“Why Is There Never a Time Machine Around When You Need It?”
When I didn’t make it through the original Quantum Leap series before the reboot started this last fall, I figured it’d get back to it fairly quickly and keep going. Somehow, I didn’t get back to it until this year, and even then, it took me a couple of months to get season 3 watched. I’m glad I did since I mostly enjoyed it.
If you are unfamiliar with the premise of this series, it starred Scott Bakula as Dr. Sam Beckett, a scientist who has invented time travel. To prove it, he steps into the machine himself, and now he finds himself leaping from time to time. Each leap, he leaps into the body of someone who is in need and must fix what went wrong in their life in order to leap again. Helping him along is Al Calavicci (Dean Stockwell), who is another member of the team. He can only appear as a hologram, guiding Sam but not able to actually do anything to help.
After two seasons of helping random people, this season starts out with a personal leap for Sam. He leaps into himself as a teen. While Al tells him why he is there, Sam thinks he is really there to keep his brother from going to Vietnam, where he is killed. Or maybe to help his father improve his health. But then, his second leap of the season leaps him into Vietnam just before his brother is supposed to die in combat.
From there, we get more leaps that are typical for the series – Sam helping random strangers in any time from the 1950’s to the 1980’s. Even though we don’t know these characters, we are still drawn into their lives and stories fairly quickly, and it is amazing how much we come to care for them. Over the rest of the twenty-two episodes presented here, Sam tries to help a model who is dependent on alcohol and drugs, he leaps into the middle of the Watts riots in LA in 1965, he leaps into a pregnant teen who has decided to keep her baby, he leaps into a piano player on the run from the mob just as his ex-girlfriend tracks him down, and he becomes a death row inmate about to be executed for his crimes.
Most of the times, the episodes are compelling with plenty of twists to keep Sam from accomplishing his mission. Quite often, there is a mystery around what is going to cause the problem that Sam is there to solve. A couple of times, it’s a full-blown murder mystery, or, I guess, almost murder mystery. Naturally, I enjoy those quite a bit, but many of the other episodes can be just as compelling.
Sadly, the episodes they tried to do for the holidays didn’t work for me. The Halloween episode, in which Sam becomes a horror writer, was just too weird. The Christmas episode, a take on A Christmas Carol, was likewise just as bizarre.
Then there’s the season finale. It was brilliant, as Sam leaps into a patient getting electro shock therapy, which makes him think he is some of his previous hosts. His task while there was just stupid, especially how easy it was to accomplish, but the rest was great. And what a cliffhanger!
A couple of fun pieces of trivia. This is the season that Al’s handheld computer gets an upgrade. These episodes may have aired in 1990 and 1991, but I can’t help but feel like the computer is a 1980’s futuristic vision brought to life. Of course, in typical fashion for the time, the new device appears in a couple of episodes before we actually see Al show up with it for the first time. Continuity? Who needs that?
For fans of the reboot, the Vietnam episode I mentioned earlier where Sam is trying to save his brother is the episode with the connection to the new show. Quite honestly, I think I wound up liking watching it in this order since I knew the significance of that episode before I sat down to watch it. I’m not sure it would have stood out to me.
I’ve also noticed that we get at least one scene every episode without Sam in it. I get it. Being the lead in a show like this is a grinding schedule, and this allowed Scott Bakula at least one small break. It is still very much his show, with Dean Stockwell in quite a bit of the scenes as well. Both of them are more than up to the task of carrying the show, and along the way, we get a great sense of the friendship the two characters have as well as the friendship between the actors behind the scenes.
Of course, a show like this lives or dies based on the guest cast. Yes, there are a few weak spots, but for the most part, they are more than up for the challenges sent their way. I didn’t recognize too many of the cast in this season, but among those I did were Andrea Thompson, Patrick Warburton, Marjorie Monaghan, CCH Pounder (who would co-star with Scott Bakula on NCIS: New Orleans), Lauren Tom, Peter Noone, Jane Sibbett, Rance Howard, and Kurt Fuller.
Yes, this is a science fiction show, but it isn’t heavy on the special effects since the stories are set in the real world. That’s probably a good thing since the effects are dated, but fans won’t care since they will be caught up in the stories.
With the cliffhanger at the end of this season, I’m very much looking forward to seeing just how Sam and Al deal with it and what happens next. Yes, it will be a few months, but I hope to move on soon. Meanwhile, season 3 of Quantum Leap will keep fans of the original happy.
Did you watch Meeno Peluci in Voyagers! back in the 1980s? In about 2008, we found the DVDs at the library, and my daughter was obsessed. Sounds like the same sort of premise. I somehow missed this one entirely. Guess I wasn't watching much tv in the early 1990s!
ReplyDeleteI saw a couple of episodes of Voyages! back in the day, and I bought the DVD set, but I've never watched it. I've had the sets of Quantum Leap for years as well, and I'm finally watching them, so I have lots of TV on DVD that doesn't get watched in a timely manner.
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