My favorite of all four of the Irwin Allen series and the most dramatically interesting. It deserved to be renewed more than Land of the Giants, even if it did tail off into campy alien-centered stories in the last few episodes.

When I had a chance to watch these episodes after many many years I was surprised how good they were-- I knew I liked it, but I think the show still stands up today, because they establish it as 1968, and not the future (ie Land Of The Giants), so if it seems dated, that's because it's the 60's.
Anyways, upon watching an episode that I think was called The End Of The World (it involved Halley's comet passing of Earth in 1910 (or whatever early year that was)), I thought it was very cool that the Tunnel locked onto the comet by accident and caused it to veer away from a collision with Earth-- only to nearly exit the Tunnel itself!
And who can dispute The Day The Sky Fell as a true classic, where Tony meets himself as a little boy and his father the day Pearl Harbor was attacked? It still puts a lump in my throat.

Why was this show cancelled? Was it the dreaded "Friday Night Curse," that killed off good shows scheduled on Friday nights? (Just look at "Trek", whose ratings dried up on Friday nights.) My first exposure to the sinking of the Titanic was in the "Time Tunnel" pilot. I was hooked on this show; my sister and I always made time for it on Friday nights when I was in eighth grade. A cancellation too soon. Allen resurrected the concept in 1975 in a pilot with Sam Groom called "The Time Travelers" (at least I think that was the title.) Sci-fi (at least) once ran the uncut pilots of "Tunnel" and "Lost In Space". Both are essential viewing.

Lee Meriwether later went on to play Catwoman
in the 60's BATMAN movie starring Adam West
(aka The One True Batman..I didn't make that
one up,if you saw Classic Tv Who Wants To Be
A Millionaire?That's what Regis called him!)

The One True Batman..I didn't make that
one up,if you saw Classic Tv Who Wants To Be
A Millionaire?

The one true batman? The one true Batman was a comic book character created by Bob Kane. That guy that Adam West played was a spoof of Kane's creation.

I have to admit that Keaton was probably closest to Bob Kane's vision.

Guys: This is a "Time Tunnel" board. Please don't turn this into a "Batman" discussion. There is a separate TV show board; and discussion boards for the films under the "Movies" heading.

"The Day The Sky Fell In" creates a continuity nit with the pilot episode. In the first episode, Tony states that he was born in 1938. However, in "Sky", Tony is seven years old in 1941.

An early episode "End of the World" also sent Tony back to the tic-toc project at a time where he had not yet joined the project. Doug and the others of that time did not recognize him and considered him to be an intruder. So when the real Tony joins the project later, wouldn't Doug and the others remember him as the strange intruder who once mysteriously appeared and disappeared at the complex?

One of the premises of the series is that the Time Tunnel controllers are able to shift Doug and Tony in time, but have no control over when they send them in time. If they did, they could presumably bring them back to the present. But at least one episode contradicts this idea. "Secret Weapon", another early entry, has Doug and Tony in Europe in the fifties, to investigate a foreign power's research into time travel technology. Although it is never explicity stated, it is strongly suggested that the Time Tunnel personnel sent Doug and Tony to that place and time on orders from the U.S. Government. If this is true, it means that the tunnel personnel CAN control where and when the pair go.

Did the creators sue the makers of Quantum Leap over copyright issues? I caught an episode of this show some years ago & I noticed it was a very similar concept, but with a bit of Randell & Hopkirk (deceased) thrown in. On the other hand some episode of this covered the same periods of time the Dr Who had already done. (Full list to follow)

The Time Tunnel - proof that skivvies aren't fashionable in any time period.

Dr Who - The Time Tunnel Similarities.
(DW = Dr Who Episode, T = The Time Tunnel Episode.)

T) The Revenge Of The Gods, DW) The Myth Makers: The Regulars get involved in The Trojan War.

T) Reign Of Terror, DW) The Reign Of Terror: A visit to France during the Revolution.

T) The Ghost Of Nero, DW) The Romans: An encounter With Nero.

T) Idol Of Death, DW) The Aztecs: An attempt by the regulars to save The Aztecs.

T) Attack Of The Barbarian, DW) Marco Polo: An ecounter with Marco Polo's expedition to China.

T) Merlin The Magician, DW) Battlefield: Stories based around King Arthur's adventures.

Another series that had a lot of similarities to the Time Tunnel was an early 80's series called Voyagers. It concerned the adventures of a time traveller with a young companion who visited different important historical events. I don't know much about this series first hand I only have a vague recollection of it (I was about fourteen when it was on) and it's hardly been re-run since then. But from what I've heard of it, it sounds even more like TT than Quantum Leap.

I have good memories of Voyagers!, and I wish I could see reruns. I missed one or two episodes.

The series had a lot of potential, especially to get kids interested in going to the library to read up on history.

It starred Meeno Peluce and the late Jon-Erik Hexum. Buffalo Bill Cody appears twice, first as an adult visiting Queen Victoria's court with his Wild West Show, and again as a boy riding the Pony Express, in the episode that also features the Pearl Harbour attack. (Almost every episode had two different times weaved into a single story, and often in a common theme.)

Didn't John Erik-Hexum commit suicide?

Jon-Erik Hexum did NOT commit suicide. He was fooling around with a prop gun loaded with blanks on (I believe) the set of "Cover-Up", a series he was doing with Jennifer O'Neill. He fired the gun at himself and the blank lodged in his brain.

Like that guy in Probe?

That's right, I remember now. What an ignonimous way to go.

Ronald Reagan lost most of the use of one ear when someone fired a gun close to his head during the making of one film.

William Shatner blames his tinnuitis on explosions on the set of "Arena". He has stated he has considered suicide over the ringing in hs ears, according to A&E's "Biography."
Weren't some of the set decorations from "Time Tunnel" re-used from (and in) other Irwin Allen productions?

George Maharis blamed the case of hepatitis which forced him to leave Route 66 on the filming of the episode "Even Stones Have Eyes", which required him to jump into a pond of ice-cold water. He was eventually replaced by Glenn Corbett. This experience didn't keep him from naming "Even Stones Have Eyes" as one of his favorite episodes of that series on a Nick at Nite feature.

Another Batman connection: I believe the set of the Time Tunnel was also the computers used for the batcave.

Probably, since both were filmed on the Fox lot.
A Nit: The company still is named "20th Century Fox." Shouldn't they change to "21st Century Fox" now? Admittedly, 20th Century falls off the tongue better, and a corporate name change would be expensive (that didn't stop AOL Time Warner.)
Was the water that Maharis fell in sufficiently dirty to cause hepatitis?

Irwin Allen liked to reuse things when ever possible, so I wouldn't be suprised if many props & sets were used more than once.

Supposedly the water was so cold that he caught a chill, rendering him succeptible to the infection.

Adam Bomb -- I always thought 20th Century Fox should have made the name change to 21st Century Fox when they released The Phantom Menace. It was easily their most-anticipated feature for years, and would have been a nice pro-active strike in 1999 (looking forward to the future, and all that.)

I am assuming that a corporate name change would be very expensive. Also, the public is familiar with "20th Century Fox", although there are many divisions (Fox Searchlight, Fox 2000, et al).

So? ... what's to stop them from creating a "21st Century Fox"? ... is that any more strange than "Fox Searchlight" or "Fox 2000"?

If THEY felt it necessary to add the "corporate" names of Searchlight and 2000 to their battery of names ... well?

(Personally, I'd be VERY disappointed if they didn't make the change to "21st Century Fox", seeing how we are now IN the 21st century. (as Spock would say, "It's only logical")

This would fit in with one of Futurama's predictions.

It is still "20th Century Fox," at least as far as the ads for "Dr. Doolittle II" and "Planet Of The Apes", two big summer 2001 releases, are concerned. I think I read in 1999 that the company will stay "20th Century Fox" even into the 21st Century.

The theme for "Time Tunnel" was done by John Williams

I had taped most of the episodes of this show on the Sci Fi channel, then laid them away to watch later...and forgot about them! I've only watched a couple of them so far, but they are quite interesting. I think that I'd like to pick it up on DVD, to see what it's like without syndication cuts. Also, I've found that I apparently missed taping several episodes, including the Pearl Harbor one that I really wanted to see.

I watched one called "The Last Patrol" last night, concerning the last battle at New Orleans in the War of 1812. A descendant of a British Colonel traveled back to try and help Tony and Doug, who were in peril of their lives. (Am I right in assuming that they are going to be in peril a lot on this show? ) An interesting thing: Tony and Doug tend to get hurled into the scene. They hit the ground, bounce and roll. The British traveler, on the other hand, landed gracefully on his feet with hardly a jar. Perhaps the machine knew that he was already dying, and wanted to spare him any extra jolts.

Another thing about this episode, that made me wonder if I'd missed something due to syndication: While the British were preparing to send a rocket signal to show the Colonel where he should attack (should have been east), Tony and Doug began fighting with them. Bodies were flying every which way, and I kept expecting someone to hit the rocket launcher and knock it off course, making the Colonel think he should attack from the west. It never happened. After all the British were laid flat, I thought that Tony or Doug would run over and alter the rocket, to ensure the American victory. They didn't; they just cut and ran. The only reason we knew that the rocket was set wrong was that Capt. Hotchkiss (a really nasty sort; Tony saved his life twice over and Hotchkiss was still prepared to kill him without showing a flicker of remorse) looked up and yelled, "You've got it the wrong way!" I really would like to know if syndication cut out the rocket being bumped, or if they showed that the British lost the battle simply because the soldier assigned to set the rocket off couldn't even remember how to do it properly.

That's quite an interesting machine, by the way. It can't bring Tony and Doug home, but it can get them dressed in their proper outfits when they've been wearing something else. (And what happens to those outfits that they're wearing?)

In looking up information on this show, I found that it wasn't canceled due to poor ratings. The ratings were fine, and they were preparing for a second season when the Powers That Be arbitrarily decided to shelve it for another show, something about Custer, I believe, that lasted maybe half a season. It would be interesting to know if the second season would have continued with the outer space alien interference that showed up in the last episodes.

It would be interesting to know if the second season would have continued with the outer space alien interference that showed up in the last episodes.

Yes, and it would probably have gone the way of Seaquest. "Look, the alien episodes were rated highly. Let's do more aliens!!")

I have the box set of themes from Irwin Allen shows. Ah, the time when music was (melo)dramatic and memorable...

I noticed a number of nits in the Krakatoa episode, "Crack of Doom".

They made it very difficult to judge just how much time passed while they were on the island. Doug and Tony were frantic to find out just exactly what day it was. The professor's daughter first said, "I think it's the twenty-fourth. Or is it the twenty-fifth?" When she finally looked it up in her journal, she announced that it was the twenty-sixth, one day before the explosion, which would take place at 10:00am. Quite some time later, Doug is looking through her journal and discovers that she forgot to allow for the time change, and it is in fact the twenty-seventh already. These people must have been up super early in the morning, because they had plenty of time to reach Sumatra.

BTW, if Sumatra was so close that they could easily reach it in time that morning, you would have thought that it would be badly affected by the disaster.

We are introduced to the professor's daughter when she is pinned down by a fallen tree. The tree is lying along the whole length of her body, and is heavy enough that it took two men to lift it off of her, yet she scrambled out and jumped to her feet with nary a wince. At best, she should have been badly bruised; at worst, she should have had some internal injuries.

Tony and Doug have to rush to get to their jumping-off point in time. The island is about to blow up under their feet, tremors and lightning are everywhere. Doug still has the presence of mind to fetch his discarded jacket and properly button it up!

This was a pretty nifty episode. The time warp technobabble was rather fun. I liked the scene where Tony, about to jump back into the Tunnel, takes a last look back, as though considering that he may be throwing away his only chance at getting back to his own time. On the other hand, what if he had been forced to spend the rest of his life locked in that time warp?

I didn't really understand that bit about using all their power to pull on one man, rather than both. The idea seemed to be that if they focused on just one, they would actually be able to get him all the way back. However...they didn't really take the idea any further. They spoke of the potential energy overload; what would happen with the second man? Did they decide that completely rescuing one and leaving the other behind was preferable to leaving both of them jumping at random? And what about the science party that they were planning to try and transfer?

Very convenient that they managed to speak through the Tunnel just when Tony need some heavy-duty persuasion for the lady.

Sounds like you're watching the show on the Action channel. My favorite eps are the more scifi (rather than historical) eps. They're definately cheesy in typical Irwin Allen style. The ep where aliens take over a Maine town is fun. The one with Michael Ansara and the planet of the plant people (who become inactive at night) is also a hoot! The ep featuring the trip to the moon relies on too much stock footage from Destination Moon made in 1950! Hardly up-to-date considering this show was made during the late 60's, when NASA was in the middle of its Apollo program.

I had gotten these taped years ago off of the Sci Fi channel--I just never got around to watching them until now. My loss; they're pretty fun.

"Revenge of the Gods" was a lot of fun--visually very good for its time, even if it had a lot of nits.

Major nit: this was Greeks vs Trojans. As I recall, Rome and its culture was still some time in the future. So why all the Roman references? "Ulysses" should have been addressed as "Oddyseus" (sp) and the goddesses referred to should have been Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena, rather than Venus, Juno and Minerva. (Apollo is Apollo wherever he goes. ) Presumably the writers or whomever felt that the American audience would comprehend the Roman terms better than the Greek.

This episode also shows the difficulty of compressing a highly complicated event into an hour show. A person unfamiliar with history (or mythology; take your pick) would think that the Trojan war was basically Ulysses vs Paris. Ulysses (I'll stick with the show's labels) was a high-ranking soldier, true enough, but Agamemnon was the actual leader, and he wasn't even mentioned. Paris was a minor player in the game, even though he caused it all.

That bit with sending Jiggs back to help Tony seemed to be just padding, as well as a way to show off the potential hazards with the Tunnel. Nice that they were able to reverse his aging so quickly and easily. Jiggs did save Tony with his submachine gun, but I noticed that he came back to the future without the bag of hand grenades. Unless Tony used them in a syndication cut, he seemingly never even saw them. Imagine some local sap coming along after all the excitement dies down and finding that bag of grenades. (Or perhaps Heinrich Schliemann coming across them during his archaeological excavations!)

That Trojan who came through the Tunnel (because someone forgot to turn it off--oops!) sure had a single-track mind. Faced with a complete unknown, he charged without hesitation. Interesting that a whole squad of security men had trouble pushing him back. In fact, they couldn't have done it if he hadn't inexplicably turned and ran--turning again to throw his sword like a petulant child.

Doug, who has been captured by the Trojans, witnesses the retreat of the Greek fleet, which takes place at night. Paris then orders him put on the "rack". The next morning, the Horse is found outside the gates, and is eventually brought in. That night, Tony and the Greeks come out and start the rampage, and Tony eventually finds Doug. Doug, unless he has been tortured in on-and-off shifts, has been on the rack close to twenty-four hours (possibly over twenty-four hours). He really shouldn't have been able to walk at all. At least they didn't show him hopping off the rack and strolling out. He staggered out the door looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I liked his succinct response to Tony: "What kept you?"

Being the 60's, they of course had to clean up the ending. Doug doesn't mention that Cassandra aquired her gift of prophecy from Apollo while he was trying to seduce her, or that Apollo twisted the gift into the curse of nonbelief when she stuck to her vow of chastity. It wasn't actually Ulysses who located Helen, but her husband. And her husband (Menelaus, I believe) had no intention of taking her back--he planned to kill her for infidelity. (It's quite possible that Helen was seduced away by Paris, not out-and-out kidnapped.) Helen avoided being killed by the simple expedient of disrobing before her husband, who promptly forgot that he wanted to kill her. I suppose that if they were filming this episode today, they would have kept in all the good parts.

If it was filmed today it would include hip-hop music and all the women would be dressed like Britney Spears-with lots of exposed skin!

I realize that it would have made for an extremely short season if they'd been able to get Tony and Doug back. However, you'd think that someone on the tech team back home would have commented on the fact that, while they could not get Tony and Doug back, they had no problem yanking other people out of their time and sending them back to it.

Another problem is the language. A simple (on the surface) explanation would be that the Tunnel is equipped with a sort of Uni-world translating device, that would enable the people involved to communicate with anyone, anytime. In "Revenge of the Gods", Tony and Doug did not question that they could communicate with ancient Greeks and Trojans. However, in "Massacre", Tony is vocally astonished that the Indians who captured them could speak English. In "Devil's Island" and presumably the next episode (which I'm planning to watch tonight) where the language should have been French, Tony and Doug again take the communications for granted.

