Howdy Holograms, welcome to the twenty-second episode of HACK. Ziggy says there’s a 99% chance that I’m here to save Project Quantum Leap from obscurity.
Quantum Leap was a weekly TV drama that ran from 1989 – 1993.
Watch the Intro and Theme Song
Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett led an elite group of scientists into the desert to develop a top secret project known as ‘Quantum Leap.’ Pressured to prove his theories or lose funding, Dr. Beckett prematurely stepped into the project accelerator, and vanished… He awoke to find himself in the past, suffering from partial amnesia and facing mirror images that were not his own. Fortunately, contact with his own time was maintained through brainwave transmissions with Al, the Project Observer, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Dr. Beckett can see and hear. Trapped in the past, 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…
That’s pretty much all you need to know and you could leap in at any point in the series. Each episode found Sam in a different body, different location and a different time period (within his own lifetime) with different actors playing new characters each week. The show had a sci-fi premise but everything else was strictly character driven. It was about people and the messed up choices they make and how one person can help them to think differently. Quantum Leap was enlightening—a Highway to Heaven of the 90s, if you will. I personally learned a lot about how to communicate with others who “don’t get it” or “just don’t see it.” In addition, the characters of Dr.6 Sam Beckett and Rear Admiral Upper Half Albert Calavicci provided satisfying role my models for the extremities of my personality–Saint/Pervert.
“Let me tell you where this cigar has been.”
After five seasons the show ended. Sam’s “final” leap was on his actual birthday, August 8, 1953. He leaps in (at the exact moment of his birth) standing in the doorway of a bar called Al’s place. He orders a Schlitz from the bartender, takes a sip, looks in the mirror and sees his own face, the face he hasn’t seen since before he first leaped . Cue the iconic “Oh Boy!” and prepare for an emotional kick in the butt.
So let’s leap right to it. By the end of the series finale Sam…
a) Realizes that it is he who has been leaping himself around in time all this time. We had always presumed that God/Time/Fate/Whatever was the culprit but in the last episode this “unknown force” is represented by the bartender, coincidentally called Al, who most likely is just some higher dimensional entity that’s been keeping an eye on Sam. The bar is called Al’s Place and seems like some kind of waystation for Leapers. In fact, the actor who plays Al the Bartender (Bruce McGill) also played one of the commanders (‘Weird Ernie’) during Sam’s first leap. He’s the only character besides Sam and Al to appear in both the first and last episodes of the series. So by using some simple post creative rationalization you have a connected loop where Al the Bartender has been watching Sam since the beginning. At this point Sam’s leaping is mostly subconscious. This unknown force probably placed him where he needed to be. It is strongly suggested that Sam is ready for more direct control over where he wants to go and what he wishes to change.
“Who knows what Don Quixote can accomplish?”
b) Discovers that dead people are Leapers too. This is crucial because it reveals to Sam that leaping around in time makes one somehow beyond life and death. Once time becomes something you can leap around at will, the concept of a linear existence seems pretty irrelevant. We’ll come back to this point later. Suffice it to say, the closest equivalent to Leapers would be Angels or whatever name you want to give to those beings who continue to save us and guide our evolution.
Sam Beckett is playing the trope of the walk-in. Except instead of it being a ghost or alien or angel or whatever, Sam uses technology to reach the level of direct human intervention. Leaping into someone’s life to put right what they either made wrong or prevented from going wrong. Some other guy might ingest ayahuasca, meditate for 18 years and reach the same level. It doesn’t matter how you get there, once you’re there, you find that you’ve always BEEN THERE.
That (subplot?) in the episode about Stoppa being Al the hologram’s dead Russian uncle seemed like a warning. You can get stuck in a recurring cycle of Saṃsāra. Since Sam had to be the one to help accomplish Stoppa’s original mission, the message is clear: Leapers help each other. Sam has known that there are other leapers but now he truly realizes that he’s part of a community. Quite conceivably, it’s the kind of thing we’ll all be doing once we make our own personal leap into higher awareness. Some of us are doing it right now!
c) Understands that before he can move on he must finally fix a wrong in his best friend’s life. Al Calavicci is the Project Observer. He stands in a giant cave that’s been converted into an Imaging Chamber and his brainwaves are tuned to Sam’s brainwaves, whenever they are. Once connected, Sam sees Al as a hologram while Sam and everything around him appears as a hologram to Al. Al uses a handlink to communicate with the Project’s “parallel hybrid supercomputer” named Ziggy, who acts as a giant online search engine, calculating probabilities as to what Sam is there to do.
