Time travel television (#SFWApro)

Catching up on some of the Saturday reviews that I skipped during my trip, starting with some of the TV shows I’ve watched for my time-travel book.
The 1960s series THE TIME TUNNEL stars Robert Colbert and James Darren as respectively the Older and Younger Scientists (you know Darren’s younger because he wears a turtleneck instead of a suit) working on the eponymous research project. Much like Sam Beckett a couple of decades later, Darren decides to test the project before the government can cut off the funding and winds up trapped on the Titanic; Colbert follows. While they escape the Titanic, the most the project can do is keep moving them through time, never bringing them home (or pulling them out so fast they escape this week’s thrilling adventure).
This show is a good reminder that most TV SF really was much crappier back in the day. There’s diddly-squat characterization and most episodes only vary by which era they’re struggling to survive in. The show also gives zero thought to the premise: We never learn exactly what Uncle Sam plans to do with the Time Tunnel and nobody ever gives any thought to the effect of the protagonists on the past, and what saving lives in the past might do to the present (even when Darren runs into a younger Colbert on one time trip, there’s no hint it’s affected anything). This lasted one season, and deserved probably less.
•STUDIO ONE: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court was a TV adaptation of Twain’s classic, as faithful as can be expected given that it only had an hour to work in. Nothing terribly memorable here, except Boris Karloff’s turn as an amiable King Arthur. Any deeper thoughts will have to wait until I’ve watched a few more adaptations, but I’m pretty sure most of them favor contemporary Connecticut Yankees, whereas this one uses a 19th-century man, just as Twain did.
PARADOX was a 2009 BBC series that ran all of five episodes before getting axed. In the opening episode, a scientist shows Scotland Yard mysterious warnings about an upcoming terrorist incident, which the cops eventually realize is a message from the future. When more messages follow, the Yard creates a special squad to deal with them covertly. As I don’t include precognition and other see-the-future stories, this one doesn’t make the cut, though if it had lasted long enough to explain what’s going on, who knows, maybe that would have changed. However as it’s a routine cop thriller despite the ominous warnings, no great loss that it died.