Tumblin' With Tony and Doug

Given how much I love the sci-fi subgenre of time travel, it's pretty incredible that I've barely (if even at all) mentioned it thusfar in this blog. For the same reason, it's also pretty unbelievable that, until now, I had only seen snippets from the classic Irwin Allen TV series The Time Tunnel. I had of course been aware that the series came out on DVD some time ago, but since it was doubly expensive (having been released in two 15-episode volumes) I kept putting it off. But a couple of weeks ago, I heard that our nearby Suncoast video store is one of the 125 nationwide that are closing up, and fortunately for me, they had both volumes in stock and, like every other DVD in the store, on sale for 25% off, and that made them well worth picking up. (Hey, how often am I likely to actually spend less for something at a mall chain store than at Amazon?!?)

Last night I finally popped in the pilot episode, "Rendezvous With Yesterday". Being a show from the '60s, I was expecting a program rife with hammy acting, historical inaccuracies, and scientific implausibility. But seeing as how this is an Irwin Allen series, I should have known to expect better. This show has aged far more gracefully than one might think, and its '60s vintage only adds to its appeal. Sure, the computers used by the lab personnel are dinosaurs, but the show's writers drew so little attention to them, using them matter-of-factly like any mundane scientific tool that their contemporaries used, that their obsolescence is almost unnoticed. The attention to historical detail may have been lacking (the name of the Titanic's first officer didn't jibe with history, and far as I know there were no shuffleboard courts on the liner's decks), but one can hardly expect a '60s TV show to do the kind of exhaustive homework that James Cameron did for a major motion picture.

The fast-and-loose explanation of how the headquarters scientists can see and hear Tony and Doug across time just like on a TV set comes off as a bit silly, but then you just have to chalk that up to the aforementioned scientific implausibility ... and besides, how else are they supposed to take part in the action, and pluck the two intrepid adventurers out of danger when they need to? And if there's one thing that is a little hard to get past, it's the vastness of the Project Tic Toc underground complex, both in its size (descending some 800 stories below ground) and its body of personnel (a staggering twelve thousand) ... obviously nowadays, knowing more about how the government and the scientific community operate -- and probably just the way the world is now in general -- those kinds of statistics would make us viewers roll our eyes and/or snicker out loud. But this is a TV show, after all, and we're just not supposed to dwell on such minutiae.

One can plainly see the influence that The Time Tunnel had on future time travel shows, particularly Quantum Leap, which carried on the semi-cliffhanger-style endings that TT pioneered: much the same way that Sam leaped into a new and often awkward situation whereupon he would utter his famous "Oh, boy!", viewers would catch a glimpse of the following week's adventure into which Doug and Tony found themselves arriving. I must say I'm looking forward more eagerly to watching this show than I have any other for quite awhile ... I imagine it'll be fun to see the dynamic take shape between the young, impulsive Tony and the more mature, thoughtful Doug, and I'm also curious to find out how much we'll see of the scientists back at Tic Toc headquarters.

And, of course, the Trek geek in me simply can't close this post without pointing out the more obvious Trek connection -- the lead role of DS9's "Vic Fontaine" himself, the dashing James Darren -- as well as the less obvious one -- the fact that The Time Tunnel premiered on September 9, 1966 ... just one day after Star Trek did. Now I have to think about my biggest dilemma: Can I wait until after I watch all 30 episodes before my curiosity overwhelms me and I have to watch the most drool-inducing extra of them all -- the never-aired 2002 pilot episode of a Time Tunnel reboot that never became a series...? Okay, now I know I'm a geek.