Will Sam Beckett Return Home? NBC Orders Quantum Leap Reboot Pilot

[Scout101]

It’s weird to invent a machine to intentionally meddle with past events, if your current present isn’t a disaster. Different argument if there was a massive disaster, war, plague, whatever that they were trying to use time travel to avoid somehow, but if things are ok, or even ok-ish, screwing with the past 40-50 years of history and making intentional changes is a big gamble. Butterfly effect and all that, but who knows which change he makes ends up killing everyone? Saved a nice woman, who raised a nice kid, who saved someone from a car wreck who goes on to be the next Hitler. Know the theory was small changes, kindness, etc, but they can only see as far as Al’s present, so who knows the damage they could be doing? Other than the implication that God was steering things, but along those lines, what does God need with a time machine? Either omnipotent or he’s not…

 

[Tosk]

It’s weird to invent a machine to intentionally meddle with past events

They didn't. The intent of Project Quantum Leap was observation. The whole thing with righting wrongs was a theory that Ziggy came up with when Sam's first Leap went caca.

 

[Christopher]

Other than the implication that God was steering things, but along those lines, what does God need with a time machine? Either omnipotent or he’s not…

The line they generally used was "God or Fate or whatever." They generally avoided being too overt about the religious element, though I think that was probably at the network's request, since Bellisario seems to like sneaking religious themes into his shows. (There was an episode of Tales of the Gold Monkey where the heroine saved the unconscious hero's plane from crashing by praying until it miraculously righted itself.) And there was a QL episode where Satan pretty explicitly showed up, impersonating Al.

I suppose you could say that if it was God or some comparable cosmic consciousness, maybe they/it preferred not to interfere too much in human free will. Since Project Quantum Leap was a human invention, that allowed them/it to intervene with a light touch, just nudge things to create an opportunity for a human being to help other human beings, so that free will was preserved.

They didn't. The intent of Project Quantum Leap was observation. The whole thing with righting wrongs was a theory that Ziggy came up with when Sam's first Leap went caca.

I wonder... The finale implied that it was Sam himself who was subconsciously controlling his journey, using his power to help others rather than get himself home. And his memory was "Swiss-cheesed." Maybe it actually was secretly his intention to use PQL to meddle constructively in the past, and he just didn't remember it.

Although I still think Ziggy played a role in engineering the Leaps, perhaps carrying out Sam's wishes.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

(Or rather, TTT's bread and butter was "big events from historical movies that we can crib stock footage from.")

Or more specifically cribbed from all Irwin Allen's movies.

Wasn't the bartender at the end supposed to be GFTW (God Fate Time Whatever) and it was he that pulled Sam off course? They even mentioned it.

 

[Christopher]

Or more specifically cribbed from all Irwin Allen's movies.

No, Allen didn't make nearly that many movies. Before TTT, he'd only produced eight non-documentary features and directed four of them. The only one that had footage edited into a TTT episode was The Lost World (1960), whose dinosaur footage was also recycled in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Land of the Giants. Although the first feature Allen directed, The Story of Mankind, included stock footage from Robert Wise's Helen of Troy, which was also later excerpted in TTT.

Let's see... The first episode of TTT used footage from Titanic (1953), directed by Jean Negulesco. The second used footage from Destination Moon, directed by Irving Pichel. The third, John Ford's How Green Was My Valley. The fourth, Raoul Walsh's The Revolt of Mamie Stover. And so on. They didn't even limit themselves to 20th Century Fox films.

Wasn't the bartender at the end supposed to be GFTW (God Fate Time Whatever) and it was he that pulled Sam off course? They even mentioned it.

I think that was what Sam believed for most of the episode, with the final twist being that it was really Sam all along. I'm going from a very distant memory, though.

 

[Skipper]

I wonder if the new series will delve into pre-existing mythology. I mean, one of Sam's "missions" was to help a girl win a beauty contest (or something like that). If I were working on the project QL I might legitimately ask myself "Why God waste ours time on things like this and not to prevent 9/11"?

 

[ED-209]

I wonder if the new series will delve into pre-existing mythology. I mean, one of Sam's "missions" was to help a girl win a beauty contest (or something like that). If I were working on the project QL I might legitimately ask myself "Why God waste ours time on things like this and not to prevent 9/11"?

Butterfly Effect, who knows what other events that influenced.

 

[Astra]

I always kind of handwaved it with the idea that Sam somehow leaves remnants of memory behind, which the Leapee perceived as their own. (Just as Sam sometimes psycho-synergized with them.) It's thin, but good enough for me.

I give you the leaving memories behind, but what I meant was, how did he know the other guy wanted to propose in the first place? Maybe he just wanted to stay good friends?

Or, how did he know that the rainmaker really wanted to give up his business and stay with his family on the farm? Maybe he was not yet ready for that?

 

[Christopher]

I wonder if the new series will delve into pre-existing mythology. I mean, one of Sam's "missions" was to help a girl win a beauty contest (or something like that). If I were working on the project QL I might legitimately ask myself "Why God waste ours time on things like this and not to prevent 9/11"?

Even if it were God (and they never narrowed it down clearly), would God really think like that, that one life is less important than thousands?

The mystery of why this was happening was intentional, and we weren't supposed to know the answer. That's why even the finale didn't spell everything out but just added new layers to the mystery. Really, it was just the MacGuffin, the unimportant catalyst for the part that really mattered, which was the weekly character stories. I don't want the new show to lose that and be just another big conspiracy arc of the kind that's become so cliched.

I give you the leaving memories behind, but what I meant was, how did he know the other guy wanted to propose in the first place? Maybe he just wanted to stay good friends?

