“Rendezvous with Yesterday” is episode one of the first and only season of The Time Tunnel.
It opens on a small jet and a man, Senator Clark, is told that they are landing. There isn’t much to see below and the plane doesn’t land on a runway. A car approaches as the jet departs and the senator gets in. As they drive, one of the two men in the car contacts Tik-Toc base and requests permission to enter. A ramp opens in the desert, revealing a tunnel below ground.
The car stops in the tunnel and the senator and the other man get out. The man, Dr Doug Phillips, introduces the senator to Master Sergeant Jiggs, the head of their security forces. On the way, Dr. Phillips shows the senator what look like skyscrapers underground, with lifts going up and down the outside. He says that each complex has over 12,000 personnel and is over 800 floors deep. Senator Clark says that, each time he sees their budged, he asks a question: Is time travel really worth it? Phillips says it’s the most valuable treasure there is. The senator says it’s the most costly.
They enter a lift and head down 800 floors where Clark meets an old friend of his, his former commanding officer, Lt. Gen Heywood ‘Woody’ Kirk. Clark is there to investigate the project. Phillips states that Tony should be there as well; he’s apparently in the time tunnel
Clark is concerned because all they’ve ever sent back is mice and monkeys and they could have simply been disintegrated. Phillips explains why that isn’t the case. Although they haven’t recovered any of them yet. Clark’s problem is the $7.5 billion the project has already cost. Tony, Dr. Tony Newman (James Darren, who would later play Vic Fontaine in Deep Space Nine) is greeted. Clark is thinking of scrapping the project. They need to prove to him it works. Either he returns to Washington tomorrow to cut them a blank cheque or he cuts their umbilical cord. Newman is willing to take the risk; Phillips isn’t willing to risk him.
This doesn’t stop Newman who, alter, sneaks back in, starts up the equipment and uses the time tunnel. This alerts the others, but Newman is gone. They need to locate where in time he is; Newman had been working on a radiation bath that allowed that. If they can’t locate Newman, he will be lost.
Newman lands on a ship and a woman asks if he’s okay, because he looked to have a bad fall. It’s a pretty big ship and the woman, Althea Hall, tells Newman it’s supposed to be a pretty big ship. She mentions Teddy Roosevelt and the date, but not the year. Newman heads off and sees the name of the ship. Titanic. Not a ship you want to be on at any time.
In the present, they’ve worked out that Newman is no more than 100 years into the past or future. When they track him down, they will be able to see and hear him, but not vice versa.
In the past, Newman wants to see the captain. He explains what is going to happen to the ship. Naturally, and Newman knows this, he sounds out of his mind. Explaining that he was born in 138 and comes from 1968 hardly helps. So, the captain has him confined.
In the present, they get an image of the ship and General Kirk recognises it. Phillips wants details on the Titanic and the disaster. If Newman is on the ship when it goes down, he will die as well. Phillips plans to head back too, although he’s going to be more prepared than Newman, to try and get him back. In the present, they are going to try to work out how to recover the two. They can, to a degree, see and hear what goes in the past, but any attempt to recover the two scientists is, in and of itself, high risk.