Interesting technical sidenote: Sam and Al always refer to Ziggy with the pronoun he or she, depending on the episode. It would be interesting to do a breakdown of exactly when they say he when they say she across the five seasons. When we actually met Ziggy in ‘The Leap Back,’ it was a she. Also, Ziggy is voiced by Deborah Pratt, who also does the intro explanation of the show’s premise at the beginning of each episode. The most creative explanation I’ve read for the constant flip in pronouns is that it’s some kind of quantum quirk, as Sam leaps and changes history, Ziggy’s gender is some minor loose variable that keeps changing without affecting the rest of the project as a whole.
In the season 2 finale, we learned that Al was captured and held POW in Vietnam. He was repatriated four years later only to find out that the love of his life had remarried. Sam had at least two opportunities to fix this for Al but didn’t. He had these rules about how you can’t change your own past and yet he did it for himself in the second episode of the entire series. More on that below. Then in Season 3 he saved his own brother from dying in Vietnam but unknowingly at the expense of rescuing Al who was being captured by Vietcong only a few miles away! Al the hologram was forced to watch his younger self get captured and yet he didn’t give Sam any shit about it.
So back to the series finale. After a long and heartfelt chat with the Al the Bartender who gently breaks it to Sam that he can’t go home again, all Sam has to do now is leap back to Beth and tell her that Al’s alive and he’s coming home. He leaps out the next scene is Sam doing just that. Beth’s crying, Sam’s smiling, ‘Georgia on My Mind’ is playing, and–the last image is a zoom-in on a black and white picture of young Al. Then the Al in the picture quantum leaps (???? Why didn’t we just cut from Beth crying with joy to Sam smiling with relief as he leaps out? You know, the way EVERY SINGLE EPISODE ENDED.)
Except this time the leap implodes into blackness. We read that Beth never remarried and that she and Al are happily married and have four daughters.
The very last scripted scene of the series was never filmed. It showed Al, his wife Beth and and their daughters sitting in their living room. They’re still at Project Quantum Leap and Al explains to them that there’s been no success locating Sam but that wherever he is, he’s still in his own body. Instead of this vital piece of information, viewers who had stuck through 5 years of leaping were treated to this line as the final scene of the series:
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home.
Wha-wha-wha-what? What the fuck? What the fucking fuck? Why the fuck not? What’s going on? This is a joke, right? Man, Donald Bellisario is an ASSHOLE! *
That’s pretty much what went through my head after I read the words. I was crushed. I didn’t understand. How could this poor guy go through all that, helping all those people and not get to go home at the end?
* The Author does not actually believe that Donald Bellisario is an asshole.
If you look up IMDB’s Quantum Leap trivia page, you’ll find this bit at the very end:
Donald P. Bellisario and Scott Bakula have both expressed their ire with the NBC network over the series finale. Originally Bellisario was asked to write an episode that could function either as a season finale cliffhanger, or as an end to the show. When Bellisario complied, the cast and crew were assured of the series renewal. In the eleventh hour NBC decided to cancel the show after all, and re-edited the ending with title cards revealing the fate of Sam and Al. This was one of at least four endings, at least two of which were filmed. If the show was to end, Bellisario originally planned to have Al and Beth as an old married couple discussing how they would locate Sam who had leaped again. Had the show continued, Bellisario planned to have Sam leap into a space station in the distant future, and Al becoming a leaper himself to rescue Sam.
Technically, Sam did go back—once. In The Leap Back (season 4 premier) Sam and Al switched places and Sam actually got to go home. He remembered that he has a wife—because he changed history in the second episode by solving her daddy issues so she wouldn’t run off at the wedding. So that means that not only does Sam not go home again, he leaves his poor wife to remain lonely and (apparently) childless the rest of her days. But of course Al was gonna die so Sam had to leap back and switch places with him. And since Sam’s brain gets swiss-cheesed every time he leaps, he forgets about his wife and she makes Al promise not to tell him.
“Babe, I’m gonna leap you.”
Well don’t worry folks, I’m here to put right what once went wrong and change history for the better. After years of contemplation and soul-searching I can finally reveal to you why it all makes sense, why the end is appropriate, and why there’s still hope for Dr. Sam Beckett.
OK, so if Sam is leaping himself around in time and he now knows that, then he should be able to leap right back home. Then he could consciously go whenever and wherever he wants and always leap back in time for dinner, right? Well, it’s apparently not that simple. Maybe Sam could eventually achieve that kind of control over his leaping. At this point he’s only just learned that he controls his leaps. He’s about to discover the actual potential of his abilities. That’s what all those previous leaps were, after all—training.
