Let’s Talk About Quantum Leap (2022) Season One
The reboot of the season was not what I expected, and that’s not a bad thing.
--
I still remember staying up late on some weeknights as a kid to watch the original “Quantum Leap” television series on NBC. And I still remember watching the series finale. The finale left me with many questions about the mythos of the series (the original and the reboot).
First, the original series clearly laid out that the host ended up in the future, in a “waiting room,” while Dr. Sam Beckett was in their place in the past. The original series also told us that Sam’s body did travel to the past, and that people around him saw him as the host because there was an “aura” to him. In the reboot, the host has no awareness of the time they miss, and just kind of blacks out while Dr. Ben Song occupies their body.
This makes sense, because you would not want a bunch of people through time in the last 50 years (while Sam was traveling) reporting that they were in the future. Surely, someone would have put two and two together and done a deeper dive into what was going on. Project Quantum Leap would have been at risk of being discovered. I mean… What if someone returns to their body and makes it their life mission to prevent the project from ever happening?
To be honest, the approach in the reboot is better. It allows that plot hole to be filled, with no one having any knowledge of what happened to them, or the future. Still, some of the more memorable episodes of the original series had special guest stars in the waiting room and interacting with Al Calavicci while Sam did his work. Here, for example, is Dr. Ruth:
Second, does the imaging chamber have some sort of physical interface? Addison has been shown to sit next to Ben, or to go through doors instead of walls, like a regular hologram would. I guess it saves production costs to not have her go through walls, but is there something in the imaging chamber allowing her to sit down? The producers seem to be…
