Post-58th Anniversary Viewing
The Time Tunnel
"Crack of Doom"
Originally aired October 14, 1966
The Old Mixer said:
A backup in the project's wastewater conduits forces the Tic-Toc crew to hire a plumber...
No, really...
Frndly said:
Landing on Krakatoa in 1883, the time travelers try to convince a British scientist that the volcano is about to explode.
Tony and Doug are spied upon by a native (Vic Lundin) as they land in a tropical forest set. From the lightning, tremors, and smell of sulfur, Doug (who's established to be a paper-writing expert in vulcanology) determines that they're on top of a volcano that's threatening to blow. They come upon the native, Karnosu, leading others in attempting to sacrifice a boy (George Matsui) to the volcano. The boy gets away and the natives turn their wrath on the devils who fell from the sky. The uneven melee is interrupted by British researcher Dr. Everett Holland (Torin Thatcher), who holds some sway over Karnosu and chastises him for his ignorant superstitions. The guys introduce themselves as fellow scientists and learn that they're on an island situated between Java and Sumatra...named Krakatoa--
DUM DUM DUUUUUMMMMMM! The Tic-Toc crew (who do pick up audio) determine that the guys are in the late summer of 1883. The guys learn that it's late August, but an annoyed Holland is unable to give them an exact date. The guys try to warn him what's about to happen, but he tells them that his research indicates the eruption will be in 20 or 30 years.
The guys meet Holland's daughter, Eve (Ellen McRae, aka Ellen Burstyn from
The Exorcist), when she needs help getting out from under a fallen tree. She keeps a journal that could give them the exact date, but she's suspicious that the guys are there to steal her father's research. At TT, Jerry turns up the exact time of eruption--10:02 a.m. on August 27; while Swain exposits than the eruption was 25 times stronger than the biggest H-bomb, and the noise was heard 3,000 miles away. Eve's journal indicates that it's August 26, which gives the guys enough time to come up with an evacuation plan to one of the adjacent islands. They have their eyes on Java, but Ann looks ahead to the aftermath of the eruption and finds that the island will be inundated by a tidal wave.
The guys try to persuade the researchers of the need to evacuate, but they're unwilling to abandon their snazzy Victorian instruments.
The guys decide to get out on their own with one of two boats available, but one of them has already been taken by the young native they saved, so taking the other would mean stranding the Hollands. Spearheaded by Eager Young Jerry, the TT crew look into a theoretical method of bringing back just one of the travelers, which is established to involve concentrating a great amount of energy to induce rapid acceleration; but there's a risk of power feedback endangering the complex.
Right after the Professor produces notes indicating that the tremors are getting progressively weaker, the island is rocked by the strongest one yet. The guys get Holland to admit that he's been lying about his results so that the others wouldn't want to evacuate the island before he's gotten the data he needs; but he still estimates that the eruption is days away, and is incredulous when the guys insist that they know the exact time. Doug becomes suspicious that the eruption is closer than they think, and pores through Eve's journal, eventually determining that she made an error--the Hollands' journey involved crossing the International Date Line, and she hadn't accounted for gaining a day, meaning that the eruption is 24 hours closer than they thought.
Before they can spread the news, Karnosu and his minions jump them and drag them to the lava pool again. The TT crew make their move, bringing Tony through the Vortex. He emerges in the Tunnel, but after the profuse amount of smoke from the pyrotechnics clears (now I'm picturing Kiss doing a show in the Tunnel), he finds the crew all frozen like statues.
Even the Tunnel's livestream of Doug being dragged by the natives is frozen. Tony finds the crew's notes about the procedure and realizes that he's experiencing one of the potential risks--a time warp, in which the crew is frozen "between two split-seconds of time" (or within the wink of an eye, another show might say). He nevertheless finds that the Tunnel controls work at normal speed, so he sets them to take him back to help Doug, but writes out a note for the crew before entering, in which he establishes an exact set of space/time coordinates for them to grab him and Doug. After he leaves, time resumes to normal speed for the crew, and his surprise re-entrance at Krakatoa results in a brawl during which Karnosu stumbles backward into the lava. Tony procudes notes that he brought back with him indicating that they have to go to Sumatra.