First Model of Cylons and First Captain of the USS Enterprise
Even if Sam could consciously control his leaps, it makes sense that he would never go home again. Think about it. He’s just realized that leaping is beyond death and beyond the technology that got him there in the first place. He always wanted to do good and he willed himself the chance to do more. Al the Bartender has hinted that there’s greater (and more difficult) work to be done. In short, Sam’s ready for some next level shit. Once you get to that level, you can’t go really go back, at least not in the same form. He’s transcended life and death and linear time, what’s he gonna do now…go live out some narrow, singular existence? And then what? He’d be right back where he is now, a Leaper. So he could go home again but the awful truth is that there’s really no point. His life as Dr. Sam Beckett from birth to death became irrelevant the moment he first leaped. He has no other choice but to MOVE ON.
“You don’t have to leap home but you can’t stay here.”
It’s kind of exciting. The series ends right when it could really start to get interesting. There’s infinite potential for story lines. Despite cool ideas like Sam in space or Al as a Leaper… Sometimes I think maybe it’s better that they didn’t go there. What I always appreciated about Quantum Leap is that the sci-fi element remained hidden in the background. You didn’t even see the goings on at Project Quantum Leap until the 4th season…and it was kind of lame, actually. To be fair, Quantum Leap the show and the fictional Project Quantum Leap always did suffer from budget restrictions.
There was just enough metaphysical jargon to make leaping sound plausible, while keeping it vague enough for speculative junkies like myself to wonder at the nuances of a consciousness that inhabits the physical and temporal location of another consciousness, and how the two are connected across time in varying ways dependent upon the nature of the leap. So anyway, while I think Quantum Leap could incorporate some Serious God Knowledge, it should always stay in the human realm and not stray into sci-fi whackiness.
Which brings me to my own humble suggestions for continuing Quantum Leap–at least for the short term:
So Sam’s leaping around in his own body, right? The Project can’t locate him. He’s got a wife that he last banged about two years before the last episode. So let’s say she conceived and had a kid. Sam would never be told this, of course. He was never allowed to learn anything other than what he could remember. So they finally locate Sam and Al is right there helping him while Sam’s learning how to do his next level shit. Maybe he leaps as himself plus he can leap into other people if necessary. Maybe he coordinates with other Leapers more frequently. Maybe he’s working on fixing something that crosses many points in the space-time continuum. Or, if the rumors are true, the season 6 script stars with Sam in a spacesuit floating above Earth.
I don’t know, I don’t write fanfic, I keep all that in my head, but if I did, then essentially we’d see Sam progressing as a Leaper and his missions would be more difficult. After being trapped in the past, now he’s free to leap into his future, which could be our present or even our future. Presumably Sam will still physically live a very long time. His “death” might even be something he eventually has to face as a Leaper.
Meanwhile, Sam’s wife Donna (also a brilliant physicist) does the same thing her husband did and jumps in the accelerator in a desperate attempt to find him, for their son’s sake. She gets lost in time for a while until Sam rescues her. So now the two of them get to leap together, and death do part them not.
Al and Beth takes care of their son and Sam’s illegitimate daughter Sammy Jo (see comments below.) Thanks to the new timeline Al already has a bunch of kids of his own, so Sam’s sibling progeny won’t be lonely. Speaking of Al, throughout the whole series he’s on and off with Tina, a genius with a bimbo persona. Since we know that Al remembers changes in history, there could be some great awkward moments where Tina comes onto him. But he loves Beth so he never sleeps with Tina. Yet for Al it doesn’t matter because he already got to sleep with Tina many times in the alternate past that he still remembers! Finally, I’d like to see Sam’s brother have some kind of role.
All of that that leaves the Imaging Chamber door open for a re-up of the story line when the son grows up and discovers that his parents are actually alive and leaping. He’s angry at first and with the help of his sister he locates them, jumps in the accelerator to go get them, leaps and eventually confronts them…
You may say I’m a dreamer but if you’ve made it this far, dear Leapers, I’m not the only one.
The overall message I came away with from Quantum Leap is: You can’t go home again. Nothing stays the same and change is constant. There’s work to be done. Consider yourself lucky. Most people aren’t even aware that this is possible. Now go leap around and do some good.
