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The Headscratchers page for Quantum Leap: Violating Bellisario's Maxim since 2009.

  • Was the pitcher in the pilot actually supposed to resemble a famous baseball player or did Al just say "You know who that kid kinda looks like?" to foreshadow the 'kisses with history' to come?
    • That kid was a young Nolan Ryan who could throw a 100 MPH fast ball. In the original history, Tim Fox hit a caught foul ball, ending the game. But ain't no way Sam can hit ANYTHING thrown by Nolan Ryan. Sam would have struck out, but the catcher dropped the ball, and a dropped third strike turns a batter into a runner.
  • Has Sam ever leapt into a person who met him while leaping, at the same time? Would he be able to see both Als? Would each Al be able to see the other? Aside from special effects budget providing the obvious answer, could each Sam see the other as himself?
    • As far as I know, Sam never leaped into another participant in one of his own leaps. The closest he came was leaping from one person directly into another person in the same place (as in "Double Identity"), but the leaps were still linear rather than crossing over.
      • In the finale, he leaps, deliberately, as himself, to tell Beth to wait for Al. Technically, the earlier version of himself from the first time he met her was still in that time period, but he wasn't in the house. In that scenario, the earlier Sam would have seen himself as himself, and the later Sam would have been able to see Al, as their brainwaves are linked.
    • I have a theory that, at one point several years after the finale, Sam leapt into his father during the events of "The Leap Home: Part 1". This is the only in-universe explanation I can think of for why John is played by Scott Bakula instead of the guy who played him in the pilot.
  • Bellisario's Maxim and all that, but... When the show first debuted, everyone assumed that Sam was taking over the body of those he leapt into. Then this was altered to Sam switching places with someone, but their "aura" surrounding Sam (and vice-versa) making him look and sound like the person he replaced. All of which is a roundabout way of asking how the hell Sam could wear clothing that was often vastly too large or small for him? Or why people who touched him couldn't spot the disparity in the way Sam's built and the way the real person should be - especially when Sam leapt into a woman.
    • The aura was also supposed to extend to touch (people thought that bits of him that they touched were closer or further way than they really were), though it could have been creatively interpreted as the aura making him shaped like the person except for things that would have harmed him (missing a leg or eyesight). In at least the first episode where he leapt into a woman's body, the clothing was visibly altered to fit him- which just makes things worse. They changed it from Grand Theft Me to an Alternate Appearance Aura just to make it easier to wrap up certain plots (The original blind pianist episode could have been handwaved/justified by Sam seeing things without having to filter it through the body, or leaving it as his mind thinking instead of Jimmy's brain, and avoiding all this in the first place).
    • Well, there is something to the physical body thing, Sam was able to recognize Alia (The Evil Leaper) when he runs into her (but oddly enough he can't see through his own aura). Of course, a hole in the physical body transferring thing has shown up a few times. One I can remember specifically was when he leaped into the chimpanzee and was able to fit in various chimp-sized devices (and couldn't swim due to the low body fat of a chimp).
      • Incorrect: Sam could swim while he was leaped into the chimp. He did so in order to save the Girl of the Week, and it got remarked on afterwards. He did still fit into the chimp-sized gear, but this is really nothing new; his host's clothes always fit him as though made for him whether he leaps into a teenager or a wrestler. It's just more noticeable when the host is a woman or a chimpanzee.
      • If Sam's body is leaping, and he winds up in a chimp meaning his body has to shrink, wouldn't that cause his body's density to go up, presumably higher than that of water, since his mass would be the same, but his volume would go down, which means that would cause him to sink—ah never mind...
      • If that's the case, then why was it that Sam could still fight really well no matter what person's body he inhabited. There were times when he was in a woman's body and he'd still be able to fight off several attackers, a feat that would not be likely to be accomplished by most men.
      • Physical strength is often all in the mind. The original body owner may have underestimated their strength. Sam, however, knows exactly what he's capable of.
      • This I thought was one of the strangest examples of the "aura." Sam, as a chimp, is fighting the bad guys using martial arts kicks. But he has much longer legs than a chimp does. What are the scientists seeing, exactly? A chimp lift its leg and some guy three feet away just fall over?
