Episode 115: The Dead Zone

The Dead Zone was released in 1983. It stars Christopher Walken as Johnny Smith and was directed by David Cronenberg. Unlike the earnest Josiah Bartlet in The West Wing, Martin Sheen's character, Greg Stillson, has nefarious plans for what he'll do in the White House. Once Johnny becomes aware of Stillson's future, should he intervene?

"Back There" was a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone. A man is sent to 1865 on the night of Lincoln's murder. He tries to intervene, but will he be successful?

➡️ Is the past changeable? Is the future? 

➡️ Are some major historical events set in stone?

➡️ Where is the line for intervention? And does that become "pre-crime" à la The Minority Report? 

⚠️ Spoilers lie ahead!

Links:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085407/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734556/

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My award-winning biography of Dag is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Unicorn-New-Look-Hammarskj%C3%B6ld-ebook/dp/B0DSCS5PZT

My forthcoming project, Simply Dag, will be available in hardback, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats on July 29th! 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please excuse any typos!

Sara Causey discusses the 1983 film The Dead Zone, directed by David Cronenberg and based on Stephen King's novel. The film follows Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken), a psychic who, after a coma, can see people's futures through touch. He helps a nurse save her daughter and discovers his ex-fiancée, Sarah, is married. Johnny aids a sheriff to catch a serial killer. He later predicts Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen) will become president and start a nuclear war. Johnny attempts to stop Stillson, leading to Stillson's downfall and Johnny's death. Sara reflects on the film's themes of changeable futures and the moral implications of altering history.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

The Dead Zone, David Cronenberg, Stephen King, psychic abilities, coma, serial killer, Greg Stillson, nuclear war, time travel, The Twilight Zone, back there, historical events, alternate timeline, moral imperative, pre-crime.

Announcer, welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I will be talking about the 1983 film, The Dead Zone. I'm not sure why, but here lately, I've been on a 1970s 1980s sci fi horror movie kick. I don't know if it's nostalgia for like back in the day, wanting to go and see movies that I either didn't get to see when I was a kid, or that I watched a long time ago and have brain dumped. But I'm glad that I went back and picked up this one, because especially as I got toward the end, I was like, whoa. This is going to make for a great podcast episode. Unfortunately, I do have to spoil it. So if you have not seen the film, please bookmark this episode or download it and come back to it later, after you've had the opportunity to watch the movie for yourself. I do recommend it. It is worth your time. I will also be spoiling an old episode of The Twilight Zone called back there. It originally aired on January 13, 1961 it's from season two, Episode 13. So if you've been watching the Twilight Zone and you're like, Whoa, I haven't seen that one yet, and I don't want you to spoil the ending, please be advised that I will be spoiling the dead zone as well as that old Twilight Zone episode back there. So now that all of that is said, and you have been warned, so that you can turn back if you need to, if you're still with me, choose your frosty beverage of choice, and we will saddle up and take this ride.

Just a reminder. Sara's award winning biography of Dag Hammarskjold, Decoding the Unicorn, is available on Amazon. Her next nonfiction project, Simply Dag, will release on July 29th. To learn more about her other works, please visit SaraCausey.com. Now back to the show.

