TIME TUNNEL (Volume 1)

[The Burgomaster]

I bought volume 1 of Irwin Allen's short-lived 1960s sci-fi TV series THE TIME TUNNEL.  I remember watching this as a kid, but I didn't remember too much about it.  Anyway, I watched the first 2 episodes last night.  

The special effects look pretty cheesy by today's standards (for example, the "travelling through time" effect is nothing more than the actors spinning around slowly in front of a kaleidoscope), but I suppose they were state of the art for the 1960s.

In the first episode, scientist James Darren (who works for "Tic Toc," a secret government agency located below the desert) becomes the first human to enter the time tunnel.  He uses himself as a guinea pig when he finds out that the government is about to stop funding the time travel project.  For his efforts, he ends up on the Titanic shortly before it is about to sink.  Luckily, anyone who goes through the time tunnel passes through a radiation bath that marks them and acts like a homing device so that the scientists back at the base can track them.  They can also see images of the time travellers on a huge video monitor.  Fellow scientist Robert Colbert decides to go through the tunnel to save James Darren.

In the second episode, they end up on a space flight 10 years in the future and the crew thinks they are spies trying to sabotage the mission.

The whole idea of the series is that these 2 scientists keep getting batted around in time and the people at the base can only watch them on the monitor and keep moving them from one time period to another.  But no one knows how to bring them home.

I recommend this series, even though it is dated and cheesy.

[peter johnson]

I loved this series so much as a kid --
One thing they did do was use public domain footage from various period epics to round out the series --
I especially remember the bit they did from the Battle of New Orleans in 1812 -- a wide variety of various footage from other "period" films were used to flesh out the story, but who cares?  The whole premise was wonderful & I loved loved loved Time Tunnel!!!
peter johnson/denny crane

[BoyScoutKevin]

Being a big history buff, when I was in school, and I still am, here is another person who loved "Time Tunnel" and still has fond memories of it. I only wish it had lasted more then one season. Still, there are thirty episodes to enjoy. Fifteen on this dvd release, I believe, and there are plans to release the ofther fifteen episodes, sometime later in the year.