Quantum Leap reboot

[David Chesler]

When Usenet was cutting edge, I followed the Quantum Leap group, probably rec.arts.sf.tv.quantum-leap (which I understand was downsized around 2011).
I don't the last time I wrote to, or even read from, Usenet, and I don't have a news server or news reader.
But here we are, according to the promo on the Sunday night NFL game, there is going to be a Quantum Leap reboot on September 19, 2022.

--
- David Chesler <che...@post.harvard.edu>

[Wolffan]

On 12 Sep 2022, David Chesler wrote
(in article<a69b13c5-f952-4b27...@googlegroups.com>):

> When Usenet was cutting edge, I followed the Quantum Leap group, probably
> rec.arts.sf.tv.quantum-leap (which I understand was downsized around 2011).
> I don't the last time I wrote to, or even read from, Usenet, and I don't have
> a news server or news reader.
> But here we are, according to the promo on the Sunday night NFL game, there
> is going to be a Quantum Leap reboot on September 19, 2022.

will Our Hero make it back this time?

[Adam H. Kerman]

David Chesler <che...@post.harvard.edu> wrote:

>When Usenet was cutting edge, I followed the Quantum Leap group,
>probably rec.arts.sf.tv.quantum-leap (which I understand was downsized
>around 2011).
>I don't the last time I wrote to, or even read from, Usenet, and I don't
>have a news server or news reader.
>But here we are, according to the promo on the Sunday night NFL game,
>there is going to be a Quantum Leap reboot on September 19, 2022.

I have no interest. That they started to work on the reboot was what
killed Al. Making wrong what once went right is unforgiveable.

[Your Name]

I wouldn't take any bets. The show will probably get quickly cancelled
without any real ending, like most of the current on-going fad for
idiotic reboots / remakes / resurrections.

[Your Name]

Apparently Scott Bakula turned down having a role in the quasi-sequel
reboot ... at least for now, given enough money and/or lack of work, he
could change his mind, if the reboot lasts long enough.


Instagram:

scottbakula

To Quantum Leap fans around the world, in an effort
to quiet the rumors and move on...

First of all, thanks for hanging around through the
decades!

Here's the simple version of what's going on with
the Quantum Leap reboot and me:

I have no connection with the new show, either in
front of the camera or behind it.

In January, the pilot was sold and a script was sent
to me because the character of Sam Beckett was in it,
which makes sense, right? As so many of you have been
asking me the last several months, "How could you do
QL without Sam?"(or Al, for that matter) Well, I guess
we're about to find out.

That's the story. As the show has always been near and
dear to my heart, it was a very difficult decision to
pass on the project, a decision that has upset and
confused so many fans of the original series. However,
the idea of anyone 'leaping' around in time and walking
a mile in someone else's shoes, remains a very
appealing concept and so worthy of exploration,
especially given the current state of mankind. In that
spirit, I am crossing my fingers that this new cast and
crew are lucky enough to tap into the magic that
propelled the original Quantum Leap into the hearts and
minds of generations past and present.

I wish them good luck and happy leaping!

SB

<https://www.instagram.com/p/Ciiwi_qvuS2/>

[Your Name]

Well that got screwed up. It looked fine before I posted it. :-(


Try again:

[Ubiquitous]

che...@post.harvard.edu wrote:

> When Usenet was cutting edge, I followed the Quantum Leap group, probably
> rec.arts.sf.tv.quantum-leap (which I understand was downsized around 2011).
> I don't the last time I wrote to, or even read from, Usenet, and I don't
> have a news server or news reader.

I remember reading alt.tv.quantum-leap back then but this is the first time I
heard of the rec.arts group.

> But here we are, according to the promo on the Sunday night NFL game,
> there is going to be a Quantum Leap reboot on September 19, 2022.

I see Bakula issued what I presume to be an attempt at distancing himself
from this lame rehash.

--
Let's go Brandon!

[anim8rfsk]

OK, pilot episode watched.

It wasn’t nearly as awful as I was expecting. That doesn’t mean it was good
or anything.

