If I had any high hopes for this episode, they would’ve been dashed as thoroughly as Jay Gatsby smashes champagne glasses into his fireplace. The plot may have looked great on paper, but its execution gives us the oddest and ultimately, the dullest, episode of the series.
We open on our core cast, Dr. Raymond Swain (John Zaremba), General Heywood Kirk (Whit Bissell), and Dr. Ann MacGregor (Lee Meriwether), futzing about in the control room, trying to fix some interference waves. A thunderstorm suddenly erupts, and a far-out looking spaceman materializes.
The havoc that follows proves team Tic-Toc has the worst security in the world: Far-Out Spaceman zaps Kirk, Swain, and a bunch of guards with his ray gun – then kidnaps Dr. Ann!
After Far-Out Spaceman and Dr. Ann teleport, Kirk and Swain regroup. They’ve only been slightly singed, but their pride severely wounded.
“Dr. Ann is gone!” Swain blubbers. “But how?” Kirk says, perplexed about every aspect of the kidnapping except one: “He looked as though he might have been a… time traveler from the future!” Oh, how I pity Whit Bissell for having to drop that clunky line.
Swain finds a conveniently dropped metal data card on the floor, a possible clue to where Dr. Ann’s been taken. The guys insert this future tech into their decrypting system (really an IBM Selectric typewriter) and it spits out what looks like coordinates. Kirk instantly orders Swain to send Doug and Tony there. Swain makes it so.
Moments later, Tony (James Darren) and Doug (Robert Colbert) fall out of the time kaleidoscope into a poorly lit, futuristic soundstage. As soon as Doug surmises, “This has got to be the distant future,” zombie Julius Caesar lumbers into the room. A disembodied voice announces the man is Roman statesman Cicero. He’s followed by a medieval-style zombie the announcer (Ray Didsbury) says is the Renaissance scholar Erasmus.
“WTF?” Tony asks. WTF, indeed.
Cut to central command. Kirk’s stunned to hear Swain’s stunning pronouncement that our guys have landed on a planet clear out of our solar system. No sign of Dr. Ann, though. Kirk’s troubled – has he made a mistake sending Tony and Doug to unknown coordinates? And has he lost Dr. Ann forever?
Meanwhile, in outer space, the bullying announcer orders our guys to follow the shining light on the floor to an office that looks like a disco I used boogie down at in the late-70s – flashing lights, odd architecture, shiny floors, an egotistical man in a silver suit.
That man is the Curator (Michael Ansara, who played the Klingon “Kang” in three different Star Trek series), and not only is he wearing a silver suit, he’s painted silver from head to toe. Sitting at a giant pinball machine desk-control console, he informs Doug and Tony it’s the year 8433 and they’re 100 light years from Earth.
When Curator’s called away, Doug and Tony escape but are quickly set upon by guards with antennas on their silver helmets (yes, antennas!). The guys demolish the antenna-heads and rush off to… “Where do we go next?” Doug asks, scratching his head. The announcer butts in again, ordering Doug and Tony to throw down their weapons and surrender, unless they want harm to come to her.
Her? Which her? They find out when the antenna-heads drag Dr. Ann out of the shadows. She’s dazed, her beautiful brown eyes rolling around like she just heard The Time Tunnel has been cancelled. About to collapse, she falls into Doug’s arms, who comforts her, saying everything’s gonna be alright. Tony’s eyes are rolling now because he knows they’re in a pretty pickle.
At central command, 2/3rds of the core cast contacts our guys through interstellar, intertemporal walkie talkie. “Hold position!” Gen. Kirk yells. “We’re going to transfer you!” Not in time – the antenna-heads drag Dr. Ann away.
Meanwhile, the Far-Out Spaceman makes a return visit to the control room. Kirk orders security (aka: the gang that couldn’t shoot straight) to fire. Mr. Far-Out retaliates, killing one of the guards, then calmly steals the time-space converter (should’ve locked that up after the last time a time-traveling alien stole it!).
