Remembering... Quantum Leap

In a new, semi-regular feature, we're going to start taking spoilerific looks back at now-dead cult TV series, from the classic to the... less so. First off is late 80s/early 90s feelgood time travel good-deed-'em-up Quantum Leap. Oh boy...

“Theorising that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the quantum leap accelerator… and vanished…”

So began Quantum Leap in 1989, a unique and appealing mixture of futuristic science fiction and period Americana.

The show told the story of Sam Beckett, a scientist from the future of 1999 (!), who invented a manner of time travel that allowed him to return to the past (so long as he was within his own lifetime), entering into the body of somebody else - this poor victim would then occupy Sam’s body in the “waiting room” of the project’s base in the “present”. The project goes wrong, as these thing do when you’re telling a long-running story, and Sam found himself unable to leave the body he had leapt in to unless he put right something that once went wrong - from the small (fixing relationships, winning sports games and so on) to the major (if more than two episodes pass without his having to prevent a murder, something’s gone amiss).

Guided by Al, a holographic representation of his friend from the future who only Sam can see and hear (until the plot demands otherwise), Sam finds himself leaping from life to life, doing good deeds, and hoping desperately that the next leap… will be the leap home (if an episode takes place mid-season then - SPOILER ALERT - it won’t be).

The unique set-up meant that there were only two regular cast-members - Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell - with the rest of the guest cast (and the location and time period) changing every single episode. It allowed for a show that could change tone and genre every week (from Bogie-esque film noir, to cowboy romance, to serial killer drama), while still maintaining a sense of continuity.

Not that continuity was ever the show’s main interest. The “rules” changed as often as the time period. The two leads’ personal histories were manipulated near-enough every week so that one of them had a personal investment in the case-of-the-week, inadvertently making them two of the most tragic characters in TV history, while a very dangerous drinking game could be played where you take a shot every time Sam is revealed to have a degree in something.. One episode Sam will have to complete the good deed to move on, the next, Al will remark that “success doesn’t have anything to do with leaping”; one episode Sam will literally be in the body of the person he has replaced, the next he’ll be up and walking around despite being in a war vet who lost his legs; Sam can only head back as far as 1953, apart from the time he went to the fucking Civil War. And then there’s the existential mindfuck that is the fourth season finale, where Sam leaps into a younger Al, who then - in Sam’s body in the future, uses the Quantum Leap accelerator to leap into Sam-As-Al… It made no sense then, and it makes no sense now.

Which doesn’t matter. The pure joy of the show was the good-spirited camaraderie between the two leads. Traditionally, Sam was the straight man, with Al as the womanising, badly-dressed clown.

This is not the stupidest he ever looked

That’s not to say that Sam didn’t get a few good laughs, too - usually from the outfit or situation he leaped in to.

This is not the stupidest he ever looked

But it was the clear and believable friendship between the two that gave the show such heart. These were two men who - despite never being able to even touch - were closer than family to each other. The easy camaraderie between the two, and the genuine warmth of both portrayals, proved to be the main draw of the show. And for what was such a uniquely small core cast, there was a lot of talent on display. Stockwell is of course an acting veteran, but Bakula always managed to show off his many skills over the course of the series. An adept singer, sportsman and musician (and an… interesting martial artist), Bakula clearly revelled in a role that could give him plenty of reasons to demonstrate his CV. Given the fact that he was playing a different role every week, this rarely became jarring or annoying (as cast showoffs tend to be), although perhaps the episode Piano Man - when Sam plays and sings a song that Bakula himself wrote, was pushing it just a little. 

Al also got to show off his musical... skills

Later seasons expanded the cast a bit, with fellow scientist at the project Gooshie finally getting a semi-regular look-in (having previously only been mentioned by name), and Ziggy, the controlling computer, developing a voice and vaguely sassy personality. Neither of these developments was a good thing.

The show really found its stride at the end of the second season with the brilliant MIA, where Sam found himself in a position to stop Al’s first ex-wife, Beth, from remarrying when she believed her husband was dead (he was actually languishing in a POW camp in Vietnam). Ultimately Sam is forced to save the life of an undercover cop instead, leaving Al’s tortured personal life to play out as it originally had, and turning what was a running gag about the number of ex-wives the hologram had into a painfully sad story of what could have been. You’ll never hear Georgia On My Mind without crying again after seeing that one.

