Does Sammy Jo know that Sam is her father?
Is it time for "Quantum Leap" to make a comeback?
- Thread starter Jayson1
- Start date
They can do Sam's granddaughter.
And I don't think that Dean Stockwell will be back. Last I heard, he was living in a long-term care facility.
Chemistry aside, part of what wouldn't endear me to a reboot is the premise itself - that a leaper could only leap within their own lifetime. While they stretched that a little bit (going to 1945 when Sam & Al switched places, or 18-whatever in the Civil War episode), the episodes largely happened between Sam's birth year in 1953 and when he started leaping in 1995, except for the bits set in the "future" that Al operated from, which went all the way to 1999.
Making a show in the present day, but adhering to a) the original premise of the show and b) typical Hollywood leading man tropes, suggests that a leaper would have to be in their early forties at most in the context of the show (for reference, Scott Bakula was 35 when the show premiered in 1989, and Sam was 42 in 1995). Now I dunno about you guys, but if we had to follow the adventures of a 40 year-old leaper from the year 2024, I'd hate the notion that they would only ever leap to 1984 at the earliest. There's only so much 1980s any TV show can handle!
Mark
Making a show in the present day, but adhering to a) the original premise of the show and b) typical Hollywood leading man tropes, suggests that a leaper would have to be in their early forties at most in the context of the show (for reference, Scott Bakula was 35 when the show premiered in 1989, and Sam was 42 in 1995). Now I dunno about you guys, but if we had to follow the adventures of a 40 year-old leaper from the year 2024, I'd hate the notion that they would only ever leap to 1984 at the earliest. There's only so much 1980s any TV show can handle!
Mark
I agree that I would want them to open up the leaper's ability to go to different times. Only thing I wouldn't want to see is leaps to the future, except for maybe 1 special ep, because I think the show works best by having it in the past. I know leaps to the future was something that might have happened if the show had went on for another year.
Jason
What would be the point of leaping into the future? What could Sam (or any leaper) do in the future that they can't do in their own present?
Poor Dean Stockwell:
https://www.facebook.com/events/528066870728673/
https://www.facebook.com/events/528066870728673/
Well you can always set the show present in our past. i.e the 1990's.
And just have an intro something like in
The 1990's the US Government began research in time time travel codenamed Project Quantum Leap, facing funding cuts the project lead Dr. X Y leaped however they were unable to retrieve him/her. These are the chronicles of the attempt to bring him/her home.
Only things I can think of is if God is leaping him then Sam might know about a problem that people aren't aware of, simply because he would know he was in that place for a reason.
The second reason is if he was still, pretending to be someone else by looking like them he would have a way to get involved in people' lives but from what I understood is he wouldn't even be doing that anymore as well. People would see him as he really looks.
Jason
Here's a way to get around the "leaping within one's own lifetime" problem:
Have multiple leapers. Take turns.
Scott Bakula has said that Archer's middle name is Beckett (the novelverse has run with this). FWIW.
What's going on? Is Dean ill?
Have multiple leapers. Take turns.
Scott Bakula has said that Archer's middle name is Beckett (the novelverse has run with this). FWIW.
What's going on? Is Dean ill?
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No.
Yeah, aside from the novelty factor every once in a very long while I don't see that there would be much purpose.
To my mind, the main point of the show is to explore social issues and past struggles and address how they're still relevant today.
I suppose you could go the "this is where we could be heading!" future route, but that tends to be more about echoing and parodying the present than really reflecting on anything in any depth. 'Continuum' tried that and while entertaining to a point, didn't have an awful lot to say beyond "corporations replacing governments would suck for the 99%".
An even simpler one would be to simply ignore it. It's not like the rule was ever iron clad as they hand waved an excuse to get around it on more than one occasion IIRC. I'm pretty sure the only reason the rule existed in the first place was to contrive a reason why he didn't spend half the time leaping into stone or bronze age people, or periods of history that are too expensive to convincingly portray.
There may have been some thought about avoiding the grandfather paradox, but I don't recall it ever coming up...unless you count the time he actually leaped into an ancestor (at least I think he did, memory is a bit hazy.)
Starting with similar restrictions, one could just come up with another vague justification for keeping everything in the era of indoor plumbing for the most part by saying the leaper is anchored to their personal timeline, meaning leaps within it are the most frequent, but it's not impossible to go back further, but it's gets exponentially less likely the further back you go. "Something something something, causal nexus, something something, butterfly effect."
I was so sick of the 50s that I was happy to see an episode set in the 80s.
I had always assumed it was just a purely budget move, that they just didn't get the money to do more older periods. I doubt that would be much of an issue today, we've seen shows like Legends of Tomorrow, Timeless, and Making History show that it's really not that hard to do older period stories on a TV budget.
I wonder, did they ever come up with an excuse as to why Sam almost only ever leaped into Americans? Was the restriction to his timeline also geographical?
Well I think there might have been the odd time he wasn't an American, "Blood Moon" springs to mind. But Sam only leaped outside of the States what three times, in the aforementioned "Blood Moon" (UK), "The Leap Home, Part II" (Vietnam) and the time he leaped onboard the QM and perhaps a fourth time to Russia in the Lee Harvey Episodes.
Perhaps Al the bartender was sending other leapers to their own native countries. Sam, being American, would be mainly responsible for leaps in his own territory.
It does make sense that God/Time/Fate/whoever was sending leapers to where they could do the most good, so sending people to environments where they'd be familiar would be a good idea.
And I know the "within one's own lifetime" was mostly for a budgetary thing, but the two times they specifically went outside of that were to places and times that would have been relatively easy to recreate. The Civil War one was arguably an attempt at opening the show up a bit after having been stuck recreating three decades for five years, but a little too late to do any good.
Mark
And I know the "within one's own lifetime" was mostly for a budgetary thing, but the two times they specifically went outside of that were to places and times that would have been relatively easy to recreate. The Civil War one was arguably an attempt at opening the show up a bit after having been stuck recreating three decades for five years, but a little too late to do any good.
Mark
Hence the qualifier "almost".
They could set the show's launch in the 80s or 90s, but include the modern day and near future in episodes, by stating that within their lifetime means their original longevity and lifespan.
