On 9 September 1966, The Time Tunnel made its debut on American television...
Oh dear, I'm bored already. No, not with The Time Tunnel - I've adored that series since I was a boy. I'm bored with the dry, textbook article I was about to launch into, throwing facts and figures at you in a way that's identical to a hundred other retrospectives.
You see, this is a series I am absurdly passionate about, and I'd like to try something a little different. So, for The Time Tunnel's 60th anniversary, what say we try a little time travel of our own?
It just so happens that I have the listings pages from a vintage Georgia edition of TV Guide from that exact Friday evening. So let it be our own personal Time Tunnel as we step into a perfectly ordinary living room on a quiet street in Macon, Georgia, on September 9, 1966…
1966 had been a pretty good year for television, as far as young Tommy was concerned. It had got off to a good start when Batman exploded onto the scene. Tommy had been hooked on the Caped Crusader since January. Every week brought another mad scheme, another ridiculous death trap and another opportunity for Batman and Robin to escape from certain doom. Truth to tell, he liked the villains, such as the Riddler, the Penguin, the Joker and Catwoman, almost as much as Batman and Robin themselves. He could hardly wait to discover which of them the Dynamic Duo would be taking on next.
Last night, he and his dad had watched a new science-fiction programme called Star Trek. Tommy wasn't quite sure what to make of all of it yet, but there was a man called Mr. Spock who was very nearly as cool as Batman. Tommy had already decided that he'd be watching again next week.
Outside, the September evening was beginning to soften. Just after seven, there was still enough daylight for the neighbourhood kids to be riding their bicycles up and down the street and playing kickball on the asphalt. But the sun was sinking lower now, and the sky had begun to turn the colours Tommy associated with the end of summer: orange near the horizon, deepening into purple overhead. Soon the streetlights would flicker on and mothers would start calling the kids indoors.
Tommy sighed and touched his T-shirt, underneath which the scar from his recent appendectomy was still fresh. That was the only reason he was stuck indoors on a fine Friday evening, though it did have its perks. His parents were more sympathetic to letting him watch all the "fantastical" and "far-fetched" television shows he loved - terms his mother used with a tolerant smile. Dad had winked at him earlier and pretended he was only tuning in to keep Tommy company, though Tommy knew he enjoyed them just as much as he did.
Tonight, though, Tommy's dad presented him with a dilemma.
"So, what are we watching, kiddo?" Dad asked, the copy of TV Guide opened to that evening's viewing. "The Wild, Wild West? Ooh, looks like Dr Loveless is back."
Tommy liked Dr Loveless. Not quite as much as the Riddler, perhaps, but he was definitely in the same league as the Penguin and the Joker.
"On the other hand," said Tommy's father with a mischievous smile, "there are two new shows on ABC tonight."
Tommy couldn't imagine anything could compete with Jim West and Artemus Gordon going up against Dr Loveless, but he could tell from his father's tone that he was about to find out.
"Well, starting in just a few minutes, there's The Green Hornet. I used to listen to his adventures on the radio. He's kind of like Batman, but more serious."
Tommy wasn't entirely sure what that meant. Batman was deadly serious as far as he was concerned, and he never understood why his dad would chuckle at it. But he had to admit The Green Hornet sounded promising.
"And straight afterwards, at eight, there's a new sci-fi show called The Time Tunnel. It's made by that Irwin Allen fellow."
Then, seeing the confused look on Tommy's face, he explained that the same man was responsible for Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space. Tommy loved both of them. If Irwin Allen was making another programme, it was probably worth watching.
"It's got James Darren in it," Dad added.
Tommy didn't know much about James Darren, but his older sister, Peggy, certainly did. She had a picture of him on her wall and was always playing his record, Goodbye Cruel World. Tommy had heard it often enough to know that she thought James Darren was wonderful. Was that a good sign or a bad sign?
Young Tommy was faced with what felt like the most difficult decision of his entire life: The Wild, Wild West or The Green Hornet and The Time Tunnel. He squatted on the carpet in front of the family's new television set and considered his options.
