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Another Irwin Allen production:
‘Time Tunnel’ |
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 | | | James Darren |
| | By Art Ronnie
• Irwin Allen has finally done something that scientists and dreamers have been envisioning for centuries but doing nothing about. He has created a time machine.
There are those who argue that such creations of the devil can never be invented because if they could, we would be having visitations now from future people.
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But Allen hasn’t let such arguments deter him, nor has he let time hang heavily on his hands. He calls his machine, which ignores the sands of time, a Time Tunnel. The hour-long show debuts in color Friday night, Sept. 16, on ABC-TV at 8 o’clock.
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DAZZLING SETTING
The show is the best argument imaginable for seeing television in color. The complex housing the Time Tunnel is an 800-story shaft sunk deep in the floor of the Arizona desert. The scenes of it and sundry electronic devices are dazzling and awesome.
Also awesome is the complex in which Irwin Allen works. Only Eisenhower mapping the Normandy invasion had more charts to study. Allen’s office walls and corridors are hung with charts and diagrams festooned with pins and tags which enable him to keep track of actors, directors, writers, publicists and crews working on his three hour-long shows—Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space and Time Tunnel.
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| |  | | | Scientist-hero Bob Colbert |
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Looking into the future without benefit of spatial spelunking, Allen expects to have six shows on the air simultaneously. “There is no more of a problem in producing six shows than three,” he says mildly. “It’s only a business.”
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 | | | ‘Time Tunnel’ set at 20th Century-Fox studios |
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About Time Tunnel, he says: “We will go as far into the past and as far into the future as we want and play around in between. Our boys will not change history but help create it. There are moments in history that are unexplained mysteries. I call them shadows in time. We offer our own explanations of what happened.”
Allen points out that during the Great Plague of Europe, 1800 people in the heart of London were unaccountably spared. Time Tunnel explanation: Scientists-heroes James Darren and Robert Colbert save them with penicillin. They also will put down a mutiny aboard Columbus’ flag-ship, thus enabling Chris to discover the New World.
An important asset to the show will be Winton Houk, who was taken off Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and permanently assigned to Tunnel. Three Oscars (Joan of Arc, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and The Quiet Man) and one Emmy (last year for Voyage) is a pretty fair recommendation for any picture-snapper. |
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Los Angeles
Herald-Examiner
TV WEEKLY
July 17-24, 1966 |  |  | | | Cover | |
 | | | Page 10 | |
 | | | Page 11 | |
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