Join Scott & Tom as they break down this week’s pilot: Quantum Leap
Although the Project Quantum Leap isn’t ready yet, Sam Beckett doesn’t listen to supercomputer Ziggy, hops into the Accelerator and leaps. As Tom Stratton, an Air Force test pilot about to attempt a dangerous flight. Sam finds his memory Swiss cheesed, with only enough left to know that he is not where or when he belongs. According to Sam’s friend and partner Al, who appears to him as a hologram nobody else can see, Al explains that the Project has gone awry and in order to leap out of the pilot’s body, Sam must successfully fly the X-2 to Mach 3, which according to historical records, ended in a fatal crash.
PLAY
– MP3 download
– The RSS Feed
– The iTunes Subscription
– The Frogpants Ultra Feed (iTunes)
Great show! Really loved Quantum Leap. Although I never really got into it until it went into syndication.
On the discussion of a reboot, They did attempt a revival in the 2000′s on the (then) Scifi channel. The basis would be that Sam’s daughter would be leaping with Al’s help trying to find Sam and bring him home. Unfortunately this never happened. A few years ago Scott Bakula mentioned during an interview that a new Quantum Leap movie was in the works. I haven’t seen any mention of it since.
JAG is off the air, for a few years now, but it does have a spin-off currently running in NCIS, which started as a backdoor pilot in a 2-part episode of JAG. And amusingly NCIS also has a spin-off that started as a 2-part pilot as well, with NCIS Los Angeles.
As an aside, if I were to have a decent collection of Pilot episodes, quite a few of the “unaired” variety, as well as some that were changed from pilot to actual first episode aired, would be there be a optimum way to get them to you to add to the archive? burn to many discs, thumbdrive, HD?
You should do Sliders next and do a compare and contrast
Loved Quantum Leap. Just saw the finale a few weeks ago and it still choked me up. Since you did BSG a few episodes ago, I remembered an episode of the old BSG I saw a few years ago called “Experiment in Terra” that I never saw when it first ran. But when I saw it again, and being a fan of Quantum Leap, i couldn’t believe what. I was seeing. You may want to check it out.
Loved Quantum Leap!
Sam did leap into real people, for instance, He leapt into Lee Harvey Oswald (who Don Bellisario encountered when they were both marines) and Al spent the episode trying to prevent JFK’s assassination, which could not happen, but was revealed by Al at the end, “in the original history, Sam, Jackie died too…”.
Ziggy was voiced by Donna Pratt, who was divorced from Don Bellisario after QL ended.
You really need to see Sam singing “Imagine”, in context, to his little sister in the “The Leap Home, Part 1″ S03E01. He also did a passable Elvis when he leapt into the King. Season 5 found him leaping into well known people, in an attempt, I think, to bring up ratings (stunt-leaping)
Subscribed and enjoying the show! Thanks!
Tom, you are the wise, bearded man on the tech/movie mountain. Have you heard of the TED talk about the movie piracy ? The name is something like the 8 billion dollar iPod, or something like that. Please watch it and discuss on the Frame show.
Thanks, loved the show (a nod to BOL),
Bill H
I’m not sure if I heard Tom talking about the “8 billion dollar ipod” on Frame Rate or between shows, but he definitely knows it. In fact he’s currently reading the new book Alien Zero by Rob Reid (the guy giving the TED talk) and he will be a future Triangulation guest (don’t know if scheduled yet).
Guys, the final episode stated in text that Sam never returns. Al never sees him again! If they did a new QL series it would almost have to have a new main guy. Also the real problem with the Ray Charles song is that it was integral to the plot of the episode. They mention the song in the episode.
I was going to mention the Deborah Pratt/Ziggy fact but was beaten to it, so I’ll lay this one on you. Pratt was a guest star in the season 2 episode ‘A Portrait for Troian’ as the title character. That character was named after Pratt and Bellisario’s daughter Troian who appeared in the episode ‘Another Mother’ (the one where Magnum is seen on tv and one of my favourite ever episodes). Troian is now one of the ‘Pretty Little Liars’ in the show of the same name. Also- Pratt in the only returning cast member in the 2009 fan film ‘A Leap To Di For’ as Ziggy…..
Also, in the last episode, it’s not a matter of Al never seeing Sam again, he never meets him AT ALL. Sam tells Al’s first wife that he is still alive and a caption says Al and Beth had 4 kids (who never existed before). Thinking of this, Al never joined the Quantum Leap project as he didn’t go off the rails after being rescued in Vietnam and finding out his wife re-married. So, Sam wouldn’t have to be there to get his life back on track by giving him a job It’s a beautiful ending that gets a lot of flack. Yes, Sam never returned home but he sacrificed himself so he good get Al and Beth back together, which I thought was lovely:)
I had to watch this on Hulu since it wasn’t on Netflix. I had alot of trouble with it but since it was free I guess I can’t com
Crap… Hit the post comment button by mistake….anyways since it was free on Hulu, can’t really complain that much on the service. Great episode guys and keep up the great work!!! I am still hoping for an Airwolf episode.
I didn’t realize it until listening to this episode but there’s a Lovecraft connection in Quantum Leap. The Great Race of Yith from “The Shadow Out of Time” used this technique to travel through time and space, to the point that when their world was going to be destroyed they used this to make a mass exodus to take over a prehistoric race on earth.
I finally got around to watching this on Hulu, and it only hung on me once!
A few notes on some things discussed by Scott&Tom.
No, JAG is no longer a current show, but it’s spin-off, NCIS, is still on the air, along with IT’s spinoff, NCIS LA, which is crossing over with Hawaii Five-O.
The Bell X-2 really existed. It was an improvement on the Bell X-1 that Chuck Yeager used to go faster than sound in 1949, the year I was born.
The setting is Edwards Air Force Base in CA, not White Sands, NM.
I would bet that the footage of the B50 carrying and dropping the X2 was real stock footage of actual flights.
As I recall, the episode was set in 1956, which matches up with the Wikipedia article on the Bell X-2, which states that Captain Milburn G. “Mel” Apt “became the first man to exceed Mach 3, reaching Mach 3.2 (2,094 mph, 3,370 km/h) at 65,500 ft (19,960 m).” on 7 September 1956.
AFAIK there were only two X-2s built, and one of them crashed in 1953, so how they managed to crash two more of them in this episode is a mystery…
Sorry, I grew up during this era and have been an aviation and space freak from a very early age…
Almost forgot. I thought Bruce McGill was great as Weird Ernie. Then again, he will always be Daniel Simpson Day (D-Day) from Animal House to me…