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518 "The Beast Within" Leap Date: November 6, 1972 Episode
Adopted by: Brinsley
Synopsis: Mistaken for the creature Bigfoot, Sam leaps into a Vietnam veteran named Henry Adams who lives with another vet, Roy Brown, in the mountains away from civilization. Roy has seizures and hallucinations and needs medication to prevent them. But the town sheriff, who has an old war secret to hide, is preventing Sam and Roy from coming into town to get the medicine.
TV Guide Synopsis
Production # : 68122
TV Guide Synopsis:
Commercial:
Place:
Leap Date:
Name
of the Person Leaped Into:
Broadcast
Date:
Project
Trivia:
Sam Trivia:
Al Trivia:
Al's Outfits: 2. Dark yellow long overcoat with gold pin in the lapel, dark yellow scarf, black shirt, black pants, black shoes. (in the campsite the next morning, town jail, the riverbank)
This episode was written by John D'Aquino, who has appeared in a guest role in the show as Frank LaMotta, brother of Sam's leapee Jimmy in the episodes "Jimmy" and "Deliver Us from Evil", as well as in the role of young miner Tonchi Palermo in the series finale "Mirror Image". John (and Scott Bakula) didn't like Bigfoot being added into the episode. This episode has the same name as a horror movie released in 1982. The spot below aired immediately following the end of this episode. Sam and Al explain that QL will return to the NBC schedule on March 30th, 1993 but one hour later. Notice that they are on the set of "Mirror Image" nearly two months before the final episode aired. The script for this episode is the only one writen by a guest star from the series (John D'Aquino). During the original broadcast, this episode Leaped Sam into "Memphis Melody", but was changed to "The Leap Between the States" instead the following week.Bloopers:
Regular Cast:
Guest Stars:
Pat Skipper as Lucas
"Luke" Marlet: Pat
Skipper was born on September 23, 1958 in Lakeland, Florida, USA. He is
an actor, known for The X-Files (1993), Bosch (2014) and Yellowstone
(2018). He is married to Jennifer Hammond. They have two children. Appeared in such
movies
as "Wall Street", "Lethal Weapon 2", "Predator 2", "Femme Fatale",
"Independence Day" and "Erin Brockovich". He has also appeared in such
TV-movies as "Dancing with Danger", "Trade Off" and "Dying to Live".
Among his TV guest credentials are such shows as "Paradise", "The
X-Files", "Frasier", "That 70's Show" and "NYPD Blue".
Guests
Who Appeared in Other QL Episodes: Say What? Is it cold in the Waiting Room? Al has on multiple layers of clothing and we can see his breath when he speaks on occasion. Putting an object in the mouth of a seizure victim is never a good idea. It's a neat effect as Al repositions by "sliding" down the rock. However, after he checks on Daniel, he relocates out and then back in to Sam. Why?
Quotable Quotes: (Roy and Daniel
have settled on the rocky ledge
above the riverbank. Al pops in to watch over them until Sam arrives)
Best Line:
Best Scene: (The four young
soldiers' sweep-and-destroy
mission in Vietnam - August 6th, 1968)
Leaping in to find himself sitting on a windowsill outside a dark room at night, wearing a furry long coat and holding a bottle of pills in his hand, Sam is startled into falling off the ledge by a teenage kid who mistakes him for Bigfoot. Stumbling away into the forest to avoid being captured by the house's owner who comes after him, Sam soon runs into a scrawny, wild-haired young man who is revealed to be his host's friend, coming to meet Sam - or Henry, as he learns his host is named – on the way home. Home, as it turns out, is a secluded campsite in the forested mountains, away from the town where Sam found himself when he leaped in. When Al finally arrives to give him some answers, Sam learns that he is Henry Adams, a Vietnam vet living with his friend Roy alone in the mountains of Washington State. Roy and Henry went to Vietnam, a few years back, along with their two best friends from high school, John and Luke, but an incident on the battlefield, in which a moment of moral disagreement led to John's sudden death, caused Luke to end his friendship with Henry and Roy, who were the only witnesses of that tragic death and its cause, and who have nevertheless remained silent about it. In Vietnam, Roy was a "tunnel rat", a burrower who is assigned the duty to flush out enemies out of tunnels and cracks. During one later mission he was shot in the head and has since been suffering from nervous spasmodic fits. Coming back home to live with Henry in the wild, Roy has been supplied the medicine he needs for free by the town doctor. However, the man has very recently died, leaving Roy doomed to eventually die of his nervous disease, as there is no other