The television itself was still something of a marvel. It was a great wooden console, polished and imposing, the sort of thing that looked as though it belonged in the furniture department rather than the electrical shop. Dad had only brought it home a week earlier. And best of all, it was colour. All his friends were green with envy and begging their parents to switch to a colour set too. Maybe that was why he suddenly found himself swayed towards watching the series with a colour in the title.
"Let's watch The Green Hornet, Dad!"
Half an hour later, Tommy and his father had been joined by Tommy's mother and sister. As it was a Friday, Mom got a break from cooking, so they all had metal folding trays in front of them as The Green Hornet theme blared from the television.
Tommy loved TV dinners. It always felt as though the family were breaking the rules somehow by not sitting at the kitchen table. Peeling back the foil from his aluminium compartment tray, he tucked into Salisbury steak, corn, mashed potatoes and a tiny warm brownie.
Both Peggy and Mom were keen to watch James Darren's new series, so Tommy magnanimously decided not to play the appendectomy card, which he suspected was already wearing a bit thin, especially with Peg. And so the double bill continued with The Time Tunnel.
The episode opened with a sleek aircraft streaking through the sky.
"Wow, is that a Learjet?"
"I do believe it is," confirmed his dad. Tommy and his father were pretty good at spotting types of plane, and most Saturdays they would spend some time gluing together Aurora model kits. "Looks like the one Frank Sinatra bought last year."
"Gary Merrill," said Mom as the view changed to the interior of the jet, where a surprisingly dour-looking fellow was looking through the contents of a red folder. Tommy would have been thrilled to be in that jet.
The jet dropped the man off in what looked like the Arizona desert, where he was met by another man in a car.
"That's not James Garner, is it?" asked Mom.
"No," replied Dad. "Looks a lot like him, though." Mom and Dad often went in for what they called "actor spotting", where they would try to identify all the actors in a film or TV show. It was only occasionally annoying, on those occasions when they drowned out the dialogue.
"Oh, maybe it's that fella who replaced Garner for a couple of episodes of Maverick."
Tommy tuned out his parents' chatter as the car drove toward a patch of desert that suddenly split apart. The earth swallowed the car whole, then zipped shut as if nothing had happened.
"Was that the Time Tunnel?"
No one answered, so he was left to ponder the question as the title sequence began. The screen became a kaleidoscope of motion. Radiating bolts of crimson, teal, and white rushed at the screen in a crazy optical illusion that made Tommy tilt his head back. An animated hourglass materialised out of the swirling colours, and inside it, a tiny silhouette of a man tumbled helplessly against a stream of falling sand. The music shifted from eerie ticking to a roaring, brassy march that rattled the speaker of their new console.
THE TIME TUNNEL declared the title card.
"The Time Tunnel!" a voice like thunder boomed from the speaker.
"Anyone else think this is called The Time Tunnel?" deadpanned Peggy.
Tommy ignored her. The titles were good, he decided, better than The Green Hornet but not quite as good as Batman. Then again, what was?
It turned out that the car had driven into an underground garage. The two men checked-in with an old looking soldier called Jiggs who gave them clearance to pass through into an incredible underground complex. The dour man from the plane, it turned out, was a United States Senator - and he looked thoroughly unimpressed, already grumbling about how much money had been spent on the project.
"He's mean!" Tommy said, taking an instant dislike to Senator Clark.
"In this role, maybe, but Gary Merrill used to play Batman on the radio," Dad replied.
Tommy screwed up his face, trying to imagine this grumpy, middle-aged man wearing Batman's cowl. He was no Adam West, but then again, his dad was talking about radio from "the olden days," as Tommy thought of them.
The dark-suited man who looked like Maverick turned out to be Dr. Doug Phillips. As he continued the tour, he casually informed the senator, "There are over twelve thousand personnel quartered in each of those complexes. Each complex is over eight hundred floors deep."
Dad scoffed. "Well, that certainly puts the Cheyenne Mountain Complex to shame. Where on earth did they put all the sand?"
