Wow! Now here's a show that I wish I had been older for. I see the episodes on Sci-Fi and just love it. What a great show. It's never the same.

It's a great show!:)

It's a great show!:)

How come there are no titles for the fifth
season?

In which season was that two-parter (three parter?) where Sam
leaps to alter the life of a girl named Abigail.
First he leaped into her father when she was a young girl, then he leaps into her fiancee, then
he leaps into her lawyer.

I don't get what the point of "Lee Harvey
Oswald" was...

Rene, QL's creator said he wanted to counter Oliver Stone's JFK. To me, a better episode for this purpose would have been to have Sam leap into one of Jim Garrison's people to show why his investigation was a fraud.

I had a couple of problems with it :

1. How come Oswald had control of Sam most of the
time, but Sam never had control of Oswald
in the waiting room for more than thirty
seconds?

2. Sam really didn't accomplish anything since
he was apparently there to "save" the president's wife...but she didn't die in our
timeline.

3. What's with the little picture show before
the episode actually started.

It was a good episode...not too bad...but
becomes pointless at the end.

I just saw it yesterday....(part 1 on Monday,
part 2 on Tuesday)...

Also, it would be easier to nitpick season 5
episodes if the titles of the season 5 episodes
were up.

But I guess I'll just have to nitpick them here...
I can't wait to see "Mirror Image" again...
it's been so long since I last saw that episode.

Oh...and I have a question about "A Leap For Lisa"...was the name "Commander Riker" a coincidence or is the creator of QL a fan of TNG?

Okay...I think the episode was titled "Killing
Time"...it was the one where Sam leaps into
a killer and the killer escapes from the waiting
room...

Anyway, when Stiles first leaves the waiting room
with Al, Gooshie walks in and tells Stiles, "Hello
Doctor Beckett" as if nothing was going on,
as if he didn't know that Sam was leaping in time.
But we know that this isn't true, because of
other episodes. Also, in this very episode,
we know that Gooshie knows Sam is in the past...
so shouldn't Gooshie's reaction have been something like, "Mr. Stiles, why are you out of
the waiting room" or something?

In "Lee Harvey Oswald", Oswald didn't seem to have
a swiss cheesed brain...he seemed to have his
memory completly intact.

Of course Jackie Kennedy didn't die in our time-line! Sheesh. We live in the corrected timeline. This is proven time and again by the series. This is the post-Beckett Earth.

Lighten up, man! I am allowed not to like
a certain episode, and I found "Lee Harvey
Oswald" to be a boring and pointless episode.

Anyway, in "Trilogy, Part 1", who's the actor
who played the doctor that does the autopsy.
He's so familiar, but I can't place where
I have seen him before.

I think Rene's point regarding "Lee Harvey Oswald" was valid. Time travel stories involving real people or events (something QL did too often in its last year) have no place really to go. After all, you know nothing can really be changed or if it is it will just be changed back to what we already know. The reason I think that QL (and Back to the Future) work so well is that they just involve ordinary people. So, if John Doe's life is changed, it is no big deal in the scheme of things.

When the producers of QL started out, they made a specific rule that no famous people/events of history were to be incorporated in storylines. This was probably because of the example of the Time Tunnel, which ran out of steam after one season after trying to focus exclusively on just that type of show (with episodes involving the Titanic, the Alamo, Pearl Harbor, etc.). Of course, it was inevitable that this rule would eventually be lifted if QL ran long enough, as indeed it was.

One interesting twist on this theme is Stanley Shapiro's novel A Time to Remember (filmed as "Running Against Time"), which has the time-travelling protagonist attemtping to go back and prevent the Kennedy assassination. The twist? The hero actually, after various complications which form the body of the novel, SUCCEEDS, and creates a better world at the end!

Oh, I absolutely disagree with you, Mike, regarding where time travel stories involving real people and events can go. I think it's a lot of fun to watch a show that tells you..."The history books have it wrong...it really happened because of our hero..."

It's a nice wholesome revisionism without the anti-establishment mudslinging that revisionist historians love so much.

James, compare Oliver Stone's JFK to QL's "Oswald' episode. JFK (despite the fact that I disagree with its premise) is a very well made film that labels its "revisionism" as speculation. The problem with the QL episode is that the viewer absolutely knows that Sam can't save JFK so the whole thing becomes pointless. A lot of critics found shows like Dark Skies where it "tells you...'The history books have it wrong...it really happened because of our hero...' to be disrespectful of the real people and events depicted that way. JFK was killed by a lone nut not because of some alien conspiracy.

The following is from an article entitled 'The Surreal World' by Lee Sandlin published in Spectrum magazine #10 (July 1997):

"In NBC's Dark Skies, the ostensible idea is to do an X-Files/Independence Day knockoff by dovetailing the alien invasion conspiracy and all the big events of recent history. But the underlying impulse is to ridicule whatever Americans might consider precious about their heritage. The pilot had the gall to propose that JFK was assassinated because he knew too much about a crashed flying saucer. We haven't reached 1968 - so while we have been told that Bobby Kennedy is a marked man (he, too, has read the fatal top-secret file), we have so far been spared the news that Martin Luther King was rubbed out because he'd discovered a UFO infestation in the Everglades.
I don't know when I've seen a show that seemed so much like an invitation to a fistfight. If Americans really gave a dam* about our history, the producers seem to be taunting us, we'd be livid about a TV series that trashes public tragedies for the sake of a jokey exercise in conspiracy-mongering. But Dark Skies knows perfectly well that we don't care. Who out there in the audience even knows enough about our past to call them wrong?"
I think you could apply these paragraphs also to some time travel stories involving real people and/or events.