    • What bugged me about this was that it went through a few changes. Over the seasons, it wasn't consistent. First, there was no mention of the person being in the chamber back in the lab, then it was the person being in the chamber, then it even became the person looking like Sam in the chamber.
      • The waiting room was mentioned in the very first episode. However, in the first season, there was no clear statement of how leaping actually worked. Maybe Sam DID occupy the leapee's body during the leap. (This controversy also existed in the (non-canon) novel series; in some, Sam's whole body leaped; in others, he entered the leapee's body.) Also, Al is not military in season one.
      • Al is at least implied to be military in season 1. He states he was an astronaut and knows how to fly the X-2.
      • The best part about the series though is that pretty much ALL the inconsistencies can be explained by ripple effects in the time line from his leaps.
    • Going back to the "chimp" episode, the real big issue is... how could he talk with Al? It's made several times that Al is affected by the aura as much as everyone, such as when he ogles the women Sam leaps in to. Presumably the aura affects how Sam sounds as well as how he looks... so why doesn't Al just hear a chimp when Sam talks?
      • This was changed as the series went on (presumably Project Quantum Leap adjusted the way the interface between Sam and Al worked). For example, when Sam and Al switched places it wasn't immediately obvious because Al didn't look to Sam like the person he'd leapt into and Sam looking like Sam was no surprise. So by the time of the chimp episode Al would have seen Sam as Sam.
    • For what it's worth, watch the ending of "Blind Faith". As Sam leaps out at the end of the episode, his seeing eye dog reacts to the Leaping Effect, so obviously SOMETHING physical is going on.
  • A pretty minor thing, maybe a case of Fridge Logic, but in the first episode of the second season, Honeymoon Express, back in 1999 Al is in court trying to get funding for another year for project Quantum Leap, however the senator says, the only proof they had to confirm the Quantum Leaping actually happens is Al's word. But I thought: What about the person in the Waiting Room, that Sam replaced in the past? Couldn't they call him to court as a witness. Of course he would look like Sam, but simple questions ("What is your name?", "What year is it?", "What's your profession?") would suffice, especially if they repeat it a few weeks later with another "leapee", that's a complete other person... Maybe a psychologist could help to determine it's really not Sam, but someone else. Instead they don't even MENTION the persons they get in exchange for Sam, who look like Sam to everyone, even though it would contradict the claim that Al is just making it all up...
    • Other times it's suggested that the people Sam replaces (who then take his place at Project Quantum Leap) don't take on his appearance whole he takes on theirs.
    • Occam's Razor being what it is, having someone who looks and sounds just like Sam Beckett claiming to be someone from the past probably wouldn't be particularly convincing. The board would either take it as an act put on by Sam out of desperation to keep his funding, or take it to mean Sam had just snapped.
    • One wonders why Al didn't just have Sam send some sort of letter to the committee from the past to verify his presence. The age of the letter or package or whatever, along with its place of origin, could be verified with some degree of ease.
      • He actually pulls this stunt in the episode where he and Al switch places and Sam ends up stuck in the imaging chamber because the handlink went back with Al. He had Al mail a letter to Project: Quantum Leap's secret location to have them unlock the chamber. (Why such a thing wouldn't have a panic button or emergency door release is a different question altogether).
      • But it did have an emergency release. The only problem was that the release was activated by the handset and so the only way that it could possibly be a problem is if somehow the leaper and the observer switched places while the observer was in the imaging room thus getting the room into lock-down which shouldn't be possible.
  • It just bugs me that Sam never got home. Does he eventually die of old age? What happens to his "host" when that happens? Without Al, what happens to the person in the waiting room?
    • Since it's Sam's body that is leaping, he is presumably still aging (as is pretty much confirmed in the last episode). So given another forty or fifty years of leaping in his subjective time, its possible he eventually does just die of old age. Assuming he isn't killed on a leap before then.
    • I would say that if Sam died while on a leap, his dead body would leap back to the future (possibly just before his actual death) and the leapee would return to their own time unaffected.
      • "Revenge of the Evil Leaper" confirms this. Zoey is shot and killed, and the man she leaps into gets up like nothing happened right after.
