The Time Tunnel.

The Time Tunnel : Irwin Allen The Time Tunnel is a science fiction television show that aired between 1966-1967. "The Time Tunnel" was released by 20th Century Fox and broadcast on ABC. The show ran for one season of 30 episodes. A pilot for a new series was produced in 2002, although the pilot was not picked up.

Cast

 * James Darren as Tony Newman
 * Robert Colbert - Doug Phillips
 * Whit Bissell - General Heywood Kirk
 * Lee Meriwether - Dr. Ann McGregor
 * John Zaremba - Dr. Raymond Swain

About the Show
Project Tic-toc is a top secret government effort to build a time machine known as the "Time Tunnel". When the costs of Project Tic-Toc reach an extreme level, United States Senator Leroy Clark (Gary Merrill) begins to examine the project. After deciding that the costs of the project were to high, the senator wants to shut down the Time Tunnel because it was a waste of time and money. Tony Newman, a scientist who helped develop the Time Tunnel, sends himself into the past in an effort to prove that the Time Tunnel is not a waste of the government resources. The people at the Tic-Toc base learn that Tony was sent back in time to the Titanic. To try and save his friend, fellow scientist Doug Phillips travels to the Titanic. The people at the Time Tunnel base were never able to bring Tony and Doug into their own time; instead they just travled from one period of time to another.

Summary
Project Tic-Toc is a top secret U.S. government effort to build an experimental time machine known as "the Time Tunnel". When the costs of the project approach those of the entire U.S. space program, a United States Senator Leroy Clark (Gary Merrill) launches an investigation of the project. The Senator thinks that the tunnel has cost too much money for too little reward. At his request the Senator is allowed to visit the project base and be given a tour. Once he reaches the central control room the Senator explains his complaints to the project heads. The Senator then says that he wishes to close down the project as a waste of time and money that has not worked.

Key Time Tunnel scientist, young physicist Dr. Tony Newman (James Darren) turns the machine on and sends himself back in time in an attempt to prove that the Time Tunnel project funds were not wasted. In so doing, Newman becomes "lost in time". The Time Tunnel top personnel can see through the Tunnel that Tony Newman is aboard the soon to sink Titanic. They can also see that he cannot escape before the sinking, and they cannot retrieve him.

In an attempt to rescue his younger friend, another key Tic-Toc scientist Dr. Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert) enters the Time Tunnel as well, carrying a newspaper describing the sinking to occur. Unconvinced, the captain of the Titanic threw the newspaper overboard.

However, the system was still being developed and tunnel operations was never able to bring them home. As the series progresses, the two time travelers are swung from one period in history to another, allowing episodes to be set in the past and future. Each episode begins with the following narration:


 * "Two American scientists are lost in the swirling maze of past and future ages, during the first experiments on America's greatest and most secret project, the Time Tunnel. Tony Newman and Doug Phillips now tumble helplessly toward a new fantastic adventure, somewhere along the infinite corridors of time."

By luck (or lack thereof) the travelers, Tony and Doug, frequently found themselves thrown onto the precipice of major historical events: on board the Titanic before it hits the iceberg, in Pearl Harbor before the Japanese attack, on Krakatoa before it erupts, and so forth. They would try to warn people about the event, or try to prevent it from happening, while the Time Tunnel crew (led by two scientists and a military general), who once gaining a "fix" can view through the Tunnel the action taking place in the different time, would try to rescue the travelers before the historical calamity befell them too. Sometimes, when rescue was impossible at the time, the Time Tunnel scientists would often try to help Tony and Doug in other ways or, in some cases, communicate with them whenever possible. The final episode provides no resolution, as the series was initially scheduled to continue into a second season.

