NBC orders a Pilot Episode for a Quantum Leap Reboot

[Malvolio]

I agree with those concerned about the show being a project of its time and how television and now streaming has changed. One of the best aspects of QL was that every episode was a new place, a new time, a new scenario. One episode he's a gay man in the military, another he's a teen black girl with dreams of being a singer, another he's a rape victim taking her attacker to trial. There was no through line beyond the basic premise, what happened last episode had no bearing on the next. It reveled in the episodic format, it thrived because of that episodic format. But today you just can't do episodic storytelling anymore, it's all got to be part of a multi episode story arc. Instead of leaping from time to time every episode he'd spend the next four episodes in one time for a story arc, so we get 3 leaps max in a 12 episode season. And somehow what happened in the last leap affects this new leap. Instead of righting what once went wrong he'd have to correct history because his leaping is causing all kinds of butterfly effect impacts on the timeline and making things worse. Just...no. If they make this, I want them to stick to the premise, each episode is a standalone story where he is in a different place and time and making it better. Don't "prestige television" it!

When I was a kid, the three words I most dreaded while watching television were "To be continued." They should find some happy medium between the continuing story and the one-and-done. They do it with sitcoms. Why not with dramas?

[Matt Rat]

Ernie Hudson joins the cast

https://deadline.com/2022/03/quantum...ot-1234973289/

[Vakanai]

When I was a kid, the three words I most dreaded while watching television were "To be continued." They should find some happy medium between the continuing story and the one-and-done. They do it with sitcoms. Why not with dramas?

They could find a happy medium, where he leaps into a new unrelated scenario every episode while still going through a character arc, but I just can't see them attempting it. If he does leap every episode instead of needing multiple episodes to set right what once went wrong I'd be shocked.

Ernie Hudson joins the cast

https://deadline.com/2022/03/quantum...ot-1234973289/

I do love me some Ernie Hudson.

[Nods]

That's a problematic issue - not the issue you presented, but that attitude. This is the 21st century where we as a culture are beginning to understand that a straight white male doesn't represent "every man" (he was also a scientific genius who knew martial arts - how was he an everyman?) - he represented a straight white male and the show was looking at history through that lens. There's no "mixing of metaphors" with a POC lead, this is just a more complicated environment to tell stories that doesn't have the same naive and mainstream-centered POV.

I agree that Sam represented the tired trope of using a white person for the dominant culture to identify with, to make learning about other cultures and orientations easy for that dominant group to go along with. For example movies like GANDHI and CRY FREEDOM used this device, also. However, if you take it seriously, the Quantum Leap made Sam non-binary and pan-racial. He was fundamentally changed as a being, to go beyond the confines of one sex or one race and become something greater. To me this is an ideal--and it's what every writer is trying to do in their work--because writers try to put themselves in the skin of every character they create. It's a hard problem I've wrestled with all my life. On the one hand, people should have the right to tell their own stories. But then that means a white straight male can only write about other white straight males. A black Lesbian can only write about other black Lesbians. A two-spirit Musqueam can only write about two-spirit Musqueam. We're left with writers each in their own silo and only writing about their own experience and not trying to imagine themselves in the boots of other people.

The point of the show is about empathy, about walking in the shoes of another person. When you decide to race change you put yourself in a box, the character is Asian so is every episode going to be how an Asian Sam Beckett type handles a different situation with different gender and ethnic issues. You are putting yourself in a situation where the character has his ethnic identity removed to get to the basic starting point of the show or your going to try and walk the line of mixing Asian and other gender/ethnic issues with every episode. Hypothetically it could work...but as we've seen over and over and over and over again it doesn't.

I resent the idea that it's a tired trope to have a white lead...frankly it's a tired trope of rebooting a show with a different gender or race. What happens in most cases is the project is a critical or commercial or both flop. Almost 100 years ago Orson Welles made his fame doing black Shakespeare adaptations in New York that's how long this gimmick has been around. The idea behind these projects reminds me of Reaganomics. Reaganomics believed in the trickle down economics and even though in 40 years it hasn't worked people still believe that it works even though the evidence says it doesn't. That's what reboots like this are...sociological Reaganomics, while it might sound good on a message board the audience you are trying to reach is small and the market is saturated that the shows are one and done. By creating this racebending situation you are also giving your "side" an out...it was the fault of the other for not engaging in your project because they are bad. It's not that the gimmick is uninspired and the market saturated if only the audience was more tolerant than these projects would work.

