519 The Leap Between the States

The Leap Between the States


  • Total voters
    24

alsplacebartender

Al's Place Bartender
Staff member
The Leap Between the States
September 20, 1862


Mansfield County, Virginia


Breaking all the rules of Quantum Leaping, Sam leaps along his genetic line and finds himself in the Civil War as his great-grandfather! While helping the underground railroad smuggle a family to freedom, Sam must also win the heart of his great-grandmother, or he may be erased from existence.


Written by: Richard C. Okie
Directed by: David Hemmings


Rate and comment on this episode!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
This is the only time Sam leaps outside of his own lifetime. He has to get things right so that he doesn't get erased from existence. I like how he inspires Martin Luther King's name.
 
Bad luck!! You do not speak the "forbidden episode"! LMAO. That's prolly why it went all ********* the first time, hehe. It's along the lines of actors not saying M*cBeth, but saying "the Scottish Play"...its bad luck :)

Samantha Beckett
 
lalala12345678910 said:
No it isn't! Sam go's to the 1980's on The *********:wacko :disbelief :b :nut

You're right, the Leap Between the States is not the only time that Sam leaped outside of his lifetime but the episode The Boogiem*n is not the other time. Sam's lifetime runs from 1953 - date of death unknown. The Leap Between the States occurs in 1862 - clearly outside of his lifetime. Boogiem*n takes place in 1964 - clearly in Sam's lifetime. You may have been confused because at the very begining of the episodes Sam looks at what he's wearing and then looks down at the publication date of the books he's holding which is outside of his lifetime but the episode is cleary within his lifetime.

The other episode where Sam leaped out of his lifetime was The Leap Back when he leaps himself into Al who had exchanged places with him. That leap takes place in 1945 - which falls within Al's lifetime.
 
There are no other times that he leaps outside of his lifetime. The only two instances are "Leap Between the States" and "The Leap Back". It is explained in both episodes why it is that Sam could leap before his lifetime.

In "Leap Between the States", Sam's able to leap beyond his lifetime because he leaps into his great-grandfather so it can happen due to genetics. In "The Leap Back" Sam explains that part of him and Al have sort of meshed together (he gets Al's dirty mind) which enables him to leap beyond his lifetime in this instance as well.

No other episodes happened before the year 1953. Now some of them did happen earlier in 1953 than Sam's August birthday but that opens the door of when does life begin. If you believe life begins at the moment of conception then Sam's lifetime would have actually begun in December 1952 (no indication was ever given that he was born prematurely). If you believe that life begins at birth then, yeah, I guess you could say there are other instances where he leaped out of his lifetime but that's sort of nitpicking.
 
yeah i always believed that Sam's life extended all the way back to when he was a fetes, but when Sam's lifetime was set into Ziggy wouldn't they have started with Augest 8 1953?
 
Well, either Sam or Al could be pro-life. Even as a lapsed Catholic Al would probably firmly believe in life beginning at conception, so he could have insisted.

Or, a less convoluted detail.....once GFTW seized control of the project, Sam went where He wanted and it wouldn't have mattered if they'd programmed PQL to only go from Sam's 1954 1 year old birthday to the "present day"
 
I have to say this is one of the more interesting since it is the only time Sam is able to leap out of his own lifetime, WAY out. However, he leaped into the lifetime of another Beckett. Captian John Beckett, his great grandfather, and meets his Great grandmother to be when he gets shot in the arm and takes shelter in her barn. I remember being really confused throughout the episode as to what Sam was there to do, becasue obviously, he was not there for his great granparents relationship, becasue he would not have been born if that had not worked out. i figured out later though that he must have been there to assist Olivia's Slave Issac and his family to become free. i loved how Issac turned out to be the ancestor of Martin Luther King.
 
Last edited:
Sam Beckett Fan said:
i have to say this is one of the more interesting since it is the only time Sam is able to leap out of his own lifetime, WAY out. However, he leaped into the lifetime of another Beckett. Captian John Beckett, his great grandfather, and meets his Great grandmother to be when he gets shot in the arm and takes shelter in her barn.
Spoiler Alert! (highlight to read)
i remember being really confused throughout the episode as to what Sam was there to do, becasue obviously, he was not there for his great granparents relationship, becasue he would not have been born if that had not worked out. i figured out later though that he must have been there to assist Olivia's Slave Issac and his family to become free. i loved how Issac turned out to be the ancestor of Martin Luther King.