The series used a precursor to the Novikov self-consistency principle as its time travel model. Recorded history could not be altered because all attempts to do so were destined to fail. In other words, they will not change history because they haven't already changed it. However, sometimes Doug and Tony’s actions were essential to cause history to unfold as recorded. The lives of individual people could be influenced by the actions of the travelers or the Time Tunnel scientists. It was in someways a forerunners to later tv series like Quantum Leap, Stargate SG1, and Sliders, although one did not directly deal with time travel on a weekly basis, it employ time travel episodes and concepts. The base for Project Tic-Toc was huge and located underground in the Arizona desert, with no visible entry. The only way in was a very big secret panel that when it opened a car could quickly go through the entrance. Once the panel closed all any one could see was ordinary desert. Tic-Toc base was a futuristic series of complexes 800 floors deep and employing over 36,000 people ("12 thousand people in each of those complexes"). It was under the command of General Heywood Kirk (Whit Bissell). The center of the base was The Time Tunnel control room where the tunnel was located. In charge of operating the Tunnel were Dr. Ann McGregor (Lee Meriwether) and Dr. Raymond Swain (John Zaremba). The date at which it was operating was stated as 1968, which was two years into the future for the initial TV audience.

Production
The production basis of the show was the large number of period dramas made by the 20th Century Fox film company. Even black-and-white shots of the Titanic sinking were tinted to fit them into this color production. Only a few actors were costumed for a given episode, interspersed with cuts of great masses of people similarly dressed from the original features. The plots were not noted for historical accuracy.

Certain episodes featured aliens who wore costumes and carried props originally created for other Irwin Allen television and movie productions. Prop sets were similarly re-used. Only in episodes 18, 24, 28, 29, and 30 did aliens appear; only the second and third of these were set in the far future.

The Titanic-based premier episode, "Rendezvous with Yesterday" (based on the original series pilot ), was well written, and featured good production values, albeit with an error in that the Captain Smith of the Titanic was called "Malcolm" rather than "Edward" or "EJ". The names of the secondary officers are also fictitious and do not reflect the actual officers of the Titanic, though Walter Lord's best-selling book A Night to Remember had been available for nine years.

The prop computer looked realistic because it was actually an array of memory modules from the Air Force's recently-decommissioned SAGE computer.

The soundtrack for The Time Tunnel was composed by John Williams (credited as "Johnny Williams"), who would go on to become one of film's most celebrated composers.

The series won an Emmy Award in 1967, for Individual Achievements in Cinematography. The award went to L.B. "Bill" Abbott, for his photographic special effects.

The Time Tunnel was not a commercial failure, as it received higher viewer ratings than many other shows of the network. It was picked up for the following year, and four episodes for season 2 were scripted (and falsely rumored to have been filmed) before an abrupt cancellation - after the "cast renewal party" had been held.

