Review for The Time Tunnel: The Complete Series (9 Discs)

Introduction

Time Travel and Irwin Allen; that should be my perfect sci-fi storm right there. I don't know when I started watching Irwin Allen shows, but my parents tell me that even before I was going to school, I'd be entranced by Lost In Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants, and The Time Tunnel, even on a creaky black and white TV set. Gripping adventure stories with bold characters and fantastic ideas and concepts, it would set the viewing habits of a lifetime. Then there is time travel, a venerable concept in fiction and entertainment, reaching all the way back to Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and H. G. Wells. If I look at my DVD collection, I'm certainly not surprised to see how much of it is sci-fi and fantasy, but seeing how much time travel actually plays a part is a shock. It's a weapon in every fantasist's arsenal, one that many are quick to use. You see the concept of time being twisted in some unlikely shows and movies, Groundhog Day, Minority Report and Harry Potter, and of course there were episodes where Star Trek had more time travel to it than actual space travel. But the pure time travel show can be a whole lot of fun as well, and a boon to the canny producer. Play your cards right, and you can save money on sets and a large regular cast, as well as have the sheer variety of stories and settings that history can allow. My favourite time travel show of all distilled this ethos down to its essence, and Quantum Leap ran for a splendid five years.


Quantum Leap may have been my favourite, but it was Irwin Allen's The Time Tunnel that did it all first, in the US at any rate. The BBC were there three years beforehand with Doctor Who, but The Time Tunnel made in 1966 had the budget, the production values, the special effects and of course it was shot in colour on film, as opposed to black and white on videotape. It only ran for one season though, but back then, one season meant a juicy 30 episodes.


In 1968, Project Tic-Toc is the US Government's biggest investment in scientific exploration, the ability to journey through time itself. They have invested billions in creating a massive underground complex in Arizona, all of it built around a unique device known as the Time Tunnel. Once activated it will be able to project its users to any point in space and time, allow the mission controllers to observe the journey on a projection screen, and return the travellers once their mission is done. That's the hope. But when a Senator arrives to see just where taxpayers' money is going, it pressures one of the chief scientists, Anthony Newman, into activating the Time Tunnel before it has been tested and proven. It does work, and he finds himself in the past, but in a situation that may prove terminal for him if he doesn't extricate himself. To help him, his colleague Doug Phillips also travels back in time, but the problem is that the technology was yet to be perfected. Doug and Tony are now lost in time, travelling from place to place, era to era, with no apparent way to bring them back home.

Page 2 - Episodes
Page 3 - Extras
Page 4 - Conclusion

Picture

The Time Tunnel gets a 4:3 standard transfer reflecting the original broadcast, and it's a damn fine transfer at that. The image is clear and sharp throughout, the film source looks as if it hasn't aged a day since the original broadcasts in the 1960s, and the strong colours and iconic sets come across with astounding clarity. That's with the exception of episode 29, which has vertical black lines marring the print for the first half of the episode. Otherwise, the only signs of age and print damage that you will find is in the copious usage of stock footage to create the various eras and locales that the duo visit. It's used to bring a cinematic level of authenticity and detail to the show, but that does also mean that some of the footage is distinctly creaky when compared to the show itself. The only gripes I have with these discs are some really clunky layer changes.

Sound

You get a DD 2.0 English audio track with optional English subtitles. The yellow subtitle font isn't the most pleasing, but from what I sampled the subtitles were free of error and accurately timed. The audio is certainly acceptable though, with the dialogue clear and audible throughout. The music is a little generic, although the same can't be said of that memorable theme tune, courtesy of one 'Johnny' Williams. The audio hasn't held up quite as well as the image though, and I did notice the odd moment of hiss, especially in the later episodes.

The Episodes

This boxset release of The Time Tunnel presents the episodes in original production order, not broadcast order, which is why you will find the next episode previews collated in the extras, rather than at the end of the episodes where they would now make less sense.

Disc 1

1. Rendezvous With Yesterday
Pressured to prove the theory of time travel, or have Project Tic-Toc lose its funding, Tony Newman steps into the Time Tunnel and vanishes. He finds himself aboard the Titanic on its maiden voyage in 1912, and when he tries to convince the Captain of the unsinkable ship's impending doom, he's locked up as a stowaway. It will be up to Doug Phillips to leap back and rescue him.

