No Time At All

If I were to adapt Time Enough At Last, it would involve the person stopped from practicing a skill of some sort, instead of the addiction being books. I wouldn’t change the ending at all, mainly because I like the ironic twist in that the character finally has the time but doesn’t have the skill anymore. And in my adaptation, I’d make it such that the person is the one stopping himself from practicing the said skill. Probably something like dancing, which is a skill that’s time dependent because as your body ages, the less you’ll be able to do a lot of physically rigorous stuff.

I don’t think the episode itself really focused on the science of the atomic bomb; if anything it was just a plot device to ensure that the main character, Henry Bemis, was no longer barred from reading. That being said, my adaptation would be more concerned with the basic themes of the episode. It would kind of be a commentary on the fact that although we have many technological advances, we humans still age and have a limited amount of time on the earth, so it’s important to calculate our moves and grab the chances we’re given. In my adaptation, the dancer would keep doing other things, and putting off his or her dancing career, saying that there are more important things, until, finally, when all those “important things” are done, they are too old and too inexperienced to dance.

I believe that changing the sad ending for a happy one would be taking away the essence of the film, that’s another reason why I don’t want to make it any happier no matter how much the original ending seems wasteful or sad. The original, I think was emphasizing the fact that time isn’t the only thing you need. You also need the ability to use it, because after all, time is pretty useless when you’re not doing anything.

Cadiz, M.T.M.