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"Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett led an elite group of scientists into the desert to develop a top secret project, known as QUANTUM LEAP. Pressured to prove his theories or lose funding, Doctor Beckett, prematurely stepped into the Project Accelerator and vanished. He awoke to find himself in the past, suffering from partial amnesia and facing a mirror image that was not his own. Fortunately, contact with his own time was made through brainwave transmissions, with Al, the Project Observer, who appeared in the form of a hologram that only Doctor Beckett could see and hear. Trapped in the past, Doctor Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, putting things right, that once went wrong and hoping each time, that his next leap will be the leap home. " - Narrator, Quantum Leap opener.

Each week, Quantum Leap opened with the monologue above. It would be one of the few things that would be predictable every episode. Thanks to an ingenious plot and talented writers, the fertile soil from which to harvest ideas was unlimited. And over the course of four years, that ground was relentlessly toiled as Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) "leaped" from character to character, era to era.

It was a show that stretched your imagination with the concept of "what if", and did so intelligently. It also had a lot of humor and a lot of heart. What could be more ambitious than to undo what had previously gone wrong? And who better than good hearted and quick thinking Dr. Beckett, with his plucky, wise cracking sidekick Al (Dean Stockwell)?

The show tackled social issues by having Sam leap into people of other races, or another gender. It did so with respect and keen social awareness. Thanks to the hard work of the set and costume designers, it was also able to convey time travel with relatively no special effects whatsoever, keeping the budget low and our imaginations high.

Though it depended on a very "sci-fi" idea, it didn't overwhelm the concept with technicalities that could alienate those in its audience that tuned in for the other things the show did so well - which was just about everything else from drama to action to comedy. And while this worked with its non-sci/fi audience, there is one technicality that arguably proved to be its one major plot flaw.

The main complaint was with the logic if one thing was changed in the past, wouldn't it change the future? This is attributed to "the Butterfly Effect", the idea that something as innocuous as the flutter of butterfly wings could create such change it could produce an effect of gigantic proportions, such as a tornado.

We can attribute the show's long running success to the wit of the writers as well as the charm of the actors we grew to love... so much that whenever an episode ended we didn't want Sam to leap home.

We longed to hear the same words heard at the end of the episode, and the other only predictable part of the series: "Oh boy."

We knew when Sam uttered those two small words, he would be immersed in a new character, a new time and in dire circumstances. This was what drew us back each week, the true testament of the success of "Quantum Leap".

Had NBC not canceled the series, who knows where Sam would be today? With such an innovative concept, anything and everything could have happened.

Thankfully for all of us, for four years it did.

A+

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