Season 3

Complete listed story — includes the ending

1. Stairway to Heaven

In 1979, Mary Ann Evans (Lilli Birdsell) drives her car off the road and dies. In the present, a backstep is authorized to keep a train from derailing and poisoning the Colorado River with radioactive waste. Backstepping through pronounced solar flares, Parker somehow brings Evans into the present, alive and well. While Parker and Evans try to understand what's happened and locate Evans' daughter, the sphere has developed a black hole in its hull, and it's growing larger, affecting weather across the globe. After meeting her daughter (Tori McPetrie), Parker brings Evans to NNL, and after she enters the black hole, everything returns to normal.

2. Peacekeepers

UN Peacekeepers arrive to steal a Serb payroll manifest stashed in a burnt-out church but find the church mobbed by refugees and the trio of soldiers is killed by mortar fire. Backstepping to avoid the escalation of hostilities in the region, Parker and Donovan catch the peacekeepers in the act, but are forced to hunker down in the church with the refugees after the mortar fire begins and their truck is shot up. After a thwarted escape attempt and some soul-searching, two of the peacekeepers sacrifice themselves attacking the Serbs and saving the refugees. Parker and Donovan refuse the payroll money as payment for their help.

3. Rhino

Sadie ( Anne Marie DeLuise ), a rogue IRA assassin, first kills a bounty hunter on her tail ( Bob Koherr ) and then the President of Colombia (Dave Adams) at a Washington, D.C. lunch in his honor. The bounty hunter was an antagonistic acquaintance of Parker's in the Navy SEALs: Rhino, and after backstep, the two reluctantly team up to take on Sadie. After twice losing the assassin, Donovan and Ramsey arrive at the Colombian embassy to back up Parker and Rhino. Sadie kidnaps Vukavitch to force Parker's hand, but he and Rhino defuse the attached bomb before chasing and killing Sadie after her failed assassination attempt.

4. The Dunwych Madness

Traveling to Dunwych, Maine, Parker finds the town in a state of disarray. Surviving a town-wide explosion, Parker backsteps to prevent a forgotten munitions depot from exploding and taking out the town. After backstep, Parker, Vukavitch, and Donovan all investigate Dunwych, but find no munitions. As everybody in town goes mad, Mentnor reveals Project Leviathan, a Cold War biological weapons project designed to induce madness in the enemy. In the previous timeline Dunwych was destroyed by FEMA to prevent the spread of Leviathan. With Owsley's (Kevin Christy) help, and despite being infected, Parker succeeds in averting the bombing.

5. Olga's Excellent Vacation

While Vukavitch spends her personal vacation days backpacking around the Wrangell Mountains, a mercenary for North Korea has infiltrated her group to gain access to recon an Alaskan Pipeline pumping station. After a pumping station is bombed by her associates, millions of gallons of oil are spilled, a wildfire is ignited, and Dr. Vukavitch is lost; a backstep is authorized to prevent what is thought to be an accident. After backstep, Talmadge has Parker rendezvous with Vukavitch and her group to keep them safe. Parker stumbles upon the bombers in the woods, and after sending the backpackers away, he and Vukavitch stop the bombing.

6. Deloris Demands

Deloris (Lennie Loftin) has been calling NNL asking for Parker. After he takes the call and brushes her off, she uses his voice to implicate the NSA in a failure of ATC systems that costs thousands of lives. After backstep, Deloris begins tasking Parker over the phone with increasingly dangerous tasks, with which he complies lest she kill people and reveal Project Backstep to the world. Parker deduces that Deloris is actually a man; Owsley unmasks the voice to reveal Deloris as a former NNL employee named Dean Loris (Scott Gilman) with a psychotic break and a grudge. Beaten by Parker, Loris commits suicide rather than be taken in.

7. The Fire Last Time

Convicted terrorist Paul Watson ( Gary Graham ) is freed from a prisoner transport vehicle. After he kills the United States Attorney General (Elan Ross Gibson) in Spokane, Washington, a backstep is authorized to save her. Meanwhile, Parker has been having trouble sleeping due to nightmares about his time in Somalia in 1993 as a Navy SEAL; upon backstep, Parker begins hallucinating that he's back in Somalia, complicating his attempt to complete the mission. Believing Watson to be a squamate named Kipp (Boyan Vukelic), Parker loses Watson during a hallucination but manages to track him down and kill Watson in self-defense.