The Top 13 Quantum Leap Episodes You Should Watch
1. Genesis (Pilot, Season 1) 2. Star Crossed (Season 2) 3. M.I.A. (Season 2) 4 – 5. The Leap Home – Parts 1 & 2 (Season 3) 6. Shock Theater (Season 3) 7. The Leap Back (Season 4) 8. Mirror Image (Finale, Season 5) 9 – 13. One more episode from each season, in any order.
Al and Beth Dance to ‘Georgia On My Mind’ (Season 2, ‘M.I.A.’)
Closing Act of Series Finale (Season 5, ‘Mirror Image’)
Scott Bakula as Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha (Season 2, ‘Catch A Falling Star’)
Scott Bakula with Marietta DePrima singing ‘Somewhere In The Night’ (Season 3, ‘Piano Man’)
Scott Bakula and Shari Headley (Season 2, ‘Pool Hall Blues’)
Quantum Leap: 100 Oh Boys
Quantum Leap Theme Song Comparison: Seasons 1 – 4 vs. Season 5
Quantum Leap Bloopers
Sam Learning Sign Language
Dr. Sam Beckett’s Theory of Time Travel
Ball the Loop: (slang) To make it happen, to get it done, complete the circle, finish the mission, tie up loose ends, wrap it up, etc.
Hey Towel Boy,
QL novel author Chris DeFilippis here. (FOREKNOWLEDGE)
I enjoyed your positive spin on the QL series finale. I arrived at similar conclusions in my own deconstruction of Mirror Image, which you can read here if you’d like: http://deflipside.com/?page_id=2063
I also wrote a post Mirror Image story that explores the idea of Sam coming to grips with the new and seemingly unlimited parameters of his leaping, and how they conflict with the promise he made to Donna at the end of The Leap Back. It’s called “Somewhere Between Limbo and Lightning” and you can both read AND listen to me read it here: http://deflipside.com/?p=297
The only thing you seem to have overlooked in your ideas for how the series could continue on is that Sam already has a daughter, Sammi-Jo, thanks to one of his leaps, and that she’s working at the Project with Al to bring Sam home. She’d have to figure prominently in any continuation of the premise, I think.
Anyway, it’s nice to see fans are still talking about QL. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Howdy Christopher, Thanks for the comment and the correction. I’m ashamed to call myself a QL fan for forgetting that Sam does have a daughter. That’s probably why it popped up from my subconscious disguised an original idea. I’m exploring your links now. Will definitely read SBLL. By the way, thanks for writing it so I don’t have to! One thing just stood out in your Mirror Image analysis. You mention Stawpah’s comment about having been here too many times. I completely agree with you that he means this literally. I also agree that this was a very important and overlooked line and it does seem to imply that one won’t move on to “the next leap” until the current one is completed correctly. The rest of the analysis is great and spot on. Cheers! Marcus
What about that script for Mirror Image Part 2 that was floating around, that was going to be the Season 6 opening episode? Sam leaps into the future, and Al steps into the Quantum Leap accelerator and gets sent to the bartender. Al asks the bartender where Sam is, and the bartender says something like “I’ll show you where he is, but this time you can’t be there merely as an observer”. Thus, two leapers.
Was that script real, or a fanfic? From what I heard, it was going to be the continuation, but Quantum Leap got cancelled shortly before the end of production on Mirror Image, and the studio added in the epilogue text which originally was nothing like what the story was going to be.
Still, I enjoyed reading your theory. It’s good to see that there’s professional Quantum Leap fiction being written so I’ll have to check it out!
Chris,
You’re right about the MI scene you describe. I have the actual script that describes it, and it makes the “Al’s picture leaps” ending of MI make much more sense.
In the script, the pic leaps to the shot of Al and his family, pans across the new photo to Al sitting in his living room at the Project with Beth, saying he’s sure Sam is out there, and he wants to find him. Al then Leaps to Al’s Place and the bartender tells him that Sam has gone beyond the limitations of the project, that he’s in the far future. The bartender further explains that if Al wants to follow, all he has to do is Leap himself there, since Leapers control their own leaps. So Al leaps himself and materializes in a spaceport bar (seriously) and looks into a mirror to discover that he’s a woman in a futuristic outfit. “Oh Boy!” and wait for season 6.
Where Bellisario would have taken the series from there we’ll never know, but that’s what he wrote. Anyway, I’m glad you enjoyed my MI theories. My post-Mirror Image story is still fanfic, however, since no one paid me to write it like FOREKNOWLEDGE. Hope you enjoy!
