History Series / TheTimeTunnel

* GoldFever: In "Idol of Death", the MacGuffin is a golden mask that serves as a symbol of authority for the Tlaxcalan people. UsefulNotes/HernanCortez wants the mask because he thinks possessing it will force the Tlaxcalans to accept him as their ruler. A contemporary archaeologist whom General Kirk calls in for his knowledge of the era turns out to be obsessed with the mask; he tries to bargain for it by refusing to help Tony and Doug unless the Tic-Toc staff retrieves the mask for him. He actually gets it for a few moments, but is forced to send it back. Meanwhile, the son of the murdered Tlaxcalan elder is able to resist the call of "the yellow metal", which Tony and Doug say makes him worthy to take over as chief.

The premise? Project Tic-Toc is an attempt by the American government to create a TimeMachine. When a senator questions the project, scientist Tony Newman (James Darren) impulsively jumps into the titular tunnel to prove that it works, and his colleague Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert) goes after him. Unfortunately, while the Time Tunnel is great at sending people [[TimeTravel back and forth through time]], the Tic Toc staff has little control over the device, so they're unable to bring Tony and Doug home. The result: our heroes wind up bouncing around in the timestream like a pair of human ping pong balls, encountering a lot of StockFootage and never quite grasping that YouCantFightFate despite their attempts to help the people they meet. MeanwhileInTheFuture, their contemporaries watch and try to decide when things are going badly enough for Tony and Doug that it wouldn't hurt to just send them off to yet another random date.

* GoldFever: In "Idol of Death", the MacGuffin is a golden mask that serves as a symbol of authority for the Tlaxcalan people. UsefulNotes/HernanCortez wants the mask because he thinks possessing it will force the Tlaxcalans to accept him as their ruler. A contemporary archaeologist whom General Kirk calls in for his knowledge of the era turns out to be obsessed with the mask; he tries to bargain for it by refusing to help Tony and Doug unless the Tic Toc staff retrieves the mask for him. He actually gets it for a few moments, but is forced to send it back. Meanwhile, the son of the murdered Tlaxcalan elder is able to resist the call of "the yellow metal", which Tony and Doug say makes him worthy to take over as chief.

The premise? Project Tic-Toc is an attempt by the American government to create a TimeMachine. When a senator questions the project, scientist Tony Newman (James Darren) impulsively jumps into the titular TimeTravelDevice, and his colleague Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert) goes after him. Unfortunately, while the Time Tunnel is great at sending people [[TimeTravel back and forth through
time]], the Tic Toc staff has little control over the device, so they're unable to bring Tony and Doug home. The result: our heroes wind up bouncing around in the timestream like a pair of human ping pong balls, encountering a lot of StockFootage and never quite grasping that YouCantFightFate despite their attempts to help the people they meet. JJ bm
I'm MeanwhileInTheFuture, their contemporaries watch and try to decide when things are going badly enough for our heroes that it wouldn't hurt to just send them off to yet another random date.

Creator/IrwinAllen, the man behind ''Series/LostInSpace'' and ''Series/VoyageToTheBottomOfTheSea'', also gave us the ScienceFiction series ''The Time Tunnel''. The premise? Two [[TheSixties Sixties]] guys who don't care beans about temporal causality, Tony Newman (James Darren) and Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert), [[TimeTravel travel through time]], encountering a lot of StockFootage and never quite grasping that YouCantFightFate. MeanwhileInTheFuture, their contemporaries watch and try to decide when things are going badly enough for our heroes that it wouldn't hurt to just send them off to yet another random date.

* HateSink: "Idol of Death" has Doug call UsefulNotes/HernanCortez "one of the worst butchers in history", and the episode depicts him as living up to that title. He ruthlessly kills the Tlaxcalan natives, whom he regards as subhuman "savages"; the first thing we see him do is torture and murder an elderly chieftain and his wife.

* HateSink: "Idol of Death" has Doug call UsefulNotes/HernanCortez "one of history's greatest butchers", and the episode depicts him as living up to that title. He ruthlessly kills the Tlaxcalan natives, whom he regards as subhuman "savages"; the first thing we see him do is torture and murder an elderly chieftain and his wife.

* TheHomewardJourney
* HotScientist: Dr. Ann [=MacGregor=].
** Lee Ann Meriwether was “Miss America 1955”.

