The Time Tunnel - Volume One
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: James Darren, John Zaremba, Lee Meriwether, Robert Colbert, Whit BissellBrand: Fox
Writer: Irwin Allen
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); English (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 765 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-01-24
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Movie Reviews of The Time Tunnel - Volume One
Movie Review: Travel down the corridors of "The Time Tunnel" with Tony and Doug
Summary: 5 Stars
"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 towards a new fantastic adventure, somewhere along the infinite corridors of time."
"The Time Tunnel" only aired on Friday night on ABC for a year, but those of us who were kids at the time and liked science fiction have fond memories of the short-lived series. Dr. Tony Newman (James Darren) and Dr. Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert) were a pair of scientists working on Project Tick-Tock, the Time Tunnel, beneath the Arizona desert. About to get their funding cut off by Congress, Tony went through the Tunnel before it was fully tested and found himself on the H.M.S. "Titanic." To save Tony, Doug followed, and the two were unstuck in time, jumping from one historical event to the next without being able to get back home. Back at the Tunnel you found General Haywood Kirk (Whit Bissel) in charge, with Dr. Raymond Swain (John Zaremba) and Dr. Ann MacGregor (former Miss America Lee Meriwether) running the science part of the show (and pretty much making up the rules from one week to the next).
There are several reasons that "The Time Tunnel" was appealing to us when we were kids. First, Tony and Doug got to go back in time to see famous events along with a few fantastic ones in the future. In this first volume we get to visit the "Titanic" ("Rendezvous with Yesterday"), travel to the Moon ("One Way to the Moon"), see Halley's Comet panicked people ("End of the World"), be there for the Attack on Pearl Harbor ("The Day the Sky Fell In") and the Battle of New Orleans ("The Last Patrol"), have to get away from the explosion of Krakatoa ("Crack of Doom"), see the end of the Trojan War ("Revenge of the Gods"), avoid the Battle of the Little Big Horn ("Massacre"), be sent to "Devil's Island," get caught up in the "Reign of Terror" of the French Revolution, check out a Soviet Time Tunnel ("The Death Trap"), and show up at the last day of the siege of "The Alamo." Even better, everybody takes in in stride that they meet Ulysses one "week," General Custer the next, and then Captain Dreyfuss. "The Day the Sky Fell" stands out because actually the point is that nothing happens, but that is because of the Time Tunnel.
Second, whenever warranted by the story, creator-producer Irwin Allen uses scenes from theatrical films to dress up the production. So for the "Titanic" episode we have scenes from "A Night to Remember," while for "Revenge of the Gods" they use clips from another cherish movie from the past, "The 300 Spartans." Recognizing the movie being used is also part of the fun. Third, you can see some future stars in their early days including Ellen Burstyn (then Ellen McRae) and Tom Skerritt. Two of the better performances are turned in by Carroll O'Connor, who plays a pair of British commanding officers a hundred and fifty year apart in "The Last Patrol" and Ford Rainey as Abraham Lincoln in "The Death Trap." Plus, I think my second crush on a television actress was on Lee Meriwether, just for "The Time Tunnel" and not for playing Catwoman on "Batman" (the first was on Mary Tyler Moore as Laura Petrie).
But what I love the most about this series is that for the most part Tony and Doug jump around in time without any concern for what they are doing to the time line. They land on the "Titanic" and try to convince Captain Smith (Michael Rennie) that the ship is going to hit an iceberg and sink. They fail, but do they ever consider the classic time travel paradox of going back in time and killing your grandfather before your father is born which means you were never born to go back and kill your grandfather? No, they do not. When they are at Pearl Harbor we learn that Tony's father was killed there when he was a boy. Back in the Tunnel somebody points out that instead of saving the adult Tony they have to make sure the younger Tony survives. Gee, if little Tony dies would big Tony disappear. It is theoretically possible, admits Dr. Swain. Gee, Doc, YA THINK? Even when Abraham Lincoln dismisses the idea that killing him in Baltimore in 1861 before he is inaugurated would change history, no light bulb goes off for Doug. Where is there a Time Travel Ethicist when you need one? But, as I hope to indicate, this silliness is part of the fun. I have not even begun to talk about what happens when the Tunnel starts plucking people from the past and bringing them to the future and then sending them back. To be fair, the "theory" here is clearly that Tony and Doug were at these historical events the first time around, so that they have always been part of history and not agents of change.
The important thing is that it is all great fun and if you have ever imagined yourself at the Alamo or wondered what you would say to Abraham Lincoln if you went back to the past and met him, then you can appreciate glorious nonsense like this television series. My greatest joy in this coming out on DVD is that almost forty years later I finally got to see the episode "Revenge of the Gods," which is set during the Trojan War. I saw the epilogue at the end of the previous episode that would become the prologue for the next, so I knew there was an episode about the Trojan Horse coming up, but for some reason on October 21, 1966, I missed seeing the episode. There are only 13 episodes for Volume 1, but another 17 on Volume 2, which will give you the entire run of the series. You cannot stop here because there are still encounters with Robin Hood, Billy the Kid, Cortez, Genghis Khan, and Merlin ahead for Tony and Doug. There are also those time-hopping aliens, but how can you top Machiavelli at the Battle of Gettysburg?
Summary of The Time Tunnel - Volume One
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