AS SEEN ON TV: THE EARL OF HUNTINGTON

For this weekend, "As Seen On TV" is having a little marathon of "historical" characters from an episode of 'The Time Tunnel'. I put the word "historical" in quotes because three of these characters (two are sharing the same day) could be merely legendary.

Dr. Doug Phillips:

"I always thought Robin Hood was a legend."

Little John:

"A LIVING legend!"

'The Time Tunnel'

In the episode "The Revenge Of Robin Hood", Doug and Tony landed in 1215 England, perhaps drawn there by the manipulation of the time-stream by the temporal manipulations of a Martian named Exigius 12 1/2 (AKA "Uncle Martin O'Hara"). It was just before the great meeting of the barons at Runnymeade, where they coerced King John into signing the Magna Carta.

For today, we're looking at Robin Hood, that legend from Sherwood Forest. In this incarnation, he was the Earl of Huntington, and portrayed by Donald Harron. (If I'm not mistaken, he was cast to resemble Errol Flynn in the classic movie. The same could be said for John Crawford's resemblance to Claude Rains, as will be seen tomorrow.)

Richard Greene, as seen in the TV series from the 1950's, is the Robin Hood for Toobworld. But I don't think he was referred to as the Earl of Huntington. So I think we can take a page from the 'Robin Hood' series of the 1980's and claim that both men used the nom de guerre of Robin Hood to achieve the same goals. Greene's 'Robin Hood' would then be Robin of Locksley.

(Michael Praed and Jason Connery, as Robin of Locksley and Robert Huntington respectively, would have to be situated in an alternate TV dimension. And I think even 'The West Wing' dimension needs its own Robin Hood legend, and definitely a good one!)

If it turns out I'm wrong about the true identity of Richard Greene's Robin Hood, then here's the backup plan:

Whenever Tony and Doug travel in Time, they automatically caused a new dimension to be created with a new timeline beginning from that juncture. After all, just by meeting the people of History - the great as well as the ordinary folk - they changed history. So then the Time Tunnel was acting as sort of a TARDIS - traveling not only in Time, but also in Relative Dimensions In Space.

BCnU!
Toby O'B