Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Samaa Lathan, Damson Idris, Steve Harris, Glenn Fleshler, Jordan Peele, Candus Churchill, Zari Django, Keon Boateng, Henry Mah, Samantha Spatari, Jocelyn Panton, Blake Stadel.
We only see Time as a strict progression of cause and effect, unless we use our imagination and see how all possible futures can play out, but without the benefit of a time machine, or the understanding of how one action causes a splinter, a fracture that must always be, there is little that we can do but hope for a Replay, another chance to put our world right.
If you had such a device, a machine that allowed you to go back to a point where all that you knew made sense, that someone you loved did not fall into the hands of a predator, a racist, the officialdom of corruption, would you take it, or would you understand that you might be able to cheat time, that you can fool Time into doing your bidding for a while, but at some point it will exact revenge, it will always remember, and it will come knocking for what you have stolen from it.
Selwyn Seyfu Hinds must be congratulated for bringing such a tightly wound script to the new series of The Twilight Zone, and in Replay one woman has the ability to do just that as she returns with her son to the town she grew up as he enrols in college, whilst fighting the law, a man with a grudge against black people and who keeps coming time and time again, no matter what she does to stop him arresting and hurting her son.
The story may be shrouded in the wisps of time itself, the thought that we can effect an outcome of an event, that we can prevent it from happening has been a staple of fiction since such ideas were able to be conveyed to the mass readership and the television and film fans that invariably followed; however it is in such heightened times of human emotion, when the racist, when the scent of xenophobia rears its ugly and foul face to the world that such stories delve deeper into our own subconscious.
After all, we will do anything to stop someone we love coming to any harm, turn back time or make a stand with others showing the same defiance and deep rooted anger, that is the true way to engage with such an enemy; but remember, Time will exact its own revenge for being cheated and in the final twist of the episode, the fear in Sanaa Lathan’s eyes speaks volumes as she realises this fact for the first time.
A brutal, examining and superb episode of The Twilight Zone, one of the finest created.
Ian D. Hall