Reboots: The Return of Sliders (?), Quantum Leap, and Other Properties (Page 6 of 12)

I was joking.

In other thoughts... I do think SLIDERS will eventually come back. I just don't know if it will be TRACY TORME'S SLIDERS when it does.

I would expect that a SLIDERS revival would be like the MACGYVER reboot: recast actors playing the original parts. The producers wanting the original actors to play the parents. Richard Dean Anderson was asked to play MacGyver's mentor (not necessarily his father) but Anderson declined. And MACGYVER had a very shaky start with episodes that ranged from poor to average, but it gradually found its feet and was a pretty great show by the end of Season 1 and it had a five year run with a less-than-satisfying finale because it had been filmed as a season finale in anticipation of a sixth season that didn't come. MACGYVER was consistently good by Season 2 and often great by Season 3. Season 4 was excellent. I haven't finished Season 5 yet, but it's been as good as Season 4.

MACGYVER had the original creator involved and he wrote a few scripts on the writing staff, but the showrunner was the (now-disgraced) Peter Lenkov and then Monica Macer.

That's what I'd expect for a SLIDERS revival: a new producer who loved SLIDERS and wants to do a reboot and start from the ground floor. It's not what I would personally want. It's not what Tracy Torme wants. But it's what I think a studio and network would believe they could sell.

I like Temporal Flux's AFTERLIFE model for SLIDERS.

One model of a revival that I do not like and found offensive in some ways was LONELYGIRL15. This 2006 web series went on permanent hiatus in 2008 due to funding issues and ended on a massive cliffhanger. In 2016, LONELYGIRL15 came back with new videos. The first one left the cliffhanger still unresolved. There were three more videos indicating a larger story was to come -- and then nothing, with the producer revealing that the project did not have funding yet and that releasing the four videos in total had been an attempt to draw in potential sponsors. It didn't work and LONELYGIRL15 once again ended/didn't end and it was inconclusive and confusing.

THE X-FILES ended in 2000, came back in 2016 and 2018 and also failed to address the unresolved cliffhangers of 2000 and also ended inconclusively and confusingly.

Having protested absolutes, I will say this: it is really unreasonable to ask audiences to invest emotional energy and loyalty into stories that creators don't end, so whatever form SLIDERS returns in should be a complete and satisfying product within the limitations. If SLIDERS in its revival is only guaranteed six episodes or, like LONELYGIRL15, four short webisodes, then it would ideally (at least for me) be a complete story with a beginning, middle and end, albeit an ending that leaves space for more should the opportunity present itself.

Yes, while I did say that crossovers generally happen when networks are out of ideas, I didn't say doing them is always the wrong thing to do.

For example: I would love to see an X-Files/Sliders crossover. That would be fun to watch. Mulder and Scully investigating the mysterious disappearance of four people into a vortex. I can picture Mulder with his trademark smirk: "Sounds like aliens, doesn't it?" A Sliders and Quantum Leap crossover could easily be done, with something going wrong during a slide that pushes them into a quantum transdimensional error that has Quinn leaping around while Sam finally returns to his physical form. That would be wild.

But here's the other general problem with crossovers - if they are not done correctly legally-speaking: and without consideration for legal issues with other shows from other networks, this could sink Sliders from a legal perspective, irregardless of where the writing ends up.

That's the only reason I see Sliders being limited in terms of crossovers and how they accomplish them. In which case, addressing legal issues where they exist and tackling them before they become problems with certain properties (such as in streaming formats or other syndication formats) this could be successful.

There are many great ways to tackle an X-Files crossover.  My thought was always that Mulder and Scully would be pulled into a murder investigation of someone who isn’t dead.

Arturo’s body is discovered in San Francisco in what appears to be a pretty cut and dried murder; but the X-Files come into play when Arturo is sighted in another part of San Francisco even though his body is in the morgue.  Mulder and Scully catch that one and begin interrogating when they get report that a third Arturo has been sighted.  Then another.  And another.

I see it as an Agatha Christie type mystery where everyone involved is Arturo.  And, of course, our Sliders land in the middle of it and get pulled in.

Somewhere, Nigel Mitchell is kicking himself for writing a SLIDERS/X-FILES crossover where it's just Quinn and Arturo investigating the murders of their doubles and encountering Mulder and Scully when TF has now proposed a more complex and challenging path for the story.

lol, I love it!!!!

Crossovers have a lot of potential. You could say that about any idea. Crossovers have a lot of potential problems. You could say that about any idea.