Dad's credulity was strained even further when Doug led the senator into an elevator, warning him, "Hang on, we're going into free fall for eight hundred floors." There were no handrails, and to make matters worse, the floor flashed bright coloured lights straight up into the occupants' faces.
"You'd be throwing up, Tommy!" Peggy giggled, gleefully reminding him of a certain embarrassing incident on a Ferris wheel earlier that summer.
Before Tommy could deliver a scathing reply, Dad chipped in. "Never mind vomiting - they'd be floating off the deck, completely weightless! And when that thing stopped, the deceleration would turn their organs to soup and crush their spines!"
"Yes, well, vomiting and crushed spines are not polite after-dinner conversation," Mom said sternly, casting a sharp look across the folding trays. "So if you two don't mind..."
It was all Tommy and his sister could do not to burst out laughing.
In any event, Dr. Phillips and the senator emerged from the elevator with their spines entirely intact to meet an army general whom the senator greeted as "Woody."
"Ah, the ubiquitous Whit Bissell," Dad said with a smile.
"Yeah, he's in everything!" Tommy's sister agreed.
The three men stepped into an enormous underground cavern packed with buzzing computers and busy looking scientists, all dominated by a massive, hypnotic cylinder of black-and-white rings that looked like something straight out of an Op-art exhibition.
"Wow..." Tommy breathed. As far as he was concerned, this place put both the Batcave and the bridge of the Starship Enterprise to absolute shame.
Even Dad looked impressed. "Now that looks like something straight out of Forbidden Planet."
Peggy, however, was far more interested in the handsome young scientist striding out of the Tunnel in a white jumpsuit.
"Moondoggie!" she sighed, giving her eyelashes a theatrical flutter. Tommy gave her a stern don't-spoil-this look.
On the screen, Senator Clark was doing his best to spoil everyone's day by threatening to shut down Project Tic-Toc unless they proved the machine worked by sending a man into the past right now.
"They should just throw him in," Peggy declared. "'Senator? What senator?'"
For once, Tommy was inclined to agree with his sister, though he'd never admit it out loud.
"I want to know what happened to all those mice and monkeys they sent back in time," Mom murmured, peering over her tray.
Dad grinned. "I'm imagining Julius Caesar sitting down for breakfast when a boatload of mice and monkeys materialise out of nowhere and land right on his head."
A short while later, with the main control room conveniently deserted while all the scientists were presumably off on a break, Tony Newman made his move. Now dressed in a green turtleneck sweater and slacks, he slipped into the silent Tunnel chamber and flipped the On switch. Immediately, sirens wailed and klaxons flashed. Armed soldiers scrambled in all directions, racing down corridors and over high gantries.
"They don't look like they have any idea where they're going," Peggy observed.
"Does Tony know where he's going?" Dad asked.
The whole family fell silent as Tony was swallowed up by the Tunnel, and sent tumbling helplessly through a dizzying kaleidoscope of swirling light and colour.
"What is that, Dad?" Tommy whispered, leaning in toward the screen.
"Time itself, I suppose," his father replied, sounding a little uncertain himself. "Maybe the colours are days rushing by, or perhaps he's passing through another dimension. A bit like in your comic books when Superman flies into the past or future."
Tommy understood that completely. In the comics, whenever the Man of Steel broke the time barrier, he flew through concentric bands of colour—usually with the years helpfully written on them.
"He's coming in for a landing," Peggy said, leaning forward. "Moondoggie should have brought his surfboard - he's about to land right in the sea!"
"No, he's going to land on that ship, stupid!" Tommy blurted out.
"Don't call your sister stupid," Mom warned, without turning her head from the screen, "or you'll find yourself upstairs wondering how all this works out."
"Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Peg."
Tommy bit his tongue, staring back at the screen. Though he would rather die than admit it out loud to Peggy, the thought of surfing through time on a surfboard was actually pretty cool.
Tony somersaulted onto the deck of the ship, where a pretty young English girl assumed he had simply tumbled down some steps.