Recurring themes, mistakes, and cliches
Themes particularly characteristic of this show include:
 * The colorful, dynamic opening credits sequence.
 * A short "teaser" from next week's episode was shown at the end of each episode, as Tony and Doug arrived at their next destination.
 * The impressive introduction to the scale of the project (over 36,000 people and huge underground buildings) is never seen after the first episode except for two clips (used over and over) of the giant power generator flashing, and Tunnel Security running across a walkway.
 * At the end of every episode, Tony and Doug always magically reverted to the same cleaned, pressed clothes: a green turtleneck sweater and a pair of gray slacks for Tony, and a conservative Norfolk suit for Doug. Doug never takes off his tie (although he loosens it occasionally). Doug's clothes were originally meant for the 1912 Titanic, but the suit somehow changes to being contemporary style in future episodes.
 * Frequently, when something is wrong with the tunnel, we see Dr. Swain (a man) pushing Dr. MacGregor (a woman) away from her control panel so he can do her job himself.
 * Aliens are always hostile, and the existence of other intelligent life in the universe never seems remarkable to anyone.
 * The studio set uses forced perspective to make the tunnel look infinite. Occasionally an  actor walks too far into it, forcing him to bend over lest he hit his head against the top of the supposedly-huge Tunnel.
 * In more than two out of every three episodes, Tony and Doug's random placement in time landed them right before an important historical event, and right where the event was about to occur (D-Day, the attack on Pearl Harbor, Biblical events, Custer's last stand, Krakatoa exploding, the Titanic sinking, Lincoln's attempted assassination in 1861 (not the 1865 one which killed him, although that one is briefly glimpsed), etc.
 * Sometimes the stock footage didn't match very well with what was filmed for the show. Costumes were  not always consistent with the stock footage.
 * The tunnel frequently sent objects and people back to help Doug and Tony, and even brought other people from the past, but it never could retrieve Doug and Tony themselves.
 * Wild historical mishmashes, such as Niccolò Machiavelli getting involved in the Battle of Gettysburg.
 * Mixing history and sometimes inaccurate mythology,such as with the Greek Gods,who had Roman Mythology and Roman Gods names mixed together with Greek Mythology in the Trojan War episode or such as Robin Hood being involved with the signing of the Magna Carta, and Merlin the Magician appearing in the tunnel forcing Tony and Doug to help a Young Arthur, etc.
 * No matter what they did, they never changed history even though they had opportunities to, such as killing John Wilkes Booth.
 * Tony and Doug almost always appeared somewhere in their past. When they did travel to the future, it was, with two exceptions (both in 1978), hundreds of years into an unrecognizable future.
 * Aliens and people from the future all dressed identically, often in aluminum foil, as seen in other Irwin Allen TV series at the time.
 * Classic 1960s "action" sequences, such as hand-to-hand fighting in which the protagonists fall onto their backs and kick-flip their adversaries over them.
 * No matter when or where Tony and Doug materialized, they were immediately attacked or taken prisoner.
 * Doug and Tony knew they were being monitored by their colleagues, but rarely spoke to them or asked for help.
 * At the end of every episode but the first, Doug and Tony were safe. However the tunnel scientists always transferred them to another dangerous, random place and time for no reason when they could have waited until they had sufficient power to bring them back to 1968.
 * When people are hit on the head they get amnesia, and it's always temporary.
 * A guest character decides that he has nothing left in 1968 and agrees to enter the past to help Tony and Doug, knowing that he will spend the rest of his life there.
 * Implausible physics. For instance, in episode two ("One Way To The Moon"), Doug and Tony did not experience the Moon's one-sixth gravity.  Also, a loud explosion in a lunar fuel depot ignites a massive fire, but in the silent vacuum of the moon there could be no combustion,  an explosion would make no noise, and a fireball would not rise vertically.
 * Everyone everywhere, in every time period, spoke 20th-century American English. French and German characters have a stereotypical accent, while British, Greek and Afghani characters do not.
 * No explanation is given for the frequent computer glitches which spontaneously show scenes far from Doug and Tony but which are related to the storyline.  The characters themselves even noticed this, wondering aloud if the computer is trying to show them something.

Episodes
While the episodes were first shown in 1966, the show's setting begins in 1968, two years ahead of when the episodes originally aired.

Movies excerpted

 * Forbidden Planet
 * Titanic (1953)
 * Destination Moon
 * How Green Was My Valley
 * Khartoum
 * Pearl Harbor - Now It Can Be Shown
 * The Story of Ruth
 * The 300 Spartans
 * Prince Valiant
 * Taras Bulba
 * A Farewell to Arms
 * The Buccaneer
 * To Catch a Thief
 * The Day the Earth Stood Still

Novel versions and other related material
Books

Prolific science fiction author Murray Leinster had published a 1964 Pyramid Books novel titled Time Tunnel with cover art somewhat similar to the television series' Tunnel. The actual plots were quite different — the 1964 novel was set in France, the tunnel was built by a professor, and it only established a fixed connection between 1964 and Napoleonic era 1804.

In any case, in 1967 Leinster wrote a loosely based novelization of the television series, entitled The Time Tunnel and also published by Pyramid.One end was in 1964 - the other in 1804. People could go both ways. So could... things. For instance, brand-new "antiques" for the 20th century, and marvels of modern industry for the Napoleonic era. But you had to be careful - because what would happen to "now" if you did something in 1804 that changed history.The Time Tunnel was the most important - and most secret - weapon ever developed. Scientists Ton Newman and Doug Phillips knew that the destiny of the world depended on it. Now the Tunnel was threatened with destruction - and the only way Doug and Tony could save it was to take a blind leap into the whirling mists of time.

This was followed later in the year by Timeslip.Time Tunnel Adventure'' #2.The last novel based on the tv series. The front & back covers feature photos from the series.

Time Bomb-The experimental nuclear missile was sent through the Time Tunnel - but something went wrong, and it wound up buried in the capital of a great nation, over a century ago! Now, excavation equipment was moving toward the site - any day a bulldozer blade might set it off, destroying a mighty city and plunging the world into war! Time travelers Tony Newman and Doug Phillips had only one chance to head off disaster - to go through the Time Tunnel and make the accident "unhappen." The trouble was, there was a war on in the past - and the bomb was in enemy territory... 

