John Beckett

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Captain John Beckett (played in cameo look-in-the mirror appearance by bit actor Rob Hyland), of the Union Army. In the Season 5 episode "The Leap Between The States", Dr. Samuel Beckett, as his ancestor, Capt. Beckett, while helping the underground railroad smuggle a family to freedom in 1862 Virginia, must also win the heart of who turns out to be his future great-grandmother Olivia Barrett Covington (played by Kate McNeil), or he may be erased from existence.

About Sam's leap into John

Sam leaps into John, his great grandfather, in order to help keep the relationship between John and Olivia, at age 24, who's an already-once widowed war bride and native Virginian who tacitly sympathizes with the cause of escaped slaves who are trying to venture north via The Underground Railroad. Sam, as John, his grandfather, must try to help kindle, then keep alive, the relationship which develops between John and Olivia, who, in the original storyline, was to fall in love with John and move North, marry, with Olivia eventually becoming Sam's great grandmother.

As Sam looks into a living room mirror, he sees his great-grandpa John played by bit actor Rob Hyland.

More Trivia

The episode 'The Leap Between the States' was one of only two episodes of the show where the perpetual time-traveler Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) leaped out of his lifetime, this time jumping into the American Civil War in 1862. Here he assumes the identity of John, his great-grandfather and must woo his great grandmother Olivia, deal with the slavery issue, protect the Covington servant/slave Issac King (played by Michael D. Roberts, and who in the storyline is the great grandfather of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.) and fend off an evil Confederate officer, Lt. Montgomery (Geoffrey Lower) who attempts to force himself on Olivia, against her wishes.