"Massacre" deals with Gen. Custer and the Battle of Little Bighorn. The Indians assume that Tony and Doug are lying about not knowing who "Yellowhair" is, because everyone knows about Yellowhair. I haven't done much reading on this subject, but in a book that I read concerning the Sioux (who were the main Indians in this ep), they referred to him as Longhair. Most men of the time, I believe, kept their hair fairly short (possibly because it was more convenient in battle), but Custer flaunted long, flowing locks. At the time of the Little Bighorn battle, he had in fact cut his hair short. In this episode, they showed with his hair kind of in-between; not long locks, but not really short, either. (He actually looks like he's had a permanent!)

Tony earned the respect of Sitting Bull by contemptuously shrugging off the hands that would have dragged him to his execution and walking to the spot himself. Quite a nice scene. However, since the writers seemed obligated to have at least one fight scene in every show (so far, at least), Tony had to prove his "brotherhood" by fighting one of the warriors. I found it rather odd that he had to fight Yellow Elk, rather than Crazy Horse, who was the one arguing the point.

I was quite surprised by the way they portrayed Custer. I had the impression that it was only relatively recently that Custer was no longer seen as an heroic legend, tragically cut down. This episode showed him as a glory-chaser, who died because he refused to wait for reinforcements and was convinced that he could outfight any number of Indians no matter what. On the other hand, they showed him with enough concern to order the young bugle boy out of his command, where he would have a better chance at survival.

This is supposed to be a top-secret science project, yet they have no problems with hauling in outsiders and telling them all about it. And considering that the first episode showed the complex well off the beaten path, they were able to get those outside specialists there in a hurry.

Yellow Elk must be related to that ancient Trojan warrier. After a single astonished look around, he leaped forward to do battle.


I wonder why they simply called the Devil's Island episode "Devil's Island", rather than some fancier title? Did they think that "Devil's Island" was ominous enough?

Tony and Doug seemed to land fairly near the shoreline. They seemed to be watching the group of prisoners brought in, and watched while they tried to run off. They also seemed to be watching as two of them (who coincidentally looked a lot like them) dove into the water and swam away (presumably to provide the local sharks with lunch), yet neither of them mentioned it when they were mistaken for the prisoners.

It seemed really naive of Tony and Doug to think that the Commandant would listen to a reasoned explanation. And out and out st---d of Doug to simply hand the man's gun back to him. He should have at least taken the bullets out. On the other hand, in a French penal colony for French prisoners, you'd think that the Commandant would have at least noticed that these two men didn't sound French at all. (Or did the supposed Uni-world translator make them sound French? Hmmmm.)

The writer of this episode seemed to foresee a future syndication cut! When Tony and whatisname visited Dreyfus in his private quarters, Tony grabbed a decanter of water and asked if he could take it, and Dreyfus agreed. I figured that Tony was going to stop at the hot box on his way back to the barracks and give Doug some water, but they didn't show him doing so. However, when Doug was returned to the barracks and Tony asked him if he was all right, Doug said, "Thanks to that water you brought me."

Whathisname brushed off his whole experience in the Tunnel as a bad dream. Why didn't they think to send a written message with him? However, the youngster, who had seen the man vanish before his eyes and suddenly reappear (right on his feet; apparently Tony and Doug are the only ones who get hurled around by the Tunnel. Perhaps it has a grudge against them) doesn't seem to question the miracle at all, he just yells, "Where have you been?" That alone should have told whatshisname that it was more than a dream, especially since Tony seemed to know all about it.

If whatshisname had remembered, he would also have remembered seeing that the escape attempt was being engineered as an ambush for Dreyfus. It was left for Doug to make the classic cliche observation: "This has all been too easy." Come to think of it, if the Commandant was engineering the escape attempt, why did he nearly wreck it by first coming to search for the missing food, and then threatening to start killing the men one by one if they didn't report on the missing man?

You would think that Tony and Doug have been around enough by now to realize the significance of their clothing suddenly altering. They could have at least waved goodbye. Instead, they stood there, looking rather confused.

They set up a paradox in "Reign of Terror." In an attempt to focus on Tony and Doug (for some reason they couldn't focus direct in this episode) General Kirk decided to send back his ring, a family heirloom dating back at least as far as the French Revolution. (The last time they attempted to send inanimate objects back in time, it failed miserably, but that's another nit.) One of Kirk's ancestors acquired the ring and, recognizing it as a love token from Marie Antoinette to Count Axel Ferson, planned to use it as evidence in her trial. At the end of the episode, right after Tony and Doug were pulled out of the time, the ring vanished from Querque's finger. Problem is, if Querque didn't have the ring, then he couldn't have kept it in the family, and it wouldn't have come down to Kirk, who wouldn't have been able to put it in the Tunnel...anyone feel a headache coming on? I think it would have been more effective if a) they had somehow persuaded Querque not to use the ring (if it had been used in evidence it presumably would have been confiscated) and b) at the end of the episode Kirk suddenly realized that he had his ring back, showing that it had remained in the family and got passed down to him.

After Tony and Doug got tossed into the scene, Doug was picked up and arrested--apparently simply to help fill a quota. They were grabbing anyone fool enough to be out on the street. So why did they go right past Tony and the shopkeeper, who were also out on the street, Tony in obviously foreign clothing? The shopkeeper should have pulled Tony off the street, and then peeked out at the cart driving by.

And once again, a traveler through the tunnel reappears on his feet. I really would like to know what that Tunnel has against Tony and Doug, hurling them around so much.

Apparently there is pretty good evidence that the unfortunate Dauphin died of illness in prison, not too long after his mother. Funny thing, they referred in the show (and in a book I read) that Marie Antoinette's children--plural--were taken from her and placed in a separate prison, but only the Dauphin is referred to, and he was the only child Marie expressed concern for. How many children did she have, and what happened to the others?

That little bit at the end, with the youthful Napoleon Bonaparte, was a nice touch. I did wonder how Doug managed to keep his face straight as Tony was prophesying for the Lieutenant. It would have been fun if he'd made some aside to Tony afterward.

Gee, a Time Tunnel with two Time Tunnels! "Secret Weapon" is full of unanswered questions.

Up to this point, it seems that Tony and Doug are being tossed around time completely at random. Yet this episode makes it clear that they were dropped into 1956 Russia for a specific reason. How'd they manage that?

What ever happened to the original Smith and Williams? Did the American government capture them before they could defect, and then, twelve years later, find out that Dr. Biraki had had dealings with a "Smith" and "Williams" anyway? Or were they spies that the American government knew had been killed or whatever before they reached Alexi? Is this why they were so anxious to get Tony and Doug involved?

Michael Ansara played his role magnificently, but he was rather confusing. He made it quite clear that he disliked the thought of foreign scientists becoming involved in their time project, yet later it is also perfectly clear that he knew (or thought that he knew) that "Smith and Williams" were spies, and that he allowed them to come in. You can't have it both ways.

Dr. Biraki kept protesting that he had to have Tony and Doug because they were scientists that knew more about the technology than any other Russian scientist, and yet, faced with the probability that they were not what they claimed to be, he didn't care. If they weren't Smith and Williams, then how did he know that they were scientists at all?

Dr. Biraki had put together a fairly decent Time Tunnel twelve years before the Americans would, and yet, even with a hint about radiation from Tony and Doug, he was never able to complete it sucessfully. Must have been awfully frustrating for him.

I found a nit that may be due to syndication cuts, but maybe not. At the beginning of the episode, Tony and Doug spotted a glowing brick that they recognized as a portable part of the Time Tunnel technology. (Actually, they seemed to see it a moment before it actually phased into the scene!) This first brick nearly fried Tony's hands. It seemed to have a odd pulling effect; when Tony's first hand seared onto the brick, his second hand seemed to jerk forward of its own accord and grab the brick as well. Having pried Tony's hands off and watched the brick disappear, they found another one moments later. This one exploded (without causing any damage to the surrounding area, oddly enough). Meanwhile, back at Tunnel Central, the tech crew are arguing about trying it again, as they nearly killed Tony and Doug the second time. After Kirk discusses it with Washington, he says that they are to try it one more time. When Doug spots the next brick, he refers to the last three tries. Either there was a cut in there, or someone goofed on the dialogue.

Near the end, Dr. Biraki strongly implies that Tony and Doug are going to be tortured for their information. Kirk passes on to Washington that Biraki conducts "research by torture". However, we don't see it done. Syndication cut, or 60's sensibilities? When Tony and Doug are brought back to the lab, they look rather tired, but that's all, and there is no indication that they've given anything away. They "agree" to try again, because the alternative is being killed.

It was rather naive of both Biraki and Hruda to allow Tony and Doug to mess around with the equipment without close supervision. My immediate thought was, "They're going to blow the place up while they sit safe in the capsule." Well, they didn't quite blow it all up, but they came close, which brings me to the last oddity. Dr. Biraki saw and reacted to Tony leaping out of the capsule, doing some last thing to the console, and then fleeing the room. Why then, 12 years later, had he assumed that they had both died?

In the episode "Death Trap" the tech crew were alerted to the fact that something was out of sync when they watched the scene of Lincoln being assasinated at Ford's theater...and then realized that it was the wrong year for it. The show revolved around an assasination attempt on either Lincoln's train or the depot where they were waiting, so what was with that scene at the theater? It would have made more sense for them to have seen Lincoln's funeral, and realized that it was too early.

I rather liked how they portrayed Pinkerton. He was very anxious to protect the president, so much so that he was deaf to all of Doug's (and later Tony's) protests. However, their sheer persistence wore him down to where he conceded that they might be telling the truth.

I also liked the part where David got pulled into the Tunnel. He didn't react like any of the other people pulled in...because they were adults, and he was a young boy. He reacted like a frightened boy; distrustful of the strange adults and wanting to go home. I found it interesting that he translated the experience into terms that he could understand, calling the Tunnel a "cave".

One big nit, though: How did that time bomb grow legs? Tony found the bomb and, rather than yelling for Pinkerton and his minions to come see, hurled it away into a pile of trash. Pinkerton hustled Tony away without bothering to go take a look at the bomb. When David finds the bomb, it is lying underneath a horse trough, and after jamming it with with a tool from the future, replaces it by the trough. When Tony persuades Pinkerton to come look for the bomb, he cannot find it. If that horse trough had been close enough for the bomb to have rolled over to it, they couldn't possibly have missed it. How did it get completely out of the area?

I liked the ending, where Doug realized that the Time Tunnel crew must have been involved somehow...but they didn't know how, and possibly never would.

"The Alamo" was very exciting visually. I enjoyed the long battle shots.

I'd like to know why Tony and Doug got so far apart when they fell into the scene. Tony landed at the bottom of a hill, near the Alamo, whereas poor Doug fell in at the top of the hill, and bounced down. Little wonder that he got a concussion; what's surprising is that he didn't break any bones.

It was a nice touch showing the increasing tension among Texas soldiers. Col. Travis telling the Captain that henceforth he was to report the casualties to Travis, not Col. Bowie, strongly hinted that there had been an argument of some kind, and Travis had either been given, or claimed for himself, the leadership.

I was startled when they made a throwaway comment about Crockett having been killed the day before. As I understand it, as of 1955 (long before this show was made) there was evidence indicating that Crockett, among others, was in fact captured, not killed, at the Alamo and later executed. I was wondering if the producers just didn't want to compete with the Fess Parker version of Crockett, and therefore wrote him out of the script.

Tony and the Captain were both anxious about Doug, who had sustained two good cracks to the head and was suffering dizziness and blurred vision. Tony escaped in order to try and fetch a doctor. Just a short time later, Doug appeared to make a complete recovery. Lucky him.

When Tony escaped from the Mexicans, he ran out a door and down a stairway built on the outside of the building. The Mexican scout got up from the floor, ran to the door...and fired his gun straight out the door. Tony must have hit him really hard, because all he could have been aiming at was the second floor of some other building.

Just before Travis got yanked into the Tunnel, he called a guard over to arrest Doug and the captain. Then he vanished into thin air. Doug and the captain reacted to his disappearance, but the guard didn't seem to care in the slightest!

The Tunnel tech crew must be getting embarrassed at the number of times they've dragged an innocent bystander into the Tunnel.

General Kirk is not very tactful. Travis, rather pathetically, asks him if there is no hope. Kirk answers, "There is hope. For our man...." I can't think that Travis would be comforted by that information at that point. Kirk could have at least told him that they would not die in vain.

Travis is very gung ho. Even knowing that he's going to be killed, he's still anxious to get back.

A very nice touch: Col. Bowie, who has been injured and is likely dying anyway, gets in one final blow by hurling his famous knife and killing a Mexican soldier before being killed himself.

They don't really show how Tony and the doctor managed to get inside the Alamo so easily. It was very nice of the doctor to claim the captain's widow as his nurse, so that she would be left alone.

In this episode, Tony and Doug seemed to know that the Tunnel was about to be activated for them. They walked away from the doctor and the widow, stood still in the open, and waited. Under the circumstances, I think that I'd be looking for a place to hide.

Nice, exciting way to open "Night of the Long Knives"--Tony seems to get killed. Of course, you know that can't be....

I'm feeling sorry for Doug. Just in the previous episode, he sustained two hard cracks to the head. Just a few minutes after landing in an Indian desert, he gets knocked on the head again! And yet again, just a few minutes after waking up. The poor guy's brains are going to be like scrambled eggs.

The Time Tunnel focuses on Tony and Doug. Occasionally they can fast-forward a bit in order to see what is going to happen, but it all stays in their general area. In this episode, for no explained reason, the focus suddenly shifts thousands of miles away from Tony and Doug, over to England. The actual purpose for the shift, of course, is to inform the audience of just what is going on.

Ann starts to panic when she thinks that Tony is dead. The others comfort her by saying that he couldn't be dead, for otherwise they would lose the focus. Then they do lose the focus. Ann panics again, and they try to reassure her. Some time later, they are wondering why they can't get the focus. The other doctor says that he knows of a possible explanation, and when Kirk insists on knowing what it is, says that Doug and Tony could be dead. Shouldn't they already know that? Apparently they all forgot what they had said earlier.

The British commander seems to believe that one should never tell civilians anything. He tells Tony and Kipling that he can't do anything, only to quietly do so after all. If he'd bothered to mention it to them, they might have kept out of trouble.

Having seen the Afghans attack the supply train, Tony gets on his horse and takes off. A few moments later, we see an Afghan fire a rifle, and Kipling collapses. Several Afghans later come and carry him off. Tony later reports to the British commander than Kipling is nowhere to be found in the fort. Racing from the scene of the ambush back to the fort, and Tony never noticed that Kipling wasn't following him?

It was very gallant of the blind slave to make Doug go alone, so that they wouldn't both be captured, but it was rather silly of him to even think that he, moving very slowly, would be able to escape at all. Considering that Doug left on horseback, it's quite possible that both of them could have gotten away.

It was interesting to watch the British commander get around his orders to that they could try to rescue Kipling. Once again, he couldn't be bothered to tell civilians anything.

By the time they reached Kipling, the writers seem to have forgotten that Kipling was shot. When Doug freed him, he didn't seem to be harmed in the least. It doesn't even seem as though he'd been tortured at all. Perhaps Singh was saving him for later, to unwind after a long night of uprising.

The Tunnel forgot to put Doug and Tony's original clothes back on before whisking them away.

In "Invasion" they really choreographed the drop-in nicely. Tony looks as though he just missed rolling right over Doug's head!

And speaking of Doug's head, this series seems to be turning into the "Let's clobber Doug Phillips Show". Once again, he gets bashed over the head, and later shot in the head--by Tony, no less. No wonder Dr. Kleinemann was so sucessful in brainwashing him.

I noticed something odd at the beginning. In the previous episode's teaser, it showed the underground performing a lot of guerilla tactics, including one where a Frenchman dressed in Nazi uniform introduced himself to a guard, then stabbed him in the back. However, in the opening of the actual episode, we only saw an explosion and some soldiers being shot down as they ran out of a building before Tony and Doug were captured. The scene with the Frenchman in German uniform showed up well into the show.

Having been captured, Tony and Doug notice the date on the desk calendar, and realize that D-day us approaching. Doug states that it will happen in 48 hours. During the brainwashing scene, the doctor announces that he will have Doug doing what he wants in three hours. After Doug has been conditioned, and has been sent out on a sortie and returned, a French traitor comes in and announces that an invasion will take place--in 48 hours. Somebody needs to wind his watch.

The Germans allowed Tony to escape, and set a man to follow him, but they never seemed to realize that the man was killed while doing so.

Poor Tony. The Germans think that he's helping the French, and the French think that he's helping the Nazis. Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of the Tunnel....

The doctor took a photograph of Doug dressed in his regular clothes. Later he showed Doug this photo--plus a photo of him dressed as a Nazi. How did they get that? That could possibly be due to trick photography, but where did they get the photograph of Tony?

It's rather ironic that the name of the French traitor was Mirabeau. One of the more heroic figures of the French Revolution was the Comte de Mirabeau, who quite possibly could have altered the course of the Revolution for the better if not for his untimely death by illness.

