Quantum Leap reboot: series premiere and synopsis confirmed

Sam Beckett can return any time the producers want…in someone else’s body.

That wasn’t made clear in the original, and in the novels based on the show (I read a few), the assumption was that it was a swap of consciousness. See this article:

But as that article points out, Ben is “merging” with the people he leaps into, and there is no swapping at all (physical or mental). And it implies Sam was doing that too.

The novels threw me off, because they added extra info that is clearly not canon.

In the original he swaps bodies and the person he leaps in to ends up in a waiting room at the QL complex. There are multiple references to AL questioning the leapee to gain clues about the mission. One episode they somehow escaped and stole Al’s car. Has that all been retconned now?

Yes they did. It was stated frequently.

The difference hasn’t been commented on, AFAICR. But we can accept a few changes in the rules as a result of Ben advancing the technology.

Admiral Williams described darkness when Sam switched places in Vietnam.

He may have forgotten the waiting room. He did remember Sam and restarted the Q project.

I agree the waiting room isn’t used anymore.

I could never suspend my disbelief enough to watch the original series. It just never made any sense to me, how it was supposed to work. It seemed to me like pure fantasy, pretending to be science fiction of some kind, and I guess I’m not really into fantasies. Didn’t mean to threadshit :slightly_smiling_face:

I was a huge fan of the original. I watched the first few eps of the new series, but I miss the Sam/Al focus of the show. Now it’s all about the team. Before it was Sam & Al vs the world. But it has enough support to be renewed for another season, so I should probably give it a chance. The last ep I saw was where Ben leaped back in time to the old gunfighter.

StG

But they implied differently in early episodes, thus the confusion. Kind of like how Al went from seeing the leapee to seeing Sam without comment or explanation.

No they didn’t. In an early episode Sam leapt into a blind pianist, but had no trouble with seeing.

It was ALWAYS Sam’s body, with an aura that makes people see the person he replaced. That was directly specified. Can you cite anything specific in any episode that implied the contrary?

Researching now to jog my memory.

I call BS, this has been a debate in fandom since the series ended. You may have felt it was clear in your head canon but that’s all it is.

I forgot the episode “Killin’ Time”, where the guy Sam swapped with (a mass-murderer) escapes the waiting room, and is clearly the physical guy from the past, not a mind in Sam’s body.

I wonder if the fan confusion was again from people who read the novels as I did, which had the whole concept wrong.

Caitlin Bassett says that S.O.S. is her favorite so far. As an actor myself (less than professional, but more than amateur), I can see why.

Cancelled.

To bring up the most contentious issue (according to Primetimer, anyway): Yes, I thought the mushy Ben-Addision stuff got a bit overboard; no, I didn’t think it was a dealbreaker. Obviously NBC has woman-centric agendas at play; you can see it in the marketing for things like the Olympics and American Ninja Warrior. You can argue the VALIDITY or EFFECTIVENESS of this approach, but there’s no doubt that they exist and have existed for some time, so any revival of a classic show which lacked such sensitivities was going to go in that direction. If the stories are compelling, it’s not a problem for me.

My main problems were that all the machinations got too convoluted for me to keep straight and the antagonists got shoehorned in too quickly. I think that in a setup like this, where the hero is struggling to adapt to constantly changing situations, always starts out having no idea what he’s supposed to do, and having to learn all kinds of things completely on the fly, there’s enough adversity as it is, and you make a Big Bad only when the hero’s proven himself and it’s time to raise the bar. It looked like the production team was looking really long term and setting themselves up for big reveals four or five seasons down the line, never realizing that they didn’t have that long.

(I really regret not making a list of short-lived shows I found interesting. Could’ve gotten a few discussions out of them. What was the one about the rich black people?)

Durned shame, esp. since they couldn’t get Bakula to come back for at least a cameo, which might have lead to a big ad push during a sweeps month and the possibility of staying on the air. So no closure for Dr. Beckett in TV canon at least, which is a shame.

Do you mean the Tom Swift series?