Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the quantum leap accelerator and vanished. He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so, Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home.

Future Boy

• Sam finds himself dressed in quasi-futuristic clothing.
• He’s with an older man, similarly dressed, who orders him to activate the time machine.
• There are a lot of flashing lights and strange noises as the alleged time machine begins to shake…
• October 6, 1957
• The older man calls Sam “Future Boy.”
• Fitting, if you think about it…
• The two of them exit the “time machine” and Sam finds himself on a soundstage filming a TV show.
• He’s not great at reading the cue cards…
• Apparently, this show is depicting what they believe 1987 will look like.
• The lead, Captain Galaxy, goes off book and speaks directly to the children watching the show, telling them that this vision of the future is just one man’s twisted view of what the world will look like.
• Behind the camera, the producer is losing his mind over the changes.
• Once the show ends, the producer yells about Captain Galaxy going off script.
• The older man’s response is that they shouldn’t be teaching kids that the world is nothing but endless violence.
• The producer just says kids love violence… And the actor says that’s only because we teach them to love violence.
• He’s not wrong.
• Sam’s co-star is named Moe, an accomplished actor who isn’t thrilled about the role he’s currently playing.
• Sam asks him if he’s afraid of losing his job, but Moe just says he won’t be around much longer anyway.
• Al arrives and Sam is able to talk to him alone in the dressing room for a while.
• Sam is a young actor named Kenny Sharp and there’s a 96.2% chance he’s there to save Moe’s life.
• Sometime after noon tomorrow he is killed trying to hop a freight train.
• But Ziggy says the only way to really save Moe is to have him committed to a mental institution.
• In the original history, Moe’s daughter tries to have him committed and he runs out of the hearing and is killed by the train.
• Sam wonders if the problem isn’t with Moe… what if the problem is Irene, the daughter?
• Moe asks Sam to take Irene out of the building and buy her a soda, just long enough for him to sneak away.
• Irene tells Sam that her father is a sick man and being institutionalized is the best thing for him.
• The reasons she provides are pretty convincing.
• Sam does some digging and finds that Irene is holding a lot of grudges over her father never being there over the years… even being absent from her mother’s funeral.
• Just as it looks like Sam is getting through to her, the production assistant comes out to get him for a live commercial that he has to do.
• Irene just hands him a letter and asks Sam to give them to Moe.
• The letter is likely an order to appear in court, which Moe initially ignored, leading to the commitment.
• Sam visits Moe at home and can easily assume from his housekeeping skills that commitment might not be far off…
• Moe emerges from his basement and Sam tries to convince him to meet with the doctor so he can convince the court that he doesn’t need to be committed.
• Moe says he doesn’t need a doctor… he just needs another 24 hours.
• Then he takes Sam to the basement and shows him the time machine he’s been working on.
• Moe has been working on his own real time machine.
• Then he begins to quote Sam’s own time travel/string theory to him and Sam is convinced that Moe knows what he’s talking about…
• Sometime later, Captain Galaxy and Future Boy have to make an appearance at a roller rink.
• During a Q&A session, a little kid asks if they could go back in time two weeks and lock the gate so his dog doesn’t get out and get hit by a car.
• Talk about breaking your heart…
• Moe freezes and Sam takes over to say they already went back and talked to the kid’s dog… the dog misses him, but he’s happy.
• Later, Moe says he should have told the kid the truth… that he would go back and close the gate.
• Because he’s still convinced that this time tomorrow he will have traveled in time.
• Irene confronts them at the rink and Sam convinces her to bring the doctor to Moe’s for dinner.
• Moe begins to win the doctor over by cooking a really good meal.
• While Moe talks with the doctor, Sam tries to convince Irene to end all of this and take time to get to know her father.
• Then it all falls apart when Moe decides to show the doctor his time machine.
• But when he turns it on, things start to explode…
• It doesn’t go well.
• Sam waits for Moe the next day and is disappointed to see him come out of his house wearing a pyramid for a hat…
• Moe is still convinced he won’t be committed because he’s “not crazy” and he’ll be leaving (time traveling) after the hearing.
• He wants Sam to represent him in the hearing.
• Sam tries to pull a Miracle on 34th Street by having the PA bring in bags of fan letters for Captain Galaxy.
• He gives the judge an impassioned speech, but it’s not enough.
• The judge agrees with Dr. Sandler and Irene, recommending that he be confined to a psychiatric hospital for the next six months.
• Before the doctor can escort Moe to the hospital, he jumps out the window and runs home.
• Sam convinces Irene to go after him and they get to the basement just as Moe gets his machine up and running.
• He very nearly leaps as we see him turn the same electric blue that Sam experiences every episode.
• Disappointed that it didn’t work, Moe tells Irene that he intended to go back and spend more time with her and her mother.
• Moe regrets his entire acting career… he wants those 30 years back.
• He tells her he wanted to change one moment that would have kept him from becoming the actor he was.
• He wants them to be a family…
• Irene, in tears, tells him that they are a family.
• At the end of the next episode of Captain Galaxy’s show, he tells his audience that he’ll be going away for a while.
• Al tells Sam that he goes to live with Irene and entertains kids in the neighborhood with tales from the future.
• Moe reads one last fan letter that happens to be from little Sam Beckett in Indiana, who asks about the possibility of time travel.
• Then Sam leaps into a male stripper who is temporarily dressed as Zorro…
• Oh boy.