James Darren did very well in the scene where he unknowingly shot Doug. When his companion called to Tony to leave Doug behind, and Tony insisted that they had to take him along, his voice was all high and tight, as though he were just half a step from hysteria.

I liked the casual comment made by the French doctor, which showed both his courage as a patriot and his dedication as a doctor: "If there were another doctor in the village, I would be fighting at your side."

After Tony and a companion got into the Nazi headquarters, knocked out the commander, and captured Dr. Kleinemann, the doctor made a sneering comment. It was to the effect that he was a scientist, and therefore they shouldn't expect any military heroics from him. I really would have liked Tony to say something like, "That's funny. I'm a scientist, and that's all I've been doing the last two days."

After they could hear the invasion beginning, they all got up to go out to the bomb shelters (at least I assume that that's where they were headed). Tony picked up Doug's Nazi jacket and handed it to him. You would have thought that Doug would give it a funny look and make some comment, but he didn't.

The Tunnel forgot to put Doug's clothes back on him again.

A nit that I forgot to mention from "Invasion"--while the doctor might have been able to construct a whole past identity for Doug, how the heck did he manage to fit him with a German accent?

Finally--an episode where Doug doesn't get conked over the head. I was starting to worry about him.

"The Revenge of Robin Hood" is a gloriously campy romp. I kept expecting Errol Flynn to show up. I wonder if the actors had as good a time filming this as I had watching it.

Last episode, Tony and Doug fell into the scene almost on top of each other. This one, they were quite separated--I don't think that they were even on the same floor.

Tony needs to learn that when you're fighting for life and freedom, you can't afford to be gentlemanly. At one point during his fight with the guard, Tony managed to toss a net over him--and then considerately waited until the guard managed to pull it off.

After they were found by the Merry Men, they were taken off to change into "greens"--that weren't really green. Tony and Doug looked rather self-concious after they changed clothes. Or maybe they were afraid that they would start giggling if they looked at each other.

You wouldn't think that the Merry Men would put so much trust in a woman so easily susceptible to bribery. And how did the briber manage to get to her so far ahead of the M.Ms?

Doug demonstrates hitherto unsuspected talents for "battlefield first aid" (which earned him a very strange look from Friar Tuck) and chemistry. I'm wondering if he also suspected the baroness. You would have thought that her constant suggestions to send a messenger somewhere would have raised everyone's suspicions.

Why on Earth did the Baroness wait so long to inform the King's aide that the two friars that came with her were Robin's men? She really should have mentioned it right when they were still in the room with her. Actually, her behavior seemed to suggest that she was trying very hard to keep on everyone's good side--so that no matter who won, she'd keep out of trouble. Unfortunately for her, King John and his aide are prone to blaming everyone around them when things go wrong, and she happened to be right there. Wonder what ever happened to her?

Robin was tortured while he was imprisoned, and for a change, he actually looked like he'd been tortured--he kept collapsing in his chains, and he had a nasty gash on his head.

That homing post seemed to be about the most useless bit of technology they've tried. The tech team made it sound as though they've used it before, but unless it was in one of the episodes that I missed taping, it hasn't been seen. I kept expecting someone else to grab it--King John, perhaps--and have yet another bystander accidently brought forward in time.

This episode perpetuates the myth of the Magna Carta--that it ensured freedoms for the common man. Actually, the only people that benefited from the Magna Carta were the barons--which is why they fought so hard for it. They also kept referring to King John "signing" it--which would have been difficult, since he never learned to write--but at the end, they corrected this error and showed him sealing it with the royal seal.

"Kill Two by Two" opens with Tony tumbling into the scene and injuring his ankle. What I find astonishing is that they haven't had a whole plethora of sprains, strains, and breaks.

Tony's injury can't seem to settle down. First off, it's his left ankle, and it's his left ankle that the elderly Japanese sergeant tapes up. When the lieutenant orders Tony to get up and walk out of the hut, the tape is on his right foot. It stays on the right through the stick fight, then Tony and Doug are given an hour to try and run before the lieutenant follows them. When we see Tony arranging the booby trap with the grenade, he pulls sticky tape off of his left ankle, and it seems to stay left for the rest of the show.

The tech crew, who are of course watching while they try to get a fix, wonder why the two don't simply hole up somewhere and wait to be located and removed. General Kirk says something along the lines of, "They've gotten involved. They're young men and they've involved themselves." Nice answer, but the same question could have been asked on nearly every adventure they've had so far. Why wait until this one?

Ann narrows down the possible islands to two (although if she'd been listening more carefully, the lieutenant said distinctly that they were on the smallest island in the cluster). However, by the time the Japanese doctor from the consulate arrives, they seem to have made up their minds; instead of saying, "We think that it's this island or that island," General Kirk says flatly, "It is this island" and the doctor agrees with him.

Once again, needing an outside authority, they manage to locate one and bring him to the complex in good time; not to mention telling him all about their top-secret project.

Having the doctor turn out to be the lieutenant's father gave things an interesting twist and added a lot of tension.

This episode also gave Tony and Doug plenty of opportunity to show friendship and courage: Tony insisting that Doug leave him behind, and Doug refusing to do so. I also liked Doug snapping at Tony, "Stay here and don't move. No false heroics!" Tony, surprisingly enough, actually listened to him.

When Doug was lying on some sacks in the supply section of the hut, waiting for the men to leave, he looked as if he'd just settled down for a nap.

The Japanese doctor had insisted on the tech crew pulling his son into the future, and they reluctantly agreed. Once they got a fix on Tony and Doug, however, Kirk asked which was the stronger fix, and Ann snapped, "They're both the same." I suspect that she was actually saying, "If you're going to abandon one of them, you pick which one!"

I read a summary of this over at TV.com, and I have the impression that that person watched a different version. It said that the lieutenant involved them in a series of sadistic games; I only saw one fight, and one extended "chase". It also said that the lieutenant ended up commiting seppuku while his father watched. It looked as though he were going to do so, but he gave Doug a last chance to take a shot at him, and then he ended up shot by an American sergeant. No suicide.

I also noticed that the elderly sergeant, who had urged him to kill himself, surrendered to the Americans without hesitation.

I would like to have seen the reaction of the Americans and the Japanese, when Tony and Doug vanished before their eyes.

"Visitors From Beyond the Stars" was a rather wild one, although given the premise of the show, I suppose that it's a matter of degree.

My tape of this one started a little after the show began, so I missed a bit. It sounded as though Doug was dating the time to around 2068--but when they got down to Earth, it was in the 1880's or thereabouts. Perhaps Doug was estimating what year that Earth would have the level of technology that they were looking at.

The aliens said that they were raiding for protein. I wonder how many people besides myself thought that they meant human protein. After all, in the 1800's people had not yet started using added chemical preservatives and such to their food, and therefore would still be fairly tasty....

I wish Tony or Doug had commented along the lines of, "If you're so technologically superior, why do you still need to steal food?"

Tony recognized that Doug had been "taken over" by the aliens, but he did not react as hard as I would have expected.

At the beginning, the aliens demonstrated their "superior" teleportation abilities--quietly vanishing and reappearing. For the rest of the show, they would do so using messy, explosive bursts.

I really liked the way they had the sheriff's behavior evolve. First he brushed off Tony as a man with a wild story. After a portion of the town blew up, he saw Tony as a man with a wild story and explosives. After Tony forced him to go with him, he regarded Tony flatly as a madman. Faced with proof, he planned at first to simply run away, then, realizing how desperate the situation was, he fell in whole-heartedly with Tony's plans.

That tavern owner was a real weasel, wasn't he? (Actually, I'm probably insulting weasels the world over.) His attitude seemed to be, "Do whatever you want as long as you leave me alone." Even when he was being so obsequious, he was trying to keep back things for himself. It seemed rather silly of the sheriff, who must have known what he was like, to trust him to be their look-out. Perhaps all the other men had either run off or had been taken over at that point. All of them seemed to disappear after being ordered to collect food.

The aliens seemed to have bulletproof suits on. Tony didn't, and went diving off to the side when the man in the bar opened fire on them. However, Doug just stood there. Did being taken over make him bulletproof, too?

The aliens would have saved themselves a lot of trouble if they'd taken Tony over, too.

Those aliens seemed to be awfully...robotic. After Tony managed to smash their power device, they didn't act angry or upset. They weren't even disconcerted. They just stepped away, held a brief conversation, and quietly left.

Roughly a hundred years in the future, two more aliens showed up, wanting to know what happened to their lost spaceship. They may have developed beyond the need to raid for food, but they are still arrogant, self-centered, impatient, and refuse to listen to reason. When the tech crew failed to give them instant proof that Earth was not responsible for the disappearance, one of the aliens basically threw a tantrum. (Kind of like those old margarine commercials--"It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature!")

Struggling (over the effects of the tantrum) to focus the Tunnel and show the aliens their proof, Ann suddenly cringes away and cries, "I can't! I can't!" Fine time to have a panic attack, and seemed utterly pointless.

We're left with the question--what did happen to the aliens? Was that little power device so important that they couldn't properly run the ship without it? Having failed in their mission, did they decide to kill themselves? If that was the case, then Earth was indeed responsible for the disappearance...heh, heh, heh.

All in all, I think that I preferred the ghost story to the aliens. At least it was an Earth ghost.

When Tony and Doug fall into the scene in front of the villa, it looks like a bright fall afternoon. They turn around and look across the way, and see soldiers clambering around in snow.

After entering the basement of the villa, a bombardment knocks part of the ceiling loose. Tony and Doug are knocked out, and Nero's tomb (with "Nero" conveniently spelled out in English lettering for the audience) is opened up. A sword rises from the tomb, and comes to take a poke at Tony, who obligingly rolls face up, even though he's still unconcious. This might be plausible, but a few moments later Doug does the same thing--only he had a heavy beam lying across him which should have prevented his moving at all.

Tony and Doug manage to escape the invading Germans by more or less falling into a secret passage into some ancient catacombs. In the darkness, they manage to come across a table, a box of matches, and a candlestick. Tony questions this, and Doug speculates that someone must have been there recently. Problem is, who? The owner of the villa, Count Galba, didn't know anything about the secret passages.

They played rather fast and loose with the supernatural aspects. The title of the show is "The Ghost of Nero", but the tech crew and the specialist they call in (who, once again, just happens to be very close by Tic Toc Base) keep referring to a poltergeist. A poltergeist, strictly speaking, is not considered a ghost, but an energy force, and the one common factor in poltergeist phenomenon is the presence of a child or children close to the age of puberty. Tony Newman may be regarded as a youthful prodigy, but I think that he's a bit past puberty at this point.

They also played around with historical fact, although that's not surprising. Nero died outside of Rome, but not that far outside; he had not fled to a "northern province". Also, he was not killed--he killed himself to avoid execution, and his final words--in Latin--were along the lines of "What an artist dies in me!" And does it seem likely that Galba's family (Galba was 70 when he became Emperor, and died just a few months later) would build a home right over Nero's tomb? And if they had, you'd think that Nero would have been roused out long before this.

Oddly enough, Doug twice managed to physically connect with the ghost--once by smacking it with a candlabra (with an audible "thunk") and once with a punch that knocked the ghost onto the sofa cushion.

The German soldier who was possessed started giggling maniacally, and then began "raving" about being Nero and killing Galba. The young Italian didn't seem much different, except that he referred to "Huns" rather than Germans (and by the way, I believe that the actual Huns attacked Rome long, long after Nero was gone). Tony, on the other hand, looked really menacing. I don't know if it was his expression, or the expert light and shading, or both, but he really looked scary. I also liked how he picked up a fallen bell, and started ringing it over and over, warning Doug and the Count that something was coming....

BTW, why didn't Doug and the Count hear Tony when he called out to them?

The tech crew attempted to exorcise Tony with a million volts of energy. That seems just a tad excessive. They also said that it would be for a microsecond, but it looked as though Tony were effected a lot longer than that. Pulling Nero into the Tunnel provided them with a lot of excitement--even more than the alien "tantrum" of the previous episode.

Having Nero possess a young Italian--who turned out to be Mussolini--was a nifty twist, but I wish that they had shown it a little differently. The Italian makes a comment about driving out the "Huns". Tony looks at him carefully, and then asks him his name. Tony and Doug are left giving each other a significant look. I think that it would have been better if Doug had been the one that spoke. Tony, earlier on, had been adamant that, whatever was going on, it was not supernatural, and in point of fact he never saw anything to convince him otherwise. He was knocked out by the "possession", and didn't remember anything about it. (And BTW, he seemed to recover pretty quickly, considering that the tech crew thought that he was going to die.) All of the physical phenomenon was witnessed by Doug and the Count--Tony was never present. It would have been interesting to end the episode with Tony and Doug arguing about what really happened.

"Walls of Jericho" was a visual treat; very well done for its time.

Over at TV.com, the commentary for this episode included the observation that it was odd for Dr. Ann MacGregor to be so flatly skeptical of the miraculous aspects of this adventure, considering that in the previous episode she had witnessed (directly as well as second-hand) a variety of supernatural phenomena. While General Kirk takes the miracles for granted, and a wide-eyed Dr. Swain says "I've always wanted to believe," Dr. MacGregor remains smugly, scornfully skeptical. Even at the end, with the walls crashing down and a whirling cloud of dust forming out of nowhere, she grimly maintains that it could be a natural phenomenon.

When Ann is about to override everyone else, including the general, and yank Tony and Rahab out of danger, the console suddenly explodes with smoke and sparks. It's never happened before. When they ask themselves how it could have happened, Dr. Swain mutters, "Heaven knows." Wonder if he meant that literally? It seemed to fly right over Ann's head; it would have been fun if she'd given him a nasty look.

Tony and Doug really seem to be trying to get into the spirit of the thing; they begin speaking very portentously (especially Tony). Even when he's not quoting, his phrasing is stiff and solomn.

Tony seems to be the Biblical scholar. Doug relies on him for necessary information.

I thought at first that it was rather peculiar that the sister of the city's best known "bad woman" would be considered a worthy virgin bride for their god, Chemosh. After thinking about it, I thought (cynically) that maybe it wasn't so strange. After all, the wealthy and powerful families would probably be willing to donate to the temple to ensure that their daughters would not be "honored".

I noticed a couple different pronunciations for the word "Chemosh", and at least three different pronunciations of "Rahab".

The Hand of God shows in this episode in many ways. Doug is captured and put on the rack, as he was in Troy. Unlike most instances where the boys are being knocked around, we actually see him reacting and crying out in pain (giving Ann a chance to emote). The torture seems much worse than it was in Troy, yet, while in Troy we saw him staggering out of the room after Tony freed him, here he more or less jumps up and strolls out. Tony asked him if he'd be able to walk, and he said that he was all right.

After finding Tony in her home, Rahab gives a ring to her servant for her silence. The servant waspishly states that Rahab does not need to buy her loyalty. However, watching her expression as she admired the ring on her hand, you just knew that she was going to betray them later on.

They followed the story from the Bible pretty closely, adding information that would not alter the plot. The Bible never states why Rahab, a kind and foresighted woman, took up the profession of harlot. Here, we find that her father, a famous architect, had been blinded by the king after designing his palace, forcing her to sell herself to support her family.

It's interesting to see how overtly sexual they made Rahab, without mentioning sex at all. Rahab only speaks of "waiting on" brutal men, as though she is only serving them tea. Yet her bright, loose clothing makes her stand out like neon. Rahab dislikes her life, yet is so accustomed to it that she can easily make use of it to distract the soldiers from Tony and Doug, first down on the street, then on the roof of her home. I was a little shocked when the captain pulled Rahab into a concealed area of the roof, but all he did was embrace her and promise to come back later. He really should have been suspicious when Rahab told him, "Not here." There was only a guard or two on the roof across the way, and she had been embracing him down on the public street with all of his men standing right beside them.

Of course, they had to make the ending more exciting by having Tony and Rahab captured, leading Ann to cry out, "Something's gone wrong! That's not in the Bible!"

Was Tony trying to be mystical or just mean? At the end, he tells Rahab to go to her house where she will be safe. She asks him if he will be with her, and he replies "Always". Then he vanishes. Hmmmm. Shades of Obi-wan Kenobi....

I think that "Idol Of Death" is (so far) the most disturbing episode that I've seen. Considering that virtually all of them deal with tragic circumstances, that's saying something.

Doug starts it off by observing that they've landed in the middle of the biggest bloodbath in history. It's upsetting to watch these invaders, speaking so scornfully of the Indian "savages" while making it quite clear who the real savages are.

The tech crew are upset that Tony and Doug are attempting to prevent the inevitable, while admitting that if they were there, they would probably try to do the same. I rather think that I would, too.

The chieftain's wife, grimly silent while she herself is threatened, caves in when she hears her son scream. However, the son shows no indication afterwards that he has been hurt at all. Did he simply scream in fear?