8. Tracker

Josef Pretzneff ( Peter J. Lucas ) is the brother of Karl Pretzneff, the terrorist killed by Parker in "Pilot". To avenge his brother, Pretzneff has Parker tracked down, kidnapped, interrogated under truth serum, and fitted with a tracker. After a backstep for an unrelated incident, Parker's tracker is picked up by Pretzneff's team who kidnaps the chrononaut, but Pretzneff's lover Petra ( Anna-Louise Plowman ) is killed in a tussle with Vukavitch and Donovan. Learning of Project Backstep from Parker under the truth serum, Pretzneff forces Parker to join him on a backstep to save Petra. Parker lands two of them back at NNL, ambushes Pretzneff, and kills him.

9. Top Dog

A Pakistani intelligence satellite is destroyed by a hacked Strategic Defense Initiative satellite. Meanwhile, Talmadge suffers an apparent mental breakdown in front of the Project Backstep team and is removed from his position by the NSA panel. In the interim, Ramsey is appointed director of operations and he immediately appoints Donovan as the new primary chrononaut. Caught attempting an unauthorized backstep, Parker is returned to the asylum at Hansen Island. After Talmadge dies, Ramsey realizes he's been put into place as a patsy for the NSA panel, and he authorizes Parker to backstep, save Talmadge, and catch the satellite hacker.

10. Adam & Eve & Adam

While Parker, Vukavitch, and Owsley are 600 feet (180 m) underground in Boulder, Colorado analyzing data, a Los Alamos weapons experiment wipes humanity from the planet. Parker and Vukavitch were safe underground, but Owsley was en route to the surface when the weapon hit, exposing him to dangerous levels of radiation. As they travel the almost 900 miles (1,400 km) to Never Never Land to undo the accident, Owsley becomes increasingly dangerous, obsessing about Vukavitch and sabotaging their vehicles. Finally, despite Owsley's psychopathic attempt at sabotage, Parker successfully backsteps and stops the weapons test.

11. Head Case

The president ( Holmes Osborne ) has been seeing a psychiatrist ( Christina Moore ) about nightmares stemming from a plan to eliminate Peruvian president Manuel Escalante (Sal Landi). Escalante's men kidnap the therapist, obtain the recordings of the president's sessions, and blackmail the president. After a backstep to secure the psychiatrist, Parker discovers that the men who were to kidnap her are FBI agents. Framed for the kidnapping, Parker later uncovers that the conspiracy leads to the White House Chief of Staff ( Francis Guinan ). Despite being captured, Parker manages to expose the Chief of Staff and his plan to the president.

12. Raven

When a White Sands missile is commandeered and kills top military brass, a backstep is authorized to prevent a prototype of the missile's guidance intelligence cube from being stolen in London. The thief for hire was Raven ( Bobbie Phillips ), and after backstep, Parker intercepts her posing as her support. After securing the goods, Parker's cover is blown and Raven escapes with the cube. Raven uses the cube to try and exact revenge on Alexander Trevaine ( Hrothgar Mathews ), her employer, but loses him and the cube. With Donovan and Owsley's assistance, Parker and Raven catch up to Trevaine and re-secure the cube.

13. The First Freshman

When the president's daughter, Deedee Maxwell ( Elizabeth Bogush ), is killed at a rave, Parker is sent back to supplant her Secret Service bodyguard and keep an eye on her. Parker intercepts Maxwell streaking across campus and returns her to her dorm to prepare for class. The two bond over a day of breaking the rules, but when Parker is dismissed in favor of her Secret Service detail, she slips away to attend the rave. Breaking up with her boyfriend there, his friend comes onto Maxwell and is revealed as the one who killed her in the previous timeline. Parker and the Secret Service save Maxwell from toppling off a balcony to her death.

14. Revelation

Major Michael McGrath ( Robert Picardo ) has backstepped seven years to the present to assassinate Aziz (Bill Millerd), a major component in Middle East peace accords. Evidence of events to come convinces the NSA panel to authorize the assassination of Aziz. The assassination mission goes south: though Aziz is killed, so are many other dignitaries and Donovan. Parker is caught and takes the fall for the killings, being disavowed by the NSA. After escaping custody, Parker travels back to NNL and with the help of the Backstep team, successfully backsteps and stops McGrath, whom may have been possessed by certain dark forces intending to start the End of Days.

15. Crystal Blue Persuasion

NASA astronaut Commander William Streck ( Rod Rowland ) is investigating an alien craft above Earth when something erupts, killing two of his crewmates. Later, while at NNL to brief the Project Backstep team on his mission, Streck and Dr. Vukavitch begin a sexual relationship that consummates in a local hotel. Feeling ill, Vukavitch ultrasounds herself to find alien beings gestating in herself. Meanwhile, Mentnor has discovered alien crystals infecting Streck's blood and Owsley has translated a glyph from the alien ship: biohazard. After tracking down and killing Streck, Parker backsteps and has the NASA mission canceled before they can dock.