"Oh, I know her!" Mom announced, pointing a fork toward the screen. "She was in that Disney film about the cat-"
"The Three Lives of Thomasina!" Dad said instantly, snapping his fingers.
"That's it," Mom smiled. "Susan Hampshire. She plays the girl who lived up in the glen."
"He ought to ask her what year it is?" said Tommy.
"He's gradually working it out without giving away that he's a time traveller," Dad replied, leaning back in his chair. "See, she's just told him that Theodore Roosevelt is president, which narrows it down."
"Why not just tell her he's a time traveller and ask what year it is? That's what I'd do."
"Because they wouldn't believe you," Dad warned. "They'd think you were mad and lock you up. Or, if you went back far enough, they might think you were a warlock and burn you at the stake."
"Either sounds good to me," Peggy smirked at her brother.
"He's wandering off now," Mom said, watching Tony walk down the companionway. "Where's he going? What's he even doing on this ship... did he mean to come here? I'm confused. This is why I don't like sci-fi."
"He seems to be here randomly," Dad said. "Like he didn't or couldn't set a destination."
"Do you think those mice and monkeys landed on the ship?" Peggy asked.
"I hope not," Dad said softly. "Look what ship it is." On screen, Tony was staring aghast at a life preserver fixed to the wall. Stenciled across the curve in bold black letters was a single name: TITANIC.
"Ah, he's gone back in time fifty-four years," Mom announced suddenly.
Tommy turned, genuinely impressed. "Wow, how do you know that, Mom?"
Mom smiled. "Because your Auntie Jean was born on the exact day that ship - "
"Don't spoil it for them, Helen," Dad laughed quietly.
"It's okay, I already know about the Titanic," Peggy said smugly, taking a bite of her brownie and infuriating Tommy, who was now the only one in the room left in the dark.
He wasn't destined to remain puzzled for long, though. On screen, Tony had cornered the ship's captain and was desperately trying to warn him about what was coming.
"Do you recognize the captain, Tommy?" Dad asked, leaning forward. "That's Michael Rennie. He played Klaatu - the alien with the big robot, Gort - in The Day the Earth Stood Still."
"Yeah, and I think he was in an episode of Lost in Space, too..." Tommy trailed off. He quickly clamped his jaw shut, refusing to get drawn into his parents' actor-spotting game. He was trying to follow the plot. And just as well, because on screen, Tony was desperately trying to convince the captain that his ship was going to collide with an iceberg and sink. Then Tony blurted out that he was a time traveller who had come all the way from the year 1968 - the future!
"Told you," said Dad as Tony was led away to be locked up. "They think he's a crank."
"It's a horrible dilemma, though," Mom said sympathetically, resting her fork on her tray. "Imagine being on that ship, knowing what's going to happen, but no one will listen to you. It's the stuff of nightmares."
Back at Project Tic-Toc, the Tunnel had finally homed in on Tony's location. Suddenly, the Tunnel apparatus functioned like a massive television screen, displaying a grainy, flickering picture of a liner cutting through the ocean at night.
"Hey, why is the picture in black and white?" Peggy asked. "You'd think with all the money they spent on it, the picture would be in colour."
On screen, General Heywood Kirk announced gravely that he'd "know those lines anywhere," declaring it to be the Titanic.
Dad chuckled, shaking his head slightly. "He's forgetting that the Titanic had two sister ships. One was the Olympic - she was nicknamed Old Reliable."
"It wouldn't be much of an adventure if Moondoggie had landed on Old Reliable," Peggy laughed.
"Don't be so sure," Dad countered with a grin. "The Olympic saw plenty of action during the First World War. She even rammed and sank a German U-boat!"
Back on the Titanic, the English girl, Althea, was checking up on Tony in his holding room.
"I think she's sweet on him," Mom smiled approvingly.
Peggy giggled, swaying side to side. "Althea and Moondoggie sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-"
"That's enough of that," Mom cut in sternly, much to Tommy's relief.
Mom turned her attention back to the screen. "Oh, what's going on now?"