Maybe it was a paradox? So that would suggest that Sam was predtermted to travel in time.
 
I just saw this episode and am having a hard time working out what he actually changed, it seems all he sorted out was stuff that he caused by leaping in or stuff that eventually sorted itself.

First of all as others have stated, he wasn't there to keep his Great-Grandfather and Olivia together or to even keep her from being hanged, as she must have survived at least 9 more months to have a child.

The only other thing that was involved in the episode was the slaves that were being hidden. However there is a paradox stuck in my mind that the slaves must have been fine in original history because Issac went on to be a relative of Martin Luther King, a name both Sam and Al recognised and knew about before the leap.
Infact I'm Martin Luther King is mentioned in an earlier episode, possibly 'Black on White on Fire' .
 
I actually watched this episode last night, and was wondering the same thing. Maybe it wasn't something obvious. Maybe Sam was there to help those slaves Isaac was assisting when the confederate soldiers arrived. The slaves may have originally escaped with John Beckett's help, but Sam was able to tell them army locations that helped them avoid captured. Maybe, originally, they were recaptured. Just a thought.

The other thing that struck me about the episode was the flag in the beginning. I only saw it briefly, but it looked like it had all fifty stars. I can't remember what Civil War era flags look like, but I don't recall them having so many stars.
 
Well I seen this only once. It was hard for me to take it all in. I did like it, but I would like to see it again. I was just a "kid" when I first seen it. I don't remember how Sam was able to go outside his own life time? or why he would need to. Think I need to rent season 5.
 
Well this episode defently had its moments,but as a full episodes i found it no more then Average. My main problem with this episode is what were mentioned before me - Sam mission. i think no Sam nor Al and nor Ziggy knew why sam leaped to 1862. The only one who might know why Sam were there is Richard C. Okie - The writer of this episode,but i think he forgot to tell the ansewer to the viewers...
BTW i gotta say - after seeing this episode,today i can't stop wonder if Richard C. Okie got some of his inspiration for this episode from the "Back to the Future" Trilogy...:)

BTW i also didn't really likethe ending with all the Martin Luther King's thing in this episode.
 
I'm too lazy to rewrite an explanation of this episode, so, if you'll forgive me, I'll cut and paste from another thread (the Evil Leaper/Bad Fanfic discussion). I'm including jmoniz's comment, which is what I was responding to, in order for it to make sense.

Quote:
"The Leap Between the States" is a fifth season episode and it never gives any clear indication of the purpose of Sam's leap. It can't be to make sure his great grandparents get together. If that hadn't happened originally he would never existed. The only other thing we're led to believe is that the purpose was to either make sure MLK's ancestor escaped to freedom or that he took the name "King". Again, though, it's already established in the first season that both of these things must have happened since Martin Luther King exists and both Sam and Al know of him.
I'm fine with the third possibility, that the slave family (who was not, I think, related to Isaac) was discovered by the Confederate patrol and returned to their owners in the original history. I think John Beckett did everything Sam did (got shot, went to Livvy's farm, saw the slaves, kept quiet about it), but it was Sam who devised the scheme of getting the watchmen drunk, and it was Al who figured out the route they should take to freedom (avoiding Confederate troops based on where the next couple of battles would occur). That is, I think, the point of diversion from the original history. Isaac was always going to be freed by Lincoln's Proclamation. I would imagine he would still feel like a "King" about that, without Sam's pep talk about how things were going to change in the future. I think the subtlety comes in because normally, Al has a wrap up regarding the people Sam is there to save, not some other character. But the point of the Underground Railroad (and the slave family was simply the last "passengers" to go through this particular "station," Livvy's farm) was that the slaves literally disappeared into the North. Ziggy would have no record to access to give an update. So if we're focused on the characters who get the update, we might think that Isaac is the focus of the Leap, or John and Livvy. But they're not. The family is. And we'll never know how they went on to change our history, or why GTFW wanted that particular wrong made right, because we don't know who they are.

Perhaps an ancestor of that family went on to become a senator, or an astronaut, or a doctor. Because of the nature of slavery in this country (with close to a million people never having a birth record and having their family names changed at the whim of their owners), we will never know.
 
