MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night

[Skipper]

By the way, I forgot to mention the thing I always notice about the pilot of The Time Tunnel -- it's basically got the same setup as Quantum Leap. "Pressured to prove his theories or lose funding, Doctor [Newman] prematurely stepped into the Project [Time Tunnel]... and vanished."

I don't remember the pilot very well, but hadn't the time tunnel the ability to see into the past, every time and every place? In this case you have the most powerful spy tool in the history. "Let's see what the commies were doing 5 minutes ago...". It would be foolish to cut funding...

 

[JD]

Sure, that happened all the time, if a show needed footage of a battle or a natural disaster or a rocket launch or the like. The pilot of The Six Million Dollar Man built Steve Austin's crash sequence largely around stock footage of a famous real crash of an experimental supersonic craft, though they also got to shoot new footage of a near-identical vehicle. ST: "Assignment -- Earth" used stock footage of New York City and a rocket launch. Lots of old sci-fi shows and movies would depict rocket launches using stock footage of rockets that didn't look a thing like the miniatures we saw once they were in space.

Of course, in our Incredible Hulk reviews, we talked about the three first-season episodes that were written around stock footage from Universal movies -- "747" based on one of the Airport movies, "Never Give a Trucker an Even Break" based on Spielberg's Duel, and "Earthquakes Happen" based on Earthquake (footage from which was also used in Galactica 1980's premiere). MacGyver built episodes around stock footage from The Italian Job and The Naked Jungle.

Of course, old movie serials used stock footage all the time to save money. This is why Batman just drove an ordinary car in his 1943 and 1949 serials -- so they could reuse car chases/crashes from other serials.

Does it still happen? To some extent, I'm sure, if only for things like city flyovers, storm footage, and the like. It's probably less necessary in the age of digital effects. There is, of course, the Power Rangers franchise, which is based entirely on recycling FX footage and costumes from the Japanese Super Sentai franchise -- which is why it's inexpensive enough to have stayed on the air for over two decades.

Interesting, I I didn't realize it was so significant in so many shows, I had thought it was mostly just used for b-roll, establishing shots, for a big crowd or battle that was only needed for a quick joke on a sitcom or stuff like that.
I'm familiar with Power Rangers and Super Sentai.

 

[Christopher]

I don't remember the pilot very well, but hadn't the time tunnel the ability to see into the past, every time and every place? In this case you have the most powerful spy tool in the history. "Let's see what the commies were doing 5 minutes ago...". It would be foolish to cut funding...

An idea used in the Arthur C. Clarke/Stephen Baxter novel The Light of Other Days.

Although I don't think it'd work in this case. As I recall, Doug's explanation was that they could only home in on somebody who'd already traveled through time after being exposed to the radiation bath Tony added to the Tunnel. They could lock onto that radiation signature anywhere in time and space and get an image of the area around it. So they couldn't look anywhere, just in the vicinity of someone who'd used the Time Tunnel. And that proved to be a one-way trip.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I don't remember the pilot very well, but hadn't the time tunnel the ability to see into the past, every time and every place? In this case you have the most powerful spy tool in the history. "Let's see what the commies were doing 5 minutes ago...". It would be foolish to cut funding...

It would be worse than that. You should track down Asimov's short story "The Dead Past," an unusual goodie that would have fit right in with one of the Dangerous Visions anthologies of the next decade.

 

[Skipper]

It would be worse than that. You should track down Asimov's short story "The Dead Past," an unusual goodie that would have fit right in with one of the Dangerous Visions anthologies of the next decade.

But could the tunnel "snoop" in the past before they tried to do the first test trip? It's been years since I saw the episode.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

I suppose the latter, because my understanding is they hope to go back to their era.

True. The TV astronauts were not on a mission where they intended to travel to the future, hence their shock when they see the book with dates far past the time of their departure. The TV series made the decision to have Virdon stress finding a way home to reunite with his wife and son-a sharp contrast to the original POTA's Taylor, who was more than happy to leave his own time behind. So, we can conclude that the TV astronauts' mission to was meant to operate and return in their own time.

 

[Skipper]

True. The TV astronauts were not on a mission where they intended to travel to the future, hence their shock when they see the book with dates far past the time of their departure. The TV series made the decision to have Virdon stress finding a way home to reunite with his wife and son-a sharp contrast to the original POTA's Taylor, who was more than happy to leave his own time behind. So, we can conclude that the TV astronauts' mission to was meant to operate and return in their own time.