The Dead Zone was directed by David Cronenberg, who he's kind of like David Lynch in that he has like weird cult films, movies like scanners, Videodrome and the fly. And I may see if I can track down a copy of video drone, because it's about a TV station, and like, there are broadcast waves or broadcast signals going out as part of mind control. And I was like, Ooh, especially with MK Ultra, that could be something interesting to probe. But the dead zone came out in 1983 it's kind of a sci fi horror, sci fi murder mystery, thriller type movie, and it was based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. Full disclosure, I have not read the novel, so this episode is really not going to be about trying to juxtapose what's different in the book versus what's in the film, Hollywood, as we know, takes its liberties with whatever has been put in a novel. And, you know, I don't know, I kind of have mixed emotions about Stephen King throw rotten tomatoes at me, if you must, but that's like with the shining. I have read the shining, and, of course, have watched the film and have reviewed it for this podcast from the early days, and I prefer Stanley Kubrick's version better. Like Stephen King was really pissed off because he felt like the character of Jack Torrance is crazy from the beginning, and you lose the character arc. So instead of being a man who is trying to redeem himself that goes to this isolated hotel and falls into a rabbit hole of insanity, like he's just crazy as shit from the get go. But to me, that actually makes it more horrifying, like, because you know from from the setup from the jump, that he's crazy. Jack Nicholson looks absolutely fucking deranged in that role, and you know that he's going to lose his shit and try to kill his family, and that's part of the horror. It's that slow burn. I know what's coming, and it's not going to be good. So essentially, in the dead zone, Christopher Walken is playing the main character, Johnny Smith. And it's, it's funny, too, that he even has this, like, you know, Americana could be anyone type of name Johnny Smith, and he's this mild mannered, nerdy teacher. And as they did back in the 80s, if you wanted to say somebody's mild mannered and nerdy. You just put them in a cardigan sweater and an ugly pair of eyeglasses. So that's pretty much our cue that Christopher Walken is playing a mild mannered school teacher nerd, and he is engaged to another mild mannered school teacher named Sara, and. Two of them are like, oh, you know, they're all, they're all lovey dovey. When school gets out and they want to go on a date, and it's all very like, oh. So they get together and they go to, like, a carnival amusement park type place in Castle Rock main and when they're on a roller coaster, Johnny has, like, a it's not really clear, like, is it a headache? Is it a round of dizziness? Like, something happens neurologically that makes him not feel well for a minute or so, but he recovers from it, and they go on and have their date, and then they get to her house, and so there's a little bit of canoodling on the porch, and she wants him to come inside. It starts to rain. Okay, so here we go. You don't have to be the world's smartest person to know this is bad juju. This is foreshadowing Something bad is about to happen, because we've already seen him have a headache or a dizzy spell, whatever it was on the roller coaster. Now, his fiancee is like, hey, I want you to come in. I want to do this tonight. And he's like, No, he's standing there trying to be Mr. Gallant. No, I want it to be super special, like, we don't have to do something tonight. It's rainy, it's stormy, and you're like, This is not gonna go well, he's gonna regret not going in and just having some sex with his lady tonight. Something bad's gonna happen. So he gets out on the road, and this truck driver is like, falling asleep at the wheel, and he's driving a tanker truck, and he crashes it due to a combination of the weather in attention, falling asleep, etc. And Johnny Smith's little doodle bug type car crashes into the tanker truck, and so he's in this catastrophic car accident. He goes into a coma and is hospitalized when he wakes up in this hospital, like, what would you call it? Like an extend, like a rehab, like an extended care type facility. When he wakes up in this facility, he just thinks it's like the next day. But in fact, five years have actually passed, and the doctor is trying to explain to him what's going on? The doctor calls the parents, and the parents show up, and they're all trying to, like, bring him back to reality. So even though he thinks that only a day has gone by, five years have passed, and they have to break the sad news to him that his fiance left. She got married to another man, and is no longer in the picture. But while he's in this hospital or extended care facility, he discovers that if he touches somebody else, particularly like if he grabs somebody on the hand, as you would for a handshake, for example, he can see their future like he starts to have this psychic knowledge of who they are, just through the power of touch. And so, for example, while he's in this facility, he touches a nurse's hand and he sees that her daughter is, at that very moment, trapped inside their house, and the house is on fire, and he warns her and tells her like he calls the girl out by name and says she's there, but if you call the fire department, if you get some intervention for her now she can still make it out. The nurse is freaked out, as one would be, but she takes him at his word, calls the fire department and then rushes home, and it turns out that everything that he said is true. The girl gets out narrowly. She escapes with her life. The house burns down, and the nurse is just incredibly grateful because he has saved her child's life. Also, when he makes physical contact with his primary doctor, he sees that this man's mother is actually alive. The man thought that the woman died at the hand of the Nazis in World War Two, but he finds out through Johnny Smith that she's still alive. And Johnny's like, I know her name, I can give you her address. The Doctor poo poos it at first, and he's like, No, you have to be mistaken. She died in the war. That's what whoever it is you think you're seeing, it's not her. It's probably just a hallucination. But curiosity gets the better of him. He follows up on the lead that Johnny gives him, calls the woman up on the phone, and it is, in fact, his own mother. There's a press conference because word gets out in the small town that there's a psychic among us, and he he's already saved a little girl's life, and oh, my god, isn't that crazy? It's heartwarming, but it's also nuts. How can this be true? There's a particular journalist at this press conference. It's that's being an asshole to him, acting like, you know, this is a carnival show. You're a huckster, and you and the doctor have probably contrived this plan. You've probably put all of this together to get publicity for the hospital or to get some kind of money, but it's all a joke. So he allows Johnny to touch his hand, and Johnny starts talking about how his sister was abused and unalived herself, probably like he hints at at the idea that, you know, she unalived herself because the journalist was the one who was abusing her. And he lets go and is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're out. You're out of line. This is nuts, but you can tell that he's shaken like what Johnny has told him is actually true.