He knew he had the right answer when he leaped. That was intrinsic to the show. Sam and Al never knew exactly what Sam's mission was; they had to figure it out as they went, with help from Ziggy's historical records and probability calculations. If they guessed wrong, if they didn't achieve the outcome intended by "God or fate or time or whatever," then Sam simply wouldn't leap out, and he'd have to try again to fix it. Leaping out was the proof that he'd finally gotten it right.

 

[Skipper]

Even if it were God (and they never narrowed it down clearly), would God really think like that, that one life is less important than thousands?

Ok, but why He can't do both? I mean, for every 10 ladies you help win bingo (yes he did it), can't we stop a terrorist from getting on a plane? It seems to me a question that someone could ask. It doesn't seem so strange to me.

 

[Christopher]

Ok, but why He can't do both?

"The Lord works in mysterious ways," goes the saying. As I said, the subtlety of the intervention in QL argues against any kind of hands-on, micromanaging deity or cosmic force, but rather something intervening minimally in a way that preserves human free will.

And again, the reason Sam didn't intervene in big historic disasters is because that's not the kind of time travel show QL was. It deliberately chose not to do that, because it didn't want to be cliched, and because the time travel was just an excuse for a historical-fiction pseudo-anthology character drama. QL was the ultimate in "soft" sci-fi, the kind where the science and technology and logic of how it all works is incidental because what matters are the character stories and the human themes being explored. Indeed, it was really a fantasy show, with any "science" being just magic with a superficial technical gloss. It worked in whatever way allowed the stories they wanted to tell. It never really stood up to analysis. (Like, if Sam's body is physically leaping, as later seasons made unambiguous, then how come the leapees' clothes always fit him?)

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

can't we stop a terrorist from getting on a plane? It seems to me a question that someone could ask. It doesn't seem so strange to me.

It's easy to say you would stop, say, 9/11 if you had the ability to do so, but who's to say that the resulting timeline wouldn't be even worse? That's why QL will never do anything like that.

It's like The Final Countdown. At the end, Martin Sheen's character says "At least we came back to the same world we left". Sums it up right there.

 

[Samurai8472]

Events like George Floyd murder made me think a Quantum Leap episode could talk about the issue

 

[FederationHistorian]

Events like George Floyd murder made me think a Quantum Leap episode could talk about the issue

George Floyd's murder might get a mention. But changing history to prevent 9/11 seems like a story more suited to Star Trek at this point.

 

[Christopher]

They certainly tackled racial and other social issues in the original show, but they did it with fictional characters, not famous real people, because that was the time-travel cliche they were consciously avoiding.

 

[Marc]

Events like George Floyd murder made me think a Quantum Leap episode could talk about the issue

The original did cover the issue (the Watts riots) in Black On White On Fire

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Well I finally got to the final episode.. What a ride?

Fantastic show, they covered many different points in time and history, some notable events like the civil rights period with various episodes, some goofy paranormal ideas with some other episodes, it was great. I did like that episode with Sam leaping into the KKK guy and changing his father inlaws mind the way he did. That was a great episode.

Definite rewatch again maybe sometime over the new year.

 

[The Knappos]

George Floyd's murder might get a mention. But changing history to prevent 9/11 seems like a story more suited to Star Trek at this point.

I can see a 9/11 episode where their job is to save either one life or one small group of people. And that’s it. Someone who shouldn’t have been there. I can even see it paying homage to the first cliffhanger from Trilogy, where they just achieve it but die in the attempt. Because every life counts but some events are too big to undo or some such.

 

[Christopher]

I can see a 9/11 episode where their job is to save either one life or one small group of people. And that’s it. Someone who shouldn’t have been there. I can even see it paying homage to the first cliffhanger from Trilogy, where they just achieve it but die in the attempt. Because every life counts but some events are too big to undo or some such.

Using 9/11 at all still feels too close to the time-travel cliche that Bellisario was avoiding, building plots around famous historical events or personages. He only did "Lee Harvey Oswald" as a counterargument to Oliver Stone's movie. And that was years into the run, at which point the standard approach was well enough established to allow for the occasional exception.

You know what would be better? Have the hero leap into a Muslim-American somewhere else in the country and have him face the anti-Muslim bigotry that flared up in reaction to 9/11. Make it a Quantum Leap-style story about the everyday impact of the tragedy rather than a Time Tunnel-style story directly depicting the event. Heck, he doesn't even have to be Muslim. I remember reading about a Sikh gas station owner who was murdered a few days after 9/11 by racists too stupid to know the difference.

 

[The Knappos]

I see what you're saying. But, he did include JFK's assassination and the Vietnam War. And the old show threw in plenty of other peripheral events which were adjacent to big social events, such as racial equality, gender equality etc.

Showing a Muslim-American dealing with the post 9/11 bigotry is a good shout. No reason they couldn't do both, either. And I'm not too sure how involved or how much say Bellisario will have.

Sadly, it's not as if there aren't countless examples of other (famous) atrocities or trends they could explore. For example, the rise in mass/school shootings. online/social media bullying, bombings, bigotry, sexism, etc. In fact, the majority (if not all) of themes which were applicable during the original run are still as relevant now and in the intervening 30 years as they were between the 50s to 90s. With a smattering of new ones, or a modern spin due to tech developments etc.

I wonder too, will the new show carry on the trend of 'before they were famous' cameos such as Buddy Holly, teaching Michael Jackson to Moonwalk, Elvis, Chubby Checker, Stephen King etc and, if so, which they'll have.