Back There

"Back There"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no. Season 2
Episode 13
Directed by David Orrick McDearmon
Written by Rod Serling
Featured music Jerry Goldsmith
Production code 173-3648
Original air date January 13, 1961
Guest appearance(s)

"Back There" is episode 49 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on January 13, 1961 on CBS. It involves time travel, and stars Russell Johnson, who had appeared in another time-travel episode the previous season.

Opening narration

Plot

On April 14, 1961, young engineer Peter Corrigan (Russell Johnson) is involved in a discussion with colleagues at the elite Potomac Club on the question of whether events in history could be changed if time travel were possible. After bumping into William, a familiar attendant, on the way out, Peter feels faint. Confused by the gas lamps and horse-drawn carriages on the street, he notices that he's wearing clothes of a much older style and walks home. He finds that his home is now a boarding house. In discussion with the strangers he meets there, he discovers that he has been transmitted back in time to April 14, 1865, the date of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth.

Corrigan rushes to Ford's Theatre to warn everyone but is arrested for disturbing the peace. The police presume him to be a Union soldier under emotional distress or drunk. One officer tends to believe Corrigan, but is overruled by his superior. After he has been held in the police station a short time, a "John Wellington" arrives and persuades the police to release Corrigan into his custody. Corrigan implores Wellington to do something to warn and protect the president.

In Wellington's room, he gives Corrigan a drink, but it is drugged and he collapses. Later the policeman who believed him arrives and rouses him, relating that he had tried unsuccessfully to convince anyone to take additional precautions. The landlady identifies the tenant of the room as John Wilkes Booth, and indeed the handkerchief left behind by "Wellington" bears the initials JWB. Booth himself had drugged Corrigan to prevent any interference in his mission. And now it is too late: the crowd outside is spreading the news that the president has just been shot.

Corrigan pounds his fist on a window sill and finds he is back in 1961, pounding on the door of the Potomac Club. It seems the same, but there is no longer an attendant named William. Back at the table with his colleagues, he finds that the scholarly discussion has moved from time travel to money, and William is also at the table participating. He says that his money was inherited from his great-grandfather, a policeman who had had made a name for himself by somehow predicting the assassination of Lincoln and trying to warn about it, becoming Chief of Police, then a councilman, and eventually become a millionaire through real estate. Overwhelmed by all that has happened, Peter steps aside to wipe his brow with the handkerchief in his pocket and notices the initials: JWB. It turns out that Corrigan was able to change the past, but not in the way he had intended.

Closing narration

Cast

See also

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
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