Space 1979 Wells-A-Thon 3: The one that was made for TV as a comic book tie-in

 

Title: The Time Machine

What Year?: 1978

Classification: Knockoff/ Prototype

Rating: Dear God WHY??!! (1/5)

 

When I first thought of this feature, one of my first and hardest decisions for ground rules was setting aside made-for-TV movies. It’s a field that includes genuine classics like Duel (which I reviewed on a technicality) and Trilogy Of Terror , plus plenty more cult favorites like the Ewok movies, Gargoyles, 12:01, and a slew of Marvel titles I somehow haven’t gotten to. With this review, I’m finally bringing in a TV movie that stayed on the small screen, one that I have long known about and found intriguing but never looked up until now. It’s in play here because it adapted an H.G. Wells story that had already been the basis of an accepted classic of science fiction, with enough liberties to anticipate a number of future films. Here is the ‘70s TV version of The Time Machine, an adaptation that updated the novel for the era of Star Wars, and as we shall see momentarily, being forward-thinking was far from being good.

Our story begins with a tense scene as a space-defense outfit try to use an experimental laser to stop a nuclear satellite headed for Los Angeles. I won’t say what happens because I honestly wasn’t paying attention and I honestly don’t care enough to go back and figure it out. After the weapon’s less than satisfactory performance, the scientist who designed it is called on the carpet by his employer Mega Corporation. This is our “hero” named Neil, who for some reason reveals that he put his time and millions of dollars allocated for the space defense laser to build a time machine. He then proceeds to tell a familiar tale of a future where humanity is divided into two races or species, the good-natured Eloi and the mysterious and temperamental Morlocks who exploit them as food. Our hero helps the Eloi in a revolt against the Morlocks, before returning to our time to warn his employer of the coming disaster. Will he stay to change our history, or go back to his beloved Weena? Did you really need to ask?

The Time Machine was a TV movie originally aired by NBC in November 1978. The movie was made by Sunn Classic Pictures, otherwise known for paranormal-themed documentaries, as part of a series of TV movies nominally based on the Classics Illustrated comic, then in reprints after an initial run that ended in 1969. A comic based on The Time Machine was indeed published in 1956, four years before George Pal’s feature-length adaptation of the novel. The comic and both movies differed from the book in their portrayal of Weena and the rest of the Eloi as of normal human size and able to speak English dialogue. The TV adaptation added a subplot to tie in the movie with nuclear war and strategic missile defense, as well as several episodes where the time traveler goes to earlier historical periods. The film starred TV actors John Beck as Neil Perry and Priscilla Barnes as Weena, several years before their most prominent roles on Dallas and Three’s Company respectively. Beck had previously appeared in Cyborg 2087, a time-travel paradox film from 1966. Sunn went on to make the 1983 movie Cujo, their only readily verifiable theatrical release. The 1978 movie has reportedly never received an authorized video release, though copies on DVD are available. The novel was not adapted again until 2002, when a new version was directed by Simon Wells, a direct descendant of the author.

For my experiences, I believe The Time Machine was the first H.G. Wells novel I ever read, I’m certain no later than 6^th grade. What’s disconcerting is that I don’t really recall reading it since then, which leaves me in hazy territory even for my world’s-worst-superpower memory. (I did somehow figure out I read the most notorious of the lost/ censored chapters.) I suppose what true me to this time-forsaken oddity was the simple question of whether the original story could be filmed. If the question were put to me at any age, I would have said animation all the way, though the comic attests that even the liberties of that medium could be squandered. Given the limits of live-action film, certain compromises were inevitable. What intrigued me about the TV version was that its creators clearly decided to go their own way from the starting line, fashioning a story that sounds almost as much like Terminator as Wells’ actual novel. (Cyborg 2087 already promises to be an even stranger coincidence to run down.) I finally watched it as an online video that made my copy of The Horror Express look like the Blu Ray of Alien for the extra junk factor. What I had no way to anticipate was just how completely they squandered every opportunity handed to them.

Of all the problems of the movie, the obvious one is that the original story only occupies a fraction of the film, with the time traveler arriving in the future more than 50 minutes in. That in itself could have been an interesting choice, especially if this had been filled out into a miniseries format, but the preceding misadventures do little more than fill air time with sets and costumes that look like they were recycled from unrelated projects. When we do start learning about the future, we get off to a decent start. This time around, it is specified that this is the result of a combination of ecological decay and nuclear warfare, making the story topical. Most intriguingly, we learn that the Eloi are clearly intelligent yet significantly dependent on the Morlocks, to the point of relying on an irrigation system apparently set up for their benefit.

This brings us to a far more fundamental problem with how the source material is handled. The Morlocks are a very complex set of villains. On one hand, they are the quintessential image of the savage brute; on the other, they are a potent symbol of the downtrodden, feeding on what may well be the descendants of their former oppressors. As further portrayed here, they are intriguing even when unseen, and unnerving once they appear, tall and lean with luminous eyes possibly even more effective than their Pal counterparts, even at no-bit video quality. All of this revision begs for a finale where they get to speak for themselves. They might be reasoned into a truce, they might reveal their knowledge of the machines in their domain, they might give an account of the lot of their ancestors. But the moment never comes, because neither the writers nor their hero bother to try to talk to them even though all the evidence indicates they could.

That leaves us with the biggest problem of all. The time traveler per the book already had plenty of issues; like many Wells protagonists, he is a cipher always on the edge of fading into the background of his own story. His counterpart here, on the other hand, is a short-sighted, self-justifying weasel. From the get-go, he endangers millions in his own time by neglecting the job he is being paid for. Then he still tries to put himself in the right by admitting several excursions that could have profoundly altered history. Finally, in the main event, he freely plans the defeat and possible extermination of the Morlocks without even considering if the Eloi can survive without them, all on the preposterous rationale that he is saving “civilization”. His character might still work if he had the idealism of a Don Quixote or the hot temper of an Othello but he never comes across as out for anyone but himself. In the end, even his return to Weena simply seems like one last retreat from responsibility.

With all that, I still don’t have the “one scene”. This time, there was never much doubt of my choice. In the time traveler’s very first excursion, he runs into a woman in Puritan dress fleeing from a band of witch hunters. Needless to say, the mob doesn’t take kindly to someone in strange dress at the controls of an incomprehensible machine that has appeared from nowhere. Their leader solemnly pronounces him a witch (warlock?), and they set a fire to destroy him and the machine (notwithstanding the fact that even witches were kept alive long enough to appear in court). It’s an absurd scene that should have been either developed into a longer episode or set aside. Still, there’s enough solemnity to feel a kind of understanding with the mob more than the perplexed time traveler, who of course disappears without any further effort to aid the accused witch.

In closing, all I can say is that this is bad, certainly worse than Empire of the Ants, indeed worse than more than one movie that I have disqualified as “too bad” to review (see War of the Planets, again). But once again, it is not objective quality that settles whether this one gets the lowest rating. If anything, what leaves me personally annoyed is the parts that work just well enough to show that this could have been good. Even so, I can’t quite say that I hate this one, mostly because what I feel instead is an indifference that is almost worse. My final verdict is to let this one lie in the rubbish pile where I probably should have left it, forgotten and even more deservedly ignored.

Image credit goes to Space 1970. I further recommend The Chiseler for an account of the strange saga of Sunn Classic Pictures.