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The Time Tunnel (ABC 1966 - 1967)
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scotpens
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2018 12:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Eadie wrote:

The exterior desert hidden entrance:



Then we are taken on a tour of the same stadium used in Fantastic Voyage. (Kind of boring, really.)

I've watched the first eight minutes of the episode, and I don't see anything that looks like the Los Angeles Sports Arena -- just some sets and matte shots.
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Robert (Butch) Day
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2018 2:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Then check out Fantastic Voyage. Filmed in 1964 and released in 1966 when it was brand new the same stadium was used.

http://m4ufree.tv/watch-dct-fantastic-voyage-1966-movie-online-free-m4ufree.html

Scrol down and hit play.

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scotpens
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2018 4:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Robert (Butch) Day wrote:
Then check out Fantastic Voyage. Filmed in 1964 and released in 1966 when it was brand new the same stadium was used.

I'm quite familiar with Fantastic Voyage. I have a high-quality copy of it on my hard drive. I've seen it at least 20 times.

Watching the Time Tunnel pilot, it looks as if the underground entrance and stairway we see from 2:10 to 3:02 could possibly have been filmed at the Sports Arena. But those areas don't appear in Fantastic Voyage.

BTW, the Sports Arena first opened in 1959 and was demolished in 2016.
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Eadie
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 27, 2018 10:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Irwin Allen's hype strikes again!

At the time he claimed that they were both filmed by him at the same time. Not very likely as Fantastic Voyage was filmed in the Summer of 1964 while The Time Tunnel was filmed in the late Spring to early Summer of 1966.

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scotpens
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 28, 2018 12:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Eadie wrote:
Irwin Allen's hype strikes again!

At the time he claimed that they were both filmed by him at the same time. Not very likely as Fantastic Voyage was filmed in the Summer of 1964 while The Time Tunnel was filmed in the late Spring to early Summer of 1966.

Is there a source for that statement? If Irwin Allen actually said that, it's more than hype -- it's an outright lie. Irwin Allen had nothing to do with Fantastic Voyage. FV was produced by Saul David and directed by Richard Fleischer.

Of course, various bits and pieces of sets and props from FV turned up in later Irwin Allen productions filmed on the 20th Century-Fox lot.
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Eadie
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 28, 2018 7:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

scotpens wrote:
Is there a source for that statement? If Irwin Allen actually said that, it's more than hype -- it's an outright lie. Irwin Allen had nothing to do with Fantastic Voyage.

Irwin Allen was rich — even by Hollywood standards. He owned a sizeable amount of stock in 20th Century-Fox and was one of the backers of Fantastic Voyage (as stated in several different biographies, but never directly by himself or his wife Sheila Mathews-Allen). It is mentioned in Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx's The Groucho Letters: Letters From and To Groucho Marx (Simon & Schuster, 1967, ISBN 0-306-80607-X) and The Groucho Phile: An Illustrated Life by Groucho Marx with Hector Arce (Galahad, 1976, ISBN 0-88365-433-4).
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scotpens
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 28, 2018 10:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

^^ In which case I stand partially corrected. Allen may have put money into the project, but he had nothing to do with producing, directing, or writing Fantastic Voyage. His name isn't in the screen credits or any of the posters or promotional material.

And I still don't see the L.A. Sports Arena anywhere in the first Time Tunnel episode!
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Pow
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 02, 2018 7:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

TTT did indeed win an Emmy Award for their time vortex scene used throughout the series that showed Tony & Doug tumbling through time.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 14, 2019 6:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Here's two documentaries about The Time Tunnel and the pilot episode!

I done good, didn't I, folks? Very Happy
________________________________



_________ The Time Tunnel - Inside Irwin Allens


__________



__Everything you need to know about The Time Tunnel


__________



The Time Tunnel Ep 01 Rendevous With Yesterday


__________

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Pow
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 21, 2021 5:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Irwin Allen's 1964 45-page story treatment for his "Time Tunnel" television show.

Location: The Institute for Advanced Research in the Theoretical Sciences, a sprawling, windowless complex of buildings on the outskirts of Silvermine, Connecticut.

Dr. Peter Philips & Dr.Tony Newman are the two scientists in charge of the time travel experiment.

The Time Tunnel is described as having a convergence chamber at the end of it in which a white mouse is placed in order to transport the creature back through time.

Tony is located in a control cubicle deep inside the huge computer that is the brain of the device.

The next test will be to send a human being through time.

An ion generator has been constructed and placed into a simple crest ring for the time traveler to wear. Once the ring is activated by the traveler, it will allow the "tunnel" to zero in on the traveler in order to teleport them back to the present.

Philips will be the first human to test out the "Tunnel."

Due to the uncertainty of what Philips may encounter, he will wear a pressure suit similar to the ones worn by astronauts. He will also carry a small supply of auxiliary oxygen and a small but high-powered radio which may or may not be usable.

Seated at the controls, Newman views Philips through a quartz crystal shield.

Three needle-like laser beams are brought to focus upon three critical points surrounding Philips. An instant later the convergence chamber where Philips once stood is now empty.