The Time Tunnel Comics

There were two comics that came out that were directly related to The Time Tunnel tv series.These were put out by Gold Key Comics (Western Publishing Co.) in 1966-67.The Time Tunnel.The Assassins April 14 1865. Abe gets a second chance.The Lion or the Volcano? August 24 79 A.D. Pompeii... here it's the lions or Vesuvius for Doug & Tony—which will it be? Mars Count-Down 1980. Will the US make it to Mars? Will Doug & Tony make it back to Earth? The Time Tunnel ,The Conquerors D-Day 1944! The Nazis get a second chance—this time with weapons from the future! The Captives June 25 1876, mid-America. Custer gets a second chance.

Record

The Time Tunnel 1967 ABC-TV Japanese Book with record. Spectacular Original 33-1/2 RPM record from the classic 1960s ABC-TV series "The Time Tunnel". This ultra-scarce rarity was licensed and manufactured for exclusive release in Japan by Asahi Sonorama company and was released during the show's original airing in 1967.

The record is pressed in blue-vinyl and contains the exciting time-travel drama "Adventure in the Lost World."

The highlight of this package is the colorful 12-page booklet which showcases original storybook artwork of the record's episode with the intrepid time travellers being terrorized by rampaging dinosaurs and angry cavemen!

Games

The Time Tunnel. 1966 boxed board game from Ideal Toys (No. 2326-7). Playing board design shows characters and events from the prehistoric era into the future. The box insert has a spinner board and other parts include playing cards, token and marker disks.The second game was...The Time Tunnel Spin-To-Win. 1967 boxed board game from Pressman Toys. Game features a box insert playing board which has a tunnel-like design representing different past years in history and plastic tops are spun on the playing board to determine "Time Travels."


 * The Time Tunnel Coloring Book.

The Time Tunnel Viewmaster Set.Saalfield # 9561, 1966A Story Book to Color. 80 pages Sawyer #B491, 1966 .Three Viewmaster slides from "Rendezvous With Yesterday" (Pilot Episode) and 16 page story booklet.Simply tells the pilot episode in 3D slides,in a viewer.

After the original run
In 1967, a feature length film, Aliens from Another Planet, was produced using a compilation of three of the TV episodes.

Despite the series having only been on the air for one year, the number of websites and fan reminiscences concerning it attest to the series having made an impression on its audience.

The series was re-shown on American television in the early-mid 1990s, and it was re-shown on British television after the success of the 1997 Titanic movie due to the Titanic-related content of the first episode. It was also parodied by Alexei Sayle as Drunk in Time on British television. In the U.S., it can now be seen on the Encore Action cable network at various times.

The first 15 episodes were released on DVD in North America on January 24, 2006. The second volume, containing the final fifteen episodes, was released June 6, 2006. It also includes the unaired 2002 pilot and the made-for-TV film The Time Travelers as special features.

The Time Tunnel is being shown on the AmericanLife TV Network cable channel, as of September 2007.

The Time Tunnel was very similar to a later time-travel show, NBC's Voyagers! (1982-83). 1) Both shows ran for only one season, and had extremely high budgets. 2) In both shows, the time travellers would "fall" through an elaborate and colorful special-effect backdrop, and "land" in the targeted time period. (In this regard, The Time Tunnel was often more convincing; in Voyagers, it often seemed obvious that stuntmen were jumping from an off-camera ledge.) In each case, they would "fall" just softly enough to avoid major injuries. 3) The Time Tunnel ("Rendevous with Yesterday") and Voyagers! ("Voyagers of the Titanic") both used the Titanic as a plot setting. In the respective stories, both Tony Newman and Jeffrey Jones try desperately to warn of the coming disaster, and both of them fail.  (In a somber warning against such tampering, Bogg conceded that "Sometimes, history's cruel.  But it's going to happen, and we can't change that.") 4) Both shows usually dropped the characters into other major historical events. 5) Both shows always had the characters back in their original "period" costumes at the beginning of each episode. (Voyager Phineas Bogg stood out the most, being dressed as a 17th century pirate.)    6) Like Tony and Doug, Jeffrey Jones could never return to his own time (1982). However, Phineas Bogg presumably could (his "Omni" time machine being capable), though he never tried to do so.

