For the past 54 years scientists Dr. Tony Newman and Dr. Douglas Phillips have been living a very primitive existence in the year 10,000 BC.
On a bright spring morning Doug Phillips is paddling his dugout canoe on a rather pleasant, placid lake. Today he is hoping to catch some fish when, all of a sudden, a voice is heard. Doug first thinks he must have gone completely mad as he is the only person out on the lake but then the voice speaks again. The language is English but only parts of many of the words can be heard due to some type of interference. Silence then returns to the lake. After 54 years, he now realizes the Time Tunnel must have finally gotten a fix on their location and is attempting to communicate.
Paddling as fast as he can, Doug reaches the shore and then sets-off back to the scientist's residence, a log cabin in the woods.
He is almost out of breath when he finally reaches Tony.
Doug says "Tony, I heard a voice while out on the lake".
Tony turns to him, looks at him in complete disbelief and, in a condescending voice, says "I told you not to eat that unfamiliar species of mushroom last night. You are now hallucinating or maybe it is something much worse".
Doug gives an expression of annoyance and states "but you also ate those same mushrooms after I told you how they just melted in the my mouth when mixed in with that wild rabbit stew".
The voice then returns.
Tony now has an expression of utter consternation as he realizes he too must be under the influence of those obviously psychedelic mushrooms.
But the voice can now be heard clearly.
"Tony and Doug, this is the Time Tunnel. We have a solid lock on your location. We now have the capability of returning both of you to your own time but it is now the year 2022. Transfer being initiated right now."
Tony and Doug find themselves in that strangely familiar spatial time vortex.
The usually pleasant sensation of floating around the vortex suddenly changes. Forces beyond all comprehension start pulling and then pushing against Tony and Doug's bodies. Both start frantically screaming while their arms and legs uncontrollably convulse wildly as the pressures being exerted on them reach intolerable levels. Both lose consciousness at the same time.
Later, Doug, now lying on a couch, slowly regains his senses. Along with Tony, they are now in an office inside the Time Tunnel complex. Doug's vision is still badly blurred but he does recognize the familiar face of General Heywood Kirk. However, something is wrong.
General Kirk does not speak when Doug says how happy he is to see him.
As Doug's vision slowly improves, he now sees that he is looking at a wall portrait of the General.
Tony also sees the portrait. He points his finger in the direct of it and exclaims "Why is General Kirk wearing a god damn Nazi uniform!"
The SS-Gruppenfuhrer, the Commandant of the Time Tunnel complex, reacts to this statement by pulling-out and leveling his pistol in the direct of Tony and demands the meaning of this grossly insulting statement.
Tony explains that where he and Doug are from Nazi Germany ceased to exist back in May 1945 due to its total military defeat at the hands of the allied powers and this is why General Kirk should be wearing an American military uniform.
The SS-Gruppenfuhrer now understands that the Tony and Doug the Time Tunnel has just retrieved are not the ones that had originally left the Nazi Time Tunnel back in the 1960s.
He orders their arrest.
Several SS-Totenkopf guards grab the time travelers and roughly escort them towards the complex's holding cell. Along the way they pass a framed picture on the wall that shows Dr. Raymond Swain beaming with pride at having just been awarded the meritorious medal for scientific achievement by General Kirk.
The SS-Gruppenfuhrer is greatly concerned.
After cogitating briefly about this, he concludes that knowledge of another universe where Nazis do not rule the entire planet must never be allowed to come to light. The Commandant turns to his trusty subordinate, the SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer, and gives the order to have these anti-fascist scum executed first thing next morning.
The SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer clicks his heels as he comes to attention, gives his commanding officer a raised, stiff right-arm salute, and shouts "Long live the National Socialist States of North America!" He then turns and marches out of the room.
Later that night, in the main control room of the Time Tunnel, Dr. Ann MacGregor can be found sitting at the main control desk. She is the only member of the original Time Tunnel crew from the 1960s still working at the complex.
She calls over a technician and asks him to take over her position as she has finally made the decision to visit the new occupants of the holding cell. Although these scientists are not the dedicated Nazi time travelers she knows so well, she has an interest in talking to them and learning about their experiences.
Before she leaves the control room, Ann issues an order to the technician to recalibrate all the resonance frequencies used by the Time Tunnel's mechanism. The retrieval of Tony and Doug from a parallel universe with a divergent past history was not an anticipated event. If the recalibration task does not reveal any clues as to why this happened, ordering a complete strip-down and examination of all recent hardware upgrades and a review of recent mainframe computer software updates will be obviously necessary.
The technician gets to work immediately, pressing various buttons and observing the results on the computer screen. Once Ann leaves the room and the door closes, his enthusiasm for this rather tedious work quickly slackens and eventually he leans back in the chair and proceeds to take a nap.
Meanwhile, in the holding cell, both scientists hatch a plan to escape.
Tony yells that his friend is very sick and needs immediate medical help.
The guard slides open the viewer window to the cell door and peers in. He laughs when he sees Doug rolling around on the floor, holding his stomach and deliriously saying "Oh, the Pain... the Pain". The amused guard then says "I have already seen this exact same scenario in a recently repeated episode of the 1970's television series called Colonel Klink & Friends.
The window slider is slammed shut.
With no obvious means of escape, Tony and Doug settle down again to just sitting in their cell.