I only have a passing acquaintance with the original. I quit watching it
the beginning of season two when it turned out they were working directly
for the Lord God and he smote a senator trying to shut them down.

This is a direct continuation of the original show. They show us pictures
and mention the names of both Sam and Al.

And they say Al died last year. :-(

Apparently Al’s daughter will be in future episodes.

But there are strange inconsistencies. For instance even though they’ve
been spending five years trying to get Sam‘s work up and running again they
apparently never bothered to read the files. They’ve only heard rumors of
the Swiss cheese memory effect. And what happened to the bit where the
person being leapt into appeared in the future in the waiting room? They
seem to have done away with that and are keeping into that person in the
past with the leaper somehow inhabiting them.

There’s a nonbinary project leader as we figured there would be who is
incredibly annoying.

They definitely watched THE TIME TUNNEL when formulating this.

Deborah Pratt plays the voice of Ziggy!

I’ve read that Ernie Hudson is reprising his role from the original series
but I can’t find anything on IMDb to confirm that.

The big problem is that neither of the leads are particularly good actors.

Next week Sam Junior (that’s a bad sign, I don’t remember any of the
regular characters names) is on board the space shuttle ATLANTIS.

I think I’ll give this another episode and see how it goes.

Oh, instead of saying “oh boy” Sam Junior apparently says “oh shit” but
they have to do something to drown out that shit part. That’s going to get
old real fast.



--
The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it is still on my list.

[Adam H. Kerman]

anim8rfsk <anim...@cox.net> wrote:

Ubi the shithead's crosspost to two non-existent newsgroups cut.

>. . .

>But there are strange inconsistencies. For instance even though they've
>been spending five years trying to get Sam's work up and running again they
>apparently never bothered to read the files. They've only heard rumors of
>the Swiss cheese memory effect. And what happened to the bit where the
>person being leapt into appeared in the future in the waiting room? They
>seem to have done away with that and are keeping into that person in the
>past with the leaper somehow inhabiting them.

In the original show, their bodies and consciousnesses were swapped.
They never did much with it. Al could have debriefed the person from the
past, but this was usually hand-waived away that the person was almost
always too traumatized to help figure out what's going on.

But then there was the episode in which Sam was pregnant and about to
pop and nothing at all was consistent with what had been established.
The foetus remained even though biology made that impossible, then at
birth when Sam was about to essentially get ripped to shreds, the
completely normal birthed baby lept into the future.

>There's a nonbinary project leader as we figured there would be who is
>incredibly annoying.

Isn't that overly redundant?

>. . .

[Ubiquitous]

anim...@cox.net wrote:

>Deborah Pratt plays the voice of Ziggy!

Didn'y only make meeping and beeping sounds?

>I've read that Ernie Hudson is reprising his role from the original series
>but I can't find anything on IMDb to confirm that.

He was in the original? I have no memory of that!

>Oh, instead of saying “oh boy” Sam Junior apparently says “oh shit” but
>they have to do something to drown out that shit part. That's going to get
>old real fast.

Starting with you telling us about it.

[anim8rfsk]

There was also the episode (with Jennifer Aniston in a very short skirt if
I recall correctly) where Sam jumped into a guy who was I assume legless
and they very clearly show that it’s actually Sam in the past with a
hologram overlay making him look like the other person because he walks and
what other people see is a legless man levitating.

I remember reading an interview with one of two women who wrote the quantum
Leap novels at the time and she said that the two authors didn’t agree on
what happened. The woman being interviewed understood it as I explained
above and was correct. The other woman apparently insisted that Sam stayed
in the future and somehow just controlled what the person in the past did.
Which makes no sense at all. If Sam was just sitting in the waiting room
you think they have dealt with that and not been quite so anxious to rescue
him from the past.

But in either case there should be somebody sitting in the waiting room.
And in this version there apparently isn’t.

Also, how did they possibly establish that if the person in the past dies,
the leaper dies as well? That might be a theory or something but clearly
there’s no way they’ve ever tried it out.

