Grimlock said:
Sorry, but i don't buy it. You have to remember that Al is NOT THERE (he is in the future). I can buy the fact that there might be a devil controlling the time and place that Sam had leapt into, but the far and distant future? Uhhmmm..no!
Well, this is a tough one... It appears we can't have it both ways.
Scenario 1: It was all a dream and Sam had a psychic premonition, thereby resulting in his d?j? vu with Tully's death.
Scenario 2: GFTW intervened with the leap and saved Sam because the Devil was too powerful to defeat. Sam ends up back at the beginning of the leap with knowledge of everything that occurred, yet Al appears and has no recollection. (But note that he is also wearing the SAME clothes as he did in the previous history/dream, which suggests further that it actually happened.) This would also be a contradiction with "Deliver Us From Evil" because when that leap was reset, BOTH Sam and Al had a recollection of the previous history.
Obviously, the episode is leading the audience to believe that it was all a dream. So if this is the case, Sam had to have had a psychic premonition. No way around that. But I just don't buy that scenario. Sam was many things: A genius, a physicist, a doctor, etc., but NOT a psychic.
So, I think something more was going on. Al had no recollection of the leap because it was erased in the past, and therefore he had no corresponding memory of it in the future. (Time changes instantaneously in the present when something is changed in the past [think "Honeymoon Express" and "A Leap For Lisa"].) Since GFTW intervened, He/It could have allowed Sam to remember this alternate history in the same way that only he was able to remember Stawpah in "Mirror Image." The reason being because GFTW wanted to make sure Sam was able to complete his mission without letting him rely on Al.
I think the reason why both Sam and Al were able to remember the alternate history in "Deliver Us From Evil" was because GFTW didn't intervene in that situation, and Sam and Al remembered the history just as they usually do for every leap. It's a bit of a stretch, but the best I can come up with for now...
Grimlock said:
My version would be that the mind of Sam and the person he leapt into became mixed with eachother (because of the fall) and Sam had HIS dream and fantasies.
Two problems with this theory: The mind-merging concept didn't really begin to occur until "Shock Theater." And as I've said a few times on the board, I think the shock treatment Sam received in that episode initiated all of the subsequent mind-merges.
Secondly (and more importantly), how could Joshua possibly have a memory of Tully's death if he had leaped out
before it actually happened? If Sam's mind was indeed merged, yes, he could know who Tully was, but he wouldn't be able to know that he was about to die on the ladder.
Grimlock said:
Besides, it's never explained why he only had to save Tulley the second time around (if you presume that the whole episode was about what originally DID happen in the original history........seeing how Sam failed the first time round). Otherwise, Al would have also mentioned the other deaths.
But that's just it:
This time, since God reset the leap, the Devil was no longer there, and it would be a history without the deaths that the Devil kept causing. The way I see it, the first original history only had Tully's death; the second rewritten history had the appearance of the Devil, wreaking havoc because of his anger toward Sam (who only decided to show up as a result of Sam's leaping in time); the third and final history was back to the original one, only with Sam there. And as we all know, history can be changed an infinite number of times, whether it's by Sam or GFTW.
Now the only issue here is...the Devil originally caused Tully's death (he was in the form of a goat, who yanked the ladder that killed Tully). But now without the Devil's interference, Tully slipped and was about to die, yet with no goat there. I suppose it was just a coincidence that Tully would have slipped and died anyway without the Devil's interference. Perhaps the Devil decided that he wanted to do it personally by appearing as the goat, just to toy with Sam and have everyone believe he was nuts when no one else saw the goat ("It was a pattern that seemed to add up, but it didn't").