Thank you for explaining the finale, but what what I was always the most interested in was the “Dark Leapers”. I honestly think they could build a series based on them. Correct me if I’m wrong but it was supposed to be good against evil right? Sam’s daughter could be the good leaper but we would basically be following the leaps of a so called evil leaper. Maybe there is a hidden good reason why they cause bad things to happen. Oh I don’t know I just thought it would be intersting to delve into that aspect of the show. What do you think?
Hi Evette,
Thanks for reading. First of all, great name. Second of all, the Dark Leapers. I like that term much better than Evil Leapers. I’m split down the middle on them. On the one hand, I appreciate that there are other Leapers doing good and so it logically follows that there would be Leapers whose agenda is chaos and discord. On the other hand, I admit that I found the whole Evil Leaper thing (Season 5) kind of lame. I’m too lazy right now to look up the details but that whole thing with the first evil leaper, that girl. It was interesting because her character was conflicted, so it wasn’t one-dimensional. Yet it was lame because we were supposed to buy that there’s a secret project with it’s own technorganic supercomputer and that their whole agenda was the opposite of God/Time/Fate/Whatever’s agenda. They would put wrong what once was right or prevent Leapers like Sam Beckett from putting right what once went wrong. Maybe it would have been better if the dark leapers weren’t just some mirror image (no pun intended) of Project Quantum Leap. Or if there was more of a continuing thread with a single antagonist (an evil bartender?? haha) that slowly built to a head over a season or something. But the thing that really bothers me about the evil leapers–and even watching Stoppa leap out in the season finale was that it completely removed the uniqueness of Sam Beckett’s experience. I liked it when he was just one human who through his own genius and determination was able to transcend time and fulfill his greatest wish…to help others. I suppose it couldn’t have gone on like that forever. That’s the why the last episode laid bare the active presence of other Leapers, which I also agree makes total sense and support that idea. But it still sounds risky to me. Sam’s interaction with other Leapers must be handled carefully or it becomes to sci-fi-sh and detracts from the focus of the show. Even though Sam Beckett is doing “good,” his leaps are complicated and deal with real human issues. To simplify it all by saying: these are good leapers, these are bad leapers turns it into any old hackneyed good v. evil conflict. Maybe I’m just tired of duality. Not sure if there’s an actual point to all this. I’m in the middle of a QL marathon but haven’t reached Season 5 and the Evil Leaper yet. I might have some more coherent opinions when that happens. As for your own ideas for the role of dark leapers, I like them. I think these are good foundations on which to build a story that is not lame. Good and Evil are two sides of the same dualistic coin, so exploring the (necessary) role of evil in spiritual evolution could be quite interesting. If it’s done right. In the final analysis, we’re probably lucky that the show ended when it did. Now we can speculate on these things and create our own conclusions without having them petrified by Donald Bellisario’s single vision. Peace Out.
Marcus and Evette,
You both have done more to flesh out the Evil Leaper idea than I think even Don B. did. When the episodes aired, I thought they were kind of neat, but in the end seemed to smack too much of appeasing network brass who wanted to spice the show up in the fifth season–a gimmicky device aimed at creating a dumbed-down “good vs. evil” hook that might bring new viewers. It’s no different than the celebrity leaps that also plagued season five. That being said, the whole Alia/Zoe/Lothos thing DID have potential, especially when Zoe said something to the effect that she and Alia had to literally claw their way out of hell to get the Evil Leaper gig in the first place. It kind of harkened back to the blatant first-season references to God controlling Sam’s leaps. I also liked the fact that it allowed QL to experiment with multi-episode story arcs, giving it more continuity and mythology. And I actually really liked the amped-up Sci-Fi aspects of the episodes: the multiple leapers, multiple holograms, competing against an active adversary rather than historical circumstance. It brought a unique “Gee Whiz” fanboy factor to the proceedings. That being said, Marcus is undoubtedly correct: we’re lucky that we can speculate in a positive direction rather than lament a failed experiment. Although I’m POSITIVE Evil Leapers would play a prominent role in any eventual QL reboot.
I really enjoyed the appearance of the Evil Leaper (and I found the finale idea of a community of leapers quite warming), I remember on Alia’s first appearance, thinking, “now this is an interesting twist” so for me it worked.