      • Actually, it doesn’t. Thames (Zoey’s hologram) shouts at Lothos to leap her out because she’s dying. We have no idea if she was actually killed or not, since all of the Evil Leaper episodes were in the final season. There were several allusions in those episodes to the idea that Lothos was able to direct & control the leaps, unlike Ziggy, and therefore can send people deliberately into horrific situations over poor performances or results. If the series has continued, Zoey might’ve been back, having been brought to the future for medical care & then forcibly sent leaping again for her failures with Sam and Alia.
    • I assume that after the finale, Sam is just capable of travelling through time under his own power and has decided to do so in order to help as many people as he possibly can. Essentially, he's Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence (perhaps, given the religious overtones of the series, he's become an angel of some sort). So there's no one going to the waiting room. No one other than Sam is involved or potentially harmed by his leaps from that point forth. Perhaps he doesn't even age; he just exists outside of time, doing whatever he can to make the universe a better place.
  • OK, so I get the whole theory behind the time traveling (Sam's life a loop, the loop is balled, Sam leaps between the strings in the ball and thus back and forth in time), but where in that does it imply that he should leap into other people? Shouldn't he leap into himself every episode? I mean, yeah he did in one episode, but that was considered extraordinary.
    • I think the idea was that the time machine was supposed to operate by letting you go back to times within your own life. Instead,the machine didn't work as intended and instead sends the user back in time to a point within their own lifetime, except it's not them. So, it's supposed to work as you detailed, but the whole premise that the machine isn't working properly is why that happens.
    • That sort of thing is probably Applied Phlebotinum or because A Wizard Did It.
      • Since the premise of the series involves Sam changing the past 'for the better' and it's often implied that there's some ultimate power at work behind Sam's leaps, it seems reasonable to assume that if this is the case, then the entity behind Sam's leaps is also responsible for him being able to swap bodies with other people in the past.
  • In one episode (I believe it was called "Killing Time") Sam leaps into a man who's taken a woman and her daughter hostage. In the present, the leapee is able to get a gun and force Al to let him out of the waiting room. On their way out, they run into Gushie who nonchalantly says "Hello, Dr. Beckett." and becomes surprised when the leapee then points the gun at Gushie, who still thinks it's Sam Beckett. 1) Shouldn't Gushie know that, even though the person looks and sounds like Sam, it isn't Sam? And 2) even if he did think it was, shouldn't he be a bit more excited since it would mean Sam was back? I mean, isn't that the whole premise of the show, and the main focus of what they've been trying to do at Project Quantum Leap for the past four years?
    • That used to bug me, too, but after rewatching it recently, it dawned on me that Gushie is joking. Although Gushie is mentioned in nearly every episode, we seldom get to see him, and this is the only episode in which his character is fleshed out. Despite Al's insults, we see that Gushie is very intelligent and has a good sense of humor. He probably addresses EVERY hapless soul in the Waiting Room as "Dr. Beckett" because he doesn't yet know who they are.
    • My assumption is that since the person left the waiting room, the only reason that one would do that would be if Dr. Beckett himself had finally made it home. The leapees were not supposed to leave the room. So, when Gushie saw the leapee out of the room, he assumed it was the real Dr. Beckett.
      • The killer himself demands to know why Gushie is calling him that and Gushie nervously stammers out that it's because he looks just like him (Dr. Beckett).
    • For what it's worth, Gushie strikes this troper as an Absent-Minded Professor type. It may not have even registered to him that the leapee, looking like Dr. Beckett, was standing in front of him. He simply greeted "Dr. Beckett" and continued reporting to Al.
  • What bugs me is all of the behind the black moments that appear at the end of the episodes to leave a cliffhanger that is quickly resolves at the beginning of the next episode. This happens more than once with camera crews or stage shows where the camera crew and film crew would have been completely visible to Sam.
    • Sam is obviously disoriented after each Leaping In; it takes him a moment to take stock of his surroundings (which, to the viewer, would be the cliff-hanger).
