NBC orders the Quantum Leap revival to series
Raymond Lee will star in the revival series, searching history for a time-lost Dr. Sam Beckett
Aux News Quantum Leap
Today, in news we can only assume was engineered to make the exact writer of this particular Newswire give an otherwise entirely uncharacteristic “Yippee!”: NBC has announced that it’s picking up the Quantum Leap reboot for a series order, on the strength of its pilot.
This is per Deadline, which reports that the Quantum Leap revival—which will star Raymond Lee as, presumably, a new scientist with a swiss-cheesed memory and a mandate to change history for the better (in mostly TV-friendly ways)—has rightly assumed its position as the first series pick-up of the 2022 season. In addition to Lee (whose recent credits include the upcoming Top Gun: Maverick and AMC’s Kevin Can F**k Himself), the cast for the series includes Caitlin Bassett, Ernie Hudson, Mason Alexander Park, and Nanrisa Lee. (That’s a pretty big sizing up of the roster from the original show, which saw just Scott Bakula and the late Dean Stockwell in regular roles, teaming up with a new guest cast in a new era every single episode.)
One of the biggest questions about the series, of course, is whether Bakula himself will appear in it; the revival is apparently set in-continuity with the original series, which concluded with a text message that Dr. Sam Beckett “never returned home.” Bakula, meanwhile, is currently waiting on a pick-up order from NBC himself; his new series Unbroken is apparently waiting on word of a possible launch this November.
Of course, the very nature of the endlessly mutable Leap-averse means it’s entirely possible the show could get around Bakula’s absence by introducing a version of Sam who’s, say, leaped into someone else and who then runs into Lee. (If the Quantum Leap writers need help crafting any of these scenarios, hit us up, the fan fiction folder is full.) The new series is being showrun by Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt, whose co-credits are all over genre TV of the last decade: Alcatraz, Hawaii 5-0, Gotham, God Friended Me, and more. Original Leapers Donald P. Bellisario and Deborah Pratt (who also voiced the show’s iconic opening) are both set to executive produce.
45 Comments
Why do so many people dislike the evil leaper arc?
I thought it was fun BUT leaned too far into the quasireligious aspect of the show. I also didn’t particularly care about the show’s mythology. It’s weirdly an example of a procedural that got less appealing (for me) when serial elements were introduced.
Not generally a fan of revivals, but this dude combined with Helen Shaver directing the pilot is more than enough to get me to give this a shot. It’d be nice if they dealt with the Sam situation quickly instead of leaving it until the season/series finale. I was shocked by that ending as a kid, though ultimately it did lead me to love sad/mixed endings to stories. Still, it’d be nice to see it resolved a little better even if Sam does keep choosing to never go home.
Totally the same reaction as a kid and result. It really made me think about the nature of a happy ending, and why Sam would choose to do what he did.
I always like seeing you around. It’s a nice reminder of other Barker fans.
I was in high school when the finale aired. Our lunch table got very heated the next day.
Same age range here, and I want to say that even though I only watched sporadically after the first two seasons, I made sure to watch the finale. A true gut punch but so, so good and memorable. I always forget that it aired just a few weeks before my high school graduation. Tend to think that it coincided with the TNG finale almost exactly a year later.
This sounds like a great way to do a revival (not reboot) of the show—looking for Sam. Since the show is a continuation of the story, it’s easy to imagine that the technology has advanced enough to make a rescue mission feasible. Maybe Lee’s character’s brain doesn’t get quite as swiss-cheezed as Sam’s did, or maybe he can go home between leaps while the team is tracking where Sam will likely be next. I also assume Ernie Hudson is going to be a character like Al, who can communicate with Lee when he’s in the Quantum Generator.Whatever happens, I’m hoping it does justice to the original.
Yippee? Not “Oh Boy!”? Christ, it’s not even hard to do this.
It was written by a 9 year-old Anakin Skywalker, what do you expect?
Somehow cannon or GTFO.
Bakula is such a fun guy, and commands the screen. I’ve watched a good deal of Quantum Leap, some Enterprise, and I will say I’ve watched all of NCIS: New Orleans. In fact I pronounce it like he does in the show N’orleans.
His cameo in What We Do In The Shadows was delightful.
Shout out to Men of a Certain Age. A very good show.
it’s gonna suck!
Are they going to do the Jimmy episode again?
Having a larger supporting cast implies to me there will be an ongoing present day subplot. It reminds me of how Y: the Last Man seriously expanded the Washington DC story compared to the comics in order to have something that happened on the same set every episode, compared to the road trip A-plot. Traveling to new time periods every episode effectively makes it a road trip show.
oh boy
Mine might be a minority opinion but I would like it if the new series strayed away from the more “spiritual” elements of the show. If there has to be some supernatural element to the science fiction of leaping, I’d rather they leave it vague. I felt like there was a little Judeo-Christian messaging in the original show. It was always soft-peddled but even so… meh.