[j9ac9k]

The point of the show is about empathy, about walking in the shoes of another person. When you decide to race change you put yourself in a box, the character is Asian so is every episode going to be how an Asian Sam Beckett type handles a different situation with different gender and ethnic issues. You are putting yourself in a situation where the character has his ethnic identity removed to get to the basic starting point of the show or your going to try and walk the line of mixing Asian and other gender/ethnic issues with every episode. Hypothetically it could work...but as we've seen over and over and over and over again it doesn't.

Making the lead Asian is no more of "a box" than making the character white. Being white doesn't "remove their ethnic identity" or do you really think being white has no baggage or identifying characteristics? (your attitude is a particularly white one, imo) You seem to equate whiteness = human, whereas any POC = human+ethnic baggage. (iow, an asian person being able to identify with a black person is no more of a leap than a white person being able to identify with an asian person, etc.) A POC can be an "everyman" if you look at them as simply human, or an individual like anyone else with their own individual baggage.

[80sbaby]

It's also the idea that POC's have to prove why they are on the show. Why would an Asian lead have to have their culture be a plot point in every episode or anything like that?

Ironically, the poster is actually proving why representation matters.

[Vakanai]

The point of the show is about empathy, about walking in the shoes of another person. When you decide to race change you put yourself in a box, the character is Asian so is every episode going to be how an Asian Sam Beckett type handles a different situation with different gender and ethnic issues. You are putting yourself in a situation where the character has his ethnic identity removed to get to the basic starting point of the show or your going to try and walk the line of mixing Asian and other gender/ethnic issues with every episode. Hypothetically it could work...but as we've seen over and over and over and over again it doesn't.

I resent the idea that it's a tired trope to have a white lead...frankly it's a tired trope of rebooting a show with a different gender or race. What happens in most cases is the project is a critical or commercial or both flop. Almost 100 years ago Orson Welles made his fame doing black Shakespeare adaptations in New York that's how long this gimmick has been around. The idea behind these projects reminds me of Reaganomics. Reaganomics believed in the trickle down economics and even though in 40 years it hasn't worked people still believe that it works even though the evidence says it doesn't. That's what reboots like this are...sociological Reaganomics, while it might sound good on a message board the audience you are trying to reach is small and the market is saturated that the shows are one and done. By creating this racebending situation you are also giving your "side" an out...it was the fault of the other for not engaging in your project because they are bad. It's not that the gimmick is uninspired and the market saturated if only the audience was more tolerant than these projects would work.

They're not race bending Sam Beckett tho - this is a sequel, not a reboot.

[Nods]

It's also the idea that POC's have to prove why they are on the show. Why would an Asian lead have to have their culture be a plot point in every episode or anything like that?

Ironically, the poster is actually proving why representation matters.

Sam Beckett
-Noble Prize winner
-Speaks multiple languages
-Martial arts master
-Child math prodigy
-famed muscian

So that's the starting point for the character, that character is either going to seem like a bundle of stereotypes or a lesser version which is also bad or Sam's going to have to have his continuity change. As for this idea that "representation" matters I'd say in my life time POC really aren't represented in media well at all. In most cases when I see POC on TV the writers are so terrified of making them full developed and realization character we get these bland idealized versions. We know what works in film/TV and that's inspired ideas not this marketing gimmick.

[Noodle]

Sam Beckett
-Noble Prize winner
-Speaks multiple languages
-Martial arts master
-Child math prodigy
-famed muscian

So that's the starting point for the character, that character is either going to seem like a bundle of stereotypes or a lesser version which is also bad or Sam's going to have to have his continuity change.

He's not playing Sam. This is an entirely new character. It's not the starting point for this character, it doesn't lessen the character of Sam, nor does it require a continuity change.

[Powerboy]

Making the lead Asian is no more of "a box" than making the character white. Being white doesn't "remove their ethnic identity" or do you really think being white has no baggage or identifying characteristics? (your attitude is a particularly white one, imo) You seem to equate whiteness = human, whereas any POC = human+ethnic baggage. (iow, an asian person being able to identify with a black person is no more of a leap than a white person being able to identify with an asian person, etc.) A POC can be an "everyman" if you look at them as simply human, or an individual like anyone else with their own individual baggage.

I think it could become a box in a show like this, depending on how far back this new guy can leap.

