New Quantum Leap

[mothman]

I suppose it's not impossible that Bakula could take a properly leading role in a revival. He's 67 now, but then another captain of the Enterprise is doing a TV show in his eighties...

But chances are he'd just either die after passing the torch to another Leaper, or appear briefly and act all mysterious and encouraging before going off again to do his thing while the new Leaper does theirs. Either option is unsatisfying.

And the striking thing about QL is, there were just two regular characters. TWO. There were a few recurring PQL staff but only two of them are considered worth mentioning in the QL wiki page, and they only appeared in five and two episodes, respectively. I'm not sure I can see a new show doing that. There'd be a whole cast who'd need storylines writing every week, and it'd mostly be soap opera bollocks.

[JamesTC]

Somebody should convince Sam to return home but, in doing so, take his place. Sam should then help them as the new hologram.

[The Culture Bunker]

But chances are he'd just either die after passing the torch to another Leaper, or appear briefly and act all mysterious and encouraging before going off again to do his thing while the new Leaper does theirs. Either option is unsatisfying.

I remember they did the latter option with the ill-advised Knight Rider revivial a few years back - it turns out the male lead is actually Michael Knight's son and at the end, the Hoff appears at the funeral of the lad's mother to pay respects to his previous one night stand and wish his spawn well in carrying on the family legacy with FLAG/KITT.

Given that show was absolute crap, I'm not holding out much hope for this one either. See also: A-Team film, which they tried to make a bit more 'edgy' by having people actually die in it, rather than staggering from blown-up jeeps, rubbing their heads and going "owww..."

[mothman]

I'm demonstrating my staggering lack of taste yet again, but I quite liked the A-Team film. It bore only the vaguest resemblance to the original, but to try to seamlessly match the original would probably have seen it derailed into outright parody. I guess I'm just a sucker for a competent comedy action film.

[The Culture Bunker]

I thought the team themselves were fine (Neeson made for a good Hannibal, and obviously Cooper is impossibly handsome, so perfect for Face. Wasn't quite convinced Murdoch was crazy enough, though) but the rest of the cast didn't really work for me. I barely remember the plot, bar BA briefly becoming a pacifist, which is suppose is apt enough for an A-Team film.

[mothman]

It's possibly my critical faculties were dampened because I was awestruck by quite how good-looking Bradley Cooper is and certainly was throughout the film. He's gorgeous. When he comes out of the tanning booth, that'll make any straight man want to start batting for the other team.

[JaDanketies]

Al is fucking disgusting. Watched the one where Sam leaped back into his teenage body and all Al could talk about was how he should go fuck some 16-year-olds while he has the opportunity

[Replies From View]

A pivotal aspect of who he was, though.  He could walk through walls and view things unseen, so in the show bible he naturally needed to be a pervert and also a paedophile.

[Psybro]

I remember an episode where he's in the body of a vampire cultist aristocrat of some sort and just before he leaps he looks in a mirror and he's got no reflection. Thought I might have imagined both that and the Diagnosis Murder with an actual vampire until some feverish Googling.

There was also the one with a devil version of Sam? Not sure I saw that one or just read about it online.  The Cuban Missile Crisis and JFK ones really left an impression on me as I had grown up in that early 90s period where nothing really happened in the global West.

[Bad Ambassador]

There was also the one with a devil version of Sam?

There's all kinds of diabolist stuff going, and at the end Al reveals he's the devil, then Sam wakes up - he'd bumped his head as soon as he leaped in, and before Al can tell him where he is he rushes outside and saves the life of someone who'd died in the dream in the exact same way. Cue Sam and Al sharing a spooky look and Sam leaping off.

[Replies From View]

There was also the one with a devil version of Sam?

There was a Halloween episode with a devil version of Al - maybe you are thinking of that.


Edit:  yes, this, although I was avoiding sharing the 'all a dream' spoiler:

There's all kinds of diabolist stuff going, and at the end Al reveals he's the devil, then Sam wakes up - he'd bumped his head as soon as he leaped in, and before Al can tell him where he is he rushes outside and saves the life of someone who'd died in the dream in the exact same way. Cue Sam and Al sharing a spooky look and Sam leaping off.

I remember the (spam) streaming of it a couple of years back, when QL was once again the Tuesday night highlight of everyone's week, and some people in the chat being a bit pissed off with the cop-out ending.

[JaDanketies]

I remember an episode where he's in the body of a vampire cultist aristocrat of some sort and just before he leaps he looks in a mirror and he's got no reflection. Thought I might have imagined both that and the Diagnosis Murder with an actual vampire until some feverish Googling.

There was also the one with a devil version of Sam? Not sure I saw that one or just read about it online.  The Cuban Missile Crisis and JFK ones really left an impression on me as I had grown up in that early 90s period where nothing really happened in the global West.

Vampire one definitely happens.

There is the 'evil leaper' storyline, where there's an alternative quantum leap thing going on where they're trying to fuck up history by making sure baby Hitler doesn't get aborted or whatever.  It's inferred that God is the one leaping Sam about, so presumably they're in cahoots with Satan.

[Replies From View]

It's inferred that God is the one leaping Sam about

Yeah, when the show started implying things like this I found it got a bit less fun to watch.

[JamesTC]

The religious stuff is much more overt in the first season or two.

[Replies From View]

The religious stuff is much more overt in the first season or two.

