Hypnotizing a Formerly Evil Time Traveler

Note: This isn't the only example of hypnosis from the Quantum Leap series. I just recently did a post about a therapist engaged in unethical hypnosis so I'll save the "Dreams" episode for another time.

There once was a show on the NBC network titled Quantum Leap. The series was about a scientist named Dr. Samuel Beckett (Scott Bakula). Dr. Beckett was so brilliant that he ignored all warnings of danger after funding for his project was yanked and sent himself randomly through time. That'll show them!

Technically it was his mind which was sent through time. His body was left in the late 1990s like a Beanie Baby and the person's mind he switched with in the past was sent forward in time to the scientist's body.

The time traveler body swapped at the beginning of each episode. Dr. Beckett was then stuck in that body and time period "striving to put right what once went wrong". For the most part the time traveler did fix everything except the final season of the series. I guess some train wrecks are just destined to happen.

Anyway, between body swapping with JFK's assassin, Elvis Presley, Dr. Ruth and a ufologist Dr. Beckett had the time (get it, time travel?) to both meet and reform an evil time traveler named Alia (Renée Coleman). After the recently introduced Freaky Friday chrononaut changed her ways they both ended up in the bodies of prisoners serving time in a women's prison accused of murdering a fellow inmate. No good deed goes unpunished.

The two temporal nomads have another problem. The formerly evil time traveler wasn't working freelance. She was part of a time travel project devoted to ruining people's lives. Sort of like Scientology but slightly less malicious. An artificial intelligence named Lothos had the ability to scan across time and lock onto Alia's brainwaves. Once Lothos successfully detected her brainwaves another evil time traveler named Zoey(Carolyn Seymour) who used to be Alia's holographic observer would body swap with someone in the prison and kill Alia.

I swear this is all from the TV series and not dianetics.org.

The two time travelers posing as prisoners were able to talk a guard into letting them have five minutes of privacy in a janitorial room. That's two minutes short of seven minutes in heaven so the guard knew the purpose was only to talk about the murder the two are accused of amongst themselves.

Once the two were in the closet as much as Tom Cruise they had to devise a way to alter Alia's brainwave pattern so Lothos couldn't locate her. Sam's holographic observer showed up and after consulting through a handlink with their project's artificial intelligence the hologram suggested hypnosis.

Dr. Beckett hypnotized Alia to assume the persona of the prisoner she was already posing as so that her brainwaves would become the prisoner's until she heard the word "Rumpelstiltskin". That included all of the prisoner's fears. One of those being claustrophobia and since one of the guards was especially sadistic that didn't go very well for Alia.

Image Source: Quantum Leap