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

Ugh, this show is heading straight for cancelation... 2.77 million for episode 2. Debris season finale was 2.43 and it got canned. This show will probably bottom out in the 1s. Manifest was cancelled with 2.76.
 
The Wormhole said:
Here's something that's nagging me with this week's episode. As I recall from the premiere, Ben's Leaps are unauthorized, and at the moment everyone at the Quantum Leap Command (or whatever) is trying to keep it a secret from their superiors. Yet this week, upon learning the astronaut Ben Leapt into died on that mission and that the report on his death was classified, they put in a request to NASA to see the file which is granted more or less right away. Shouldn't a time travel project which isn't supposed to be running yet requesting classified files regarding someone who died close to twenty-five years ago raise one hell of a red flag to the higher ups at the Pentagon? Furthermore, assuming NASA isn't read into what Quantum Leap is, what reason do they have to grant them access to a classified file to begin with?
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This isn't the level of show that expects people to think about it this deeply.
 
crookeddy said:
Ugh, this show is heading straight for cancelation... 2.77 million for episode 2. Debris season finale was 2.43 and it got canned. This show will probably bottom out in the 1s. Manifest was cancelled with 2.76.
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I wonder if costs of show which might be lower could be a factor in keeping it going. Also I watch it on Demand... so maybe also a factor?
 
Maybe they need to move it to an earlier timeslot - see if it does better going up against sitcoms rather than other dramas.
 
I know it's only two eps in but I'll still state with confidence that the show would be better if they had done it as a streaming show from the get-go. What's the bet it gets cancelled just as the show starts to find the right balance and really gets going?
 
Guy Gardener said:
One of Sam's missions was to plug in a hair dryer.
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Ziggy thought that would work, but it turned out not to. Whatever controls Sam's Leaps simply shunted him into Don Gino instead. Ziggy often got it wrong. ...or wrong-ish, at least. I tend to believe that some of the sillier Leap solutions were in addition to the main problem rather than instead of. Except for Peggy Sue. ;)
 
Tosk said:
Ziggy thought that would work, but it turned out not to. Whatever controls Sam's Leaps simply shunted him into Don Gino instead.
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I looked up the description for that episode, and apparently it did show us what happens when a Leapee returns, since the first person Sam leaped into returned with no memory of events when he was gone. Which raises all sorts of questions about how Sam's changes are supposed to stick if the Leapees don't remember the choices he made.

And it makes the ending of this week's new episode problematical, because it means David Tamura leaped back in to find himself mid-spacewalk with no memory of how he got there, which seems highly dangerous. Although his safety line was clipped to a rail outside the Mir module, so that's something.
 
Tosk said:
I know it's only two eps in but I'll still state with confidence that the show would be better if they had done it as a streaming show from the get-go. What's the bet it gets cancelled just as the show starts to find the right balance and really gets going?
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If that happens I hope they have the sense to give it a low budget peacock wrap up season. But they don't have this sense, judging by recent sci Fi cancellations on NBC.
 
Tosk said:
Susan Diol appeared on the QL podcast.

1. The intention of having her working on a car was that it was Al's car and she feels close to him when working on it. This didn't make it to the final edit. :(
2. She had to audition to return to play Beth.
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Here's the actual interview:
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Another interesting tidbit—it sounds like Diol is in another episode. She also mentions Pratt still doing the voice of Ziggy—so they're gonna restore the vocal interface?
 
I know one thing and this show isn't coming close to touching the first one in terms of quality. It's kind of watchable but it's just so generic and lacking in anything special or unique to make it truly great. So far anyways.
 
Jayson1 said:
I know one thing and this show isn't coming close to touching the first one in terms of quality. It's kind of watchable but it's just so generic and lacking in anything special or unique to make it truly great. So far anyways.
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It lacks the spark of the original. The heart. The desire to change history for the better, one life at a time. To make right what once went wrong. Right now it’s just all plot and no character.
 
Ryan Thomas Riddle said:
It lacks the spark of the original. The heart. The desire to change history for the better, one life at a time. To make right what once went wrong. Right now it’s just all plot and no character.
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Indeed, it imbued purpose, that there was a goodness to Sam's efforts, not just to find a way home, but to heal people's damaged lives. It had a deep sense of humanity to it. The new show, while fun in many respects, lacks all of this.
 
Jax said:
Because that never screwed up a show before.
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Oh, a fair number of shows have reworked their unused pilots into later episodes. There's Star Trek's "The Menagerie," obviously, and Gilligan's Island's season 1 Christmas episode. The Monkees' pilot aired as episode 10, and Law & Order aired its pilot as episode 8. I wouldn't call any of those failures. Although of course it's also been done with less successful shows, like The Dresden Files (whose 2-hour pilot was hacked down into a standard hourlong mid-season episode, though the full uncut version was aired after the show's only season) and Dollhouse (whose original pilot's footage was spread out over much of the first season a bit at a time, like a more extreme version of how Lost in Space's pilot was spread out over the first five episodes).

Of course, even more shows have never aired their original pilots at all, because they changed so much between pilot and series. A pilot is a demo, after all, a first draft, and thus many of them get changes made before going to series. So it makes no sense to see a retooled or repositioned pilot as a danger sign. It's part of what pilots are for, to try things out and see whether they work or not. And hey, it's better if the pilot can be slotted in later rather than abandoned altogether.
 
I posted this in the Khan thread because I thought it was the what are you watching Thread...

Because of a funding Crisis, a time Jockey heads into the time tunnel and fails to stop the Titanic from Sinking, and then quantum leaps into a new situation about a Rocket ship that's about to launch.

Time Tunnel. 1968.
 
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