The young man--who is hardly more than a boy--admits that he has had no training whatsoever for being a chief. This presumably means that he has had little or no training in combat, either. When the elderly servant gives him the chance to murder one of the soldiers following them, he cringes away from the knife, and the servant deals with the soldier himself. Tony then chews the boy out, stating that it was his duty to do the killing. I think that this scene bothered me most of all.

It's so convenient that Tic Toc base has all these specialists so close at hand, ready to be hauled in at need. They quickly discover that this particular specialist is disreputable, but they're stuck with him. I'm surprised that they didn't at least try to find someone else.

Tony acquired a crossbow, which promptly broke after he used it once. He had a good opportunity to grab another one, but passed it up.

The specialist made a deal with the tech crew to bring forward the mask that everyone was after. The usual glitch in the console occurred, letting them grab the mask alone without touching Doug or Tony. This caused a disturbance in the cave. They then came up with a trick that I've never seen used before--simply freezing the scene until they can fix it.

The specialist has seized the mask, and intends keeping it at whatever cost. The tech crew has stated that they must send it back to save Tony and Doug, yet he refuses. However, at the last, he decides that if he can't have it, they can't either, and throws it back into the Tunnel--which is just what they wanted him to do!

I liked the ending. The Spanish captain has forgotten about Cortez, Spain, the mask,conquest and glory, and is completely fixated on the pile of gold that had been with the mask. The young chief, who has found his nerve in the last several hours, wants to fight with the captain for vengeance, but, seeing him scrabbling in the
dirt, finally turns away in disgust.

With "Billy the Kid" I was glad that they didn't try to glamorize Billy. In point of fact, so far they haven't glamorized anything.

Tony and Doug fall into the town of Lincoln right as a group of rowdies are riding in. They stumble into the sheriff's office, where the deputy seems utterly unconcerned. Perhaps syndication cut out a reason why the deputy didn't think there was any danger, but considering that he had Billy the Kid locked up, you'd think that he had great reason to be nervous. Or didn't he actually know just who it was in the jail cell?

Billy starts poking fun at Tony and Doug's odd clothing, yanking Doug's tie loose in the process. When they were distracted by the approach of some of the townsmen, Doug automatically tidied himself back up. I loved it.

Billy put his coat and hat on Tony and shoved him out the door, hoping that the townsmen would shoot him by mistake. I don't recall hearing a single shot outside, and Tony and Doug made their escape without any trouble.

The tech crew were stunned when Doug apparently killed Billy. This is the first time that they've really shown concern about messing around with history (although they may have done so in the Pearl Harbor episode that I missed). They also, apparently for the first time, really had problems trying for a retrieve, the power being too low. Why haven't they had this problem on a regular basis? It makes sense that they would need to wait for the power to build back up.

Tony made it quite clear that he was getting hungry. They never were able to do anything about it in this episode. Wonder just how long they've gone without eating?

Tony and Doug have both had to kill people previously, in self defence and in defence of each other. Doug seemed really bothered that he had killed Billy. Was it just because of the apparent alteration of history? I liked how, faced with imminent peril, he still smiled in relief that he had not killed the Kid.

Billy's a tough customer. It took the two of them some time to subdue him. (They also need to learn a more efficient way of tying a man up.)

The whole mistaken identity bit could have been avoided if it had been Doug that went to search for Pat Garrett.

That bit with Tony and Pat Garrett was confusing. Pat came right up to the cell bars, looked closely at Tony, and addressed him as Billy. I thought at first that he had decided to throw Tony to the wolves in order to avoid trouble with the mob, but just a few minutes later he let Tony out and proved, by his lack of a heavy tan or burn on the back of his neck, that he could not have been long in the area, and therefore could not be Billy. I should have thought that the difference in hair color would have been an easier giveaway.

When the stampede started, I thought that Doug was going to be caught up in it.

I liked how Pat Garrett was portrayed, over all. Brave, intrepid, clever at setting up a stampede to disperse the mob. When Tony insisted on going back into danger to find his friend, Pat yelled after him that he would need someone to look after him, then muttered to himself, "And it looks like I'm elected," and followed.

Twice during the show, with Tony and then with Billy, guns were shot out of their hands without causing them any harm whatsoever.

I wonder why the mob didn't gather again when they knew that Pat had the real Billy in custody. No explanation of how Billy got away, to be killed by Garrett roughly three months later.

Encore Action, a pay cable channel, was running Time Tunnel until fairly recently. Without commercials.
And, it's still called "20th Century Fox."

With "Pirates of Deadman's Island" I couldn't believe how much action they crammed into it.

While facing the pirate captain to learn their fate, Doug excuses Tony's temper, saying that it's because they've been locked up so long without food or water. (Considering that they were hungry in the previous episode, they must be famished by now.) I don't know if there was a syndication cut here, but there is no indication of just how long they were locked up. If it was a decent length of time, why didn't the tech crew whisk them out of there?

The captain tried to ascertain if they had wealthy relatives who would ransom them, giving Tony a great line: "I have some relatives in Philadelphia. The trouble is, they haven't been born yet."

The guys must have gotten really frustrated in this one. They escape, they get caught, they escape again, they get caught again, they escape again...Tony ended up getting shot in the head during the (I think) fourth escape--the same place that he was shot some episodes earlier. (The man must have temples made of granite.) At the time, neither Doug nor Armando reacted very hard to the idea of Tony being dead, but of course Doug had the boy to worry about.

Suffering from a hard blow to the head, Tony's lucky that he didn't drown while swimming out to the American ship. And perhaps it's the nature of the sweater, but while Tony's head was dripping when they hauled him on board, his sweater looked dry.

Doug and Armando were in a cabin below deck; the Captain was up above. Since the tech crew were focused on Doug, how could they possibly have pulled the Captain into the Tunnel? The reason, of course, was to give the tech crew and the security people a bit of light exercize and Ann MacGregor the chance to scream and struggle and generally act like a helpless twit.

BTW, when they accidently transported the Captain, they mentioned that it would take several minutes to build the power back up to send him back. Actually, it only took a few minutes to both bring the power back up, and repair the damage that the Captain caused to the console. Yet, in the previous episode, it took them hours to get back to full power.

The whole business of Doug being injured was fishy. Having managed to transfer back to the island, there is an explosion behind them and Doug is hurtled to the ground, with a strong implication that he's been hit by shrapnel from the explosion. Armando inexplicably gets transferred to the American ship (right on a bunk--how thoughtful) and Doug is later found and retrieved by the American crew. Tony puts his ear to Doug's chest and yells that there is no heartbeat. Back at the lab, there is a fairly lengthy stretch during which the retired doctor offers his services. Kirk only wants to send the medical bag (which, unless Tony is a trained medical technician, will be useless in Doug's case). Kirk finally agrees, the doctor gets a farewell hug from Ann, they power things up, and he goes. The doctor had suggested that Doug was having a "heart attack", but by the time he arrived, Doug's heart apparently started up again on his own. No damage to body or brain from being "dead" for several minutes. It's probably more plausible that Tony--rather in shock himself--missed hearing the heartbeat. The doctor gave Doug a few CC's of "something" which instantly cured his shock and brought him to his feet. It apparently also cured whatever had caused the shock, because Doug showed no sign of any injury except minor bruises and scrapes.

Doug may not have had a chance to think about Tony being dead, but he made up for it. I really liked how both of them reacted when Doug regained conciousness. They were both obviously overjoyed that the other was all right, but they didn't overplay it.

While treating Armando, the boy asked if it would hurt, and the doctor (naturally) lied and told him that it would not. After giving the shot, he said, "There, that didn't hurt much, did it?" Why not just tell him that it was going to sting a little? He had already bravely dealt with much worse pain.

I'd like to know why they took the wounded sailor back out of the cabin after having brought him in. What was the point?

Tony and Doug can say a lot without speaking a word. After realizing that the doctor had volunteered to spend the rest of his life in the wrong time, they stared at each other as if thinking about what the doctor would face, and wondering if they would be willing to do such a thing.

I should think that the American captain had quite enough of his mind to worry about. It wasn't very nice of them to freak him out by telling him the truth about themselves, even if they had some proof with the doctor's bag. (BTW, the chemicals in that bag won't last too long. The doctor is going to have fun learning about old remedies, and if he tries to explain newer methods, other doctors are going to think he is crazy.)

Something that I forgot to mention yesterday. In all the episodes that I've seen thus far, there is at least one obligatory fight scene. Sometimes they are with weapons, but usually just fists (and feet).

In the pirate episode, the captain decides to finish off Tony and Doug by forcing them to fight to the death with a small mountain on two legs. Surprisingly enough, the pirate audience did not interfere in the fight at all--perhaps they thought that it would be insulting to their champion. I really would like to know if they choreographed that fight for comic relief, or if it just turned out that way. Watching Tony literally climb up his opponent, sit on his shoulders, and beat him over the head--with absolutely no effect whatsoever--was hilarious.

When the pirate captain was transported forward, and the security people rushed in, one of them fired a shot. (At point blank range, and he missed. Some security man!) General Kirk shouted that they couldn't kill him in this time, that he had died 200 years ago. Elsewhere (at TV.com, I believe) someone comments about this, interpreting Kirk's words as meaning that they were literally unable to kill him in the future time, that he could only die in his own time. The person commented that if this were true, then it should also hold true for Tony and Doug, that they could not die outside of their own time. This is apparently not the case, because the tech crew is constantly fearful for Doug and Tony's lives. I think that Kirk's words could also be interpreted to mean that they must not kill the captain outside of his own time, because that might foul up history as it should be.

It's rather interesting how often one man, with primitive weaponry can get the better of a whole squad of well-armed security men.

"Chase Through Time" was a pretty exciting episode, with lots of tension. It's too bad that they couldn't make it more plausible.

In every single episode that I've seen up to now, the laboratory has always had a number of people working in it. And always, always, security men. They sure made it convenient for Neiman, didn't they, sending every person but one out of the room for a nap or a potty stop? The lack of even one security man is utterly absurd.

Whatever the glitch was that was killing Tony and Doug, lucky for them that it went quite slowly.

The idea seemed to be for Doug and Tony to find Nieman and force him to tell them about the bomb. So why on Earth did the tech crew snatch him away? Perhaps there was an explanation in a syndication cut--perhaps they grabbed him because he was on the verge of shooting Tony. And BTW, whatever happened to that gun?

A first for the Time Tunnel--it sends Tony and Doug forward in time, and they reappear on their feet! It would have been really fun to have them comment on that.

I'd like to know why they came up with the "beehive" motif. I did like how they underscored the background music with a buzzing tone.

It doesn't seem likely that an Earth with no animal life (apart from the humans) could continue. How would plants grow without the interaction of animals? Pollinization, fertilization, etc, etc, etc?

They probably wouldn't have gotten an answer, but I wish Tony or Doug had asked what caused the radical change in the human complexion.

Neiman appears to have been only a technician, not a scientist. Pretty arrogant of him to think that he could recreate the Time Tunnel. I notice that Doug did not bother to mention to him that they had discovered long since that a time capsule would not work. I guess that Neiman was on vacation during that particular episode.

I should make allowances for growing tension and an agitated state of mind, but for Tony to forget about a force field that could fry him...tsk, tsk.

I wish that they had come up with an explanation for why two extra people--who were standing well away from Tony, Doug, and Neiman--got pulled into the Tunnel. Ann discovered quickly that there was a fourth person in with them, but it took a relatively long time to notice the fifth.

They all ended up in the same place and time, but why were they all scattered? Tony and Doug, at least, should have been together, because the Tunnel took them together. Doug, BTW, looked as though he'd been having a pretty rough time of it. Tony only looked a little sweaty. The other three didn't look affected at all.

Gee, that quicksand looked awfully dry.

Tony and Doug are certainly influential. Just a bit of conversation with them is enough to make a person "defective" and thinking outside the hive.

The tech crew are trying to get focused enough to hear Neiman tell about the bomb. Ann, who up to now has been cool enough to refuse to seek safety, gets frantic and says, "I can't!" Ray calmly reaches over and hits a button, saying, "Stabilize!" There you go.

If there were such things as giant bees, wouldn't they need giant flowers to gather nectar?

Neiman never actually tells them where the bomb is. He says that they will never find it. (If he put it somewhere, it stands to reason that someone could find it. He tells them where the timer is. Kirk yanks it out and they are safe. However...there is still a nuclear bomb sitting somewhere in the depths of the complex.

I'd like to know whatever became of Zee and Votor. Did the Tunnel actually manage to send them home, or did they end up as gods in some primitive backwater? It seems to me that if they did get home, both now being "defective", they would be executed in short order.

I was surprised that they didn't dwell a little more on Neiman's shock when he realized that he was not getting picked up. I would have expected him to start shouting, "What about me?" Instead, he simply grabs some scrap of material and tries to hide from the bees (who, BTW, took an awfully long time to get to the hive, considering how loud they sounded).

"The Death Merchant" was an exciting episode, but it would have been even better if they'd made it more plausible. There were too many inconsistancies. I really think that they could have done an excellent Civil War episode without Machievelli thrown into it.

We're introduced to Machievelli, striding across the battlefield, muttering in Italian and accompanied by a Harlequin Dane (referred to as a mastiff throughout the show). My first thought on seeing him was that he looked like Blacula.

Once again, Tony is left behind, presumed dead. (And perhaps it was in a syndication cut, but Doug didn't react too hard to this, or when he found that Tony was still alive.) Back at the lab, a mournful Ann is "consoled" by the notion that there was always a good chance that one of them would die sooner or later. (Boy, that would really make me feel better!) No one mentioned the fact that if Tony were really dead, they should have lost the focus on him. Ray then mentions that they have lost the focus on him. Problem is, a short while later, instead of focusing on the living Doug, the Tunnel has gone back to look at the dead Tony. Why? And if he was actually dead, how would the Tunnel be able to aim that blast of energy that revived him?

Like Doug in the pirate episode, Tony, who has been injured badly enough to "die", revives completely with no signs of injury. They didn't even bandage his head.

Once awake and on his feet, the Rebel sergeant tosses a uniform at him, commenting that, while it wouldn't fit, it would be better than being taken for a spy. As a matter of fact, the uniform did fit--very well. So did Doug's.

So Machievelli, by a million-to-one chance, matches Doug's frequency in the Tunnel? The Tunnel is monitored constantly. How could it, of its own accord pick up a second "Doug" and send him through time without anyone noticing? And how is it that while Doug only travels with the clothes on his back, Machievelli managed to take along a very large trunk and a very large dog?

Tony has lost his memory, but by the time they all meet in Machievelli's cabin, he's become convinced that he's the courier, Andrews, and has some background information, as well. And while he's ranting at Doug, his voice intonations change subtly, as though he's trying to sound southern.

Doug's information about the dead courier--including how much money he had on him--plus his instant recognition of Tony--should have convinced the sergeant. It should also have given Tony some second thoughts.

Tony has convinced himself that Doug is responsible for killing "his" corporal, and plans to kill Doug in return. In spite of various chances, he fails to do so. Why? They should have either included a valid reason for keeping Doug a live prisoner (perhaps lost to syndication), or indicated that something in the back of Tony's mind kept him from killing his friend.

Why did the dog (and later, Machievelli) disappear with an explosion?

The most implausible point of all--Machievelli cannot be killed in the current time zone, because it is not his time zone. He stands smugly while the wounded sergeant fires several shots at point-blank range without effect. (BTW, Machievelli must have experienced this previously, because he shows no concern or surprise. We're not told how long he's been hanging around, but it must have been long enough to a) get over the shock of transfer, b) get a general notion of what's going on, c) study the situation long enough to determine that the South is technologically weaker, and d) come up with a plan to even things out.) If Machievelli cannot be killed outside of his own time, then logically Tony and Doug would never have been in any danger whatsoever in their travels, unless they happened to land around their own time. All those times that they had been injured--sometimes close to death--should have passed them by without harm.

Doug leaped to Tony's assistance--fighting against his "own" soldiers. This should have given Tony third thoughts, but it didn't. Stubborn isn't the word for it. (When Tony pulled his gun on Doug, I was really hoping that Doug would snarl, "Oh, not again!")

Machievelli seemed addicted to conflict. Even at the end, he can't resist egging the two on against each other.

I'm wondering if there was a syndication cut where Doug stealthily opened up one of the kegs to trail powder from the cave to the wagon. Otherwise, where did it all come from?

Tony's memory didn't return when he received a hard crack during his fight with the Union soldiers, but a relatively minor blow from Doug was sucessful. I was surprised that they zipped right past that moment of returning memory. Aside from that one short phrase, "What happened?" Tony might still have thought that he was a soldier, with Doug convincing him that Machievelli was trying to get them to kill each other for his entertainment. Well, maybe that got cut for syndication, too.

