Wow. That's a ton for a modern show. Do you know how many for La Brea?
Will Sam Beckett Return Home? NBC Orders Quantum Leap Reboot Pilot
- Thread starter Ryan Thomas Riddle
- Start date
Not a clue. I only know the QL episode commitment because it was announced in the past 24 or 48 hours!
Just for completeness, the answer to this question seems to be 14. NBC bringing long seasons back, heh
Just don't send anyone back in time. The hologram is tethered to the present and can go anywhere.
The hologram is tethered to the Leaper through Ziggy. No Leaper, no hologram.
Help me to remember, in the original series, Sam had some kind of precise target for his first jump or was a "blind" leap? I mean, in theory, what was the hypothetical goal of the project? That he could physically travel in time but he was just limited by his own life span?
All we were told, as far as I recall or can tell from the QL Wiki, is what we were told in the opening narration: "Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett led an elite group of scientists into the desert to develop a top secret project, known as Quantum Leap. Pressured to prove his theories or lose funding, Doctor Beckett prematurely stepped into the Project Accelerator and vanished." I would guess that the leaping into others' bodies and the "Swiss cheese memory" were meant to be consequences of Sam jumping prematurely, before the tech had been completed or tested or calibrated or whatever, but the new show is assuming it's intrinsic to how the process works.
The original show opened with Al getting the call that Sam was leaping prematurely, with no more explanation, and then we went back to Sam waking up an amnesiac. So the audience had to get all the exposition along with him. And Al was reluctant to dole out information at first, for fear of the effects future knowledge might have on the past. So there weren't a lot of specifics given about exactly what led up to the leap.
Ziggy says my interest and liking of new QL took an estimated 87% hit that likely can not be recovered, unless they cut the dumb stuff pronto... 
present: I fast forwarded and read a short summary. Reasons for existing = adding conflict/drama points + keeping present day characters involved as more than just side characters.
ending: ah crap
I will not comment on non Leap stuff from here on out anymore, so not to spoil other people's joy if they like those things.
Leap: I actually enjoyed the (predictable), but fun
story and characters.
present: I fast forwarded and read a short summary. Reasons for existing = adding conflict/drama points + keeping present day characters involved as more than just side characters.
ending: ah crap
that's liekly the introduction of eViL lEaPeRs for new QL. Hated that storyline in the OG.
Don't want another good vs evil fight.
Don't want another good vs evil fight.
I will not comment on non Leap stuff from here on out anymore, so not to spoil other people's joy if they like those things.
Leap: I actually enjoyed the (predictable), but fun
Salvation town coming together to save themselves
Ziggy says my interest and liking of new QL took an estimated 87% hit that likely can not be recovered, unless they cut the dumb stuff pronto...
present: I fast forwarded and read a short summary. Reasons for existing = adding conflict/drama points + keeping present day characters involved as more than just side characters.
ending: ah crapthat's liekly the introduction of eViL lEaPeRs for new QL. Hated that storyline in the OG.
Don't want another good vs evil fight.
I will not comment on non Leap stuff from here on out anymore, so not to spoil other people's joy if they like those things.
Leap: I actually enjoyed the (predictable), but funstory and characters.Salvation town coming together to save themselves
My take is the exact opposite. The leaps themselves are more of the same stuff we got with TOS, but the present day stuff is novel and unique to this iteration.
An okay episode on the surface, but it had some major issues that made it disappointing for me overall. For one thing, they had Addison mention in passing that it shouldn't be possible for Ben to leap as far back as the Old West, and then they completely ignored the question, never again even mentioning it, let alone explaining how it happened. It should be a big deal, but it got trampled under the bit about the Congresswoman.
Also, despite Ian mentioning how much the Old West has been misrepresented in the media -- by which they probably meant the erasure of its ethnic diversity -- the episode still uncritically embraced the fictitious portrayal of the Old West as a lawless era dominated by gunslingers and duels at high noon, which was mostly an invention of dime novels, pulps, and movies. In reality, gun duels were quite rare and almost never as orderly and one-on-one as in fiction.
Indeed, they really went for cliche in the plotting, since it started out being more or less High Noon -- reluctant gunslinger trying to get help and avoid the looming battle with no success -- and then modulated into The Magnificent Seven with the gunslinger convincing the townfolk to fight in their own defense. If they were going to break the QL formula by sending Ben so far back in time, not only should they have explained how it happened, but they should've had a better reason for why they did it than just regurgitating lazy Western cliches. They could've done something that was more of a deconstruction, say, something where Ben remembers enough of his cultural knowledge to expect the Western cliches but keeps finding out how different the reality was.
Also, this is the second week in a row that Ben's change to history has simply been too big. Last week, he shut down a major drug smuggling ring and probably saved quite a few lives, and this week he saved an entire town from ceasing to exist and helped its people become rich. Either one could've had major ripple effects on history, with dozens or hundreds of people's lives being changed instead of just one or two at a time. And yet the show is still ignoring the question of how the changes Ben makes in the past manifest in the team's present.
