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

I'd prefer it NOT be him due to the age factor but knowing the producers they probably intended it to be Jonathan.

 

Pretty sure they did, but intent doesn't matter if it doesn't make it on the screen. Lots of things are intended to be one thing but end up getting retconned into something different later on, either by different creators or by the same creators changing their minds. So we're free to ignore intent, especially if it's as implausible as this. Some ideas are just bad.

 

IIRC, in the prime timeline, Archer lives long enough to attend the launch of the Enterprise in 2245 (15 years before SNW) but dies soon after that.

 

Um...so the Accelerator is still on and firing? Huh?

If they shut it down they'll lose Ben? It's not a one and done thing?

 

I think the Accelerator is acting kinda of like a tracking device/lifeline and also carrying out the trajectory to bounce Ben where needed to get to the future.. if its turned off he could still leap, but they wouldn't have any idea where he was or be able to connect with him again. At least that's the impression I got. It seems like that's what Sam became.

It seemed like they thought turning it off might have him immediately leap so I dunno.

Sounds kinda like Sliders and their sliding.

 

Can you do a pic of that?

 

"Ann! Try to get a lock on Tony Ben!"
"Who?"

And an actor named Robert is watching the imager!

Yeah, the tubes in that television set probably give off more heat than the story's reactor! Take ten minutes to warm up!

 

OMG ..... I don't think we saw that in the first two episodes which is all I have seen so far, I didn't mind the space shuttle one

 

I don’t think Jen had really thought things through when she tore a strip off Magic.

She was pissed at him for siding with Janice but seems to ignore that shutting the Accelerator down could have had the same effect.

 

Come to think of it, is that NO SMOKING sign (and the policy mentioned in the episode) another anachronism? I mean, I've seen footage of mission control crew at NASA in the '60s smoking up a storm while working at consoles much like these.

 

I thought the implication was they were assuming Groundhog Day rules applied to the time loop. Indeed, that even got lampshaded when they made the comment about there not being very much practical research into time looks and that a majority of their search results consisted of "bad Groundhog Day fan fiction."

 

Yes, that's exactly the problem -- they assumed. They leapt (no pun intended) to a hasty conclusion based on almost no evidence, and didn't bother to consider alternatives. A scientist like Ian shouldn't do something that stupid. The first thing any scientist does with an idea is to question it, to challenge it, to look for alternative explanations for the data. And the same should go for a skilled investigator like Jen is supposed to be. If you only have a single piece of data, that's not enough to draw any conclusions from without more data to give it context. You keep your mind open to every possible explanation for that data point, then gather more evidence to rule out alternatives until you've excluded every explanation except one. (This is how courts of law work too. It's what "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" means.) Making assumptions is bad. It dumbs these characters down to have them rushing to conclusions so thoughtlessly, to assume the first thing that popped into their heads is correct and not even bother to look for alternatives. Smart people don't do that.

And again, they assumed it was a time loop before they had any reason to think that. Ben had only jumped back once. They didn't know yet if he'd do it again. It makes no sense to assume a repeating pattern from a single example. Having them jump to that conclusion ahead of the in-story evidence made it feel like they were fictional characters being puppeteered by the scriptwriter to react a certain way in order to prematurely force the story forward to the desired point. It just wasn't a credible way for the characters to react to the limited data they had at that point.

 

At this point every Sci Fi show has done one. Heck TNG did one even before Groundhog Day did it. Well so did Rashomon.

 

This was fun! I found the approach novel (yeah, I know, Groundhog Day but I still found it novel), and I think it worked. A bit of a "whodunnit?" mixed in with some history, a good environmental message, a favorite actor (I love you Robert Picardo), and a little bit of character growth. Of course it would end with "I will give you the name," and then we have to wait until next week to get the name, but that's just good cliffhanger writing to get you back next week.

Good episode, and now I really want to know who encouraged Ben to leap.

 

The name should be a legacy character. Sammy Jo Fuller? Donna Elesee-Beckett? Gooshie?

 

"The name is...forty-two!"

Yeah, it will probably be a legacy character. Which will have us all scratching our heads as we try to figure out their connection to the ultimate destination Ben's heading to in order to save Addison's life.

But it will make a neat twist to reveal it was Addison herself.

 

I think it might be a Addison that leaped and got stuck leaping like Sam and has been doing it for a very long time. Ben found out about her fate so decided to change the timeline and save his Addison by leaping first thus keeping his Addison from being stuck in time. Al's daughter knows about this because she was part of the project from day 1 in the original timeline and maybe was the person Addison leaped into and how our Ben first encountered this original Addison. Al's daughter was able to piece together what happened but also angry she was no longer part of the project in the current altered timeline.

 

That's probably better than what the writers will come up with.

 

I liked how they determined that the leap was a closed series of leaps and NOT a real "Groundhog day" sort of setup - they aren't really repeating things per se, but Ben would only leap into each person once before ACTUALLY getting killed. I'm pretty sure we haven't seen this in the genre before, so playing with both the formula AND the Quantum Leap way of doing stuff was fun. That the accelerator "chooses" where to land Ben seems a little off, but then again it goes with the overall intention of Ben heading to an ultimate destination - to it's more like being in a canoe and navigating the rapids of space-time instead of powerboating your way to where you want to go.

Another revelation here is that Ziggy determines probabilities based on what Ben "sees". I guess that means between extrapolating on the actual date Ben is in, the people he interacts with upon arriving, plus whatever butterflies are flapping at the time, Ziggy figures out the probabilities Addison (and I guess Al) spouts all the time.

And yet again, Addison is left behind after Ben leaps out. The show carefully hides that she SHOULD be left staring at whoever returns to their body looking around confused, but we seem to be playing politely with that fact and just ending on her wistfully thoughtful face.

Mark

 

I get the vague impression that I have seen something like it before, but I can't remember where.

In the original, Ziggy based her predictions on available documentation and news reports from the time. Which is why it's annoying that they keep having Ian or Jen do internet searches for information, because that's supposed to be Ziggy's gig.

Oh, right, I didn't even think of that!