change the basic plotline to the one that would be used in STARGATE SG-1--that is, have the characters visit the past deliberately, not by accident. Getting LOST IN TIME is too similar to getting LOST IN SPACE; didn't Allen want to avoid the unsatisfactory result of the previous show, in which its story never had a proper ending?
God is subtle, but He is not malicious. (Albert Einstein)
Your post doesn't entirely make sense. When TIME TUNNEL premiered, LOST IN SPACE was still on the air just starting its second season. It was a big success at the time, so Irwin might well have figured: "If having seven people being lost in space worked well as a format, why not two people lost in time?" The unsatisfactory result of LOST IN SPACE never having a conclusion had not yet occurred, so it would have had no effect on his decision.
However, as to your point of whether the show would have been better if the time travellers had gone to places voluntarily rather than being lost in time, it has some validity. Irwin's longest-running series was VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, the only one of his big four science fiction shows that didn't rely on its main characters being lost or stranded. Perhaps TIME TUNNEL might have been more successful with a different format. But, the concept of being lost in time would make writing stories the simplest. They wouldn't need an excuse for being in a certain time period. They just land there by chance. So Irwin can't be blamed too much for going that route. Even in the successful QUANTUM LEAP series, the lead character was also lost in time.
NEED AN EXCUSE? It seems to me that curiosity about the past is reason enough to go and explore it. For ex, at that time the fate of Louis XVII--who is now know to have died of mistreatment at the age of ten--was not known for certain, so it would have been a great thing to discover whether he managed to escape from prison, as so many legends used to say.
God is subtle, but He is not malicious. (Albert Einstein)
[deleted]