Machievelli disappeared with an explosion, and in the lab, it looked as if an earthquake had struck. There had been a similar, but lesser reaction when the dog had been transferred. In that case they had stated that it would be eight hours before they could get back up to power. In the second case, they were able to transfer Tony and Doug to safety in a matter of moments.

The tech crew claimed to have sent both the dog and Machievelli back to their own time. How do they know that they've done so? They sure haven't managed it with Tony and Doug!

Unless Tony and Doug go spinning around in that Tunnel for long periods of time (which I suppose is possible) the tech crew sure cleaned up the lab in very short order. Consoles had exploded, papers and people had been strewn everywhere, and seemingly moments later, all is tidy and tranquil.

I wonder if they gave any thought to bringing Machievelli back during the second season? The way they left it (unless there was yet another syndication cut) there's no reason why the Tunnel might not grab him again.

"Attack of the Barbarians" is the first episode that has one of them--Tony--consider resisting his fate. Actually, considering the maelstrom they've been whirling around in, with very little opportunity to rest, I'm surprised that they haven't thought about just parking it somewhere before. Of course, 13th century Mongolia in the middle of a power struggle would not be my first choice....

I suppose that it's logical that scientists involved with time travel studies would need to have a good working knowledge of history. On the other hand, there is a heck of a lot of history to be known. Funny how they always manage to know what they need to know, whereas the tech crew often falls back on history computers and books. Just glancing at a fallen shield, Tony knows that it is Oriental, and narrows it to Mongolian. Doug narrows it further--the Mongolian Khans.

Batu Khan states that Doug's fate is completely unimportant. Why did they bother dragging him along, then?

This is the third time a version of the rack is used as a torture device. I suppose that they used it because racking would not--at least not in the early stages--leave visible wounds that might distress the audience. I must say, Doug stands up to torture much better than Tony. He endured quite lengthy periods on the rack, and managed to walk away both times. Tony is on it for a relatively short period, passes out, stays unconcious for quite some time, and requires a fair period of convalescence.

Either some of the "getting to know you" scenes were cut for syndication, or Tony's romantic abilities rival those of Captain James T. Kirk. Well, I suppose that it has been a long time for him....

Unless it was cut, Doug could have pointed out to Tony that his feelings for Sarit might be the result of a very common phenomenon--a sick or injured patient falling for the person caring for him or her.

Marco Polo (very well played by a shockingly young John Saxon) said that Sarit was traveling with him to Europe to learn about European culture. Given the general indifference to and contempt of females--even royal females--this seems highly unlikely. A younger son, perhaps, but not a daughter. Sending her to marry someone would be a tiny bit more plausible--but to a total unknown? Surely there would be considerable negotiating first. And surely Sarit would be traveling with a royally large entourage, but we don't even see a single maid.

How lucky can you get? Batu's men manage to scale the fortress wall just where Tony and Sarit have elected to take their romantic moonlight walk.

On their way to rescue Sarit, Tony speaks of the possibility of staying at that place and time--with Sarit. Doug attempts to dissuade him with the quite silly argument that, in their time, Sarit would be 700 years dead. Tony understandably reacts with a "So what?" At that moment, they are in Sarit's place and time--it's not as if they are ghosts or such passing through without touching or reacting to their surroundings. It would have been more sensible for Doug to point out that Tony was a complete stranger--and a presumed commoner--while Sarit was a princess. He could also have asked, "Just how do you think you can stay?" It took Tony a long time to realize the obvious--that he has no control over the Time Tunnel. He has no way of knowing that a romantic Ann is contemplating leaving him there in that time zone. (I would like to know how Ann would have reacted if it had been Doug who thought that he had fallen in love. Just curious.)

Apparently the tech crew only worries about messing up history when it's convenient to do so. They blithely prepare to send some high impact weapons back to help Tony and Doug. It didn't occur to them that Marco and his people would probably have been afraid to use strange weapons that appeared by magic. It also didn't occur to them that they've never had much luck in sending inanimate objects back.

Tony and Doug prepared a whole bunch of home-made bombs. While they were grateful for the modern fuses that the tech crew managed to send back, they really didn't seem concerned about the bombs malfunctioning without proper fuses. (BTW, apparently sending things through the Tunnel makes sounds audible to Tony and Doug as well as the audience. They had their backs to the table when the fuses appeared, then suddenly turned to look.)

I suppose that I should make allowances for Tony being in love--or thinking that he's in love--but he really seems to have a low opinion of Doug's integrity. He seems surprised that Doug sprang to his assistance on the fort wall, saving his life, after they'd been arguing about Sarit.

Being made in the mid-Sixties, I suppose that they had to go easy on the romance--but Tony and Sarit's "passion" comes across as rather tepid. Tony accepts the hopelessness of it without even a "...but I wish...." Sarit refers to Tony as "my stranger" and comments that she is "pleased" by his concern for her safety. During her conversation with Marco, she makes a token protest about having to ignore her own desires to obey those of her father, then submits to her duty. She and Tony make their farewells without even a kiss.

Those Mongols were a tough bunch. Faced with an unknown, frightfully damaging weapon, it took them a long time to decide to turn back.

"Merlin the Magician" is described elsewhere as being somewhat "fey". He is also obnoxious. A show-off, and oh-so-superior, he seems quite contemptuous of the mortals he has to deal with.

In the opening, he freezes everyone in the lab, looks scornfully around at the equipment, fetches Doug and Tony in to yak at them, then dismisses them, saying that they will not remember. Then what was the point of the whole exercise? And why does he find it necessary to use them at all? We're never given a real answer to that question.

In most, if not all, "histories" of Arthur and Merlin, it is understood that Merlin has been Arthur's mentor and tutor since early youth. In this episode, Arthur is a young man--actually an uncrowned King, since his father is dead--and knows nothing of Merlin.

Arthur is a pretty good fighter. Knocks that spear out of Tony's hands with no trouble at all. On the other hand, it took him quite some time to notice that Tony and Doug were not Vikings, in spite of their radically different clothing.

I had wondered in the previous episode how Ann would react to the notion of Doug, rather than Tony, falling in love with someone. This episode gives more food for thought. In several episodes, Tony has been presumed dead, and while Ann has been distressed, she grimly carries on. Here, where Doug is apparently killed before their eyes, she walks like a sleepwalker into the Tunnel, as if trying to physically reach him. (Ray walks in, too, but I had the impression that he wanted to be close in case Ann collapsed completely.) When Kirk speaks of reestablishing the focus, she mutters indifferently, "What's the point? Doug's dead." Kirk has to remind her that Tony is still alive and kicking.

Since the Vikings were planning to kill them all along, what was the point of capturing them? And what was the point of imprisoning Arthur and Tony separately? And what was the point of keeping a lit torch in Tony's cell? I hardly think that the Vikings would be concerned with providing their prisoner with a night light.

Once Tony and Arthur slip into the secret room, we see a Viking hiding close by, who has seen the whole thing. Why didn't he follow them immediately? Arthur was in no shape for a fight.

It was nice seeing Doug getting the attention from the girl for a change, even if it didn't last long. Merlin once again displays his contempt for the mortals, addressing the princess as "girl" and treating her like a servant, and refusing to properly explain what's going on. And he shows off again, too--rather than simply heal Doug, he goes about it obliquely, acting as though he is forcing a badly wounded man to rise and get to work, only then letting them see that the injury has been taken care of. And there is no reason why he could not have properly introduced himself, rather than waiting until the last instant before disappearing.

Merlin also seems fond of bellowing, "NO!" He does so at least three times. He does so at the tech lab, right as they are about to transfer Tony and Arthur. There's no real reason why he should have stopped them; they indicated that they were simply moving them to a safer spot, not taking them completely out of the picture. And again, there was no reason, other than his natural contempt, why he couldn't have simply explained to the tech crew what was going on. His claim that he didn't have time to waste was absurd. The Time Tunnel crew doesn't have time to waste; they are directly linked to Tony and Doug and they have to operate with the same time constraints that the travelers are under. Merlin, on the other hand, pops in and out of his own accord. There was no reason why he couldn't have taken all the time he needed for explainations, then gone back to the appropriate place in Arthur's time. And why didn't he merely freeze the console so that they couldn't use it, rather than rigging it to zap them if they disobeyed his orders?

I loved the interaction of Merlin and Kirk. Merlin asks his name and Kirk readily gives it. You can then see it dawn on Kirk that he is the one in charge and therefore should be the one asking questions.

Hmmmm. Guinevere might have quickly dumped him for Arthur, but she was obviously interested in Doug. Otherwise, why not send a servant to show him the way to the Viking-held castle? Of course, then they would have had to come up with another way to make her the obligatory lady-in-distress.

Wogan indicated that once he was king of England, he would use Guinevere as a diplomatic pawn, selling her to a British aristocrat in return for a pledge of loyalty. However, before he leaves the room, he gives her and the audience a hint (only a hint; this was a family show) that she might not be "undamaged goods" when she's bartered off.

Doug has been captured and chained up with Tony and Arthur; all seems lost. Presumably syndication cut out Doug telling the others about the identity of the strange old man they'd seen previously, becasue Tony suddenly asks, "So where is your Merlin now?" and Doug replies that he thought that he would have shown up by now. Wogan comes into the cell and orders one of his men to kill all three men, starting with Arthur. Arrows are distance weapons; you would not use them to kill men standing in chains just a few feet away. Why not just stab them?

Tony is apparently fed up with the whole mess; he shows no reaction whatsoever to his impending death. And when Merlin pops in at the last instant, Tony merely says, dryly, "You're a little late."

Merlin reverses time to save Arthur, but he apparently encapsulates and reverses only a tiny patch, because Arthur, Tony and Doug are all aware that Arthur was killed. They should have simply thought that Merlin showed up right before the Viking fired the arrow.

Interesting that the frightened Viking had the presence of mind to close and lock the cell door, but not to call for assistance.

Merlin tells them that he cannot "magic" them out of the cell because he's used up too much magic at the moment, and must conserve what's left for an emergency. Why did he waste magic getting them out of their bonds? Why not open them manually?

Watching Tony and Doug rig up their steam-pot explosive device reminded me of MacGyver.

Merlin has said repeatedly that men must carry out some of the tasks that will lead to Arthur being crowned king, but he is typically contemptuous of the force Doug manages to gather, saying that the Vikings will wipe them out. Vikings have no fear of "gentleman" warriors. He elects to use his hoarded magic to make them all Vikings, whom the real Vikings would fear. However, judging by the reaction of Doug and the warrior beside him, he has only changed their costumes. They are still British warriors. Dressing them like Vikings is not going to make them fight like Vikings, and presumably the real Vikings, faced with what they consider an equal foe, will fight that much harder.

Doug seems aware of how utterly ridiculous he looks in his horned helmet (and I understand that Vikings didn't actually have horned helmets). He promptly takes it off, and we don't see it again.

Arthur tells Tony that, with his knowledge of the castle, he can neutralize the Vikings' attempts at defence, but I couldn't see any sign that he actually did so. They were able to close the gate against the incoming British, and were able to spill hot oil or something down on them--it seemed quite flammable, and judging by the screams, quite effective.

When Tony was fighting against Wogan, the torch that got knocked to the floor seemed to appear and disappear as needed. In some of the shots it might have been out of sight behind an outcropping of wall, but we still should have seen its light flickering.

Arthur gets the girl in the end--of course!--and we see Merlin, Doug and Tony looking at them with fondly indulgent expressions, like a trio of uncles. Meanwhile, back at the lab, they gingerly experiment with the console and find that it's not going to blow up at them again. Merlin, who knows perfectly well who Tony and Doug are, seems utterly astonished when they vanish.

As with Machievelli, I wonder if they would have considered using Merlin again, if they'd been allowed their second season. (Having seen most of the season now, I'd really like to kick the twit who arbitrarily decided to shelve it. Even "Land of the Giants" got a second season, and, in retrospect, it seems incredibly silly compared to this show.)

I was not surprised to learn that Lee Meriwether considered "The Kidnappers" her favorite episode. Not only is she pretty much the center of attention, she actually gets to act with the lead actors!

Poor Tony and Doug ended up spinning around in the Tunnel for quite some time on this one.

I loved Ray's comment over the phone when they were trying to deal with the interference. "Check channels 100 to infinity. And be quick about it!" It seems to me that it would take quite some time to check to infinity....

I can see why OTT would have stunned General Kirk and Ray to get them out of his way, but what was the point of hitting Ann with it?

Ann would later tell Tony and Doug that one of their men had been killed by a shot from the "laser" OTT wore around his neck, but how did she know? Unless they cut it, there were no exclamations of "He's dead!", and after Ann was gone, Kirk ordered the man taken to the infirmary, and no one seemed overly concerned about it. Granted, they were worried about Ann, but even so....

Kirk thinks that the kidnapper looked like a time traveler from the future. Brilliant deduction, but just how did he arrive at it? The silver skin? And what's with all the silver skins, anyway? Did Irwin Allen have an overabundance of silver make-up to get rid of?

Having found a "computer card" that gave them coordinates, Kirk elects to use those coordinates to send Tony and Doug after Ann. If this is all it takes, why the heck don't they program coordinates for "Tic Toc Base, 1968" and have done with it?

Having landed "somewhere", Tony and Doug start looking around in confusion. This would have been a fine time for Kirk to use the vocal transmitter and give them a little information, but he didn't bother. They come across two people from earlier in Earth time: Cicero and Erasmus, who are acting like zombies. We find later that all of their knowledge and personality traits have been drained. What was the point of leaving their empty bodies around? Without mind power, how would the bodies move, anyway? Were they keeping them as half-live museum pieces?

When they finally do find Ann, Kirk, who has been watching what has been going on, makes the supremely silly move of announcing to all and sundry that they are about to retrieve the trio. If he had to warn them at all, why not wait until just a couple seconds before retrieval, instead of giving the aliens all that time to thwart them?

The Canopians are plant-like, getting nourishment from their sun--only Michael Ansara corrects Tony's use of "sunlight" and says that it's "Canopian-light." Well, Canopus is still a sun.

Ann's rather slow on the uptake; it takes her a while to realize that Tony is indicating that they pretend to eat their "nourishment cubes". Well, she had been drugged previously....

Trying to get to the transporter chamber, they come to a hall with two guards at either end. Tony deals with one guard--rather noisily. The second guard, only yards way, hears nothing.

Michael Ansara never indicates just why his planet is so fascinated with Earth. They seem to have a huge amount of information about it; why do they need to drain individuals? And why did they need to kidnap Ann in order to lure Tony and Doug to them? Why not just kidnap them direct, as they have been doing with other Earth people?

Showing the "emptied" body of Adolph Hitler provided an interesting little jolt.

I liked how Ansara looked so disconcerted when he realized that the trio had faked eating their cubes, and Doug's reply, "Why not? You lied to us."

I was glad that Tony came up with an explanation for why OTT was still roaming around when everyone else was dormant, but he also made a good point--when does the creature sleep? I also liked how they all pretended to be asleep standing up. If the Canopians slept that way, it made sense that they would think that everyone would sleep that way.

Tony and Doug could not have been looking too hard for that space/time converter--it was sitting quite openly on a shelf.

OTT indicated that he would be pleased to simply kill them--why? Was he jealous of them as fellow time travelers?

We knew, of course, that the Canopian time travel device would have to be wrecked, leaving Tony and Doug at the mercy of their own Tunnel, but what's to stop the Canopians from repairing it and continuing with their project?

More hints of Ann's feelings for Doug--it's his name she calls out first, it's his arms that she totters into when they find her. Doug has his arm around her as they are being led to Ansara's presence. Doug is the one who comes and talks with her when he's supposed to be looking for the converter. And at the end, she leaves him with a kiss. She kisses Tony, too, but it looked (to me), like a token kiss, just to avoid hurting his feelings. Seems fair. Tony gets nearly all of the female interactions on the rare occasions that they had women in the episode.

"Raiders From Outer Space." *Sigh* They could have done an interesting episode dealing with Egypt and the battles between the British and Arabs. They didn't need to put aliens into it. At least they made them look different this time; I was getting tired of the silver.

Shortly after Tony and Doug are taken prisoner, the tech crew prepares to retrieve them, even though it will mean taking all four. For some reason, they delay doing so, until Tony and Doug are on the verge of being shoved over a cliff, at which point the leader intervenes. When they finally do try a retrieval, the leader prevents them from doing so--somehow. He's also somehow able to catch the attention of the Tunnel, which normally focuses exclusively on Tony and Doug.

We discover that there are three types of aliens present: the Sackheads (Doug refers to them later as slaves) the Flyheads, and the Leader. The Leader's head looks as though everything got pushed over to one side. He probably has chronic problems with his neck.

Like all good television villains, the Leader cannot resist telling his captives what is going on. He's gonna conquer the world, starting with destroying London. This is all apparently a kind of "maturity" test, to see if he's worthy of becoming a Prince of his people.