As Tony's retrieiving Eve, the TT crew manages to succeed at something that they say they've been trying to do...establishing voice contact with Tony, which Eve can also hear. Tony comes clean with her that he and Kirk's voice are both from the future. As the remaining boat isn't large enough to take everyone (including some now-friendly natives who are probably the same ones who were just dragging them to the lava), Tony volunteers for him and Doug to stay behind to be picked up by TT at the coordinates that he established. But the forces building in the volcano cause feedback in Tic-Toc's instrumentation, so they have to settle for the usual random jump. Tony and Doug vanish back into the vortex just before the island blows.
The Invaders
"Vikor"
Originally aired February 14, 1967
IMDb said:
David Vincent, using an assumed name, gets a job as a chauffeur in order to infiltrate a manufacturing plant and find proof of alien activity.
At Vikor Enterprises, a lineman named Hank (Sam Edwards) is rising in a bucket when he sees a group of
them through a window, surrounding a regeneration tube with a figure inside who's glowing and occasionally showing his skeleton. Hank's spotted by their leader, Mr. Nexus (Alfred Ryder), who makes a call as the lineman hurriedly descends to the ground. He's intercepted at his truck by a security guard (Hal Baylor), who slips in the Famous Invader Neck Disc (FIND). Hank's partner, Phil (Joe di Reda), rushes up, and Hank tells him with his dying words how he saw a glowing man in a tube. Phil takes the wheel, pushes the guard aside, and screeches away.
The opening and closing titles for tonight's episode include a noteworthy guest prior to his signature role:
The QM Narrator said:
David Vincent had read the stories in the newspapers. How, before he died, a telephone lineman had described to his partner a glowing, burning man. The story was investigated by the police and promptly forgotten. Seeking the truth, David Vincent traveled to Fort Scott, Florida, headquarters of Vikor Enterprises...and, perhaps, headquarters for a people from an alien world.
Mr. Nexus is told off by company owner George Vikor (our fine, sweet Lord) for having drawn more attention in having since killed Phil as well than Hank's story would have; but Vikor, a Korean war hero with a wooden leg and a plate in his head, seems to have an arrangement with Nexus that causes him to cooperate. Vikor is called to the police station, where his wife, Sherri (Diana Hyland), has been picked up for drunk driving...again. She's been acting out over her husband spending too much time at the office, and Vikor arranges for the sergeant (Richard O'Brien) to sweep the matter under the rug. David, using the name Daniel Baxter, asks the same security guard about applying for a job, and soon finds himself with one as Sherri's chauffeur...an arrangement she's not happy with, so the first place she has him take her is to Vikor's plant. While she's seeing her husband, David tries to sneak into a security building that she made a point of telling him not to go near, but is intercepted in a stairwell and roughed up by several guards, at least one of whom has a stiff pinky.
Sherri's questioning why her husband jumps for the "foreign investors" whom he says are going to make him the biggest man around when "Baxter" is brought to him for questioning. David gives them a story about being lost and Sherri helps extract him from the situation, though George, assessing that the chauffeur isn't a government agent, instructs Nexus to look into who he really is. Back at Vikor Manor, Sherri wants to know what it is that she can tell David's onto. He initially tries to tell her that her husband's working with a foreign power, but is quickly maneuvered into dropping the alien invasion bomb. She's naturally incredulous, but for some reason believes him enough to ask what she can do to help.
She helps him sneak back into the plant after hours, where he sneaks back into the security building, takes out a guard, and finds both evidence of regen tubes being manufactured and a the regeneration chamber that Hank saw. He watches from hiding as a couple of
them are rushed up by others posing as workers to use the tubes. It being a busy night in the security building, soon Vikor and Nexus enter, discussing how the former has to meet quotas to have enough of the tubes ready for the thousands who'll be coming. After Vikor is called away by a teletype that came in about the chauffeur, David hightails it out of the building and an alarm is sounded. Vikor learns that the chauffeur is David Vincent, who's been reporting alien activity to the police, newspapers, and public officials.