Having just left Tony, Althea suddenly swooned on a nearby staircase, clutching the handrail before weakly retrieving a small bottle of pills from her purse.
Tommy shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He wasn't sure he liked this sudden turn of events - it was starting to look like a scene straight out of one of Mom's afternoon soaps, like General Hospital or Peyton Place. She obsessively followed those sagas the same way Tommy devoured his sci-fi, but as far as he was concerned, this melodrama was an unwelcome intrusion.
Thankfully, the scene shifted back to Project Tic-Toc, where the team was observing Tony's predicament on the viewscreen.
"Hey, it's in colour now!" Peggy noticed. "Did Sergeant Jiggs go outside and twiddle the aerial, do you think?"
Tommy clamped his lips together and tried not to smile. No way was he letting his sister know he'd found one of her jokes funny.
"Can't they just bring Tony back home?" Mom asked, not unreasonably.
It appeared the answer was no. Instead, Doug Phillips decided the only option was to jump in the Tunnel after Tony - much to the visible distress of an attractive woman scientist in the control room.
"Hey, isn't she Miss America?" Dad asked, suddenly straightening up in his armchair.
"Um... Deborah Bryant?" Mom offered.
"No, not this year's Miss America - from about ten years ago," Dad said, snapping his fingers. "I've seen her in a few shows since then. Lee Meriwether." He smiled at the screen. "She looks fantastic, even in a lab coat."
Mom gave him a playful elbow in the ribs, and Dad wisely took the hint.
In the meantime, back at Project Tic-Toc, Doug had kitted himself out in a natty Norfolk jacket and picked up a vintage newspaper featuring a front-page headline about the doomed liner.
Dad let out a sharp laugh when the camera pushed in for a close-up of the front-page photo. "Now I'd know those lines anywhere - that's not the Titanic, it's the Lusitania!"
Then it was Doug's turn to step into the Tunnel and tumble through the swirling kaleidoscope of colour.
"Groovy!" Peggy giggled, before her amusement instantly turned to alarm. "Oh no - he's going straight into the furnace!"
It was a dangerously close call. Doug materialised inside the ship's roaring boiler room and landed squarely on a mound of coal, much to the annoyance of a soot-covered stoker.
"Hey, the background is in black and white," Tommy pointed out, leaning closer to the cabinet.
"They must be using stock film footage," Dad explained. "There have been a couple of movies made about the Titanic. Mind you, the whole thing is passing into history now. Give it another decade or so and everyone will have forgotten all about it."
With the help of a cheeky young French boy, Doug managed to gain access to Tony's cabin. Their relief at being reunited was relayed straight back to the control room, where Senator Clark was currently dozing off - even with a mug of tea sitting right in front of him.
Now it was Mom's turn to be eagle-eyed.
"Did you see that?" she asked, pointing at the TV screen. "That yellow tea set in front of the senator is the exact same one sitting on the table in Tony's cabin!"
"Maybe they were sending cups and saucers through the Tunnel along with the mice and monkeys," Peggy suggested innocently.
On screen, after a brief scuffle with the crewman guarding the door to Tony's cabin, the two time travellers took over the ship's wireless room, frantically pounding out distress messages to nearby vessels. It was a bold move - and one that did not go down at all well with Captain Smith when he and his crew burst in to subdue our heroes.
Desperate to prove his story, Doug pulled tomorrow's newspaper out of his jacket and tried to show the captain the headline about the sinking. Captain Smith remained utterly unimpressed.
Dad shook his head with a chuckle. "Well, I don't think showing him a picture of the Lusitania helped."
With grim inevitability, the Titanic struck the iceberg, sending a violent tremor through the ship and causing Mom to get unexpectedly philosophical.
"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."
"What's that, Mom?" Peggy asked softly.
Her dad could be a bit of a know-it-all when it came to history, but Mom was well-read in her own right - she just tended not to make a big show of it.
"Just an old poem I memorised back in my school days," Mom said with a faint, sombre smile. "It means what's done is done. You can't change the past."
