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

[Qonundrum]

Not sure why the Internet is crushing this show with a 4.7 IMDb rating.

For the same reasons as Rotten Tomatoes or any other review site where initial ratings are questionable*. Half the time those not fond of the show and voting it down aren't going to agree on the number of underlying reasons either, though in some cases there may be some overlap. Dunno; there's no breakdown. But to adumbrate a few, some may hate actors for how many possible reasons and some reasons may be more surprising than others, or the fact it's another reimagining/reboot/regurgitation**, or that it's not being done well... Most rational people gave up on IMDB for everything except the cast and crew when they ditched the comment forums, and a number of those folks remained solely to artificially vote down or up a show for a thrill, until their next dose comes along.

* e.g. The Orville. It's not a 90% (never mind not 100%) show for me, but had enough innovations and fresh air ideas that render its first season far higher than what RT decided it was (theirs being 31%, based on-- this is becoming cyclical as well as borderline cynical, so I'll just say that given the legitimately subjective nature of entertainment in general to begin with, reading all their reviews was intriguing and I'm only halfway into theirs and some of them are interesting despite or in spite of their scores as well... My rating would be 74% for season 1 overall... YMMV. )

** it's why some people flocked to "Firefly" than to see a reboot using the name of some old tv show or movie it's partially influenced by

Pile on is making these rating sites completely useless.

They're useful for reading others' opinions, and some of them may or may not be peers... and even then your best friend might introduce you to a show you ultimately loathe or love. There's no one definitive reason, but these sites aren't completely useless either. They at least for advertising a show with.

 

[Astra]

This one? Wasn't it cancelled?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowhere_Man_(American_TV_series)

That's the one! The plot sounds a bit similar to a movie with Liam Neeson where also his wife suddenly doesn't remember him anymore.

Looks like the show got some closure at least, so that's good.

 

[Christopher]

Anybody remember "Nowhere Man"? In the pilot this guy was in a restaurant with his wife and when he came back from the toilet she was gone and when he went home she said she didn't know him... big mystery and of course you wanted to know what had happened and why but the next episodes he also was going from place to place, not getting any wiser about the conspiracy... I was frustrated with it so much, I stopped watching a few episodes in. I guess I was not ready for the slow burn mystery. It felt like a waste of time watching him do things that had nothing to do with anything. Maybe I should go back to it?

My problem with Nowhere Man is that it was trying to do The Prisoner with the format of The Fugitive, and that just doesn't work. You can't tell a story about a pervasive conspiracy always controlling a guy's life if he's wandering the country rather than trapped in a single Village. It got to the point where the vast majority of the population of the United States would've had to be complicit in the "secret" conspiracy against this one guy in order for it to play out as shown. It was just ridiculous.

My other problem was that, even though the guy got used to being suspicious that the conspiracy was after him, the scripts always made him let his guard down at the one key moment when he should have been the most cautious, so that he could fall prey to the conspiracy's latest gambit. It was very artificial.

The pilot movie was actually fairly good, but the concept just wasn't sustainable as a weekly episodic series. I always felt it should've just been a movie or miniseries.

Looks like the show got some closure at least, so that's good.

Well, it got an "Everything You Thought You Knew Is Wrong" cliffhanger twist in the finale, setting up a new level of the conspiracy for a second season that never came. I wouldn't call that closure. And the revelation made no sense to me.

 

[Astra]

M

Well, it got an "Everything You Thought You Knew Is Wrong" cliffhanger twist in the finale, setting up a new level of the conspiracy for a second season that never came. I wouldn't call that closure. And the revelation made no sense to me.

Bit like "Awake" with Jason Isaacs then. Only 13 episodes with promise to more coming but still well worth watching.

 

[Christopher]

Bit like "Awake" with Jason Isaacs then. Only 13 episodes with promise to more coming but still well worth watching.

I recall being lukewarm about that one too.

 

[Tosk]

And yes, they can theoretically look anywhere around Sam in his subjective present, but they need to know where to look.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Al frequently gets centered on another person. But then sometimes he isn't when it's more dramatically appropriate for Sam to have to find them.

"Logic"? It's just the Fugitive formula with a little bit of sci-fi dressing. Every week he'll help someone, why it's happening is secondary. It's like wondering about angels' aerodynamic after watching "Touched by an angel".

Which is why I've said repeatedly that it doesn't bother me and that you just have to go with it, that QL's "rules" tend to be whatever the episode says they are. Doesn't mean we can't discuss it though.

 

[JD]

I wonder if the new show will try to come up with more consistent rules when comes to things like that?

 

[Christopher]

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Al frequently gets centered on another person. But then sometimes he isn't when it's more dramatically appropriate for Sam to have to find them.

Which is entirely consistent with my statement that they have to know where to look first. They can center Al on another person if they know who it is, where they are, and why they need to focus on that person instead of some other person.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I remember Nowhere Man and lasting only 5 or 6 episodes before bailing out. But then it was on terrestrial TV so you had to wait every week for the next 'new' episode to air. Just realized this is the same show I was thinking of which started off with him taking a photo..

