I was told about this show from my intern boss at Mayflower High School, while I was going through my last year of college. The concept of a man traveling into bodies, either male/female/and mammal, during random years of his own lifetime was very intriguing and after going through the first season, I was hooked into this time travel adventure of Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) and his holographic sidekick Al Calavicci (Dean Stockwell). What I love about this show was that it was both funny and very dramatic at times. I love the concept that in order for Sam to leap forward, he had to correct an event that would cause devastating effects in the future for a specific person, whether it was the person that Sam leaped into, or someone that knows that person. With each ending, Sam would leap forward into the next person and it was usually a small teaser for the next episode that always ends with Sam’s iconic line, “Oh boy!” The theme song to this show is very good and the chemistry between Sam and Al is iconic. My favorite episode is a two parter, The Leap Home Part 1 and 2. Sam leaps into himself as a boy and has win a basketball game, but Sam really wants to prevent his brother, Tom, from being killed in the Vietnam war and eventually does save his brother’s life but at a cost. What I love about this two-part episode is that Sam learns two critical rules of leaping through time. While trying to prevent his Tom’s death, Sam learns that Al was in the Vietnam war and was part of a group of POWs that are not saved because Sam and Al prevented Tom’s death instead of fulfilling their original mission of making sure that Tom’s unit rescued the POW’s. So basically, Al sacrificed his freedom in order to save Tom. The other rule is that if Sam or Al tries to prevent terrible futures to someone personal to themselves and not to the person that they are intended to save, it will most likely change nothing and will only just cause more misery for that person’s present. Sam learns this particular rule when he tries to prevent both his father from dying of a heart attack and when he tries to prevent his sister from marrying a very abusive husband in the future. It’s a bittersweet ending to an otherwise great two-parter episode. Any sci-fi enthusiast like me has to check out Quantum Leap, it was a great show during it’s run during the late 80’s and early 90’s and shows you an innocent story about a man saving people’s lives by preventing tragic fates in time.
