No Time Like the Past

2022-04-15T06:20:17Z

2603:8001:6703:6E00:9D35:212F:D20D:A219: /* See also */ italics for TZ and quotation s for episode titles

{{Infobox television episode
| series = [[The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)|The Twilight Zone]]
| image =
| caption =
| season = 4
| episode = 10
| airdate = {{Start date|1963|03|07}}
| production = 4853
| writer = [[Rod Serling]]
| director = [[Justus Addiss]]
| guests = [[Dana Andrews]]: Paul Driscoll [[Patricia Breslin]]: Abigail Sloan [[Robert F. Simon]]: Harvey [[Malcolm Atterbury]]: Professor Eliot [[Marjorie Bennett]]: Mrs. Chamberlain James Yagi: Japanese Police Captain [[Tudor Owen (actor)|Tudor Owen]]: [[William Thomas Turner|Captain of 'Lusitania']] [[John Zaremba]]: Horn Player [[Robert O. Cornthwaite]]: Hanford [[C. Lindsay Workman|Lindsay Workman]]: Bartender
| music =
| season_article = The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 4)
| episode_list = List of The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) episodes
| prev = [[Printer's Devil]]
| next = [[The Parallel]]
}}

"'''No Time Like the Past'''" is episode 112 of the [[American television]] anthology series ''[[The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)|The Twilight Zone]]''. In this episode a man tries to escape the troubles of the 20th century by taking up residence in an idyllic small town in the 19th century.

==Opening narration==
{{cquote|Exit one Paul Driscoll, a creature of the twentieth century. He puts to a test a complicated theorem of space-time continuum, but he goes a step further, or tries to. Shortly, he will seek out three moments of the past in a desperate attempt to alter the present, one of the odd and fanciful functions in a shadowland known as the Twilight Zone.}}

==Plot==
Disgusted with 20th century problems such as [[World War I|world]] [[World War II|wars]], [[nuclear weapons|atomic weapons]] and radioactive poisoning, Paul Driscoll ([[Dana Andrews]]) solicits the help of his colleague Harvey ([[Robert F. Simon]]) and uses a [[time travel|time machine]], intent to remake the present by altering past events.

Paul first travels to [[Hiroshima]] on August 6, 1945 and attempts to warn a Hiroshima police captain about [[Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|the atomic bomb]], but the captain dismisses him as insane. Paul then travels to a [[Berlin]] hotel room to assassinate [[Adolf Hitler]] in August 1939 (immediately before the outbreak of [[World War II]] the following month), but is interrupted when a housekeeper knocks on his door and later calls two [[SS]] guards to his room. On his third stop, Paul tries to change the course of the [[RMS Lusitania|''Lusitania'']] on May 6, 1915 to avoid being [[Sinking of the RMS Lusitania|torpedoed]] by a [[German Empire|German]] [[U-boat]], but the ship’s captain questions his credibility.

Paul accepts the hypothesis that the past cannot be changed. He then uses the time machine to go to the town of Homeville, [[Indiana]] in 1881, resolving not to make any changes, but just to live out his life free of the problems of the modern age. Upon his arrival, he realizes that President [[James A. Garfield]] will be shot the next day, but resists the temptation to intervene. He stays at a boarding house in town and meets Abigail Sloan ([[Patricia Breslin]]), a teacher. At one of the boarding house’s dinners, a boarder named Hanford vehemently espouses American [[imperialism]]. Paul delivers an angry rebuttal in which he accuses Hanford of speaking from ignorance of war and a certainty that he himself will not have to take part in any fighting, while dropping numerous allusions to wars that have yet to take place. Abigail is impressed and privately tells him that she shares his views, having lost her father and two brothers in the [[American Civil War]]. He kisses Abigail, but she becomes alienated when he refuses to explain his earlier remarks about future wars.

A passing remark from a local musician ([[John Zaremba]]) jogs a memory from Paul's vast historical knowledge: Homeville's schoolhouse will burn down because of a [[kerosene]] lantern ejected from a runaway wagon, badly injuring twelve children. He resolves to keep his vow not to change the past, but when he spies the lantern in question he tries to unhitch the horses. The resulting altercation with the wagon owner causes the horses to run wild, inadvertently [[Causal loop|causing the fire he intended to prevent]].

Afterward, Paul tells Abigail that "the past is sacred" and belongs to those who are native to it. He knows too much of the future and fears that he will inevitably cause more mishaps like the schoolhouse fire because of it. He returns to his own time and declares that instead of continuing to fixate upon the past, he will now try to do something to positively impact the future.

==Closing narration==
{{cquote|Incident on a July afternoon, 1881. A man named Driscoll who came and went and, in the process, learned a simple lesson, perhaps best said by a poet named [[Mary Artemisia Lathbury|Lathbury]], who wrote, 'Children of yesterday, heirs of tomorrow, what are you weaving? Labor and sorrow? Look to your looms again, faster and faster fly the great shuttles prepared by the master. Life's in the loom, room for it. Room.'<ref name="Lathbury1915">Quotation from the poem "Song of Hope." {{cite book|last=Lathbury|first=Mary Artemisia|title=Poems of Mary Artemisia Lathbury, Chautauqua Laureate|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZY8TAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA20|year=1915|publisher=Nunc licet Press|pages=101–102}}</ref> Tonight's tale of clocks and calendars in the Twilight Zone.}}

==Notes==
In the Twilight Zone radio drama series with [[Stacy Keach]] as the narrator, the first three time travel destinations perpetrated by Driscoll are inverted. He first attempts to board the Lusitania, then attempts to assassinate Hitler, and finally attempts to warn and evacuate Hiroshima. The rest of the story matches with the TV script.

==See also==
*[[Fatalism]]
*[["Back There"]] and [["Of Late I Think of Cliffordville"]] – other ''Twilight Zone'' episodes about a man who tries to change history by traveling to the past.
*[["Profile in Silver"]] - an episode from the 1985 ''[[The Twilight Zone (1985 TV series)|The Twilight Zone]]'' series about trying to change history by traveling to the past.

==References==
*DeVoe, Bill. (2008). ''Trivia from The Twilight Zone''. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. {{ISBN|978-1-59393-136-0}}
*Grams, Martin. (2008). ''The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic''. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. {{ISBN|978-0-9703310-9-0}}
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*{{IMDb episode|id=0734602|episode=No Time Like the Past}}

{{The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) episodes}}

[[Category:1963 American television episodes]]
[[Category:The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series season 4) episodes]]
[[Category:Television episodes about time travel]]
[[Category:Television episodes written by Rod Serling]]
[[Category:Fiction set in 1881]]
[[Category:Fiction set in 1915]]
[[Category:Fiction set in 1939]]
[[Category:Fiction set in 1945]]
[[Category:Works about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]]
[[Category:Television episodes set in Indiana]]
[[Category:Cultural depictions of Adolf Hitler]]
[[Category:Television episodes about World War II]]
[[Category:Television episodes set in Berlin]]
[[Category:Television episodes set in Japan]]
[[Category:Television episodes about nuclear war and weapons]]
[[Category:Japan in non-Japanese culture]]
[[Category:Television episodes about wars]]

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No Time Like the Past