• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Time Tunnel wouldn't recognize a paradox if it bit it in the bum!

Guy Gardener

Guy Gardener

Fleet Admiral
Admiral
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Tunnel

Almost at the end, but some of the shit they've tried to pull would make Phineas Bogg roll over in his grave!

The general back in the present sent a machine gun and a gymbag full of hand-grenades back to turn the tide of the Fall of Troy... My gods, Tony tried to stop the Titanic from striking it's iceberg in the pilot just because he couldn't find a dress to doll up in and sneak onto a life boat! Tony running around Pearl harbour hand in hand with his father and his younger self! They try to stop the slaughter at Little big Horn, but for the Indians so that they gain face and won't get so screwed by whitey during the final accounting. They even tried to win the battle at the Alamo!

In every episode, they ALWAYS told everyone they met in the past exactly who they were and when they were from as if it would have no consequence on future history or see them in thumbscrews until they told all the baddies exactly how to turn the tide of history just like Davros did the first time he captured Doctor Who.

Naivety unbound.
 
Yes but in the case of DW, it is possible that the Timelords interferrance in the creation of Daleks did have consequences as it eventually led to the virtual extinction of both races. Because of war. Besides in DW it's made clear that time is in flux, some points are fixed and some can be altered.
 
If you think that's bad, you should track down the pilot for a Time Tunnel reboot. It would have thrown up so much confusion.
 
I've seen the 2002 reboot.

It's starring the gay mafioso from Caprica and the whole thing is about reducing "further" corruption to the timeline generated by a "timestorm" which was an accidental by product of a hot fusion experiment. The only humans who remember the original time line are the time tunnel engineers, eye of the storm, who were so worried about making the present even more changed that we wound up with such great lines as "I know you want to kill those Nazi's but you can't."

I just finished episode 30 of the time tunnel.

What absolute shit.

Even Planet of the Giants had more charm.

Although DS9's Vic Fontaine was a bit of a looker back in the day.

What a pity that he didn't learn to act till years later.
 
Guy Gardener said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Tunnel

Almost at the end, but some of the shit they've tried to pull would make Phineas Bogg roll over in his grave!

The general back in the present sent a machine gun and a gymbag full of hand-grenades back to turn the tide of the Fall of Troy... My gods, Tony tried to stop the Titanic from striking it's iceberg in the pilot just because he couldn't find a dress to doll up in and sneak onto a life boat! Tony running around Pearl harbour hand in hand with his father and his younger self! They try to stop the slaughter at Little big Horn, but for the Indians so that they gain face and won't get so screwed by whitey during the final accounting. They even tried to win the battle at the Alamo!

In every episode, they ALWAYS told everyone they met in the past exactly who they were and when they were from as if it would have no consequence on future history or see them in thumbscrews until they told all the baddies exactly how to turn the tide of history just like Davros did the first time he captured Doctor Who.

Naivety unbound.
Click to expand...

In the Time Tunnel universe, time was fixed. As many times as they tried to change the past, they couldn't. And for the number of times they told people who they were, who's to say they were ever truly believed.

They did change the future on at least one instance that I can recall. But never the past.

I disliked the end of Time Tunnel for the wacky aliens in silver suits Irwin Allen introduced. He used the same suits in Lost in Space and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. I am just glad a carrot man didn't show up on Time Tunnel.
 
The aliens from the middle of the season fighting cowboys were silver, and the aliens at the end were blue. Oddly the humans from a million AD were both silver and gold. Though I doubt it was a consideration of Irwin's, but from our point of view we'd suspect that man was genetically adapted to cope with no ozone layer or just simply higher levels of radiation by adding another tea spoon of metal to our.basic composition.

There were a couple episodes where they hinted that they couldn't or shouldn't change the past like in the Devils Island episode where some famous French bloke was supposed to have lived a lengthy exile there-on that island Prison, so when the other rabble began planning a jail which break would be doomed if it included said celebrity..

So were tDoug and Tony characters from the bible who helped Joshua or did they hijack some other buggers destiny? I really thought that (Shades of Stargate) General Kirk was going to bring the walls of Jericho down with a missile strike though the time tunnel, but alas no, GOD had it all sorted.
 
There was that predestination paradox in End of the World...

It's the one where they end up in 1910. with Halley's Comet about to strike the Earth. There's miners trapped underground, and Doug has to convince the local astronomer that despite his, and everyone else's calculations, that the comet will miss the Earth, and that they should bother and rescue the miners. The trouble is that when Doug checks the calculations, and the observations, he gets the same answer as the astronomer.

Meanwhile in Arizona 1968, the Time Tunnel is starting to have a weird magnetic effect on the comet...

Irwin Allen shows aren't exactly known for the exploration of their core concepts, it's usually just an excuse for an routine and formulaic action show. I mean most of the Time Tunnel episodes consist of Doug and Tony being sent into some conflict of the past, being captured, getting into fistfights, with everyone at the Time Tunnel just fretting and worrying about it, unable to do anything. But there were some interesting stories hidden in there regardless of that, especially in the first two thirds of the run.

I hated the silver skinned alien episodes, which was the only way they could imagine the future.

The trouble is that they couldn't go around messing with time, because they'd always focus on famous or infamous events and people. You can't hold stuff like that up to scrutiny. Which is why for the most part Quantum Leap told stories of the little people.

One of my favourite Time Tunnel episodes is The Death Merchant, with Machiavelli brought forward from the past to the US civil war, an astounding characterisation by Malachi Throne. And yes, Doug and Tony do get captured, and there are fistfights...
 