* {{Revival}}: A pilot for a reimagined ''Time Tunnel'', complete with Tony Newman [[GenderFlip recast as a woman]] named ''Toni'' Newman, was made in 2002 but never broadcast; it's available as a DVD extra in 2006. The [[Creator/{{Syfy}} Sci Fi Channel]] announced another revival attempt a few years later, but it never got out of DevelopmentHell. [[invoked]]

* TheCretaceousIsAlwaysDoomed: Or pretty much anything else Tony and Doug stumble upon. The Time Tunnel is supposed to be sending them to random eras unpredictably, but they always seem to arrive while some famous, exciting event is happening, or about to happen.

* EternalEnglish: Every person in every time period speaks perfect 20th Century English, no matter how far into the past or future the travelers go or what country they are visiting. Sometimes foreign characters will have [[JustAStupidAccent stupid accents]] when the travelers end up in a place like France or Germany, but that's usually as far as it goes. "Kill Two by Two" {{handwave}}s how the two Japanese soldiers know English; Sgt. Itsugi has picked up the language, while Lt. Nakamura is fluent because he was educated at Stanford. The 2002 revival pilot solved this problem by giving its cast {{Universal Translator}}s.

* {{Revival}}: A pilot for a reimagined ''Time Tunnel'', complete with Tony Newman [[GenderFlip recast as a woman]] named ''Toni'' Newman, was made in 2002 but never broadcast; it's available as a DVD extra. The [[Creator/{{Syfy}} Sci Fi Channel]] announced another revival attempt a few years later, but it never got out of DevelopmentHell. [[invoked]]

** Nicely played with in "The Day the Sky Fell In" when Doug and Tony succumbing to truth serum lead their captors to believe they must be professional spies who have been conditioned to spout nonsense when drugged.

* TheCretaceousIsAlwaysDoomed: Or pretty much anything else they stumble upon.

* TheCretaceousIsAlwaysDoomed: Or pretty much anything else they stumbled upon.

** ''Aliens From Another Planet''= "Chase Through Time" + "Visitors From Beyond The Stars."
** ''Revenge Of The Gods'' = "Revenge of the Gods" + "The Walls Of Jericho,"
** ''Old Legends Never Die'' = "Merlin The Magician" + "The Revenge Of Robin Hood,"
** ''Kill Or Be Killed'' = "The Day The Sky Fell In" +"Kill Two by Two."
** ''Raiders From The Moon'' = "The Kidnappers" + "One Way to the Moon."

** ''Kill Or Be Killed'' = "The Day The Sky Fell In" +"Kill Two By Two."
** ''Raiders From The Moon'' = "The Kidnappers" + "One Way To The Moon."

* GoOnWithoutMe: Tony in "Kill Two By Two". Doug, obviously, does not comply.

* {{Revival}}: A pilot for a reimagined ''Time Tunnel'', complete with Tony Newman [[GenderFlip recast as a woman]] named ''Toni'' Newman, was made in 2002 but never broadcast; it's available as a DVD extra. The [[Creator/{{Syfy}} Sci Fi Channel]] announced another revival attempt a few years later, but it never got out of DevelopmentHell.
* SadlyMythtaken: "Revenge of the Gods" is swarming with errors regarding Greek mythology and The Iliad.

* YoungFutureFamousPeople:
** Doug and Tony encounter Lieutenant UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte in the French Revolution episode.
** And UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini in "The Ghost of Nero"
** And Creator/RudyardKipling in "Night of the Long Knives".

** Could the [=MacGregor=] family be related to the MacGyver family?

* YouCantFightFate: Recorded history can't be changed. Sometimes our heroes will try (with no acknowledgement of [[TimeParadox what a mess]] they might make by succeeding), but it does seem to eventually sink in that this is futile, and they're more likely to spend the episode playing TheCassandra, i.e., "You're going to lose this battle. No, you're really going to lose this battle. No no, you're ''really'' going to..." [[LoopholeAbuse However,]] smaller events that wouldn't necessarily make it into the history books are still malleable (or may as well be, since their fates are not recorded), like making sure specific people they meet make it through a historical event okay, even if they can't change the larger event. For instance, they knew they stood a chance of saving Tony's father at Pearl Harbor because [[NeverFoundTheBody his body was never found.]]