The creators had a no-real-person rule (ratings-hungry final season notwithstanding), yet Sam's mission in "How the Tess Was Won" (the fourth episode of the first season) turns out to be to keep Buddy Holly from calling his song "Piggy Suey". Of course, they were still working out some stuff early in the series, so maybe that rule hadn't been put into place yet.

Why do some people bash season 5? Sure, there were a few bumps in the road...but there were some
nice episodes.

In "How the Tess Was Won", Buddy Holly wasn't famous yet. Unlike the Marilyn Monroe episode et al.

Gooshie is very absentminded so that might explain why he called Leon Stiles "Dr. Beckett" in the episode "Killing Time". The visitor also looks like Dr. Beckett.

I liked Lee Harvey Oswald. It was very creepy when Sam sounded Oswald and vise versa.

Anti-nit. Buddy Holly hadn't become famous yet in "How The Tess Was Won". Perhaps TPTB meant famous people at the height of their fame.

Besides, Buddy Holly (and Mrs. King's nice boy Stevie in the Halloween episode) were not the focus of the episodes they were in, they were just setups for funny little throwaway lines. The stories would have worked just as well if they were regular kids.

There's a huge difference between a funny little throwaway scene where Sam does something that coincidentally sets a famous event in motion, and a story where a known event in the life of a famous person is pivotal to the plot.

Is it just me or were the creators influenced elements of The Time Tunnel & Randall & Hopkirk deseased(Sp?)(AKA My Partner The Ghost). I'm not trying to knock QL but these 2 show spring to mind when watching it. From TTT was the random jumping around in time idea, & from R&H(D) was the idea that the companion was only visable to the lead character apart from animals & anyone with certain mental powers.

I just finished watching an episode that had an evil leaper in it. Sam jumped into Jimmy, a guy he jumped into before, but when he touched this girl, he was able to see her true form, as another leaper. What was the whole story with her?

What exactly was the point of the Leap Between the States. Was it to make John Beckett and Coventington fall in love and ensure the birth of Sam Becket three generations later. Or was to make sure Isaac made it to safety so that Martin Luther King Jr would be born.

How did Sam leap into 1862. I thought he couldn't leap in any earlier than when he was born (in 1953).

PS I missed the first half of the episode

they made up some stuff about sam's dna being the same as the guy he leaped into. which
1.makes no sense as dna had/has nothing do with leaping and
2.makes you wondered why they bothered as the ep was hardly that great.

Probably so they could get that one little throwaway line of "I feel like a King, so that's what my last name will be. King"

I really believe that entire episode was written just so they could have something to do with Martin Luther King Jr.

Would you like to explain to me how DNA has *nothing* to do with Leaping? What is your theory on why Sam can't Leap outside his own lifetime? I understand that he has Leaped twice into his birth year on dates prior to his birthday (though in both he was probably in utero), so I would think that DNA might have something to do with it. It made better sense than some technobabble. And given that GTFW is controlling his Leaps, Sam should be grateful that GTFW takes the trouble to conform to the scienific principles Sam originally discovered. Just my $0.02.

Sam can leap outside his own lifetime,but only
IF it's into someone who he is related to,such
as an ancestor or descendant.
In the novel Independence Sam leaps into his
great-great-great-great(something like that)
grandfather Samuel Beckett around the time of
the opening of the Revolutionary War.
(I mentioned that same could leap into a descendant just in case Captain Archer on
Enterprise could turn out to be a descendant,I know different universes as well as different
series..but ya never know it could happen!)

Leaping is kind of open to debate. There's two sections of QL fandom -- at least when I started, about 5 years ago -- and they're of the people who believe his body leaps, and those who believe his spirit itself leaps. There are also little groups that believe elsewise. I'm sure the same goes for this topic, because Leaping is really glossed over in the show, unless I've missed something.

Here's an interesting essay pointing out a number of similarities between Quantum Leap and The Fugitive TV series:

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~josephr/HOTH/quantum.html

Although the author makes a few stretches in his comparison of the two series, it still makes interesting reading for fans of either series.

Good article. I actually had a letter published in Starlog years ago that compared QL (and other sci-fi shows) to The Fugitive.

In the first episode GENESIS, when Sam leaps into the Baseball player Ken Fox, Al shows up and says that Sam has been bouncing around in time for about a week. This brings up an interesting question: Is the waiting room empty during Sam's temporal bouncing? If it's not the who or what is there? If it is empty then why is Al and Gushie act so suprised in this episode when they find it empty?

Sam's physical body doesn't leap, only his consciousness does (which is why he always sees someone else's reflection). So the Waiting Room is never empty. Or maybe Ziggy simply knows when Sam has Leaped.

I thought his body did leap, that's why Al couldn't believe Sam was pregnant in that one episode.

It's kind of a rubber rule thing. The way I remember is this:

Sam's body leaps, but the aura of the person he leaps into remains around him. Children under 6 (or something like that) can see through it, as can animals (which can also see Al.)

I guess maybe the waiting room is empty while Sam is leaping, or that his aura is there with no one in it. Maybe it just looks like he's sleeping.

Doesn't the episode in which Sam Leaps into the chap with no legs _prove_ that Sam's physical body Leaps? I mean, he walks in that episode, for pete's sake. If it's only Sam's mind Leaping about, ain't no way he's taking that little stroll.

M@

The proposal by Don Bellisario for Sam to leap into a baby wasn’t thought through I think. It would be ridiculous as a baby can't do anything to help anyone. As ridiculous as the chimp episode was (besides of course getting to see most of Scott Bakula’s body which is its only redeeming quality ), chimps at least can move themselves around and have some agency. Babies have no agency whatsoever.