I am in favour of crossovers that are done well and I feel SLIDERS could do them well.

PROFESSOR: "I support the good things in life. I oppose the bad things in life."

QUINN: "Way to go out on a limb, Professor."

I don't know that SLIDERS lends itself to being directly interconnected in a shared universe. The sliders don't *stay* in the same universe; how often can they really crossover in such a fashion?

I think SLIDERS' hypothetical crossovers would be more like what TF suggested: the sliders are seen running through the background of various scenes of other TV shows on the same streaming service / network.

SAVED BY THE BELL REBORN has been cancelled on Peacock.
https://www.cbr.com/saved-by-the-bell-r … d-peacock/

NBCUniversal is clearly not in a great financial position right now.

Crossover? Sounds doable.
Once the Team-Ups!!! are finished.

Great news about QL!

As for Peacock -- from what I can tell, Peacock operates on a model similar to Netflix where they spent huge sums on shows, present them without commercials -- and the hope is that the media reception and word of mouth will lead to new subscribers which allows the streamer to recoup its costs and earn a profit. However, existing subscribers don't produce profit; Peacock and Netflix need a constant influx of new subscribers. This is why Netflix cancels so many shows after 1 - 3 seasons because there comes a point when a show has gained as many new subscribers for the streamer that it will and there's no further financial gain in maintaining the series.

Whether that series is a new property or an existing IP may not be that relevant. Peacock is losing 2.2 billion dollars a year and SAVED BY THE BELL definitely had a loyal audience, but because Peacock doesn't have a very large subscriber base to begin with, that wasn't enough to keep the show going and it's hard to see if Peacock can keep going.

Dr. Soong on Star Trek...Dr. Seong on Quantum Leap...they just don't even try to be creative anymore do they? I can imagine the writer's meeting:

"Just replace one o with an 'e'. Nobody will know the difference."

ireactions - I do apologize for that misstep: there were absolutely no racist intentions meant with my post. And I am sorry you took it that way.

And I agree with you: there is absolutely no reason why Quantum Leap can't have a similar character.

I am truly sorry you took my comment that way. And again: that was certainly not my intention.

I will be more careful in the future.

Addendum:

My comment was about Hollywood's latest trends of constant reboots, along with their own rehashing and stealing of other successful attributes from other more influential shows, and doing homages, to see what formula is going to stick and be the most profitable. Something that Sliders itself was very guilty of doing in the third season when David Peckinpah was brought on board.

The most egregious recent example being La Brea - in which Scott, one of the main characters, comments himself about the show, their "situation" being like an episode of Lost. Which was the first thing I thought of when watching La Brea. But I turned out to love the show and can't wait until it comes back.

I also agree that not everything should be attributed to nor should be thought of as having originated with Star Trek. But, Star Trek has been very influential in Hollywood when it comes to Sci-Fi, and has influenced a generation of writers.

Of course, I am a big fan of Star Trek also. And I have been watching Star Trek Picard until the last episode of the second season quite recently.

Addendum #2: It is also worth noting that the same showrunners for La Brea are also involved with Quantum Leap, and La Brea's  criticism from a number of people have been how similar it is to Lost, while being different as well. It's also not a stretch to say that there may be some similar but different types of homages being done with Quantum Leap too.

Again, I do apologize for how you took my comment but I also thought you would want to hear my point of view on the topic, and that I never intended for it to be read as "there can never be any type of this character on Quantum Leap," which is far from what I intended it to be.

Again: I'll be more careful in the future.

We are both on the same page. It's a matter of doing reboots, homages, and the like well with quality writing and production. That's one of the best parts of La Brea - it's a fresh take on an older "Lost" formula. While some suspension of disbelief is required it's not something that requires too much suspension of disbelief, like you mentioned about the MACGYVER reboot. You care about the characters, the writing and production are quite good, and it's certainly not a terrible implementation of time travel sci-fi.

The problem with older homages of certain Hollywood films on Sliders, for example, is because the production took a significant dive in the latter half of season 3. As a result, they ended up being in one of those situations where the lack of quality caused a lack of legitimacy as well. And Sliders just didn't work as a homage-heavy show. The point of parallel universes is they are supposed to be different than our own, not rehashing the same things from ours. That is where the writers ended up committing a few errors in judgment on their part, I think. The writers kind of just stopped thinking and phoned it in.

