I wonder if part of the reason Scott doesn't want anything to do with the new QL is because of Dean's death...
Will Sam Beckett Return Home? NBC Orders Quantum Leap Reboot Pilot
- Thread starter Ryan Thomas Riddle
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Does he really NOT want to do it the way I read the quote.it sounded like he was interested but not asked. He wad also involved in his own potential series at the time
I wonder if he'd reprise his role as Captain Archer if asked?
Sounds like Scott Bakula passed after reading the pilot script. Maybe it wasn't the right story or fit for him. Simply that.
Hopefully, there'll be a script and story that would be more appealing for Bakula down the road.
While I want an answer to "Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home," I also don't want there to be an answer. That it remains a mystery and a bittersweet ending for the character. He's out there, still leaping... putting things right that once went wrong...
Hopefully, there'll be a script and story that would be more appealing for Bakula down the road.
While I want an answer to "Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home," I also don't want there to be an answer. That it remains a mystery and a bittersweet ending for the character. He's out there, still leaping... putting things right that once went wrong...
Some things are better left unanswered. I think the way it ended was perfect.
I just rewatched "Mirror Image" today. And yes it ended perfectly.
I think you'll be disappointed. With modern storytelling for a scripted show there will probably be a long running mystery( The text messages) and some more deconstructing of the original series
The original Quantum leap was pretty episodic. Sam Beckett leaps in and changes the course of someone's life. Rinse and repeat for 13 episodes.
In this day and age there has to be a catch or something dangling for the audience to be interested in.
It is what is its. This isn't the 80's (Knight Rider) or 90's (Star Trek Voyager)
Like most of its network contemporaries, QL had 22 episodes per season, not counting its 9-episode first season (it was a midseason replacement).
In fact, relatively episodic TV seems to be starting to come back into vogue -- see The Orville, Star Trek: Lower Decks, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Everything goes in cycles.
I think episodic stories can be better as long as you don't outright break established continuity between episodes..
TV Line gives the first episode a C+.
Says the lead is great and has considerable chemistry with the female lead, but the dialog is clunky, they overexplain everything and the tech support team is straight out of a CBS procedural.
Says the lead is great and has considerable chemistry with the female lead, but the dialog is clunky, they overexplain everything and the tech support team is straight out of a CBS procedural.
Knight Rider 2008 had the same problem.... the leads were fine, but saddled with an entire entourage of tech support; by the time they whittled it down to One Man can Make a Difference and figured it all out, the show was kaput.
These old shows were carried by one or two strong leads, not an ensemble. That has been lost over the years.
These old shows were carried by one or two strong leads, not an ensemble. That has been lost over the years.
These selfish actors who want to have a private life! But aren't they ashamed of themselves!?!
As someone said, actually over twenty except for the first season.
However, I think some of the premise of the series today would not simply be brushed away as it was then.
For example
a) In the original series it is repeated several times that it is God who is actually manipulating the travels. Uhmm what ??? This would be something that would radically change the foundations of religions and science. There is truly a supreme being who decides what is right and wrong and we have the proof. I sincerely doubt that IRL would be something that would elicit little more than a disinterested shrug from people. But in the old series it was just a plot device and none of the characters have ever elaborated on the concept.
b) Yeah, they say they're trying to get Sam back home. But they never showed what they actually did to to make it happen. They just google what they think Sam might need to finish the mission and that's it, hoping he'll come home in the next leap. Again, it was just a plot device, but really, I think it's really unrealistic that the characters are just sitting idle and throwing taxpayer money away hoping for the best.
I think a modern show that successfully combined episodic nature and a story arc was "Person Of Interesest". If you think about it the premise is not very different from "Quantum Leap". A mysterious entity guides our hero to help ordinary people. But at least there the concept was deepened.
I don't have a problem with a support team. But they have to be interesting, and serve an actual purpose beyond the same old crap every week. I don't care how quirky Abby Sciuto supposedly is! 
No, it's guessed at in the same breath as time, fate, or whatever. It's not until the finale we get something arguably more concrete. And even then, there is no proof to radically shift the world. Just the experiences of a guy who never came home. By the end of the series there was as much proof of vampires, aliens, and bigfoot as there was for a god.
But that was very stressful on the lead actors. Part of the reason today's shows have ensemble casts is because the actors are less overworked that way.
I always liked how Ashley McConnell's Quantum Leap novels fleshed out the Project Quantum Leap team in the future alongside Sam's experiences in the past. I always wanted to see more of how PQL worked. So that could be worthwhile, if they don't overdo it. I read an article recently saying that it usually would be a background element, but occasionally might take up as much as 40% of an episode if the plot required it.
I loved Person of Interest, but I think CBS pressured it to emphasize the episodic side a little too much. I liked the fact that they never fully abandoned the format of helping people in need every week, but the show was far, far too slow to get to the really interesting stuff about the emergence of artificial superintelligence, since CBS wanted it to be strictly a crime procedural with minimal science fiction content. So it's a really, really slow-burn series, and the first couple of seasons can be a bit of a slog to get through.
There is an entity who decide what is good and what is bad. And the proof is that Sam leaps only when things go in the "right way".
You can call it God, fate or whatever but the truth is thwy never deepened the concept. Instead of trying to understand what was actually happening they used all their resource to help a old lady to win the bingo. I have to say it's not a really scientist-like reasoning.
More like when Sam achieves the desired goal, when he helps someone succeed at something when they failed before, or survive when they died before, or avoid making a terrible mistake. It's not about absolute right and wrong, it's about helping people get a second chance.
Because that's not what the show was about. It was a character-driven semi-anthology exploring recent history. It was totally uninterested in science or technology except as an excuse to generate the situations. You might as well complain that The Fugitive was more about helping guests-of-the-week than finding the one-armed man. The quest is not the point of the show, it's just a MacGuffin to keep the main character traveling.
Although we didn't see enough of Project Quantum Leap to know how much effort they put into solving the problem, so it's really not fair to assume they weren't trying. What we saw from Sam's perspective may just have been the tip of the iceberg. But you can only do so much without data. Lots of scientific mysteries go unsolved for decades. So do lots of crimes, despite what procedurals show. Fiction gives us unrealistic expectations about how likely a mystery is to be solved.
Anyway, the series finale pretty much established that Sam's own mind was controlling his leaps. So PQL had been looking in the wrong place the whole time by seeing Sam as the one acted upon instead of the one acting. You can't solve a problem if you're locked into the wrong paradigm.
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You leave Abby alone she's adorable
How is that proof that god exists? And who can that be shown to? Even the oversight committee were unable to see proof that Sam was even in the past, let alone anything supernatural.