Johnny stays at this facility doing physical therapy. He has to relearn, like, some basic mobility thing like he has, he has to, he has to, essentially, like, relearn how to walk and to be mobile again. So he does that. He still has a limp and he walks with a cane, but over the course of time, it's like he's able to graduate from a wheelchair to crutches to a cane. In this time, while he's doing his physical rehab exercises, the fiance Sara comes back into the picture, and it's weird for both of them, because she still has feelings for him, but she's married, and she also reveals that she has a kid by the husband. And Johnny Smith is sitting there like, Well, for me, you have to understand my feelings haven't changed yet. I still remember you from five years ago. I still remember you from being engaged to you and wanting to get married. So it's hard for me to accept that you've moved on. You have this whole ass life now with another man and a baby, and I'm just here in this facility trying to learn how to walk again, and I don't know how to feel about all of this. Well, he gets released from the facility and goes to live with his parents. His mother passes away, and so it winds up being like Johnny and his father. His father has become a widower, so it's like Johnny and his father living in this house together, and Johnny's just kind of knocking around, not really sure of what to do with his life anymore, because five years has passed. Now, his mother is gone, his father is alone, except for him, and it's like, what even is my life now? My fiance is married to somebody else and has a kid by him. I'm here as an adult living with my dad because I can't completely take care of myself yet. And what even is my life right now. So he's in a bit of an existential crisis. Oh, and on top of that, he's psychic, so yeah, we can cut the guy some major slack. A sheriff named Bannerman shows up one day and he's like, there's been a serial killer in my town. I have heard about your skill set, and I am desperate. I've tried everything. I don't know what else to do. And someone's like, help me. You're my only hope. And so he resists at first, and he's like, I I just don't want to get involved with something like this. So while he's trying to think about whether or not he wants to get involved with law enforcement and being like the psychic on call for the sheriff the ex fiance, Sara, comes back to the picture, and she shows up one evening with her kid, and basically, like when the kid goes down for a nap, the two of them decide to get freaky too. But still, yet, even though she's come back to have sex with Johnny, it's like, I don't know what I want, because I am married and I am a mother, and, you know, I think I'm going to need to go away for a little while. You probably won't see me again, but, you know, at least we had tonight. Okay, I'm sure that in the novel, it was probably more clearly explained what was going on emotionally there. But I did feel sorry for him. I was like, So you showed up long enough to get your rocks off and emotionally confuse this guy that seems super not cool lady. Anyway, he decides that he will help Bannerman. It's like I'm here in this house. I've had sex with my lady, but she's not my lady anymore, and she may not be coming back, and my dad's a widower and my mom is gone, and what else am I living for? I may as well try to help this Sheriff, because the serial killer keeps killing. So one of the things that Bannerman gives him is like a package of cigarettes that was discarded at one of the crime scenes, and he grabs a hold of it, but he can't get any kind of energy off of it. And the deputy that's with him is like, Dude, I told you, this guy's a crank. I told you, this is all a joke. It's all a game. Like, Quit messing with these psychics there. Nobody has ever told you the truth, but they get to a crime scene like, the killer strikes again, and Bannerman takes Johnny to. To a crime scene while the victim's body is still physically there, he gets up in this gazebo and