The team receives a warning, claiming the IRA has planted a car bomb in Manchester. Sam realises the warning doesn't conform to IRA techniques. However, when Sam's knowledge backfires, nearly killing Ray, the department shuns his line of investigation to focus on an Irish socialist group. Meanwhile, Sam's visions of the future suggest he may have suffered brain damage, affecting his higher reasoning, due to him being in a coma for so long.

The body of a young woman is found on wasteland. The investigation takes the team to suburbia, where a local car dealer is throwing private parties, employing make-up girls from a local company to “help out” when the wife-swapping begins. Posing as married couple Tony and Cherie Blair, Sam and Annie infiltrate one of the parties, only to discover that it isn't as simple as they think.

The team investigates the abduction of a young woman and her daughter, who are being held prisoner by somebody who wishes the team to release a prisoner arrested on a murder charge a year ago. At the same time, Sam faces a life or death situation in 2006 when he thinks he has accidentally been given an overdose. As the deadline draws closer, Sam collapses into a deeper coma, leaving his colleagues to tackle the mystery on their own - albeit using some of his earlier suggestions.

As heroin hits the streets of Manchester for the first time, CID and DCI Hunt want culprits for the smuggling, the dealing and ensuing violence, which becomes difficult when Annie is kidnapped by the smugglers. As Sam tries to get to the source of the influx of this deadly drug, he finds himself intractably drawn to a beautiful young woman who was witness to a heroin-related shooting - and who, he later realises, is the future mother of his 2006 girlfriend. At the same time, Sam's 'visions' reveal that his girlfriend has decided to stop visiting him in hospital, as she can't keep waiting for him to wake up.

A water-tight court case fails to put away a local gangster. Unable to cope with a guilty man walking free, DCI Hunt turns to alcohol but soon finds himself in a spot of bother. When it appears as though Hunt may have killed someone, it's up to Sam, torn between Gene and his replacement - a DCI who actually uses Sam's modern police techniques and vocabulary - to help him out.

Sam learns that an operation is to be conducted upon him in 2006 to try and revive him from his coma. However, he believes that to return to the 21st century, he has to betray his colleagues in 1973 - but can he regard them as real or imaginary?