Congresswoman Adani was an interesting character, adversarial but sympathetic and smart. I suspect she'll be recurring. I hope she'll be an ally, but I'm not convinced that Magic's choice of how to use the "nuclear option" was really that different from blackmail. It's just more like bribery instead, and a bribe based on a deceptive promise. Is that really any better, ethically speaking?
So now we know that Ben leapt in order to "follow" someone. If the other guy recognized Ben, does that mean Ben saw his real face too? Or maybe he recognized Ben more through his actions. It did strike me as odd that nobody reacted to all the times Ben was talking to "himself" in the middle of the crowded saloon or a public street.
Also, despite Ian mentioning how much the Old West has been misrepresented in the media -- by which they probably meant the erasure of its ethnic diversity -- the episode still uncritically embraced the fictitious portrayal of the Old West as a lawless era dominated by gunslingers and duels at high noon, which was mostly an invention of dime novels, pulps, and movies. In reality, gun duels were quite rare and almost never as orderly and one-on-one as in fiction.
Indeed, they really went for cliche in the plotting, since it started out being more or less High Noon -- reluctant gunslinger trying to get help and avoid the looming battle with no success -- and then modulated into The Magnificent Seven with the gunslinger convincing the townfolk to fight in their own defense. If they were going to break the QL formula by sending Ben so far back in time, not only should they have explained how it happened, but they should've had a better reason for why they did it than just regurgitating lazy Western cliches. They could've done something that was more of a deconstruction, say, something where Ben remembers enough of his cultural knowledge to expect the Western cliches but keeps finding out how different the reality was.
Also, this is the second week in a row that Ben's change to history has simply been too big. Last week, he shut down a major drug smuggling ring and probably saved quite a few lives, and this week he saved an entire town from ceasing to exist and helped its people become rich. Either one could've had major ripple effects on history, with dozens or hundreds of people's lives being changed instead of just one or two at a time. And yet the show is still ignoring the question of how the changes Ben makes in the past manifest in the team's present.
Congresswoman Adani was an interesting character, adversarial but sympathetic and smart. I suspect she'll be recurring. I hope she'll be an ally, but I'm not convinced that Magic's choice of how to use the "nuclear option" was really that different from blackmail. It's just more like bribery instead, and a bribe based on a deceptive promise. Is that really any better, ethically speaking?
So now we know that Ben leapt in order to "follow" someone. If the other guy recognized Ben, does that mean Ben saw his real face too? Or maybe he recognized Ben more through his actions. It did strike me as odd that nobody reacted to all the times Ben was talking to "himself" in the middle of the crowded saloon or a public street.
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The possibility that the "new guy" might have been Sam occurred to me as well but, as far as we know, Sam only leaped beyond his lifetime on one occasion and how would he know who Ben was and what year he leaped from? Unless Janis is using her bootleg QL tech to talk to Sam, maybe. She could also, potentially at least, have unhooked Sam from the "within his own lifetime" restriction. Lots of questions. Hope we get answers eventually.
You mean Ben, not Sam, right? I wish they hadn't given them both 3-letter monosyllabic first names. Makes them easy to mix up. I've caught myself almost making that mistake before.
But if that had been Janis, she'd be actually leaping. If her goal were just to talk to Ben, she'd be a hologram and he'd see her as she is. Also, the guy (assuming it is a guy) told Ben to stop following him, so implicitly he's another actual leaper who preceded Ben.
No, I meant Sam. If he is the "Unknown Leaper" but not getting updated intel, he would have no way of knowing who Ben is and his year of origin. He could be telling Ben that he doesn't want to be found. (Of course, why he wouldn't simply tell Janis that, I don't know.)
It seems likelier, then, that the unknown leaper is someone else maybe, as has been suggested, a new evil leaper (Satannis ex Machina?) who came from further in the future. But then, why would he think Ben was following him? Like I said, lots of questions.
Oh, I see what you mean now.
But if Sam is freely in control of his travels now, there's no reason he couldn't travel to Ben's present or future and learn about the reactivation of the project that way. Okay, theoretically he can only travel within his own lifetime, and if he never returned home, that would arguably put the forward endpoint of his lifetime in the early 2000s; but since he didn't actually die per se, maybe it's open-ended in that direction. And heck, this episode pretty much established that the "within your own lifetime" rule is kaput anyway.
No reason a time traveler from the present couldn't find out about a future traveler doing things in the past, then follow them into the past to try to stop them. It doesn't matter that the traveler came from the future; if their actions are in the past, then someone in the present could discover them in the historical record. Or get tipped off by another time traveler, like Captain Archer and Agent Daniels in Star Trek: Enterprise.
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Everything was pretty good right up until the last few moments, and then my interest dive bombed. If they do go for the "evil leaper" trope over an extended period of time, like more than a few episodes, then I'm done. I have no interest in that kind of show.