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Project Tic-Toc is a top secret U.S. government effort to build an experimental time machine known as "The Time Tunnel". The base for Project Tic-Toc was huge and located underground in the Arizona desert, with no visible entry. The only way in was a large secret panel; when it opened, a car could quickly go through the entrance. Once the panel closed, all anyone could see was ordinary desert. Tic-Toc base was a futuristic series of complexes 800 floors deep and employing over 36,000 people ("12 thousand people in each of those complexes"). It was under the command of Lt. General Heywood Kirk (Whit Bissell). The center of the base was The Time Tunnel control room where the Tunnel was located. In charge of operating the Tunnel were Dr. Ann McGregor (Lee Meriwether) and Dr. Raymond Swain (John Zaremba). The date at which it was operating was stated as 1968, which was two years into the future for the initial TV audience.[1]

When the costs of the project approach those of the entire U.S. space program, United States Senator Leroy Clark (Gary Merrill) launches an investigation of the project. The Senator thinks that the Tunnel has cost too much money for too little reward. At his request the Senator is allowed to visit the project base and given a tour. Once he reaches the central control room the Senator explains his complaints to the project heads. The Senator then says that he wishes to close down the project as a waste of time and money that has not worked. None of the discussion mentions specifically why the project has not worked or any experiments sending inanimate objects through the Tunnel.

When no one else was around to observe, a key Time Tunnel scientist, young physicist Dr. Anthony Newman (James Darren), turns the machine on and sends himself back in time in an attempt to prove that the Time Tunnel project funds were not wasted. In so doing, Newman becomes "lost in time". The Time Tunnel top personnel quickly return, to see through the Tunnel that Newman is aboard the soon-to-sink Titanic. They can also see that he cannot escape before the sinking, and they cannot retrieve him.

In an attempt to rescue his younger friend, another key Tic-Toc scientist, Dr. Douglas Phillips (Robert Colbert), enters the Time Tunnel as well, carrying a newspaper describing the sinking to occur. There was no discussion about sending just the newspaper to the ship before risking another human becoming lost in time. Unconvinced, the captain of the Titanic throws the newspaper overboard.

However, the system was still being developed, and the Tunnel operations staff are never able to bring them home. As the series progresses, the two time travelers are swung from one period in history to another, allowing episodes to be set in the past and future. Each episode (up to episode 24) begins with the following narration (which Dick Tufeld voiced):

"Two American scientists are lost in the swirling maze of past and future ages, during the first experiments on America's greatest and most secret project, the Time Tunnel. Tony Newman and Doug Phillips now tumble helplessly toward a new fantastic adventure, somewhere along the infinite corridors of time."

By luck (or lack thereof) the travelers, Doug and Tony, frequently found themselves thrown onto the precipice of major historical events: on board the Titanic before it hits the iceberg, in Pearl Harbor before the Japanese attack, on Krakatoa before it erupts, and so forth. They would try to warn people about the event or try to prevent it from happening, while the Time Tunnel crew, who once gaining a "fix" can view through the Tunnel the action taking place in the different time, would try to rescue the travelers before the historical calamity befell them too. Sometimes, when rescue was impossible at the time, the Time Tunnel scientists would often try to help Doug and Tony in other ways or, in some cases, communicate with them whenever possible. The final episode provides no resolution, as the series was initially scheduled to continue into a second season.

The Novikov self-consistency principle was anticipated by the tacit understanding of the Time Tunnel scientists that recorded history could not be altered although in episode four ("The Day The Sky Fell In") the time travelers make it their concern to see to it that young Tony Newman escapes being killed in the Pearl Harbor bombing in order to prevent the adult Tony from ceasing to exist. Especially the Bible is held to be sacrosanct as recorded history (except, of course, poetic license on numerous details, for the proverbial, dramatic effects) in episode 20 ("The Walls of Jericho"): General Kirk reassures Drs. Swain and MacGregor that Doug and Tony will survive the mortal dangers of being in Jericho.

The Time Tunnel's time travel model operates with the assumption that the past, the present, and the future are all alike continuing to exist in a manner to permit the random placement of a time traveler into any point of time. When Senator Clark sees an image of the Titanic on the image screen in the course of episode one, he is told by Dr. Swain that he is seeing "the living past," and Althea Hall is told by Tony Newman that the past and the future are the same. The Time Tunnel itself is like a long corridor that stretches through the time continuum with portals that allow access to any moment in history past, present, or future.

Despite the tacit understanding that recorded history cannot be altered, sometimes Doug and Tony’s actions are essential in causing history to unfold as it did, and the lives of individual people could be influenced by the actions of the Time Tunnel time travelers and scientists. In episode twenty-six ("Attack of the Barbarians") Marco Polo tells Doug Phillips that Tony and the Princess Serit can fall in love with each other despite their being from different times because they can then and there see and touch each other. Dr. MacGregor points out to Gen. Kirk and Dr. Swain that history itself might allow for Tony and Serit to marry.

The Time Tunnel is a precursor to the Back to the Future series, Time Changer, and later TV series such as Quantum Leap in which most episodes feature the cast traveling to a unique place and/or time.