2. End of the World
It's 1910, and everyone is convinced that it is judgement day, that Halley's Comet is going to strike and destroy the world. It's why no one can be bothered to save two hundred miners trapped underground when the Emperor Mine caves in. Doug and Tony know better, but they have their hands full trying to convince the townsfolk otherwise.

3. One Way to the Moon
There's a race on, a game of intercontinental one-upmanship as nations race to put a man on Mars. It looks like the US is going to lose off the bat, when Doug and Tony fall into 1978, aboard a rocket during lift-off, straight away putting it over the weight limit to ever reach Mars. The crew assume that they are spies and saboteurs, but the real saboteur is actually one of the crew.

4. Revenge of the Gods
When two men appear from thin air, strangely attired, on the battlefield of Hellespont in 1200BC, they are naturally assumed to be gods. At least some assume they are gods. Others think that they are enemy spies. They'll have to prove their supernatural insight and ability to stay alive. It's a good think for Doug and Tony that they've read up on the Trojan War.


Disc 2

5. Secret Weapon
Now Central Intelligence is getting in on the act. They have a mission for Doug and Tony behind the Iron Curtain, an Eastern European totalitarian state in the year 1956. It's no frivolous request either, for the Commies have built a Time Tunnel of their own, 12 years before project Tic Toc.

6. The Day The Sky Fell In
World War II isn't the best time for a time traveller. 6th December 1941 is worse, especially in Hawaii. Arriving in the Japanese consulate, just as the consul and his staff are busy burning incriminating paperwork is the worst place of all. But for Tony Newman, this is personal. As a child, he lived on the island with his naval officer father, and Pearl Harbour was the day that his father vanished.

7. The Last Patrol
Doug and Tony are in even more danger, arrested as American spies on the eve of the last battle of the American War of Independence. Their captor went down in history as a butcher who got his own command slaughtered through his incompetence, but sentencing the two spies to death, he shows a cunning cold-bloodedness that is far more lethal.

8. Crack of Doom
It's August 1883, the time travellers arrive on a South East Asian island, shaken by earthquakes and spitting brimstone and fire. That they appear from thin air convinces the locals that they are the devils that are causing the upheaval. But Doug and Tony have bigger trouble trying to get the scientists studying the island to leave. For the island is Krakatoa, and it's about to explode.


Disc 3

9. Massacre
They're back in the old west again, and they're captured again. This time it's 1876, and General Custer has captured Doug, while Tony's in the hands of Sitting Bull's Indians. They both have their hands full trying to convince their respective captors that they are on a doomed course.

10. Pirates of Deadman's Island
And again they are captured, this time by pirates. Captain Beal has been raiding the Barbary Coast, and he's just taken a Spanish galleon with a juicy cargo, Armando the nephew of the king of Spain. When the time travellers arrive in the middle of battle, the pirate is quick to deem their hides worthless, but Armando buys them some time by claiming that they are his servants.

11. Devil's Island
Doug and Tony have to fight for their lives when they arrive on Devil's Island in 1895. It's a notorious penal colony where French political prisoners are sent to disappear. Mistaken for prisoners, the two will be lucky to get out with their lives.

12. Reign of Terror
Madame Guillotine shows up again, as they arrive in Paris 1793, during the reign of terror that accompanied the French Revolution. Seeing them stand up to the revolutionaries, a loyalist named Blanchard decides that they are there to help the imprisoned queen. They aren't expecting to run into a familiar face though, a familiar face with an ill disposition.


Disc 4

13. The Death Trap
It's 1861, and Doug and Tony arrive in a barn in Baltimore, just as a group of conspirators are finalising their plans to assassinate President Lincoln. The thing is though, that Lincoln won't be assassinated until 1865. Meanwhile, at the Time Tunnel, the official histories just don't make sense.

14. The Alamo
Of the tightest spots that Doug and Tony have been in, this has to be the tightest. They're at the Alamo, on the day of the attack, an attack that saw the death of every man, woman and child at the fort. They've been arrested for spreading low morale, and they only have nine hours to escape certain doom.

15. Night of the Long Knives
It's 1886, and the place is the North West Frontier. The notorious Heera Singh is in the mood to stir up some insurrection against the woefully undermanned Raj, and when a couple of Englishmen fall into his grasp, he sets about making an example of them. He captures Doug, and leaves Tony for dead, but a young man named Rudyard Kipling rescues Tony, and offers to help him save his friend.

