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Theorising that one could time travel within his own lifetime,
Dr. 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 Dr. 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...
So
began the prologue to Quantum Leap, which ran for five
seasons between 1989 and 1993, created by Don Bellisario from
an idea which had previously appeared both in the original
Battlestar Galactica show (Experiment in Terra)
and the film Heaven can Wait.
The
premise of the show is that Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula), following
an ill advised early use of his accelerator, finds himself,
each episode, in the body of another person whose life needs
altering for the better. Each week he was helped in his quest
by Al (Dean Stockwell). Generally the show had a massive feel
good factor as Sam leaps around making peoples lives better.
Though there was a minor Christian undercurrent to the show,
much of its appeal came from its unequivocal moral stance,
the interplay between Al and Sam, and undoubtedly Bakula's
Tom Hanks like ability to ooze "niceness" into every
frame.
With
such an open-ended format Sam could be anyone who had been
alive during his lifetime; the show had the opportunity to
place Bakula's character at the heart of some of the most
intriguing historical events of the past forty years. Although,
at times, it did indeed go down this path, it was the more
personal stories of tragedy and triumph which were the shows
main staple and its strength. Admittedly, by the fifth season
the show had to experiment with its format so as not to become
repetitive. Some of these changes worked better than others,
but to its credit the show ended on a high note with the last
episode.
This box set represents the fifth and final season of the
show. Its main change to the format was the introduction of
the evil leapers (Eps Deliver Us From Evil) who are
in direct conflict with Sam's work. This change drew much
controversy to the show, with fans taking sides on whether
this was an expansion of the format or a complete turkey of
an idea. That said, the show opened strongly, generally maintained
its level of quality and ended in an appropriately enigmatic
way.
The
opening show of the fifth season was Lee Harvey Oswald,
a two-parter that did what it said on the box, with Sam leaping
into various different times in Lee's life. There are many
ways the show could have gone with this. The assassination
of JFK was, and continues to be, shrouded in controversy -
a veritable field day for the conspiracy theorists. The show
rightly goes with the single shooter theory, which allows
them to concentrate on Sam's attempt to stop history repeating
itself.
Given
the emotionally charged Oswald, the next show is a
light-hearted little number Leaping of the Shrew, which
is a cross between The Blue Lagoon and The Taming
of the Shrew, where Sam finds himself stranded on a desert
island with a rich and unpleasant young woman.
With
Nowhere to Run the show returns to its staple type
story, with Sam leaping into the body of a Vietnam vet who
must stop a fellow soldier from killing himself following
the loss of his legs.
Disc
two opens with Killin' Time and is a show that I remember
well from the show's first run. Sam finds himself in a house
with a mother and child. Worse still he quickly discovers
that he is an escaped killer, whom the sheriff is determined
to kill. His only way out is to persuade the woman that he
is not really the killer, but Sam, so that he can buy himself
enough time to resolve the situation. Once again, following
an emotionally charged show, the tone reverts to light-hearted
with a story of a son who wants to have his father committed
for seeing UFO's in Star Light, Star Bright. Okay,
that doesn't sound very light-hearted, but trust me; it's
a matter of degree, given the previous shows.
Deliver
Us From Evil saw the show take a dramatic new turn with
the introduction of evil jumpers who are out to stop Sam changing
history. I remember, when I first saw this episode, that I
thought that this was a really bad idea. And even today, after
so much time has passed, my opinion hasn't changed. It wasn't
that the evil jumper shows weren't well written, or that there
was a sudden downturn in the quality of acting, for me it
ran deeper; it just wasn't Quantum Leap. With no logical
idea why this should be I can only assume that it was a form
of Luddite mentality that affected those of us who felt the
same way. Anyway, Sam finds himself back with Jimmy LaMotta,
a downs Syndrome guy who had appeared in a previous episode.
Sam is in a quandary, as he cannot understand why, having
sorted out Jimmy's lift, it should all be going wrong. At
first he tries to do nothing, thinking that it was something
that he was doing that was altering history for the worst,
until he uncovers the evil leapers.
