In this weeks episode of The Quantum Leap Revival, Cory and Tom are taken away to feel their feelings as they discuss season 2 episode 3, Closure Encounters.
Closure Encounters:
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.
Ziggy’s Data Retrieval:
Who is Ben?
Agent Robert Cook
Where is Ben?
Starlight, New Mexico
When is Ben?
1949 (37 year leap back)
Closest Previous leaps-
S01E16 "Ben Interrupted" 1954
Closet location to Sam Beckett-
S03E15 "Piano Man" November 10, 1985 Tularosa, New Mexico
S04E01 “The Leap Back” September 18, 1999 Stallions Gate, New Mexico
S04E17 “Roberto!” January 27, 1982 Destiny, New Mexico
Closet time to Sam Beckett-
S04E01 “The Leap Back” Jun 15, 1945 Crown Point, Indiana
Louis Herthum was Sheriff Morgan. Early on in his career, he played a recurring character in Murder, She Wrote. He carved out a living as a character actor in about 100 credits, with some more recurring roles in True Blood, Longmire, Westworld, What/If (an anthology series which tackles a different morality tale, and the ripple effect of a single decision that changes the trajectory of an entire life), and more recently Home Before Dark (young investigative journalist, Hilde Lisko, moves with her family to the small town her father left behind, only to unearth shocking secrets in her pursuit of the truth, with Jim Sturgess) and The Peripheral (set in the future when technology has subtly altered society, a woman discovers a secret connection to an alternate reality as well as a dark future of her own, with Chloë Grace Moretz).
Eliza Taylor plays Hannah. Early on in her career she was a lead on the Australian soap opera Neighbors: A New Chapter (Australian soap opera exploring the lives and relationships of the residents of Ramsay Street in a suburb of Melbourne called Erinsborough). She was also a lead in the series Pirate Islands (a freak accident sends three Australian kids into a computer-generated world of pirates and swashbuckling heroes. The kids must help a group of adventurers find a buried treasure and a way back to the real world), and Sleepover Club (In an effort to solidify their friendship, five young girls have decided to start a sleepover club, promising that they will take turns having sleepovers once a week). She was the lead in all 100 episodes of The 100 (Set 97 years after a nuclear war destroyed civilization, when a spaceship housing humanity's lone survivors sends 100 juvenile delinquents back to Earth, hoping to repopulate the planet). She was also in an episode of The Orville called “From Unknown Graves” (Doctor Villka and her father discover a Kalon that can experience emotion, and a female led ship with males as underlings). Her most recent credit is the lead in the movie It Only Takes A Night (four best friends on a girl's night out end up on a path none of them expected and find out it really does only take one night to change your life), and I’ll be Watching (after her tech genius husband (Bob Morley) leaves on a work trip, Julie (Eliza Taylor), still mourning the loss of her sister, is trapped in their new, isolated home and must fight her own fears to stay alive).
Alison Thornton played Carrie. She was in The 100 as well, albeit for just 1 episode. She was also in 7 episodes of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (Holistic Detective Dirk Gently investigates cases involving the supernatural), and in 26 episodes of Girlfriends’ Guide To Divorce (follows a best-selling author of a self-help book series who hides her recent separation as she starts to navigate her life as a single woman in her 40s in Los Angeles). She was a supporting cast member in Dare Me (relationships topple and loyalties flip when Colette French, an icy new cheerleading coach, takes over the suburban high school squad ruled by Beth and her devoted BFF, Addy). She was a lead in the movie Caught in His Web (three girls are tormented by a mysterious cyberbully by the name "Blake" who makes them send nude photos, harasses them and tracks their every move, so they decide to seek help from a detective to unmask their harasser), and Girl Gone Bad (when 16-year old Samantha has the house to herself over the weekend, she plans a romantic night for her and her girlfriend. However, when an intruder makes his way into her home, it's fight or flight on a night that will change her life).
William Devry played General Murray. He was a lead in the series InSecurity (set in the fictional National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA), it follows secret agent Alex Cranston and her team of spies as they juggle dates, terrorists, pets, ex-boyfriends and the safety of the nation. The only thing harder than protecting the country is protecting themselves from their own insecurities). He is well known amongst soap opera fans, making the rounds in hundreds of episodes of The Bold and the Beautiful, General Hospital, and All My Children. He was briefly in Stargate SG-1, Outer Limits (1996-2000), and Earth Final Conflict. We have seen him before in the Seaquest season 2 premiere, “Daggers,” where he played Matthew.
Unsung Hero: Uncredited
Kiss with History: Project Sign
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