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"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:
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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)
Miscellaneous
Trivia: The script for this episode is the only one writen by a guest star from the series. During the original broadcast, this episode Leaped Sam into "Memphis Melody", but was changed to "The Leap Between the States" instead the following week.
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.
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Sean Gregory Sullivan (Roy) has appeared in such movies as "Back to the Future 3", "Who's that Girl?" and "Wayne's World". He has also appeared in the TV-movies "Melanie Darrow" and "RFK". His TV credentials include a recurring role in "Roomies", as well as guest appearances in "The Bronx Zoo", "Caroline in the City", "Babylon 5" and "Fame". Pat Skipper (Luke) 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". David Tom (Daniel) appeared in such movies as "Stay Tuned", "Swing Kids", "Roommates" and "Pleasantville". He has also appeared in such TV-movies as "A Place to be Loved", "Summertime Switch", "The 60's" and "Holy Joe". Among his TV credentials are a recurring guest role in "The Young and the Restless", as well as guest appearances in such shows as "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" and "Party of Five". Eileen Seeley (Karen) appeared in such movies as "Creature", "Molly and Gina", "The Killers Within", "Batman Forever" and more recently in "Jack Frost" and the sequel "Jack Frost 2". She has also appeared in such TV-movies as "A Dangerous Affair", "In the Shadows, Someone's Watching" and "Ruby Jean and Joe". Her TV guest credentials include appearances in "Who's the Boss?", "Family Ties", "The Facts of Life", "Murder She Wrote" and "ER". David Denney (Deputy Curtis) appeared in such movies as "Under Cover", "Rush Week" and "Shadow Force", as well as in such TV-movies as "Pointman", "A Mother's Gift" and "A Promise to Carolyn". His TV guest appearances include "Walker, Texas Ranger" and "Coach". Mike Jolly (Henry's Mirror Image) appeared in minor roles in such movies as "Creator", "Bad Guys", "Sister Act", "Clean Slate" and "Forrest Gump". He also appeared in recurring roles on the TV series "Fresno" and "Dirty Dozen". Among his TV guest appearances are Bellisario's "JAG", as well as "Murder She Wrote", "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Facts of Life".
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Review: 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. Synopsis: 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.
Best Line:
Best Scene: (The four young soldiers' sweep-and-destroy mission in Vietnam - August 6th, 1968) John: I'm gonna level this place. (Luke returns from having surveyed the hooch) What've you got? Luke: Nothing. Just an old man, let's go. John: Wait a second. Hey, we got orders to secure this village, that's what we're gonna do. Luke: John, it's just an old man. John: There's no young or old anymore. There's just us and them. Luke (determinedly, half-challenging): Can't do it. John (quiet, disbelieving): What did you say?! Luke: You heard me. I can't kill any more people like that. Roy: Look, John, maybe he's right. I mean, maybe we oughtta move it on outta here and let them flyboys just scorch the joint. Henry: Yeah… I'm all for that. I got a bad feeling about this place. (A moment of silence) John: No. Command says this is a VC supply point, and we're to secure it. Luke (bursts out): You still don't get it, man -- John: That's an order, sergeant! Luke (shrugs it off dismissively): That doesn't matter. John: It *does* matter!! (Silence. desperately) it has to matter! Luke: Then you do it. (John stares at him. Luke stares back) (Without a word, John shoulders his rifle and moves out towards the hooch. Luke, Henry and Roy step back to wait for him some distance away. The moment John passes through the doorway, the hooch explodes. Flames rise up to the night sky) Luke (maddened by grief, makes to run towards the flaming hooch but is restrained by Henry and Roy): John!! John!! (The remains of the hooch collapse into the flames)
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.
Quotable Quotes: Sam: 'Morning. (the deer looks up, startled at the sound of his voice) Can I get you anything? (the deer turns its head and saunters away. Sam smiles) Guess not. ---- (Roy and Daniel have settled on the rocky ledge above the riverbank. Al pops in to watch over them until Sam arrives) Daniel: My mom would probably be mad at me now. Al (to Roy): Why don't you tell him to go home? Roy (to Daniel): Sometimes a boy gotta break away from his mama. Al (irritably): On second thought, don’t say anything!
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