16. Invasion
Two days before D-Day, and Cherbourg is the last place anyone with any foreknowledge ought to be. It gets worse when the Nazis capture Doug, and brainwash him to kill Tony.


Disc 5

17. The Revenge of Robin Hood
Doug and Tony arrive to interrupt the signing of the Magna Carta. Actually they arrive to interrupt King John's absolute refusal to sign the Magna Carta, and the arrest of the Earl of Huntingdon. The time travellers will have to join up with Robin Hood and his Merry Men if history is to remain on track.

18. Visitors From Beyond The Stars
Now they've appeared aboard an advanced spaceship. It isn't the future though, as these are aliens, heading for Earth to strip it of its protein. Doug warns them that Earth is advanced enough to have powerful weapons, vast armies, time travel even, but the trouble is that it's 1885, and the only help Tony will find is a sceptical Arizona sheriff.

19. Kill Two By Two
It's World War II, and Doug and Tony find themselves on a small island near Japan, alone with two Japanese soldiers, forced to fight to stay alive. But there is more to this than just war.

20. The Ghost of Nero
It's time to duck and cover again, as the two travellers find themselves hiding from shelling during World War I. They find refuge in an Italian villa near the Alps, but the explosion jars loose the crypt of the Roman Emperor Nero. At the same time, the Germans arrive to commandeer the villa from its owner Count Galba, to spot the Italian forces. But they have more to worry about than just the invading Germans.


Disc 6

21. The Walls of Jericho
They're in biblical times now, as the Israelites lay siege to the city of Jericho. More than that, Tony and Doug find that they are now actually part of the bible, the two spies that Joshua sends into Jericho. Back at the Time Tunnel, the success of their mission will come down to a battle between science and faith.

22. Idol of Death
Doug and Tony arrive in South America just as Cortez is going on his rampage of butchery through the land, slaughtering the Indian tribes in his lust for gold and power. It will be a whole lot easier of he can obtain a golden mask of authority. The time travellers have to help a young inexperienced chief to get the mask first.

23. Billy the Kid
Arriving in the middle of a jailbreak is bad luck, especially when the outlaw being freed is one Billy the Kid. Doug manages to make a personal enemy of the Kid when he tries to stop him murdering the deputy, but Tony has it harder when everyone starts thinking that he's Billy.

24. Chase Through Time
There's a saboteur in the Tunnel, an enemy agent who tries to destroy the time machine, and when interrupted escapes into Time. It's up to Doug and Tony to capture him and make him talk, or a bomb will destroy the Time Tunnel, and forever end their hopes of getting back home. It's a chase that will take them across 2 million years of history.


Disc 7

25. The Death Merchant
Tony and Doug arrive at the Battle of Gettysburg just in time to get caught in an explosion. Now the two are separated, Doug's been drafted into the Union Army, while Tony has lost his memory, and thinks he's a Lieutenant in the Confederacy. But that isn't their only problem, another time traveller is there, the philosopher Machiavelli, and he's playing both sides against each other.

26. Attack of the Barbarians
Now they're in 13th Century Mongolia, helping Marco Polo protect one of the Khan's forts against a would be usurper. But Tony's fallen in love with Genghis Khan's daughter, and he's seriously considering leaving this life of time travelling and settling down.

27. The Kidnappers
An alien from the 85th Century infiltrates the Time Tunnel and spirits chief technician Ann MacGregor away to a planet orbiting the star Canopus. In a desperate attempt to rescue her, General Kirk orders that Tony and Doug be sent after. It's a trap though, for the alien is collecting for a museum of historical personages, and the world's first time travellers are top of his list.

28. Merlin The Magician
Tony and Doug have been drafted. Merlin the Magician wants to use them to ensure that history, 6th Century history remains on track. That means helping the young Arthur free his kingdom of marauding Vikings. The Time Tunnel's magic is nothing compared to that of the legendary wizard.


Disc 8

29. Raiders From Outer Space
It's 1883 and Doug and Tony arrive in the middle of another battle. The British and the Arabs are about to hack each other to pieces at Khartoum. But the mayhem and slaughter is just the cover that an alien invader needs to launch his attack on Earth. Doug and Tony have to convince a British Captain of the outlandish truth if they are to save the world.