touches this corpse on the arm, and then that's when he sees everything, and he sees that the killer is, in fact, the deputy. A chase ensues, and not really very much with Johnny, since he's with a limp and trying to walk with a cane, but Bannerman goes after the deputy. Johnny catches up. This deputy's mother goes nuts and tries to murder the sheriff tries to murder Johnny, but she isn't successful. She winds up being shot instead the deputy knowing that the walls are closing in, and he's about to be outed as a serial killer. Unalives himself in the bathtub in a pretty creepy scene. But all of this sort of re traumatizes Johnny, like Johnny winds up being shot by the deputy's mother the deputy unalives himself with a pair of scissors, and it's really disgusting. And Johnny's like, fuck this man. I got to get out of here. So he moves to a different town. He's in it. He's still nearby, whereas he and his father were living but he moves to a different town and cloisters himself away in a house. He sets out a shingle to get work as a tutor. But everything is fairly private, like, I will take on private students and private clients at my discretion here in my house, but I don't. I don't want to have anything to do with my psychic abilities. I don't want to be treated as a sideshow. One day this dude shows up, and he's like, Richie Rich. He's like, in a rolls, Royce and some shit like, you know, overtly wealthy. And he tells, Johnny, I have this son named Chris. He's shy, and I feel like he's not living up to his potential. I think if he had a good tutor who could be a mentor to him, he would not only excel in school, but he would also come out of his shell. I just I can't get him to do much of anything. He wants to hole up in his room and live like a hermit, even though he's a teenage kid. And Johnny has reservations about that, but it's one of those deals, like, I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse. You know, I'm going to arm twist you and stand here with my rolls, Royce, until you agree to go to my mansion and meet my kid. So he goes with the guy, and while he is like in the foyer of this rich dude's house, he meets a man named Greg Stillson, and he's this third party candidate for the US Senate. But before Johnny can shake still since hand, Stillson puts a big metal campaign button in Johnny's hand instead, so he doesn't actually make any contact with the guy. And Greg Stillson, by the way, is played by Martin Sheen, and he does a great job at it too. So the two of them don't ever make any actual real skin to skin contact. So he doesn't pick up any psychic visions, and he notices that the wealthy guy Roger is joking around with Stillson and everything's like the good old boys club. He thinks it's weird, but he just kind of blows it off like, well, this is what rich white people do, so it's whatever. He goes and meets the kid, Chris, and the two of them get along. It's kind of like because they've both been loners and they're not all extrovert jazz hands all the time. The two of them get along with each other, and he agrees to tutor the boy. Meanwhile, as he's about to leave Richie Rich's house. There's a TV program that comes on where Stilson is talking, and the rich dude, Roger Stewart, tells him, like, That guy's dangerous. We got to be careful with him. And Johnny's like, I thought he was your friend. He was just here at your house not long ago, and y'all were laughing and cracking jokes, and seemed to be all buddy buddy. And now you're saying he's dangerous. What's up with that? And Roger Stewart is like, Look, you got to play both sides against the middle. Okay, even, even just this bit of dialog is important. You got to play both sides against the middle. I need to be friendly with him in case he actually wins. I want him to be on my side. I want him to feel like we are buddy buddy, but I can't be so close to him that if he loses, it would taint my reputation. So I just have to make sure that I'm good either way. So as Johnny and Chris are working together.

