WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Quantum Leap episode 1.The nature of time travel in Quantum Leap has never been fully explained, but the relaunch has alluded to certain new details. Few science-fiction franchises really manage to handle time travel in a consistent manner. To be fair, there’s good reason for this; these are stories, not scientific treatises, and the temporal mechanics really exist in service to the plot. This means it’s not uncommon for franchises to change the rules at the dictates of the plot.
Quantum Leap is a case in point. The original series of Quantum Leap starred Dr. Sam Beckett, who had theorized it was possible to travel through time by “leaping” from one person’s body to another. His experiment with the Quantum Leap accelerator went badly wrong, however, leaving him lost in time – with only a holographic projection of his best friend as a guide. The NBC relaunch of Quantum Leap follows exactly the same format, with Dr. Ben Song literally following in Sam Beckett’s footsteps. Quantum Leap episode 1 left Ben similarly stranded in time, leaping from body to body, working to correct crises in their lives.
Any model of Quantum Leap‘s temporal mechanics must begin with the recognition there is a pattern to the time travel. The cliffhanger ending of the original Quantum Leap saw Dr. Beckett encounter a mysterious being who had directed his travels, heavily implied to be God. In contrast, the first episode of the Quantum Leap relaunch hinted the leaps had been initiated by an algorithm running when Beckett’s adventures began, and Ben ran a similar (but flawed) algorithm. This explanation seems rather unlikely, given Sam Beckett was lost in time at the end of his show, presumably continuing his misadventures even after the Quantum Leap project had been mothballed, and the algorithm would have stopped running.
How Quantum Leap’s Time Travel Works
Quantum Leap is a cult science-fiction TV show, but the show never really explicitly explained how its time travel worked – leading to different portrayals in individual episodes, and heated debates in the fandom when novels and novelizations committed the show to more precise models. The main characters of Quantum Leap have generally seemed to be leaping from body to body, their consciousnesses projected through time rather than their physical forms. In the books, the minds of Sam Beckett’s “host” bodies leaped into his own, and his team interviewed them for clues to where and when Sam was this time.
The first episode of NBC’s Quantum Leap relaunch appears to switch things up a little, however, with a B-plot at the Quantum Leap project that hints at another approach to the series’ time travel. Here, it currently looks as though Dr. Song’s body has leaped through time as well as his mind, somehow merging with the host body. There’s no evidence Ben’s body is still back at the Quantum Leap project, and the team certainly wasn’t able to interview the host – otherwise they’d have learned he was an undercover cop investigating the potential theft of the Hope Diamond. Presumably the explanation is believed to lie in some variation of quantum entanglement, but hopefully Quantum Leap will explain more as the show continues.
Episodes of Quantum Leap release on NBC on Mondays at 10.00 PM ET.