  • I just watched the episode 'Blind Faith,' in which Sam leaps into a blind concert pianist who has to save his host's love interest, a young woman with an overbearing mother, from being strangled by a serial killer. While this is a worthy mission for Sam, there is one event in this episode that really bugs me: the woman who was strangled before his love interest was his neighbor. Seriously, we see Sam go home to his host's apartment, and he passes a sexy French blonde out walking her dogs. In one of the next scenes, the blonde is killed. Are we to assume Ziggy didn't see this one coming? All Sam would have had to do to save her was accompany her on the walk; odds are the strangler was only targeting solitary women, and even if he did attack with Sam present, he knows tae-kwon-do. What's more, his neighbor—and her death (or disappearance)—are never mentioned again.
    • It seems that it may be that Sam leaps to right specific wrongs, and apparently can't right every single wrong that's happened during his life. For example, when he leaps to Dallas in November of 1963, he can't save President Kennedy from being assassinated, but Al reveals at the end of the episode that apparently he was there to prevent Jackie Kennedy from being killed too, not to save the President. Granted, that still doesn't explain why he can't save the President or the neighbor, or why Ziggy wasn't at least aware of what happened to the neighbor.
      • That's a necessary belief to the series; or else why would Sam leap in to solve murders, rather than stop them? How bad would it have been in "Good Night, Dear Heart" if Sam would have been there to prevent the sweet girl everybody loved from being murdered, keeping her alive and preventing her would-be killer from going down that path?
      • Fridge Brilliance moment! What if the God/Time/Fate/Whatever thing has an endgame based on the ripple effect? It would explain why changes in Sam's personal past always seem to end up giving him the exact skills he needs for each leap. If that's the case then saving the neighbour or Kennedy would be counter-productive as saving them wasn't what he was sent there to do. Suddenly it's not "Set Right What Once Went Wrong" it's "Create the most desirable overall timeline". But maybe this belongs in WMG.
      • Assuming that the killer was going to kill one woman every night then saving that one woman wouldn't have made a difference. Sam didn't know who the killer was and he couldn't keep every woman out of Central Park. Even if he had been spending the entire night patrolling the area, the killer still could have gotten to someone. So what practical difference would it have made to save that one woman and have another random one die? I'm sure Sam still would have wanted to but Ziggy is not sentimental and Al only knows what Ziggy tells him. Similarly, just keeping his girlfriend out of Central Park or going with her wouldn't have stopped the killer, he only managed to do that because the guy attacked the girl when she was alone and Sam arrived in the middle of that.
  • Since PQL is based around Al and Sam's brainwaves, I always assumed Al saw Sam as himself. However, in the episode where Sam leaps into Samantha the sexually-harassed secretary, the running gag is that Al sees Sam as Samantha and finds him/her attractive. So does Al always see Sam as the person he's leaped into, or was it a glitch just involving that one leap?
    • It's an inconsistency in the story. Sometimes, Al says he sees Sam. Sometimes, he says he sees the person Sam replaced. Another example of when Al sees the other person is when Sam jumps into a younger version of Al. Al says he sees himself in the chamber.
    • I don't recall any mention of Al seeing Sam as the Leapee after "What Price Gloria." Fanon is that the events of that episode caused the project to adjust Ziggy and the, uh, holoemitters so that Al would see Sam as Sam from then on.
      • Inconsistencies abound! I seem to recall in one episode Sam sees Alia leaping. He then asks Al if that's what he looks like when he leaps and Al replies "I don't know Sam, all I see is the person you've leaped into" or words to that effect. Yet in one episode Al is standing on the top of a building in a thunderstorm and starts to glow blue. He then remarks to Sam, "Look Sam, I'm leaping!". How would he know?
      • That was from the last episode, Mirror Image The exact words are: Sam: "Al, when I leap, do I turn all blue and tingle with electrical energy?" Al: "How would I know? When you leap, I go back to the Imaging Chamber."
      • The "rules" seem to change in each episode depending on what's needed to make the plot work.
      • One of the books describes it as Al seeing Sam overlaid with the faded image of the person he's leaped into.
      • Al and Zoey do see the opposite leapers whenever Sam and Alia touch, so it's not much of a stretch to think that they see their own Leapers as themselves. As far as the inconsistencies go, I think that in Al's case, he retroactively felt weird ogling his friend during the Samantha Stormer leap, and had Gushie and Ziggy fine-tune the Imaging Chamber so that he sees Sam as Sam. That even serves a double purpose in cases where Al might not know what the leapee looks like, and he would have to rely solely on his recognition of Sam.
