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Time Travelers, TV Movie/Pilot (1976)

 
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Pow
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PostPosted: Sat May 21, 2022 11:16 am    Post subject: Time Travelers, TV Movie/Pilot (1976) Reply with quote



Wikipedia/IMDB; "Time Travelers" was an Irwin Allen Production with 20th Century Fox and first broadcast on ABC on March 19, 1976, it also served as a pilot.

Written by Rod Serling (The Twilight Zone, The Night Gallery) and Jackson Gillis wrote the screenplay.

Directed by Alexander Singer (Lost In Space, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Mission: Impossible, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager.)

Story: During the Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, a girl becomes the latest victim of a deadly virus known as "XB."

Dr. Clinton Earnshaw (Sam Groom) has been following the outbreak but only is able to diagnose it, not cure it.

The Federal government assigns Jeff Adams (Tom Hallick), who has no medical or scientific experience to contact Earnshaw, and bring him to a secret location in the hopes to discover a cure for the disease. Earnshaw cannot possibly imagine how Adams, or wherever he's being taken, will help at all with any cure. It's a waste of precious time is the doctor's thinking, but at the moment he has no leads or answers on the disease.

Earnshaw is introduced to former NASA physicist and Nobel laureate Dr. Amos Cunning (Booth Coleman), and his colleague Dr. Helen Sanders (Francine York.)

It has been determined that in the 19th century there was a discovery of a virus with similar characteristics as the "XB." In that era the virus was known as "Wood's Fever," and it was discovered by a Dr. Joshua P. Henderson (Richard Basehart.)

Henderson compiled extensive notes about the fever back then, but they were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Earnshaw doesn't see how any of this information could possibly help find a cure in present day 1976.

That is, until Dr. Cunning and Sanders are able to show Dr. Earnshaw what their highly classified project is that they've been working on: a way to travel back in time and return safely.

Earnshaw and Adams will journey backwards in time to several days prior to the tragic devastating fire, in the desperate hope that they can contact Dr. Henderson and procure his potentially vital life saving documents and bring them back to 1976.

Sidebar: [This was an interesting and intelligent science fiction pilot.]

[Producer Irwin Allen wasn't generally known for creating thoughtful SF TV series. Allen liked splashy production values, lots of action, and nothing more.

Compelling stories and rich character development were not a concern to him; along with scientific accuracy.
His SF shows were as much fantasy as science fiction.]

[Time travelers was an exception to all that and a change for Allen. Hiring legendary writer Rod Serling was a great move towards producing a story with imagination and substance by Allen.]

[Unlike Allen's The Time Tunnel (1966~1967) SF series, this pilot would have the time travelers being able to be safely returned from the past safely back to their present day.]

[Smart touches were included in the pilot/movie such as the time team donning proper period clothing, carrying a small microscope, and a portable centrifuge in their quest in 1871 to study the fever.]

Scenes of the Great Chicago Fire was tinted footage from the 1938 movie "In Old Chicago" starring Tyrone Power and Don Ameche.

The twenty-minute climatic fire sequence for the 1938 movie cost Twentieth Century Fox $150,000 to stage (a significant sum back then), and burned for three days on the studio backlot.

For the 1968 big scale musical "Hello, Dolly!", Twentieth Century Fox constructed an expensive and enormous set for 19th century New York City on their backlot. The cost for this elaborate set was reported to be anywhere from $1,920,00 to $2,000,000.

After the filming of the musical was concluded, the studio estimated it would cost at least $150,000 to demolish this stunning NY street set.

Fox decided not to tear down this amazing set and started charging $2,000 a day for other productions to use.

Sidebar: [Aside from an intriguing story, part of what impressed me about this pilot were the filmed scenes of 19th century Chicago. Allen rented the "Hello, Dolly!, set and transformed it into Chicago. It gives this television movie a grand and epic scale not otherwise available using the standard backlot sets.]

Chicago Fire Stats: Broke out on October 8, 1871 and ran until October 10.

300 deaths, 2,112 acres were burned, 17,500 buildings destroyed.

Cost was $222,000,000 in 1871. That would be approximately $4.7 billion dollars as of 2020.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat May 21, 2022 1:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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I certianly wish this YouTube video looked a lot better than it does, but apparently this is the best we can get. Sad

In this marvelous digital age, I hate the fact that prints of productions like this are allowed to molder away in studio vaults until they can no longer be restored to their original condition! Rolling Eyes


___________________ Time Travelers (1976)


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Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sun May 22, 2022 11:16 am; edited 2 times in total
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scotpens
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PostPosted: Sat May 21, 2022 9:48 pm    Post subject: Re: Time Travelers, TV Movie/Pilot (1976) Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
. . . For the 1968 big scale musical "Hello, Dolly!", Twentieth Century Fox constructed an expensive and enormous set for 19th century New York City on their backlot. The cost for this elaborate set was reported to be anywhere from $1,920,00 to $2,000,000.

After the filming of the musical was concluded, the studio estimated it would cost at least $150,000 to demolish this stunning NY street set.

Fox decided not to tear down this amazing set and started charging $2,000 a day for other productions to use.

Sidebar: [Aside from an intriguing story, part of what impressed me about this pilot were the filmed scenes of 19th century Chicago. Allen rented the "Hello, Dolly!, set and transformed it into Chicago. It gives this television movie a grand and epic scale not otherwise available using the standard backlot sets.]

However, the time-travel device used by the scientists must be one of the cheapest time machines ever. It's nothing more than a long stairway surrounded by dry-ice fog.

When our heroes arrive in 1871 Chicago, they materialize on the steps of the elevated railway platform on the Hello, Dolly set. I half expected them to break into a chorus of "Before the Parade Passes By"!
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Pow
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PostPosted: Tue May 24, 2022 7:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Scotpens, you are absolutely spot-on regarding the underwhelming set used for the time travel scenes in this SAF TV-movie.

I mean, c'mon, a bunch of military surplus computers inside a mansion!?! And the metal door that our intrepid time travelers use to simply walk back into the past is a joke!

At least Irwin Allen's Time Tunnel set was far more impressive, and actually looked like it was a sophisticated machine of immense power that could propel humans back to distant eras.

I don't know if the understated set in this TV-movie was a budget consideration only, or if Allen decided that since he already did a show with an incredible and huge set, he'd artistically go in a more modest direction just as a change of pace.

The Time Tunnel ended up being cancelled due to its high cost per episode. Maybe Allen figured that if his Time Travelers was picked up as a weekly series, he could keep within an economical budget by not having to run a lavish looking and expensive set each week.

In any event, this set for Time Travelers was disappointing.
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Pow
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PostPosted: Thu May 26, 2022 6:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Monkey-wrench in the works.

Charles Willard Byrd claimed that this TV-movie was taken from his unpublished 1959 book "A Time to Live."

A lawsuit was filed by him and producers reached a monetary settlement that allowed Byrd to claim the story as his work.

Litigation kept the pilot from being bought, ending Irwin Allen's plan to relaunch a new version of his Time Tunnel science fiction television show. Thus, Time Travelers ended up airing as a one-shot ABC Movie of the Week.
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Item: So this article makes it appear that the legal suit doomed poor Time Travelers from ever really having the chance to be picked up by ABC as a weekly TV series. It's a shame they couldn't have sorted out the mess and allowed the pilot to be for sale by ABC.
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