# The Irwin Allen TV Series And Movie Thread



## BAYLOR (Sep 27, 2014)

This thread covers all things Irwin Allen , Tv Series, Like Lost  in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Time Tunnel Land of The Giants  and Movies that he did.


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## J-Sun (Sep 27, 2014)

DANGER, BAYLOR, DANGER! Bad "sci-fi" ahead!



Erm, well... I have a _Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea/Fantastic Voyage_ duo on DVD - arguably FV (not an Allen film) is worse but it has Raquel Welch in it, so is much more watchable to me. VBS does have something neat about it, though I'm not sure how to describe what. (I own the FV novelization by Asimov but, while I should have picked it up "just because", I've seen Sturgeon's novelization of VBS around and passed on it.) And, as a kid, I used to get up early Saturday mornings (or was it Sunday? maybe Sunday, before NFL football) to watch _Lost in Space_ and, as less of a kid, I ask "why?" as I don't think I've been able to make it through an entire episode since. But much of his stuff had a big impact and has become iconic.


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## dask (Sep 27, 2014)

I liked Time Tunnel. I missed the episode, the premiere I think, which had a soldier shooting up the Roman Empire with a machine gun. When I heard about it a school I got really mad. Even now I don't think I ever saw it, even during summer reruns.


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## Foxbat (Sep 27, 2014)

I've got Land Of The Giants and Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea collections on DVD and still enjoy revisiting them. I really must make the effort to get Time Tunnel and Lost In Space too


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## BAYLOR (Sep 28, 2014)

*Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea .    *I marvel at the creative ways Allen was able to  reuse the same props and monsters and tock movie footage  to save money. That aside , the show was tremendously entertaining.


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## F.J. Hansen (Dec 28, 2014)

I just finished Season 1 of *Land of the Giants*. It's one of the better Irwin Allen shows along with *The Time Tunnel*, I think. I especially admire that the writers try to make it more serialized.

*Lost in Space* and *Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea* were my least favorite. My biggest problem about *Bottom of the Sea* was the submarine. The torpedoes come out of nowhere. Also, I find it's really silly of Fox to release the show in double-sided discs with a mere two episodes per side.


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## BAYLOR (Dec 28, 2014)

F.J. Hansen said:


> I just finished Season 1 of *Land of the Giants*. It's one of the better Irwin Allen shows along with *The Time Tunnel*, I think. I especially admire that the writers try to make it more serialized.
> 
> *Lost in Space* and *Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea* were my least favorite. My biggest problem about *Bottom of the Sea* was the submarine. The torpedoes come out of nowhere. Also, I find it's really silly of Fox to release the show in double-sided discs with a mere two episodes per side.



I think Voyage was his best show, it lasted the longest at 4 season. yes the writing  got ever hokier as it progressed but, it's still pure escapist fun .


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## F.J. Hansen (Dec 31, 2014)

I guess the mutants, monsters, mad scientists, and mutant mad monster scientists were what audiences loved in the '60s. I understand *Lost in Space* would have had a fourth season, too, but Allen had other plans.

And, that's why network executives were baffled by *Star Trek*.


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## Dave (Dec 31, 2014)

Certainly, the re-runs were a big part of my childhood. There are some very, very old discussions here:
http://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/24773/
http://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/6322/
I'm not sure I have more to say now, but would have liked to have seen that re-imaged 'Time Tunnel' film made. I thought the concept of the tunnel itself, in a secret government facility (widely copied in other scifiTV) was good. Though there is a 1964 film 'The Time Travelers' directed by Ib Melchio that was obviously an inspiration and probably should be given the credit. And also the Krell machine from 'Forbidden Planet'

Edit: Just to add that those two threads are very old indeed and the links and polls within them are broken or removed.


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## BAYLOR (Dec 31, 2014)

F.J. Hansen said:


> I guess the mutants, monsters, mad scientists, and mutant mad monster scientists were what audiences loved in the '60s. I understand *Lost in Space* would have had a fourth season, too, but Allen had other plans.
> 
> And, that's why network executives were baffled by *Star Trek*.




The network was willing to give Allen a 4th season but they wanted the  budget for *Lost in Space *to be reduced *.  *


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## F.J. Hansen (Dec 31, 2014)

I thought it was because Allen wanted to move on and he was unwilling to let anyone else produce it. That's what I heard, anyway.


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## BAYLOR (Dec 31, 2014)

F.J. Hansen said:


> I thought it was because Allen wanted to move on and he was unwilling to let anyone else produce it. That's what I heard, anyway.



They wanted  the production budget reduced by 15 percent.


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## alchemist (Dec 31, 2014)

dask said:


> I liked Time Tunnel. I missed the episode, the premiere I think, which had a soldier shooting up the Roman Empire with a machine gun. When I heard about it a school I got really mad. Even now I don't think I ever saw it, even during summer reruns.



That's the episode I thought of as I wandered into the thread! Although I think it was the siege of Troy.

I loved that show, but I suspect it wouldn't age well if I were to see it again.