>
>> There's a nonbinary project leader as we figured there would be who is
>> incredibly annoying.
>
> Isn't that overly redundant?
>
>> . . .
>

[anim8rfsk]

Ubiquitous <web...@polaris.net> wrote:
> anim...@cox.net wrote:
>
>> Deborah Pratt plays the voice of Ziggy!
>
> Didn'y only make meeping and beeping sounds?

I don’t recall hearing Ziggy talk but as I said I didn’t watch much of it
after season one. Deborah Pratt was Mrs. Bellisario and the REAL LIFE
mother of McProbie‘s sister on NCIS OWM and also a writer on the various
shows and as I recall the narrator on quantum Leap and of course most
importantly Marella on AIRWOLF!

>
>> I've read that Ernie Hudson is reprising his role from the original series
>> but I can't find anything on IMDb to confirm that.
>
> He was in the original? I have no memory of that!
>

>> Oh, instead of saying “oh boy†Sam Junior apparently says “oh shit†but

>> they have to do something to drown out that shit part. That's going to get
>> old real fast.
>
> Starting with you telling us about it.

Hey!

>
> --
> Let's go Brandon!
>
>

[Your Name]

Adam H. Kerman <a...@chinet.com> wrote:
> anim8rfsk <anim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> Ubi the shithead's crosspost to two non-existent newsgroups cut.
>
>> . . .
>
>> But there are strange inconsistencies. For instance even though they've
>> been spending five years trying to get Sam's work up and running again they
>> apparently never bothered to read the files. They've only heard rumors of
>> the Swiss cheese memory effect. And what happened to the bit where the
>> person being leapt into appeared in the future in the waiting room? They
>> seem to have done away with that and are keeping into that person in the
>> past with the leaper somehow inhabiting them.
>
> In the original show, their bodies and consciousnesses were swapped.

Nope. In the original show Sam's mind "leapt" into the body of the
host. That's why he always saw the host whenever he looked at the
reflection in a mirror or window. The host's mind also swapped into
Sam's body back in the "Waiting Room".

[Adam H. Kerman]

Your Name <Your...@YourISP.com> wrote:
>Adam H. Kerman <a...@chinet.com> wrote:
>>anim8rfsk <anim...@cox.net> wrote:

>>>. . .

>>>But there are strange inconsistencies. For instance even though they've
>>>been spending five years trying to get Sam's work up and running again they
>>>apparently never bothered to read the files. They've only heard rumors of
>>>the Swiss cheese memory effect. And what happened to the bit where the
>>>person being leapt into appeared in the future in the waiting room? They
>>>seem to have done away with that and are keeping into that person in the
>>>past with the leaper somehow inhabiting them.

>>In the original show, their bodies and consciousnesses were swapped.

>Nope. In the original show Sam's mind "leapt" into the body of the
>host. That's why he always saw the host whenever he looked at the
>reflection in a mirror or window. The host's mind also swapped into
>Sam's body back in the "Waiting Room".

It's his body AND mind. They said so on the introduction to every single
episode.

Theorising that one could time travel within his own lifetime,
Doctor Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and
vanished... He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing
mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown
force to change history for the better. His only guide on this
journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the
form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Doctor
Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put
right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next
leap will be the leap home.

It doesn't make any sense, but I don't write this crap. If it was just
his mind, his body wouldn't have vanished.

>>. . .

[David Chesler]

I also don't remember Ernie Hudson. I liked the pilot well enough. They laid some heavy hints that it was 1985 and then left it alone. I thought Ben was reaching for a cell phone when he pulled out his wallet. (I suppose anyone who watched QL:TOS remembers the 80s, and they seem more normal than a typical TV caricature of them.)

My impression is that Sam got mostly his mind in the other person's body, but for instance when he became a mentally retarded boy his thoughts became clumsier.

I guess it violates causality or something for Addison to tell Ben to get a message to Sam not to take that first leap. (Somehow I missed the Vietnamese POW arc on TOS -- I was too busy getting married or something -- but they came close to the same problem, what if Sam alters Al's life?)

