Tuesday TV Touchbase: Quantum Leap

Today the Tuesday TV Touchbase takes a look at Quantum Leap, both classic and new. 

Andrea and I have been revisiting the original Quantum Leap on the SyFy channel.  Andrea was a big fan of the show back in the day when the show originally aired on NBC. 

Here's the premise:  Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Backula) is a super smart scientist who has created a time travel device called the quantum leap accelerator. Entering the device, Sam can travel in time into the past along his own time line. (He can't go back into time further than the date of his own birth.)  

The time travel itself involves Sam "leaping" into the body of someone in the past and living that person's life until he puts right whatever was going wrong for either that person or someone close to them. Once than mission is accomplished, Sam leaps out and into another person.  

Sam's lone companion on these journeys through time is Al Calavicci, (Dean Stockwell), a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. Al is linked up to a super computer named Ziggy back at the Quantum Leap project which enables Al to relay information to Sam on who he is and what he's supposed to do to make another leap. 

Dr. Sam Becket was a middle aged white guy but the people he leapt into were not so he would confront issues arising from ageism, racism and sexism.  

Although ostensibly a science fiction concept, Quantum Leap did suggest involvement of forces of a more supernatural nature. What exactly was driving Sam's leaps into people who needed his involvement to set right what was about to go wrong? 

The show did occassionally play with the conventions of the show.  Due to a near identical genetic match with an ancestor who fought for the Union army in the American Civil War, Sam once leapt into his great-great grandfather.  

And in an episode set around the nascent space program and it's use of chimpanzees as test subjects, Sam leapt into a chimpanzee.  Which involved Scott Backula waddling around naked except for an over-sized diaper. 

Sam looked like whoever he leapt into to everyone around him and in reflections but to the audience at home, he looked like Scott Backula. He would dress however his current persona dressed. So if Sam leapt into a woman, then at some point Scott was wearing a dress and high heels.   

The series ended with Sam Beckett leaping into an adult Sam Beckett on August 8, 1953 which is his birthday.  He is in a small town bar where the bartender (God?) knows who and what Sam is and drops some very oblique knowledge about Sam's destiny. 

After one more leap, the screen goes to black and a graphic informs us "Sam Beckett never returned home."

Which brings us to 2022 and the new Quantum Leap.  

It's been thirty year since Dr. Sam Beckett vanished into the Quantum Leap accelerator. For reasons unknown, new project leader Dr. Ben Song (Raymond Lee) uses the upgraded accelerator to leap back in time, becoming lost in the past just as Beckett did, living the lives of other people and changing history in hopes of getting back to the present. Project employee (and Ben's fiancée) Addison Augustine (Caitlin Bassett) acts as his hologram advisor.   

The new series differs from the original in that time is spent with the cast at the Quantum Leap project. The original series focused solely on Sam and his temporal predicament with little or no time spent at the project. In the new series, the Quantum Leap project team is busy trying to figure out what the hell Ben was up to, involved it appears in some kind of conspiratorial stuff with Janis Calavicci,  the daughter of Sam Beckett's hologram assistant Al.   

Besides Janis, there is another connection to the original series.  The military's point man for the Quantum Leap project is Herbert "Magic" Williams, a Vietnam veteran Becket leaped into back in season 3 of the original series. 

Spending time in the "present" with the Quantum Leap project team and adding a layer of mystery to Ben's unexpected use of the accelerator  is a interesting deviation from the original series formula.  But it does eat into time that could be used to explore the time in which Ben has been catapulted to and the people he has to interact with in that particular time.  Since the time and people in a particular leap are only around for one episode, time spent developing the characters in that leap is precious.  Time spent in the present is time away from learning more about the time Ben has arrived in. 

And time spent in the present undercuts a fundamental tragedy of the leaper, their isolation. Cut off from home, the leaper's only connection to home is their hologram companion. In the original, seeing the world only from Sam's perspective underscores that isolation. In the current series with the constant check ins with the present, the viewer's empathy for Ben's isolation is undercut. 

By the way, if Ben looks familiar, Raymond Lee is also Sam, Allison's would be paramour from Kevin Can F**k Himself. 

The first handful of episodes of the new series have been perfectly serviceable but seem to be lacking a certain, I don't know, spark. Raymond Lee lacks the expressiveness of Scott Backula. And Addison is too serious as the hologram; I miss Al's snarkiness and the wild day-glo wardrobe he sported.  

The new Quantum Leap has potential and I hope it has a chance to reach it.  

OK, that's a wrap for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase.

This weeks Your Friday Video Link is connected to Quantum Leap.   

Coming up next week, we'll take a look at the new season of  Young Sheldon.  

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.