There's an afternoon where he gets a knock on the door, and it's like a, you know, door to door canvassing campaign thing for Stilson. And the guy's just like, hey, I can give you some brochures. And Johnny's like, I don't. Even think I'm registered to vote, like I was. I was in a coma for years. My dude, like, I don't know enough about politics. I don't even think I'm registered. Oh, well, we can help you get registered, at least. Let me leave you with this literature. And then this woman comes up that he introduces as his wife, and it turns out to be Sara the ex fiance. So it's like, this dude and the ex fiance are both out campaigning for Stilson. It's like they've drank the stills and Kool Aid, and they like him to the point where they're going out campaigning for him. And seeing her again, seeing her with the husband, freaks him out. You know, he has a little bit of a mental event over it. But while he is with Chris, because Chris is over there when this happens, and while he's with Chris, it's like Chris reaches out and, like, touches his shoulder, kind of like, Hey, man, it's going to be okay. Whatever you're sad about, you know, you don't have to cry whenever that happens. He has a vision, and he sees Chris and a couple of other boys drowning during an ice hockey game. And when he goes back, like if Chris's tutoring session is over and the rolls, Royce comes to get him and take him home. Johnny goes with them, and he sees Stewart unloading a van with a bunch of hockey equipment, and he's like, You can't do this. And the guy's like, yeah, I can. It's no big deal. Like he's coming out of his shell more. He's starting to be a little bit more sociable, and I think that's because of your tutoring. And I want to keep it going. I want him to join this Ice Hockey League. He needs to get out and be with other kids. He needs to get some extracurriculars going, and this is a great way to do it. And I'm going to coach the team. I've already got the team put together. Like, we're going to go have a match today, and Johnny's like, you can't do that. I've seen a vision. This is serious. The guy doesn't take him seriously. Even though Johnny is like, your kid is going to die, other kids are going to die. He still is just like, No, dude, you're crazy. So Johnny takes his cane, like, as they move into the house, he takes his cane and just whomps a vase and it shatters into a million pieces. And he's like, look, motherfucker, I'm serious. Your kid's gonna die if you don't listen to me. Well, Stuart doesn't want to listen to him. He's still just like I think you're a crackpot and you're fired, I'm going to give you the last bit of your wages, and then you're going to get the fuck out of my life and you're gonna leave my kid alone. You are creep and a weirdo. But Chris, the little boy, believes him. He's been around Johnny enough to know that Johnny is not a crackpot or a crank. So he's he stays at home, and because he listened to Johnny, he stays alive, but the dad goes ahead and has the ice hockey game with all the other boys, and the other boys that Johnny saw in his visions drown. So it's like the ice gives way, just like he saw in his vision, and these boys die, and you just see Stuart in a room with like a bottle of whiskey getting drunk. Johnny calls to make sure that Chris is still okay, because he sees the headline on the newspaper about you tragic accident boys drown in the lake. He calls the house to make sure that Chris did, in fact, stay home. And as soon as Chris gets on the phone and he knows that Chris is okay and is still alive, he hangs up, but the dad is just sitting there trying to drown his sorrows in whiskey. But Johnny comes to the conclusion that he has a quote, unquote, dead zone in his visions, and the dead zone is where the future can be changed.

