Written by: Romy Loor
Directed by: Chris Grismer
Airdate: October 18, 2023
Synopsis:
Ben leaps into the body of Special Agent Robert Cook, an agent that investigates UFO sightings for Project Sign. After a brief gnome encounter with a farmer and mischievous kids, Ben finds orders to go to Starlight, New Mexico to investigate Carrie Baker who had a car accident, leaving her friend, Melanie Hunt, in a coma. As Ben drives, Addison asks if he wants to talk, and he guesses that she is with someone new, asking her how long. She responds that it’s been 8 months and will tell him anything he wants to know, but he chooses to focus on the leap instead.
Ben questions Carrie who relays her experience of being run off the road by a bright light after their radio started making weird noises. She remembers telling Melanie to run ahead of her since she was going slower but then fell into a ravine where she hid till morning.
The sheriff shows up and reveals himself to be Carrie’s grandfather. He explains that he found Melanie in her car and not the woods, and explains how for the last year, since her mother died, he has been trying to clean up her messes all over town. Addison points out that the grandfather is hurting but comes from a generation ill equipped to deal with grief, and how to talk to teenage girls about dealing with it. Russell Hunt, the big man in town and Melanie’s father, shows up at the hospital demanding that Sheriff Morgan put his granddaughter in lockup, but the sheriff pushes back against his request. He tells Ben that he hopes he can find something to help his granddaughter out.
Ben goes to the local diner and talks with Hannah, the waitress, who says she believes Carrie because she is just prone to believing crazy things. She reasons that someone from the 1850’s would decry their modern day inventions like planes, atom bombs, yo-yo’s and even the discovery of centrifugal force as witchcraft.
Ben and Morgan go to the crash site, but on their way they are followed by two of Hunt’s men. Morgan whips the car around and plays chicken with them, winning the game as the two men crash their car into the side of the road. After the crazy stunt, Ben realizes that it was the sheriff himself who called in the anonymous tip about the UFO sighting in order to get someone out there to investigate. At the site, Addison finds a partial footprint with Morgan explaining that no hunters come out there and even if they did, why would they brush away all their other tracks.
Addison reasons with Ben that Carrie could have been in shock and that she unintentionally lied about what happened, but Ben won’t hear of it. He goes to visit Carrie and when he says he found something, she has a visible reaction to it and tells him more of what she remembers, including a figure with three green eyes.
Later, Hunt’s men attack Ben but Sheriff Morgan arrives and fires his gun, scaring them off. He warns Ben that if he does help clear Carrie’s name, Hunt might try and kill him himself.
Back at the project, the team investigates Hunt and finds that he is the largest landowner in Starlight, having made his money in oil, but the wells dried up in 1946 and he seemingly is still laden with money. They reason that he could be running drugs, given the increase in Mexican heroin and weed after WW2, while Magic hypothesizes that a helicopter could very well look like a UFO. Magic also pulls Addison aside to suggest someone else should be in the imaging chamber due to Ben becoming very reckless on this leap, but she says that Ben thinks she abandoned him once and doesn’t want him to think she is doing it again.
Ben asks the sheriff if he knows of any military bases nearby, passing along his team’s theories, and together they decide to go investigate Hunt’s land, despite Addison warning him against going due to the approaching night. As they drive and discuss Morgan’s loss of his daughter, and failure to take proper care of Carrie, Ben reveals that he lost his fiancee recently, and that sometimes it’s nobody's fault that these things happen, but the anger still sets in one’s blood like acid. They are suddenly interrupted by a bright light and the radio outputting a strange frequency as they look above for the source. Addison tries to talk to Ben but she is kicked out of the imaging chamber. She asks Ian if it was Janis again, but Janis works for the NSA in Hawaii, and the jamming frequency is coming from Ben’s side. Ben runs from the car for cover, while the sheriff fires on the bright light above. Ben trips and falls, looking up only to see three circular green eyes attacking him.
Later, Ben awakens in a bed, with Addison telling him they don’t know what happened. As they discuss it, she admonishes him for making decisions he never would have made three years ago, but Ben turns on her with anger in his voice as he corrects her that it’s only been three days for him. He says he doesn’t know if he can get the old Ben back, but he knows he can get the lives of Sheriff Morgan and Carrie back, which is all he has to hold onto. Ben and Hannah talk, and she notices he has what looks like a spider bite on his neck. At the hospital they see that Melanie has the same marks on her neck, and they deduce that they must have been drugged, and with Melanie being smaller, the drugs put her into a coma. Carrie is soon discharged and she thanks Ben for believing in her, but he reveals that it was her grandfather who called him in. He tells his granddaughter that he doesn’t believe in UFOs but he believes in her.
Back at the project, Magic knows of a drug called Gamma Blue 5, used in the 40’s and 50’s, and that a counteracting serum was developed as well. The team also manages to work out where Hunt may have a secret military base on his land, narrowing it down to an 1100 square mile area, as well as the name of the general who would officially be in command of such a base.
Ben goes to find the sheriff and tell him what he’s learned, but he tells Ben that he was suspended from duty, and they are coming to arrest Carrie. His plan is to run and hide away, but Addison tells Ben that if they do, they will both get caught and sent to prison. Ben asks the sheriff to give him 6 hours to find a way out for him and he agrees, with Hannah helping to hide Carrie. Morgan recalls some construction on Hunt’s land at one point that he always thought was strange, and together they come up with a plan.
On Hunt’s land, Addison warns Ben against going to the base because of the drugs in his system, but Ben reveals he stole some adrenalin from the hospital to help counteract it. Addison says that she doesn’t want to have to bury him again, but Ben lets loose with his hurt and pain, telling her that no one asked her to do that, and he now has to live with that for the rest of his life. He says he needs her for this plan to work, and asks her to not give up on him again. Suddenly, the three-eyed figure appears and is taken again.
Though groggy, the adrenalin does its job and Ben catches glimpses of things as he is wheeled through a hallway on a gurney. After he awakens in a field, he is found by the sheriff, with Addison nearby.
Later, they meet with General Murray and reveal what they know, as Ben explains he saw the agents with three barreled night vision goggles, an experimental craft, and the doctors joking about their golf game as they injected him with drugs. Morgan reveals he was nearby and got pictures of the abduction and the dumping off, and Addison mentions that she saw plenty more that would be of interest to Congress. Ben and Morgan demand a statement about how the helicopter caused the car crash, the serum to the drugs for Melanie, a new car and full ride scholarship for Carrie, and for them to move their base away from town. General Murray reluctantly agrees.
Ben tells Morgan to talk with Carrie, and share how they feel about each other. Back at the project, Addison says maybe Magic was right about having someone else go into the imaging chamber but Magic says to just give it time, suggesting that no one should go through these things alone, urging her to discuss it further with Tom. He then calls someone on the phone, telling them that this is much harder than he thought it would be.
Ben pays a last visit to Hannah, and she reveals that she actually wanted to be a scientist, even working on the first electromechanical computer during the war. After the war however, the job went away just like most women’s jobs, and she was left trying to figure out what to do next. Recognizing her abilities for this type of work, Ben gives Hannah the name of a professor at Yale who will soon open his physics program to women, and encourages her to find out more about it. Ben leaps, and arrives as someone getting instructions on how to attack a guard, steal a statue, and then light up a place so there are no survivors.
