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

[Skipper]

That's the basic premise of the show boiled right down; "put right what once went wrong".

For some reasons I really, really doubt that the new show will be so straightforward. I foresee at least a couple of conspiracies, an arc lasting at least a season focusing on the "Evil Leapees", terrorists who will want to use the machine for their own gain, corrupt politicians who will ask to change the outcome of past elections and the doctor who will meet himself in another body and this will cause a paradox with the risk of destroying the universe.

 

[Christopher]

I don't remember, could Al go anywhere or did he have to stay close to Sam?

I don't know about "anywhere," but he could certainly travel some distance from Sam, letting him witness events and overhear conversations that he then came back to tell Sam about. It was often a key source of information, or a way to warn Sam about something bad going on elsewhere. And there were occasions where Al used his invisibility and intangibility to indulge in his lecherous tendencies by peeking into women's locker rooms and such, or at least tried to before Sam chastised him for it.

 

[Skipper]

I don't know about "anywhere," but he could certainly travel some distance from Sam, letting him witness events and overhear conversations that he then came back to tell Sam about. It was often a key source of information, or a way to warn Sam about something bad going on elsewhere. And there were occasions where Al used his invisibility and intangibility to indulge in his lecherous tendencies by peeking into women's locker rooms and such, or at least tried to before Sam chastised him for it.

So they in theory could use Al for intelligence gatherings even for events unrelated to the particular Sam's "mission"? I think that intelligence agencies will be a factor in the new show...

 

[Jayson1]

That's up to ones personal interpretation. That bartender also known as GFTW God Fate Time Whatever, I don't think it was literally God

I think God makes the most sense because it was implied as a possibility in many episodes before and we did once see the real Devil. Plus I always got the impression that the evil leapers were somehow connected to the other side. As if the Devil decided he wanted his own Leaper out their. Plus a God is self ware unlike fate or time and thus it gives you a explanation in terms of why some of the things work they do like Sam being able to fit into other peoples clothes and whatnot.

 

[Skipper]

Do you people think that "God" or whatever will be a factor in the new show?

 

[Jayson1]

AL could go great distances. In the football episode he even went and watched some of the Super Bowl. Then when he a rock star he followed the kid around they thought was a stalker and possible killer.

 

[Jayson1]

Do you people think that "God" or whatever will be a factor in the new show?

I think it might be brought up but quickly dismissed. Seen as to problematic or so. Plus they will want some mystery box explanation that involves bad guys or a bad organization or something like that that has more clear cut answers than some philosophical question mark like the old show had?

 

[Christopher]

So they in theory could use Al for intelligence gatherings even for events unrelated to the particular Sam's "mission"?

When they tried going off-mission in the original series, it usually didn't work. When Sam leaped in two days before the U2 spy plane crash, Al lied to him about Ziggy's predictions and tried to get Sam to warn the government about the U2 incident, but time/fate/etc. wouldn't let him, because that wasn't his purpose. By the same token, attempting to exploit a Leap as an opportunity to gain historical intelligence unrelated to the Leap would probably backfire in some way.

I think maybe the reason Sam didn't meddle in big events may have been that the inertia of time wouldn't let him make any large-scale changes. He helped people in more intimate ways because they had less of a global effect on history, so the timeline didn't resist those smaller-scale changes. He couldn't prevent a war or a catastrophe, but he could help individuals who fell through history's cracks.

Anyway, what would be the intelligence value of information collected from decades in the past? As I understand it, in the intelligence game, information has a shelf life. Older secrets aren't as important as current ones. Nobody but historians would have reason to care about what a government no longer in power was planning decades ago. Okay, maybe in some circumstances you could, say, dig up some dirt about a current leader's past indiscretions that would damage them if they were revealed. But there would be a narrow set of circumstances where that would be useful, and it would require the Leaper to coincidentally be around on the same day as an incident unrelated to the Leap. Which could happen, as in the U2 case, but it wouldn't happen predictably or reliably.

I mean, sure, as Asimov's "The Dead Past" established, a time viewer could be very useful for spying if you had complete control over it and could set it to spy on events mere minutes or seconds in the past. But that's not how PQL works. It's a crapshoot where and when the Leap ends up or how long it lasts. Which makes it a pretty crummy source of intelligence.

I think that intelligence agencies will be a factor in the new show...

I hope not. As I keep saying, Bellisario's goal with QL was to avoid the usual time-travel cliches and do a different kind of show, one about everyday people in the past rather than the big-ticket historical events. I hope the new show resists the pressure to go the conventional route and do big Timeless-style conspiracy plots. I get that they want to have a present-day arc, but the primary focus should be on Ben helping individuals in the past. Let the mystery arc be something more personal, about why Ben and Al's daughter are doing this, or about what Sam Beckett's influence has been, or something like that.

Do you people think that "God" or whatever will be a factor in the new show?

Well, it was very downplayed in the original show, hinted at but never more than that. I think people in this thread are dwelling on it more than the show itself did. Bellisario did like to hint at religious themes in his shows, but I don't think he's heavily involved in this show, since he retired in 2007 and is probably in more of a consultant capacity at most. And given current politics, it might be safer for a TV series to avoid wading into religious waters.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

The Lee Harvey Oswald episodes are good but it nags at me how Sam could have been affected so by Oswald if they had swapped places.. Was there some part of him with Sam?

 

[Christopher]

The Lee Harvey Oswald episodes are good but it nags at me how Sam could have been affected so by Oswald if they had swapped places.. Was there some part of him with Sam?

