LEINSTER VS IRWIN ALLEN: the LAND OF THE GIANTS/TIME TUNNEL defense

 Someone wrote that Leinster's Irwin Allen books are much, much better than the shows they wrote about. Uh, no, they're not. This is my response to that outlandish idea:

Normally, even when I don’t agree with your opinions I can respect them and I get that Leinster is a good sci fi writer…for details and ideas but I do totally disagree that his LAND OF THE GIANTS (and TIME TUNNEL) books are much, much better, and aren’t even much better IMO.

 

I also understand that Leinster worked from the ideas of the series with his first books in each written long before the series were made (not excuse for his second and third books in each case). He may have had only the basic premise.

 

The original idea for GIANTS, of which Leinster was probably unaware of, was two astronauts land on a planet of people OUR size who combat giants who are from ANOTHER planet but that script was humorless and awful.

 

To get back on track, Leinster’s LAND OF THE GIANTS books have NONE of the humor and terrific loyal/friction interplay of the regular characters nor none of the showmanship of Irwin Allen’s casting. Leinster missed the entire positive and colorful aspects of characters and actors who are personable, lively, filled with humor, who are also relatable, likeable, realistic, and who relate to each other in a real and funny manner. They can also relate TO US, the audience by their actions. And we can relate to them.

 

Leinster, also has, while keeping with the original idea of the giants being unable to communicate with the Earth people, missed all interaction between the giants and the Earth people that later episodes use so well in plot, pathos, and humor.

 

The original show was made with maybe the first four to six episodes with the giants lumbering, uncommunicating alien masses. Irwin, in an intelligent move, realized this could not sustain a longer running series, changed even those early episodes to include giants who could talk English (and this is explained in another novel VALERIE IN GIANT LAND years later).

 

 

 

Leinster’s book falls down in every area when compared to the fun, action filled, tension filled, and even sympathetic and very human Earth characters on the TV show. His details are okay but are somewhat dry and long winded. More of his prose could have been spent making the characters have some depth.

 

 

He missed the mark on every character. Dan is a farm country boy (he was from the city and a Vietnam Vet in the TV show).

 

Mark is a reserved, quiet scientist wearing glasses. Barry is a sci fi book reader.

 

The girls are not developed at all and he even adds another one, Majorie, who barely talks.

 

Fitzhugh is just a nervous man who once had to deactivate a nuclear bomb and has none of the mirth or warmth of Kurt’s Fitzhugh on TV. Talk about clichés.

 

And what’s worse is that ALL of the characters in Leinster are dull. On TV, they’re colorful, bright, and different from each other. What’s more, he has two novels to correct this and doesn’t, instead focusing on their ship underwater.

 

LAND OF THE GIANTS, the TV show, is about the characters and where Leinster didn’t get that, the Whitman writer Carl Henry Rathjen who wrote THE best further adventure tie in book of all time FLIGHT OF FEAR did.

 

Rathjen’s characters are just like those in the show; his “good” giants interact with them in a warm and sympathetic fashion, fitting in with their survival as the ship leaves the forest in the nick of time from a fire set by the giants to force them out. They land in the city between buildings and interact with the sub plot of a giant doctor and the mob trying to force him to work for them. There’s also a lot of action and humor but the best thing Rathjen does is give us reasons that the LAND OF THE GIANTS and their adventures in it have changed each character positively. Leinster missed ALL of this and it is an opportunity he didn’t use. ALL of FLIGHT OF FEAR is fantastic.

 

As for THE TIME TUNNEL, Leinster wrote two novels but three if you consider that his first novel was so WRONG, so long winded and so boring, that he himself re-wrote it…and he still gets it all wrong.

 

For some reason Anne is called The MacGregor rather than just Anne or Anne MacGregor. The rest is a somewhat adequate historical adventure but the characters are bland, boring, humorless, and have none of the connection that James Darren and his co stars have with an audience. In addition, like his GIANTS books, Leinster spends much time on details, all of which are fine enough for reading about a time period but we’re looking for adventure and his is slow and without pace, very unlike Irwin’s shows. In some moments, Leinster does give Doug and Anne …a relationship, which is further, admirably, explored in the books but it almost doesn’t ring true because they’re both so bland, not having Lee Meriweather and Robert Cobert behind them.

 

 

All three of his TUNNEL books are must reads for FANS of the series as are his GIANTS books. BUT they’re nowhere near as fun, as entertaining or as generally GREAT as the two series they are only tenuously based on.

 

 

 

As for GIANTS, there are some good moments in Leinster’s books that I do wish were filmed for the series (effects probably would not allow it). In one, Dan is alone in a locked farm shed with a set of lab animals and insects loose and armed only with a flashlight he has to shine them away from the others, holds the light as a menagerie parades around him, including a snake.

 

Overall, NONE of Leinster’s Irwin books are as good as the series. He did not novelize or Tie In LOST IN SPACE and VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA so we shall not even go into those staid books.   

 

I do believe Lester Del Rey wrote TUNNEL THROUGH TIME, about two teenagers or near teenagers who go through an experimental time tunnel to travel backwards in time, era by era to find one of their fathers. It’s a good take on the premise but again, while being, not being TIME TUNNEL but that’s another story.