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

Finally an episode that showed some of the heart of the original. As for Ben leaping beyond his own lifetime, maybe the limiting factor is the lifespan of the person he's leaping out of. Think of it as "Quantum Leapfrogging" (and if they don't use that phrase, they're missing a bet).
And what is Janice up to? With access to Ziggy and her own handlink all she'll need to take to Ben is her own poor man's imaging chamber. Maybe a modified VR helmet would suffice.
 
E-DUB said:
And what is Janice up to? With access to Ziggy and her own handlink all she'll need to take to Ben is her own poor man's imaging chamber. Maybe a modified VR helmet would suffice.
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Oh, maybe that's what the geodesic dome thingy at the end was. I thought she was going to leap herself, but maybe she's just going to be a rival hologram.

Although if it were that easy to become a hologram, anyone on the team could have spelled Addison and talked to Ben in her place. In the original, only Sam and Al could do it because Ziggy was built from their neural tissue. I think there was something said in the pilot here about having to be synchronized somehow with Ziggy. Maybe Janice could do that remotely through the handlink, but it wouldn't be easy. Or maybe she could do it because she shares genes with Al? That doesn't make much sense, but then, what in QL physics/tech ever has made sense?

Incidentally, it's weird that the leaps at the end are so delayed. In the original, Sam tended to leap moments afer he achieved his goal. Here, Ben seems to hang around precisely long enough to exchange some meaningful wrap-up conversation with Addison. In this case, it seemed like it was a fair amount of time later, enough time for the arena to empty out and Ben to get dressed and recover from the fight. It feels rather arbitrary.
 
Last night's episode is a huge leap forward.

We spend more in the leap and getting into the relationships Ben is there to "make right what once went wrong." Ben getting emotionally invested in his leap gives the episode the heart of the OG.

I didn't mind the Project QL stuff as it was less mystery box and more about Addison pushing herself too hard.

Also, this is the first time Addison and Ben's relationship gelled for me. After reading the original pilot script, this felt like what the producers originally envisioned for them.

I think Janice Calavicci is rebuilding the original Ziggy interface, which is why she needed the Handlink and other QL materials Al kept. The dome she was building very much reminded me of it.

As seen in the episode, "The Leap Back":

yMkNB9q.png


Although I like the above suggestion that she might become a rival hologram. But the moment Janice showed up at Beth's doorstep, I knew she was there for the Gummy Handlink!
 
This one was better, more focused on the time period they were in, it felt a little more like the spirit of the original, which is all I'm wanting, not a shot for shot remake. Just give me a reason why it's Quantum Leap and not "new show about time jumping," and this is a good start.

That said, things do seem to be heating up, and it does look like Janice is going to contact Ben. I honestly hope it's not going to be some evil leaper situation, because I actually hated that from the original. Something I despise in almost every show or move that has had it: the evil twin, whether it be an actual twin, or just an antagonist using the same methods as the protagonist, and causing more drama that way. I hate that stuff. Hate it.

So I hope we're not seeing that here, and maybe just more of a way for Janice to guide Ben where he needs to go that exists outside of the knowledge of Addison and everyone else.

Anyway, a good episode, I hope it keeps getting better.
 
1987SpaceGuy said:
I'll start to fast forward over parts of present day soon - it is getting worse and more annoying for me.
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Maybe they over cast in terms of the number of characters for the present day which means they have to spend more time in 2022 to get their money's worth?

In terms of splitting things a series called The Pretender which rang in the late 90s. Most the of focus was the main character but there were three main characters and one re-occuring who kept the mystery arc going but there wasn't as much time focusing on them.
 
The QL setup is really a variation on the "wandering cowboy" trope of old; a lone wolf breezes into a different town every week, and he stops the bad guys, gets the girl, and teaches a lesson to the kid. Then he breezes right back out again. They've been playing with this formula since the days of radio serials and comic books.