I don't remember the specifics, but the idea was that something abnormal happened with the Leap so that Sam's personality started blending with Oswald's and Oswald took over. Maybe it was because he was a psychopath or something, so his mind worked differently. But Bellisario wanted to refute Oliver Stone's JFK conspiracy theory and do a story portraying Oswald acting as himself, plotting and attempting the assassination alone. So he broke the usual rules and had Oswald's personality in control for most of the story. The reason why was beside the point; as with everything else in QL, the "science" just worked in whatever random way the story needed it to work.

 

[The Wormhole]

That would make sense from a production standpoint, but from an in universe point of view, that doesn't really make sense to me. I was under the impression that Al wasn't actually there, that he was being projected to Sam's brain or something.

It kind of ties in with the belief that animals or babies can see ghosts or other forms of the unexplained. Kind of like a story I remember my mother told about visiting my grandfather in the hospital about a week before he died. She had my nephew (who was a year old at the time) with her and it completely freaked her out the entire time they were there that my nephew seemed fixated with an empty part of the ceiling directly above my grandfather.

 

[Christopher]

She had my nephew (who was a year old at the time) with her and it completely freaked her out the entire time they were there that my nephew seemed fixated with an empty part of the ceiling directly above my grandfather.

Nothing freakish about that. I've been known to stare at ceilings. Sometimes they have patterns you can study, and sometimes they're just a comfortingly neutral space if you want to avoid looking at other things.

 

[JD]

There's an old folk belief that animals have a "sixth sense" or some kind of psychic ability, because people don't realize that animals' normal five senses are just a lot more acute than ours, so they can hear or smell things beyond our awareness. I think QL was going on that belief, and suggesting that babies had a similar sixth sense or intuition that we lost as we grew.

And yes, Al was being projected to Sam, but there must have been some sort of signal doing the projection, so theoretically it could have been detected by the right kind of receiver.

That's pretty good explanation.

I don't know about "anywhere," but he could certainly travel some distance from Sam, letting him witness events and overhear conversations that he then came back to tell Sam about. It was often a key source of information, or a way to warn Sam about something bad going on elsewhere. And there were occasions where Al used his invisibility and intangibility to indulge in his lecherous tendencies by peeking into women's locker rooms and such, or at least tried to before Sam chastised him for it.

That's right, I forgot he could see things Sam wasn't present for, so that would mean that he was actually there, and not just in Sam's brain.

I think God makes the most sense because it was implied as a possibility in many episodes before and we did once see the real Devil. Plus I always got the impression that the evil leapers were somehow connected to the other side. As if the Devil decided he wanted his own Leaper out their. Plus a God is self ware unlike fate or time and thus it gives you a explanation in terms of why some of the things work they do like Sam being able to fit into other peoples clothes and whatnot.

Not necessarily, there have been a lot of stories where fate and time were anthropomorphic beings, or at least controlled by specific beings.

 

[Astra]

Nothing freakish about that. I've been known to stare at ceilings. Sometimes they have patterns you can study, and sometimes they're just a comfortingly neutral space if you want to avoid looking at other things.

There are some Twitter threads though where people are asked to tell a creepy or scary story about their toddler, and so many seem to see people that are not there, and hear things that are not there, and also convincingly say things like "before I was in your tummy I was married to this guy..." and stuff.

One child said "Remember when you were little and I was big I used to call you this name" and it was a nickname the mother had been called by her own mother when she was a child, but grandmother had long died and the child could not know about this name. Stuff like that.

I usually don't believe in the supernatural, but I also don't think why these people would make up anything like that.

I mean, would you not freak out if your child out of the blue said "It's okay, mama, they don't want to harm you" and nobody else is in the room?

 

[crookeddy]

Not sure why the Internet is crushing this show with a 4.7 IMDb rating. Pile on is making these rating sites completely useless.

 

[Reverend]

Exactly. There are "rules" but they are really only there to let the show tell stories. Most of them don't really make a lick of sense. My fave was how Al could go elsewhere and observe events in real time that Sam was not present for. How does the logic of that even work?

More to the point; given that this is a DoD project, why the hell wasn't the Pentagon using the apparently omnipotent imaging chamber to go spy of literally everyone? I think there was a few instances where they lost the lock on Sam and were scrolling through all of time and space (well, all of Sam's lifetime on earth at least) like they were flicking though TV channels.

Why did they not just drop the very expensive time traveller nonsense and just have a team of holograms wandering around the headquarters of certain intelligence agencies?!

 

[Christopher]

That's right, I forgot he could see things Sam wasn't present for, so that would mean that he was actually there, and not just in Sam's brain.

No, he wasn't "actually there." He was standing in the Imaging Chamber, seeing the past projected around him like in a holodeck. It's just that, as with the Time Tunnel, they were able to shift their imaging focus to other places, using Sam as their anchor to that time but widening their scanning field beyond his immediate location.

I mean, would you not freak out if your child out of the blue said "It's okay, mama, they don't want to harm you" and nobody else is in the room?

No, I wouldn't freak out, because unlike most adults, I haven't forgotten how a child's imagination works.

(Well, I would freak out, because I don't actually have a child and I live alone. But aside from that.)

 

[JD]

Not sure why the Internet is crushing this show with a 4.7 IMDb rating. Pile on is making these rating sites completely useless.

Because the new Leaper is Asian, the new Al is a woman, and it has a non-binary cast member.

 

[Skipper]

Why did they not just drop the very expensive time traveller nonsense and just have a team of holograms wandering around the headquarters of certain intelligence agencies?!

It seems to me that Al needed Sam to "anchor" himself at a certain point in time. Now, intelligence gathering aside, why didn't Al use some free time trying to see what had happened in unsolved crimes instead of peeking into the ladies' dressing rooms? I think I remember that there were times when Sam stayed weeks in the past. If Al used a couple of hours for the common good it wouldn't be bad.

 

[Astra]

(Well, I would freak out, because I don't actually have a child and I live alone. But aside from that.)

LOL Same