59th Anniversary Viewing
The Time Tunnel
"Raiders from Outer Space"
Originally aired March 31, 1967
MeTV said:
Tony and Doug are at Khartoum in 1883 when the world is menaced by conquerors from outer space.
Doug and Tony tumble out to find themselves in the middle of a battle between horse-riding British soldiers and Arabs, and have to employ their academic skills to fend off some turbaned swordsmen. As they try to slip away from the scene, they find themselves at the ray-gun point of a couple of more bug-eyed alien types rather than silver ones. The aliens' intent is to kill them, but a voice commands them to bring the time travelers to him. When the TT crew try to pull the guys out, their console obligatory sparks and a more human-faced alien (Kevin Hagen) appears on TunnelVision, warning them not to interfere for the next two hours or be destroyed. Finding their equipment's power down, the TT crew determines from their previous fix that the guys are in the Sudan on November 2, 1883...which according to the episode is the time of the siege of Khartoum, though IMDb contributors dispute this.
The guys are taken to a cave lair protected by a force field and cloaked turrets. The alien leader explains that he's from Aristos and showing them on a Lucite map how he plans to hit London with his missiles (in tubes reportedly from the
Seaview, along with other props in the cave) and conquer the planet to prove his worthiness of being a prince. The alien has Tony led out to the desert to make it look like he died of thirst; while Doug is magnetically bound to an "extractor" to remove the knowledge in his brain about time travel, which will kill him.
Trying to get fixes on the guys, the TT crew watch the alien escorting Tony disappear as a pair of mounted British soldiers approach. Captain Henderson (John Crawford) has Tony taken prisoner as an Arab spy, and is understandably skeptical when Tony tries to tell him about the aliens from outer space who plan to destroy the captain's people. Then, from high ground, the party comes upon the sight of the Arabs charging the British forces and wiping them out (one of various parts of the episode that makes use of footage from the 1966 film
Khartoum). Henderson holds Tony responsible, but Tony, now deliberately being more vague, offers to show him where the people who want to destroy the captain's people can be found.
The TT crew then watches as Doug's extraction begins. They attempt to retrieve Doug at half power and end up sending him to where Tony is--outside the alien cave trying to get Henderson to go in. Finding himself also being taken prisoner, Doug tosses a rock at the force field to show the captain what they're talking about. This gets the aliens to uncloak themselves and their defensive armaments, with which they blast the captain's sergeant when he approaches. Now readily convinced about the alien threat, Henderson offers to bring forces who can assault the cave. Not having time to reach Khartoum before the aliens plan to launch their missiles, he takes the guys to the location of an already mobile column, only to find that the column is being ambushed by the Arabs. Henderson and the guys proceed to tussle with Arabs while attempting to join the column.
Meanwhile, the alien leader transports a device into the TT control room, threatening to kill everyone in the complex if the crew doesn't cooperate by abandoning the complex. An attempt to scan it for radioactivity causes a technician to go up in smoke. Swain suggests the risky move of sending a reverse power burst to the alien HQ. This is absorbed by the aliens' energy screen, and the leader reveals that he plans to take over the Tunnel complex for the aliens' use. Back in '83, the British forces are routed and fall back to a British fort (presumably Khartoum, though I didn't catch them explicitly establishing this), where Henderson pretends to lead the movie forces in fending off the Arab assault. The guys take up rifles as the Arabs breach the gate and charge in. Tony is knocked out in a melee near some powder kegs, following which an Arab tosses a grenade to make them blow. Doug dispatches of the Arab he's fighting in time to help Tony, tossing away the explosive.
When the British abandon the fort, Henderson and the guys return to the cave with grenades. Tony's nabbed by the aliens while trying to toss one and taken inside to be placed on the extractor. Doug and Henderson carry on the assault, taking out the alien guards and their blaster towers (which just seem to disappear in puffs of smoke rather than explode). They then use explosives to blast open the metal door to the alien complex. The alien leader finds himself in a standoff with Doug, who learns about the threat to the TT complex, which is confirmed via brief voice contact with Kirk. With the alien device's timer running out, Kirk gets the idea to put it in the Tunnel and send it back to the aliens. (Why wouldn't they have thought of that sooner?) When it appears in the cave, the alien leader activates a pair of missiles. Henderson and the guys brawl with the aliens and their masked human servants, then make their escape, Henderson getting off a couple of shots at the alien device. They watch from outside as part of the mountain above blows up. As Henderson's fetching the horses, Doug and Tony disappear.
The Time Tunnel
"Town of Terror"
Originally aired April 7, 1967
Series finale
MeTV said:
Tony and Doug are propelled into the future (1978) to fight invaders siphoning off the Earth's oxygen.
