User Reviews

Doug and Tony are transported to February 1861 to a barn where a group of conspirators leaded by Jeremiah plots a plan to kill Abraham Lincoln, but they are surprised by a raid of governmental agents. Tony flees with Jeremiah and his brother Matthew while Doug is arrested by Pinkerton's men. The fanatic Jeremiah has prepared a time-bomb to blow up Lincoln's train but Tony knows that the plan is doomed to fail since history tells that Lincoln will die only four years later. When Jeremiah discovers that Lincoln is at the depot with Doug, he decides to blow up the spot; Tony tries to save his partner by is tied up to a chair in the brother's house.

"The Death Trap" is another flawed but engaging episode of "The Time Tunnel". Doug and Tony are involved in a doomed conspiracy to kill the President Lincoln. Maybe the greatest curiosity or attraction is the young Tom Skerrit in the role of Matthew Gebhardt. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Túnel do Tempo" ("The Time Tunnel")

This is a decent episode; watchable, but not a standout. The pacing in the second half feels slow to me. The best part of the episode are the characters of President Lincoln and the famous detective, Pinkerton.

I've been watching this show lately in the very good blue-ray dvd release, and I notice some aspects of the show, which seem like limitations to me. For one thing, every episode that I've seen has some kind of a big fistfight involving Doug and Tony versus somebody. It gets repetitive. Why a fistfight in each show? Also: Doug and Tony are never shown shooting any of their enemies. If the bad guys have rifles--which they do pretty often--our guys never grab and use them except as clubs! It seems obvious to me the show had a rule, "Doug and Tony can't shoot any villains." Sometimes there's a sword fight, and then actually Doug or Tony can slay their opponent, on occasion. Swords OK, guns not, I guess.

Tony's characterization as an impulsive, hot-headed kind of guy is OK, but that's about all the only character trait the show gives him. Doug is somewhat more cerebral; that's his one trait. I like them, and I like the show, but their characters are limited. For one thing, they never get a chance to just confide in each other as human beings; they're constantly reacting to the time period they're dropped into. They rarely if ever get to kid around with each other, even a little. Compare that to how the main characters on the original Star Trek would interact. Usually they drop into whichever century, and bang! Right away they're caught up in--yes, you guessed it--a fistfight! Enough with the roughhousing stuff, for Heaven's sake! I wish they could have visited Leonardo da Vinci and no fistfights with anybody! I wish there had been at least some episodes that were more on the thoughtful side. The show is a bit too cookie-cutter with the predictable action (fistfight!) scenes. Maybe there should have been an episode where they went back in time and Tony had to box one of the great early 1800's bare-knuckle boxers.

According official sources Abraham Lincoln really had an attempt of murder in 1861 when he headed to Washington by train to take office as President, the writer Leonard Stadd picked up this event wisely for the dramatization on Time Tunnel, otherwise if he had chosen the President's fatal day at Ford's Theatre, therefore ours friends couldn't save his life as displayed in this episode that is concerns when Lincoln's train will be passing through by Baltimore, toughly escorted by Allan Pinkerton (R.G. Armstrong) and his detective squad, after John Brown's death left behind many followers that later settle a plot to kill Lincoln (Ford Rainey), among them the brothers lead by Jeremiah Gedhardt (Scott Malowe) and Matthew (the young Tom Skerritt) Jeremiah make a rustic time bomb, Tony and Doug try hard to convince them that whole plot was clearly doomed to failure, Jeremiah and Matthew have a little brother David who finds unwittingly the bomb stashed under the depot and took away back to Jeremiah, meanwhile the Time Tunnel complex was already planned bring the bomb to be turned off, David was transported to the complex which he calls later as Cave, I've remember this episode when I was a little boy over this specific sequence when David carry on the bomb in his fragile arms calling "Jeremiah, Jeremiah" over and over, whereby echos in my head until today, how I could forget????

Thanks for reading.

Resume:

First watch: 1971 / How many: 5 / Source: TV-Cable TV-DVD / Rating: 7.5

Yes, there was a plot to assassinate President-Elect Abraham Lincoln as he travelled through Baltimore on his way to Washington, D.C. and his inauguration. And yes, Allan Pinkerton and his operatives foiled the plot, a bit of detection that helped reinforce Pinkerton's reputation as a detective. But nearly all John Brown's disciples had been killed in the raid on Harpers Ferry some 15 months earlier, or tried and executed. By Feb. 1861, the five who escaped or others who'd not been at Harpers Ferry would hardly have risked capture in Baltimore, a hotbed of Southern sympathizers, for an assassination attempt which could as easily have backfired. The Nov. 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln had already been received by the slave-holding states as tantamount to a declaration of war; who knows what the reaction to Lincoln's death prior to the actual start of hostilities would have been by wither side -- regardless of who pulled the trigger or set off the bomb.

I found the responses of Doug and Tony to Abraham Lincoln surprisingly muted; sure they were concerned about proving their innocence, but I expected a bit more awe that they were in his presence. Ditto for the crew back at the Time Tunnel. Are the general and the scientists getting jaded about seeing the giants of history in front of their eyes? Also the show should have provided a better explanation for the Tunnel's momentary jump to the actual Lincoln assassination in 1865. As the episode played out that foreshadowing seemed unnecessary, especially as it was presented inaccurately -- Maj. Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris were in the box along with the Lincolns and the shooting took place while the theater was darkened for the play onstage. We can read Thomas Mallon's novel, Henry and Clara, for a highly readable and detailed account in a work of fiction; but the 1966 writers also had access to numerous works about Lincoln's assassination (one of the most written-about subjects in U.S. history).

The guest cast was uniformly good and the script was closely focused on the situation in Baltimore. General Kirk and the scientists seemed to have much less screen time than in the other episodes I've seen. Their one extended scene (with the boy who was transferred along with the ticking bomb) seemed concocted mostly to give the actors something to do. The choice of R.G. Armstrong to play Allan Pinkerton was inspired -- Armstrong closely resembles photographs of Pinkerton taken in the early 1860's except that the actor is much taller than the detective was. In an 1861 photo held by the Library of Congress, Lincoln towers over Pinkerton and General McClellan who stand on either side of the President. Since McClellan's nicknames included "Little Mac" and "Young Napoleon" the famous detective must have been on the short side, too.

Amazingly, after 11 episodes in which Ann wears what appears to be the same drab tweed dress under a white lab coat, she finally gets a new outfit -- a blouse with a ruffled collar and a skirt (both in a vivid shade of green) -- underneath the lab coat.

Still, attempting to present real historical figures - Pinkerton and, particularly, Abraham Lincoln - was a risky move. It's one thing if Michael Rennie doesn't match the Titanic's actual Captain Smith but another to tamper with the Lincoln image and persona. So the show's producers, writers and director deserve credit for making the attempt even if they changed the sympathies and motives of the would-be assassins.

This death-of-Lincoln episode is good but not outstanding. The Time Tunnel series demands good guests stars and the guest cast here does a fine job. There is a non-event feeling to the hour that bothers me a little.

To me, the main event happens in the Tunnel command centre when the complex accidentally brings back a boy-with-a-bomb and the outraged General Kirk (Whit Bissell) says "If the bomb explodes it will destroy him (the boy), us and the Tunnel...SEND HIM BACK".

Yes, Gereral Kirk steals the episode again! The episode music composer is Robert Drasnin, who worked on a few Irwin Allen shows. To me, his music is just okay but his score for Lost In Space's Thief Of Outer Space was perhaps his shining hour.