30. Town of Terror
This time they are in the future, 1978 to be exact, but they still have to deal with an alien menace. This time it's the evil aliens from Andros, who are here intent on stealing the world's oxygen. They've started by invading a small New England town, and snatching the bodies of its residents. All that's left are Doug and Tony, and a terrified young couple who think the time travellers are the bad guys.

Extras

The Time Tunnel comes on 9 discs, with the episode discs getting animated menus, episode select screens, and episode synopses.

The extras proper begin on disc 8, with first the Unaired Pilot Episode: Rendezvous With Yesterday (original version). This lasts 53 minutes now, although that includes a next episode preview at the end of the show. There are a few extra scenes worth noting in this version, but the Dennis Hopper footage remains on the cutting room floor. Dennis Hopper was in the Time Tunnel pilot as one of the Titanic passengers and you can see him in the background of a couple of scenes, but any dialogue that he had has been cut.

Of greater interest here is the Unaired Pilot for the 2002 (IMDB contradicts this and says 2006) version of The Time Tunnel. As so often happens, a successful property from yesteryear is dusted off and given a modern polish, and I have to say that this 49-minute pilot certainly has promise. Doug Phillips is a government investigator who is called to offer to a secret project his expertise on a certain battle in the Second World War. Apparently, a project to create nuclear fusion had the adverse effect of ripping a hole in time, creating a time storm. In the four hours it took for the project scientists to tie down one end of the storm, history was changed, and only they remember the original history. With the other end of the time storm still loose and whipping through history, it's up to them to track the changes and repair the damage to the timeline. A young monk from 1546 has been picked up and dropped in 1944, and the ripples through history could prove disastrous. Doug knows the battle, and he has to guide a team of operatives back into the mayhem to find the monk and set history to rights. One of the team members is one Dr Toni Newman, (yup, she's female). This iteration of The Time Tunnel is certainly an interesting take on the story, but alas with Timecop and Time Trax covering similar ground around ten years ago, it's understandable why this show was never picked up. This is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen.


The rest of the extras are on disc 9, and you can select them individually, or just let your sloth take advantage of the play all option.

Top of the list is the Time Travellers TV movie from 1976, in which Irwin Allen, with the aid of a Rod Serling script, takes another crack at the time travel genre. It's presented here as a one-off television movie, but could very well be another series pilot. In it, a New Orleans doctor, Clinton Earnshaw is faced with a terrifying disease with a 40% mortality rate. Dubbed XB, it presents symptoms that haven't been seen in over a hundred years. When a man from the government arrives offering to help, the New Orleans authorities leap at the chance, except that Jeff Adams is no doctor. He's actually a failed astronaut with the authority of Washington behind him, enough to spirit Earnshaw away from his patients and onto a private jet. His offer is intriguing though. The last time XB appeared, then dubbed Woods Fever, it was treated by a Chicago physician, and with a surprising degree of success. The problem is that Doctor Henderson's notes were destroyed in the great Chicago fire of 1871. Adams hints that there's a way to see those notes. Earnshaw has no inkling that it actually means physically travelling to 1871, and asking Henderson personally for his help. But when they get there, they are confronted with the impossible. Doctor Henderson has no idea why his patients are being cured! Time Travellers lasts 73 minutes, and is presented in 4:3 with a faded NTSC-PAL conversion.


The Coming Up Montage lasts 75 minutes. These are the little previews at the end of each episode that heralded what next week's fantastic adventure would entail. Of course they would only work if the episodes were in broadcast order.

There are a series of cast interviews, with Whit Bissell (2 mins), Robert Colbert (7 mins), James Darren (11 mins), and Lee Meriwether (8 mins). Given that Whit Bissell passed away in the mid nineties, and James Darren here looks younger than he did on Deep Space Nine, I'd hazard a guess and say that these were recorded in the late eighties or early nineties. The interviews may be short, but they are edited down into soundbites, and there are some interesting anecdotes about Irwin Allen and the making of the show.

By far for me the most interesting addition is the Irwin Allen's Home Movies - UK Edit (no audio). This lasts 52 minutes and is the most rare of commodities for vintage television, an actual making of. These silent home movies were shot during the filming of the pilot episode, taking us behind the scenes of the shoot both on location and on set. Very rarely do you get to see how films and television were made back in the sixties. This is before the advent of home cinema in any form, and the culture of collecting, the idea that you had to put everything and the kitchen sink onto a DVD to give it extra value just didn't exist. It's just good fortune that someone picked up an 8 mm camera and took it backstage. Even given that it is silent footage, no captions, no context, it is still invaluable material. It's also probably the only place that you'll see the role that Dennis Hopper played in the pilot.