There's a political rally that comes to town, and of course, the ex fiance and her husband, whenever they had showed up handing out their brochures, that was one of the things that they wanted, was like, Hey, you ought to come out to this rally. So it's not necessarily that Johnny wants to it's more like maybe I'll see a glimpse of the ex fiance out there. But finally, at the rally, like there's a whole there's a whole bunch of hands and people wanting, still some to kiss babies and all that, all that political crap. So still some shakes Johnny's hand without knowing that it's Johnny's hand. And at that point, Johnny has a vision of Stilson as the president, and he has the nuclear football like he's opened the case up, and he just needs a general to punch in his code and scan his hand so that he can launch a preemptive nuclear strike. We don't know against who, because this was in the backdrop of the Cold War. We can assume it was probably the Soviet Union, but we don't know. We just see him with the nuclear football, telling this general, you're going to do this, and history is going to look on us favorably. But if you don't. Don't do it. I'm gonna blow your fucking head off and then I'm gonna saw your hand off and put it on the goddamn nuclear football anyway. So you can either do it willingly or I can kill your ass and put your hand on there when you're dead. I don't really give a fuck, because I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do. So the general is like, oh, you're a madman, as he puts his hand on the scanner and the nukes become activated. And so Johnny is just horrified, and he knows now that stillsen is a demagogue. Not only is it that Stillson will wind up winning the Senate race, but he'll wind up becoming the president, and he will throw everybody into a hot nuclear war, so he goes back to his doctor, especially since his doctor had been in Poland during the war and had been a victim at the hands of the Nazis, had been separated from his parents, assumed that his mother was dead and had been shunted off to a concentration camp. He goes to the doctor and says, like if you had had a vision about Hitler, if you had known ahead of time what Hitler would do, and you have the opportunity to eliminate him, would you have done it? And so the doctor is like, Well, you wouldn't have any choice, because if you have the opportunity to get rid of somebody that's going to commit genocide, you pretty much have to do that. So Johnny writes a letter to Sara, the ex fiance, explaining what he's done. It's like it's a letter that he's meaning for her to find after he's done what he's going to do, and letting her know that he understands that it's a one way trip when he does what he does, it will kill him, but he feels like it's worth it to keep the world from the catastrophe of nuclear war. So there's a rally for Stilson and, of course, the ex fiance, Sara and her family, including her baby, are there. Johnny sneaks in and hides in the rafters with a boom stick. He tries to pop, pop Stillson, but at first he misses, and Stillson always has this bodyguard slash henchman slash mafioso type dude that's with him all the time, like a fixer, a right hand man. And so the right hand man springs into action and pops Johnny. So even though Johnny has tried to pop Stillson, he's missed. And then the right hand man pops up like a whack a mole and gets Johnny, however, in all of this commotion, Stillson, who, who has had Sara, come up on stage with the baby, is like a aw shucks, Americana type baby kissing thing. He grabs the baby and uses the baby as a human shield. I mean, talk about a shit ass thing to do, and a photographer who was in the audience captures it. So he's not only photographed the attempted Pop Pop, but he's also photographed Johnny use, or excuse me, Stillson using a baby as a human shield. So even though Johnny dies like he fall, he gets popped himself and falls from the balcony and lands on the bottom floor, some damage has already been done.

