Created by Donald Bellisario, this TV show centers around a scientist from who gets lost in time after an experiment goes awry. His only constant companion is a hologram of his friend who can offer him advice and and historical context.

Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) leaps into the bodies of certain troubled people. He doesn’t know anything about them and also doesn’t have much memory of his own life since traveling through time causes Sam’s brain to become “swiss-cheesed.” To all others living in that time, he appears to truly be that person.

They can’t however see his best friend, former astronaut Admiral Al Calavicci (Dean Stockwell), who travels to each destination along with Sam in the form of a hologram. It’s Al who provides Sam with most of his information, filling in the holes of the person’s life where he can. Together, they try to figure out why Sam has lept into a particular person and what he needs to accomplish or change so that he can leap again.

They’re never sure exactly what problems need to be solved and just keep trying until Sam leaps out of that person and into the next, in a different time, a different place, and a different person. Their hope is that his next leap will bring Sam home.

It’s unknown exactly what force keeps guiding Sam in his leaps through time but there seem to be some rules. Sam’s time travels seem to be limited to the years of his own life, roughly from the 1950’s to the 1980’s. While he can change minor points in history, it doesn’t seem that he can change or prevent major events.

Some of Sam’s more interesting adventures include leaping into a very pregnant young girl, a trapeze artist, an elderly black man in the pre-Civil Rights South, an actor while onstage, a chimp in the space program, a blind concert pianist, and even a teenage version of himself.