Mapped, every Quantum Leap Sam Beckett ever took

Mapped, every Quantum Leap Sam Beckett ever took

0 comments 📅07 November 2017, 08:00

Quantum Leap was without a doubt one of the life’s highlights of the early 90s. It ran for five seasons between 1989 and 1993 and along with Magnum, PI, it was one of the great gifts Donald P. Bellisario gave to the world.

Rumours have recently resurfaced regarding a Quantum Leap movie – however, we suggest these are taken with pinch of salt, just because Bellisario wrote a Quantum Leap movie screenplay once upon a time.

 

That said, if you need a new reason to share some Quantum Leap love we suggest you check out this pretty cool interactive map. Created by a gentleman names Josh Jones for Special Request magazine, it traces every leap Sam Beckett took during Quantum Leap’s series run, with every episode title and description available for those who want to match the leap with the location.

Using Google Maps, Jones marks a total 93 leaps across five seasons, with the second season having the most, 22, one more than every subsequent season. Most of them took place in the US, though there were a few in Europe, along with one in Egypt and another in Japan. But it looks like Sam never managed to leap to Central America, South America, or Australia. Largely for budgetary reasons no doubt.

Jones also includes a nice quote from Bellisario, “Being thrust into a life to “put right what once went wrong” was such a worthy endeavour that one couldn’t feel sorry for Sam Beckett no matter how difficult the leap. However, I did feel sorry for Scott Bakula, since he had to prepare for one leap while filming another, i.e. play a broncobuster and between scenes learn to fly the high wire.

“I wrote ‘Oh, boy’ on the second page of the pilot script when Sam rolled over to find a pregnant woman in bed with him. Of course, Scott’s delivery had a lot to do with making it a catchphrase. It’s difficult to name a favourite episode or leap… there are so many really good ones, such as MIA, The Leap Home, What Price Gloria, Mirror Image and, of course, Lee Harvey Oswald, which was the only leap that was based on a real event: the assassination of JFK. It took me quite a while to figure out how to make that work so that it was believable, since Sam obviously couldn’t save Kennedy’s life. I didn’t know until the last minute how the series would end or if it would end.

“Truthfully, I didn’t know Sam wasn’t going home until the day before the last episode aired. That’s when I made the decision to let him continue leaping through time. As a character, he always wanted to go home, but in the final episode, set in my dad’s bar, he realised that he could have leaped home anytime… if that was what he truly wanted.”

There’s even been talk of a Magnum, PI reboot, but fingers crossed that will never happen and sadly, we’re inclined to think that a Quantum Leap movie would be an equally terrible idea for similar reasons. As oneonline commentator said, every time he leapt into a minority, it would be dissected by trolls. “Stop cutting 1990 shows with 2017 razors,” he added.

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