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The Time Tunnel was a 1960s color science fiction TV series produced by Irwin Allen that lasted 30 episodes. It was produced by 20th Century Fox for the US ABC television network.
The plot situation was that the US federal government had funded a secret, experimental time machine that cost as much as the space program. To prove that the money was not wasted, a young researcher turned the machine on and sent himself back in time -- only to find himself in a cliffhanger. To get him back, an older scientist prepared himself to be able to change history. But the machine was not built to handle two people travelling in time -- so it cannot retrieve them. The time travellers are swung from one period in history to another, allowing episodes to be set in the past and future, but always ending in a cliffhanger as a preview of the next episode.
Some episodes featured aliens who wore costumes and carried props originally created for other Irwin Allen television and movie productions, and some sets were similarly re-used. These were fewer than it appears, since these episodes were later re-run often on secondary market. 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 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, but then neither were the original films.
The series was re-shown on British television after the success of the late 1990s Titanic movie. It was shortly parodied by Alexei Sayle on British television.
Only one series was made, originally airing in the 1966/1967 season. It was not really a failure, as it got more viewership than many other shows of the network. Yet it was not picked up for the next year. A novelization was written by Murray Leinster.
The principal characters were:
- Dr. Tony Newman played by James Darren
- Dr. Doug Phillips played by Robert Colbert
- Dr. Ann MacGregor played by Lee Meriwether
- Lt. General Heywood Kirk played by Whit Bissell
- Dr. Raymond Swain played by John Zaremba
Recently, a there was interest in remaking this series. The storyline and setting was updated to reflect recent times. A pilot episode, in which a government team goes back in time through a time tunnel(represented by a series of huge metallic rings)to WWII in order to retrieve a medieval monk misplaced by a time storm, was filmed but later turned down due to similiarities to Stargate SG-1.
Movies Excerpted
- A Night to Remember
- Destination Moon
- How Green Was My Valley
- Khartoum
- Krakatoa, East of Java
- Pearl Harbor - Now It Can Be Shown
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