  • What happens when Sam leaps out and the "leapees" return to their bodies? Does Al fill them in as to what happened before they leap back, is there liberal use of hand-waving which causes them to share relevant memories with Sam, or do they leap back having no idea what just happened?
    • Al usually ends up talking to the people in the chamber and he tries to calm them down. I don't think it's ever addressed how the person fits back into his/her body after Sam leaps out after solving all the problems for that person.
    • I always assumed that they remember doing what Sam did but didn't remember why they did it.
      • I think the concern Al and Sam may feel is gone when they move on to the next problem.
    • It seems like Sam's leaping would cause more problems for the person than he fixes.
      • Especially when you consider that the person not only has no recollection of having participated in some historically-significant or personally-significant event and add in the fact that the person also has a story about being in a chamber for a period of time while someone else occupied his or her body. I think this would put the person in the same category as all the people who claim to have been abducted by aliens and suffered an anal probe.
      • We have seen how a leapee reacts to being returned in "Double Identity": they don't seem to remember anything, or that any time had passed at all.
      • We also see Oswald leap back into the Schoolbook Depository in "Lee Harvey Oswald" after having been absent from November 1963 for a while, and he continues with the assassination without any signs of amnesia or hesitation. Granted, the particulars of that leap were already pretty screwy with the neuron and meson misalignment between Sam and Oswald, but since Sam says that he retains a small portion of each leapee, it's not too much of a stretch to think that the individual's mind realigns itself with memories of what Sam did.
      • Personally I always worked on the premise that it was similar to what we saw in the episode "Shock Theatre" with the personalities that emerged. Take Jesse, for example. He remembered doing everything Sam did, including sitting down at the lunch counter (something he wouldn't have done but he justified to himself why he did it) and giving the correct details of a medical procedure (something he couldn't do) but couldn't understand how he did it considering that he couldn't read. I expect that when Sam leaps out of someone, they have the full memories of what Sam did and so there's no confusion or lost time but they may feel confused if they ever think back over their actions.
    • Season 4, "Raped". As psychologically satisfying as it was to see Sam kick the shit out of Kevin, couldn't Kevin just later squeal that Katie hunted him down and beat him up in revenge? They'd believe him again, too.
      • Considering Kevin went to her house to "teach her a lesson?" His believability isn't very high.
      • OK, so he says she invited him over to apologise, then kicked the crap out of him.
      • He's also not the sort to openly admit that he got the ever-loving shit beaten out of him by a woman, especially once that he already overpowered.
      • Kevin had gone over to try to rape her again. It's likely that this time, there would be enough evidence to finally put him away, since it was witnessed by the leapee's parents.
      • Leaving aside the fact that a misogynist like Kevin wouldn't be likely to be in too much of a hurry to claim that a woman beat him up in any era, much less 1980, he's already been accused of raping her once. Once, okay, he can get away with it, but twice? Even in America in the early 1980s — not exactly a feminist utopia — it was possible to convict a man of rape, he has no reason to be there which isn't at least a little shady, and there are only a certain amount of times that you can be involved in rather suspicious goings-on with the exact same person before people start to get a bit suspicious. Especially if you're coming up with some cock-and-bull story about how you only went over there because she wanted to apologise but instead she beat you up for absolutely no reason whatsoever, honestly guys, no reason at all.
      • Also, Kevin has apparently just been falsely accused of rape by this woman, and yet he still trusts her sufficiently to go into her house all by himself with no more than her word that she wants to apologise to him? He willingly agrees to a meeting where it's just the two of them instead of, say, going there with a friend or arranging to meet her in a public spot with witnesses? He doesn't just her to fuck off and decides not to have anything at all to do with the woman who supposedly tried to ruin his life? Not exactly plausible. Not the sorts of things an innocent man falsely accused with no hidden agenda would do. Either he's a moron, or he had some ulterior motive for going there which might make his previous denials about raping this woman more than a little unconvincing.
  • In the pilot episode (which happens to be about a pilot), why didn't anyone on the Air Force base notice or say anything about the 80's model car driving near the flight line in 1953? This car goes by in the background as Sam and Al talk prior to Sam's flight of the X-2.
