Retro TV: Aliens Invade The Time Tunnel!

Robert Colbert & James Darren

In the mid to late 1960s, Irwin Allen produced and created a quartet of science-fiction series, including Lost in Space and Land of the Giants. I recently wrote a retrospective review of The Fantasy Worlds of Irwin Allen, an entertaining 1995 documentary about Allen's life and career. This time out, let's take a look at an episode of The Time Tunnel. While this series had the shortest run of Irwin Allen's shows, lasting only one season, it still has a devoted following, and was his personal favorite. The Time Tunnel starred James Darren and Robert Colbert as Tony Newman and Doug Phillips, two scientists who become lost in time when their time travel experiment goes awry. Every week the duo was propelled into the midst of a different real-life event, from the sinking of the Titanic, to the attack on Pearl Harbor, to the battle at The Alamo, while their colleagues at Time Tunnel HQ tried to bring them home. This clever concept allowed Allen and his production crew to make extensive use of 20th Century Fox's library of stock footage, inserting the duo into the midst of epic battles, volcanic eruptions, and a number of turning points in history.

"Visitors From Beyond The Stars," is a bit different from previous episodes of the show, as Tony and Doug aren't interacting with real life historical figures or participating in actual events. This time, our heroes venture into the territory of other Allen series like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, as they face off with alien invaders for the first (but not the last) time. As the story begins, our stalwart time travelers materialize on a spaceship which is orbiting Earth, where they encounter a pair of silver-skinned aliens. At first, our heroes think they've ended up in the future, but it turns out they're arrived in our past, during the nineteenth century. These not so friendly extraterrestrials plan to drain the Earth of all its resources in order to revive their dying planet, destroying our world in the process. It's up to Tony and Doug to stop them and thwart their evil plan.

The episode is an enjoyable, old school 1950s sci-fi tale, complete with a brainwashed Doug, and an Old West twist. "Visitors From Beyond The Stars" was directed by Sobey Martin, who was also behind the camera for a number of episodes of Lost In Space. The story was written by Bob and Wanda Duncan, who regularly penned scripts for that family-oriented space adventure series. The guest cast includes familiar faces Jan Merlin and John Hoyt, both of whom appeared in a number of science-fiction and fantasy films and television series. Irwin Allen had a group of actors, directors, writers and production staff that he liked to work with, and he'd often utilize members of this unofficial stock company for his television shows and movies. For example, John Williams, of Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars fame, composed the themes for Lost In Space, Land of the Giants and The Time Tunnel, as well as creating incidental music for those series.

At the conclusion of "Visitors From Beyond The Stars," after saving the day, our heroes are propelled into their next adventure, in which they meet "The Ghost of Nero." Doug and Tony would encounter aliens twice more during the run of the series, in "Raiders From Outer Space," and "Town of Terror." If you haven't previously seen The Time Tunnel, this entertaining show is worth checking out, especially if you really enjoy vintage science-fiction and fantasy television. Of course, if you're already a fan, or an Irwin Allen devotee, it's about time for an epic re-watch of the series, don't you think? 

 

Memorable episodes of the show include "Rendezvous With Yesterday," the impressive pilot, in which our heroes end up on the Titanic, and "The Day The Sky Fell In," in which our heroes encounter Tony's father (and Tony's younger self) just prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The complete series has been released on DVD and Blu-ray. I recommend the Blu-ray edition issued by Revolution Films in the UK in 2018. Though it's a Region 2 release, the discs will play on US Blu-ray players. Here's a trailer for the DVD release of the series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIJRh5zinbk.