Remakes
Two attempts were made to resurrect the show. One produced a pilot episode, but neither resulted an a new series.

2002 Remake
In 2002, Fox showed interest in remaking this series. A pilot was produced by Twentieth Century Fox Television, Fox Television Studios and Regency Television in association with Irwin Allen Properties. Executive Producers were Kevin Burns and Jon Jashni. Sheila Allen was credited as one of the producers. It was not picked by Fox, in order to make room in its schedule for Joss Whedon's Firefly.This Time Tunnel was pretty bad.It was too derivetive of the elements of the X-File.Project Tic Toc looked very cheaply put together.

The new series had a much much darker, serious tone. Doug Phillips (David Conrad) is the main character, and Tony Newman is now Toni Newman, a female minor character. The unaired pilot episode is available on DVD from Fox Home Entertainment on The Time Tunnel: Volume Two, Disc Four.

In this remake, the (21st century) Time Tunnel is a Department of Energy research project into "hot fusion", which produces nearly limitless energy. When they initiated the reactor (an event not shown in the episode), it caused an unintended "time storm". For four hours—240 minutes—the time storm was uncontrollably whipping around in the past and changing history. The DOE was able to anchor one end of the storm by using the Tunnel like a lightning rod.

On their way into the tunnel complex, Flynn tells Doug Phillips, a former friend, that Phillips has been recruited because he has a detailed knowledge of the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. The head of the Time Tunnel likens their team to FEMA, in that they don't send a team back for a rain storm but they do for hurricanes. However, they can only go through time to where the other end of the storm is at the current moment, so they have a limited amount of time in which to fix what is wrong and to be retrieved by the Time Tunnel.

The team (Doug, Toni, Flynn, J.D. and Wix) must go back to WWII in 1944, to the Battle of Hürtgen Forest in Germany. They are to retrieve a person who was moved there by the time storm from 1546. During the mission, Doug Phillips meets his grandfather, a soldier who will be killed in this battle. Doug knows this, but cannot tell him and save his life because it would change history. Toni Newman tells him that she used to have three brothers and two sisters before the time storm accident, but is now an only child. They find out that the displaced person is a (very confused) medieval monk who is carrying bubonic plague. A number of the team have to pretend that they are Germans and switch uniforms. Two of them say they are Colonel Klink and (Sergeant) Schultz. Everyone who came in contact with the monk is given an antibiotic injection and the time ripples stop. But Flynn has been fatally stabbed, so he reveals that Phillips was a bitter man before the "240", but he now has a family. Flynn told Phillips this information to give him incentive to keep the timeline the way that it is.

Reality changes due to the time storm
There are some notable differences between the series world and the real world:
 * Traffic lights use red for "go" and green for "stop" while yellow retains its meaning.
 * There are 49 states in the USA. The title sequence shows New Jersey disappearing and the territory being divided between New York and Pennsylvania.
 * The title sequence shows the USSR winning the race to the moon as the American flag dissolves into the Soviet flag.
 * The New York Yankees are now the Boston Yankees.

2006 Remake
The SciFi Channel (a US cable network) announced in 2005 that it was going to create a new pilot for its 2006/07 season. Allen's wife, Sheila, and two producers of the 2002 FOX remake (Kevin Burns and Jon Jashni) began work on the new pilot. John Turman (Hulk) wrote the script. The series never materialized.

Related material
Two movies made previously,The Time Travelers (1964 film) well as the 1967 remake Journey to the Center of Time both are somewhat similar to this series.Both employ time travellers hopeflesly lost in the infinite corridors of time,with no way to get back their own time period.Although the movie,made in early 1960s, The Time Machine (1960 film) might inspired this to be produced, the plot and characters are not similar enough to warrant similarities between the two. Ib Melchior, also has connection two these movies and Irwin Allen on other material, such as Lost in Space, is debated in various publications and websites,of who created what first-Melchior or Allen.

Fictional secret histories
Secret history is sometimes used in a long-running science fiction or fantasy universe to preserve continuity with the present by reconciling paranormal, anachronistic, or otherwise notable but unrecorded events with what actually happened in known history.Whatever Doug Phillips and Tony Newman did,they never could really change anything and sort of acted like Temporal Agents,who keep history as if really happened.Alternate History or Alternate Timelines never entered into this tv series storylines