With the new Sci-Fi thriller "Flash Forward" on ABC's 2009 fall schedule, it's hard not to look back at the grandfather of all time travel shows, "The Time Tunnel." Created by Irwin Allen, this 1966 television series focused on Project Tic-Toc, a government-funded experiment which tried to send a man on a round-trip through time.

Facing budget cuts, Dr. Tony Newman (*James Darren*) decided to use himself as a human guinea pig in the untested Time Tunnel. Newman successfully sent himself to the deck of the Titanic hours before it hit the iceberg. Dr. Doug Phillips (*Robert Colbert*), the scientific director of Project Tic-Toc, followed his friend back to 1912 to help out.

Although the Time Tunnel could send people to different time periods, Phillips and Newman hadn't quite perfected how to bring those time travelers back to their starting point. The best that the technicians could do was to move them from time zone to time zone in the hopes of eventually perfecting the return mechanism.

Doug and Tony traveled through the centuries, landing in such places as a Mars rocket, Pearl Harbor and Krakatoa before the volcanic eruption. The two 20th Century scientists repeatedly had to convince everyone that they weren't crazy, and, quite often, they ended up in fistfights with people in the past.

Even if you believed time travel was possible, this show still required some suspension of disbelief. The staff at Project Tic-Toc, for instance, was constantly bringing the wrong people back through the tunnel, including a sword-wielding soldier and a little boy from the 19th Century. How come they could never get Doug and Tony all the way home?

The other odd thing was the clothing worn by the two doctors. Doug wore a suit while Tony had jumped into the time machine wearing a turtleneck and slacks. No matter how many fights and explosions they were in, their clothing always looked freshly laundered each week.

Still, "The Time Tunnel" is a fun "running and jumping" show that deserved a longer run that just one season.