Philips is able to communicate back to Newman what he's experiencing.

He reports feeling nothing, that there's a sensation of falling, he is enveloped in blackness with flashing lights.

Allen then conceived of five story ideas in order to demonstrate the basic story situations that the series could explore each week.

The Immediate Past (1956) Philips finds himself at Grand Central Station on October 3, 1956. He goes to the Institute but no one there knows who he is because he did not join it until after 1956.

The Recent Past (1927) Philips appears in New York City in the year 1927. He meets a woman who turns out to be a fellow time traveler from a period far later than his own.

She was falsely accused of a crime that she did not commit and was sentenced to die. Her brother is a member of the International Time Bureau. He's risked everything to arrange her flight back to the past while he feverishly works on clearing her name.

The Distant Past (1863) Philips is now in a Pennsylvania town called Gettysburg on July 2, 1863.

The Ancient Past (200,00 B.C.) Philips manages to join a primitive tribe.

The Future (2065) Philips finds himself on the planet Mars. Known as the American colony of Mars, a democracy, a ruthless man from the Space Corps has set himself up as a dictator. Philips encounters a man who is part of an underground rebel group fighting the dictator.

Throughout Philips time jumps from era to era, Newman is frantically working on communicating with Philips and attempting to get a lock on his ion ring in order to safely return Peter to the present.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 22, 2021 10:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Hey, that sounds better in some ways than the series we actually got. For one thing, it doesn't seem to rely on stories that revolve around borrowed footage from historical epics.

I guess the addition of a second time traveler was a good idea. It made it easy for the writers to provide dialog between the two which helped the audience keep up with the story.

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Pow
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 22, 2021 12:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Second Season Proposals.

Over 30 plot proposals were created for a second season of "The Time Tunnel" had the show been renewed.

Lost Civilization
Tony & Doug land in the primordial ooze of a prehistoric swamp out of which come charging antediluvian dinosaurs. Fleeing from the threat, they are stunned when they come upon the ruins of metropolitan skyscrapers.

Atlantis
In 6,000 B.C., Tony & Doug are drowning in the Atlantic Ocean. They manage to reach the island shores of a fabulous civilization with help from the Time Tunnel Complex.
George Pal's "Atlantis: The Lost Continent (1961) would have been used as stock footage for this episode.

Item: Pal's film is far from one of his best. However, there were moments here and there visually that were rather decent.
I'm guessing that the producers & directors of all these feature films that had stock footage that Irwin Allen was using for his "Time Tunnel" episodes were not overly enthused at that prospect?

The Gladiator
Tony & Doug land in the middle of the Roman Coliseum during the Gladiatorial Games of 300 A.D.

Item: Didn't it work out beautifully that two 20th century egghead scientists had the conditioning of an Olympic athlete and the fighting skills of a Delta Force soldier?
Every week Tony & Doug had fistfights with someone and they usually prevailed.

Inferno of Terror
In 2,150 A.D., Tony & Doug find them selves on board an Alien earth-boring vehicle, plunging at nightmare speed toward the molten core of the Earth.

Item: I love history and really hated those "Time Tunnel" plots that brought in alien life forms to the plot.
Very silly stuff and all too frequent on the Irwin Allen productions.


David and Goliath
Tony & Doug arrive in the Holy Land just in time to save the life of a young man who was about to be crushed in the mighty arms of an armed giant.

Footage from the 1951 motion picture, "David and Bathsheba" would have been utilized for some scenes.

Item: Using footage from earlier movies must have played a factor when casting the guest star roles for the "Time Tunnel" episodes. One assumes that the TV show would attempt to match the (different) actors roles from a movie to the particular guest star on that week's episode of the sci~fi show who had the same role and was required to look similar to the film actor.

Hannibal
Tony & Doug find themselves in a narrow Alpine defile in the year 216 B.C. Hannibal spares their lives since he thought them to be Roman spies.
To further prove their innocence, Hannibal allows them to infiltrate the Roman lines in order to rescue his daughter. Genevre, from the brutal Roman General, Scipio.

The stock footage for this episode would have been from the 1959 motion picture "Hannibal," starring Victor Mature.
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scotpens
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 22, 2021 9:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:

Atlantis
In 6,000 B.C., Tony & Doug are drowning in the Atlantic Ocean. They manage to reach the island shores of a fabulous civilization with help from the Time Tunnel Complex.
George Pal's "Atlantis: The Lost Continent" (1961) would have been used as stock footage for this episode.

As we know, Atlantis, the Lost Continent made extensive use of stock footage from the earlier Quo Vadis (1951). So would this be a case of stock footage using stock footage?
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 9:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

scotpens wrote:
As we know, Atlantis, the Lost Continent made extensive use of stock footage from the earlier Quo Vadis (1951). So would this be a case of stock footage using stock footage?

Perhaps it suggests infinite universes, worlds within worlds, parallel dimensions, stuff like that . . . or it's just cheap-ass film making. Rolling Eyes
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 1:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Time Tunnel pilot episode "Rendezvous With Yesterday"

Initial Telecast: September 9, 1966.

