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"Secret Weapon"

Secretweapon

TTT episode
1.11/11th of 30 aired
First aired
Written by
Irwin Allen, Theodore Apstein
Directed by
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Summary[]

Tony Newman and Doug Phillips tumble out of the time vortex onto a street in the year 1956. Looking around them they see signage written in a Cyrillic alphabet. Glowing blocks then materialize one after another, which Newman and Phillips recognize as probes containing messages sent from Project Tic-Toc. After several tries, one of the probes makes a successful materialization and the time travelers are able to retrieve a message. They are told to go to a certain location at midnight and meet up with a man called Alexis.

Probe

The glowing block contains a message that has been sent through time from Project Tic-Toc. When fully materialized, the block melts to reveal the message inside.

Message Received.

Doug and Tony receive a message from their colleagues at Project Tic-Toc.

Back at Project Tic-Toc, Lt. Gen. Heywood Kirk is being pressed by General Parker in regards to how important it is to get information on the mysterious Project A-13, even though it means risking the scientists’ lives. Dr. Ann MacGregor argues that Tony and Doug are not spies and nor are they trained to be. Kirk replies that the time travelers were not given orders, but Jerry counters that because the request was over Kirk's signature, Tony and Doug would have taken it to be an order. Although troubled, the Tic-Toc team bow to pressure from General Parker and reluctantly allow the mission to go ahead.

After Newman and Phillips meet with Alexis, they assume the identities of two 'defectors,' Smith and Williams, (actually American spies who have been waylaid somehow) and are taken to the secret Project A-13 installation. After their blindfolds are removed, the time travelers are horrified to find themselves in a Time Tunnel complex very similar to their own. Although primitive, this Tunnel has been completed by the foreign power the same year that construction was only just beginning on America's own Tic-Toc project, which leads our heroes to speculate that in the present day the enemy Tunnel might be more advanced than their own. The man in charge of the project, Professor Anton Biraki, expecting Smith and Williams, takes Newman and Phillips as compatriots and urges them to examine the Tunnel he has created.

Biraki's Time Mechanism

In 1956, Doug and Tony meet Professor Anton Biraki, a brilliant scientist who has constructed a Time Tunnel for an enemy nation.

Unknown to Newman and Phillips, over ten years later in the present time, an older Biraki is having meetings with General Parker and his aide McDonnell. The scientist wants to defect to the West, and offers his services as an expert on the construction of a time mechanism. When asked about 'Smith' and 'Williams,' Biraki claims that they were accidentally killed during an experiment.

Friend or Foe?

General Parker (left) and his aide, McDonnell (right), wonder if Professor Biraki (center) is all that he claims.

In 1956, Newman and Phillips, have learned that they are about to become guinea pigs in a capsule Biraki has built for transporting time travelers through the enemy Tunnel. Doug knows from experience that the capsule technique won't work and might even prove fatal. When they are forced to take a ride in the capsule, Newman and Phillips fate rests on the outcome of a battle between the two Time Tunnels.

The result is disastrous - Tony and Doug are nearly killed as the forces from the two Tunnels tear at them. To save their lives, the American Tunnel releases the capsule and it is pulled back to the enemy Tunnel in 1956. The time travelers are thrown into a cell and left to recover. Biraki has the cell bugged and overhears Tony and Doug discussing the fact that the enemy Tunnel needs its own radiation bath before it can become fully functional. Biraki forces them to create a radiation bath for his Time Tunnel but Tony and Doug take the opportunity to sabotage it instead.

Background information[]

  • Doug Phillips recognizes the Cyrillic alphabet and is also able to read the date from a discarded newspaper in that language.
  • Doug also recognizes the experimental messenger probes as a modification of a prototype that was being worked on before he and Tony became lost in time. If successfully transported, the capsule would melt, revealing the message. The probes do not appear in any other episodes.
  • Before Tony came to work at Project Tic-Toc, Phillips worked on a time capsule with Dr. Raymond Swain. The capsule was rejected when it was found to be a potentially deadly and the scientists decided that all instrumentation needed to be contained in the Tunnel itself.
  • Although the audience might assume that Tony and Doug have arrived in Russia, that is never outright stated in the episode. As in many episodes of Mission: Impossible, it could be a foreign power that just happens to look an awful lot like the Soviet Union.

    TV & Radio Week

    James Darren and Nehemiah Persoff on the cover of TV & Radio Week.


Cast[]


Links[]

The episode can be viewed at Hulu.com at The Time Tunnel channel

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