I think that no sci-fi tv show before TNG (with the exception of TOS) acknowledged the fact that you need some type of FTL technology if you want to visit the stars and then return to your relatives on Earth while they are still alive. I remember that, for example, the original Battlestar Galactica completely handwaved the subject. I'm not sure that they did it because they thought that the viewers could not grasp the concept, or simple ignorance on the part of the writers. Or both.

 

[Christopher]

But could the tunnel "snoop" in the past before they tried to do the first test trip? It's been years since I saw the episode.

What they said was that they had no way of tracking down the objects they'd sent into the past before, which is why Tony had added an innovation, a radiation bath that marked the subject so that they could be tracked through time. That's the specific thing that Tony was testing when he went through the tunnel -- he wanted to prove that the radiation tag was the key to tracking and retrieving a time traveler. And when they first tried locking onto Tony and getting a look at his location, they didn't seem sure it would work and were relieved when it did.

And the whole setup for the ongoing series is that, because it was a brand-new, untried technology that Tony tested prematurely under pressure of the project's cancellation, it didn't work as he'd hoped. It allowed tracking, but not retrieval. So the Time Tunnel crew could observe and assist the time travelers, but not bring them home or control their movement through time.

I think that no sci-fi tv show before TNG (with the exception of TOS) acknowledged the fact that you need some type of FTL technology if you want to visit the stars and then return to your relatives on Earth while they are still alive. I remember that, for example, the original Battlestar Galactica completely handwaved the subject. I'm not sure that they did it because they thought that the viewers could not grasp the concept, or simple ignorance on the part of the writers. Or both.

There was a passing reference to "hyperdrive" in the broadcast version of the Lost in Space pilot. The original pilot had the crew drifting for years in suspended animation before reaching the planet where they crashed, so it did acknowledge the lightspeed limit, but adding Dr. Smith in reshoots required giving the ship FTL capability, since there was no extra hibernation tube for him. But it was never referenced again, and in a later episode where they exceeded the speed of light, it was portrayed as a new thing and sent them back in time. As a rule, the Jupiter 2 was portrayed as being able to travel between star systems without any reference to any kind of FTL capability.

Galactica completely screwed up astronomy on every level. Supposedly the fastest speed that the fleet's fastest ships could attain was lightspeed, but they rarely went that fast so that they wouldn't leave the other ships behind. Yet the fleet was said to have passed through several galaxies by the end of its one and only season. And earlier, when it left its home galaxy, it crossed directly and immediately into the next galaxy, as if it were like crossing a state line.

And yes, I think it's due as much to scientific ignorance on the part of the writers as to the belief that the audience won't know or care. Otherwise they wouldn't get concepts like galaxies so very wrong. A lot of screen and comics writers don't seem to have understood the difference between a star system, a galaxy, and a universe.

 

[Skipper]

And yes, I think it's due as much to scientific ignorance on the part of the writers as to the belief that the audience won't know or care. Otherwise they wouldn't get concepts like galaxies so very wrong. A lot of screen and comics writers don't seem to have understood the difference between a star system, a galaxy, and a universe.

I just found out that TvTropes has a page on the subject

Sci Fi Writers Have / No Sense Of Distance

 

[Silvercrest]

I think that no sci-fi tv show before TNG (with the exception of TOS) acknowledged the fact that you need some type of FTL technology if you want to visit the stars and then return to your relatives on Earth while they are still alive. I remember that, for example, the original Battlestar Galactica completely handwaved the subject. I'm not sure that they did it because they thought that the viewers could not grasp the concept, or simple ignorance on the part of the writers. Or both.

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century at least paid lip service to the concept with things like their Stargates.

 

[Christopher]

Blake's 7 apparently acknowledged that starships needed "ultralight speed" to travel between stars.

Red Dwarf acknowledged in episode 2 that the title ship needed to accelerate past light speed if it had a hope of getting back to Earth, and that doing so would cause temporal anomalies ("future echoes"), but it didn't treat breaking the lightspeed barrier as requiring any technological or physical mechanism more complex than just "go faster until you pass it." And afterward, the Dwarf and Starbug were able to make interstellar journeys and visit numerous different planets despite Starbug explicitly not having an FTL drive.

