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Title

Assassination in Time

Plot

A time traveling pair are tormented by their decision to save Abraham Lincoln from certain death; thereby changing history as we know it.

Episode

0352

Air Dates

  • First Run - September 26, 1975
  • Repeat - July 8, 1976

Actors

Writer

Listen

Rating

109
89     20


19 Responses to Episode 0352

An inventor works on a time-travel machine and ends up sending his daughter and her future husband back in time to an unknown destination. They land in Washington D.C. in the days of Abraham Lincoln and end up in a boarding house where a plot is being hatched to assassinate the president. This leads them to contemplate what might happen if they alter the course of history as they know it.

Frank C.

Two people, participating in an experiment, travel back in time and find themselves caught up in the assassination plot to kill President Lincoln. Will they be able to stop it in time (pun intended)? A story reminiscent of the Twilight Episode \"Back There.\" I\'m a big fan of time travel stories but this one didn\'t really grab me because the characters aren\'t very interesting and primarily serve to move the plot forward. Genre: Science Fiction

Lisa M.

A scientist enables a couple to travel back in time and they find themselves caught up in the plot to assassinate President Lincoln. Should they stop the murder and risk changing the future? This is a fairly run-of-the-mill time travel episode. Genre: Science-fiction

Mr. Bigfoot

A time traveling couple is afforded the opportunity to thwart the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. They struggle with the morality of saving our nation's most reveled leader versus altering the course of history.

J. Richman

I've always thought that the Titanic was actually sunk by the sudden weight of countless time travellers materializing aboard to witness the tragedy... This episode is about that other favorite site for time travellers; the assasination of Lincoln. Nice bits of historical authenticity improve this one and you can hardly quibble with the details of how time travel functions... it is, of course, impossible. All in all, a pretty good episode.

Noel Lacuesta

This is similar to a TWILIGHT ZONE episode "Back There" (Season 2, Episode 13). In that TZ episode, the main character goes to Ford's Theatre to warn everybody about the assassination. In this CBSRMT, our main characters, Mac McDonald (played by William Redfield) & Peg Andrews (played by Jennifer Harmon), replace 2 people in the past to encounter John Wilkes Booth (played by Gordon Gould). In ACT 1, it starts off slow, but the time traveling adventure begins in ACT 2. Then, in ACT 3, that's when things get intense. If you like Ian Martin's writing, you're going to like this one

Russ

I love that Twilight Zone episode. This RMT episode was definitely a lot like the TZ episode. No one believed the time travelers in either episode when they tried to warn the people that the President was going to be assassinated.

Angela

I noticed that while CBSRMT has a lot of product ads--Preparation H, (give your cold to) Contact, Alka Seltzer, I noticed there is a huge amount of human service type of ads --March of Dimes, The American Lung association, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, and the list goes on. I even heard one the other evening that had to do with people's attitudes towards those with the AIDS diagnosis. The 70s seemed to be time of budding enlightenment! March of Dimes initial focus during the 70s-80s used to be on prevention of birth defects like spina bifida. Now they concentrate on prevention of premature births.

Cathy

There should be more of those kind of ads these days: the human service ads, that is. The ones that surprise me the most are the Better Business Bureau ads!

Angela

Must have either been from the final season, or a rerun. AIDS wasn't announced until 1981. Also... the March of Dimes (founded by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and named by Eddie Cantor) was started in 1938 to combat polio. After polio vaccine came along in the 1950s, they changed their focus, first from combating rubella (which can cause birth defects) to a full-time campaign against birth defects. Lots of public service announcements can also indicate that commercial advertising slots weren't sold. CBSRMT's audience demographics skewed old, especially in the later seasons, hence lots of ads for items made to address various ailments. The ads you're hearing may be from a rerun years after the original airing, a rerun for which not a lot of advertising was sold.

Vince

My grandfather became a major March of Dimes fundraiser in the Charleston, SC area, after MOD-funded research helped my uncle, then a boy, recover from polio. A letter of commendation from Eleanor Roosevelt is still in the family. Hope you'll excuse the bragging, and the expression of gratitude. The AIDS PSA's likely come from the KCBS limited rerun of the CBSRMT in 1988 and 1989. San Francisco was way ahead of the national curve on that one (he says, remembering the Bleachman adverts on Muni busses telling IV drug users how to clean their needles in bleach water in order to prevent passing on disease). The PSAs were often an indication of unsold commercial slots. However, the stations were required to run a certain number of public service announcements by the FCC. It was up to the individual stations which ads they ran. So the ads they picked do show some enlightened thinking. Ad agencies too, would produce these for free to garner favor with the station managers, but the subjects they chose were up to them. I think it is fascinating to hear how the subjects changed through the 70s and 80s.

