Description: Season 2, Episode 13
Air Date: January 13, 1961
Plot Summary: A man inexplicably finds himself time traveling back to 1865--hours before Lincoln's assassination.
Review: This episode borders more on the moderate side as it has interesting themes to consider, but the execution is severely lacking. We are first shown cliched, rich guys in the most cornball of ways with such references as "old chum" if that helps set the tone. The main character, Corrigan, is played by Russell Johnson who makes yet another appearance. Corrigan and his crew are discussing the plausibility of time travel and whether or not you could alter history. Hey, old chums, mind if I get in on this conversation?! Come to think of it, what happened to the days when a bunch of old men (and me) could sit around and debate philosophy Plato-style? Anyway, Corrigan ditches the retirement home, and magically finds himself transported to 1865. This is heavy, Doc! I really didn't like the casual nature to the time travel as it makes absolutely no sense. Was this supposed to be divine intervention? A weird rift in time and space? If so, how could Corrigan change his clothes? I have no clue, but it seems like some supernatural force was at work to deliberately mess with Corrigan; not even addressing this issue is nearly unforgivable as well.
When Corrigan realizes the exact date, he attempts to warn the people that the president is going to be assassinated, but he is arrested instead. Out of nowhere, a fruity guy appears to release Corrigan from jail which you will realize is an outlandish contrivance. When taken back to the weird guy's home, Corrigan realizes he's been drugged. It turns out the guy is actually John Wilkes Booth and Corrigan appears to have inspired the assassination on a whim; I don't know if that was the intended implication, but that's how the story presents the setup. Unable to stop the assassination, Corrigan is magically returned to the present as he realizes he couldn't alter time in the grand scheme but was able to make a small change. Due to Corrigan trying to warn the public, one police officer believed the warning and this resulted in him becoming wealthy; in turn, his descendant, whom we met earlier, was no longer an employee at the retirement home but became a member of the club. And that's pretty much all she wrote.
If they had simply offered a reason for why the time traveling occurred, I think my mind would be at ease in accepting the situation. Also, the notion that Corrigan could have led to the assassination is pushing my sensibilities to the limit. While I'm no theoretical physicist, I contend that if time travel could exist, by default, time can be altered. Would this create universe-destroying paradoxes? Perhaps, but time travel in essence establishes time altering. To say a time traveler already made their trip, thus, became an existing part of history, cannot possibly occur. This would entail that all of time itself was predestined and that a time traveler had to make their journey in order for the events of time to exist. But this creates a paradox since there would have to have been a time line in which that time traveler didn't originally come back. As I've mentioned before on this topic, we look at the big picture and draw conclusions, but, realistically, if we could travel through time, we could test things in a small scale. Meaning, if I invented a time machine and plan to travel back in time 5 minutes, technically I should run into my future self before I even did the test. Now, keeping that knowledge in mind, and assuming I did meet a future self from 5 minutes ahead, this would provide me with the knowledge to come back 6 minutes earlier instead. Then 7 minutes. Then 8 minutes. You see the paradox, right? If I have knowledge of the future, I can alter it. Therefore, there would be an endless loop, or time itself can be changed. That is the only way things could feasibly work without somehow imploding the cosmos. In fiction we often depict an event that cannot be averted due to forces beyond human comprehension, but if the small scale can be altered, it would stand to reason that all things could be changed. One more thing...wouldn't the time traveler add matter to the universe, thus, breaking the law of conservation of mass? Meaning, the matter that comprises me is already in existence, yet if I time travel, I am adding that same matter to the universe again. This would extend to whatever microorganisms are on my persons as well. Or are they time travelers with me? Okay, I'm going waaaay off here. Enjoy the episode!
I read a reviewer on IMDB who said thar the police and judge would've thought that Corrigan had something to do with the assination of Lincoln since he knew about it happening before it happened, but I disagree. I think that Corrigan would certainly not be going to the police begging them to stop it from happening if he was helping to plan it or if he was wanting it to happen.
ReplyDeleteI am curious why right away the Irish officer and the judge blew off Corrigan with his pleas to save the president and put him in the overnight lockup, but this other guy who was also a complete stranger, asked the judge to release Corrigan and send him to him, and the judge immediately obliges and smiles telling him how decent he was. And he only a card to present himself (I know this were the days before photo IDs, but still). It's like the guy who was really the criminal murderer the police liked, but the innocent guy trying to stop it they didn't like. That's justice for you. It does show that according to the dispute at the beginning of the episode, some things in history can't be altered.
I must say that the man who played Wellington, aka John Wilks Booth really looked like him, I seen photos of the real Booth. And there's one moment where Wellington/Booth looks sorta like Ben Stiller, when he's heading out the door right after telling Carrigon "It's odd, because I'm beggining to believe you".
ReplyDeleteI was also a tad bit curious about how when Carrigon returns back to 1960 and his heritage club, things have been altered such as a different attendant and the guy who was previously an attendant now being a wealthy aristocrat who inherited a fortune. Those changes were made, but the same conversation from the beginning of the episode was still being discussed. They moved on from the topic of time travel to the topic of money making, but they still clearly remembered discussing the time travel.