No Time Like the Past

"No Time Like the Past"
The Twilight Zone episode
Scene from "No Time Like the Past"
Episode no.	Season 4 Episode 112
Directed by	Justus Addiss
Written by	Rod Serling
Production code	4853
Original air date	March 7, 1963
Guest stars
Dana Andrews: Paul Driscoll Patricia Breslin: Abigail Sloan Robert F. Simon: Harvey Malcolm Atterbury: Professor Eliot Marjorie Bennett: Mrs. Chamberlain John Zaremba: Horn Player
Episode chronology
← Previous "Printer's Devil" Next → "The Parallel"
List of Twilight Zone episodes

"No Time Like the Past" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Synopsis

Paul Driscoll uses a time machine with the noble intention to go back in time and alter past events (in such a way as to minimize the loss of human life). After failing to warn a Hiroshima police captain about the atomic bomb, failing to assassinate Adolf Hitler (in August 1939 immediately before the outbreak of World War II in September 1939), and failing to change the course of the Lusitania to avoid being torpedoed (by a World War I German U-boat), he accepts the hypothesis that the past cannot be changed. He then uses the time machine to journey to the town of Homeville, Indiana in 1881 (with the intention of escaping and living out a quiet, uncomplicated life). He then realizes that President James A. Garfield will get shot the next day. However, he allows the assassination to happen. After reading in a history book that Homeville's schoolhouse will burn down because of a kerosene lantern ejected from a runaway wagon, he spots the wagon and attempts to prevent this event from occurring. But instead he causes the fire he intended to prevent. He returns to his own time, having learned not to tamper with the past.

References

• DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1593931360
• Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0970331090

See also

• Fatalism

External links

• "No Time Like the Past" at the Internet Movie Database