The Leader arbitrarily decides to keep Doug in order to drain his mind of information, and kill Tony. If he's going to kill Tony anyway, why not drain his mind, too? He also cautions his minion to kill Tony with a dehydrating device, so that it will seem to any passers-by that Tony died of thirst. He's planning to conquor the world in two hours; why should he care what people think about the death of one stranger?

In trying to save Tony, the tech crew makes the alien guard vanish. Love to know where he ended up. Considering that he had a weapon with him, wherever he ended up, he could do a lot of damage.

The British captain saw the alien and Tony, but didn't react at all to the alien vanishing. He accused Tony of being an Arab spy and arranging the ambush that destroyed a lot of British soldiers. Tony must be getting very tired of having his motives misinterpreted.

Doug is pretty resistant to torture, and here he is quite resistant to the alien brain-drain device. Or perhaps the Leader took his own sweet time turning it up to full power; either way, Doug was left relatively unharmed by the time the tech crew got him out of there. (And lucky for him he showed up on the far side of the force field!)

The first time the tech crew tried using the Tunnel, the Leader told them not to interfere, or he would destroy them. Having gotten Doug out of there, the Leader puts off destroying them, instead sending them a large bomb as a deterrent against further interference. We later find out that he wants to make use of the Earth time device rather than his own for some reason. It doesn't occur to him that if he succeeded in conquering the world in the 19th century, it would not be likely that Earth would be able to create a Time Tunnel.

Having finally persuaded the Captain that there really are aliens about, they try to collect an army to come and attack the alien base. (They really manage to cram a lot of activity into two hours!) One troop of British is attacked, so they go on to the fort. This also is attacked and overcome, using a lot of battle footage from some movie or other. There is a fun moment during the hand-to-hand combat: Tony has been knocked out and is lying near barrels of gunpowder with a smoldering bomb right next to them. Doug, in the midst of a fight, takes the time to glance sideways and see what's going on. Of course he promptly subdues his opponent, springs off the staircase, and hurls the bomb away just in time.

Tony and Doug persuade the Captain that the fort is lost, and that they must get back to the alien base. Wonder what the other British soldiers felt about that Captain running away and leaving the rest of them? I don't really think that they would have accepted "I had to save the world from alien raiders," as a valid excuse.

The tech crew try yet again to interfere with the alien's plans, and he starts a countdown on the bomb. Tony, meanwhile, is captured trying to get rid of the force field, and is dragged inside to have his brain drained. The British captain pragmatically notes that they must continue to try destroying the base.

The Leader takes his time powering up his draining machine, so Tony doesn't have to try resisting it very long before Doug and the Captain come to the rescue. At some point, perhaps during a syndication cut, the Leader had informed Tony what was going on, because Tony was able to tell Doug about the bomb sent to the lab.

It takes Kirk a long time to realize that he can simply pick up the bomb (which seems extraordinarily light for its size) and send it back to the Leader using the Tunnel. However, if he hadn't waited until the last moment, the Leader could have just sent it back.

All heck breaks loose--the bomb shows up, one of the Sackheads attacks the Captain, and the Leader sets off his machinery. Having pulled Tony out of the machine, Doug shouts at him that two missiles have been launched, and then jumps back into the fray. I had the impression that he wanted Tony to do something about the missiles, but Tony, looking rather woozy, waded into the fight. Some machinery associated with the missiles got torn loose, but if the missiles had already been launched, I don't see how this could have affected anything. Tony, Doug, and the Captain manage to get out before everything explodes. They don't really run very far, but they didn't need to--the explosion really wasn't very big. And what just happened to the missiles? And what's to stop the aliens from sending another potential Prince to Earth to prove his manhood by conquering the world?

The captain says nothing about trying to explain what happened to anyone else. He says that he will try to join up with Gordon's forces. I was expecting Tony or Doug to say something, or at least give each other a Significant Look, but they simply said cheerfully that they would go along with him. General Gordon ended up being massacred. Either that Captain was headed to a nasty death, or he would arrive on the scene too late.

"Town of Terror", the last of the series. Once again, they came up with a different make-up for the aliens. I do wonder why they crammed three of the four alien episodes back to back? Why not space them a bit?

Having emerged in a rather high-tech looking basement, Tony and Doug are attacked by a man. Knocking him into a console of some sort, he collapses, and Tony states that he is dead. Even moments later, when the man gets up, Tony is adamant that the man had been dead. Even doctors are very careful about declaring a person dead; there is way too much room for error.

Why did the man get up, anyway, and why that dramatic disappearance? Throughout the rest of the show, whenever they knocked an alien down, he transformed into his true form, then vanished.

After the nice lady innkeeper froze them, the tech crew sought to help them. Ann spoke of doing a "lateral" transfer, since apparently they couldn't just pull them out. I guess "lateral" refers to a spacial transfer rather than a time transfer. They just moved them from one room to another, and it worked, but why did they think that simply moving them from point A to point B would snap them out of their frozen state?

Peeking back down in the basement, they see one of the aliens in his true form. Tony instantly identifies him as an android. Why would he think that? An android is a robot of humanoid appearance. Wouldn't it be more reasonable to assume that it was a live alien? They've met so many of them, after all. Apparently they are androids--"Andro 1", "Andro Leader", etc, but in that case, why do they need oxygen? The aliens certainly talk as though they are personally involved; they don't speak of their "masters" needing the oxygen.

After the room that they're in is hermetically sealed and the oxygen is being drained, they attempt to smash open the window. Doug grabs a stool and swings it at the window, but he is very obviously pulling back to keep from hitting it too hard.

It was probably in one of those confounded syndication cuts, but I never heard an explanation for why Pete and Joan were unfrozen. Did they walk into town right after the mass freezing, but before the electromagnetic force field was set up?

Oh, yes, let's just trot over to the General Store and pick up some dynamite! And they were awfully casual about how they stored it, too. BTW, unless that town was being deliberately quaint, it looked awfully old-fashioned for 1978.

Just how did the aliens find out about the Tunnel? How did they know to send someone there? And all that alien did was touch that technician on the ear; how did he suddenly have that round device in his pocket?

Ann must be very delicate; she began reacting to the decrease in oxygen long before anyone else did. Note also that they started losing oxygen through the tunnel before the aliens even started the procedure.

You really can't blame Joan and Pete for getting nervous, after watching Tony and Doug talking to empty air, can you?

The whole business of the aliens and the townspeople was confusing. Sometimes it looked as though the aliens were taking on the form of one of the townspeople, leaving the people themselves standing frozen (and swaying gently). Yet at one point, in the General Store, one of the frozen men suddenly opened his eyes and moved in on Tony and Doug. When they managed to knock him down, he changed to alien form, then disappeared. Are all of those frozen people actually aliens on standby? And if so, where are the actual people?

There was a bit of (possibly unintentional) comic relief. After one of the aliens cornered Pete and Joan, he managed to freeze Pete, but Joan ran off. The alien stalked after her, wiggling his finger. Maybe it was supposed to look menacing, but it just looked like he should be saying, "Tickle, tickle, tickle!"

Having found Joan, it never seemed to occur to them (unless it was another !@##%&* syndication cut) to ask what happened to Pete.

Under the circumstances, it was pretty silly of them to leave Joan behind. She--and they--would have been much safer staying all together. Of course, that would have eliminated some of the excitement at the end.

The oxygen drain causes a fairly intense storm. Tony and Doug, who have been knocking down aliens right and left with the greatest of ease, observe that the aliens would not be able to manuver around in the wind. Pete managed it, though. So was Pete Pete, mentally locked into the aliens? Did they trade him for one of themselves on his way to the motel? When he gets knocked down in the basement, he transfers to alien form.

I loved how Doug "tested" Tony by punching him and knocking him down. When Tony asked what that was all about, Doug said that he had to check. I wish that he'd said, "Well, you didn't change form after hitting the floor; I guess that you're you!"

Having been grabbed by the Tunnel, they jump to a menage of scenes from the Titanic. Some say that this implies that Tony and Doug have gotten locked in a perpetual loop. (Certainly looks that way in syndication!) I'd love to know if that's how they intended to finish it for the season ender, or did they just cobble it together when they found out that they'd been canceled? It would have been nice if they'd been able to finally send them home, or do something to give a sense of closure.

Did Sam Beckett ever find his way home?

Yeah, I know it's OT, but what the hey...

Did Sam Beckett ever find his way home?

Closing slide from QL:Mirror Image.

---

Quote:

Dr. Sam Beckett

never returned home.

---

Seeing that Tony and Doug are in an apparent temporal loop that keeps them cycling through their adventures over and over again...I went back to the beginning, too.

During the Senator's introduction to Tic Toc Base, at one point they are looking down from a catwalk or some such. Down, down, down. Doug tells the Senator that each complex (there seems to be at least three or four) houses 12,000 people and has 800 stories. Just what are all those 32,000 to 48,000 people doing? During the whole series, we only see a relative handful of people working.

Good thing for the Senator that he has a good head for heights. Going down that weird elevator would have made a lot of people dizzy.

I realize that this was before they had men in the Tunnel requiring constant monitoring, but it still seemed odd that there was absolutely no one in the lab when Tony sneaked in to make his unauthorized jump.

Tony really didn't give much thought to the consequences of his jump. He was chilly on the deck of the Titanic, having forgotten to bring a jacket along. What if he had gotten dumped in the Arctic circle? In just a few minutes time, no one would have had to worry about him at all.

Lucky for that English schoolteacher that the guard in front of Tony's door kept his back turned to her while she was reeling from a sudden attack of her illness.

Doug was overjoyed to see the little French boy by one of the life boats, and helped lift him and his mother into it. You almost don't notice the little boy's father, pushed into the background...and left to die.

One thing Tony and Doug could have told the Captain: he should have seen to it that the life boats were filled to capacity. As I understand it, none of the life boats were filled completely, and of them all, only one went back to pick up any survivors in the water.

Several questions arose while I was watching "One way trip to the Moon."

Why would they feel that they needed a gun on board?

Wouldn't it have been safer to have extra space suits on hand, just in case? If one of those suits had something wrong with it, that would mean death for one of the four men.

Knowing that they were in for a bumpy landing on the moon, why were Tony and Doug standing up? Why not lie on the floor--where they ended up anyway?

Time paradox--shouldn't Beard have recognized Tony and Doug, since he was brought to Tic Toc base ten years earlier? Nothing that he said or did gave any hint of recognition. Of course, that might have been why he was so anxious to toss them off the ship.

Beard claimed that he would be able to survive on the moon for six months. It seems to be that six months of oxygen would take up an awful lot of space.

Tony leaves the ship in search of Doug, out on the cold, dark, silent moon. What possible reason could he have for turning off his intercom? The reason, of course, was so that Doug would have to leave the ship again. Having Tony fall or get trapped somewhere might have been cliche, but it would have been a heck of a lot more plausible than turning off the communications system.

Getting pulled off the moon, Tony and Doug are stripped of their space suits, leaving them standing on the airless surface of the moon for a long instant. Does this one even need a comment?

>Seeing that Tony and Doug are in an apparent >temporal loop that keeps them cycling through >their adventures over and over again...

I believe this particular temporal loop is called "reruns"

>Time paradox--shouldn't Beard have recognized >Tony and Doug, since he was brought to Tic Toc >base ten years earlier? Nothing that he said or >did gave any hint of recognition. Of course, that >might have been why he was so anxious to toss >them off the ship.

That was exactly my impression of the situation . . . Beard was a crafty little devil, but not crafty enough in the end.

Belated Kudos, BTW, D.K. for all the great Time Tunnel nits you've posted over the last month or so.

Thanks!

I do wonder if and when this will come out on DVD. I don't get that Action channel or whatever, and I really would like to see this uncut. Not to mention seeing those two episodes that I missed.

I watched the "Robin Hood" episode again last night. Still wonderfully campy. I noticed a couple new things.

Tony ends up landing inside a locked room in the dungeon. Luckily for him, it's the room that the guards put Robin and Doug into. Tony stealthily bars the door from the inside, then sneaks up and bashes one guard. Seizing the guard's sword, he leaps forward to confront the second guard (whom I persist in thinking of as "Ugly John" from M*A*S*H). At this point, it's fairly obvious that a stunt man is involved. It's also quite obvious that the man is grinning like a maniac. Makes it look as though Tony is really getting into the spirit of the thing. ("Have at ye, ye scurvy varlet!")

Near the end, when Robin and Co. are preparing to storm the castle, Doug and Tony prepare a chemical packet to provide covering smoke. They tie the packet to an arrow and give it to Robin (natch!) Robin notches the arrow in his bow and holds it steady while Friar Tuck sets fire to it. Ummmmm...just what did Friar Tuck use? It looked remarkably like a box of matches...which wouldn't be invented for hundreds of years!

Good news for Time Tunnel fans . . . the first fifteen episodes released on DVD January '06!

Oh, thank you!

BTW, how do you go about finding out information like that? What's the best site? I had been poking around without much result--although I found a site where I could, for $150 bucks or so, purchase a DVD set of "The Time Tunnel". I rather suspect that it is a pirated version.

I wonder, why only the first 15? To make more money?

I got the info from www.tvshowsondvd.com, where you can vote and sign up for different shows and then get e-mail for news of those shows DVD releases. And yeah, they probably released only the first 15 to make money, that's what they are in the business for after all.

Has anybody seen the failed pilot on DVD for the new Time Tunnel series that had a woman playing 'Toni Newman'? I've seen it at conventions, but I'm not sure I want to buy it. Anyone here ever seen it and like it?

I got the new DVD yesterday, and watched the first episode last night. It's beautifully clear.

I didn't notice much in the way of syndication cuts. One place that seemed to be extended was the first view of the actual Tunnel, shown from off to the side, so that you could see the outside walls of the Tunnel extending back. I don't really recall seeing it that way, so perhaps they zipped by it in syndication. Another place was at the end, where we see Jiggs shutting up the Senator's briefcase (which he had taken away from the Senator at the beginning). He then slapped some sort of sticker across the closed edges--presumably so that people could see if the briefcase was opened again before he exited the facility--then marched across the lab and delivered it to the senator.

Either the Senator was very tired, or there was a long stretch of time between Doug going into the Tunnel, and the viewport locating him, because as the picture comes into focus, we see the Senator has dozed off in his chair.

There is an odd picture on the back of the DVD box. Either it is a publicity still, or it was edited out, or it was from the other version of the pilot (which I haven't watched yet. It shows Tony sitting at a console, Ann standing and looking at him, with Doug standing behind her. The picture looks peculiar to me because, while Tony and Doug look normal, Ann's image looks almost like a painting of her rather than a photograph still. Or perhaps the effect is more that of a colorized black-and-white picture--except that it only effects Ann.

This is off the immediate topic, but I had just recently heard that the actors starring in these old T.V. shows (not actors in current or recent programs) are not getting any money from the sales of DVDs. In fact, I heard that Kent McCord (who is not getting anything from the DVDs of Adam 12) was requested to do some free publicity on behalf of the DVD!!!! McCord turned them down, of course. Whoever asked him had an incredible amount of gall. Does anyone besides me think that this is monstrously unfair? The actors are the ones that made the shows. Also, while this (hopefully) does not apply to everyone, surely some of those old actors could use the money. And this could well explain why there seems to be so little actor involvement in the bonus sections--why should they help add fun stuff to the discs when they're not getting anything out of it?

Unbelievable, D.K. I wasn't aware that actors weren't being paid for doing DVD Extras interviews. Surely these big monster companies (Paramount, 20th Century Fox, etc) could splurge for $1000 for a half-hour of interview time! Not to point fingers at any present-day big names, but actors and actresses now earn $10 million and even $20 million for a single film, so the studios shouldn't quibble over a very small payment. The interviews are one of the deciding factors for me when I consider buying a DVD of a series that I already have on video.

I watched the original pilot on the bonus side last night. It's the same story, just with a few things that got edited out. Also, because they didn't have a follow-up episode, the ending was different.

At the beginning, when the Senator has been dropped off and the car comes driving up, Doug gets out of the car, introduces himself, and says that he hopes they didn't keep the Senator waiting. This was a bit of polite nothing, as they had to have seen the plane land and take off, and they pulled up moments later.

(A nit for both versions: the elevator discs look as though they drop through the floor. They really should have blacked out the walls the way they did the floor, because the wall behind them doesn't move. And BTW, when Doug told the Senator to "hang on", I wondered if the Senator was thinking, "Hang on to what?" They had no rails, and in fact the elevator looked quite dangerous if you happened to have vertigo.)

After they come into the lab, Doug points out--but does not formally introduce--Ray Swain, the top man in electronics, and Ann MacGregor, electro-biologist (whatever that is).