Ironiclly, in light of the evil leaper mention, I think that's exactly where the possible mission has come from.

We know that Lothos can recruit new leapers and new vistiors, so it's not that far fetched to presume that quite possible, something had already happened somewhere else along the timestream to affect Sam's Grandparents, or even Isaac.

I mean we know that Lothos views Sam as a priority target so why wouldn't he go after Sam in some way- especially as unlike Sam's leaps where the entity controlling them is never really known (even in the last episode), Lothos seems to be in complete control of the leapers.

Furthermore, as Alia seems to be one in a line of Leapers, it is not out of the question that the leap which potentially caused all the trouble was done by one of her predecessors and that Martin Luther King's ancestor was the target.
 
Ironiclly, in light of the evil leaper mention, I think that's exactly where the possible mission has come from.

We know that Lothos can recruit new leapers and new vistiors, so it's not that far fetched to presume that quite possible, something had already happened somewhere else along the timestream to affect Sam's Grandparents, or even Isaac.

I mean we know that Lothos views Sam as a priority target so why wouldn't he go after Sam in some way- especially as unlike Sam's leaps where the entity controlling them is never really known (even in the last episode), Lothos seems to be in complete control of the leapers.

Furthermore, as Alia seems to be one in a line of Leapers, it is not out of the question that the leap which potentially caused all the trouble was done by one of her predecessors and that Martin Luther King's ancestor was the target.

I doubt that - if there was another leaper somewhere there changing history, Ziggy would have sensed the changes in history. Also, I never had a problem with the reason Sam leapt there - I always just thought it was to help the slave family to escape...
 
Having read some of the fanfics in the Virtual Seasons, I like how this leap canonically gives us ways that Sam could leap out of his own lifetime or leap into situations that we normally wouldn't think he could. I especially liked the fanfic where he leapt into Ziggy (which he could do because of his genetic link with the brainwaves).

I also think that it makes perfect sense that Sam or Al would really know what to do in this leap, because Ziggy was only loaded with information from Sam's own lifetime. It's quite possible that they couldn't get records from this era, and so is the first leap really where Sam and Al are flying blind. A precursor to what happens after Mirror Image perhaps...
 
Having read some of the fanfics in the Virtual Seasons, I like how this leap canonically gives us ways that Sam could leap out of his own lifetime or leap into situations that we normally wouldn't think he could. I especially liked the fanfic where he leapt into Ziggy (which he could do because of his genetic link with the brainwaves).

The leaping into Ziggy fic sounds really interesting. Do you remember the title of it or which of the Virtual Seasons it's in? I started reading a couple of the VS fics but haven't gotten very far in yet, and I got side-tracked by novels and a novel-length fanzine :).
 
Sorry, I can't remember what it was called, and I looked...

On an entirely different topic, who thinks that Obama might be a descendant of the slave family? :p
 
This is a very interesting leap that opens up new possibilities for Sam's Locus of Control.
We are given the concept that Sam was able to leap very much outside his own lifetime here, the Civil War in the 1800's because the leapee is his own great grandfather. This is debatable for two reasons.

1.) On Average we share 12.3% of our DNA with our great grandparents but it's more likely less than that due to the random nature of DNA swapping during recombination which can result in giving us more from one set of parents, grandparents etc. than the other.
So though I am unsure for certain, it seems probable to me that the chances of PQL being able to pick out pieces matching Captain John Beckett in Sam's DNA are slim to none because they wouldn't have a strong presence. So that test would have been more believable coming out as inconclusive.

Source: http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask445

One could also wonder where they managed to obtain a sample of Sam's DNA. While the novels use the notion that he and Al's connection in the imaging chamber is established from their having contributed brain/nerve cells to Ziggy (And it IS established that Sam and Al have the strongest connection to each other when Gooshie was unable to connect as clearly in Killin' Time), that's never discussed in the show.

2.) When it's established in Mirror Image that Sam can take control of his leaping based on what he believed he could do, the possibility that he could will himself outside his lifetime was opened up. This notion and with the match between Sam and Captain John Beckett's DNA being possibly unfindable, who knows? There's no clear motive for it but perhaps somewhere in his mind while he was leaping out of The Misfits set (Goodbye Norma Jean) he could have entertained the possibility/desire and willed it to him.

