From fall of 1966 to spring of 1969, 79 episodes of
Star Trek were shown on television. I did not watch them. I did get to follow the Apollo space program and watch the televised first step of a man onto the Moon. Only later did I watch
Star Trek reruns.
WABAC
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| fall 1966: the endlessly exploding time tunnel |
One of the more painful memories from my childhood is
The Time Tunnel, a 1966 television show featuring endless explosions inside a tunnel-like device (costing 7.5 billion pre-inflation dollars) that could be used (on the rare occasions when it was working) for sending people to other times. I'm not sure that I ever watched an entire episode of this television program and I long believed that the Time Tunnel was based on an idea stolen from the
WABAC machine.
Aliens
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| an alien invader of the Time Tunnel complex in Arizona |
Not surprisingly,
The Time Tunnel was canceled after one season. What
is surprising is that Irwin Allen made many such television shows in the 1960s, all equally bad. Such was the Hollywood view of
science fiction.
At the end of its run, alien invaders appeared on Earth and tried to monkey with the Time Tunnel and the fate of Humanity. The Time Tunnel is not only a time travel device, but also a teleporter, able to send time travelers as far as
Canopus, several hundred light-years from Earth.
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| Losira disrupts the power supply of the Time Tunnel |
In the final episode, evil aliens attempt to take all of the atmospheric oxygen from Earth. They establish their base of operations in a small southern California town, which is very convenient for a television show that is low on ca$h and filmed in southern California. Luckily, the aliens can be defeated with a few sticks of dynamite.
Along with all of the explosions inside the Time Tunnel, there was a constant struggle to supply adequate power for the time travel adventures. Only after
The Time Tunnel was canceled did viewers learn that
Losira, an agent of the
Kalandan Empire had been systematically sabotaging Earth's time travel experiments.
1963
The Time Tunnel was apparently inspired (in part) by
The Time Travelers, filmed in 1963. Viewers were taken ahead to the future year 2071, after nuclear war had made Earth unsuitable for human habitation, but it is a paradise for
post-nuclear apocalypse mutants.
Forest J. Ackerman has a small role in the film. I've never seen
The Time Travelers, but it sounds like an inversion of the 1960 film
The Time Machine. It depicts the few remaining normal humans as living underground while the mutants live on the surface. I've
previously blogged about how seeing
The Time Machine on television played an important role in making me despise the sad fact that horror themes often contaminate science fiction stories.
Gamma
In 1963, the first issue of
Gamma, a new magazine appeared in print. There on the cover of the first issue was "Forrest J. Ackerman" and inside was a story called "
The Girl Who Wasn't There" which had originated in a fanzine (
Inside), first printed in 1953 and apparently the story was mostly written by
Eydthe Eyde (pen name
Lisa Ben).
Gamma only lasted through 5 issues.
Issue number 4 had an interview of Forrest J. Ackerman, exploring his love of monster movies.
As a Sci Fi and fantasy magazine,
Gamma was anomalous. It originated from southern California and seemed to be devoted to SF-lite. I suspect they discovered that people who read science fiction don't appreciate the kind of fluff that sells in Hollywood. On the cover of issue #4, right there next to the image of the alien barber is the name "
H. B. Fyfe". Some of his stories are available via
Project Gutenberg.
The story in the February 1965 issue of
Gamma that was written by Fyfe is called "The Clutches of Ruin". It tells of a visit by a Galactic Federation spaceship to a planet (Ytijio) where the aliens lay eggs and are caught up in a population explosion. The story takes place a few generations after Earth joined the Federation. In this hi-tek future world of the imagination, the Galactic Federation spaceship has filing cabinets to hold all of the written reports describing the many missions to Federation planets. Our hero, Bryson, must visit Ytijio and find out if the world is complying with a Federation directive requiring that the egg-laying aliens control their exploding population. In one scene, Bryson must convert Ytijian population numbers from their base 12 system and he wishes he had a slide rule.
Apparently the poor fecund Ytijians have been placed on double-dirty probation by the Federation. The population of Ytijio is approaching 4,000,000,000 and nobody would be surprised if the Federation decided to simply eradicate the Ytijians as a dangerous pest species, unable to control its numbers. Bryson is selected to visit Ytijio, but this is his first time in charge of a mission on an alien planet. Lucky for him, he does not have to go alone. He is assigned an assistant, Carole, who will be his secretary and record what Bryson discovers about Ytijian population control efforts.
It occurs to Bryson that it might be the intention of the Federation to bomb Ytijio, eradicate the Ytijians and strand he and Carole on the planet as founders of a new civilization. Apparently this is a type of planetary colonization trick that has been used before by the Galactic Federation.
Soon after arriving on Ytijio, Bryson makes a mistake. He asks Carole, "What do you think?" She quickly replies, "
You're doing the thinking. I'm just recording." Ah, the sixties. You ask:
why is Carole even is the story? Eventually our dynamic duo gets caught in a riot among the Ytijians and Carole has her clothing torn off. I have no idea what the cover illustration on the February 1965 issue of
Gamma is meant to represent, but I imagine that in another
Reality it was meant to illustrate poor Carole getting unwanted attention from a Ytijian.
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| more 1960s SF about overpopulation |
After traveling half way across the face of Ytijio in an effort to determine the planet's current population of Ytijians, Bryson discovers that census figures are published daily in the newspaper. "The Clutches of Ruin" reminds me of someone trying (and failing) to imitate the humor of Theodore Cogswell's story, the "The Specter General".
Both
Theodore Cogswell and H. B. Fyfe were born in 1918, so along with
Theodore Sturgeon they can be subjects for science fiction remembrances during 2018 (starting
here).
See Also:
Time Tunnel 1964
Another look at
the Time Tunnel in 2022 and a time tunnel to
1953
Next: end of 2017
review of wikifiction
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