Since it's tough to have a supporting cast with this plotline, the 2022 gang was brought in, and this week they felt much less in the way than before. I feel that they're giving us the 2022 plotline so the show can be BOTH a conspiracy thriller AND a heartfelt family drama; but in two out of three episodes they feel like they're fighting for our attention, instead of complementing each other.

This week however felt much more in tune with the original show while giving us JUST enough of 2022 to keep things going, while advancing the conspiracy story. The focus really should be on the past story though, so I hope this trend continues.

The other note is that they're firmly setting Ben up as inhabiting the bodies of his leapees instead of swapping places with them. In that sense it's closer to the continuity of the novels, which specify that Sam's body is in the future and with the consciousness swapped, and generally not very helpful. I hope they'll acknowledge this change at some point, since they really dove into a (hand)link to the original show this week. Did the original not take a while to tell us that the leapee was sitting around in the future?

Mark
 
The "Evil Leaper" wasn't an inherently bad concept but suffered, I felt, from poor execution. The actress wasn't the best, but I did enjoy her Al analog who left no scenery unchewed. The character of Janice, in the current incarnation, does show how such a thing could have happened, though, with Leaper tech getting out into the wild, so to speak.

The novels were a mixed bag, as is often the case with tie-ins written by a variety of authors. I find myself wistfully wishing that Christopher, with his unique perspective on time traveling, had written one. Perhaps in another timeline.....
 
Every show does a Boxing episode once they run out of ideas.

A little early, but at least we know the writers room is tapped and they have no more good ideas left.
 
Situations Ben would not want to find himself leaping into:

A neurosurgeon in the middle of an operation
An alligator handler at an Everglades park
A tenor lead of an opera in play
The Executioner at a prison about to deliver sentence
A talking head host of a Sunday morning tv roundtable
That guy in the old Off! commercials who exposed his arm to a hundred mosquitos
The Mother Superior of a convent
The captain of a whaling vessel
The Head Chef of a 5-Star restaurant
Window cleaner high up on a broken platform.
 
E-DUB said:
The novels were a mixed bag, as is often the case with tie-ins written by a variety of authors.
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I don't think I ever read any besides the Ashley McConnell ones. I liked her variant take on the premise.

I did buy a number of the Innovation comics, though. They were well-done, with fully painted art.


I find myself wistfully wishing that Christopher, with his unique perspective on time traveling, had written one. Perhaps in another timeline.....
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I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I didn't even start trying to write professionally until 1990, and didn't get good enough to sell anything until '98. Anything I'd written back then would've been substandard.

Anyway, I think QL was too much of a fantasy take on time travel for me to be a good fit for it. No way could I have written about its nonsensical misuse of the term "string theory" or the gibberish of "neurons and mesons" without tearing my hair out.

I do appreciate how the pilot of this show had Ben talk about quantum entanglement as a metaphor for his relationship with Addison. It's the first time any concept mentioned in Quantum Leap has had anything to do with actual quantum physics.
 
It seems like a huge coincidence that Sam fathered a daughter who was a genius and went to work on the Quantum Leap project and that Al *ALSO* fathered a daughter who was a genius who is attempting her own Quantum Leap project or Ziggy interface.

The cynical part of me wonders if they didn't want an actress in her 50s to be Sammy Jo and wanted to go younger and have someone in a similar age area as Ben and Addison.

Still from an established history and ability/knowledge stand-point it would have made more sense while brainstorming to land on Sammy Jo (IMO)

It's interesting how they've incorporated aspects of the actors real life into their characters. We found out in the space episode that Ben emigrated to the US from South Korea as a child. The actor did the same.

Now we find out Addison saw combat overseas and the actress herself was in the US Army and deployed to Afghanistan for tours before going into acting.
 
IMC Headquarters said:
View attachment 30375


A tether to the past...

And for those of you missing the original Quantum Leap theme, you can hear it punctuate this Handlink reveal.

Personally, I'm not happy they toned down all the color! The Gummy Bears have gone all stale!
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A fun little fact about that Gummy Bear Handlink is that it's apparently the stand-in prop from the original series used for setting up shots.

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