If you could go back in time and change something, would you? It's one of those questions people ponder after too much smoke and wine and since I have had neither but the question is in my mind anyway, let me answer it.
I have been watching "once upon a time" on Netflix. Originally, it was a cute concept, but Season 3 is going to be my last one. This season, the Wicked Witch of the West comes to Storybrook and one of the things she wants to do is go back in time and change her past. Here is the GINORMOUS plot hole.
She has to steal Snow's baby to do it, BUT the thing she is going to DO is kill Snow's MOTHER before she can marry Snow's father ( thus having Snow) See the problem here? No SNOW, no Baby, no time travel spell. I suppose you can argue that time is somehow mutable and it's like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, but seriously. If you go back and kill someone, their children never exist
That really my problem with MOST time travel books and films ( Somewhere in Time is an exception- I think!) If you change the past, it becomes the present and the future and you never KNEW any different timeline.
There was a Twilight Zone ( I Think or it may just have been a short story) about a man who gets his wish to go back to the time of the dinosaurs, but is warned NOT to get off the path. He sees a flower he must touch and in so doing steps on a butterfly, killing it, When he returns to his own time, everything is changed. In killing the butterfly in the past he changed the future without meaning to. The Twilight Zone was meant to scare you psychologically in many ways, but it also became one of those things stoners watched and talked about ( see "afternoons of smoke and wine")
The Movie Time Bandits WAS fun, and I may try to watch that again sometime. It's about Time Traveling Dwarves who just want to have a god time and hide from an Evil something-or other, I forget. I has Sean Connery in it. Lately I have trouble sitting still for even the half-hour or so that Once Upon A Time takes. I blame Pandemic Cabin Fever.
So, in answer to the original question, no I would not go back in time to Stop John Kennedy's murder, or Abraham Lincoln's or stop myself from doing whatever stupid thing I did that I think I should not have done in retrospect. The past makes up the present and even one tiny change may have a greater impact on the world.
There are one or two things I wish I could have said (or not said!) differently - one in particular changed the entire course of a relationship that I wanted so much to pursue, and later I tried again and was soundly rejected. Actually, a few relationship things - mostly moments I can still replay. Perhaps the moral here for me is to try being nicer NOW? As far as time travel movies, the first one I ever saw was 1960's "Time Machine" and for some reason even though I was a little kid, I can remember the details surrounding going to the movie (we were on vacation in San Rafael, and the grown ups wanted us out of their hair for a Friday evening!) and Yvette Mimieux (!) Also one much later was 1979's "Time after Time," where Malcolm McDowell plays H.G. We..s and comes to modern day San Francisco pursuing Jack the Ripper. Some of the love scenes were charming (he played against Mary Steenbergen, and in real life they did fall in love and marry) When I was a childlren's librarian, I was entranced with time travel novels. Try "Time at the Top" or "Tom's Midnight Garden."
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