Alright taking a break from the intellectualness, Sam's reaction to Olivia Covington being his Great Grandmother/Captain John Beckett's future wife was priceless! Olivia Covington was certainly a stubborn, no-nonsense woman but also quite strong and independent for her time. Feminism in America was just beginning with the first movement having been in 1848 and being widowed had motivated her to stand up and defend herself and her home rather than being anxious to re-marry.

Since Sam's great grandparents successful descended into himself and his siblings and Isaac had to continue the line leading to Martin Luther King Jr, it was unclear what he was there to do but my best guess was for the slave family that Isaac was hiding. It's believable which I appreciate amongst all these somewhat gimmick like elements and again we revisit Sam's control over the leaps. Another angle there is that a lot of the time he himself may be deciding what the wrong in the situation he's placed in is and thus to make it his focus. Notice how most of the time when he pits his gut against Ziggy it always wins (not exactly the fairest match since a computer can't have gut feelings but still). Here helping that slave family is what he was set on doing. He'd decided on that mission before being told to do anything.
This is a possibility also present in The Leap Back which also supports Sam's ability to will himself to further back before his lifetime. He explains that he can leap into 1945 to save Al because the simul-Leap gave them pieces of each other and thus part of him was Al. Another option however is that it was the will to save Al's life, that same will to save the life of a loved one that had pretty clearly led him to the BRAVO squad in ...Vietnam.

Sam being more technical than spiritual in his beliefs however, not to mention having inherited plenty of his father's stubbornness would of course only look at it from the scientific perspective. He's presented as being more comfortable what could be proven, what he found to be the most logical.

Let's go back to Isaac. We remember that actor in a lesser role in season 1's Color of Truth as Jesse Tyler's son Willis Tyler but this one was a lot stronger. The expression of seriousness that he always had was very powerful and a lot of his character actually resembled his descendent, MLK.
In fact Olivia's loyalty to Isaac thus her sympathy for blacks and her stubbornness are all traits that Sam, her great grandson shares with her. So there is another reason that their DNA test shouldn't have been so easy, it seems Sam may share more with Olivia than with Captain John. Interesting Al didn't pick up on that from her attitude, that's a conversation I would have enjoyed haha!

Overall, a good episode.
 
Last edited:
I wonder at what point that Lt. Montgomery was onto Sam. Probably he knew the first time they met, when he saw the bullet wound, and then saw the jacket in the barn with a bullet hole matching the wound.

It's still not clear though what Sam's mission was. John and Libby met just fine, and obviously Isaac was fine, because if he's MLK's ancestor then things must have worked out.

The only thing I could think of was that his original mission was helping the runaways, and that he changed history when he got shot and Libby took him in.
 
Al claims Ziggy was tracking the leap when suddenly Sam fell off the space time continuum. It doesn't usually work that way. They usually find Sam by questioning the Leapee.
 
Al claims Ziggy was tracking the leap when suddenly Sam fell off the space time continuum. It doesn't usually work that way. They usually find Sam by questioning the Leapee.

They probably have a lot of backup plans incase questioning the Leapee is not possible. This would be one such time - the Leapee in question would only say that his name is John.
 
I concur with Lightning.

It's been established that, sensibly given the circumstances, more than one leapee has arrived in an unstable or unfocused condition to answer questions such as the mentally ill leapee in 'Shock Theater' and the death row inmate leapee in 'Last Dance Before an Execution' who was in a comatose stupor because his body was made to believe it was dead.
Then there was the one unique situation of 'The Wrong Stuff' in which the leapee was inhuman so unable to speak English.

Also recall that they as well suffer from the swiss-cheese effect.
Ex. Liz Tate, from 'Revenge of the Evil Leaper': (paraphrasing) "Carol Benning? I can't even remember my own last name, how am I am I supposed to remember who murdered Carol Benning?!".

Any information the leapee can provide does make it easiest but is only a fraction of the process. Sam's brainwaves are also a necessity which 'Shock Theater' illustrates when they'd nearly lost all contact with him due to his brain being scrambled by the electroshock treatment.
Sam was even located without there even being a leapee in 'Mirror Image' though that arguably took place in his subconscious while in the void between leaps.