16. Empty Quiver

After Henry Bilkins ( Matthew Bennett ) sets off a nuclear weapon in Washington, D.C. to avenge his father, a backstep is authorized to prevent it. Due to an accident caused by Parker spilling Vukavitch's tea into the reactor's console however, the sphere backsteps without Parker, leaving the team in the past with only the contents of Parker's duffel bag to clue them into the mission. To elaborate on their scant clues, Mentnor enlists a young psychic named Molly ( Jewel Staite ) with whom he used to work in 1992. The Backstep team follows Molly's premonitions to D.C. and gain knowledge of the nuke, but are thwarted by the militia regardless. When Molly is taken hostage, she and Frank take out Bilkins and save D.C.

17. Kansas

To ease the ride for their backup chrononaut, Donovan, the team tests out new sphere software designed to make the ride less painful. During testing, a power loss accidentally launches the sphere. When Parker lands, NNL has changed dramatically; everybody on the base is a drastically different person than before: an Admiral Donovan is Parker's ruthless nemesis and Talmadge rules NNL with an iron fist, while Ramsey is an incompetent hippie whose uncle keeps him employed at NNL. With the help of Svetlana Vukavitch ( Stephanie Romanov ) and a convinced Owsley, Parker launches the sphere again, landing back in his original reality.

18. The Final Countdown

Tensions escalate when a North Korean missile test coincides with that nation's invasion of Cheju-do. The missile has no warhead and drops harmlessly into the ocean, but the missileers at F.E. Warren Air Force Base do not stand down and instead launch against North Korea, instigating a nuclear war. Due to damage from a nuclear EMP, it takes six days to repair the sphere systems. After backstep, Parker insinuates himself into the missile silo but Major Nicholas Garcia (Jason Schombing) refuses to listen, arming and fueling the ICBM under his control. Parker convinces enough missileers to join him in thwarting Maj. Garcia and they avert World War III.

19. The Brink

After his release from the Hansen Island mental institution, David Harold (Benjamin Ratner) returns home. After consulting a star chart, Harold uses an experimental laser to permanently blind 14,000 concert attendees at the Georgia Dome. Parker's backstep causes Harold to reinterpret his chart, and he changes his plans to head to Cleveland. To find Harold's astrological "guru", Parker has himself reinserted into Hansen Island where he uncovers a high-reaching conspiracy led by inmate George Atzerodt (Gerard Plunkett) to brainwash inmates into performing acts of terrorism. With Vukavitch's help, Parker stops Harold's attack in the new timeline.

20. Sugar Mountain

The pyrokinetic abilities of young Taylor (Devin Douglas Drewitz) are a CIA project and have been usurped by international terrorist Cesar Gustav ( Christopher Shyer ). After an accident at Seattle–Tacoma International Airport kills Taylor and two airliners worth of passengers, a backstep is authorized. Arriving at Sea–Tac, Parker gets into a shootout with CIA agents and Gustav and winds up fleeing with Taylor to keep him safe. An interdepartmental turf war erupts with the CIA willing to do anything to get Taylor back, even taking out Parker if necessary. After thwarting Gustav and the CIA, Vukavitch is able to remove Taylor's ability, allowing him to lead a normal life.

21. Born in the USSR

Vukavitch is contacted by old lover Sergei Chubais ( Misha Collins ) and her old mentor Misha Kalatozov (Bill Meilen) for information about the formula to utilize alien fuel to time travel; Vukavitch gives them the formula. After a Russian military coup, and realizing she was tricked by Sergei, Vukavitch admits what she did and a backstep is conducted to stop the Russians from achieving time travel. After backstep, Parker does not divulge Vukavitch's treason and instead has her help him locate the Russian time travel facility. After a failed attempt at sabotage, Vukavitch and Parker successfully destroy the Russian time travel project before they can backstep.

22. Live: From Death Row

In New Orleans in 1997, an old friend of Parker's, Johnny Madelaina ( Mark Acheson ) is framed for murder by police Lt. Earl J. Rubidoux (Jeremy Roberts). In present day, Madelaina is on death row and is executed by lethal injection; six days later, evidence surfaces that exonerates him. After a backstep for the unrelated death of the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Parker withholds the mission details from Project Backstep in exchange for a stay of execution. After finding the evidence again, and tangling with Rubidoux and his wealthy benefactor who actually committed the murder, Parker succeeds in exonerating Madelaina.