You Kids Killed The Time Tunnel

How could a TV show with Whit Bissell, John Zaremba and a set made of concentric metal ovals fail?

Pretty easily, as it turned out.

Your correspondent, age 9, loved the Time Tunnel. Actually, I loved the set more than the show, though Bissell and Zaremba fit the parts. Bissell’s general and Zaremba’s scientist were alternately contemplative and urgent, by my recollection.

The Time Tunnel was a product of Irwin Allen Productions, which also brought viewers Lost in Space. I’m not a science fiction fan, but both shows—at their best—had an element of suspense, until Lost in Space turned into the Dr. Smith and the Robot (and Some Other People) Show. If Jonathan Harris had been any more camp, he could have been on RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Scripps-Howard entertainment writer Richard Shull looked at the rise and fall of The Time Tunnel in a pair of columns. As a side note, there’s one reason to like Shull. He was hired by the New York World-Telegram to replace the retiring Harriet Van Horne—who once dissed a Christmas special starring Helen Hayes. Van Horne then changed her mind and wanted her job back, so the World-Telegram fired Shull. You have to pull for a guy that gets shoved around by management like that.

Let’s start with Shull’s column of November 12, 1966, about a month and a half after the Tunnel debuted. Irwin Allen must have put out news release bait that his show was deadly serious because I’ve read a number of columns that snapped at it.

Time Tunnel: Has Interesting Twists
By RICHARD K. SHULL
NEW YORK—Neglected and almost lost in the corridors of TV time scheduling this season is a good, honest adventure show titled "The Time Tunnel."
Unfortunately, it's sandwiched between the sub-moronic Green Hornet and Uncle Miltie Berle's moribund variety show on ABC on Friday. Also, it's directly opposite the gallow's humor of Hogan's Heroes on CBS and the snickering sadism of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. on NBC.
The odds against its success, anyone on Madison Avenue will tell you, are monumental.
And a sure kiss of death for the show would be for a TV columnist to say it's good. So, no more along that line.
But Time Tunnel is good science-fiction well done with some interesting twists. Ex-rock singer James Darren, now 30 and a father of two makes a strong, youth-oriented hero.
The basic idea of a machine capable of transporting humans in time and space is incredibly credible.
• • •

MOST OF ALL, however, the show is dedicated in its honesty to history. You won't find Daniel Boone fighting the South American Incas as in the Daniel Boone show. Nor will ever see Asian tigers battling African lions while South American toucans fly overhead as in Daktari.
Time Tunnel is doing a first rate job of making history palatable to the small fry, perhaps a true reflection of the modern child's mind in which history, space research, and futuristic fantasy all commingle in one welter of events and places past and future.
"The show won't change history, but we can affect the people involved within an event," Darren, an intense fellow, explained.
"And sometimes we'll take credit for the inexplicable of history. For instance, during the Black Plague in Europe, there was one group of people who were untouched while everyone around them died. Who is to say that someone from a time tunnel hadn't played a hand? History never explained," Darren said.
• • •
THE SHOW is produced by Irwin Allen, who also does Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space. He has the facilities of 20th Century-Fox Studio behind him so he can incorporate expensive scenes from old movies into his shows to give them the illusion of grandeur and bigness.
Although the original intent of the show was to travel Darren and his pal, Robert Colbert, both backward and forward in space, so far the show has spent most of its time going back.
The initial episode, a flossy $1,000,000 production, has Darren and Colbert aboard the Titanic. They and the viewers knew what was to happen, but, in keeping with the show's policy, they were powerless to change history. The ship sank.
The following week they were in 1978 and the first U. S.-manned flight to Mars.
Since then, they've been to New Orleans for the 1815 battle in which the misdirected British were sacrificed before Gen. Andrew Jackson's lines; to the East Indian island of Krakatoa for its violent volcanic eruption in 1883, in ancient Troy to see Ulysses's Trojan Horse scheme; in the American West in 1876 to see arrogant Gen. George Custer lead his men to slaughter, and at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 6 and 7, 1941.
• • •
IN EVERY STORY, they become deeply involved with the prime characters, yet never change history.
In most of the episodes, the production values have been outstanding, although in the Custer episode the Indians were a rather potbellied, motley group.
In the context of what is being offered to youngsters as TV entertainment, Time Tunnel is an outstanding show.

Shull changed his mind before the season was over, almost as if he had been betrayed. The Time Tunnel, he decided, stopped being an “outstanding” show and the writers dumbed it down, narrowing the audience in the process. Smaller audiences mean hesitant potential sponsors, and no sponsors mean no show. There was no tunnel within a few months. This appeared in papers May 13, 1967.

