The Time Tunnel (TV Series) Visitors from Beyond the Stars (1967) User Reviews

Space Invaders

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 30 December 2009]

Doug and Tony are transported to a spacecraft with two weird aliens that intend to invade Earth to steal proteins for their dying planet. They land on Mullins, Arizona, in 1885, and the aliens use a device called "Projector" to subdue the earthlings. The time travelers decide to resist the invasion to save Earth from the eminent destruction, but the powerful aliens seem to be unbeatable.

"Visitors from Beyond the Stars" is an entertaining episode of "The Time Tunnel". The alien with slow speech is boring, but fortunately he sooner learns how to speak more fluently. The scenario of the spacecraft is kitsch, tacky and dated, but delicious to see in 2009. My vote is seven.

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

Promise Turns to Blah

[fcabanski · 4/10 · 19 November 2016]

This episode started with a bang, but after the aliens, dragging along Doug and Tony, meet a farmer it's turns into lot of whimpering.

Irwin got some of his silver skinned, silver garbed aliens into Time Tunnel. Are they from another dimension? Who knows? They initially claim Tony and Doug are from another dimension. Maybe they're talking about Tony and Doug time traveling. But when the alien says "another dimension", he thinks Tony and Doug teleported from somewhere.

Tony and Doug seem surprised when the alien "reveals" the plan to invade Earth. The aliens call it by a number, so it's a mystery until they show an image. But earlier, the aliens say that are invading a planet, and mention testing Doug and Tony according to the observed norms from Earth. So, they gave it away before the big reveal.

The impending Apache attack on the town seems to be important early in the episode. It hinted at a possible confrontation between the Apache and the aliens, some interweaving of two invasions at the same time. But it turns out the Apache were only a plot element used to create drama - Tony has a time limit in his mission to bring town people to the new alien base, but the town people are preoccupied with the Apache, so they won't follow Tony.

The aliens come to Earth for "protein". The first thing they demand is cattle, grain, and corn. Maybe the grain and corn are to feed the cattle.

The episode ends with other aliens showing up at the Tunnel complex. They make a lot of wind, threatening to do something if the General and the others don't prove the invading aliens left Earth safely. We never find out what happened to those invaders - why didn't they return home?

It's not clear why the aliens don't just ask for some protein. They could take some cattle back home and start herds to feed their people. Something happens between the past and present (Tunnel complex time). The aliens who go to the Tunnel complex mention they no longer need protein from primitive planets. The cattle the invaders took never arrived - their ship was lost. So how the aliens solved their protein problem remains a mystery. Maybe they figured out grain and corn aren't protein.

Sci-Fi & Disaster

[StuOz · 8 July 2006]

Silver suited aliens appear in Mullins, Arizona in 1885, they want food to take back to their alien world and will kill to get it! Tony and Doug try and stop them but Doug gets taken over by the aliens.

This episode must have caused a few raised eyebrows when first screened! Aliens! Then again, a dozen or so weeks before this, Irwin Allen's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea had also gone spacebound, so maybe the more in tune viewers just called out..."Irwin has done it again!".

The teaser of this episode makes a musical connection to viewers. When the heroes are first seen in the alien craft, we hear a bit of John Williams pilot music (heard when Tony reveals his birth date to the Captain of the Titanic), I think this is the director's way of saying "Hey folks, something really strange is going on".

John Hoyt steals the hour as the alien leader.

And the general look of the show. The photography of the silver skined aliens standing in open fields of grass is something you don't see in more studiobound alien encounters in other Irwin shows.

Not a bad beginning to the spaced out version of The Time Tunnel.

A STRANGE BUT ENTERTAINING MIX

[asalerno10 · 8/10 · 16 May 2022]

This series relied primarily on footage from historic Fox movies. When this footage began to wrap up, the writers had no choice but to start interspersing stories from the future or with aliens that didn't require historical accuracy. Here the protagonists try to disrupt the plans of two aliens who come to Earth with the mission of doing a study to seize our nutrients. These beings from the future arrive in a town in the far west. The mixture of fantasy genres with the western may sound ridiculous, but the result of the episode is somewhat absurd but very entertaining at the same time.

Insipid blend of space-opera and horse-opera

[jamesrupert2014 · 3/10 · 3 May 2022]

The time travelers appear in the control room of an alien spaceship in 1885 (apparently hovering over Arizona), only to be drawn into a plot to steal all of Earth's protein, thus rendering our home world a 'dead planet'. This was the first 'Time Tunnel' outing to involve extra-terrestrials and seems to be just an excuse for frugal auteur Irwin Allen to recycle the silver spacesuits from 'Lost in Space' and take advantage of the endless number of 'western' sets available around L. A. The plot, which involves two silver-skinned alien raiders, an advance team of a force that plans to strip Earth of all of its protein (yet who repeatedly ask for non-proteinaceous foodstuffs) makes little sense and silly plot-contrivances abound (including the hackneyed but always useful 'alien mind control' trope). The final scenes, which occur decades later as even more supercilious silver aliens show up looking for their colleague add nothing to the story and seems to be tacked on solely to fill out the running time. Foolish, unimaginative dreck for diehard fans only.

Another TT Dud

[robert3750 · 2/10 · 21 February 2021]

I hated this from the start, when it used music from The Day the Earth Stood Still. The alien invasion plot very quickly becomes a dull western, with a couple of guys decked out in silver. Bleah.

A Big Miss

[MiketheWhistle · 2 June 2019]

Compared to other TT eps this really is a dud. With the other eps having a focus on some historical event, this one with aliens truly takes sci fi to the limit. The TT was a good sci fi show with a premise, but with this one they blew it.

Incredibly bad

[shakspryn · 2/10 · 22 December 2021]

In 1966, as a ten-year-old, I enjoyed watching this series. I hadn't seen it since until this year, when I began watching the blue-ray dvd edition. Up until this episode, I've enjoyed the 16 that I've watched.

What makes this one such an appalling stinker? Well, it's because of the "visitors" from "beyond the stars" of the title. Irwin Allen was thought in Hollywood to be an expert on science-fiction. He was not! The "visitors" (aliens) in this one look like they wandered in from a "Lost in Space" episode. Allen's idea of "aliens" seems to have started and ended with slathering silver make-up on somebody's face, and putting tin foil over their clothes to make them look weird. Then, he likes to make his "aliens" talk halting, stilted English, kind of like robots with their batteries running down. It was OK on "Lost in Space." On this series, it destroys any sense of credibility. Our poor regulars are suddenly stuck in a very bad junior high school production, is how it feels. I give this a "2" because the regular cast gamely tries to sell this trash.

On most episodes, there is some interesting historical tie-in: to Lincoln, say, or Marco Polo, etc. Here it's just these dull, cheesy aliens spouting lines such as "Bring us all your protein." Please take it and go away, I say. I think the big problem is that Allen's idea of "aliens" reminds one of those 1930's movie serials, or maybe very low budget early 1950's movies. I think that Allen had no concept of the future, or of aliens from other worlds; maybe he simply had zero interest in that. Some people are good at looking back, lousy at looking ahead. My advice: skip this turkey. Stick with the episodes that don't have "aliens." They are infinitely more enjoyable.