Dad stared at the flickering screen, looking surprisingly thoughtful. "Their foreknowledge hasn't given Tony and Doug the power to alter history at all... they've just become a part of it."
On screen, Captain Smith finally realised there might be some truth to their warnings, even sombrely asking Tony and Doug if he himself was destined to die tonight.
"It's actually quite moving and thought-provoking," Mom admitted. "Are you sure this is from the same man who makes Lost in Space?"
Finally accepting their story, Captain Smith granted Tony and Doug their freedom, and the duo split up among the panic-stricken crowd to help load the lifeboats. Tony, naturally, bumped into Althea, who was sitting alone at a grand piano, making zero effort to save herself.
She confessed to our hero that she had an inoperable brain tumour - revealing that she was travelling to America because of some newfangled thing called neurosurgery.
"Oh, boy," Peggy sighed, rolling her eyes. "It's like Althea belongs in a completely different show. It's so clunky! She ought to be in Dark Shadows, not The Time Tunnel."
Tony, however, clearly thought she belonged in a lifeboat, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her firmly toward the upper deck. Once Althea was safely loaded into a lowering boat, Tony reunited with Doug on the tilting deck.
Tommy, who had been completely enthralled by the action on screen, suddenly sat up straight. "Um... how are Tony and Doug going to get off the Titanic?"
Mom frowned, equally unclear on the logistics. "They sent Doug to rescue Tony, but who rescues Doug? They haven't actually explained how they get back to the Time Tunnel."
"Maybe they don't," Dad suggested quietly.
Moments later, Dad was proved right. Before the doomed ship could pull them under, the Tunnel froze Tony and Doug, ripping them out of 1912 and hurling them once again into the vortex of the colourful time dimension.
"Ah," Peggy said, leaning back against the sofa cushions. "So we've got Lost in Space, and this is Lost in Time."
"Looks like it," Dad replied with a warm grin.
Tommy just stared at the shifting patterns on the television screen, his heart pounding.
"Cool," he whispered, just as the viewscreen in the Tunnel went blank.
A short time later, as the episode wound down, Peggy chimed in. "You know, they're giving that stupid senator a pretty warm farewell given that the whole mess is his fault. I still say they should throw him in the Tunnel."
Once again, Tommy found himself in complete agreement with his sister. It was becoming a deeply worrying trend.
He didn't dwell on it for long, though. Within moments, Tony and Doug were back, swirling around in the time dimension like Tommy's rubber duck spiralling toward the plughole after a bath.
Then, the background shifted. The time travellers were tumbling down through the open air toward a massive rocket sitting on a launch pad.
"Oh, wow - is that an SM-65 Atlas rocket?" Tommy asked, leaning forward.
"Looks like it, son," replied his equally intrigued Dad.
Tony and Doug tumbled straight toward the rocket, passing right through its outer hull to materialise in an empty interior compartment, where Doug issued a grave warning: "If this is one of those early Canaveral jobs, we could be blown up right here on the pad!"
Tommy held his breath as the engines ignited and the rocket began its slow, shaking lift-off. Then, just as the tension reached a breaking point, the frame suddenly froze. Superimposed in bold letters over the image were the words:
SEE THIS FANTASTIC ADVENTURE IN... THE TIME TUNNEL
As the end credits began to roll, young Tommy let out a long breath. He knew right then and there that it was going to be an agonisingly long wait until next Friday night.
The living room started to bustle around him as the family began to disperse. There were TV dinner trays to clear, dishes to wash, and for one young man, bed awaited.
But before heading down the hall, Tommy sidled over to his mother in the kitchen.
"Mom... do you think I could get a green sweater? Like Tony's?"
And that's how I'd like to imagine it was. Sixty years ago tonight, The Time Tunnel had arrived. It would last barely seven months on the air - a single season of thirty episodes - and yet, six decades on, it remains fondly, stubbornly remembered by a small but devoted following. Myself included among them.
And once, a very long time ago, I asked for a green sweater like Tony's, too.
Anthony Rooney
