I really should stop watching The Twilight Zone… But if I did, where would some of these random thoughts come from…?

There are a lot of episodes that deal with the concept of time travel. In episodes such as “Back There” and “No Time Like The Past”, the message is that you can’t change events in the past because they already happened and are set in stone, if you will. However, this morning’s episode, “Of Late I Think Of Cliffordville” is a totally different scenario. Perhaps he was able to change events in time because he had made a deal with the devil…? It’s a good question…

Then there is the ever popular Back to the Future trilogy.

Marty McFly was able to change the past, which greatly improved his future (at least in the first movie). Granted, he had to endure his mom falling head over heels for him and her jumping him in a car…

Yet another issue with time travel, I suppose… You might inadvertently hook up with one of your ancestors. Eeew… Hopefully it wouldn’t be one that was so closely related like it was for Marty.

Even the animated Futurama touched on traveling to the past. Fry meets up with the young version of his grandfather (who seems suspiciously like Gomer Pyle) and, after a series of near fatal accidents, decides he has to protect his grandfather to insure his own existence. But in doing so, he accidentally gets him nuked (oops). Yet he’s still alive… We find out why later, after he’s bumped uglies with his grandmother. Fry becomes his own grandfather! That in itself is gross, but I’m wondering how in the hell that wouldn’t have fucked Fry all up because he’d be so inbred…

So this all has me thinking… If time travel to the past really was possible, would you be able to change past events? And, if you could, would or should you…?

Imagine being able to go back in time and you could change things… You could prevent Lincoln or Kennedy from being assassinated. Or you could assassinate Hitler before he rose to power and saved a shit ton of Jewish people. It sounds good in theory, right? Especially assassinating Hitler… Think of how many people wouldn’t have been killed in battle or concentration camps because, without Hitler, there wouldn’t have been a WWII. Possibly… It’s not a guarantee. And besides, you have no idea what kind of effect it would have on the future when you came back. The world would obviously be changed, but that’s not to say it would be a change for the better.

And let’s say that that your actions, the ones you thought would make life better did fuck up the future and make it worse…

Well… I guess you would have to go back in time yet again and try to fix whatever had caused a worse future for you. But that, too, could cause more issues, so you would have to continuously go back again and again and again until you could fix everything and make it right.

Damn… you’d end up being Sam Beckett. You’d be continuously leaping through time and hoping that each leap will be the one that takes you home.

If you’ve ever watched Quantum Leap, you’ll know that they really left us hanging on the series finale… No one knows whether or not Sam ever made it home or if he just kept on leaping. Considering that there was always something to fix, I assume he never made it back…

So… for the few of you who actually read my random drivel (thank you for reading, by the way), I want to know…

If you could travel back in time and change something, would you do it, knowing that the consequences could be dire for your future?

And, if you did decide to try and change something about the past, what would you change and why? I’m curious as to what people think would be worth changing… So leave a comment!