Recipe for a solid episode of The Time Tunnel: several captures and escapes, well-known historical figure in danger, our heroes desperately trying to warn well-known historical figure he’s in danger and no one believes them, Team Tic-Toc desperately trying to help our guys, and a soon-to-be famous actor as a guest star.
That’s this episode in a nutshell, so I guess my recapping work here is done. See you next month.
Haha, I kid! On with the show….
Our lost-in-time heroes Tony (James Darren) and Doug (Robert Colbert), drop out of the time kaleidoscope into a barn, practically at the feet of a bunch of yahoos clutching rifles. Strangely, the men don’t notice the two guys who just fell from the sky. Tony and Doug crouch behind some hay bales, eager to eavesdrop.
Cut to central command, where Team Tic-Toc is watching the action, trying to figure out when and where our boys have landed. “Looks like they’re in 1861. Wait! The coordinates are shifting,” Dr. Ann McGregor (Lee Meriwether) says, frantically flipping switches and spinning dials as the image fades. While General Haywood Kirk (Whit Bissell) stands by looking concerned, Dr. Raymond Swain (John Zaremba) steps in. “Let a man do it,” he says, shoving Dr. Ann out of her chair and attacking the control console.
Kidding again! Swain’s a sweetie, simply eager to help. Like the rest of the characters on this show, Swain isn’t fleshed out much, but I bet he spends all his non-work time helping stranded motorists and ushering turtles across busy roads. I imagine Dr. Ann goes home each day, kicks off her heels, and knocks back a glass of scotch, neat. General Hayward sleeps in his office. In his uniform.
Anyway, Swain and Dr. Ann get the image to lock, but now the Time Tunnelvision shows a crowded theater (footage cribbed from yet another 20th Century Fox movie). The camera pans and stops on a private box, in which sits Abraham Lincoln and the Mrs. The door behind the Lincolns opens and we cut to Team Tic-Toc’s shocked faces as a gun goes off.
The Tic-Toc’ers are perplexed. Our guys were in 1861, but Lincoln was assassinated in 1865—have they quantum leaped four years? I’m stymied too, and I have a feeling there will be no answer.
Back to the barn, our boys are confronted by a shadowy figure, who asks if Frederick Bell sent them. Having learned claiming they’re time travelers is the fastest way to captured, Tony and Doug reply in the affirmative. Shadowy man introduces himself as Matthew Gebhardt (an early-career Tom Skerritt) then turns to his brother, Jeremiah. “He was with John Brown at Harpers Ferry,” Matt says proudly.
Jeremiah isn’t much for how-do-you-dos and gets right to the point of why they’ve gathered in the barn: “We will kill Abraham Lincoln!”
At Tic-Toc control, Gen. Kirk mentions reading of an earlier attempt on Lincoln’s life. Dr. Ann zips off to check it out on the history computer. My buddy Jerry the Technician usually does this kind of busy work, but he’s nowhere to be found this episode.
Meanwhile, police raid the barn. Gunfire erupts as the conspirators flee. Tony and Doug don’t move fast enough, so they (or their stuntmen, rather) get into one of their fistfights. Tony gets away, but Doug is captured by the feds.
After the opening credits, Alan Pinkerton, yes, that Pinkerton (R.G. Armstrong, who had a nearly 50-year career playing tough guys and lawmen) orders Doug taken to the pokey for questioning. He also orders Lincoln’s train—on its way to DC for the inauguration—to be stopped here in North Baltimore. So the president-elect can be a sitting duck for the escaped conspirators, apparently.
Meanwhile, Tony’s been brought to the Gebhardt home to be interrogated. We finally get a clear look at Matthew and Jeremiah (played by the ridiculously good-looking Scott Marlowe). Jeremiah goes on and on about Lincoln and their cause while Matt weighs in with a few semi-enthusiastic nods and mumbles. Once Tony gets by his concern for the missing Doug, he tears into Jeremiah about the futility of his plan to blow up Lincoln’s train.
While plain-Jane Matthew looks on, the two ridiculously good-looking guys Tony and Jeremiah smolder and yell at each other until they wake the youngest Gebhardt brother, twelve-year-old David (Christopher Harris). David asks about the time bomb on the table, but Jeremiah yells at him to get back in his room. Matthew’s displeased at Jeremiah’s bullying, but is too fearful to speak up. This family sure puts the “dys” in dysfunctional.
Team Tic-Toc discovers there was a plot to assassinate Lincoln in 1861 and future-famed-detective guy Pinkerton put a stop to it. Cut to Pinkerton roughing up Doug, trying to get info on the conspirators. Over at the Gebhardt house, the sound of a train pulling into the station impels Jeremiah to go investigate while the others, including David, hang out, enjoying a late breakfast.
Tony tries to talk Matthew out of the assassination plan. “We don’t talk politics in this house,” Matthew says, eyeing David with concern. Uh, sure you do, all the time, David contends, proving my grandma was right when she said little pitchers have big ears. Matthew tells David to skedaddle, then turns on Tony, ordering him to shut up. Clearly the plot to murder Lincoln and anyone else who gets in the way has him rattled.
Next, Pinkerton meets Lincoln (Ford Rainey, totally not the same actor who played Lincoln in this episode’s earlier scene) at his train and leads him to the depot, where they encounter Doug, who begs the president-elect to believe he had nothing to do with the conspirators. “Tell me more,” Lincoln says, as if he’s got nothing more important to do than hang around the depot and question Doug.