Quality certainly improved with season 4, and it would have been amazing to see Jerry and Charlie make it through to season 5. But it seems that wasn't going to be in the cards there. All in all they did what they could to make it work, and I respect what the writers were able to do with the things they were given during each season. Ultimately, the main thing that harmed Sliders was the lack of quality overall.

The showrunners did things quite well with La Brea, however, and I have no reason to suspect they won't do something similar with Quantum Leap - and take it to new heights.

Clearly they are today's up-and-coming star producers as well with a lot of clout in today's Hollywood climate.

Could they be the ones to pick up Sliders in a reboot too and give Tracy the power he needs to do his own thing?

With Sliders being featured on NBC's Peacock streaming service...anything's possible.

In 2000, Temporal Flux said that SLIDERS would have its time again. I believed him then. It's now 2022 and 22 years later, I still believe him and think that we're 22 years closer to TF being right.

**

Seasons 3 - 5 of SLIDERS suffered from two areas. The first is that SLIDERS from 1994 - 2000 was produced at a time when television was not taken very seriously as an art form. The second is that the creators did not treat the sliders like friends.

In the 90s, TV was filler between commercials. There was no way to present shows on a home video market when NTSC VHS cassettes could only store four hours of standard definition video. Shows would be syndicated if sufficient episodes were made, but the concern there was again, quantity for more commercials. Quality was a ninth or tenth place priority. TV was not required to be a captivating visual product or a model of capable screenwriting. And because VHS recording was glitchy and you had to be in front of a TV at the same time each week to follow a show, the average viewer only watched maybe one-quarter of each season's episodes.

As a result, the people who made television were not particularly aware of the artform's impact on the audience. It was only in the 2000s that psychology entering the mainstream made it clear to the majority of TV creators: audiences relate to TV characters like they are friends. Following a TV show regularly triggers the same brain activity produced by seeing a dear acquaintance or beloved family member.

The average 1990s-era TV producer did not understand this; wasn't aware of this. To them, SLIDERS was 'only' a TV show; they didn't realize that executing Professor Arturo so horrifically was like killing our dad in front of us; didn't see that raping Wade Welles was like raping our baby sister. They weren't supporting murder and rape; they didn't see it as murder and rape because it wasn't real.

I don't believe there are many producers working in TV today who are unaware that TV characters are like friends to the viewer and so long as whoever reboots SLIDERS is emotionally invested in the characters and has the storytelling and production skill to run a TV show effectively, we'll be in a good place.

But of course, a creator can be overinvested. Going back to MACGYVER (sorry): the fourth season is a perfect example of creators becoming too confident in their character. From Seasons 2 - 3, MACGYVER's creators had thrown MacGyver into impossible situation upon impossible situation: having to scale a mountain with a shoelace, having to quench thirst with only contaminated water, having to recharge a solar panel that had been buried underground, having to pass through a nuclear disaster zone with no radiation shielding.

MacGyver triumphed again and again; the creators believed in MacGyver, believed that MacGyver's ingenuity and cleverness could solve any problem and then they had him take a run at global warming and MacGyver was defeated by the fact that MACGYVER is not real life and only a TV show.

I admit, I'd rather SLIDERS' failures be from being too passionate about the characters instead of being uncaring.

(I can't promise not to bring the MACGYVER reboot up again while we talk about reboots.)

While media casually refers to any property returning after a long hiatus to be a "reboot," there are actually multiple categories of IP relaunches:

Reboot
A reboot is where the continuity starts over again with no acknowledgement of previous productions, and the term is drawn from turning off a computer system and turning it back on. Reboots include THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB (2020), BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (2012) and THE PRISONER (2009).

THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB would not have benefited from actresses in their 40s reprising roles they played 20 - 25 years previous to have their characters resume jobs they held as adolescents. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST was unlikely to secure Ron Pearlman and Linda Hamilton to reprise their roles in a TV sequel, so recasting and starting over made sense, as did rebuilding the entire concept of the show (a highly civilized lady police officer and a savage warrior fighting crime) in the context of 2012 society. Rebooting both made sense and I would call these two examples of successful reboots.

However, THE PRISONER reboot is my example of a failed reboot where the PRISONER reboot eliminated nearly every point of distinction about the original 1960s show. The original show was defined by characters known by number instead of name, a strong espionage-conspiracy thirller concept, a daring action-adventure formula and a acidically satirical vein of social commentary. The reboot had characters known by name, no spy elements, little action, no adventure and no social satire at all; it wasn't THE PRISONER except in name.

