"Two American scientists are lost in the swirling maze of past and future ages during the first experiments on America’s greatest and most secret project: The Time Tunnel. Tony Newman and Doug Phillips now tumble helplessly toward a new fantastic adventure somewhere along the infinite corridors of time…"

Created by the prolific Irwin Allen, who brought us such “classic” series as ‘Lost in Space’ and ‘Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea’, ‘The Time Tunnel’ is a fun - if rather cheesy - romp through the ages, as our two heroes, Doctor Tony Newman (played by James Darren) and Doctor Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert) attempt to find their way back to the present, only to end up at some point in history just prior to a major battle, invasion, disaster or combination of all three.

The two time-travellers are aided by the personnel at Project Tic-Toc, Lieutenant General Heywood Kirk (television stalwart Whit Bissell), Doctor Raymond Swain (John Zaremba) and the lovely-but-usually-reduced-to-hysterics Doctor Ann McGregor (Lee Meriwether), who bravely attempt to rescue their colleagues from the perils of the time / space vortex. Unfortunately their efforts usually either failed miserably, or placed Doug and Tony in even worse jeopardy than they were before!

At the time, ‘The Time Tunnel’ was the most expensive television show on the air, and special-effects supervisor Bill Abbott won an Emmy award for his design of the Time Tunnel itself. The early shows are very entertaining, with some exiting scripts and interesting storylines - one just has to ignore the historical inaccuracies and settle back for the ride. However, the show soon suffered the same fate as all of Allen’s other shows: stories became weaker, the acting more wooden, the stock footage more prolific and the storylines reduced to mere runarounds. Not even the inclusion of alien menaces in the last few episodes could help, and the show drew to an end after only one season.

The last episode ended as it began, with our heroes trapped on the ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic once more – does this mean that Doug and Tony are forever trapped in a time loop? We may never know…

(An attempt was made to remake ‘The Time Tunnel’ in 2002: a pilot episode was made in which ex-Marine Doug Phillips was recruited by the government to work with Toni Newman (yes, a girl!) to deal with a Time Tunnel project that had badly gone wrong; unfortunately, although the new version showed a lot of potential, Fox decided not to take up the option of a series).

The Time Tunnel - Season 1
The Time Tunnel - TV Movies
The Time Tunnel - Books

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Legal Bit: 'Time Tunnel' is a Registered Trademark Twentieth Century Fox; the 'Time Tunnel' logo and all television images are copyright Twentieth Century Fox unless otherwise stated; music is copyright the original composers and producers; no copyright infringement is intended. All specially created images and text are copyright © Clive Banks; please do not use these without my permission. All rights reserved. No profit is made from this website, and any revenue made from using the banner-links featured goes straight back into the costs of maintaining it, which comes out of my own pocket in the first place. No profit advertising is accepted. This website was created purely to entertain and amuse, and any references to persons living, dead, comatose, in suspended animation, not born yet, or a figment of someone's imagination is purely coincidental. All opinions expressed are my own, so there...

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