Hey fan theory I read online was that maybe Nowhere Man was a kind of prequel to Dollhouse but that seems like heavy fan wank

 

[Tosk]

Which is entirely consistent with my statement that they have to know where to look first. They can center Al on another person if they know who it is, where they are, and why they need to focus on that person instead of some other person.

They sometimes don't know where the person is and it still works. In Blood Moon, Al says that he can't get a fix on Alexandria and then less than five seconds later tells Gooshie to center him on her. Which Gooshie does.

In Temptation Eyes, Sam and Al have no idea where the killer has taken Tamlyn. Al centers on Tamlyn as a way of finding out where she is, instead of already knowing.

 

[SAndrews10]

LOVE Nowhere Man one of my favorite one season series. "Hidden Agenda" the photo that f'd Thomas Vaile's life...which in the end was a forgery if I remember...

 

[Guy Gardener]

I want to attack that party full of normal people.

Sorry.

I mean, I want to attack the concept that that party was a real thing that happened.

Crisis actors there to fill the venue, so the hosts didn't feel sad.

 

[Christopher]

They sometimes don't know where the person is and it still works. In Blood Moon, Al says that he can't get a fix on Alexandria and then less than five seconds later tells Gooshie to center him on her. Which Gooshie does.

Yes, but the point is that they need to know they're looking for Alexandria instead of any of the other X billion people on the planet. And that is why they need the historical research -- to put what they see and hear in context, to understand what it means and why it might be important to the leap. Just looking at something doesn't magically tell you everything about it.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Sam makes tiny changes to time.

The crew and Ziggy at project Quantum Leap seem to be able to see/remember changes to the timeline.

Ziggy or Al can look back to see when Time is the same as the "most recent" historical record, and when time started being disrupted by Sam, and history started moving, and that's where Sam is.

Time can only change when acted on by an outside mover. So time moves once when Sam Arrives, and then only moves again when Al interacts with Sam.

Although if Al is immune from changes to the timeline, why was he replaced by Roddy McDowell?

 

[Tosk]

Yes, but the point is that they need to know they're looking for Alexandria instead of any of the other X billion people on the planet. And that is why they need the historical research -- to put what they see and hear in context, to understand what it means and why it might be important to the leap. Just looking at something doesn't magically tell you everything about it.

I'm not sure I grasp your point.

You said "They can center Al on another person if they know who it is, where they are, and why they need to focus on that person instead of some other person." and I'm pointing out that they sometimes do not have all that information and can still center on the person.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Ziggy wouldn't see people in the past as lumps of flesh.

He would seen them as electromagnetic presences.

Ah.

Auras.

The electromagnetic field generated by your brain is unique?

Sam is generating the wrong electromagnetic field. which is why he looks like other people.

 

[Christopher]

You said "They can center Al on another person if they know who it is, where they are, and why they need to focus on that person instead of some other person." and I'm pointing out that they sometimes do not have all that information and can still center on the person.

Which is incidental to the actual topic. You claimed in post #612 that if they could directly view the past, historical research would be unnecessary. I explained why that is incorrect: because just looking doesn't equal understanding, because you need the research to determine what to look for and understand what it means. Because they can only look at Sam's immediate present and need the historical research to put it in context with past and future events. The direct scans are just one of the multiple sources of information they need to use to figure out a leap, along with Sam's firsthand experiences and the historical record. It's not a zero-sum choice.

As I learned from majoring in history in college, studying history entails studying every available source of information and comparing them to one another. Even a direct record of events such as a film or video is only a partial, limited source of information, and you need to consult other texts and records about the era, as well as earlier and later eras, to place that source in a wider context and understand what it means. One source does not obviate the need for others, because each source provides different information, different perspectives. Any one source of data can be misleading or confusing without context.

 

[Tosk]

My point isn't simply "they can look at something and figure it out" although I can see how my original wording may have been misleading. You said they can scan the past where Sam is, I argued that they don't...which was stupid of me, because I actually meant that sometimes they don't, when it's better for the story. That's really all it was.

I'm simply saying that their ability to actually "scan" the past varies wildly depending on what the story needs. Just as with most of QL's 'science'. And surely not a controversial thing to say about QL.

 

[Christopher]

I'm simply saying that their ability to actually "scan" the past varies wildly depending on what the story needs. Just as with most of QL's 'science'. And surely not a controversial thing to say about QL.

I figure that, again, it's the same as with The Time Tunnel's equivalent ability to scan around Tony and Doug. It depended on the specific conditions, how well they were able to "tune in" a particular time or refine their scans. Perhaps that was an easier analogy for viewers to understand back in the days before cable and digital broadcasting, when your ability to tune in a clear TV or radio signal depended on the vagaries of atmospheric conditions and whether you had the antenna and tuning knobs adjusted just right. Presumably whatever method they used to scan the past (or sometimes the future in TTT's case) was subject to interference from the energies of the space-time continuum or whatever, and they could make a stronger connection at some times than at others. Of course it's at the convenience of the story, but it's not completely random in-universe.

 

[E-DUB]

Aside from bringing Sam home (which seems unlikely due to real world events, but you never know), what other aspects of QL mythology could this series go deeper into?