I would say that reboots are successful when the concept and character templates (if not the characters themselves) can be reintepreted and rebuilt to be relevant to the present day and market. Batman has been relentlessly rebooted and can be made darker or lighter as needed for each era. However, reboots fail when the concept is out of step with the needs of the audience or if the production is incompetent or if the reboot is so disconnected from the original that it may as well not use the same name.

Revival
A revival is where the production is set in the original continuity as a sequel to the original production. THE X-FILES, GILMORE GIRLS, SAVED BY THE BELL, PUNKY BREWSTER, GIRL MEETS WORLD and SCREAM all benefitted from being revived when the stars of these properties were working actors and the right age to play older versions of their original characters. They also benefitted from their original storylnes being extremely opportune for sequels.

However, THE X-FILES was a creative failure because despite being a revival, it contradicted or ignored its original (and unfinished) storylines and failed to bring Mulder and Scully to the next stage in their personal and professional relationships the way the other revivals listed above did for their cast. THE X-FILES didn't accomplish the goals of a revival, instead skipping back and forth between ignoring continuity and tying into it, and the results were confusingly impenetrable.

I would say that revivals are successful when the original storylines and characters benefit from resumed exploration, but they fail if the original storylines are too dense, contradictory or confusing for a casual audience who may not have seen or remember the original. They also fall apart if the revival doesn't feel like a new chapter of the original.

THE X-FILES was a peculiar case where the original storylines were too dense, contradictory and confusing for the *writer* attempting to produce a sequel that didn't require the audience to remember much; the writer ended up confusing both the long-time fan and the unfamiliar viewer. And THE X-FILES also put Mulder and Scully exactly where they had been back in the 90s; despite the age of the actors, they felt like they hadn't made any progress.

Rebootquel
A rebootquel is where the continuity starts over but acknowledges the previous productions through time travel. Examples include the STAR TREK 2009 movie and TERMINATOR GENYSIS.

I'd say STAR TREK's rebootquel series was a mixed bag. The first movie was strong, enabling long-time fans to accept an altered continuity while being accessible to new fans. The second movie, however, got hopelessly entangled in continuity and callbacks that were obnoxious and clumsy for long-time fans and nonsensical to new fans. The third one was a strong action story that unfortunately couldn't overcome the audience's dismay with the second movie and make enough money in ticket sales.

And TERMINATOR GENYSIS was truly puzzling and counterintuitive; it rewound back to the 1984 time period of the original movie, but then cast off the 1984 setting as quickly as it could, rendering the rebootquel approach pointless.

This tells me that for a rebootquel to be effective, it needs to embrace the specific time period to which the franchise is rewinding but also embrace that it is a new story, not a remake or sequel to an old story.

Deboot
A deboot is where the continuity rewinds itself to a previous installment and ignores some previous sequels but not the original and possibly a select number of sequels. Examples include TERMINATOR: DARK FATE, HALLOWEEN (2018) and others.

HALLOWEEN's new movies ignore all but the first film; TERMINATOR: DARK FATE ignores all but the first two. HALLOWEEN's sequels were a strong distillation of the original concept and an effective update for a new era. TERMINATOR: DARK FATE was... I liked it well enough, but ticket sales were poor and it's possible that after two bad sequels, an unfinished TV show and long periods where the TERMINATOR franchise had been absent, the audience had atrophied.

In this case, a deboot is an exercise in reverting to the original storytelling template after numerous deviations. HALLOWEEN succeeded because the back to basics, non-supernatural horror of the first film had been lost with the sequels becoming increasingly magical; the deboot felt like a return to form. In contrast, the original TERMINATOR and each sequel had generally featured humans on the run from robots and TERMINATOR: DARK FATE, despite being a deboot, was more of the same and the audience had tired of it and stopped going.

In Conclusion
Reboots: Effective when the concept is timeless but the original storylines don't necessarily need sequels.

Revivals: Effective when the characters and storylines of a past TV show benefit from new exploration and can be made relevant in the present day.

Rebootquels: Effective when the franchise has a large audience but also impenetrably dense continuity in need of a new entry point for casual viewers.

Deboots: Effective when the concept has been distorted and a return to the original idea is welcome.

I 100% agree with the audio drama as being one of the best ways to revive Sliders! What's your take on this being the best format to do a revival?

JWSlider3

Why not Kari?

The audio book format could come with.a written form of course!  And I am sure if  audio drama happened some fans would be willing to translate it into script format as well.

Of course like you I would prefer television the most but also have to account for our audience not being large enough at this point, especially for a revival vs. a reboot.