way of getting the pills he needs – Luke is now the town's sheriff, and threatens Roy and Henry with arrest on the charge of a petty theft Roy has recently committed, if they even show their faces around town. The only way to get the pills was to have Henry rob the local pharmacy, at which point Sam has leaped into the scene. However, now that Roy asks Sam for the pills he was supposed to bring, Sam discovers he had dropped the bottle after having been surprised by the boy on the windowsill. Sam is now forced to come up with a way to delay Roy's worsening seizures by using the means available in nature; He must go into town and try to persuade Luke not to turn his back on his two old friends, and also not to arrest Sam himself on the spot; and finally, he must save the life of Daniel, the boy who had startled him upon his arrival – who is none other than the teenage son of the late John, now raised by Luke, who had married John's wife after returning from the war. Having once been shown a glimpse of the mythical Bigfoot by his late father (and having recently mistaken Sam in his furry coat for the monster), Daniel is angry with his stepfather Luke for refusing to believe in the creature's existence, and runs away from home to get his own photographic proof of it. But before he gets the chance, his life may be in danger in the wild terrain of the mountains. Personal Review by Brinsley: A nice and at times touching thematic episode, dealing with the ravages of war over not only people's lives, their rights or their way of life (issues dealt with in previous QL episodes such as "Nuclear Family" or "The Leap Home, Part II"), but also over relationships, and most importantly, friendships, here represented in the four classmates' long friendship that is broken between the three of them that have survived, due to an incident they are keeping a secret among themselves, in which one of them directly caused his friend's death by disobeying that friend's order to him to kill an old man. As Sam so precisely states it, this is an irony of human morality: how can Luke, having refused to kill, now be forced to spend the rest of his life feeling guilty for causing his friend's death by that very refusal? In the present, Luke initially seems to us to be quite worthy of the title of "nozzle" applied by Al to many of the villains Sam encounters. He hounds Henry and Roy for petty crimes and has made it impossible for them to come into town in broad daylight to seek help for Roy's critical condition. However, when Henry's diary takes Sam, and us, to the past of four years before that time, we have to come to terms with the fact that Luke was the good and moral guy back then, and can still be seen to be so in the present as well. He is ridden by guilt for having caused John's death by his disobedience, and that is clearly the reason behind many of his actions – on the one hand, his preventing of Henry and Roy from coming to town, but on the other hand, his decision to marry Karen and become a father for Daniel, replacing his late friend and providing for his family as a way of compensating for his deed and easing his secret guilt. All in all, Luke certainly turns out to be the victim of a strange twist of fate, and thanks to Sam's presence and his wise words, a better man for it. Worst Thing about the Episode: Nothing really bad about the episode… except perhaps having Sam and Al spot Bigfoot at the very end, which constitutes another one of Sam's somewhat frequent "kisses with the paranormal" (such as his respective encounters with the devil, angels, vampires, curses, ghostly people, ghostly ships and other unexplained phenomena). It seems quite a few episodes end with Sam and Al confronted with decisive "proof" – that of their eyesight, or other senses - of the actual existence of these phenomena. In my opinion, after having been used even once or twice, this resolution seems to have become quite predictable and tiresome.
Production Credits: Theme by: Mike Post Executive Producer: Donald P. Bellisario Panaflex ® Camera and Lenses by: Panavision ® Quantum Leap Podcast: The Beast Within  Listen to The Quantum Leap Podcast on this episode here: It’s time to confront The Beast Within! Join hosts Allison Pregler, Matt Dale and Christopher DeFilippis for Sam’s Leap into a traumatized Vietnam War veteran for what is emphatically, positively, no way no how the Bigfoot episode. Also, it’s the Bigfoot episode. Let us know what you think… Leave us a voicemail by calling (707)847-6682. Send in your thoughts, theories and feedback, Send MP3s & Email to quantumleappodcast@gmail.com. Also join us on Facebook.com/QuantumLeapPodcast and Twitter.com/QuantumLeapPod
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