Hmm.  I must have somehow ignored it when the stories were more solid and the format more fresh, I guess.

[Replies From View]

I felt robbed when it was announced that QL was axed and wouldn't be coming back, but really, revisiting it, you can see that by season 5 they really didn't have further to go without fundamentally changing what made it all work.  It was creeping in before that, as well - the chimp episode (where you spend the entire time thinking "are they seeing the chimp or what, because they are all making eye contact with the significantly taller Sam") was in season 4.

If they'd continued into season 6 I think it would have felt like a different show, with more goofy scenarios and famous people - a Zombie Simpsons transformation granting a kind of shallow longevity.

[Psybro]

Yeah I meant Al was the demonic one. I also remember another spooky one with plot similarities to What Lies Beneath? Dead wife in a lake and Sam doesn't know if he actually did it.  Or maybe that just was What Lies Beneath.

[Replies From View]

Yeah I meant Al was the demonic one. I also remember another spooky one with plot similarities to What Lies Beneath? Dead wife in a lake and Sam doesn't know if he actually did it.  Or maybe that just was What Lies Beneath.

There were some great spooky ones.  I absolutely loved how the show could change genre from week to week.

[JaDanketies]

There aren't enough 'anthology' shows about these days, but the ones I can think of are all great

[Replies From View]

One thing that always delighted me was whenever anybody other than Sam could see Al, or see Sam as himself.

In the dedicated Christmas episode, Al is mocking or berating someone the way he normally can unseen/unheard, and it's brilliant to see that character turn and respond to Al, then Al and Sam's reaction.

[JamesTC]

Season 5 went the way it did in a bid to win viewers back. JFK, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, the Civil War, evil leaper, vampire episode, and the three-part leap. It was all just about desperately trying to win viewers to save themselves from cancellation. Was a bit like what would happen with Sliders a few years later.

[JaDanketies]

Al is just a microchip in Sam's head! He's a hallucination that is only seen by Sam because he does not exist in the past, he is in the future. That's why he can't interact with objects. I assume Al is in something that is the equivalent of the Holodeck, and really he shouldn't be able to see anything that is beyond Sam's field of vision either. But he cannot interact with the past because he is only communicating through Sam through the chip in his swiss cheese brain.

So he definitely shouldn't be able to interact with kids and animals and the occasional shaman figure! It doesn't make any sense! The fuckin rants my fiancee has had to put up with on this subject

[JamesTC]

There is an explanation that Al is connecting to Sam through brainwave transmissions. This is why children and crazy people can sometimes also see Al because they can somehow receive those brainwave signals.

I'm not sure how they explain that Al can literally see the past in his holographic chamber, though.

[greenman]

And the striking thing about QL is, there were just two regular characters. TWO. There were a few recurring PQL staff but only two of them are considered worth mentioning in the QL wiki page, and they only appeared in five and two episodes, respectively. I'm not sure I can see a new show doing that. There'd be a whole cast who'd need storylines writing every week, and it'd mostly be soap opera bollocks.

Really the show was a pretty thin concept, more an excuse to have weekly bits of drama involving the two leads rather than much in the way of detail to the setting beyond the odd episode. As you say I suspect a new version will look to sell some serial drama and add more detail to the setting rather than trying to come up with quality leads and fun one off episodes.

One problem as well I can see it having is the "within your own lifetime" rule is a lead in hsi early 40's is going to be limited to the early 1980's. Is there the same kind of cache of cultural nostalgia from then to now that there was for the mid 20th century?

[Replies From View]

You can tell they were mostly making it up as they went along, rather than working with a fully fleshed concept from the outset.


Animals and children under the age of 5 can see Al?  So much easier to write something like that in a script than fight with the inevitability that they'll often be looking directly at him on the set.

[mothman]

One problem as well I can see it having is the "within your own lifetime" rule is a lead in hsi early 40's is going to be limited to the early 1980's. Is there the same kind of cache of cultural nostalgia from then to now that there was for the mid 20th century?

Nope.

And also good luck finding a pair of leads with this degree of chemistry.

[JaDanketies]

A lot of it is a little dated. For instance every time Sam kisses a woman - which is pretty much every episode - it would now be viewed as unacceptably deceptive. They think they're kissing the man they've loved for years, but really it's timetraveller Scott Bakula squeezing them titties. It'll be interesting to see how they can have a shapeshifting timetraveller in a daytime drama who doesn't violate anyone's consent.

[Replies From View]

There's a really weird end of credits for one episode where all the cast - the supporting cast and everyone, probably the writer and director as well - are up on stage rollicking about.  And Dean Stockwell is there as well, interacting as himself with a cast that spent the episode unable to see him.

Since it's on a stage I suspect it's the credits for the Catch a Falling Star episode.



Edit, yes it is:

The closing credits of the episode are run over film of the cast and crew from the show taking a theater-style curtain call on the set of ' Man of La Mancha'.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0681111/

[Replies From View]

One problem as well I can see it having is the "within your own lifetime" rule is a lead in hsi early 40's is going to be limited to the early 1980's. Is there the same kind of cache of cultural nostalgia from then to now that there was for the mid 20th century?

ZIGGY SAYS THERE IS A 78.6% CHANCE YOU ARE HERE TO SAVE CASSANDRA'S TAMAGOTCHI

[JamesTC]

"Come on Kurt, we are due on stage in 5 minutes"

*looks in mirror*

"Oh boy!"