--
- David Chesler <che...@post.harvard.edu>

[Your Name]

On 2022-09-21 04:36:06 +0000, David Chesler said:

> I also don't remember Ernie Hudson. I liked the pilot well enough. They
> laid some heavy hints that it was 1985 and then left it alone. I
> thought Ben was reaching for a cell phone when he pulled out his
> wallet. (I suppose anyone who watched QL:TOS remembers the 80s, and
> they seem more normal than a typical TV caricature of them.)
>
> My impression is that Sam got mostly his mind in the other person's
> body, but for instance when he became a mentally retarded boy his
> thoughts became clumsier.

It's not Sam's physcial brain or body that makes the leaps. Just his
consciousness. So when Sam leaps into a body and brain that is somehow
damaged, he has to deal with the leapee body's physical restricitons.

If Sam leaps into someone in a wheelchair, then he's in the wheelchair.
If he leaps into someone with brain damage, then he's limited by that
brain damage.

His mind is simply hosted by that other person's body until Sam solves
the problem and then leaps to the next person.

> I guess it violates causality or something for Addison to tell Ben to
> get a message to Sam not to take that first leap. (Somehow I missed the
> Vietnamese POW arc on TOS -- I was too busy getting married or
> something -- but they came close to the same problem, what if Sam
> alters Al's life?)

It's a time travel show. None of them ever work if you try to think too
much about it. There's too many plot holes and paradoxes involved. It's
partly why so many such shows and episodes end up simply piushing a
"big red reset button" and returning everything to teh way it was
before the show / episode (in teh case of one Doctor Who episode, it
was even a literal big red reset button).

[Ubiquitous]

In article <tgdsjm$1h50$2...@gioia.aioe.org>, Your...@YourISP.com wrote:
> Adam H. Kerman <a...@chinet.com> wrote:
>> anim8rfsk <anim...@cox.net> wrote:

>>> But there are strange inconsistencies. For instance even though they've
>>> been spending five years trying to get Sam's work up and running again they
>>> apparently never bothered to read the files. They've only heard rumors of
>>> the Swiss cheese memory effect. And what happened to the bit where the
>>> person being leapt into appeared in the future in the waiting room? They
>>> seem to have done away with that and are keeping into that person in the
>>> past with the leaper somehow inhabiting them.
>>
>> In the original show, their bodies and consciousnesses were swapped.
>

>Nope. In the original show Sam's mind "leapt" into the body of the
>host. That's why he always saw the host whenever he looked at the
>reflection in a mirror or window. The host's mind also swapped into
>Sam's body back in the "Waiting Room".

If memory serves, Sam vanished from the teleportation chamber.
They repeated it in the begining of the opening credits.

[Arthur Lipscomb]

On 9/20/2022 1:18 AM, anim8rfsk wrote:
snip

>
> I’ve read that Ernie Hudson is reprising his role from the original series
> but I can’t find anything on IMDb to confirm that.
>
>

Not the same actor, the same character from the season 3 episode "The
Leap Home (Part 2) – Vietnam." I vaguely remember part 1, but have no
memory of part 2. Based on the cast of part 2 (Andrea Thompson, Tia
Carrere and Patrick Warburton) I'm tempted to revisit the episodes
again. At least part 2 which is where Hudson's character appears.

Apparently this will all be explicitly addressed by Hudson in the 4th
episode.

I have to assume since Sam leaped into Hudson's character, he has known
about the project since the 70s. He might have even had some
involvement in getting it up and running creating a bit of a time loop.

[anim8rfsk]

Thanks!

The original actor is still working. I wonder how annoyed he is…

[David Chesler]

I saw the 2nd episode and I'm not liking it. It's a different show with all the conflicts at Quantum Leap, compared to a show with only two recurring characters.
And I know we're supposed to suspend disbelief, but astronauts? They rehearse everything hundreds of times -- one can't just leap into a spacesuit and start functioning. And the physics of leaping between spacecraft. I prefer the traveling angel solve human-sized problems.

--
- David Chesler <che...@post.harvard.edu>

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