How many times has the Twilight Zone gone back to that town with the bandstand and those big wheeled bicycles, the picket fences and the candy stores. Apparently, modern technology has developed some sort of time travel device, and despite the immutability of time, sends people back. In this case a man is fed up with the way of the world. We have reverted to a cesspool. One country develops a nuke; then the other develops theirs; and bingo the world is blown into a million pieces. He decides to go on a mission to change things. First he goes to Hiroshima to warn them about the atom bomb, then he tries to assassinate Hitler (the gun misfires), and finally tries to talk the commander of the Lusitania into changing course. Because he sounds like a nut and has absolutely no authority, none of the people are willing to listen to him (and rightfully so). His disillusionment continues and he asks to be sent back to this bucolic utopia of the 1800's. In one scene he faces off against a banker who is spouting all his jingoistic malarky about planting the old American flag on every piece of land on the earth (stepping on the bodies of the heathens that inhabit these places). He meets a pretty young schoolteacher (of course) who finds his views intriguing. He is caught between a rock and a hard place because he has knowledge of the future but must do nothing to alter time. He hears of the shooting of President Garfield and can't do anything but wait for the inevitable. He finally comes to a point where he has to decide whether to act or not. There are so many holes in this thing and the man is so clueless at times, it begs the question whether he should have been allowed this freedom.
Review of No Time Like the Past