Neither feels like sleeping so they decide to try and pass the time by discussing each others theories on how to properly translate the Voynich Manuscript. This illustrated, hand-written manuscript has been determined by carbon-dating to have been written in the early 15th century but, to date, has defied all attempts at ascertaining its meaning. Tony firmly believes it is written in an obscure proto-romance language but, as Doug is about to refute yet again such a possibility with his own assumptions, the door to the cell swings open and Ann walks in.
She smiles at them.
Both of the scientists are momentarily taken aback at seeing Ann wearing a typical white lab coat but with the one significant addition of a Nazi eagle insignia emblazoned on it. Still, her smile gives them some hope.
Before Ann can even say her first word to them, Tony and Doug get to work on trying to convince her to help them escape via the Time Tunnel. Although at first hesitant about doing this, she knows about the orders regarding their execution in the morning and this bothers her terribly. She soon decides that she just can't stand aside and allow this to happen to them so she agrees to their request for help.
Ann calls for the guard to enter the cell.
Doug, hiding behind the door, moves forward and delivers a perfectly timed karate chop to the back of his head. The guard promptly falls forward and collapses onto the cement floor.
Tony picks-up the guard's pistol and the key to the cell.
Outside the cell another guard is sitting at a sturdy, wooden desk. On the desk is a radio which is playing music broadcast from an illegal pirate radio station. The guard is silently mouthing the words to the current song called Codo by a group called Dof while casually reading an article from a recent edition of a magazine called Signal, a publication first issued by the German Wehrmacht in April 1940.
Tony makes a slight coughing noise.
The noise causes the guard to look up from his magazine and he is immediately shocked to see Tony, Doug and Ann in front of him.
Tony motions with his pistol in the direction of the cell.
With a completely sour-puss facial expression, he stands-up and raises his hands.
Doug removes the pistol from his holster and pushes him towards the cell.
With some satisfaction, Tony closes the cell's door and locks the two guards inside.
The trio then stealthily make their way to the Time Tunnel's main control room.
As they enter the room, Doug points his pistol at Ann's head and demands in no uncertain terms that everybody leave immediately.
Tony then locks the door.
A few moments later the Intruder Alert Klaxon begins blaring throughout the entirety of the complex.
Ann quickly gets to work at the main control desk and only a few minutes go by before she manages to initiate the Time Tunnel mechanism's power-up routine.
Tony and Doug are just walking into the tunnel as the door to the control room disintegrates in a loud explosion.
The SS-Gruppenfuhrer and two guards rush in.
Using the main computer terminal, Ann quickly deletes a number of important data files that have not yet been backed-up to the off-site remote server. Now, if she is given the order to relocate and retrieve the Tony and Doug from the alternate universe, she can give the truthful answer that it simply just does not appear to be possible.
The SS-Gruppenfuhrer barks-out the order to kill the time travelers. Bullets from Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifles go flying into the tunnel but, before they reach their intended targets, the scientists promptly vanish back into the time vortex.
Tony and Doug are now floating around aimlessly again. As happened last time, tremendous forces are suddenly exerted on their bodies which renders both of them unconscious.
As they groggily regain their senses, they find themselves located in a grassy field with a dirt trail just visible far off in the distance.
Doug says "I really think we must have long ago reached the retirement age for doing all this time travel adventuring."
Tony helps Doug back to his feet.
Tony tells Doug "Until our Time Tunnel contacts us and we are properly retrieved, we are just going to have to soldier on. I only hope we are now back in our own universe".
Doug agrees and then chimes with "whatever happens next, let us just hope we are never contacted again by those Nazis".
Doug further says "However, one think I am grateful for is that we are now back to wearing our original cloths from when we entered the Time Tunnel for the very first time back in the 1960s. This happens every time a time transfer is initiated. I have never understood the science behind this phenomenon but I have got to say I never really cared about having to wear all those animal furs and hides during our long stay in the year 10,000 BC".
Tony smiles and gives Doug a thumbs-up.
As both walk towards the trail, they are being viewed on a visualizer in the control room of a Time Tunnel complex.
The Time Tunnel observer watches them with very large eyes that look like two fried eggs. The observer has a greyish skin tone and a type of hair made of many thin, slowly moving filaments that emit a variety of ever changing rainbow-like colours.
"Tony zud Doug, narf flambo zootmark blechtard," says this creature to one of its human mind-controlled slaves.
This slave was once the top female scientist at the Time Tunnel complex. Her name was Dr. Ann MacGregor.
It was many years ago when an alien race called the Maedusonites invaded this Earth and, despite heroic resistance on the part of the humans, these beings succeeded in brutally ravaging every continent. The badly smoldering remains of this planet were then added to their list of completely subjugated conquests.
The Time Tunnel complex, being in a very secure bomb-proof location, was captured intact by the Maedusonites and its occupants were enslaved. Since acquiring new technology is one of their motivating reasons for the conquest of other planets, they were quick to exploit the possibility of combining time travel with their already perfected ability of travel between universes.
Behaving like an automaton robot, the slave now obediently pushes down on a couple of flashing buttons on the control panel, turns a dial to its maximum level, and then pulls down on a lever marked with the word "Cronk".
Now, in a very excited state, all the filaments of the observer's hair become rigidly erect and start glowing a very brilliant, fluorescent orange colour.
"Tony zud Doug" says the observer again with great satisfaction.
The control room of the complex is then suddenly filled with absolutely ungodly, maniacal laughter.
The rolling credits for Episode One of "The Fantastic New Adventures of Tony and Doug in The Time Tunnel" now appear.
The final statement before all goes to utter blackness reads:
"This is a production of the Doug and Ted Skrecky Alternative Entertainment Corporation".