Alas it wasn't the time tunnel drawing in Halley's Comet in but a small unknown moon (a tennis ball in orbit is technically a moon) constructed of darkmatter which only radio telescopes could detect and regular telescopes couldn't which was going to safely deflect/repulse the comet from Earth which wasn't factored into the Astronomers calculations.

But Yes, Malachi Throne was damn entertaining. :)
 
Guy Gardener said:
Alas it wasn't the time tunnel drawing in Halley's Comet in but a small unknown moon (a tennis ball in orbit is technically a moon) constructed of darkmatter which only radio telescopes could detect and regular telescopes couldn't which was going to safely deflect/repulse the comet from Earth which wasn't factored into the Astronomers calculations.

But Yes, Malachi Throne was damn entertaining. :)
Click to expand...

Damn! There's my brain making it more interesting than it was. I'm sure it's that plot point where the Time Tunnel gets locked onto the comet and the force starts affecting the instruments that convinced me of that. Maybe it's me putting two and two together and making five, assuming that the dark matter that Doug suggested was actually the influence of the tunnel. It would have been cool if that were so. Of course this was an Irwin Allen show, so such speculation never took place on screen. I've just been marathoning the series over the last two weeks. 30 episodes at two per night from the new UK boxset.

It actually became a chore to watch by the end. But having watched it and starting to write about it, I find that I think more fondly of it in retrospect than I do as I'm watching it. Marathoning also highlighted how routine and repetitive each episode was, and downplayed what was good about each individual episode. If there was drinking game for how often Doug and Tony were captured, I'd need a liver transplant. It also made me laugh that they both survived being shot in the head, Tony twice.

But the UK boxset has some nice extras, the extended pilot, the 2002 remake. An Irwin Allen TV movie from 1976 called Time Travellers that may as well be another pilot, and a really interesting Irwin Allen home movies extra, b-roll footage of the original pilot being made. You can see the footage of Dennis Hopper that hit the cutting room floor. Shame that there was no audio.
 
They were paranoid back in the future that they were causing influence on the comet. Of course half of that was about attracting it to earth, but the other half of their fears was that the comet would collide with the tunnel and frack up the tick tock base because it was too cosmic-y to be completely certain about how it would react to the tunnel.

Sometimes what they said in the control centre was ridiculous hyperfiction, but then sometimes those senerios played out.

I had a few breaks (days to weeks) but I watched all 30 episodes in 3 sittings of about 10 episodes each.

I'm still trying to make a decision about Lee Merryweather, even in a catwoman costume she's sort of plain but I can tell that the studios want me to think that she is drop dead gorgeous, an 11 even, but no matter Adam West's compliments I just don't see it.
 
I saw it then, and see it now. A cool, sophisticated honey. Mmm, yeah. When I first saw her, my hormones were just starting to kick in. Ah youth, do not dog me so!
 
Australis said:
I saw it then, and see it now. A cool, sophisticated honey. Mmm, yeah. When I first saw her, my hormones were just starting to kick in. Ah youth, do not dog me so!
Click to expand...

I had the same reaction when I first saw her as a youth in the late 1980's. "That Which Survives" from TOS, the Batman movie (as well as her 2 part episode) and The Time Tunnel were all heightened by her presence. Hell, I even watched Barnaby Jones because of her. She was also far and away, the best Catwoman.

The fact that she's 35 years older that I am means nothing.....

All that being said, The Time Tunnel was my favorite of the Irwin Allen shows, although I liked all of them.
 
I didn't mind Ertha, but all those episodes of Hollywood Squares where Whoppie channelled Ertha's Catwoman with a spot off mimicry was a little wiggy.
 
how are you watching timetunnel dvd or hulu. I know it was bad but I loved it as I was growing up I all so did'nt really care for the land of the giants or the posidoen adventure. now voyage to the bottom of the sea was great show.
 
The Laughing Vulcan said:
. . . But the UK boxset has some nice extras, the extended pilot, the 2002 remake. An Irwin Allen TV movie from 1976 called Time Travellers that may as well be another pilot,
Click to expand...
It was a pilot, meant to be a loose reboot of The Time Tunnel, that didn’t sell.

That was the one with scientists going back to Chicago in 1871, just before the great fire, to obtain the cure for a mysterious disease. It featured the cheapest time machine I’ve ever seen in a movie or TV show — a long stairway and clouds of dry-ice fog. When the two heroes were sent into the past, they materialized on the elevated train platform of the Hello, Dolly! set. I half expected them to break into a chorus of “Before the Parade Passes By.”
 
scotpens said:
The Laughing Vulcan said:
. . . But the UK boxset has some nice extras, the extended pilot, the 2002 remake. An Irwin Allen TV movie from 1976 called Time Travellers that may as well be another pilot,
Click to expand...
It was a pilot, meant to be a loose reboot of The Time Tunnel, that didn’t sell.

That was the one with scientists going back to Chicago in 1871, just before the great fire, to obtain the cure for a mysterious disease. It featured the cheapest time machine I’ve ever seen in a movie or TV show — a long stairway and clouds of dry-ice fog. When the two heroes were sent into the past, they materialized on the elevated train platform of the Hello, Dolly! set. I half expected them to break into a chorus of “Before the Parade Passes By.”
Click to expand...


Allen's science-fiction series had earned a reputation as being notorious for using nonsensical science and putting too much emphasis on catering to more juvenile audiences.

One of his answers to the lack of accuracy was" It's the future, everything's possible in the future!"

Yet Star War's success puzzled him...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

M
Fan Girl
Replies
2
Views
448
MikeJaffa
M
M
Musical Memories: Spock and Uhura Friendship fic
Replies
0
Views
686
Marie Nomad
M
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top