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

They never said why he leaped. Would be kind of weird if the modern show implied that Ben talked him into leaping for some reason. They could use a de-aged Bakula which would be one way to also get the character on the show even if he didn't want to guest star.

 

You know I was thinking that the difference in leaping might also explain why Ben was talked into Leaping. I got this idea that Ben's regular human body no longer exists. It was destroyed in the process since we no longer have a waiting room. All that is left is his soul for the lack of a different word.

This means their is no way for him to return home. He is trapped forever as a leaper. Al's daughter talked him into leaping because if he didn't it would be Allison that leaped. She would have been the one who was trapped.

This info would shut down any leaps but she needed someone to leap anyway for some cause like communicate with Sam Beckett. So Ben agreed to leap and find him while also saving Allison. The part of saving Allison was correct only she was saved from every making the first Leap. The part of being in danger in the future is a lie. The future is where Al's daughter thinks Sam is and she wants him to find him for her.

 

I always had the impression that they were seriously considering closing the project due to lack of results and Sam wanted to prove that the machine worked, but I realize that it was probably never explicitly stated in the series...

 

According to the opening narration introduced in season 2, "Pressured to prove his theories or lose funding, Dr. Beckett prematurely stepped into the Project accelerator... and vanished." So basically it's the exact same origin as The Time Tunnel.

 

So, it was just a kind of mistery only in the first season?

 

In "Honeymoon Express" the original committee chairman definitely seemed like he was ready to yank the funding. It was only when Sam's meddling replaced him with a new one that additional funds were secured.

 

I don't recall it being treated as a mystery, beyond Sam's general lack of memory about his own life. The narration was probably just summarizing what had already been established in dialogue in season 1.

 

In the first season didn't Al tell Sam that he couldn't tell him anything about the future for fear of damaging the space-time continuum etc etc? So between Sam's damaged memory and Al's reticence, viewers were probably clueless as to why Sam decided to put the machine to work.

 

In Genesis, Al doesn't want to tell Sam anything in case he changes things which and they won't able to retrieve him.

Then Sam gives Al the bad news.....

 

Except the original show didn't present that as a question in the first place, as far as I recall. In the pilot, Al just told Sam that he was part of an experiment that "went a little caca," and that was it. The only mysteries were why they couldn't get him back and what was controlling his leaps. The opening did show that Sam leapt before anyone else thought it was safe to try, but nobody questioned why. It just seemed like he disagreed with the rest of his team about whether it was ready. It wasn't treated like a mystery. After all, he was the guy in charge of the project, so if he wanted to leap, he'd leap. It's not like Ben, who wasn't meant to be the Leaper in the first place.

 

So God looked at Addison and said "Nope."

 

God doesn't seem to be part of the leaping process anymore. He retired to Florida and outsourced the job to one of his churches on Earth. They are trying hard but they don't have nearly the level of resources and work staff God was working with in Heaven. They even had to go cheap with the new leaping effect.

 

Well, after last night's episode we did get some minor reveals. Janice was in trust no one mode. And, it would seem, rightly so. Don't forget that the project was established to view the past and, as Asimov and others famously pointed out, the past begins one millisecond ago so the ability to observe the past is, fundamentally, the ability to observe the present. Have a nice day.

 

For someone espousing trust issues Janis sure is trusting not to be hosed with truth serum as she downs the shot of booze offered by Jen.

So we had a hospital inundated with train crash victims. Also, a heart transplant procedure occurs all in the same day? I'm drawing a blank in establishing a timeline for this week's episode. It's presented as playing out over eight hours or so.

I like seeing the 90's tech like the Motorola MicroTAC (I actually have this one) and the dot matrix printer grinding out plain text from an old desktop station. "What I wouldn't give for high-speed internet access right now." I can feel his pain!

NOTE TO TV DIRECTORS: If you're going to perform artificial respiration on someone in the story TILT THE HEAD BACK TO OPEN UP THE AIRWAY! Otherwise, you're just moving air into a character's stomach. Grrr...

Crikey Ben did a lot of life-shifting in this one. It was like three episodes crammed into one!



Wow! She really does look like she could be the child of Dean Stockwell and Susan Diol. Georgina Reilly was perfect casting for this role.

 

An okay episode, but I spent the whole time racking my brain to try to remember where I'd seen the main guest actress (Tiffany Smith) before. It took so long because I was trying to think of what show I'd seen her in, but I finally remembered that she was the host of various DC Comics-related news segments, interview videos, and specials shown on The CW and DC Universe. She was always so bright and cheerful there (with a gorgeous smile), so it was hard to recognize her when she was so serious here.

Pretty good acting from Caitlin Bassett when Addison monologued about telling someone her son had died on a mission. I was lukewarm on her in the role at first, but she's pretty talented when given meaty material.

I'm not sure that works in this context, though, since I always thought they could only monitor a time and place where a Leaper was present, using him as their anchor and "widening the field" around him. But I suppose if the means to monitor events in the past existed, it's possible that it could be refined to the point where you don't need a Leaper to lock onto.

Still, I'm not crazy about conspiracy stories, and one thing that annoys me about serial storytelling is that it's led to a profound overuse of conspiracy stories, since serial shows require ongoing mysteries and surprise twists that all tie into a single overall plot, and there aren't many other kinds of story that allow that. Every single time I see a character say "Trust no one," I want the person they're addressing to reply, "Oh yeah? Then why should I trust you when you say that?"

 

Quantum Leap does hospital drama. Actually a pretty decent episode for the most part. Though for once I actually agree with the criticism that the modern day subplot actually got in the way of the main story.

Meanwhile, did I spot Robert Picardo in the final scene setting up for next weeks episode?

 

Yes, that was Robert Picardo
Could have been an helpful EMH in this episode though

 

And, oh yeah. It was nice to see Stan Shaw again.

 

I thought this was a really good episode. I love it when we focus more on saving lives, and the "put right what once went wrong" part of the mission statement of the series. I'm also intrigued by just what it is Janice knows about what happens to Allison. It's also interesting if they're taking the route of "any observation of a particle changes the positional outcome of that particle" aspect of Quantum Theory. In short, if Allison knows why Ben leaped, then it changes the outcome and he might not be able to save her after all, or something even worse is triggered.

Just a small side note, but Janice really looks like she could have been Al's daughter. I always thought Dean Stockwell was very handsome, and Janice just looks like she inherited those fantastic genes, but that's not relevant to the story, I just wanted to mention it and say kudos to the production team.

 

I thought he looked familiar too, but looking over his IMDb page, it seems he's just one of those guys I've seen in a smattering of minor roles over the decades, but no one thing that really stands out. He kinda reminded me of Keith David.

I like focusing on the mission statement, but I don't care for having the mission always be to save someone from dying. That gets a little formulaic, and this episode made it particularly so, with Ben's first question to Addison literally being (paraphrased) "Whose life to I have to save this time?" In the original, Sam's mission wasn't always lifesaving, but could entail putting people's lives back on track or healing a broken marriage or something like that. Having the stakes always be life-or-death is heavy-handed.

I don't think that's what Janis meant. She seemed to be saying that the Quantum Accelerator technology allows anyone in the future to monitor any past event and discover any past secret, so anything they say aloud now could be overheard by a future observer, an unseen hologram listening in. So she doesn't want Ben to say anything aloud that could be overheard by their enemies.