And whenever Stillson is like, why did you do that? Why did you try to come after me? Johnny reaches up and touches his hand, and he sees another vision of the future. And in fact, he sees that the photograph gets published, and it completely ruins still since career, and in a moment of feeling like he's been completely disgraced and ruined. He unalives himself so there's no longer going to be a nuclear war, because he's not going to make it into the White House to do what he had planned to do. There's a sad final scene where Johnny is dying, and Sara loves on him and kisses him and tells him that she loves him. And then the movie ends, one of the themes in this movie is the idea of the future being changeable, and that whenever I've finished the movie, I immediately thought of The Twilight Zone episode back there. So I want to stop for a second and talk about the plot of that.

In that show, it's April 14, 1961 and there's an engineer named Peter, and he's talking to some of his buddies at this fa-fa club called the Potomac club, and they start talking about time travel. Yeah. And they're just having a debate about like, well, if you could travel in time, could you really change things? Some people say yes, and some people say no. He bumps into this attendant named William, and he starts to feel dizzy when he comes to he sees like, old fashioned gas lamps and horse drawn carriages instead of vehicles. And he looks down, and he notices that his clothes are old fashioned too. And he was like, What the hell happened? He tries to go home, but he finds that his home is actually a boarding house. He goes inside and there are strangers, and he finds out that the date is April 14, 1865 and he knows immediately that that is the pop pop of Abraham Lincoln. He goes to Ford's Theater to try to warn everybody, but instead gets arrested. They think that he's a crank and a coke. There's only one cop that thinks that that this Peter Corrigan, might be telling the truth, but he's more or less overruled by his superior. It's like this guy's a crank. Don't pay him any attention. So he gets held at the police station for a little while, but there's a man who bails him out and says, Hey, I'm a doctor. I have expertise in weirdos and Kooks the mentally ill, if you will. He says that his name is Jonathan Wellington, and he lets the he tells the cops, like, just release this guy into my custody and I'll take care of him. However, the guy drugs Peter Corrigan, and then leaves and locks the door. And of course, as we might suspect, this supposedly benevolent doctor who actually drugs Peter Corrigan turns out to be John Wilkes Booth. So outside you hear that the the the President, Abraham Lincoln, has just been pop, pop. Corrigan tries to like he's Peter Corgan. Is like pounding his fists on the window. He's still angry that nobody has listened to him. But then he gets transported back to 1961 at the Potomac club, and it looks like everything is basically the same. The only difference is that William, who had been an employee of that club, is now a millionaire, so he's at the table playing cards instead of being an attendant, and he tells the story that he had money that was inherited from his great grandfather, and the great grandfather was a cop who made a name for himself because he predicted the pop pop of Lincoln, and He became the chief of police, and then a councilman, and then a real estate investor and then a millionaire. So one of the things that the that episode of The Twilight Zone pushes is the idea that even if you could go back in time, there are certain events that you simply could not change. They are so pivotal to the overall arc of history that they could not be changed. The closing narration that Rod Serling does. And in fact, I think that episode was written by Rod Serling. The closing narration is Mr. Peter Corrigan, lately returned from a place back there a journey into time with highly questionable results, proving, on one hand that the threads of history are woven tightly. The skein of events cannot be undone, but on the other hand, there are small fragments of tapestry that can be altered. So that's basically what the episode contends. Is that the smaller ideas of history, the people like William, for example, that are supposedly not as important, and then his great grandfather, who became a millionaire, maybe he wasn't as important, quote, unquote, as Abraham Lincoln, their fates were not sealed, but it absolutely was a sealed fate that Abraham Lincoln was going to get pop pop that night, and there was not a damn thing that anybody could do about it, naturally. This is something I have thought about many times, especially with DAG. It's like, if I could go back, like, if I was there for just 10 minutes, if I had 10 15, minutes to warn him and be like, I am begging you, I am literally begging you not to get on that plane to Ndola. Could I convince him? And then if I did, what's to say that something else wouldn't happen five minutes later? Like, I don't know there's, there's a part of me that I really go down that wormhole sometimes, just like in that Twilight Zone episode where I'm like, Are there certain events with with important historical figures that absolutely are set in stone? Or could they be changed? Could they really be radically altered? Or is that just, you know, the stuff of sci fi movies and sci fi novels? I don't know. I. Leave that to you to decide, because the dead zone tells us that you can alter the future. If you're able to see it, you can alter the future. Here's another wormhole. Can you alter the future, but not the past? Because back there deals with a man going back in time, trying to prevent something that had already happened in his time. Whereas Johnny sees a potential future, and it's a terrible future of Stilson getting the nuclear football and trying to annihilate the world, but it had not happened yet. It was a possibility of something that could happen, but it had not happened yet in the timeline that Johnny was living in, I find that endlessly fascinating. I really do. I plan to record an episode hopefully in the next month or two, because there's a conspiracy theory going around that back in 2012 CERN fucked up time, like they sped up time, but they also opened a black hole. And so ever since 2012 we've been on an alternate timeline. I don't know if that's true, but it certainly is worth exploration. I have felt that time has been sped up ever since the pandemic, and at first I just blamed it on my career change. I thought, well, you know, for a long time, I worked outside the home for other people, and then I started freelancing and working for myself, and so more of my time belonged to me. I had more privacy and more time at home, which I love. And then I retired from HR and staffing work and started living full time as a creative and I do not clock watch. I mean, right now, for example, it's 11:50pm on Tuesday night, so this episode will go out tomorrow evening. I'm not clock watching. I'm not fucking worried about the time. And so I thought that the reason why time felt like it was going faster, I'm like, well, and I'm also over 40, you know, I'm at the point that people would call middle age. And typically, when we get to this point our 40s or our 50s, it does feel like time starts speeding up. You realize that time is precious and you don't want to waste any of it. But the more that I have heard about this CERN conspiracy theory, the more I'm like, Hmm, because there are plenty of people that have not changed careers and that are not in middle age or old age, they're like, what is happening with time? I can't believe that it's April. I don't I don't understand how that is possible. It feels like just yesterday it was December of last year, 2025 is a blur for me. There's a lot I don't even remember about individual days in 2025 I remember the the high points, I guess. But there's a lot of things that happened in 2025 that I just don't, frankly, have a clear memory of. And it makes me wonder if that conspiracy theory about speeding up time and or putting us into an alternate timeline could possibly be true.