“The System” Breeds Silliness
By RICHARD K. SHULL
NEW YORK — Why does a TV series, which shows promise of good escape entertainment in its early episodes, rapidly deteriorate into silliness? Many adult viewers have asked this question.
Blame it on the system. And for a clear example of how it works, look at Irwin Allen, producer of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space and Time Tunnel. The first two of those shows will continue next fall.
Allen is a modern Janus, with a faculty for presenting one face to the networks and advertisers and another to the TV audience. He is the ultimate product of television's system of buying and selling shows.
Take a look at his three series and see what happened.
In the beginning, Allen had Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, a tale of a futuristic research submarine and espionage by foreign agents bent on learning its secrets.
That was the story idea Allen sold to ABC network, and which appealed to the sponsors. But once the show got on the air, Allen began to modify.
To be successful with an early show, Allen knew he had to appeal to that 14 per cent of the audience between the ages of 6 and 11 years.
Youngsters don't especially dig spy stories and romantic sub-plots. Kids do like monsters, almost any kind of monsters.
• • •
SO Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea got rid of the spies and girls, and settled down to the serious business of hairy globs and chrome-plated galaxy men. The kiddies watch, the ratings are sustained, and the network keeps renewing it.
As the star of the series, Richard Basehart, once was given to comment, "It ain't Hamlet, but . . ." And recently David Hedison, the co-star has asked for more money, since he rarely gets to perform opposite a human anymore.
Lost in Space went much the same way. The original idea concerned futuristic space travel with a foundation in existing fact. This appealed to the adult program buyers.
But on the air, Allen discovered the 6-to-11-year-old TV thought leaders were smitten with the cowardly, deceitful nature of the program's villain-in-residence, Jonathan Harris.
The story ideas were overhauled and now the show comes across weekly with a tale in which two children, who ooze with honesty and integrity, must rescue the sniveling, cavilling adult villain.
The kids love the show because it confirms their suspicions about all adults.
It's almost superfluous to point out that Time Tunnel commenced as a painless history lesson in which two travelers in time, weekly would step into some historical event. This idea appealed to the adults who purchased the show for TV.
But again, there was the kiddie element. The little people who make the big ratings took over. When last seen, Time Tunnel had British General Chinese Gordon fighting for his life at Khartoum while futuristic alien beings with their brains outside their skulls were preparing to take over the earth.
So it goes in the world of Irwin Allen, who has mastered the art of selling two shows under the title—one to the networks and sponsors and another to his audience.

Sandwiched in between these columns was one by UPI Hollywood Reporter Vernon Scott. We’ve republished a number of his columns here; Scott used to do a minute-long feature on the UPI radio network, too. Generally, he seemed fairly upbeat and friendly, but he just loathed The Time Tunnel. It became a symbol for him.

This is from January 29, 1967.

Sorry Plight of Time Tunnel
By VERNON SCOTT
UP-International Writer
HOLLYWOOD — Anyone measuring the worth of a television show should first weigh its merits, if any, on the basis of the audience it is attempting to reach.
Thereafter, it should either entertain, inform, stimulate or evoke a combination of these reactions.
Clearly, most television shows this season have failed on all counts. But again, who are the producers trying to reach? The question is not easily answered.
Captain Kangaroo is perfect for his audience. Batman is fine for his. And presumably Bonanza has stolen into the maudlin hearts of viewers from 16 to infinity.
But what of a series such as The Time Tunnel which airs on Channel 34 every Fri-day evening? Who in the world is ABC trying to reach with this nugget? What does producer Irwin Allen have in mind? Tots are in bed by that time. Teenagers are too hep or out on dates. And any adult who watches it has got to be suspect.
• • •
IN THE BEGINNING the show might have been based on a good idea—perhaps H.G. Wells’ “Time Machine.” The premise was to have two handsome young scientists flown backwards and forwards into time from week to week involved in historic events over which they have no control.
But the idea is too costly for execution, for one thing. If you are going to put a couple of guys back in early Rome or in the War of the Roses you'd better have the money to make it look authentic. On this show it never does.
The concept is handled clumsily, the acting poor, the scripts unbelievably bad.
Recently it wasn't enough that the heroes (James Darren and Robert Colbert) found themselves in an Italian' nobleman's villa during World War 1 where they are badgered by the Kaiser's troops and — get this — the ghost of Nero. A spoof you ask? No. A bit of satire perhaps? No. It was pure tedium.
• • •
A MATURE MIND must ask itself why on earth this particular hour-long episode was filmed and aired, and for whom it was intended.
At best it was comic book nonsense for adolescents. But it cannot be written off so lightly. In reality it is typical of the affrontery of television executives determining what the public is offered for viewing.
But this isn’t to single out the Time Tunnel. It is no better nor much worse than the common fare American viewers have been slapped in the face with for too many years to come.
The great misfortune is that good television, not to say great television, is so rare that one is forced to leave the set turned off most nights of the week. There are Time Tunnels of one kind or another on the air almost every hour of prime time.
It is pitiful that a great and powerful medium, indeed America's mass medium, cannot or will not do better.

Irwin Allen went on to greater, big screen achievements, like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno (the latter lovingly spoofed on SCTV). Bissell won a lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. Zaremba and his serious mien made a good living in TV CommerciaLand, hunting for beans to put in Hills Brothers coffee. The Time Tunnel became scrap metal.

ABC went on next season to bring viewers a series about General George Armstrong Custer without a visit from time travellers. At least Bissell, Zaremba, Colbert, Darren and Lee Meriwether never dealt with that kind of ratings massacre.