Vincent hitchhikes out, but when he tries to stop an officer for help, it's the sergeant from the station, holding a gun on him with an extended pinky. David takes refuge in a busy tavern and calls Sherri to meet him with the car so he can get to the FBI (another Quinn Martin Production). But the Vikors' houseboy (Larry Duran) is eavesdropping via a bug and makes a call. Sherri brings David a gun, but the sergeant and houseboy swoop in, followed by George Vikor, who insists against Nexus's orders on taking David and Sherri back inside for a talk. He tries to tell Sherri that David's a mental case, but on David's prompting, she insists on being taken to the plant to see the third floor of the security building for herself. Dropping his charade, he tells Sherri that he'll be a big man with those who'll soon be running the planet, then airs his grievances against the human race and their system, going back to when he couldn't get a loan after the war to open his first business as his disability caused him to be considered a risk. David counters that
they will eliminate Sherri for knowing too much. Sobered to this fact, Vikor tells them to let him handle things his way, which involves ordering the sergeant to take Vincent to the plant and hold him there, while he takes Sherri home.
Nexus drops in at the Vikors' wanting to deal with Sherri against George's objections, planning to stage an apparent suicide via gas. Nexus tries to appeal to Vikor's hunger for wealth and power, and George storms out. While Sherri's being taken into another room, Nexus makes a call for the sergeant and houseboy to off David, but evidently not having been frisked, David shoots them both into disintegration and takes the sergeant's car back to Vikor Manor, where he busts in and saves an unconscious Sherri from the gas. He finds the bug along the way, which he uses to his advantage, proceeding to fake a call to George that makes it sound like Vikor's an undercover agent working against the aliens. Back at the plant, Nexus plays the tape in front of George and has a couple of guards give him the FIND.
In the aftermath, David reports to Sherri that no evidence of the invaders could be found at the plant, but assures Sherri that they won't go after her anymore before moving on in his quest.
The QM Narrator said:
As the Invaders move, so does David Vincent, for they must be stopped. They must be exposed. And if he doesn't do it, who will?
Alas, we don't see Lord and the regen tubes in the same shot, but this could be McGarrett's sleeping arrangement:
There is a shot of Lord's shadow touching that of a tube's distinctive triple armature:
This is the first time that I've seen the tubes fully lowered.
Hmm. Technically, maybe, but Skylab was a modified Saturn V third stage and launched on a Saturn V.
I assume that wasn't considered part of the Apollo program, though.
Lotsa progress in spaceflight during those sixteen years.
Which I assume included the entire time he was with the space program prior to being scrubbed for the '62 mission.
It seemed such a hopeful event at the time.
I've seen it criticized for being a political stunt that cost us a mission to keep Skylab in orbit.
Wow, they got it out to stores and radio pretty quickly, if that's the case.
Doesn't seem to have been an unusual timeframe. Spot-checking an example that popped to mind,
Abbey Road was also released about a month after recording was finished.
Decent song, some nostalgic value.
Recognizable little piece of classic rock.
I love this one, one of my favorite America songs. Strong nostalgic value.
Not one I was particularly familiar with. This will be their last Top 20 hit until '82; though they'll have one more Top 30 single in '76.
This is another heartbreaker. Strong nostalgic value.
I can't say I was familiar with this one at all. Looks like I'd skipped this guy's prior hit in '72. I might get this one. Subject matter-wise, it reminds me of Bobby Goldsboro.
Just a song, but with strong nostalgic value.
A pleasant oldies radio classic from the peak era of soft rock.
I liked a few of their songs, a couple for their camp value. I just looked at their discography and I'm surprised to see how few charting singles they had, and that their highest-charting single was "Beth." How'd they get to be so famous?
Their look/image and merchandising, no doubt. Even in the day, I couldn't have named one of their songs. I should note that the songs in those two clips were both from their first album; and that they're now on their second album, which includes the studio version of what will be their breakout hit when a live version is released as a single.
I don't know if I ever mentioned it, but when I moved in with the Ex in the '90s, she had a condo that had previously been owned by friends whom she says were friends of Ace Frehley. So Ace Frehley may have hung out in our old condo.
I hope he lets everybody else go home sometimes.
There's been no hint that the TT crew are ever off duty since the first episode, when Tony snuck into the Tunnel after hours. Something occurred to me in the previous episode, I think, that was supported by a moment in the one posted about above...however their time monitoring works, they seem to be practically limited to watching and potentially intervening with Tony and Doug's trips in real time. In a prior episode, Ann had fretted whether TT would have enough time to do something they were working on to help Tony and Doug. In this one, Ann didn't want to risk looking ahead at the tidal wave for fear of losing her fix on Tony and Doug. If I had to rationalize, I'd guess that it might have something to do with the decay of the radiation used to track them; whatever era they're in, it keeps them in time-sync with TT's efforts to monitor them.