Steven

I've been hoping to hear a Save the Children spot or two, and a PSA that Carol Burnett did. And some anti-smoking spots that were amusing. "Have you ever tried chewing gum?" "Yeah, but I can't get the darned stuff to light!" Our local station used to follow the show's end with a Christopher Minute by Father John Catoir. Some of those would be soooo nice to hear again. (Christopher Minutes are still around, but the format is rather different.) Some ads - PSA as well as commercials - you'll hear are from newer airings of CBSMT airings, ie, with new commercials. They have been re-aired at different times over the years. The most recent that I know of - and Mr. Brown mentioned this to me when I spoke to him on the phone about getting them back on the air - was around 1998.

Jerry

Shoprite's got the answer!! Shoprite is still going strong here in Westchester County. We always sang along to the Shoprite Can-Can song. After more than 30 years, it's still the same song! Love hearing the jingle during the commercial breaks on the CBSRMT episodes. Shows with Shop Rite ads are most likely taped from WCBS New York broadcasts? SR is the second largest supermarket chain in the NYC metro, behind Pathmark.

William

I love the various religious PSAs from the early and mid-1970s. Nothing like it today. Not even from the Mormons. I've always enjoyed all the commercial ads and service PSA's that are on some recordings from the CBSRMT. It's such a shame that the majority of the recordings have them edited out, especially after 1974. The newscasts before the broadcasts are always very interesting to hear, both national and local. Truly going back in time. In the 80's,, I spent time at a radio station, finding places to insert our own commercials, IDs; etc. Neither my bosses nor I wanted any program content lost, but the bosses didn't care if the original network and station IDs got cut. The recordings I was working with were from broadcasts on stations in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. Even though it meant our live announcer had to do a quick on-air clarification, I would always leave in the station IDs. How could I leave out stuff like, "This is the Voice of Hollywood--KNX, Los Angeles."?

Vince

Original distribution logos stay on the film, even if the distributer has changed. Production and network credits weren't a problem, but we just had to be careful to follow FCC rules regarding identification of the local station mentioned: Not allowed to give the listener the impression that s/he is listening to a different local station than the one s/he is actually listening to. Like telling them they're at one theater, when they're actually at another. I have a friend who is a Joan Crawford fanatic. I do not care for her myself. However, he collects eveything she ever did. I told him there were two PSA commercials from her for the USO. I, of course, had to find someone to make a copy of the whole first season. I mailed it to him. He had to listen through the first 10 shows before he got to Joan. So, by default, I got him hooked on the shows. I feel like Pat Summerall is an old friend. I have become so familiar with his voice and commercials. I also LOVE LOVE LOVE the commercial for the supermarket. I think it is called ShopRite. The jingle starts off with "Hey Mom, what's for dinner, hey Mom, whatch ya got." I love that commercial. I still sing that to my mother, and am in my middle aged years. It is amazing what these old shows and commercials have done for us.

Robert

A somewhat interesting story about time travel, or the testing thereof. It was interesting that people went into other people's bodies who were to die, they try to prevent another death, but all happen anyway (it's already history they're told). Not the best time travel story, but by no means the worst, either.

Alec

If you were in a position of knowing without a shadow of a doubt the dreadful thing that was to happen on this day what would you do and how? That’s the question that faces Peg Andrews and Steve MacDonald, two time travellers who are transported back in time to April 14th 1865 the day John Wilkes Booth assassinated Presidents Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theater. They are shocked to realise that they are in Mary Surratt’s boarding house the spot where the whole plot was hatched. They have it in their power to change history but what can they do?

Ned

@Jerry, there is a Carol Burnett ad in episode 373 "The Mortgage" at the beginning of act 3. Also an anti smoking ad voiced by a little child.

D.C.

If you enjoy PSAs, the CBSRMT episode Time Killer is great. This episode is very good. The inclusion of historical detail adds a great deal to this story in my view.

Max


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