With this particular character being white, there can be episodes about race where he encounters bigotry when he becomes black, Asian, and so on. When he appears as a woman, he experiences that discrimination. But, if he's, say, Asian, every episode sort of becomes about racism IF he's back in the 1950s, 60s, etc. Now, if, like Sam Beckett, this new guy has a range of about 35 years into the past, he can only get back to maybe the mid 1980s. In that case, every episode doesn't have to be about him facing racism.

However, for me, the show will have to have tremendously compelling stories because the time travel aspect won't really cut it for me since, to me, the 1980s is more or less the present in the sense that I was there.

I understand now why I found the original show compelling and my generation did but my parents didn't seem to have any interest in it. Because, to them, the 1950s was, for all practical purposes, the present.

[80sbaby]

Sam Beckett
-Noble Prize winner
-Speaks multiple languages
-Martial arts master
-Child math prodigy
-famed muscian

So that's the starting point for the character, that character is either going to seem like a bundle of stereotypes or a lesser version which is also bad or Sam's going to have to have his continuity change. As for this idea that "representation" matters I'd say in my life time POC really aren't represented in media well at all. In most cases when I see POC on TV the writers are so terrified of making them full developed and realization character we get these bland idealized versions. We know what works in film/TV and that's inspired ideas not this marketing gimmick.

Well first of all that list goes against your initial post about Sam being an "everyman" character lol

Second, while those can be stereotypical of Asians, it all comes down to how it's written. If he's these things simply because he's Asian and that's all there is to the character, then that would be a problem. If not, then it won't be. We just had a very popular film about an Asian martial artist and there was not real backlash. There's also the fact this "concern" completely vanishes if he's made black or Latino, meaning again, Sam doesn't have to be a white dude.

And lastly, characters are written as "bland" because the writers are poor. It's not about their race/ethnicity. That's a caveat you're ascribing to them.

[Powerboy]

When I was a kid, the three words I most dreaded while watching television were "To be continued." They should find some happy medium between the continuing story and the one-and-done. They do it with sitcoms. Why not with dramas?

That's funny. My father would throw a fit when an episode of a show ended with, "To be continued". He'd even declare that he would not have even watched it had he known that. Were he still alive, I suspect he would hate what television is now, with season long arcs and even season ending cliffhangers. I don't even think streaming would make any difference because he would want to see the whole story today and within a reasonable period of time. He would always say, "If you are going to have 2 parts, then just preempt another show and have that show be two hours. Next week, show two episodes of the show that was preempted. There's also the factor that shows today try to hook you into being far more emotionally involved in the characters and situations than they did back then when you normally didn't get all that much of the private lives of the characters and no subplots, just each episode being self-contained with rarely a reference to previous events.

I personally liked certain shows of the 1990s (Hercules and, especially, Xena, come to mind) where most episodes were stand alone but there were subplots involving the relationships of the characters. Those subplots carried over and required the episodes be shown in a certain order. To me, that was a happy medium between the totally stand alone shows from before and the story that never ends of today.

[j9ac9k]

I think it could become a box in a show like this, depending on how far back this new guy can leap.

With this particular character being white, there can be episodes about race where he encounters bigotry when he becomes black, Asian, and so on. When he appears as a woman, he experiences that discrimination. But, if he's, say, Asian, every episode sort of becomes about racism IF he's back in the 1950s, 60s, etc. Now, if, like Sam Beckett, this new guy has a range of about 35 years into the past, he can only get back to maybe the mid 1980s. In that case, every episode doesn't have to be about him facing racism.

Are you under the impression the character will remain Asian when he time travels or am I misunderstanding you?(otherwise I'm missing your point) You know that's not how the show works.

[Jim Kelly]

I think it's the Swiss cheese memory that allows the main character to be an "Everyman" to a degree. The less specific a subject is, the easier for us to identify with them. For the sake of the actor, it was good that Sam had real musical talent, so Scott Bakula could perform--but it's best to have a Jason Bourne enigma, so we can slot ourselves into the character.

You could probably make it that there is no known actor cast to play the Leaper--and just whichever actor is playing the character of the episode speaks for the Leaper. But that's how I'd do Boston Brand in a DEADMAN show.

[Powerboy]

Are you under the impression the character will remain Asian when he time travels or am I misunderstanding you?(otherwise I'm missing your point) You know that's not how the show works.

Um, OOPS! Forgot about that. People will perceive him as the person he trades places with. Doh!