Samantha Smith living?

Frances

Banned
Samantha is both an idealistic young person and more than that. In poker terms, she took a stab at the pot, perhaps realizing that she had strengths neither President Reagan nor a member of Congress had. I'd like to see a timeline of her letter and Andropov's response (she had asked why the Soviets wanted to take over the world) compared to the dangerous events of 1983 --- the false alarm and the Petrov save, and the separate danger peak of Able Archer. We will never know, but Samantha's letter may have been an important toning down factor

I'd like to see her to get involved in something zonky and offbeat. Or, maybe as an early teen, she can't believe no one taught her CPR until this relatively advanced age, and she can't believe that potentially highly useful AED technology is hardly distributed at all.

Or, she gets involved in the churches vs. Nestle Corp., and the follow-up to the code of conduct regarding marketing of infant formula. This could make for a potentially delicious anti-corporate timeline.

And maybe Samantha plans to go to medical school, but doesn't quite make it. Perhaps she has more of a story / narrative type of intellectual style, rather than the abstract thinking style. Story / narrative is great for a practicing physician, but not exactly what's rewarded by a science curriculum. And even someone famous is not going to be real successful at changing medical school admissions. So, this has some interesting possibilities, too.
 

Frances

Banned
There's a really wonderful moment in one of the Lime Street episodes where Samantha's character Elizabeth has prettied herself up for a dinner-dance which doubles as her first date and the viewer can really see that the adorable little girl who wrote to Andropov is now a young woman. The prettiness of the dress is decreased slightly by the shoulder pads, but it was the mid-eighties.
 
She would've been eligible to run for President for the first time in 2008, if that's a route you want to go down.
 

Frances

Banned
If she lives and Lime Street has a decent run of say four or five years, would she return to politics and activism, or stay an actress?

For Lime Street to succeed, you need both Smith to live and ABC to not be pigheaded - refusing to move Lime Street to safety, away from the competition of The Golden Girls and 227.
 
Here's a tidbit full of butterfly possibilities. Samantha was stalked by one Robert John Bardo, who would later stalk and kill actress Rebecca Schaeffer. Maybe if she lives and also survives an encounter with him that result in his early imprisonment, Rebecca also lives?
 

cpip

Gone Fishin'
Here's a tidbit full of butterfly possibilities. Samantha was stalked by one Robert John Bardo, who would later stalk and kill actress Rebecca Schaeffer. Maybe if she lives and also survives an encounter with him that result in his early imprisonment, Rebecca also lives?

Intriguing. Of course, it may well end with Bardo killing Smith instead when he goes off the deep end there, but that's a much shorter timeline; unless the fallout from Smith's death sparks some sort of enhanced anti-stalker "Samantha's Law".
 

Frances

Banned
Bardo killed Schaeffer in part because she had taken an adult, sexified, role and, in his twisted mind, "lost her innocence". Smith is several years younger than her - she won't even be 18 until June 1990 - and i doubt she will take the sexified roles that Schaeffer did, if she remains an actress.
 
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