* YouCantFightFate: Recorded history can't be changed. Sometimes our heroes will try (with no acknowledgement of [[TimeParadox what a mess]] they would make by succeeding), but it does seem to eventually sink in that this is futile, and they're more likely to spend the episode playing TheCassandra, i.e., "You're going to lose this battle. No, you're really going to lose this battle. No no, you're ''really'' going to..." [[LoopholeAbuse However,]] smaller events that wouldn't necessarily make it into the history books are still malleable (or may as well be, since their fates are not recorded), like making sure specific people they meet make it through a historical event okay, even if they can't change the larger event. For instance, they knew they stood a chance of saving Tony's father at Pearl Harbor because [[NeverFoundTheBody his body was never found.]]

* YouCantFightFate: Recorded history can't be changed. Sometimes our heroes will try (in the first episode, they try to save the ''Titanic),'' but it does seem to eventually sink in that this is futile, and they're more likely to spend the episode playing TheCassandra, i.e., "You're going to lose this battle. No, you're really going to lose this battle. No no, you're ''really'' going to..." [[LoopholeAbuse However,]] smaller events that wouldn't necessarily make it into the history books are still malleable (or may as well be, since their fates are not recorded), like making sure specific people they meet make it through a historical event okay, even if they can't change the larger event. For instance, they knew they stood a chance of saving Tony's father at Pearl Harbor because [[NeverFoundTheBody his body was never found.]]

* YouCantFightFate: Recorded history can't be changed. Sometimes our heroes will ''try,'' (in the first episode, they try to save the ''Titanic),'' but it does seem to eventually sink in that this is futile, and they're more likely to spend the episode playing TheCassandra, i.e., "You're going to lose this battle. No, you're really going to lose this battle. No no, you're ''really'' going to..." [[LoopholeAbuse However,]] smaller events that wouldn't necessarily make it into the history books are still malleable (or may as well be, since their fates are not recorded), like making sure specific people they meet make it through a historical event okay, even if they can't change the larger event. For instance, they knew they stood a chance of saving Tony's father at Pearl Harbor because [[NeverFoundTheBody his body was never found.]]

* MeanwhileInTheFuture

* OncePerEpisode: The guys at the time lab will try to bring our heroes back, and accidentally scoop up someone or something ''else'' from the Era of the Week. If it's a person, they'll be very confused, and may or may not understand any explanations, but ultimately they'll go back or get sent back. If it's a thing, odds are that it's a bomb or something else dangerous that they'll need to get rid of fast.

* MyFutureSelfAndMe: Tony meets his child self in the Pearl Harbor episode. Notable because time travel stories didn't do this kind of thing very often in the years before ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' popularized the idea.

* MyFutureSelfAndMe: Tony meets his child self in the Pearl Harbor episode.

* YouCantFightFate: Recorded history can't be changed. Sometimes our heroes will ''try,'' (in the first episode, they try to save the ''Titanic),'' but it does seem to eventually sink in that this is futile, and they're more likely to spend the episode playing TheCassandra, i.e., "You're going to lose this battle. No, you're really going to lose this battle. No no, you're ''really'' going to..." [[LoopholeAbuse However,]] smaller events that wouldn't necessarily make it into the history books are still malleable (or may as well be, since their fates are not recorded), like making sure specific people they meet make it through a historical event okay, even if they can't change the larger event.

* YouCantFightFate: Recorded history can't be changed. Sometimes our heroes will ''try,'' (in the first episode, they try to save the ''Titanic),'' but it does seem to eventually sink in that this is futile, and they're more likely to spend the episode playing TheCassandra, i.e., "You're going to lose this battle. No, you're really going to lose this battle. No no, you're ''really'' going to..." Though smaller events that wouldn't necessarily make it into the history books are still malleable (or may as well be, since their fates are not recorded), like making sure specific people they meet make it through a historical event okay, even if they can't change the larger event.

* YouCantFightFate: Not that it stops them from trying! Though in fairness, smaller events that wouldn't necessarily make it into the history books are still malleable (or may as well be, since their fates are not recorded), like making sure specific people they meet make it through a historical event okay, even if they can't change the larger event.

* OncePerEpisode: The guys at the time lab will try to bring our heroes back, and accidentally scoop up someone or something else from the Era of the Week. If it's a person, they'll be very confused, and may or may not understand any explanations, but ultimately they'll go back or get sent back. If it's a thing, odds are that it's a bomb or something else dangerous that they'll need to get rid of fast.

* YouCantFightFate: Not that it stops them from trying! Though in fairness, smaller events that wouldn't necessarily make it into the history books are still malleable (or may as well be, since their fates are not recorded), like making sure specific people they meet make it through okay, even if they can't change the larger event.