    • When you say "Why didn't anyone on the Air Force base notice or say anything," I presume you're also referring to the camera operator, the director, and most of the crew, in addition to the characters in the show.
    • Yes, anyone - production assistants, actors, directors, and anyone else who might have noticed that an 80's model car was in the shot in what's supposed to be 1953.
    • Depending on how far in the background it is, they legit might have not noticed it until it was too late; as someone who's dabbled in a little photography / filming in the past, it's easy to overlook details that pop up in the background if you're focusing on action in the foreground, as people filming a TV show likely would be. This sort of thing happens all the time in TV and film, particularly on location shoots in public and semi-public places which can't be blocked off that easily.
    • Furthermore, this one would also likely be less easy to spot with late '80s/early '90s cameras, video tapes and televisions, which were much more low-def in image quality. It's likely this genuinely wasn't noticed until the show began being upscaled into higher definition
    • In short, this one's clearly just a production error that we're supposed to politely pretend didn't happen, not a plot hole.
  • Why does Sam always leap into the person's body at inopportune times? How come he never leaps into a body while they're sleeping (which he should really have a 1 in 3 chance of doing)?
    • A good teaser.
    • Sam actually does leap into somebody whilst they're asleep. If I remember correctly, he's dreaming about Deep Space Nine's Terry Farrell naked on the beach, which shocked the hell out of me at the time because it used to be shown at 6pm in the UK.
    • His very first leap was into someone who was sleeping.
  • In "The Leap Home, Part II", it shows Sam mowing down a bunch of Viet-Cong with a machine gun. I mean, I know he leaped into the middle of a war, and that the Viet-Cong wouldn't have hesitated to kill him, but it still seems a bit un-Sam like. At least he could have shown some remorse or something later.
    • When Sam leaps, parts of his personality sometimes switch with the leapee. This is a plot point in a bunch of episodes, and remembering that clears up a lot of these character inconsistentcy problems.
      • Sam doesn't have time to get remorseful immediately because he still needs to save Tom and then they still need to escape. But the next time we see him he's drunk and clearly quite upset. Sure, he's only talking about the reporter's death but that doesn't mean that he wasn't also upset that he killed yet more people and he just realized that that would be less understandable than being sad about the civilian he brought along.
  • In one episode, Al wants Sam to change a big part of history in order to keep the project funded. His belief is: if the history books change, that will be proof the project is working. The problem with that is: everyone but he and Sam will believe the changed history books, having no memory of the event that did not happen. 'No, really, committee, I swear, in so-and-so, this big thing happened, but Sam changed it. You can look up the rec- Oh.' And Al not seeing the Fridge Logic would be fine, but not one member of the committee or Sam himself sees it, either.
    • Agreed. Besides all the above, if they needed to prove the project was working, wouldn't it have been simpler and less risky to invite a member of the committee to enter the imaging chamber?
      • It's possible that only Al (and Sam) can actually use the Imaging Chamber since the project is based around their brainwaves. In one episode when Sam goes crazy, they have the project's psychologist enter the chamber to help. Sam can't hear her talk, and it's unclear (but it's implied) that the psychologist cannot actually see or hear anything Al can, as it looks like he's directing her where to look. (And don't think about when other people use the chamber).
      • However, the leapee from "Raped" is a notable exception. Sam couldn't possibly testify at the trial against the rapist, since he wasn't actually there, so he testifies as a proxy—Al brings the leapee into the Imaging Chamber and mentions to Sam that they really had to amp up the chamber's broadcasting power so the victim could hear the cross-examination and accurately answer the questions.
      • In "Star Crossed", there are actually two people sent by the committee to monitor Al, as he's given Sam too much information already, but they at least can't hear Sam and he can't see or hear them. It's probable they can't see him as the Imaging Chamber is calibrated for Al's brainwaves to communicate with Sam's.
  • Even allowing for his being able to leap only during his own lifetime (we won't bring up the "Oh look, he has the same DNA structure as his great-grandfather" get-out clause to get him into the Civil War in "The Leap Between The States"), how can "The Color Of Truth" and the first part of "Trilogy" both kick off on August 8, 1955?