But then, I guess Red Dwarf is outside the purview of Skipper's comment, since it debuted in 1988, a year after TNG. I somehow thought it was a bit earlier.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

I think that no sci-fi tv show before TNG (with the exception of TOS) acknowledged the fact that you need some type of FTL technology if you want to visit the stars and then return to your relatives on Earth while they are still alive. I remember that, for example, the original Battlestar Galactica completely handwaved the subject. I'm not sure that they did it because they thought that the viewers could not grasp the concept, or simple ignorance on the part of the writers. Or both.

Writers were often lazy, or used creative solutions, assuming the audience would just accept that if you travel through space, the vehicle"must" be capable of incredible speeds. Further, there was an assumption that the audience did not necessarily care about such details, and wanted to get into the story. For Apes the TV series, much was changed, since they were sent forward due to an accident, not by way of the movies' sort of unifying theory--the "Hasslien Curve," which was not mentioned on the show.

In the movies, this "curve" is mentioned a few times in 1 and 2--

POTA:

Taylor: "In less than an hour we'll finish our six months out of Cape Kennedy. Six months in deep space...by our time, that is. According to Dr. Hasslein's theory of time in a vehicle traveling nearly the speed of light, the Earth has aged nearly 700 years since we left it...while we've aged hardly at all."

Later...

Landon: "Sorry, I was thinking of Stewart. What do you suppose happened?"
Taylor: "Air leak. Died in her sleep."
Landon: "You don;t seem very cut up about it!"
Taylor: "It's a little late for a wake--she's been dead nearly a year."
Landon: "Then we've been away from Earth for eighteen months?"
Taylor: "By our time. You've turned gray. Apart from that, you look pretty chipper for a man who's two-thousand and thirty-one years old! I read the clocks--they bear out Hasslein's hypothesis. We've been away from Earth for two thousand years, give or take a decade."

BTPOTA:

Brent: "I took an Earth-Time reading just before re-entry."
Skipper: "Well?"
Brent: "Three--Nine--Five---Five."
Skipper: "Three thousand nine hundred and fifty-five?"
Brent: "A.D."
Skipper: "Almighty God."
Brent: "We were following Taylor's trajectory, so whatever happened to us, must have happened to Taylor--"
Skipper: "What about us? Where are we??"
Brent: "In my opinion, sir, we've passed through a Hasslein Curve--a bend in time."

Later...

Brent: "I don't know how- to get back--we came through a defect--a kind of slippage in time."

So, at least there was an attempt to explain the astronauts' method for traveling to the far future. A flood of other sci-fi productions rarely go that far, or use so much technobabble, that it inspires an instant eyeroll for trying to bowl over the audience..

 

[Greg Cox]

And, of course, in a neat bit of continuity, Doctor Hasslein himself pops up in the third movie . ...

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Yes! A standout performance by Eric Braeden.

 

[Greg Cox]

Yes! A standout performance by Eric Braeden.

Who, of course, also played Dr. Forbin in COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT and a werewolf on THE NIGHT STALKER tv series.

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ My favorite episode. I always dug werewolves.

But could the tunnel "snoop" in the past before they tried to do the first test trip? It's been years since I saw the episode.

Good question. I don't remember either.

I just found out that TvTropes has a page on the subject

I often think that TVTropes is the only sane place on the planet, let alone the Internet.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I am from Decades in the future (winky nudginess), so I'll post this on the 50th anniversary of the airdate....

The Time Tunnel
"One Way to the Moon"
Originally aired September 16, 1966

How quaint...a Mars mission with artificial gravity, a roomy service module but no obvious sleeping accommodations, and warehouses on the moon...in the futuristic year of 1978! Wasn't that about when we were letting Skylab fall out of orbit because we were out of Apollo rockets? When the astronauts stepped out of the rocket onto the moon, I wanted to give them a pop quiz about famous singular small steps that they should have known the answers to, but wouldn't have.

So...they heard a scream on the moon...from inside the rocket...when the guy who was screaming was in the lunar warehouse...and was wearing a spacesuit to boot...?

The spy being in both time periods was kind of neat but also confusing. This is the first episode I've seen...from the way that the spacesuits disappear when the the guys go back into the timestream, I take it that they never get to change their clothes?