Doug and Tony tumble helplessly into a high-tech underground complex (for an Irwin Allen production in 1967). While they're examining instrument banks full of blinky lights and switches, they're snuck up on and attacked by a man who gets a pummeling from Doug. Tony then declares that the man's dead, but as they're walking upstairs, the man rises and uses a console to disappear in smoke and flashes (the predominant method of teleportation in an Irwin Allen production). The bewildered guys walk through a lab into a hotel room lobby and summon the proprietress, Sarah Pettinghill (Oh, Mrs. Hollinger, Mabel Albertson). When they ask about the cellar, she takes them back through the door, where they find the lab replaced by a pantry. Then she touches the two of them, causing them to freeze in place, and transforms into a glittery, fish-like alien.
Down below, the alien, Andro 1, proceeds to report the intrusion to Andro Leader, and we learn that they plan to remove all the oxygen from Earth's atmosphere and transport it to their own planet, Andro, in one hour. Blocked by interference, the TT crew manage to transport the guys a few feet in space to free them from the force that's holding them, and the guys find themselves back in the lab, with the door to the cellar, in which they see the alien, which for some reason Tony describes as an android. After they close the door, the alien uses a test device to seal the lab and remove the oxygen from it. After repeated attempts, the guys manage to break through an unusually tough window with a lab bench and find themselves in the abandoned-looking village of Cliffport, Maine, population listed as 700, where they're observed by a young couple who are hiding from them, Pete (Gary Haynes) and Joan (Heather Young). The alien sounds a strange alarm and the guys are chased by what appear to be a couple of fishermen with ray guns and into a force field on the outskirts of town, which stuns them.
When the attackers come close enough, the revived guys give them the history's greatest warriors treatment, following which the fishermen change into aliens and disappear sans smoke or flashes. Figuring that Doug and Tony are two of their own kind, the young couple follow them to the town hall, where the guys find residents frozen in place as they were...including the lady from the hotel. The young couple approaches and share the aliens' overheard plan; and after the guys have to explain that they're from another time, divulge that it's September 10, 1978 (between the death of Keith Moon and the premiere of
Taxi). The foursome proceeds to a general store--also with frozen residents inside--to scavenge dynamite, while the hotel lady disappears in their wake. (It's odd that none of the frozen residents are outdoors.)
At TT, an alien appears and touches a technician, taking control long enough for him to surreptitiously plant a device in one of the control room consoles. The crew subsequently find the phones out and exits sealed, and begin to suffer from loss of oxygen. Kirk lights some rolled-up paper and the smoke indicates that the air is going out through the Tunnel, which they can't shut down. Meanwhile, the kids get weirded out and split after the guys try to initiate voice contact with the TT crew, to no response, and then try to tell the kids about the Time Tunnel. Following that the guys fend off another attack from an alien-controlled townsman. Outside, an alien sneaks up on Pete and touches him on the head, seemingly to no effect; and then pursues a fleeing Joan. Back in '68, the TT crew start losing consciousness and a gasping Kirk manages to establish voice contact with the guys, telling them of TT's predicament and how they have to stop the aliens to save the crew.
Outside, the guys hear Joan screaming as the alien approaches, threatening to give her the finger. History's greatest warriors go into action, even fending off Andro 2 after he's remotely doubled by Andro 1. At TT, Kirk crawls around checking on the crew, then collapses trying to reestablish contact with the guys; who find shelter for Joan as the atmosphere starts whipping up, then proceed back to the lab, where Doug starts planting bombs. Pete finds Joanie and has to convince her that he wasn't possessed. However, when she tells him where Tony and Doug are, it turns out that he has been, and he gives her the finger. In the cellar, Tony's fending off Andro 1 when Pete arrives and tries to lure Doug out of hiding.
Doug TV Fus Pete instead, and he turns into an alien and disappears. When Tony approaches Doug, Doug clocks him.
Tony (on the floor): What's that all about?
Doug: I had to be sure!
The guys exit and the hotel blows behind them. The guys find Joan and the townspeople return to normal. Pete's reunited with Joanie as the guys disappear for the last time, into TV oblivion.
Photos:
IMDb said:
Even though the show ended with this episode, the plans for the proposed second season were to have Doug and Tony successfully come home. After the bugs were worked out they then would be able to move though time to fix any anomalies their travels might have caused or use it for various other purposes.
An IMDb contributor also mentions and offers an interpretation for scenes from previous episodes playing at the end. If that was part of the original episode, it didn't make the syndication cut.
I forgot about all the plugging.
As did I. But who could forget the random...
...pauses?
Now that I think of it, I remember my Father listening to him at night. They must have re-run him at various times each day.
It was syndicated, so it could've varied by market.
Ironically, they could no longer do magic.
How about Steve Miller?
No, it's not just because of the name.
I'm sure it played a role.
Yeah.
Maybe he was one of their failed super-soldier experiments.
"I know NOTH-ingk! *Hail Hydra.*"
The Russell Johnson episode of
The Invaders airs May 24.
I'm thinking that it was less of a "don't know" and more of a "don't care".