Now, here's, here's, the more, the more salacious theme that I'm going to need to be careful with, even in how I talk about it in this context, there's also the theme of like with what Johnny asks to his doctor, who's a Holocaust survivor, if you had the chance to go back and get Hitler, if you knew what he was going to do, and you had the chance to get him before he did it, would you do it? And the doctor says, Well, yeah, you'd have no choice but to do it. I'm also probably next month, going to review Ira 11 story, slash the movie the boys from Brazil, because this topic comes up again in that story, like, if somebody cloned Hitler and you knew what was going on, wouldn't you have a moral imperative to stop it? Hmm, it's like I said, it's very difficult to even discuss this topic, because you have to be super careful. There are a lot of things that you could say that would get you pulled off the fucking air or worse. So I have to be super careful here, and maybe the only way to do it is just by saying, like, I mean is, is that something that would have to be done if you knew ahead of time? But then do we get into Minority Report the idea of pre crime, thought crime. You thought about doing something in your head, and that's bad enough. That's bad enough that you need to be locked up in an institution or put in a jail, which that's scary, too. The idea that somebody could just be thinking, Man, that old lady is such a biatch. Uh oh, you said the old lady was a biatch. You must be going to do something. Jail time. So I have mixed emotions about that, because it's like, okay, on the one hand, you're talking about a very specific example, Hitler, somebody who committed genocide and atrocities and war crimes, and that shouldn't be conflated with somebody that has a negative thought about the old lady that lives down the street that everybody thinks is a battle ax. That's, that's, that is a tough question. It's a tough question to discuss on the air, because, as the doctor says, I mean, wouldn't you kind of have no choice if you if you knew. But then, you know, we also want to be careful about conflating anybody that we don't like with Hitler, because that's become common in modern parlance. And one of the shitty things about that is it takes away from the reality of who Hitler actually was calling, all of your enemies. Hitler, anybody that you disagree with politically, is automatically Hitler is diminishing what actually happened. It's diminishing what he actually did, and kind of turning him into a trope or a joke, which is not appropriate either. So I'm going to leave that question to you.

If you had a vision of the nuclear football, what then? How would that be handled? I don't know the answer to that question. I am 100% leaving that up to the individual listener. But as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, if you have not seen the dead zone, or maybe it's been a while. I highly, highly encourage you go back and rent it. As of this recording, it's available to watch free of charge on Pluto. I'll give you my standard disclaimer. Things come and go off of streaming Here today, gone tomorrow. So I can't make any promises that it will stay there. But as of right now, it is available to watch free of charge, even if, at some point in the future, you have to pay two or $3 to watch it. It's it's worth it. It really is, because it it brings up these questions, is the future changeable, or is it set in stone? If you knew about something ahead of time, could you intervene and change it? And then also, should you what's the threshold on that what is the threshold of it has reached a point where a person would have no other choice. I leave these questions open ended for you to decide for yourself, and I am not recommending any particular course of action. Let me say this is simply a movie, and we're simply contemplating philosophical questions, and that's it. Cinematic questions. Stay a little bit crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

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