episode #07 - Revenge of the Gods

episode #7 / Air Date: 10.21.66
written by William Read Woodfield & Allan Balter / Directed by Sobey Martin

Doug & Tony land smack dab into the middle (or actually, the tail-end) of the Trojan War, circa 1184 BC. This is the famous 10-year war 'chronicled' by Homer, a war between invading Greeks and the Trojans who are inside the walled city of Troy. Since the two time travelers land outside the walls, they are captured by the Greeks and brought before Ulysses (John Doucette), who believes them to be gods from Olympus. His right-hand man, Sardis (Joe Ruskin), thinks the two are just men; he gets so disgruntled over this that he switches sides.

Meanwhile, in Troy, Paris (Paul Carr) and Helen (Dee Hartford) are musing over how the war has gone these past 10 years. The weakness to this one is that there is no Achilles and Hector (already both dead by this point) and others like Agamemnon are also missing. This is like a very small, pared down version of what is usually regarded as an epic. It also doesn't help that the guest actors employed do not convey much of such impressive figures of ancient times - Hartford is fine, but the others seem better suited to playing common folk, not great leaders.

As with the previous episode, this throws in an intriguing scene about time travel - Jiggs is sent back to 1184 BC briefly, when he has a chance to machine gun down a bunch of Trojans fighting with Tony. When he's transported back, he has aged greatly for some reason; the technicians instruct him to go back and come back out; this solves the problem . There is some revisionism, too - famous characters dying in unexpected ways and a pretty simplistic tone about rescuing Helen. BoG's Score: 5 out of 10

Epilogue: Doug & Tony land in the middle of a battle's aftermath - dead 19th century American soldiers are lying all over the ground; then the two are attacked by Indians...


Time Tunnel Trivia: Star Trek TOS actor alert - Ruskin was in The Gamesters of Triskelion; Paul Carr was Where No Man Has Gone Before; he already appeared in the Time Tunnel episode, End of the World. Abraham Sofaer also has a small part here - he was in Charlie X. Also in a small role is Kevin Hagen (as a Greek soldier), known as Kobeck on the Land of the Giants show.