Disc three shows a taste for longer stories and a continued
desire to experiment with the format. The next story is spread
over three episodes: One Little Heart, For your
Love and The Last Door. The story takes place over
a considerable time period and is a murder mystery involving
Abigail, who is accused of murder, at various points in her
life Sam leaps in to save the day. Strangely enough the show
works very well as a three-parter and doesn't feel like it
has much in the way of padding. With Promised Land
the show is back to its "setting things right" type
of story, when Sam leaps in to help some farmers save their
homestead from an evil banker. The nice thing about this episode
is that we discover that this is Sam's hometown, which obviously
brings up the dilemma of whether he should go and see his
deceased parents and even if he did, what would he say?
Disc
four opens with A Tale of two Sweeties which finds
Sam in a quandary. The computer at the project says that he
must choose between two families but doesn't know which one
to choose, leaving Sam with only a fifty-fifty chance of getting
it right. In Liberation, the show goes back to the
slightly preachy stance that it sometimes took. Sam turns
up as a woman, not for the first time, at the turning point
of the Women's Liberation Movement. Apart from saving the
daughter from an untimely death, Sam spends a lot of the time
convincing stereotypical fifties father that liberation of
the females in his household does not mean the end of his
world, or masculinity. Anyone of a certain age will remember
Dr Ruth, a petite, white haired Jewish grandmother figure
who would turn up on television giving sex advice to embarrassed
couples a quarter of her age. Always good TV, and the perfect
excuse to base a show around her. So, in Dr Ruth she
appears as herself helping Al come to terms with his relationship
with the women in his life whilst Sam has to deal with a case
of sexual harassment. The last story on disc four is Blood
Moon which is a case of vampires and things going bump
in the night.
Disc
five opens with another of the dubious evil leaper stories
with Return of the Evil Leaper, which even sounds like
a cheesy fifties film, before we even get to the story. The
story is okay as far as it goes, but really can't be considered
as a high point of the series. Sam has to try and stop frat
initiation ceremonies. For reasons of flaky logic, Arnold,
Sam's host, wants to kill himself due to his parent death.
To add problems to the mixture, the evil leapers have gotten
involved and Sam is not going to take the interference without
a fight. Goodbye Norma Jean is not a story based on
Elton John's song but about the death of Marilyn Monroe. Sam
pops into her driver and, like any full blooded male, wants
to try and save her from her fate. The disc closes with The
Beast Within, which is kind of like a cheap version of
The Deer Hunter, which deals with the consequences
of the Vietnam War, a theme that the show had visited more
than once.
Obviously
the show's writers have never heard the phrase "if isn't
broke don't fix it" or even "if you set up a premise
then you kinda have to stick with it", as in The Leap
Between States Sam leaps into the body of his great grandfather.
Hold on what happened to only being able to leap into history
which had only happened within his own lifetime? Once again
it's not a bad story, but you get the feeling that the writers
were running out of ideas which could be used within the stated
format. The penultimate episode is Memphis Melody where
Sam finds himself in Elvis Presley prior to his Sun Records
discovery.
The
last episode on the final disc, Mirror Image, is probably
the most discussed and argued about. Sam leaps into a bar,
where for the first time he can see himself in a mirror and
not the reflection of the person he has leaped into. There
is an uninteresting back story about a rescue in a mine but
that's not what will draw you to the story. For the first
time Sam can see other jumpers popping in and out of reality,
which means that he is not the only one. In addition there
are the conversations with the barman, who Sam suspects is
the person leaping him through time. Although Sam confronts
him with this, and even the accusation that he may well be
God, the barman denies all - though he does seem to have more
insight into what is making Sam leap than he should be. I
won't spoil the ending for you but it always brings a bit
of a tear to these old jaded eyes.
The
discs don't come with any extras, except a trailer reel on
the first disc. Audio is the original stereo, but the visuals
are nice and clean and the whole thing runs to a magnificent
sixteen and a half hours.
To
be honest you can't fault this collection and it's pretty
much a steal at this price. The quality of the stories rarely
drops and Bakula is always a joy to watch.
Charles
Packer
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