And that's just fine with me.

good lord

Peacock lost 1.7b last year...

https://deadline.com/2022/01/comcast-pe … 234920844/

it's why they cant throw 20 million at sliders..

Those are some good points. As much as I would love to see a mainstream station pick up Sliders for a reboot, I would much rather see Netflix or Hulu pick up Sliders if it means we get an additional 3 - 5 seasons and Tracy and the majority of the original cast gets to be involved for all seasons.

The thought occurred to me. If Quantum Leap takes off, perhaps Sliders will follow with a full pilot/series order? They were, after all, always erroneously compared to Quantum Leap by TV Guide reviews/online media in the late '90s.

Perhaps if the Quantum Leap reboot takes off successfully, Sliders won't be far behind.

The thing about PUNKY BREWSTER and SAVED BY THE BELL is that it was not the end of the characters' world that they got cancelled. Punky, Zack and Slater have been off the air before and clearly survived it. PUNKY BREWSTER and SAVED BY THE BELL were cancelled, but their de-facto series finales were effective as jumping off points (unlike whatever the hell that was with THE X-FILES leaving poor Skinner run over, maybe dead, maybe alive).

PUNKY BREWSTER ended with Punky starting the adoption process for her little girl; while Season 2 could have shown all the difficulties after that, the Season 1 finale left you knowing that Punky had taken a good step forward. SAVED BY THE BELL ended with the students saving their school and Slater the gym teacher and Jessi the guidance counselor kissing; while a third season could have explored all the problems that would follow; as a final episode, it was a very happy romcom ending.

FAKING IT producer Carter Covington shot Season 3 of FAKING IT concerned that the show might not make it to a fourth year; Covington wasn't willing to end the show with Season 3, so he prepared cliffhangers. However, he described them as "happy cliffhangers" where something nice happened to each character; a fourth season could explore it further, but if there were no fourth season (and there wasn't), the audience would feel that the characters had been left in a good place.

MACGYVER also ended on a 'happy cliffhanger' in Season 5 due to an unexpected non-renewal, but in a rare change of events, I can't talk about it because I have not yet seen it (and now you may sigh with relief).

All this is in stark opposition to Quinn Mallory bleeding out in a field after being shot by the lottery police or the Kromaggs having implanted a slider with a tracking device that would mean any homecoming would be followed by invasion or Quinn and Maggie having "slid into the future" or Quinn nonsensically not bothering to slide to Kromagg Prime despite having the means to bypass the slidecage or Rembrandt jumping into an unstable vortex, fate unknown.

And one of the issues with SLIDERS: it is difficult to give SLIDERS a 'happy cliffhanger' because the sliders are lost in the multiverse. They're either home or they are not home.

I admit, I am sure that no cancellation-induced Peacock revival cliffhanger with Tracy Torme at the helm could possibly be as bad as "The Seer" (which I sometimes argue wasn't necessarily that bad as it enabled a lot of fanfic). I can't be sure of that because Torme did, as previously noted, leave Quinn bleeding out at the end of Season 1.

Why is the title of your story Sliders Reborn?

**

"The Seer" provides a very simple explanation for the Seer's vision: the Seer's premonition of death immediately after the sliders stepped through the vortex was not their deaths, but the Seer's own demise. This has always been, at least to me, a very obvious back door to avoid really killing Rembrandt off.

And because "The Seer" does not specify what world Rembrandt will slide to, does not have the Season 5 sliders join Rembrandt, does not show what's on the other side of Rembrandt's gateway, and also has Rembrandt take the broken Egyptian timer with him, there is absolutely no limit to what could be waiting for Rembrandt when he emerges after the end of "The Seer." Perhaps he makes it home; that's Temporal Flux's view as established in his SLIDERS DECLASSIFIED series. Perhaps the gateway is actually the end of a timeloop that rolls back in terms of plotting if not in-universe to Season 2 as suggested by "Slide Effects." Perhaps Rembrandt encounters the Quinn Mallory of the Azure Gate Bridge world as proposed by Slider_Quinn21.

Or perhaps Rembrandt came out of the other side of the vortex to find Quinn, Wade and Arturo waiting for him, miraculously and impossibly alive, somehow restored through the infinite possibilities of sliding, somehow able to locate their friend, somehow ready to lay Seasons 3 - 5 to rest and restore the status quo and sorry, why is your story called Sliders Reborn?

Almost all the streaming services are struggling.  The main exception is Hulu, which is largely ad-supported.

yes.

it got bumped due to X Files and Quantum Leap priority.

