…and you assume Sam is the same age as Scott Bakula was when the first one premiered, the earliest year they could leap to is 1984.
And you just know that one of the season finale cliffhangers would be on the Twin Towers in 2001…
And if Back to the Future were remade today, and retained the relative times, the ‘past’ section would be set 4 years after the original came out.
If you were to do American Graffiti today going back 11 years would take you to 2008. It would have a rap dominated sound track, no cruising and no radio station. Rated R, of course.
If The Final Countdown were remade today and they went back the same number of years, then they could attend the premier of the original The Final Countdown.
Time has stagnated. The difference between American Graffiti (1973) and the year the movie was set (1962) is a lifetime. The whole world had changed. You make a period movie set 11 years ago now, and I’m not sure anyone would notice.
And if you went back in time 9 years to see Bart Simpson’s birth, it would be in season 21 of the show. If you say Bart was 9 in Season 1, (and aged normally, of course) then he is “older” now than Homer was in the first season.
We can do better than that. The show was set several years in the future. IIRC, the first season took place in 1995, which would make Sam 42 years old when the show premiered. Thus the earliest year he could travel back to is 1977.
I’m basing this off of the episode where Sam and Al traded places, which I think was in Season 4. At one point during that episode, Al said that the “current” year was 1999.
Oh, wait… but if we’re going off of the same premise, and the show is set in like 2026, then we’re back to 1984. Didn’t think that through. 
The year the moon was blasted out of orbit, and two years after the Jupiter II took off.
Right after the Eugenics Wars. You do remember, back when Khan ruled most of the world? About a decade after Manhattan Island became a prison?
My 17yo daughter was talking to me about how she loves Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, etc.
Looking at the relative time and ages, this would have been the equivalent of 17yo me, in 1984, going on about the 1929 stylings of Eddie Cantor, Fats Waller, Al Jolson, “Tiptoe through the Tulips”, all back when music was good, before Bing Crosby came around and ruined everything.
Well, let’s not forget that eventually the show began chafing against the idea that Sam could only leap within his lifetime when it used a heretofore unknown loophole about leaping into ancestors so they could do a Civil War adventure late in the final season. I would assume that any remake would just do away with the restriction altogether. It’s not like it’s all that crucial to the premise to begin with.
If they were to make a re-make, I would watch that.
…And the ‘future’ section would–as with the original–show flying cars. And fifteen years from now, that would still be wrong.
Did they ever even explain why one could only leap within one’s own lifetime?
I can name a few different populations who would notice quite readily, depending on what they tried to do and who they tried to do it with.
I could have sworn the finale said that it was never a real limitation, and just due to Sam’s subconscious, but I can’t find any reference online. Maybe it was just something I came up with, due to the idea that Sam was always subconsciously in control of where he leaped.
I believe because of the quantum string theory, which compared a man’s lifetime to a piece of string. If you take a string, tie the ends together, and roll it up into a ball, each point on the string becomes closer to other points on the string by magnitudes of distance. It therefore takes less energy to travel between points on the string. At least, that’s the explanation I heard.
Although, Sam did leap back to the Civil War, but that’s because he had leapt into his own great-grandfather. I also once posited a leap into Captain Jonathan Archer of the USS Enterprise NX-01 in the 22nd century using this principle. 
Liked the show and wouldnt mind a remake…use the same lead actor or who would be a good replacement?
Some of those episodes were very good. When he played a female were some of the best.
Scott Bakuala currently stars in NCIS New Orleans, so he’s probably pretty busy these days.