Back to the future, Doug and Tony are in Curator’s office. Dr. Ann’s wheeled in on a gurney and for a second, we think she’s dead or zombified, but no, she’s just having a nap. She wakes up and is immediately hanging on Doug again. About 20 episodes ago I thought the show was One True Pairing Dr. Ann/Doug, but I didn’t think the romance would come about in such a stinky way.
Curator brings the gang into the teleport chamber as Far-Out Spaceman pops back from the 60s with the time-space converter. “He’s our Official Time Traveler. Ott, for short,” Curator says, explaining Ott was sent to steal the device so our heroes couldn’t escape before Curator can finish experimenting on them.
At team Tic-Toc, Swain has just ordered a replacement part, which will take about 10 days to arrive and be set in place. Ouch, Kirk complains, 10 days for one part? Welcome to my world, General. Took two months to fix my husband’s busted La-Z-Boy because we were waiting on one stinking part.
Meanwhile, Dr. Ann and the guys are locked up in a room with the most hideous lime green walls. An antenna-head wafts in, leaving behind a plate holding three reddish cubes. The announcer announces the cubes contain all the nutrients Curator’s “guests” need to survive and coaxes them to eat up. Our guys and Dr. Ann do something I haven’t seen much in this show – they talk science, debating the nutritional merits of the cubes and if humans could truly survive on such supplements.
The announcer goes all mom on the trio: “Shut up, eat your dinner, and return to Curator’s office.”
Okeydokey, the gang says, pretending to eat the cubes like I pretended to eat broccoli when I was a tot. They also disobey orders to go to the office and skip out to find the teleport chamber instead, hoping to send Dr. Ann back to her beloved control room.
Tony, Doug, and Dr. Ann sneak about a series of hallways with trapezoid-shaped arches and lots of unnecessary flashing lights. They need to get past the guards, which isn’t much of a problem for karate-chopping Tony and two-fisted Doug. Dr. Ann watches our heroes brawl, fluttering her ridiculously long eyelashes in approval.
Sadly, it’s game over when Ott gets the drop on them. He takes them at ray gunpoint to a laboratory, trapping them in probably the dullest, talky-est scene in the show’s history.
Curator shows the group a sheet-draped body on a gurney, explaining, “We’ve just extracted the sum total of his personality. His memories, his motivations, everything.” A gruesome way to gather “the full and complete data on the history of the planet Earth.” He’s just completed phase one – the history of tyrants. Ripping the sheet off the body, he reveals the zombified Adolf Hitler (Bob May, the voice of Lost in Space’s Robot).
Curator’s ready for his next extraction subject, and he’s got his eye on Doug and Tony. The guys agree, as long as Dr. Ann is set free. She’s “only a technician,” Doug says, and useless to the experiment. I get what the noble guy’s doing, but excuse me, our plucky Dr. Ann isn’t “only” an anything. Curator thinks that too and, saying she could prove an interesting subject, insists she stick around.
Curator then bids them all goodnight – forever! The food cubes were drugged, he says, and once they fall asleep, our trio will snooze away for eternity as zombies in his strange museum. Doug smirks as he takes the uneaten food cube from his pocket and slaps it on a metal table.
Things take a strange turn. Apparently, Curator and the rest of the aliens are like plants. When the sun goes away, they conk out until morning. As the light fades, Curator flees to his disco-office with our gang on his heels. The trio demand to know the teleporter codes and coordinates so they can time jump the heck out of there. Sadly, Curator falls asleep. And so do the antenna-heads who followed them to the disco-office.
It’s Dr. Ann’s time to shine. She examines Curator’s pinball machine control console, looking for buttons to push and switches to flip. “I’ve never seen controls like this,” she says, frustrated. Tony goes all What does this do? on one button and she slaps his hand away with a stern, “Don’t touch, you don’t know what it’ll activate!” Haha, she’s the best, and I’m glad the show’s finally giving her something to do besides sit in that uncomfortable-looking chair, staring at the Time Tunnelvision screen all episode.