    • I see no reason to think he can't leap into the same time period twice but in two different locations. Too bad Sam didn't have the idea to drive to Red Dog to meet his past self, just to see what would happen.
  • This mostly bugged me during Bloodmoon, but why is it that no one ever notices when Sam doesn't speak with the proper dialect, or that he was speaking with an American accent? Certainly the fact that Nigel was suddenly speaking with an American accent would raise a few eyebrows?
    • Presumably Sam takes on the voice of the person he leaped into and not just the appearance to others.
  • I know that Donna made Al promise not to tell Sam about her but why, after the timeline was fixed in the second episode and Donna married him after all, does he actively encourage Sam to get it on with other women? Is he just counting on the fact that Sam's too good of a guy to go for it, even believing that he is single?
    • Because that's who Al is. Think about it. If Al suddenly did a 180 and started trying to lead Sam away from other women, Sam would start to get suspicious and ask why Al was acting strangely. The only way to ensure that Sam wouldn't catch on and start asking questions was to act completely normally, as if Donna didn't exist. It's even possible that she told Al to keep doing what he was doing, afraid that if he didn't Sam would figure out or remember that she was back in the present and refuse to do what he needed to do during certain leaps.
      • That's quite likely, since she does say to Al at the end of "The Leap Back" that it's all right, that she understands Sam has to "do what he does".
    • That said, Al gradually backs off with the lecherous suggestions over time, and he's notably startled in a couple of episodes when Sam does act more Al-like, whether it's part of the masquerade ("Permanent Wave") or not ("Temptation Eyes"), and comments on it. Sam likewise comments that Al criticises him equally whether he gets involved with women or not.
    • The timeline is constantly changing with each leap. Every leap not only changes the direct events but causes other ripple events to change. It was pointed out in one of the books, as Al is describing what it's like every time he leaves the chamber that things are different. He even notes that sometimes Sam is married and Donna is there and sometimes she isn't.
  • What was the point of Sam's leap in "How the Tess was Won"? He didn't have Doc marry Tess and it seems like, from the love letters, the guy who did marry her would have married her without him. He leaped after giving Buddy Holly the name 'Peggy Sue' but since Sam already knew the song he would have come up with it anyway. Was it really just to save the pigs? But he stuck around for days after that and only leaped after giving Holly the name of the song a litle early.
    • The episode is a Predestination Loop. Sam is fulfilling the past by giving Buddy Holly the lyrics of Peggy Sue.
  • How is it that the important things don't always cause Sam to leap? In "Double Identity" where he jumped into the mob hit-man and then the mob-assassin and ended up causing a historic blackout, Sam didn't leap back after making sure that the lovebirds lived and would get to be together. No, he leapt after making sure that an old woman won at bingo. Is that really important at all? How is that what he was meant to do?
    • Maybe it was both. Or maybe if the old woman had lost, she would have been so mad she would have had the entire room gunned down (she is connected to the mob, after all).
    • Because the "important" things aren't always the actual important things. Note how Ziggy never once says there's a 100% chance that the thing that will cause Sam to Leap is the thing he is currently preoccupied with; it's always something along the lines of "There's an 80% chance you have to do [X]" or "If you don't do [Y] there's a 76% chance that you'll be stuck here". The clear implication is that Ziggy doesn't actually know exactly what Sam has to do, all Ziggy really knows is the statistically likely course of action that Sam needs to take in order to solve the problem.
    • Note also that in these cases, it's almost always because Sam has solved the "big" problem that he is even in a position to also solve the "little" problem. In these cases, Ziggy is steering Sam to the position he needs to be in to solve the problem that will allow him to Leap.
  • In "The Americanization of Machiko", Sam doesn't realize that the sailor he jumped into was bringing his Japanese bride back as a surprise to the family and so accidentally leaves without her and abandons her in a strange town where she has to get a cop to bring her to the farm. How, exactly, does he explain why he did this in a way that doesn't have Machiko pissed at him in the next scene?
  • Why is Donna such an unpopular character? Is it the fact that, without having her daddy issues resolved, she leaves Sam at the altar before he fixes things?
