufeld) that can be heard at the beginning of most of the episodes;

 “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.”