This episode left me disappointed that James Darren didn't do "Fly Me to the Moon" on This One's from the Heart...guess I'll just have to make do....

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

 

[RJDiogenes]

I am from Decades in the future (winky nudginess),

Good to know that Decades will still be around in the future.

Wasn't that about when we were letting Skylab fall out of orbit because we were out of Apollo rockets?

Don't remind me.

So...they heard a scream on the moon...from inside the rocket...when the guy who was screaming was in the lunar warehouse...and was wearing a spacesuit to boot...?

Moon dust has been scientifically proven to conduct sound very efficiently.

This is the first episode I've seen...from the way that the spacesuits disappear when the the guys go back into the timestream, I take it that they never get to change their clothes?

I don't remember if it was ever explicitly stated, but wearing the same clothes all the time was a staple of Irwin Allen shows.

 

[Christopher]

I am from Decades in the future (winky nudginess), so I'll post this on the 50th anniversary of the airdate....

The Time Tunnel
"One Way to the Moon"
Originally aired September 16, 1966

And TTT is streaming on ShoutFactory TV (free with ads), so I was able to watch early too.

I was wondering how they were going to handle the time paradox of the Tunnel team discovering Beard's future treason without altering the timeline. It turns out they didn't get the chance -- the episode avoided the whole issue of time paradoxes by keeping Beard's allegiance secret in the present (yet assuring that he got his comeuppance in the future).

But how could the wad of plastique that Brandon put under Ann's desktop have caused the back of the console to blow out without hurting Ann? And while Gen. Kirk ordering Ray to take Ann to safety is the kind of gender condescension you expect from the '60s (they would've called it chivalry), I have to wonder why the other one or two female technicians in the background weren't extended the same consideration.

I was wrong about the reuse of the Tic-Toc complex FX shots from the pilot -- we got a brief glimpse of the Tunnel Room matte painting here, plus another look at the reactor miniature and the stock shot of security running along the walkways. But the directing of the pursuit of Brandon through the complex spoils the illusion of the matte painting. The shots where he's hiding between the rings of the tunnel reveals that it's a forced-perspective set piece that tapers conically rather than extending far back cylindrically as in the painting. There's a low-angle shot on General Kirk and Ray that reveals the top of one of the side pillars that extend much higher in the painting. And the control complex is shown in the matte painting to be a platform on a column with a sheer drop on the other side of the outer barriers, but here we're clearly shown that there's just the stage floor on the other side of the barriers. Really frustrating.

Another odd discontinuity was the twosome referring to their project as "the Time Tunnel program" instead of "Project Tic-Toc." And what are the implications of the fact that their project is still unknown a decade in the future? Unfortunately, that will never be explored.

Of course, we also get plenty of stock footage from George Pal's Destination Moon, and recycled spacesuits from same. Oddly, in the scene where Doug and Beard are fighting, Beard's air tank is a flat box with the air cylinders just painted on, whereas it's the genuine article in the later fight with Tony.

How quaint...a Mars mission with artificial gravity

Both the moment of free fall and the alleged rotational gravity make no sense, since both the sound effects and the exterior footage show that the rocket is still under thrust. Plus it's obviously not rotating in a way that could produce gravity. Plus the rocket in the liftoff footage is a completely different vehicle than the one in the stock Destination Moon footage.

So...they heard a scream on the moon...from inside the rocket...when the guy who was screaming was in the lunar warehouse...and was wearing a spacesuit to boot...?

They heard Harlow's scream over the intercom. Just before, we saw a close-up of his hands turning the switches on the waist unit, and we later saw Doug operating the same switches to activate his radio to call Tony. So Harlow must've turned on his radio to call for help, but been unable to.

This is the first episode I've seen...from the way that the spacesuits disappear when the the guys go back into the timestream, I take it that they never get to change their clothes?

The Time Tunnel depended on stock footage -- both the stock footage from old movies that most of the episodes were built around, and the recycled footage of Doug and Tony tumbling through the timestream from the pilot. So no matter what wardrobe changes or damage they went through in the episode, they always magically changed back into Doug's 1912-style gray suit and Tony's 1968-style green sweater when they were swept back into the timestream.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Didn't realize that was stock footage, but I wasn't familiar with the source and wasn't watching this too closely, hence not noticing the radio thing.

That's pretty much what I figured about the clothes reappearing.