Veteran producer Irwin Allen sold this 1966-67 sci-fi series to 20th Century Fox on the basis of an irresistible pitch: in constructing a show around time travelers, he'd be able to keep costs down and guarantee lavish production values by using spectacular stock footage gleaned from Fox's extensive feature-film backlog. Allen himself wrote and directed the pilot, “Rendezvous with Yesterday,” in which the completion of a top-secret government project—involving the development of a time-travel portal—is threatened by a withdrawal of funding. To stave off congressional action, scientists Tony Newman (James Darren) and Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert) hurl themselves into the tunnel-like contraption and are catapulted back through time. Unfortunately, they wind up on the doomed ocean liner Titanic hours before its tragic sinking (shown in stock footage from the 1952 Fox feature Titanic), and their coworkers, Drs. Ann MacGregor (Lee Meriwether) and Raymond Swain (John Zaremba), are hard-pressed to extricate them when the ill-fated ship hits the iceberg (still, Tony and Doug get away, plucked out of one time zone and flung into another). The 30 episodes of the series found the duo on the island of Krakatoa, at the Alamo, at the siege of Troy, in the war of 1812, and various other famed conflicts, encountering such historic figures as Robin Hood, Genghis Khan, and Billy the Kid, to name just a few. The show's writers rarely confronted the issue of how—if at all—Tony and Doug altered the course of history, but the scientists were portrayed as being grimly aware of their responsibility to avoid actions that would do so. The popularity of teen idol Darren immediately won a following for the show, but it was the ingenuity of scripters and film editors that made The Time Tunnel one of network TV's most fascinating series. Some four decades later, it holds up remarkably well, looking great in this four-disc boxed set with extras including the unaired extended pilot, Allen's behind-the-scenes “home movies,” and concept art, production, merchandise, and comic book still galleries. Recommended. (E. Hulse)
The Time Tunnel: Volume One
Fox, 4 discs, 405 min., not rated, DVD: $39.98 April 3, 2006
The Time Tunnel: Volume One
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