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## BAYLOR (Dec 31, 2014)

alchemist said:


> That's the episode I thought of as I wandered into the thread! Although I think it was the siege of Troy.
> 
> I loved that show, but I suspect it wouldn't age well if I were to see it again.



In 2002 they did a one hour reboot pilot of the Time Tunnel . It's unsold but you can see it in it's entirety on the Time Tunnel DVD . I think it might be on Youtube as well. It's too bad this reboot never happened because the pilot is not bad at all.


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## BAYLOR (Jan 1, 2015)

In  1976  he did a made for Tv film  *The Time Travelers *probably a pilot for never made series. In this film the country is being ravaged by a disease that hadn't been seen since the 1870's . There was a doctor living in Chicago at that time who had found a an effective treatment to this disease that is ravaging the present. Though they know about the Doctor, they don't have any of his research records because he and his records perished  in the the great Chicago fire of 1871.  There is organization funded by the government that has discovered time travel, what they do is send two doctors back in time to find out from the 19th century Doctor how he cured the disease. One the problems is they have to send him at point just before the fire breaks out.  The other problem , they won't be able to do anything to change  any history.  It wasn't a bad film and it might have made a good series.


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## F.J. Hansen (Jan 1, 2015)

dask said:


> I liked Time Tunnel. I missed the episode, the premiere I think, which had a soldier shooting up the Roman Empire with a machine gun. When I heard about it a school I got really mad. Even now I don't think I ever saw it, even during summer reruns.



That wasn't the premiere. The premiere was the one where they're on the Titanic.


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## Dave (Jan 1, 2015)

Episode list here: http://www.tv.com/shows/the-time-tunnel/episodes/
Titanic 'Rendezvous with Yesterday' was the first. Amazingly only 30 episodes were made as they must have been shown repeatedly.
My favourite would be the 'Secret Weapon' which just placed another layer of complexity to the story of the Time Tunnel experiment, while the worst were 'Merlin the Magician' and 'The Ghost of Nero' that were both just too hokey.


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## BAYLOR (May 30, 2016)

Silly as it was , I did like the Captain Nemo Miniseries.


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## BAYLOR (Feb 22, 2021)

He also brought us such films as *The Lost World* based on Arthur Conan Doyles novel of the same name. The film had a very impressive cast but the Dino effects consisted of Monitor lizards , an Alligator and iguanas  with horns and frills stuck to them as stands ins  for the Dinosaurs  which didn't work. They did similar  thing in* Journey to the Center of the Earth* using Iguana's as stand in for Dimetrodons which did work.   

And in the 1970's  *The Towering Inferno* and T*he Poseidon Adventure* both of which are good films.  *The Swarm* about killer bees is not a very good , *Beyond the Poseidon Adventure*  really bad and his final theatrical film *The Day the World Ended , *abysmal.


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## BAYLOR (Feb 25, 2021)

Dave said:


> Episode list here: The Time Tunnel
> Titanic 'Rendezvous with Yesterday' was the first. Amazingly only 30 episodes were made as they must have been shown repeatedly.
> My favourite would be the 'Secret Weapon' which just placed another layer of complexity to the story of the Time Tunnel experiment, while the worst were 'Merlin the Magician' and 'The Ghost of Nero' that were both just too hokey.



What they should have done with that show was serialized story telling rather then the history even of the week, they could have gotten 4 years aout of it that way .  Also no aliens  any trips to the future.  This show had huge potential.


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## Dave (Feb 25, 2021)

I think it was just too expensive to make. They made good use of unused clips from movies and old news reels, but you couldn't imagine anyone doing that today, and period sets and costumes are costly. Doctor Who suffered the same, which I expect is why there were so may episodes of that running down spaceship corridors and fewer on location in slate quarries. I agree with you about the potential. I really liked that series as a kid. I think that the not bringing them back home was a way to allow the episodes to be show out of order. That was very important with syndicated shows in the 1960's that might be on several different US stations, but I would certainly have liked to see a story arc. If they had been able to have developed further the Russian "secret weapon" and had had a time tunnel "space race" between the USA and USSR.


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## Jeffbert (Apr 8, 2021)

BAYLOR said:


> ...
> *The Swarm* about killer bees is not a very good , *Beyond the Poseidon Adventure*  really bad and his final theatrical film *The Day the World Ended , *abysmal.


I saw *the Swarm* several years ago. To me, it broke the unwritten law that children must not be killed, much less en mass. Unlike the other disaster films, as I recall, there really was no victory at the ending, the hero could not say, "well, hundreds of people, including dozens of children were painfully killed, but it could have been worse" I was taken by surprise at any more than that one kid who found the hive being stung to death.  You just do not show that kind of thing!


*The Day the World Ended* sounds like my kind of film!


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## BAYLOR (Apr 11, 2021)

F.J. Hansen said:


> That wasn't the premiere. The premiere was the one where they're on the Titanic.



Michal Rennie  played Captain Smith .


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