During the scene where Althea visits Tony in his locked cabin, he asks her what time it is, and indicates that it is very important that he know the exact time. Althea consults a watch pinned on her dress, and tells him that it is six minutes after ten (Saturday night). She then looks on in surprise as Tony sets his fancy looking wristwatch. I believe that at that point in time, pocket watches were still the norm for men. In the edited version, we see Tony step away from Althea, holding his watch in his hand.

(Some more dual nits: the newspaper looks quite new, considering how old it actually was. Doug had tucked it carefully inside his jacket, but when he landed on the coal pile, it was lying beside him. When the ship struck the iceberg, none of the passengers in the piano lounge seemed to notice, although the captain certainly did. Also, Doug had pointed out that Tony's cabin was in the forward area that was ripped open by the iceberg. That was one of the reasons he was so anxious to get to the ship and get Tony out of the cabin, so that he would at least have a chance to save himself. However, it looked as though Tony and Doug had been imprisoned in the same cabin, which was undamaged after the collision.)

After Tony persuaded Althea to try and escape, they made their way out on deck. Tony helped her into a life vest, then said that he wanted to give her something. When she asked what, he said, "A 1968 wristwatch. I want you to have it." Althea said something like "Then it is real." Apparently the watch convinced her that he had been telling the truth about time travel.

They seem to have edited out a great deal of the "panic". There were a number of scenes showing people--mostly men, but some women--either falling or jumping overboard. They also showed a child or small woman sitting on the side of a lifeboat, and flipping backwards into the water, as a nearby woman reacted. The Senator commented that the tech crew seemed to have "created a monster". It was horrible to watch helplessly as people died.

I haven't seen the particular episode yet, but I believe that part of the ending was later used in the episode where Tony lands alone near Tic Toc Base some ten years before the present. The scene changes to a desert, and Tony suddenly pops in a couple of feet above the ground. A group of men, led by Jiggs without a mustache, surround him. Tony doesn't realize the difference in time, even when the men react in confusion. Doug drives up, wearing a silly looking bow tie, and also fails to recognize him. When Tony starts screaming at Doug to identify him, Doug just gives him an odd look and drives off. Tony breaks away and runs after him. In spite of the fact that he is unarmed and really has no place to run to in the middle of the desert, the men seemed prepared to shoot him. The tech crew manages to snag him out of there and somehows links him with Doug. Ann makes the comment, that is in the aired version, that "Wherever he is now, at least they're together." (I had thought that that comment sounded a little odd--shouldn't it have been, "Wherever they are now, at least they're together"? Now I know why. This also explains a continual peculiarity in the show--whenever it showed Tony and Doug floating the in the Tunnel, Doug invariably slid off to the side and vanished, while Tony continued on alone. Apparently they didn't want to waste more money filming another Tunnel sequence with the two of them continuously together.)

The final scenes were later re-used in the episode "Chase Through Time" where five of them got thrown back to 1 million years B.C. or thereabouts. The scenes of Tony fighting through the jungle, and finally meeting up with Doug are exactly the same, with the addition of Tony's comment that at least Doug recognizes him this time. He goes on to say something about the tech crew realizing what had happened and dealing with it. This explains why, in the "Chase through Time" episode, Doug ended up all sweaty and dirty, while Tony was relatively clean--Doug had been wandering in the jungle while Tony landed in the desert.

The credit listings were done to the same music as the opening, rather than the quiet closing music used during the series.

I can understand why they needed to edit out some stuff to get the pilot to a one-hour length for the series, but they really should have left in the introduction of Ray and Ann. During the whole series, we really have no idea what their doctorates are for.

I watched "One Way Trip to the Moon" a few days ago. It would seem that whoever cut the show for syndication did quite a good job of it, because I didn't really notice anything new on the DVD.

Can't say much for their security. How did that guy manage to smuggle a bomb onto the base? And I've noticed that those security men all seemed to be pretty lousy shots. The saboteur was about to kill the tech team when there is a gunshot from the door. Totally misses him. He whips around and manages to hit at least two of them.

BTW, if that guy had been paying a bit more attention, he would have left well enough alone. They were on the verge of pulling Tony and Doug from that place in time when the bomb went off. If they had done so, the focus would have shifted away from the Mars mission, and Beard could have sucessfully carried out his sabotage.

Couple more observations on the moon episode.

Why did the tech team waste time doing calculations to see if the spaceship could do a soft landing on the moon? It would have no effect on the decision of the mission commander.

They never really explained why they had to take off from the moon in 22 minutes. Presumably the movement of the moon would mess up their trajectory if they waited too long, but it really didn't make sense for them to think that they could accomplish everything in 22 minutes. It would have taken a good bit of time just to suit up, and the storage area seemed quite a distance from the ship. It would have made far more sense for them to wait twenty-four hours. That way, they wouldn't have to rush to get done, they would have time to check the repairs to the ship, and...oh, yes, they wouldn't have had to abandon 2 men to what they must have thought was certain death. They really should have abandoned the mission anyway, once they got rid of their sabateur. Having two men on a mission that calls for four is not a very good idea.


"End of the World". The first new episode for me, since I somehow missed taping it at home.

Unlike every other episode I've seen (except the alien episode set in Egypt), this showed the tech team and the Tunnel focusing on places away from Tony and Doug. It showed St. Petersburg, what they thought was South America, and England (or possibly Wales). If this had happened frequently during the series, it would have seemed more feasible, but obviously the only reason they did it was to show how wide-spread the panic over the comet was.

It seemed peculiar that no one, aside from the astronomer, seemed to know what the "thing" was. Everyone's heard of comets, and Haley's Comet was well known by that time. Mark Twain was born during an appearance of the comet, and was convinced that he would die when it came back. (He did.) I also found it peculiar that neither Tony nor Doug said anything along the lines of, "What are you idiots so scared of? It's just a comet! It was here 79 years ago, and it will be back 79 years from now!"

I was also surprised that the astronomer readily accepted Doug's theory that an invisible force out there would deflect the comment, and quickly helped set up an instrument to check it. I loved Doug's comment of the "crude" instrument, and the astronomer's indignant response that it was state-of-the-art equipment.

At one point, Blaine, down in the mind, was trying to rouse up his men, thinking that they were giving up. Actually, their reactions looked more as if they were running out of air, but later on they stopped choking and gasping.

After the sheriff had managed to free Tony, they both straightened up, and were promptly inundated by a fresh collapse, and the scene blacked out. They never explained just how they got out of that little mishap; it just showed the two of them staggering back into the mining office.

This seems to be the one episode where Jerry the Technician had more than a nominal role. He argued with the General (and almost got himself thrown out), he spent a lot of time at the consoles that are normally reserved for Ann and Ray. And he was the one who first realized, in spite of the others' denials, that the Tunnel had put them on a direct link with the comet, and it was effecting their equipment. He almost got dragged into the Tunnel, and almost died. And about that death scene...the General helped him up from the Tunnel's edge, and walked him to a chair, from which he then fell. Ann said that his heart had stopped from massive electrical shock. Massive shock stops the heart instantly, so he should have been "dead" beside the Tunnel. Presumably his heart had not stopped; it was only fibrilating, because Ann's quick jolt of electricity got him going again. (Electricity will not do anything for a flatline, dozens of television episodes to the contrary.) And what did they do after they managed to get his heart going? They heaved him to his feet and made him walk out of the room!

Doug dabbed at the soot on his face up on the hill, which didn't do much, but by the time he got back to the office, his face was clean.

Considering the damage done to the lab, they sure got that Tunnel up and running quickly.

I had the idea that it was going to be the effect of the Tunnel that deflected the comet, but apparently there really was something out there, and it effected the Tunnel.

Well, now I've seen every episode. "The Day the Sky Fell In" was the last one for me.

Pretty good episode, and, for obvious reasons, one of the most emotionally charged.

I guess that, faced with the unbelieveable, all you can do is ignore it. Two men appear from nowhere inside a closed room, and they simply accept that these men got on to the grounds of the Japanese consulate, got inside, got past the various people on the grounds, and walked into the main office--all without being noticed.

I loved Doug's line--accompanied by a disarming grin: "We're tourists!"

I don't blame Tony for wanting to grab the chance to see his father alive, but I was surprised that Doug made no attempt to be cautious about it.

A very nice touch: when Doug asked Tony if he would recognize his father, Tony described him as "a tall man". In point of fact, Commander Newman was not especially tall, but little-boy memories would see him that way.

I suppose that I've seen or read too many time-travel stories that deal with the psychological impact of being too close to yourself. Tony's reaction on seeing his father was handled pretty well, but I really think that seeing yourself walk into the room--even if you're expecting it--would still be a heckuva shock. Tony's reaction seemed more like, "Hey, look, there's me. Cute kid, wasn't I?"

BTW, Tony seemed to have the sort of freckles that fade out over time.

Trying to discuss an upcoming assault on Pearl Harbor while standing in a living room with dinner about to be served was awkward, to say the least. They should have tried for some more privacy.

I wonder if the Consulate men sent a message to Japan, telling them to toss out that so-called "truth serum". All it did was make men talk crazy. BTW, do people really recover from the use of such a drug so quickly?

When Doug and Tony managed to swing their chairs back to back to get untied, it was Doug's hands that were moving, but it was Doug's bonds that came undone first. Should have been Tony's, I think.

For one of the last times, Jerry the Technician got a fairly decent role, working at the console, discussing the situation, messing around with the bomb...maybe yanking that bomb into the Tunnel was the reason they tried to keep him away from the console in future episodes. It was odd--when Jerry was trying to disarm the bomb, he and the General both suddenly stepped away from it, and asked Ray if he could hold it there a little longer. Ray seemed to indicate that yes, they could, but then the bomb promptly disappeared.

When Tony got hit by flying debris, he fell down facing upward, but later it showed him regaining conciousness while lying face down.

The final scene between father and son was very well done, I thought. I liked how they helped the Commander put through the warning to the Enterprise (nice name!) himself, rather than having Doug do it. James Darren handled the emotional reactions quite well. I realize that Doug was anxious to get them out of there (although I'm not sure that either of them even noticed the bomb) but it seems to me that he could have shown a wee bit more sympathy--a pat on the shoulder, a grip of the arm, just something.

Volume 2 of the Time Tunnel is slated for release in June, I'm guessing this set will contain all the remaining episodes.

Cool!

I would like to know just what all the considerations are in releasing these DVDs. Time Tunnel came out in January, with the second one slated for June; six months. Seems reasonable. Same with M*A*S*H, Columbo, and Emergency! MacGyver seems to be coming out even quicker. Yet, I have been waiting forever, it seems, for the next releases of Barney Miller, Night Court (the full season, not just "The Best of--), Baa Baa Black Sheep and (guilty pleasure) T.J. Hooker.

Is it just that some take longer to put together, or are they watching the sales, or what?

BTW, I saw that, in the second release, there's supposed to be interviews! James Darren, Colbert (is it Colbert?) and Lee Meriweather. Great!

Actually, the complete Time Tunnel series has already been on DVD for some time by professional bootleggers, but it would probably cost you slightly more than the two officially releaed sets and wouldn't have the features such as the interviews.

Yes, I saw one offered somewhere--for $150 bucks!

I found a listing for a film called "Aliens From Another Planet" on the FOX Movie Channel, so I clicked to the channel. The film was actually a compilation film made up of three different episodes of the Time Tunnel. The drastic editing of the eps (to fit into a 90 minute format) made for an awful movie. I was also disappointed that 1 million B.C. was shown as having dinosaurs. I know that the Hammer film of 'One Million Years B.C." was popular around the time the show was made, but come on, how about a little bit more scientific accuracy!

Irwin Allen tried to revive the Time Tunnel format in the mid-seventies, with a made for TV movie. I'm not sure of the title, but I think it was called "The Time Travellers." It had two characters, different from Doug and Tony, travelling back to the great Chicago fire.

Apparently the Sci Fi Channel did an excellent job editing the episodes for syndication. So far I haven't found anything on the DVDs that was noticeably missing from my homemade tapes from the Sci Fi Channel. (Kinda disappointing, actually.)

Wow, that's hard to believe, considering how badly the Sci-Fi channel usually chops up its reruns. I also have all 30 episodes taped from the Sci-Fi channel. What's the running time for a typical episode on the DVD? For a show in the 1960's an episode should be about 51 minutes uncut.

I just did a time check of "Rendezvous With Yesterday" on my VCR copy taped off of the Sci-Fi channel. The total running time of the episode excluding commercials was approx. 45 and a half minutes. Is the DVD version longer? If it is and there are no missing scenes then a possible explanation might be that the Sci-Fi channel episodes were difitally compressed so that they would run at an imperceptably quicker rate than the original and thus end up with the shorter running times satisfactory to the modern-day scumsucking advertisers. However, the Sci-Fi channels usual modus operandi is to mercilessly hack the episode to pieces without rhyme or reason.

The Wikipedia article on the Time Tunnel TV series states that four episodes were actually filmed for the second season before the plug was pulled on the show. I find this highly unlikely.

Got the second half of the season on Tuesday. Included in the bonuses are an interview with Whit Bissel as well as Darren, Colbert, and Meriwether, an unaired pilot from 2002 (???) and a Time Tunnel "movie", which is presumably a compilation film.

BTW, in the Marco Polo episode, I had expressed disbelief that a princess would be sent on a journey with Europeans. Turns out that was actually based on fact. After being in Kublai Khan's court for seventeen years (!) Polo and Co. were finally permitted to return home. However, they first made a stop in Persia to drop off a Mongolian princess. It took them two years to get there, and by that time the groom-to-be had died, so she ended up marrying his son instead. (However, I still don't think that a princess would have been travelling without an entourage, so that nit still stands.)

Apparently Marco's tales of the wonders he had seen were a runaway bestseller in Europe--but everyone thought that it was fiction.

I rented volume 2, and wasn't impressed with the unaired pilot from 2002 in the least. The 'new' Tunnel completely lacked the granduer if that magnificent machine from the '60's, and the characters were bland, cookie-cut-outs. Even giving Tony Newman a sex change into an attractive blonde didn't do anything for me. I found the story a bit on the yawner side, and found myself checking my watch a couple times to see when this show would be over. I'm not sorry it wasn't picked up. Somehow they turned one of my favorite sci-fi elements, time travel, into something very average. And dressing them as soldiers that walk through a circular gateway just made it look like a rip-off of Stargate and not an update of Time Tunnel.
The interviews were okay, but not long enough. Whit Bissel is still alive and remembers the show? Bless him. Robert Colbert looked good, although he kept reminding me of Eddie Albert from Green Acres. But I'm still amazed how young James Darren and Lee Meriwether look-- incredible genes that don't show the passage of FORTY YEARS!
I'd originaly taped just 20 or so episodes of this series in the past, but now the DVDs make we want to go out and buy both volumes just so I can see every episode.
I think I know why we never see silver-skinned aliens in Star Trek-- Irwin Allen used up all of the silver paint in Hollywood with his Time Tunnel, Lost In Space, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea aliens, and the formula to make it was lost in 1970!

Okay, I'm OFFICIALLY blown away...
I just checked the Internet Movie Data Base to look up credits and birthdates for the stars, and just found out that Whit Bissel was born almost NINETY-SEVEN YEARS AGO!!! October, 25, 1909! Holy moley, that's amazing!
On a different note James Darren turned 70 this past June 8, and Robert Colbert will turn 75 next week, July 26.

And Lee Meriwether turn 71 this past May. I've always found her voice one of the sexiest, and was surprised it sounded virtually the ssme, when I saw her on the DVD extras.

Whit Bissell died in 1996.

Oops. I'd just assumed that he'd been interviewed for this DVD set. I suppose the other interviews are from the same time, as the background I believe is the same.

I checked a special I recorded some time ago, and it turns out the interviews are from 'The Fantasy Worlds of Irwin Allen', only expanded by several minutes each. I thought they seemed a little familiar...
I've been watching a bunch of episodes and came across an interesting fact (well, to me at least). The following is a list of actors that have appeared on the original Star Trek series (and I've listed their Trek character names). The sheer number surprises me because The Time Tunnel was produced by 20th Century Fox for ABC, and Trek was from Desilu/Paramount for NBC, and both shows had different casting directors and episode directors.
1. Mr.Lurry
2. Galt
3. Flavius Maximus
4. The Thasian
5. Lt.Palmer
6. Lt.Stiles
7. Lt.Lee Kelso
8. Kang
9. Koloth's first officer
10. Dr.Piper
11. Dr.Boyce
12. Commissioner Ferris
13. Stonn / Decius
14. Kodos / Karidian
15. Bela Oxmyx

And that's just from viewing half of the series, so there could be more.

I made a similar list for the "Two or More Projects Trek Alumni Were Involved In" just recently on the TOS board, which also listed actors who had appeared in "The Time Tunnel" and "Trek".

More "One Way Trip to the Moon"

Who in their right mind would design a spacesuit with a pop-out air hose? That air hose shouldn't hold even without Beard pulling it out.

