Quantum Leap

"Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and Vanished...He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so 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."

And so began each episode of the fantastic show "Quantum Leap." Sam (Scott Bakula) spent 5 seasons leaping around "from life to life" including his own, his friend Al's (Dean Stockwell) his great-great grandfather during the Civil War while fixing things that had apparently gone wrong. As the shows mythology grew, Sam met and "evil leaper", Alia, and her hologram co-hort, Zooey and learned that maybe something, or someone was guiding him through time. In the series finale, Sam had leapt into a bar where he was himself, and a bartender, named Al, seemed to know more about Sam and why he was doing what he was doing. Sam learns that he can continue leaping, only now as himself rather than inhabiting someone else's body, and that he can put a very important wrong to right. It ends with Sam leaping to the home of Al's first wife (and presumably his true love) and tells her that Al didn't die in the war, but that he would come home to her (remember if you will that Al was a POW and presumed dead...by the time he returned, Beth had remarried). We are told that Al and Beth were eventually reunited and that Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home.

Alternate endings have surfaced (which I know I have seen on television, but some claim can only be seen on the internet) where we see a picture of Al, Beth and their four daughters. Many have speculated that Sam couldn't have returned home even if he wanted to, because by changing Al's past, he never ended up with the project. They've also speculated that this would have undone all that Sam changed, but the shows creator Donald Bellasario says this was not the case. Another ending (shot but never aired because of the cancellation), a cliff hanger, we see Beth and the family talking about Sam and that he had leaped somewhere beyond his lifetime. Beth asks Al if Ziggy told him, he replies NO he just knows. She tell him she bets the Bartender knows, if he is God, he would know. It concludes with Al leaping to the bar and telling the other Al that he wants to be with Sam, as a leaper, with all the risks - next thing we see is Al in a space bar in the year one could assume 2099 and he is a woman.(courtesy of www.tv.com)

There is a TV movie in development, speculating to take place 20 years in the future(there are a few details at www.imdb.com..."Quantum Leap: A Bold Leap Forward." Hopefully this will come to fruition and we'll get a little more closure as to what happened to Sam and Al.




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