You no doubt know that 2016 is the fiftieth anniversary of Star Trek hitting the airwaves. But it is also the fiftieth anniversary of Irwin Allen's The Time Tunnel which premiered on Friday September 9, 1966.
The Time Tunnel was one of four popular sci-fi series of the 1960’s that included Voyage
to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space and Land of the
Giants each created, produced and sometimes directed by Irwin
Allen. Allen later went on to produce
and direct the action sequences of the hit disaster movies The Poseidon
Adventure and The Towering Inferno that garnered him the nickname “Master of Disaster”.
Project Tic-Toc is a top secret U.S. government effort to build an experimental time machine, known as "The Time Tunnel" . The base for Project Tic-Toc is a huge, hidden underground complex in Arizona, 800 floors deep and employing over 36,000 people.
The directors of the project are Dr. Douglas Phillips (Robert Colbert), Dr. Anthony Newman (James Darren), and Lt. General Heywood Kirk (Whit Bissell). The specialists assisting them are Dr. Raymond Swain (John Zaremba), a foremost expert in electronics, and Dr. Ann MacGregor (Lee Meriwether), an electro-biologist supervising the unit that determines how much force and heat a time traveler is able to withstand. The series is set in 1968, two years into the future of the actual production.
Project Tic-Toc is in its tenth year when United States Senator Leroy Clark (Gary Merrill) comes to investigate in order to determine whether the project, which has cost 7.5 billion dollars ($51 billion 2016 dollars), is worth continuing. Senator Clark feels the project is a waste of government funds. When speaking to Phillips, Kirk, and Newman in front of the Time Tunnel, he delivers an ultimatum: either they send someone into time and return him during the course of his visit or their funding will cease. Tony volunteers for this endeavor, but he is turned down by project director Doug Phillips. Defying this decision, Tony sends himself into time. Doug follows shortly after to rescue him, but they both continue to be lost in time. Senator Clark returns to Washington with the promise that funding will not be cut off to the project, leaving General Kirk in charge. The stage is set for the progress of the series as Tony and Doug are now "switched" from one period in history to another, allowing episodes to be set in the past and future.
The show's score was composed by a young composer by the name of Johnny Williams who would later in his career go by the one and only John Williams.
Additional musical scores would be lifted from the Fox vault such as this score from veteran composer Bernard Herrmann.
As a seven year old I found the program very exciting and was particular fascinated with the Time Tunnel complex itself. That illusion was accomplished with a number of tricks including a forced perspective set of the tunnel itself, huge miniatures with lived action plates added, matte paintings and lots of pyrotechnics.
My Cortez Motorhome nicknamed the EM-50 has served to relocate me not only in space but time as well. Using the Cortez last fall made it possible to revisit the series even though the sets had been struck nearly five decades earlier.
First stop was Coyote Dry Lake outside of Barstow, California (coincidentally on the road to Fort Irwin) the filming location of the desert sequences above the Time Tunnel complex for the pilot episode "Rendezvous with Yesterday". note the Cortez even has the appropriate Project Tic-Toc logo.
Next onto a small prop warehouse in North Hollywood where the control consoles to the Time Tunnel still exist.
These consoles have had more screen appearances over the years than most successful actors!
The Time Tunnel complex set was located on the Twentieth Century Fox lot.
Here on Soundstage #18 and extending into soundstage #19 next door.
Hope that enjoyed this trip back in time!
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