D.K. asks about the gun on the moonship. Wasn't it *two* guns? Didn't both Doug and Tony have one?

How did Doug get his suit and tie back on at the end?

Newer mind that. How did Tony and Doug get cleaned up at the end of each episode, just before the next adventure? And stay shaven, and with neatly trimmed hair?
Here's a link that give more info about The Time Tunnel. Particularly why it was cancelled after one season.

I posted this over on the "Trouble With Tribbles" page, and wanted to do it here, too:

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quote:

Missed Opportunity Dept: When that episode was shot, Whit Bissell (Lurry) had come off The Time Tunnel. He played a character named General Heywood Kirk. Maybe Shatner could have had a line such as "He (Lurry) looks like an ancestor of mine." Which would have forged a link between Irwin Allen's sci-fi universe and Trek. Or, set Roddenberry and Co. up for possible legal ramifications. On second thought, forget I ever said anything...

---

It deserved to be renewed...
According to the "TV Party" link I've provided above, The Time Tunnel was renewed for a second season. Indeed, it was one of the few bright spots in a dismal year for ABC (for which dismal seasons were the norm in the 1960's, but let's not go there.) Some short-sighted imbecile convinced ABC to cancel Time Tunnel in favor of Custer Of The West. Never mind that Westerns were declining in 1967 (my words), Custer was in and Tunnel was out. Read the "TV Party" page for more; it's interesting stuff.

If you have the "American Life" channel on your cable system (I don't think it's available on Dish or DirecTV), Thursday is "Irwin Allen Night" (my words, not theirs). Lost In Space, Time Tunnel, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea and Land Of The Giants all run in a block (with some replays) from 8 p.m. through 2 a.m. ET. More here.

In "Death Trap" the role of Abe Lincoln is portrayed by veteran character actor Ford Rainey. Irwin Allen must have considered Rainey to be of prime presidential timbre. In addition to his portrayal of the Great Emancipator in this segment, Rainey plays the Chief Exec in two early epsiodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He also played the President in the Lost in Space pilot.
Sci-Fi TV fans may best remember Rainey from his later reccuring role as Steve Austin's father in The Six Million Dollar Man (as well as that show's spinoff The Bionic Woman).

According to the latest issue of Starlog(March,#363) which has an article about the "Time Tunnel,"(Secrets of the TT)the series was actually OKed for a second season(1967-1968)by ABC & would have been moved from Friday night to Wednesday night at 7:30.But,it was cancelled at the last minute & replaced by the western series "The Legend of Custer" which only lasted one season.The causes for the TT being axed were:decent but not top ratings,the expense of this costly show,& internal politcs at ABC.The article also goes on to state that of all of Irwin Allen's sf TV shows,his very favorite was the TT.

I read about this in the book Science Fiction Television Series. There were a few story treatments already written in preperation for the second season - one of them involved Doug and Tony appearing on the Marie Celeste during its fatal voyage.

I've been watching this on "American Life" when I get a chance. Too bad Tunnel runs just once, while Lost In Space and Voyage are run twice.
It seems that Drs. Swain and Mc Gregor, and Gen. Kirk are in the control room all the time. When do they eat, sleep, or go to the john?
Time Tunnel's ratings might have improved if ABC allowed it to continue on Wednesdays; they weren't that bad, even on Fridays. The Legend Of Custer was canned after one season, and got heavy criticism from Native American groups, years before the term "political correctness" was coined.

Hulu.com has several episodes of Time Tunnel, free for streaming (but with current commercials) along with lots of other old shows.

800 stories... that would seem to have taken quite a bit of time & resources to build, not to mention all the people who work there, you'd think the location would be pretty well known even if the exact work they were doing was secret.
Instead of open desert it should be an obviously well-guarded place.

All those thousands of people working there, presumably commuting (although I suppose some of those 800 stories could be living quarters), would seem to be a dead giveaway to where it is.

"There are 800 stories in the Time Tunnel, this has been one of them." That could have been the show's closing narration.

Ah the Time Tunnel. I've been watching my DVD's of this show lately. Anyway...

How come Tony and Doug always seem to turn up just before a major historial or mythical event (of course, the answer is so Irwin Allen could use stock footage from movies, but we nitpickers don't deal in reality)?

So, they can't get Tony and Doug back, but they can grab any other Joe Schmoe, it seems, and bring them to the Tunnel complex?

This concept of not being able to kill someone from the past, because they are already dead, baffles me. So, does that mean if you sent yourself to the 30th Century, you could live forever? Also, shouldn't this apply to Tony and Doug as well. If they are in the far future, long after their time, shouldn't they be immortal as well?

The Time Tunnel needs better security forces. How many times have they been held up by just one guy with one weapon (and sometimes that weapon is a sword, while they have guns)?

I have no problem with them bringing in outside experts to help. I guess said experts have to sign an agreement that states they cannot discuss what they have seen at the complex.

How come Ann McGregor is open to the idea of ghosts one week (Ghost Of Nero), but is a big skeptic the next (Walls Of Jericho). I think they should have reversed the order of those episodes.

One Way To the Moon raises some interesting questions. Since Tony and Doug know that Beard (one of the crew of the ship, is a traitor), doesn't that mean that they will report this, once they get home. So, Beard would be arrested and thus wouldn't be on the Mars mission. But if he's not on the mission, Tony and Doug can't find out he's a traitor and so... Arrgghhhh!! The infamous grandfather paradox!

Although this is taking place during the Cold War, no communist country is ever named. Beard and Brandon (the traitors in One Way To The Moon) refer to "the Organization". In Secret Weapon, although Tony and Doug are clearly behind the Iron Curtain, the country they are in is never named.

I like how they rescue the Dauphin in Reign of Terror, since history never records what became of him. Recorded events, like the execution of Marie Antoinette, they cannot stop. to answer a question posted here, Louis and Marie Antoinette did have another child, a daughter. She survived the revolution and escaped to Austria.

I wish Irwin Allen had used more imagination about the future. Seeing a couple of guys with their faces painted gold just doesn't but it with me.

Chase Through Time features a young actor named Robert Duvall, who has since become more more famous

Allen never missed a chance to grab footage from his movie, The Lost World, and he does it in this episode. For all their scientific knowledge, Tony and Doug are clearly not paleantologists (sp?). They refer to the Age Of the Dinosaurs as "a million years ago". Uh, guys, it's actually sixty-five million years ago!

I wish they didn't have aliens in this show. This was supposed to be about time travel. Maybe one show with aliens, but not four!

When Tony and Doug arrive in 1978, in the final episodes, I'm surprised they just didn't ask the Tunnel to leave them there. Granted they would be ten years ahead of their own time, but that's not too bad. Most of their families and friends would still be around.

Tony does the same thing that Sam Beckett did in Quantum Leap. When the project was going to lose funding, he decided to use himself as a guinie pig. Must be cut from the same cloth.

Despite its flaws, this is a great show.

"I wish they didn't have aliens in this show. This was supposed to be about time travel. Maybe one show with aliens, but not four!"

I agree that four was too many.
One inventive use of an alien was sticking him in ther 1800's, instead of the future, when Tony and Doug find an alien in that time frame. Total surprise for me when I saw that. (I don't remember the episode title, however)

The episode was Visitors From Beyond The Stars.

Colbert (is it Colbert?)
Yes it was, and still is. There's a Bob Cobert, he's a composer who's worked with producer Dan Curtis a lot. He composed the music for Dark Shadows (both the 1960's soap and the 1991 NBC revival), The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. Robert Colbert seems to be retired from acting; IMDB has no credits for him after 1995.

Aside from being brilliant scientists, Tony and Doug must work out on a regular basis and take fencing lessons. Everywhere they go, they end up in fist fights. Also, they seem to be able to handle a sword pretty well, sometimes even defeating experience soldiers (like Tony beating that Greek traitor in Revenge Of The Gods). Of course, they don't usually kill the guy, they just end up knocking him out.

My friend wondered why Tony and Doug never seem to end up somewhere like Bug Tussell, Tennessee, in 1902, where nothing happens. Of course, it would make a pretty dull episode by just having Tony and Doug sitting on their hands for one hour! It's possible that does happen, we just don't see it onscreen.

The reason why Tony and Doug always switch back to their original clothes before they leave is because, back in the 60's, shows were often not broadcast in the order in which they were filmed. Irwin Allen did this to avoid confusing viewers who may have missed the previous episode. Of course, a few times at the end, they forgot to put Tony and Doug back in their original clothes before they vanished to their next destination.

I would have loved to see episodes where Tony and Doug met people like Cleopatra and Alexander The Great. No doubt had Time Tunnel continued on to a second season, that might have happened.

The show was not cancelled because of low ratings, rather it fell victim to a management shake-up at ABC. The new guys came in and purged all the shows that the old guys had renewed. Time Tunnel was replace with a show called Legend Of Custer, that bombed within weeks. Too bad, Time Tunnel was a great show with a lot of funs stories.

Way back when, D.K Henderson wrote:

"This episode also shows the difficulty of compressing a highly complicated event into an hour show. A person unfamiliar with history (or mythology; take your pick) would think that the Trojan war was basically Ulysses vs Paris. Ulysses (I'll stick with the show's labels) was a high-ranking soldier, true enough, but Agamemnon was the actual leader, and he wasn't even mentioned. Paris was a minor player in the game, even though he caused it all."


Well, I have no problem with that since we are not dealing with a recorded historical event here. There is no conclusive proof that the Trojan War ever really happened (most think that it was an earthquake that finally destroyed Troy). Some think Homer just made it all up. So does it matter if the writers make some changes to the events?

The episode One Way To The Moon contains some nits I'd like to point out. When they are at the lunar depot, how come you hear banging and crashing around? Since there is no air, you should hear nothing.

Beard holds Doug at gunpoint. THIS WILL NOT WORK!! A gun would be totally useless on the Moon, since there is no oxygen. How could the gunpowder ignite?

Why are they keeping guns and explosives on the Moon anyway? What's to stop the Soviets, for example, from sending a ship up and helping themselves to all that stuff?

When the depot blows up, you see flames in the background? How can that be? No oxygen, no flames!

Beard says he can survive for six months on the Moon. Pray tell, locked in a space suit, how is he going to eat or drink? Not to mention other necessary bodily functions?

I wonder if the ship will turn back to Earth. They've lost two men, plus they have no more spacesuits!

Good thing Tony and Doug didn't suffocate in the seconds between when the spacesuits vanished and the tunnel took them. Maybe holding their bodies in suspension saved them.

Good thing Tony and Doug didn't suffocate in the seconds between when the spacesuits vanished and the tunnel took them. Maybe holding their bodies in suspension saved them.

-- Probably that same effect that allows them to (supposedly) live and/or breathe in the time vortex, which just happens to posses the exact amount of oxygen/nitrogen to sustain life.
My guess is they're in somekinda warp field bubble that will always return their clothing and bodily functions to them.

Good thing Tony and Doug didn't suffocate in the seconds between when the spacesuits vanished and the tunnel took them.

You don't suffocate instantly. Otherwise, how would you swim underwater?

And contrary to popular belief, you don't "explode" from a short exposure to vacuum, either.

Funny thing is that in later episodes, they forget about the concept of putting Tony and Doug back into their regular clothes. Rather, they vanish wearing period clothes of whatever time they're in.

Of course, the next episode we see them back to their normal clothes. I guess it happens when we're not looking

I guess there are times they have to leave Tony and Doug somewhere long enough for them to eat and sleep.

They tried to launch a remake of the show in 2002, but it didn't get picked up. I'm glad, they changed the premise WAY too much for my liking.

Recently watched Time Tunnel for the first time. Enjoyed the show. Realized about two shows in that this was a companion show to Lost in Space....this one being Lost in Time. :-)

Lost In Space (1965-1968)
Lost In Time (Tunnel) (c 1968-69)
Lost in the "Land of the Giants" (1968-1970)
but not Lost during the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-68)

all courtesy the Master of Disaster, Irwin Allen.

But were they really lost or just out of control? IIRC it didn't take them too long to figure out where & when they ended up each time.

Lost in the sense that they seemed to be irretrievable. They seemed to be able to "retrieve" the poltergeist of Nero, the Barbary Coast pirate, the ancestor of General Kirk, but they never seemed to be able to retrieve Doug and Tony, only transfer them to some other dangerous spot.

Maybe they should've tried to "retrieve" them by moving them to some location in the USA just a few weeks earlier or a few years later. Problem is, then the senator would say, "okay, you got 'em back, but you didn't bring them back to the tunnel, so we're cutting the funding." Maybe that's why they kept trying to bring them back through the tunnel so they could prove it could be done and keep the funding coming.

They seemed to be able to "retrieve" the poltergeist of Nero, the Barbary Coast pirate, the ancestor of General Kirk, but they never seemed to be able to retrieve Doug and Tony

That was a major nit of the show, if they could grab these other people, why not Doug and Tony?


Problem is, then the senator would say, "okay, you got 'em back, but you didn't bring them back to the tunnel, so we're cutting the funding."

Could be, but didn't they produce some results, they were moved in time. That should keep the purse strings open.

Not to mention its surveillance capabilities.

IIRC they were able to find out & deal with one turncoat in the episode where they were in the future. (Which should have altered that particular future.)

Just think how agencies like the CIA could put that ability to use.

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quote:

I found a listing for a film called "Aliens From Another Planet" on the FOX Movie Channel, so I clicked to the channel. The film was actually a compilation film made up of three different episodes of "The Time Tunnel."

---

IIRC they were able to find out & deal with one turncoat in the episode where they were in the future. (Which should have altered that particular future.)

I myself brought that up in one of my posts further up.

The Tunnel was just amazing, it panned and zoomed to follow the action

I know! And it always cut away to important dialogue, instead of showing other people eating lunch or going to the space store!

The Tunnel was Just That Good^OMT

Amazing device, that Time Tunnel

I really must watch my Time Tunnel DVD's again and see if I can spot more nits!

What a Small World we live in-- or at least it is in Hollywood.
I'm reading a book I bought off eBay about Irwin Allen's 4 SF shows, and I came across this interesting tidbit in The Time Tunnel section;

Alan Napier, aka Alfred the Butler in the 'Batman' tv series was Whit Bissell's father-in-law! And if that wasn't enough, Brian Forster, who played Chris Partridge in 'The Partridge Family' was Whit's grandson!

Also read that a second season of Time Tunnel was in the works when management at ABC was changed, and the idiotic New Guys eliminated any shows that weren't big hits. T.T. didn't make the cut, despite okay ratings and big network competition on the other stations.

Also read that a second season of Time Tunnel was in the works when management at ABC was changed, and the idiotic New Guys eliminated any shows that weren't big hits. T.T. didn't make the cut, despite okay ratings and big network competition on the other stations

The show that replaced TT, The Legend Of Custer, was a ratings bombs. Stupid network execs.

Considering the kind of scripts used in the last episodes of Time Tunnel, it may not be such a bad thing that the show was cancelled.

I wouldn't say they were exactly running out of historical events to dramatize, but I can see the second season involving more aliens and more spaceships to fill in those gaps.
By the third season, who knows what old times would be left to visit.

Didn't Time Tunnel call the Titanic's Captain Smith "Malcolm" instead of "Edward"?

I wouldn't say they were exactly running out of historical events to dramatize, but I can see the second season involving more aliens and more spaceships to fill in those gaps.
By the third season, who knows what old times would be left to visit.

Depends on how much stock footage Irwin Allen could get a hold of. I guess they didn't do enough research.


Didn't Time Tunnel call the Titanic's Captain Smith "Malcolm" instead of "Edward"?

Yes, in the closing credits of the pilot episode.

I once mused to my wife about what if they blended all the movies made about the Titanic into one movie. David Warner might run into himself - he played "Lovejoy" in Cameron's movie, but he also played a second-class passenger, a school teacher, in the 70s movie "SOS Titanic".

Let's see Tony and Doug sort that one out.

In the "Billy the Kid" episode, Ann, gathering data on the outlaw, states that Pat Garrett killed the Kid on July 23, 1881. Billy was actually killed nine days earlier on July 14.

There is an episode called Night Of The Long Knives, but it's not about the Nazi purges of 1933, rather it takes place in India, in 1886.

Despite Tony and Doug being in India, the tunnel focuses on a bunch of British politicians in London, discussing the situation. That scene is only there for exposition.

All the stock footage in this episode is lifted from the 1953 movie, King Of The Khyber Rifles.

An Irwin Allen TV show reusing movie footage? *shock horror* That's unpossible! ;-)

There was this series, made in the early 1980's, called Voyagers!


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyagers!


One episode, "Old Hickory and the Pirate", is centered around the Battle Of New Orleans. For the big battle scene, that episode used the exact same stock footage as the Time Tunnel episode, The Last Patrol, did.