Quantum Leap

From LoveToKnow Sci-Fi

Time travel, but with a twist

Quantum Leap is a leap of imagination. Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) is head of a project that he believes will allow a person to time travel, but only within his own lifetime. Testing the device before it is really ready, he does indeed leap into the past - and into someone else's life.

Sam finds himself looking like and living the life of a 1950s test pilot. Complicating things, the leap has 'swiss cheesed' Sam's memory.

Sidekicks Al and Ziggy

Sam is soon joined by his best friend and project observer Al (Dean Stockwell). Al is still back at the project, but can be transmitted to Sam's location as a hologram that only Sam can see. Through a hand-held device, Al can communicate with Ziggy, the computer back at the project, to look up information useful to Sam in his current life.

But something has gone wrong with the project and Sam can't get home. The explanations are a bit murky, but it seems that the problems are less technological than they are the fact that the project has been hijacked by a mysterious higher power, which is using Sam's leaps to fix what once went wrong.

The Quantum Leap Premise

This is the show's basic premise. Sam 'leaps' into someone else's life. Assisted by Al, he must figure out what he's there to accomplish. Once he accomplishes this life's task, he then automatically leaps again into a new life.

The average episode goes something like this. Sam 'quantum leaps' into a new life. He winds up right in the middle of a situation he knows nothing about, with everyone around him reacting to him as the person whose life he's leaped into. He muddles through as best he can, trying to find out more about this life, looking for a mirror or other reflective surface so he can determine if he's male or female, young or old, black or white, in this particular leap.

Eventually Al shows up and reports, "Okay, you're Joe Blow and Ziggy says there's a ninety-five probability that you're supposed to keep Susie Blow from dying in a car accident tomorrow", or whatever this leap's task is.

Sam does his best to accomplish the task, with Al returning with new projections, such as "Okay, you've done something wrong, because now Ziggy says there's a ninety percent probability that both Susie and Joe are going to die tomorrow."

So with coaching from Al, Sam does his best, eventually completes the assignment, and is then immediately leaped into a new life and a new predicament.

A new persona every day

Quantum Leap is more fantasy than science fiction; once the project was seized by the mysterious higher power, science went out the window. An interesting feature of the show is that, while the people in the episode see Sam as whoever he's leaped into, the viewer still sees him as Sam. So the real fun of this show is to watch Scott Bakula as Sam competing in a southern beauty contest in the 1950s, as a black medical student during the Watts riots, understudying Man of La Mancha, running a bordello, priest, rabbi, mental patient, and a chimpazee in the early space program.