The Time Tunnel

Premise

Project Tic-Toc was a classified American government initiative to construct a functioning time machine. The device, nicknamed the Time Tunnel because it looked like an oval corridor, was housed in a vast secret facility beneath Arizona. This underground base reached 800 floors down and had a workforce of over 12,000 specialists. The project was run by Dr. Douglas Phillips, Dr. Anthony Newman, and Lt. General Heywood Kirk. Two key experts on the team were Dr. Raymond Swain, a leading authority on electronics, and Dr. Ann MacGregor, an electrobiologist who oversaw the team calculating the heat and force a traveler could endure. The show took place in 1968, two years ahead of its 1966–1967 broadcast season.

After a decade of work, U.S. Senator Leroy Clark came to inspect the project, which had already burned through $7.5 billion. He thought it was a waste of taxpayer money. Standing in front of the Time Tunnel, he gave the directors an ultimatum: send a person into the past and bring them back during his visit, or lose all funding. Tony Newman volunteered, but Doug Phillips rejected the idea. Tony went against that order and sent himself through the tunnel. Doug went in right after him to bring him back, but both ended up stranded across time. The senator then went back to Washington, promising not to cut the budget, and left General Kirk in charge.

From that point on, Tony and Doug were bounced from one historical moment to another, which let the show explore both past and future settings. Starting with the second episode, each installment opened with a spoken introduction by Dick Tufeld. The two men found themselves caught up in major events like the Titanic sinking, the Pearl Harbor attack, the Krakatoa eruption, Custer’s Last Stand, and the Battle of the Alamo. Back in the control room, General Kirk, Ray, and Ann could track them through time and space, watch what was happening, sometimes talk to them, and even send assistance. ABC canceled the series in the summer of 1967 before the crew could shoot the episode that would have brought Tony and Doug safely home.

Production

The show relied heavily on existing materials, using leftover sets, stock footage, and props from 20th Century Fox's many period films. Black-and-white footage of the Titanic sinking was colorized for this series. To save money, only a handful of actors wore costumes for each episode, with crowd scenes filled by cutting in footage from older movies. The only set built specifically for the show was the Time Tunnel's main control room. For the pilot, a large control room was constructed, and a longer tunnel effect was achieved with optical matte shots. After the pilot, the production moved to a smaller sound stage. Actors James Darren and Robert Colbert filmed their scenes in a different studio, on the Fox backlot, or on location, while the actors playing Time Tunnel personnel worked on a smaller, revised control-room set. Some episodes featured aliens whose costumes and props came from other Irwin Allen shows and films. The prop computer was unusually realistic because it used memory modules from the Air Force's recently decommissioned SAGE computer. The series had continuity errors and historical mistakes; for example, the premiere episode calls the Titanic's captain Malcolm, though his real name was Edward. John Williams, credited as Johnny Williams, composed the opening and closing theme music. The show won a 1967 Emmy for Individual Achievements in Cinematography, awarded to L. B. "Bill" Abbott for his photographic special effects.

In other media

In January 1967, a promotional novel titled The Time Tunnel was published by Pyramid Books, written by Murray Leinster. Leinster used four main characters: Tony Newman, Doug Phillips, General Kirk, and Ann MacGregor, and initial antagonist Senator Clark. Unlike the series, Project Tic-Toc is secretly founded and financed through the Defense Department without congressional consent; General Kirk is a retired Air Force General rather than an active duty Army General; and Senator Clark demands the end of the project out of fear of a grandfather paradox. The action takes place during the Johnstown Flood of May 31, 1889, near Adobe Walls, Texas, on June 26, 1874, and in Saint Louis, Missouri, in the distant future during an alien invasion. Doug discovers he will marry Ann MacGregor, and they return to the present. A second novel, Timeslip: Time Tunnel Adventure #2, also by Leinster, was published in 1967. A short-lived comic book was published by Gold Key Comics in 1966–1967, reprinted by Hermes Press in 2012. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released the entire series on DVD in Region 1 in 2006 in two volumes; Volume Two includes the unaired 2002 pilot and the made-for-TV film Time Travelers. In Region 2, Revelation Films released the series on DVD in the UK. In Region 4, Madman Entertainment released the complete series on DVD in Australia on August 20, 2014.

Remakes

The show has been revived three times, with two attempts resulting in a pilot episode and one ending at the script stage. In 2002, Fox considered a remake and a pilot was produced by Twentieth Century Fox Television, Fox Television Studios, and Regency Television in association with Irwin Allen Properties. Kevin Burns and Jon Jashni served as executive producers, and Sheila Allen was a producer. Fox passed on the series to make room for Joss Whedon's Firefly. This pilot had a darker, more serious feel than the 1966 original. David Conrad played Doug Phillips, the lead, with Andrea Roth as Toni Newman. The unaired pilot is included on the DVD release The Time Tunnel: Volume Two. In this version, the Time Tunnel is a Department of Energy nuclear fusion project that generates nearly unlimited energy. When the reactor was activated, it accidentally created a "time storm" that altered history. The Department of Energy anchored one end of the storm using the Tunnel as a lightning rod. The project's head compares their team to FEMA, noting they only travel to where the storm's other end is at that moment, giving them a limited window to fix problems and be retrieved.