Dr. Ann finds something interesting. “Did you find something interesting?” Doug asks. Maybe, she muses, squatting to examine a big button. “It looks like a form of heat sensor cell,” she says, which coincidentally it is. She gingerly pushes it and… nothing.
Dammit! Tony says, or wants to say if he could swear, but this is a family show, so he just mutters a little and demands to know how much time before the sun rises and wakes up the plant people.
The trio decide to split up. Tony and Doug will look for the space-time converter while Dr. Ann goes to the teleport room to try to make sense of the aliens’ time travel tech. While the gang wanders past sleeping antenna-heads, Dr. Swain is supervising repairs to the mainframe at central command. Gen. Kirk hangs out, looking like he needs a drink.
Meanwhile, Doug and Dr. Ann have a quiet moment at the teleport pad, and what do they do? Kvetch about the strange equipment and how frustrating it is to figure out. They find a slim metal rectangle inside the teleporter’s control panel and, since it’s similar to Tic-Toc’s data processing cards, they decide it might contain important info.
The couple meets up with Tony, who suggests slipping the card into a slot in Curator’s pinball machine console/desk. An important warning is revealed – only one person at a time can use the teleporter. We know who that one person will be.
The gang’s about to rush out of the office but freeze in place and fake sleep when Ott pops in and circles the room like a silver-faced night watchman. Ott leaves and while Tony and Doug debate how the Far-Out Spaceman can be skulking around when all organisms have a dormancy period, Dr. Ann gets stuff done – she finds the coordinates to return her to Earth, circa 1968.
Before attempting to teleport, Dr. Ann suggests taking the medallion the Curator wears around his neck. It’s a weapon, she explains, and could come in handy. Tony and Doug wrestle the chain off the sleeping man. Poor Michael Ansara. His second guest gig on the show (he played a Russian spy in Ep. 11: Secret Weapon) has consisted of being painted silver, talking a lot, and sitting in a chair pretending to be asleep for half the episode.
Ott comes back to the office and he’s got a ray gun and the part the trio’s looking. He plans to hold them hostage until Curator awakens and zombifies them. “Look, it’s getting light,” Tony says, looking up. Ott, being a numbskull, looks up too and gets zapped for his trouble. Good thing Dr. Ann insisted they grab the medallion!
With Ott out of commission, Doug shoves the space-time converter into Dr. Ann’s hands and orders her to send herself back home, stat. She delays long enough to kiss him (and hug Tony) then rushes away.
And whaddya know, it really was getting light – Curator and the antenna-heads wake up and chase after Tony and Doug, who run into the teleporter room in time to see Dr. Ann quantum leap out of there in a ball of fire.
She materializes at Tic-Toc command seconds later, breathless and frantic. “Here’s the converter prep for transfer gotta get them outta there now!” she burbles. Everyone jumps to do as commanded and the Time Tunnel is back in action in an instant.
When the Time Tunnelvision pops on, our core cast gasps to see Tony being strapped to a gurney. Curator is prepping to lobotomize him with a giant laser gun thingie that looks like it’ll hurt bad. Doug gets his Fight Club on and pummels antenna-heads left and right. Tic-Toc transfers Tony out of danger, and transfers Doug too seconds later, but not before he grabs a ray gun and blasts the lobotomizer to smithereens.
Whew! A loooong fifty minutes of flashing lights, trapezoid arches, and talky-talk, two heart-pounding minutes of sheer action. Well played, Time Tunnel.
Next Time: In the penultimate episode, our heroes are back on Earth, and so are some murderous, mosquito-faced aliens.
Latest posts by Janet Raye Stevens (see all)
- The Time Tunnel Episode 30: Town of Terror - October 5, 2020
- The Time Tunnel Episode 29: Raiders from Outer Space - August 10, 2020
- The Time Tunnel Episode 28: The Kidnappers - June 30, 2020
It does seem Ann and Doug might have been a thing before the latter got lost in time!