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By
WAYNE KLEIN
For a kid in 1966 TV was a
treasure trove of fun. "Star Trek," "Rat Patrol"
and "The Time Tunnel" all debuted during the same
year. Although "Star Trek" had the respectable
pedigree with involvement from science fiction
writers, "The Time Tunnel" had the feature film
expertise of Irwin Allen ("Voyage to the Bottom of
the Sea," "The Towering Inferno," "The Poseidon
Adventure," The Swiss Family Robinson," "The
Towering Inferno") and the might of 20th Century
Fox behind it. While some of the episodes could be
quite corny the initial batch of episodes for the
series had a fun and adventurous quality. More of
a fantasy series than a science fiction show, the
premise was fairly simple. The U.S. government has
secreting been investing in the next great step in
science after the creation of the atomic bomb;
sending a man back in time to observe what
occurred in the past and preventing our enemies
from altering the time line similar. It was a race
so to speak for time—control of our past. When a
senator (Gary Merril) threatens to cut the funding
for the defense department project Project Tic
Tock, Dr. Tony Newman (James Darren) uses the
device to prove that it works. Newman ends up on
the Titanic and must try and convince the captain
to prevent the sinking of the ship so that Dr.
Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert) Dr. Raymond Swain
(John Zaremba) and Dr. Ann MacGregor (Lee
Meriwether in her first role) can bring him back.
Newman also has the chance to avert one of the
worst disasters in sea faring history. Philips
goes after Newman in hopes of bringing him back
and both become unstuck in time (to borrow from
Kurt Vonnegut) randomly drifting through the past
and the future. A show that later inspired
"Quantum Leap," "The Time Tunnel" surprisingly
only ran one season on ABC and was one of Allen's
four science fiction shows of the 60's (the others
were "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" which
debuted in 1964 and was based on Allen's film,
"Lost in Space" which aced out "Star Trek" at
CBS—the show eventually ended up at NBC—and "Land
of the Giants" all imaginative if not
scientifically accurate or even well written).
What Newman and Phillips discover is that you
can't change the outcome of episodes in the past
(although they do seem to have an impact on the
future).
Fox has gone produced a beautiful transfer for the
show. The images are crisp with a large amount of
detail (and look superior to the second and third
seasons of "Lost in Space"). The color is rich and
bold with nice flesh tones and there's little in
the way of compression issues and edge enhancement
to mar the images. The mono sound comes across
with remarkable clarity and little distortion. A
very sharp nice looking and sounding transfer from
Fox. The only complaint I have is that the 30
episodes are spread out over a two volume set.
While I'm not a fan of dual sided discs these sets
look and sound extremely good.
I'm surprised that Fox sprung for special features
for this set given the cult appeal of the show.
First up we get the original unaired pilot which
had an alternate ending and additional scenes cut
before the pilot aired. The pilot had for its time
some spectacular visual effects. We also get over
an hour of 8 millimeter footage shot on the set.
While it doesn't have sound (and this is where
surviving cast members Meriwether, Darren and
Colbert could have provided narration much like
the "Hogan's Heroes" set did) it's a fascinating
glimpse behind-the-scenes on the shooting of the
pilot episode and series that's rare in TV shows
released to DVD. I have to give Fox kudos for not
just dumping this on the market much as Universal
has done with their TV shows on DVD (and Sony at
times as well). We also get promotional spots for
both radio and TV as well as trailers. We also get
some odd visual effects camera tests that survives
from the show as well as a production still
gallery, merchandise still gallery, comic book
still gallery, and concept art gallery
"The Time Tunnel" is still a fun series despite
the fact that the visual effects and some of the
storytelling elements haven't aged very well. Fox
has done a great job of raiding their archives for
vintage footage of the shooting of the show and
other goodies. I hope that the second set will
include a commentary or two and the pilot for the
2002 revival that wasn't picked up by any of the
networks. Otherwise, the show looks and sounds
terrific and will be worthwhile for fans of the
show and Allen's TV output. |