Fuck this scene...

Over the course of its five seasons, the show saw Sam interfere with many real-life events and figures. Before the show bowed out, he had taught Michael Jackson to moonwalk, given Buddy Holly the chorus for Peggy Sue, saved Mrs. Kennedy from assassination, inspired every major Stephen King novel, secured Elvis a recording contract, ensured that Marilyn Monroe filmed The Misfits and helped Martin Luther King Jr.’s ancestor escape from slavery. That’s just scratching the surface.

History is basically their fault

But the real triumphs of the show came when Sam was tackling the smaller issues: preventing a divorce, doing a spot of matchmaking, or simply changing a few small-minded attitudes. There was just something so earnest about the show and  its “small changes make big differences” message. For forty-five minutes every week, it was pure feel-good drama. We were presented with a cast of characters who had something wrong with their lives, and we knew that by the time the end credits rolled, their lives would be fixed. In our current climate, where every successful television protagonist seems to be flawed and morally grey, there’s something so refreshing about a show being this damn nice.

That’s not to say that the show didn’t tackle big issues. It occasionally missed the mark, of course (try watching Sam’s joyful announcement “Oh boy! I’m retarded!” when he leaps into a down’s syndrome sufferer in the famous episode ‘Jimmy’ without wincing), but on the whole the show bravely and respectfully handled racism (most notably in a parody of Driving Miss Daisy, or in the episode that saw Sam become a black doctor in the Watts riots), homophobia, sexism, abusive relationships, drug abuse and kung-fu kicking. In fact, for all the show’s black-and-white morality, it was also often ahead of its time in the way it was willing to portray shades of grey - most notably in the controversial episode where Sam leapt into a member of the KKK, only to discover that the black man he was tasked with saving from a lynching was an antagonistic douche bag who was always actively trying to stir up trouble, while the klansmen were - vile racist dickbaggery aside - quite nice people who helped out the community  and each other without hesitation. A brave story to tell, even today.

Look at their adorable little faces...

The show sadly lost its shit a bit towards the end of its run, with storylines involving Egyptian mummies, vampires, angels, and evil leapers working for The Devil. (The fact that the episode where Sam became a space-faring monkey doesn't even feature on that list is all you need to know about how daft the show often became.)

 This. This fucking happened.

There was also an unwelcome focus on events in the “future” at the project headquarters, where in a severely misjudged episode we saw that the 1999 of the show’s universe was a weird hybrid of white latex bodysuits, neon nightmares, talking cars with windscreens that worked like Google Glass, and the strangest prostitutes ever.

It's like Terror and Space had a baby who grew up with Daddy issues...

But arguably the show’s greatest triumph came in its emotionally-charged and strangely philosophical finale. In what was at the time probably the greatest series-ender since M*A*S*H, Sam arrived in a seemingly-innocuous smalltown bar, on the day he was born. Only, he’d leapt into… himself. The bar soon proved to be more than it first appeared, as familiar names - the bartended was called Al, and there were regular patrons Ziggy and Gooshie - and familiar faces, played by many prominent guest stars from the show’s run, began to appear. It transpired that Sam had “left” the ‘waiting room’ at the project’s HQ - his whole body had left the future and gone on a leap, and through talking to Bartender Al - who may have actually been God himself - Sam discovered that it was not Chance, Fate or any other higher power behind his leaping, it was he himself who had always been in control. He could essentially go home any time he wanted. Learning this, Sam immediately went back to the events of the Season 2 finale, stopping Beth from remarrying. And then, in a final fade-out, we learned that “Sam Beckett never returned home”…

Pictured: God?

It was a brilliant finale, because the message was clear - there would always be one more person to save, one more life to make better, and one more wrong to right. Sam Beckett could go home any time he wanted - his motivation for the entire run of the series - but he never would. Because he was a hero.

Of course, final line aside, this was never intended to be the series finale, but rather to serve as a cliffhanger for the next season, which would reportedly have featured trips even further into the future. But it’s best that the show ended when it did.

For five years Quantum Leap had made our life just a little bit better. It was time for it to leap out.