Tony and Matthew are still at the Gebhardt house when Jeremiah bursts in. Lincoln’s in town, he cries, now’s our chance to blow him up! Tony objects—that’ll kill his bestie Doug…oh, and Lincoln. Jeremiah, tired of Tony’s caterwauling, decides it’s time to get rid of our guy. As in, kill him.
Skerritt gets a good “actory” moment in here as Matthew talks Jeremiah down. Instead of killing him, they tie Tony to a chair (I wish I’d been tallying how many times our boys get tied up; must be in the thousands by now!). David comes in, gapes at trussed-up Tony, and is all WTF, bros? Neither of his brothers care to comment and send him to his room as they head off to the depot with the bomb.
At the depot, Lincoln is pontificating to Doug about the absurdity of men who want slavery abolished trying to kill him, since he wants the same thing. Ford Rainey does a convincing Lincoln, and he looks enough like the man it’s no surprise he played him four times. Shots ring outside; Pinkerton and his men leave Doug and Lincoln with a guard and rush out to investigate. They apprehend Matthew, who claims to have been shooting at rabbits, but we all know it’s a diversion from Jeremiah.
“It’ll kill everyone,” Dr. Ann cries, watching Jeremiah plant the bomb near the depot. “We’ve got to transfer Doug!”
While I feel this Doug-centric line is a big old “tough luck” to Lincoln and the red shirt left to guard them both, I get what’s happening. The last few episodes, the writers have given Ann and Doug subtle moments/dialogue that hints at *something* between them. The show has been refreshingly free of romantic entanglements, but I wouldn’t be averse to Doug/Ann as a ‘thing.’ It would give them both some emotional depth—and something to do besides bop around in time and flip switches/spin dials. We shall see as the series continues if this comes to pass.
At the depot, Lincoln gets pissy over Pinkerton’s persnickety precautions delaying his trip to DC and goes to his train, leaving Doug tied up in the depot. Tony gets free and rushes out of the house, followed seconds later by the youngest Gebhardt, David.
Meanwhile, the elder Gebhardt brothers hang out at the depot, waiting for the bomb to go off. Matthew, the sensible brother, warns they’ll be wanted men once the bomb explodes and suggests they get David and get out of town now. For once, hotheaded Jeremiah listens, and they leave.
While Team Tic-Toc is struggling to get a lock on the bomb to move it out of range, Tony runs into town, finds the explosive and hurls it into a junk pile. Pinkerton captures him and while they argue about whether or not there is a bomb, David wanders up the street and finds it. Caught in Team Tic-Toc’s time lock, David is transported to the time tunnel—while holding the bomb! Boy, Jerry the Technician, a bomb-defusing expert, sure picked a bad time to take a day off.
David’s all Dude, where am I? and refuses Gen. Kirk’s orders to give him “Jeremiah’s clock.” Dr. Ann tries the feminine touch, reasoning with the boy to step out of the tunnel, but he’s as skittish as anyone from 1861 would be finding themselves in such an alien setting. Brief aside: the extras huddled behind our core cast while this negotiation goes on look like they’re chatting about the office Christmas party and not the possibility of an explosion.
Dr. Ann finally loses patience with David and tells him he’s holding a bomb. Now sweating because he’s afraid he’s going to go boom, David wedges the screwdriver Kirk chucks at him into the timing mechanism, disabling it. In the nick of time—the team loses the time lock and David disappears!
Back in 1861, David drops the bomb, runs home, and tells his brothers all about his time traveling adventure. He gets the usual skeptical response. Suddenly turned pacifist, Matthew says he’s glad David disabled the bomb, but Jeremiah is pissed and rushes out to go restart it. Matthew chases after him and the brothers brawl in the street. I don’t know if the writers meant it as a metaphor for the brother-against-brother Civil War about to come, but their fight is pretty ugly.
Meanwhile, Pinkerton, seeking proof of Tony and Doug’s claims of innocence, has them take him to the Gebhardt’s house. There seems to be only one street in North Baltimore, so why these people wandering around never run into each other is a mystery.
Pinkerton finds bomb-making stuff and does a 180 from suspecting our guys are part of the assassination gang to letting them go as he rushes off to protect Lincoln. That he should’ve been by the president-elect’s side the whole damn time doesn’t seem to occur to him.
Freed, Doug and Tony come upon (literally across the street from the Gebhardt home) David with the injured Matthew, who is determined to stop his ridiculously good-looking but insane brother. He asks our guys for their help.
Cut to Jeremiah, who’s found and rearmed the bomb and is hanging out at the depot, waiting to fling it at Lincoln. Matthew and the others creep up on him and an awkward three-against-one fight ensues. Jeremiah somehow gets his rifle and holds them all at gunpoint, but when it comes right down to it, he can’t pull the trigger to kill his brother.
“Maybe killing Lincoln is not the way,” Jeremiah says, his voice mournful, his pretty eyes filling with tears. Doug steps on the guy’s moment of epiphany by grabbing the bomb and Hail Marying it into the end-zone just as it explodes.
The story wraps up nicely as Lincoln’s train rolls out of the station, Matthew and Jeremiah walk slowly away, and Doug bends down to scoop the screwdriver that had been jammed into the bomb off the ground.
“Look at that tool,” he says, showing it to Tony. “It could only have come from the Time Tunnel.”
Tony gives him a huh, don’t that beat all look and the duo vanish.
Next time: More footage from one of 20th Century Fox’s technicolor triumphs as our heroes Remember The Alamo.
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