I am hoping it comes back at a normal hour but you are right we shouldn't assume it will stay in the lineup.

That is quite the creative multiversal branch there. I can dig it. Dr. Seong and Quinn Mallory being acquaintances in that universe...

This fall TV season cannot come soon enough for this Quantum Leap fan.

That is... less than accurate. From NBCUniversal:

QUANTUM LEAP 2022 is a revival. It is not a reboot. The lead character is investigating the disappearance of Sam Beckett from the 1989 show.

It was the SLIDERS writers intention that Maggie Beckett is Sam's niece. The General in "The Return of Maggie Beckett" is supposed to be Tom Beckett, the brother Sam saved from death in Vietnam via time travel. Possibly more an in-joke than a direct crossover.

In my head canon, the Quinn we met in the Pilot and the Quinn we met in "World Killer" had one key difference: the Quinn we met in the Pilot spoke with Dr. Sam Beckett in his childhood, but the "World Killer" double didn't.

I imagine that when Quinn was 11, Sam gave a lecture on engineering and quantum mechanics at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Sam brought along his niece, 17 year old Margaret-Allison, as she'd recently had a fight with her father over something or other and needed some time away.

Both versions of Quinn attended this lecture. Afterwards, 11 year old Quinn rushed up to Sam as he was leaving with a question.  Margaret-Allison instinctively jumped in front of Quinn to block Sam from a perceived threat. 11 year old Quinn smashed right into Margaret-Allison. Both toppled over. Margaret-Allison's bottle of water drenched her white T-shirt rendering it near-transparent.

The "World Killer" version of Quinn tried to take control of the situation by saying something grotesquely oversexual to Margaret-Allison. Margaret-Allison shoved Quinn in disgust. He landed on his ass and crawled to his feet. Sam restrained his niece from beating up a 11 year old and told Quinn to run before Maggie killed him. "World Killer" Quinn fled.

Our Quinn didn't make a joke. Our Quinn got up and immediately pulled off his brown jacket and offered it to Margaret-Allison to wrap around herself. Our Quinn yanked off his flannel shirt as well to let her wear it (Quinn had a T-shirt underneath). Our Quinn apologized with each article of clothing he handed over.

Maggie was furious, but Sam intervened, saying it was obviously an accident as Quinn was sorry and Quinn was literally offering Maggie the clothes off his back. Maggie softened, recognizing that Quinn was a child.

Sam asked Quinn why he had been running. Quinn said he had a question for Sam but had been to shy to ask in the lecture. Quinn said he wanted to study quantum chromodynamics but didn't have the equipment for a physical Lagrangian gauge model. Could Sam give advice to a boy wanting to do science in his basement?

Sam said that as a boy, Sam developed his interest in string theory from the nearly two-dimensional shape of his brother's guitar strings. Sam suggested that rather than attempt a full size model, Quinn could instead use analogues: a football dangled from a hockey stick above a kettle, perhaps.

"Good scientists start small," Sam explained to our Quinn. "World Killer" Quinn never received this advice and made a sliding machine that slid away the entire planet's population.

I'm sure that the QUANTUM LEAP revival (which is a sequel) will focus entirely on the complex relationship between Quinn Mallory, Sam Beckett and Sam's beloved niece, Maggie.

I am certain that the catalyst for Dr. Ben Seong to locate Sam will be Quinn Mallory himself. I can't see how a QUANTUM LEAP revival would be about anything other than the secret and shared history between two science heroes, Dr. Sam Beckett and grad school dropout Quinn Mallory, eventually bringing in Mr. Spock, Sherlock Holmes, MacGyver, Dana Scully, and Dr. Miles Hawkins from MANTIS.

**

On a more serious note, one of my favourite shows in recent years was KEVIN CAN **** HIMSELF, a sitcom/drama where we get two different versions of the same reality: one a sitcom with a laugh track, one a bleak HBO Max style drama of desperation and pathos.

Raymond Lee is one of the high points of the show, putting forward a truly excellent performance in his role. He's very good and I'm glad he'll be the lead of the new QUANTUM LEAP.

I feel like fans might prefer that Scott Bakula be the lead, but creatively, there seems to be the sense that without Dean Stockwell as Al, the Sam character can't work in quite the same way and Bakula might be best as the former generation appearing to pass the torch.

I don't necessarily know what I'm talking about, I've seen very little QUANTUM LEAP. However, I did listen to all the REWATCH PODCAST episodes covering it, so I can bluff through any conversation about it.