There is a 2-minute, silent Visual Effects Camera Test, giving the Time Tunnel a dry run to see how it will look in colour.

The rest of the extras are promotional material for the show, the original Promotional TV and Radio Spots, including the Network Title Sequence, three of the TV Network trailers, one TV Spot, and the original Syndicated TV Promo. You'll also find three radio trailers here. You'll find some Stills Galleries, presented as slideshows, offering concept art, production and episodic stills, merchandise, comic books, and storyboards. These run to 15 minutes in total, but suffer from having the images slightly translucent, and letting the background distort them.

Finally there is the original US Broadcast order, which you can make note of, if you wish to see the episodes the same way that the world first saw them.

Conclusion

I don't remember ever thinking that The Time Tunnel was as dull and tiresome as it was watching it on these DVDs. All I can say is that whatever you do, don't watch it the same way that I did, with a self-imposed review deadline, and a diet of two episodes a night. That's an approach that tends to minimise what is unique and special about each episode and highlight and reinforce just what is routine, predictable and repeated again and again across the series. That's even with the mindset in place that constantly reminds me that this was an Irwin Allen show, that the sci-fi concept is really just a maguffin to allow for a serial adventure series, where every week there would be action and excitement, and you don't really have to worry about how our heroes got there.


Doug and Tony will arrive in some historical era in some part of the world that looks akin to Southern California, strife and warfare will most likely be taking place, and either one, or both of our heroes will wind up captured, placed in some sort of life threatening situation. Back at the Time Tunnel, General Kirk, Dr Raymond Swain, and Dr Ann MacGregor will be watching events unfold, helpless and unable to act, pensive and tense and usually impotent. They may even try retrieving the heroes, but will get the wrong target, and a historical figure will be culture shocked into the Time Tunnel, where he must be persuaded to return. Back in history, our heroes will escape; engage in one or more fight sequences, before prevailing and vanishing into next week's plot. Having marathoned thirty episodes in a row, it does begin to feel like this is all that Time Tunnel is. It isn't of course, and if you have the time to watch it at leisure, you'll find the variety in the stories, the depth and originality, and you'll see that even the most generic and formulaic of the episodes will have something extra to offer. Also, watching it in production order increases the repetition, as you'll find that similar themed episodes were bunched together at certain points, to make best use of sets and locations.


I did notice a gradual decline towards formula as the series progressed though. It certainly does appear that the most imaginative, and well-written episodes happened early on in the run, while by the time we get past the series midpoint, it is falling into that rut that I described early on. By the time the end of the series is coming, it looks as if the writers and producers realised that the writing was on the wall, and attempted to change things around a bit, break from the formula, but this resulted in a couple of rather ridiculous offerings, which discarded any semblance of science fiction the show had and descended into pure fantasy.


The Time Tunnel isn't big on the science fiction in the first place, but it's in the earlier episodes that you see a degree of thoughtfulness in how the scripts are constructed, and how the actual Time Tunnel set, and the 'present day' location are integrated into the story in a more constructive way. The highlights definitely come at the front end of the series, and the first nine episodes are easily the best that the show has to offer, varied and interesting episodes, set across various time periods, and with different problems for our heroes to face. The pilot episode is especially strong, with Tony Newman pressurised by the threat of having his funding pulled into testing his theories ahead of time. That's such a good set up that Quantum Leap used it as well. It instantly throws up the big what-if questions associated with time travel, with Tony and Doug presented with the opportunity of preventing the Titanic disaster, but The Time Tunnel chooses early on that these time travellers will never be able to change history, only observe it, or at the most be a recorded part of it. Given that Doug and Tony usually end up in historically significant moments of the past, that is quite understandable.