My mind interpreted the evil leapers as being from beyond Sam’s original future, where his technology may have been built upon by another (evil?) scientist, possibly so that leapers could travel beyond their own time-line. Alia had no concept of Sam but Zoe appeared to know of his existence, that suggests prior knowledge of his experiment/him and sinister motive? Future evil scientist would also know Sam is still bouncing around and maybe wants to eradicate him so that he doesn’t interfere with his masterplan, so he sends Alia after him (she may or may not know her true purpose due to the swiss cheese effect, although they clearly remember each other when they meet again at college but her mission in that episode is not revealed). Somebody at HQ gave Alia orders to assassinate Sam when they met – who and why? Maybe the whole reason for the Evil Leaper upsetting the course of history is to lure Sam to leap back to fix it in the hope that Alia would then trap him. The great thing about the fact they only saw each other when they touched, meant they easily could have been co-existing in Sam’s other leaps without knowledge of each other because they didn’t touch then. What also came across strongly was that Alia was an innocent being forced or bribed into doing evil – possibly serving an “alternative sentence” for a crime paralleling her with the character of Angel escaping prison (for a minor demeanour) which enabled her to escape her “higher authority”.
Of course this is all conjecture, it was more than likely just an idea to shake things up without putting too much thought into it. I like the fact that they kept the sci-fi/science fairly vague so there was plenty left to the imagination and you couldn’t pick holes in the theory!
When it came to the finale, I was gutted to read Sam never returned home. Even leaving it open for future episodes, you’d hope that one day he gets to retire. The leaping isn’t preventing him ageing, he comments on his grey hair in the finale so presumably he will continue to age and eventually die. Surely he should be able to leap home, then recruit a new leaper? I don’t really understand the idea of sending Al as the next leaper when Bellisario set up a perfect continuation with Sammy-Jo working at the project, isn’t she the logical choice? With her genetic tie to Sam, you’d expect she’d feel in her genes the need to leap and an “unexplainable urge” to rescue Sam (which we know is because they share a paternal bond). Its a shame they never went with the concept of her spin-off series because I think that could have worked well. Is the movie still going ahead? Maybe Sam will leap into an episode of NCIS…
I think if the show had continued, especially with the whole future space station premise and Al Leaping and all, it would definitely have been the last season. It would have been like the last season of The A-Team–the same general characters are there, but the premise is completely and totally different and not in keeping with what made the show work to begin with. The show worked when it remained in Sam’s own lifetime. Even Bellisario said in the beginning that it needed limiting factors because he wanted to have some sense of reality to the show. That’s when he came up with the String Theory idea. Of course, Don is also fond of changing his mind and then explaining it all away with Post Creative Rationalization. Like when he said “It will never be November 22, 1963.” Although, I did enjoy the Lee Harvey Oswald episode.
I agree with what Molly said about the Evil Leapers. I loved the idea behind it and imagined that they were from, not some alternate dimension, but from a distant bleak future– Perhaps the one that Sam’s Leaping will ultimately prevent. I even wrote a fanfic that speculated that Alia could possibly be a descendent of Sam’s–maybe even his granddaughter. And before you go “ew”, yes, she did try to seduce him, but nothing ever happened between them. And I highly doubt that Zoe would ever reveal to Alia that she was related to Sam, if that was the case. Alia seemed pretty expendable to the Evil Leap project, so when Zoe encouraged Alia to shoot Sam, she wouldn’t much care if that essentially killed Alia in the process. Sam even makes a comment that he and Alia cancel each other out. I like to think that he was right in a way, but that shooting him would only cancel Alia out with the good old Grandfather Paradox.
It’s fun to think about, anyway.
Loved the show, hated the way it ended, but glad it didn’t go where the Mirror Image script alternate ending suggested it might. I enjoyed the article, Marcus… some insightful and funny stuff. Even if I don’t agree with everything, it was definitely better than the response I wrote back in 1993 right after I saw Mirror Image (much closer to your original reaction, but with less swearing and more crying and the same amount of lashing out at Don Bellisario). Would I like to see some sort of continuation of the show? Possibly, but it would have to be brilliant and that’s a tall order to fill.
Your essay was fun to read. From the notes, I think its good the series wrapped up when it did. Everybody leaping here and there just doesn’t have the same impact as Sam being the lone good-doer, out there on the time travel frontier. I finished writing a 9-book science fiction series last year, working to keep the stories grounded. It’s not always easy to do. Thanks for the quantum insights.
Gregory,
“Everybody leaping here and there just doesn’t have the same impact…” is well said. It almost seems like the premise for a spinoff or different show altogether.
I just want to say that I’m heartened to see this article still getting comments like ten months later. Touch my ass and balls,
Noelie