The Time Tunnel

Well, it’s back. We’re springing for HBO for a couple months again, this time for The Sopranos. Along with HBO comes a package of b-grade movie channels which pad their schedules with genre TV series from the 60s. “Combat.” “Alias Smith and Jones.” My favorite, “The Green Hornet.”

But today I’m marveling at The Time Tunnel.

The premise is, a pair of contemporaneous scientists – one a hipster pretty boy in tight slacks and a turtleneck, the other an unthreatening authority-figure type with a coat and a tie – are randomly bounced around time (and place), doing their best to meddle with the outcomes of well-known historical events wherever and whenever they land.

These guys are supposed to be scientists. Granted, they’re being pitched around the timestream by a malfunctioning chrono-doodad of their own creation, but still – even a malfunctioning time machine is a pretty impressive achievement. These guys should know better, even without a prime directive to hew to.

This week’s episode they’re in Mexico, doing their best to obstruct Cortez on his murderously excellent adventure. At first, they're all like, “Dude, what?” Then “Whoa dude, no way!” Then finally, “Dude. Way.”

They’re Bill & Ted with PhDs and a rudimentary knowledge of history. Thank God they’re as inept as adventurers as they are time-travel-doodad inventors.

The best part is, even if this week’s episode sucks (which they usually do, but in an amusingly overwrought, wrong-headed way), the dim-wittted duo bounce to their next time and place at the end of every show, so you can go, “Well, they didn’t have much going on in Cortez-era Mexico, but the ancient Egypt sets next week look pretty cool.”

My favorite episode, and it’s one of the first I caught so memory is especially sketchy, was one where they land in the American Civil War, and commence to hook up with Niccolo Machiavelli (apparently also time-traveling, he from the 15th century) and philosophize in a circus tent on a battlefield.

It must have been fun to have been a writer on this show. By the time I did acid in the 80s, it was mostly speed.