“Little”?The second season opens with a Senate hearing in which they all discus the fact God is controlling the leaping.He meets God.
And satan at one point. That was weird.
I like the episodes where they tackle social issues or paying homage to genre tropes like crime noir etc. but the supernatural and religious parts of the show always feel heavy handed or awkwardly written to me.
Sure, but it’s always been part of the show.It’s always been God, or “Him”, or “The Powers That Be” etc. that has been guiding the leaps, it’s an integral part of the show.
The basic premise of the show is that Sam is leaping in order to “make right what once went wrong”. In order for that to work, someone or something has to define right and wrong. Without that moral grounding, the show is just some guy dicking around with people’s lives.It doesn’t really matter if the moral grounding comes from a supreme being, or the glowy thing in Marsellus Wallace’s briefcase, or a 26th-century AI named Daniels, or a Mind that partially exists in hyperspace. It exists, and its existence is beyond the ability of TV science to define, and everything else is left to the viewers’ imaginations.
rest easy, and no need to run to your safe space, I’m quite confident in 2022 the new series won’t challenge your anti-Christian belief system.
As a kid, I super dug the idea of the Evil Leaper team, and honestly, I still do.
No, not Satan. It was just a hallucination and really none of that episode happened except for him giving Stephen King the name for one of his books or something stupid like that. But for a second Al turned into a goat.
Yeah, the original show was NOT at all subtle about it. I’d be fine if the new series ignored or downplayed that as much as possible.
Specific episodes could lean heavy but overall I felt like it was subtle.
Subtlety goes out the window if you open a series with a room of people stating as a fact that god is controlling everything.
I don’t know, I think they did a pretty good job on the “vague” part. It was always, “God, or fate, or time, or whatever . . .” And it’s not like any of Sam’s missions were Christian-specific.
Well, he leaped into a Catholic priest one time. And a Jewish rabbi. So it didn’t stay totally away from religion.
Only in the sense that people should do good things for other people. The horror.
You’re right. There are no socially conscious, ethically responsible atheists. Science isn’t interested in doing “good things for other people”.Morality can actually be divorced from any particular theology. The horror.
Another old story being revived with new writers.
What could possibly go wrong.
If it starts going sideways, maybe some better writers can leap in and improve the scripts.
“borrowing” Doctor Sam Becketts research that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Ben Seong stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished… He woke to find himself trapped in the nostalgic past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an evil corporate entity so it’d wouldn’t last one season.His only guide on the journey is the hope that him and the other actors may secure a more permanent job afterwards. Doctor Ben Seong finds himself wishing the series was never made as it leaps right off everybody’s radar into the bottomless pit of bad revival tv shows that just don’t understand what made them successful to begin with…
Magic is the guy Sam leapt into in Vietnam to save his brother’s life. There was definite thought put into this and keeping a clear connection to Sam.
No Bakula, no Bob Worfington.
No, no, and fuck no. And I’ll tell you why.
It will suck.
There is no way, in today’s “let’s make a puzzle box” and “let’s tie it all together” bullshit that they will allow the show to have stand-alone episodes. I mean, they may try, but fans will be OUTRAGED.
These are the same motherfuckers who honestly thought Reed Richards was going to be a fucking mechanic in episode 5 of WandaVision and were pissed when he wasn’t.
Almost every Quantum Leap episode was a stand-alone. They got away from the “How does he get home?” bullshit midway through the first season. When they did pull out the sci-fi stuff, they made a few bangers – Al sacrificing his younger self to 5 more years of a Vietnam POW camp is an all-time great – but they were better for being fewer.
Now, if they make 13 episodes, 9 will have to be “mythology” crap. 6 will suck and the other three will contradict each other. And fans will whine and complain about the other four “not moving the story.”
Throw in the inevitable and already exhausting think pieces about whether the sexual partners of whoever is leaping are truly providing informed consent and whether cross-racial/gender leaping is appropriation and this show is already fucked.
So no, fuck this show. Already. And fuck you for making me feel this way.
I appreciate that it’s a continuation rather than a flat out reboot.
So plenty of opportunities to put an Asian man in women’s clothing is what I’m hearing. Great way to expand the show’s fan base.
The Deadline article reads:“The follow-up series is set in present day. It’s been 30 years since Dr.
Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished.”If it’s set in present day, then it’s been 27 years since his first leap in 1995. Facts matter, Deadline.
Sounds like something a new executive immediately cancels the first month they are in power.
The Quantum Leap finale belongs near the top of the list anything “Great Series Finales” are discussed. It’s fantastic and the bittersweet ending that “Sam never returned home” should NOT be undone by the new series.Happy to see Sam in there somewhere, but he chose to keep leaping, let’s respect that!
Yeah … that would seem an interesting idea. Modern day leaders trying to find him, and not comprehending why he would continue to leap.