The second episode sees our heroes faced with the fact that it looks incontrovertible that Halley's Comet will strike the Earth, despite the fact that it patently didn't, and they have to convince people to help save the lives of miners trapped underground. The denouement of this story seems to imply that the Time Tunnel's actions in the present did have an effect on the past, indeed always could have been the most provocative storyline when it comes to sci-fi, except that the show does underplay it, almost to the point where I'm half convinced I imagined it. If the Time Tunnel does have a weakness, it's when it deals with future events, which usually boils down to silver skinned aliens enacting some bizarre scheme on Earth. But the first of the future stories, One Way To The Moon is a rather neat, Cold War spy thriller, with a mission to Mars compromised by an enemy agent. The twist is that invited to the Time Tunnel to observe the future 'success' of the US space programme is that very agent, ten years younger. Of course the disdain for scientific accuracy becomes apparent with guns that can be fired on the moon, while the next jaunt into the ancient past reveals that everyone that Doug and Tony encounter, regardless of where and when, speak perfect English. Revenge of the Gods is an enjoyable take on the Helen of Troy story, with Doug and Tony mistaken for Gods. But even if the writers mix up their Greek and Roman pantheons, it still is a more enjoyable jaunt than the recent Brad Pitt version.


There are more Cold War antics in Secret Weapon, which has a foreign power trying to build a Time Tunnel of their own, but The Day The Sky Fell In is perhaps the strongest story of the series, certainly emotionally speaking, as it sees Tony and Doug arrive at Pearl Harbour the day before the attack, the attack that claimed the life of Tony's father. He gets to see his younger self, and more importantly he gets to meet the father that he lost at such a young age, and more than ever, he's tempted to alter fate. There's also a great variety in the history that is explored in the series, with the American Civil War, Krakatoa, Revolutionary France, and The North West Frontier all getting a look in. You do notice at this point that there is a routine to the episodes settling in, but the show does continue to surprise with some strong episodes built around the formula. Kill Two By Two is one such episode, which indeed sees Doug and Tony captured by the nefarious Japanese during the final months of World War II. There's a whole lot of hate and bile to spread around, with a particularly cruel Japanese Lieutenant tormenting and goading the pair to fight him and his Sergeant. But when the reasons behind his actions become clear, it becomes one of the more moving episodes.


But it's also around this time that some of the more ridiculous episodes take place. The Revenge of Robin Hood plays like an unintentional parody, while Visitors From Beyond The Stars is the first of the silver skinned Bug-Eyed Monster episodes, alien invaders who look to invade and conquer solely because they are aliens, single note foes. The Ghost of Nero, which sees Doug and Tony, an elderly Italian aristocrat, and a squad of World War I Germans terrorised by the eponymous spirit may just be the worst episode of the lot, were it not for the best punchline of the series. The last ten episodes of the series have more duds than diamonds, but you still have the energetic Billy The Kid, and the outstanding The Death Merchant, which sees Machiavelli transported across the centuries and causing mayhem during the US Civil War, requiring Doug and Tony to clean up the mess.


It's also the latter part of the series where you see just how redundant the Time Tunnel is, with less and less action actually taking place in the control room set, and General Kirk, Ray and Ann really only there to supply exposition. While Doug and Tony face whatever peril it is that week, it's the mission crew who tell the viewers about the time period, the important characters, and the significant events of the era. This also reveals The Time Tunnel's major failing, and perhaps one reason why it didn't get past the first season. Too often, the perspective would change. We'd go from watching Doug and Tony on their current adventure, to watching General Kirk, Ann and Ray in turn watching Doug and Tony on their projected viewscreen. It adds another degree of separation between the viewer and the action, rendering it isolated and less immediate, diluting the effect of the drama.


Part of the joy of watching The Time Tunnel is the guest cast, with each week bringing new characters, new antagonists, and you get to see a lot of the genre players from the sixties, actors like Paul Carr, Malachi Throne, and Michael Ansara appear in more than one role. It's also a chance to see some more recognisable actors, people who went on to bigger and better things. The pilot has Susan Hampshire and Michael Rennie, even if poor Dennis Hopper didn't make the cut. Subsequent episode will feature actors like Robert Duvall, Tom Skerrit, Mako, Richard Jaeckel and John Saxon.


The Time Tunnel was a chore to review I must admit. But I can handle formulaic and repetitive television if it's taken at a reasonable pace. The next time I watch this series, I'll make sure to watch it the same way that it was broadcast, at one episode a week. Made before the advent of DVDs, cable TV channels, and even videos, these were shows that were never meant to be marathoned. The presentation on these discs is excellent for the most part. The show looks divine, as if it hasn't aged a day, and even upscaled on to a big screen TV, the episodes look incredibly detailed and vibrant. The DVD collection also offers a mouth-watering selection of bonus features, making The Time Tunnel an instant purchase if you are a fan of the show, and well worth a look if you like sixties sci-fi.