Story by Irwin Allen, Shimon Wincelberg and Harold Jack Bloom.
Teleplay by Harold Jack Bloom and Shimon Wincelberg.

Director: Irwin Allen.

Item: Allen would always direct the pilot/first episode of each of his sci~fi TV series but would not do so again during the run of the show.

Synopsis: In 1968 Dr. Tony Newman and Dr. Doug Phillips are fearful that their enormously expensive Tic~Toc Project experiment in time travel will be shut down by visiting Senator Leroy Clark.

Tony decides to prove the value of the Time Tunnel by being the first human to enter it and journey back in time. His action is unauthorized and highly risky.

Tony ends up on the doomed passenger liner Titanic, the day before its fateful sinking. Doug follows Tony in the hopes of being able to return both them to their present.

Tragically, the staff at Project Tic~Toc are unable to retrieve either scientist who will now transport across all eras with no control as to when or where they'll appear.

Total Pilot Cost $575,920.

Tony & Doug would only return together to the Time Tunnel Complex once for the rest of the series in the episode "Merlin the Magician." Tony got back once alone in "Crack of Doom."

James Darren (Tony Newman) and Robert Colbert (Doug Philips) would film their scenes on a separate sound stage from Lee Meriwether (Dr. Ann McGregor), Whit Bissell (Lt. General Heywood Kirk), and John Zaremba (Dr. Raymond Swain) who manned the controls in the Time Tunnel Complex.

Consequently, Darren and Colbert would rarely work with the rest of the cast on a daily basis.

During the shooting of the pilot, the excitable Irwin Allen was reported to be so upset with the actors that he announced to everyone on the set that he was going to create a series that would have no actors whatsoever.

Paging Hanna~Barbera, Paging Gerry & Sylvia Anderson.

ABC TV Network Censorship Concerns

"We urgently suggest you make this a later date than 1968 to avoid impersonating real people such as senators, chiefs of staff, foreign dignitaries, etc. as the series runs for years."

"Be sure U.S.Senator Clark bears no resemblance to anyone in the senate or public political life today."

ABC cautioned "be sure your legal department has cleared the idea of impersonating Captain Smith and any others actually a part of the real story of the Titanic, particularly if they appear in a poor light."

Captain Edward John Smith was the full name of the Titanic's captain. In the TT pilot episode his name is changed to Malcolm Smith.

Other suggestions from ABC included:
Delete spitting by engine stoker.
Please do not portray the stoker in a derogatory fashion.
Do not portray the S.O.S. or C.Q.D. signal sound effect.
Be cautious about the shots of the frantic people and that they are not too grim.
Caution the prehistoric reptile won't produce nightmares.

I can see the director shooting the scene now: Okay actors, the ship is sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic. People hitting the water will die from hypothermia; and 1,500 men, women, and children will die this night. But don't look too grim about it all. Worse things could happen, right?

Seeing how ABC and the other television networks worked regarding censorship, I now understand why the 60s TV shows were so vanilla and bland. "My Three Sons" anyone?

Coyote Dry Lake near Barstow, California was where the barren desert scenes were filmed.

It was unanimously decided not to use narration on the opening of the pilot.

Though filmed, a subplot involving a male passenger named Tabor was eliminated. Tabor would dress up as a woman in order to get into a lifeboat from the sinking Titanic.

Dennis Hopper played Tabor.

To add an aura of mystery to the pilot, Senator Clark was on a pilot-less jet which brought him to Project Tic~Toc.

Michael Rennie, who played the Titanic's Captain Smith, was also connected to another Titanic story. Rennie was the narrator for the 1953 film "Titanic." That film provided the stock footage for TTT pilot.

The Time Tunnel installation is located in Arizona. The Time Tunnel set was constructed for a cost of $84,000.

The consoles and ancillary equipment cost $45,000 which included war-surplus items.

The infinity segment of the tunnel at the rear goes back an additional 26-feet into another stage. It was built on wheels so that it could be moved into position to join the main body of the tunnel or moved back to increase the tunnel's illusion of infinity.

Allen originally intended for the design of a tubular apparatus to lower from the ceiling to bathe each person. Then, a hand imprint podium would rise up from the floor to hand print individuals.

The Time Tunnel door was intended to be solid sound with a crystal type cube in the center. Personnel could look through and see a semi-distorted view on the other side.

Irwin Allen spent considerable money to consult historians who looked over the script in order to see anything inaccurate regarding the Titanic story.

So why did he more or less suspend that wonderful striving for accuracy for the rest of the series?

The Time Tunnel installation is 800-stories and a staff of 60,000 people in the subterranean facility.

800 stories! Seriously? Kinda doing an overkill there Irwin.

As someone else noted, how did the government construct such a massive high tech secret complex in Arizona and nobody notice?

60,000 people worked there, but there was never any leaks about Project Tic~Toc whatsoever?

Allen always loved the razzzle-dazzle of his productions. Logic & science be damned!
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