Watch The Time Tunnel For Free

A different way of telling a story

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Fun, but not particularly good. Even so, I would have enjoyed a few more episodes to see if it would pan out at all. A big nit is this: They allegedly needed Doug Phillips for his expertise of a WWII battle. Problem is, he remembers it not as it was supposed to happen, so how much of an asset is he? He doesn't know how it's supposed to go. And given that, he should have been aware of the effect of the plague, since he is part of the altered timeline. Not quite sure why he still has a wife and two kids, but perhaps that would have been explained later.Best part was the laughs I got from the Hogan's Heroes references.

as a fan of the original series i was pleased to find a copy of the 2002 version. i was a little sceptical expecting a stupid story with no great thought put into it, however the show was a great compliment to the original series with a great cast and a great re working of the original show. I really enjoyed it and i am sure it would have had a great fan base if the production company would have continued the series; its a great shame. I understand it was canned due to other time travelling' shows like Stargate which has never really appealed to me.What i like about the TT is the historical story lines which given modern CGI would have made this version of TT very original and exciting to watch.

The original "Time Tunnel" series was one of Irwin Allen's less successful efforts. It lasted but a single season (although it was a 30 episode season, long in those days and impossible today) and wasn't widely syndicated in afterschool reruns like Lost in Space or Voyage to the Bottom of the sea. Which was just as well, because it became very formulaic even in that single season. Our dashing heroes (always with impeccable hair) land in a strange time, get into conflict with the denizens of the era (or, in the later episodes, often invaders from space), have a fistfight or two and save the day, then are tossed into next week's episode.This new pilot was perhaps a mish-mash of other series thrown together, but by and large, it worked. Mostly, it was due to the two lead actors playing Doug and Toni. Flynn was a little too gung ho and two-dimensional. JD was a stereotypical CIA agent with ice water in her veins and the medic was little more than strongman Willie Armitage from "Mission: Impossible." He did have potential as a character, though.Unlike the series, there was no ultra-secret, ultra-expensive, ultra-gigantic, ultra-everything government time travel project. It was simply a nuclear fusion experiment gone awry, creating the timestorm that is the source of their problems and allowing the time travel that makes their missions possible. The term "the 240," indicating the 4 hours they spent stabilizing their end of the timestorm, didn't really work. It's hard to believe it took exactly 240 minutes to do that. It might have been better to call that "T-zero," for the point from which everything else is measured.The new Time Tunnel is more impressive than the set from the series, which is to be expected given the march of, uh, time. Actually, the set from the original pilot was also fairly impressive, with additional windows overlooking the large control room, although it was simplified in the course of the series. The new Mission Control is similar to that, with the control room looking down at the tunnel through a shielded window, shades of Stargate SG-1. The CGI tunnel was certainly better than the forced perspective model where actors could only run 15 feet up the tunnel, seemingly growing as the tunnel narrowed too quickly.This remake takes some cues from "Search" aka Probe (1972), a cult series where agents from a secret agency are assigned to search for lost or stolen items. In both, the agents carry equipment that let support personnel at headquarters see and hear everything they do, as well as being able to hear advice from HQ. The implant that could monitor what they see is highly implausible, but certainly better than the God's eye view they would see suspended in mid-air in the tunnel in the original series. It is also similar to Allen's "The Time Travelers" (1976), his own failed attempt at a revival. Unlike the series, where Doug and Tony are haplessly bounced through time, they have nearly full control of the time travel aspect here and in Travelers, having the ability to return to the present at will. In fact, it's very close to Timecop, the short-lived 1997 series on ABC. The premise is almost identical. Agents are sent back in time to correct ripples in history, then return to headquarters when history is restored.Irwin Allen did not place much importance on character development. Throughout the entire run of the original show, we learned almost nothing about the backgrounds of Doug and Tony, other than Tony's father dying at Pearl Harbor. Allen liked to cut to the chase, so ten minutes into the show, Tony Newman had recklessly propelled himself into the past (with no clear reason to, I might add). This pilot spent quite a bit more time fleshing out Doug and Toni, so we can safely assume that they were meant to be the main characters again had the series been bought. The other characters are very sketchily drawn. Whether they would have even remained had the series started is anyone's guess.Alas, time travel science fiction doesn't have a very large audience and the show wasn't ordered. Timecop was the last such failure. The most successful of recent efforts was the ridiculous "Time Trax." (Also ridiculously named. A real-life example of the line from Stargate SG-1's "Wormhole X-Treme" self-parody, "Research says that shows with X in the name get higher ratings.") At the very least, this pilot should have been aired even if the show was never picked up. The production was already paid for, so why not send it over to the Sci-Fi Channel and recoup some of the expenses? It was certainly better than pilots like "Island City" or "Star Command," neither of which were picked up but which did both air on Fox. Time was, decades ago, when unsold pilots were burned off in the summertime, but today's hypercompetitive TV market has no use for anything that doesn't look like a smash hit. We lose decent TV like this because of that mindset.

By some miracle I have managed to obtain a copy of this film. While it is rough around the edges, as most pilots are, it has alot of potential. With additional character development and some good stories written by strong writers this pilot could have evolved into a very good series had it been given the chance. While this film bears little resemblence to the Irwin Allen series of the 60s, other that the brief hint of the original theme at the beginning, this contemporary version is well worth a look to scifi and time travel fans. I enjoyed it very much and it's a nice addition to my video archives.