My memories of Quantum Leap, Frequency and Deep Space Nine were originally supposed to be added to the postscript. However on reflection I decided to just stick with my Doctor Who memories and their connection to my father. 

A FATHER IN TIME AND SPACE

“I have loved Science Fiction for as long as I can remember. Even before my father’s death some of my most memorable memories in the genre have revolved around father and child relationships. In every case, about a son or daughter travelling back in time to save their father”

Frequency

Frequency was a 2000 American science fiction thriller film. It was co-produced and directed by Gregory Hoblit and written and co-produced by Toby Emmerich. The film stars Dennis Quaid and Jim Caviezil as father and son, Frank and John Sullivan respectively.

John Sullivan’s Father 

‘What if you had the chance to travel back in time and change just one event in your life? What would it be? For John Sullivan, there is no question. He would undo the events of October 12, 1969, when his father, a heroic fire-fighter dies. Now John may get exactly what he wished for – and much more than he bargained for.’

 A rare atmospheric phenomenon allows a New York City fire-fighter to communicate with his son 30 years in the future via HAM radio. The son uses this opportunity to warn the father of his impending death in a warehouse fire, and manages to save his life. However, what he does not realise is that changing history has triggered a new set of tragic events including the murder of his mother. The two men must now work together, 30 years apart, to find the murderer before he strikes so that they can change history again.

*

Quantum Leap

 Quantum Leap was an American television series that originally aired on NBC for five seasons from March 1989 through May 1993. Created by Donald P. Bellisario, it starred Scott Bakula as Dr. Sam Beckett, a Physicist who leaps through space-time during an experiment in time travel, by temporarily taking the place of other people in order to correct historical mistakes. Dean Stockwell co-starred as Admiral Al Calavicci, Sam’s womanising, cigar-smoking companion and best friend, who appears to him as a hologram. 

‘Theorising that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished…He woke 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.’

Sam Beckett’s Father

John was named after his grandfather and was a kind honest hard-working dairy farmer, who loved and respected his wife, Thelma Louise Beckett. Sam, Tom and Katie were the children of John and Thelma. John worked on the dairy farm, sixteen hours a day and seven days a week. However, he also used to smoke many cigarettes a day but then claim he was healthy because he worked hard, slept well, and ate plenty of dairy products. Unfortunately, this would not prevent the fatal heart attack that would kill him.

In the episode ‘The Leap Home, Part I’, Sam tries to make his father stop smoking but fails to convince him to change his diet or even start exercising. Thus, in the original sequence, John would still die in 1973 from the fatal heart attack. This would still bring about a sequence of events that would adversely affect the whole family. However, these events changed after Sam leapt into his own family circumstances in 1971, and was finally able to help change things for the better (with the exception of Tom, who still initially died in Vietnam, until Sam leapt into his unit as a Marine officer in ‘The Leap Home, Part II Vietnam’). As John finally listened to his son’s advice, a future bad marriage for Sam’s little sister Katie was also avoided. In the changed sequence, John was still alive in 1999.

‘Well, a boy can’t feel about his Dad the way you do without his knowing it.’

John Becket to Sam Beckett

Genesis

 End of Series

‘Dr. Sam Becket never returned home.’

Mirror Image

**

Star Trek : Deep Space Nine

Deep Space Nine was an American science fiction television series set in the Star Trek Universe. The show was set in the Milky Way Galaxy, in the years 2369-2375. In contrast to the setting of the other Star Trek TV shows, it took place on a space station instead of a star ship, (the star ship USS Defiant was introduced in season three, but the station remained the primary setting for the show). The stable wormhole discovered by the Deep Space Nine crew was known to the Bajoran people as the Celestial Temple of their Prophets. Commanding Officer Benjamin Sisko, initially discovered the wormhole and its inhabitants. Therefore he became the Emissary of Bajoran Prophecy. The other end of the wormhole lay in the Gamma Quadrant, halfway around the galaxy from Bajor. That section of Space was dominated by the malicious and malevolent Dominion. The Dominion were led by the Changelings, a race of shape shifters to which Odo belonged.

Jake Sisko’s Father

‘The Visitor’ is the third episode of fourth series of the American science fiction television programme Star Trek : Deep Space Nine, first broadcast on 9^th October 1995. It was written by Michael Taylor and directed by David Livingston.

After a freak accident in the engine room of the Defiant claims the life of Benjamin Sisko, Jake Sisko lives out his life in an endless quest to locate his father.

Years later and now an old man living alone, Jake is visited by Melanie an aspiring writer who considers Jake to be her favourite author of all time. Surprised that Jake published only two works; Melanie asks why he stopped writing at 40. Jake tells her how his father died in an accident and then suddenly reappeared.

Many years previously Benjamin and Jake went to watch the wormhole undergo a subspace inversion that only happens once in several decades. Something went wrong though and the warp core of the Defiant began to breach. After repairing it, Benjamin was hit by a beam and disappeared. A few months later when things began returning to normal for Jake, he suddenly found his father in his bedroom, only to disappear a few moments later. But this would not be the only time his father would reappear and then disappear in his life again.

‘It begins many years ago. I was eighteen. And the worst thing that could ever happen to a young man happened to me. My father died.’

Adult Jake Sisko

‘I didn’t step forward. I couldn’t. I felt that no matter what I said about him, I’d be leaving so much more out; and that didn’t seem right.’

Adult Jake Sisko to Melanie

‘Let go, Jake. If not for yourself, then for me. You still have time to make a better life for yourself. Promise me you’ll do that… Promise me!’

Benjamin Sisko, imploring Jake to let him go

‘To my father, who’s coming home.’

Benjamin Sisko, reading the dedication in Jake’s last book

‘For you, and for the boy that I was. He needs you more than you know. Don’t you see? We’re going to get a second… chance.’

Jake Sisko, explain himself to his father with his last words 

‘You OK, Dad?’

‘I am now, Jake. I am now.’

Jake Sisko, after Benjamin avoids the accident

As they return home together, Benjamin Sisko gains a greater appreciation for his son, knowing he would have given up his life for his father, even though this future Jake would cease to exist due to his sacrifice of himself to save his father.

End of Series

Benjamin Sisko resides in the Celestial Temple

What You Leave Behind