A time travel classic is back in refreshed modern form in the second season of rebooted Quantum Leap – streaming on Neon. As a continuation rather than a remake, the show allows for new characters and a new direction, writes Adam Fresco.
With its fascination for super-charged computing, Artificial Intelligence, time travel, and astrophysics-for-beginners, the rebooted US sci-fi classic Quantum Leap is back with a bang.
The first episode of the second season, cheekily titled “This Took Too Long”, sees Ben (Raymond Lee) leap through time to 1978, where his consciousness is trapped inside someone on a plane, somewhere over Russia. With the stakes at a literal high, can Ben work out what needs fixing fast enough to save the timeline, and himself, from certain disaster?
Again.
Of course, this being serial TV, the answer is probably “yes”, but the fun is in how Ben solves the very particular problems Time hurls his way each episode. For younger viewers, especially those who revel in the time-twisting, multiversal mayhem of recent comic-book-inspired movie and television fare, this second season of the rebooted sci-fi franchise is bound to please.
If you are old, (like really, really old), you might remember the first incarnation, which ran for five seasons from 1989 to 1993, way, way back when the internet was coloured green, and made its way on-screen via bleeps and blips on a landline telephone. It featured Scott Bakula as Doctor Sam Beckett, (not to be confused with the Nobel prize-winning Irish existential playwright).
Sam leapt through time via an array of different bodies his consciousness was plonked in along the way. Bizarre as the concept sounds (and is), it allowed for some truly memorable episodes, such as one in which Sam’s consciousness hitched a ride in a woman’s body, and one where he found himself inside a poor chimpanzee about to be experimented on in a science lab:
Accompanying Sam in his perilous travels was his friend Al, or rather a hologram of Al, as played by a charismatic, cigar-chomping Dean Stockwell. He’d explain where Sam was, what was going on, and what needed fixing, according to Ziggy, the disembodied voice of a supercomputer tasked with untying knots in the timeline. Or something.
In 2022 the series received the reboot treatment, with Raymond Lee as Doctor Ben Song, a scientist who steps into the Quantum Leap accelerator thirty years after Sam Beckett vanished. Ben is in search of answers as to the nature of this time-travelling marvel and its vanished creator. But of course, it’s not long before Ben too is lost in time, leapfrogging from person to person, altering history, as he tries to make it home assisted by a hologram of his fiancée, and co-worker, Addison (Caitlin Bassett).
The strengths of the first season lay in its cast, with Lee and Bassett strong leads, ably supported by the likes of Ghostbusters star Ernie Hudson, as the boss of the Quantum Leap time travel project, and Mason Alexander Park, (of Cowboy Bebop and Sandman fame), as the project’s chief programmer. They form the core of a supporting cast of characters with plenty to do, mysterious pasts, dark secrets, and motives that may not be as pure as they at first seem.
Having ended season one on a cliffhanger, in which, rather than Ben leaping home, someone else materialised in the quantum accelerator, the first episode keeps viewers guessing as to just who the heck appeared in Ben’s place. Instead, we are thrust full-throttle into Ben’s plight aboard a mysterious aeroplane. No spoilers, but there’s enough intrigue for the tension to ratchet up nicely, leaving viewers keen to take the leap into the next episode.
Whilst comparisons to the original show are unavoidable, the fact that this Quantum Leap is a continuation rather than a remake allows for new characters and a new direction. Sure, I miss the bonkers humour of the original, which lay primarily with Dean Stockwell’s slyly hilarious hologram, but this reboot has its own style and humour, and contains plenty to entice a new generation into its time-twisting trajectory.
As the opening narration tantalisingly states, borrowing a line from the original series, our hero is trapped in the past “driven by an unknown force to change history for the better.” But what or who exactly is that force compelling Ben to leap through time and space? Are their intentions really good? Or bad? Or incomprehensible to us mere mortals? What is in the mysterious crate on the plane Ben finds himself on? Who are the others in the cargo hold? Who is this Sam everyone says is coming? Oh, right, “Surface to Air Missile”. Damn. Still, that makes for some dynamic CGI and special effects right from the off, as season two lands viewers smack in the action.
As with its first season, the rebooted show’s emphasis is clearly on self-contained sci-fi drama. The second episode, titled “Ben and Teller”, guarantees an exciting opening, with Ben leaping into the body of Lorena, a female bank employee held hostage in a 1980s bank robbery gone sideways. But there’s self-deprecating humour too. “So, how does it feel to be a grandma?” asks a co-worker, as Ben, wearing a bright red dress, replies in a suitably bemused tone: “It’s… unexpected.” By the third new episode, “Closure Encounters”, the crew are clearly channelling film noir by way of The X-Files, with Ben appearing as a shady 1950s government agent, investigating “the unknown”, and probing possibly extra-terrestrial goings-on, whilst rocking a fedora hat and trenchcoat.
Whether you find it a show at fault for taking itself too seriously, or not nearly seriously enough, will be a matter of taste, age, and expectations, but young teens seeking a sci-fi fix along the lines of Stargate, Star Trek, or pretty much any other show with “star” in the title, will have a ball following Ben and co. as the moral dilemmas of time travel are given a twenty-first-century spin.
So, if sci-fi’s your thing, tune in as the rebooted Quantum Leap, um, leaps into its second season of time-travelling high-jinks.