    • I think it's because by retconning their relationship and creating the marriage, it brings the uncomfortable reality that, even though Sam doesn't remember the marriage, he's still a serial adulterer or near-adulterer.
  • How long was Al a POW? I know he was shot down in 1967 and it was mention on several occasions that he was repatriated in 1973. But then in the Leap Home Part 2 (in 1970) he tells Sam that it doesn't matter that he wasn't freed then because he gets repatriated in five years. As far as I can tell, Sam hadn't done anything to extend the length of Al's time as a POW even if he didn't do anything to free him earlier. Did Al mean five years from 1970 on or that from 1967 to 1973 when he was a prisoner it was closer to five years (or he was rounding down) than six years?
    • This inconsistency was addressed in one of the novels (which are not considered canon), "Pulitzer." His official repatriation date acknowledged by the government and his actual one were different, at least within the novel.
    • Given that the mission goes down differently to the original history, with the enemy ambush failing and suffering casualties, it's possible that resulted in their retreat with the POWs happening earlier and possibly to another location. From there, Al isn't found until two years later before being ultimately repatriated.
  • In "A Leap for Lisa", if Marci had consensual sex with Chip and was then killed in some sort of freak accident (if the flashback can be believed), why was her rape and murder being investigated? Couldn't doctors tell the difference between rape and non-rape in the fifties? And even if they couldn't, since everyone up to and including Marci's husband knew that she liked to sleep around, why would they automatically assume rape when they knew she slept with someone?
    • They were investigating rape because her husband made the accusation. It's weirdly progressive of them to give a known promiscuous woman the benefit of the doubt; they probably wouldn't have had she not been murdered and made the accusation herself.
  • In the original timeline in "A Leap for Lisa", no one was ever prosecuted for Marci's death because Lisa alibied Al and Riker saw a man in Al's car kill Lisa. Well, if they know that it was Al's car but not Al then why didn't anyone at least ask Al who was in his car last night? Maybe Al would have pretended not to know what they were talking about to cover for Chip but in that case Al shouldn't be so surprised to learn what Chip did. What kind of pathetic investigation were they conducting?
  • In "A Leap for Lisa", how did finding a cigar in Al's car when he didn't smoke those until Vietnam prove anything? Why would the higher-ups know what Al smoked? Why wouldn't they take into account the possibility that Al put it there afterwards to try and clear himself or think it was left there from when someone else smoked it but Al was still the killer? "There's a cigar in my car but I don't smoke so I couldn't have killed Marci" doesn't really seem like a substantial case.
    • Because finding that clue meant that Al was able to identify the killer. As long as Al had no way of knowing who really did it, he was going to lose, but knowing who killed Marci (or who was with her) was enough to get a confession out of one of his best friends.
    • Chip wasn't investigated and the case against Al wasn't dropped. Sam told Al to put Young Al into the accelerator to send him back before the murder to prevent Chip from doing the deed in the first place. (A very risky proposition at best considering that Young Al knows nothing of leaping or of the Swiss Cheese effect.)
    • And, on that point, why did it not occur to those at the Project to just put any leapee Sam has leaped into in the accelerator and leap them into whenever Sam is so they can get him back?
  • In "Raped", the trial begins seemingly either the next day, or possibly two days after the event. Katie is still pretty badly beaten when she works with Al to testify from the Imaging Chamber. No trial happens that fast.
    • When Sam-as-Katie talks the DA into bringing charges, the prosecutor explicitly says that the trial will begin "tomorrow." Not only that, but the prosecution calls the defendant to the stand! Nowhere in the US can that happen during a criminal trial. The defendant can choose to testify on their own behalf, at which point the prosecution can cross-examine, but no prosecution is allowed to call the defendant.
    • I thought it was implied some time had passed between the DA agreeing to bring charges, and the bit where they say the trial's tomorrow. It isn't one scene.
    • Some of this is simply Rule of Drama meets Artistic License – Law used to facilitate the plot. It is, after all, a science fiction time-travel adventure series, not a Law Procedural.
    • It's entirely possible, since the rapist in question is considered a local sports hero with a bright future ahead, that this was a sham trial to begin with.
  • With all the things he knows, including multiple languages, I was very surprised in "Private Dancer" that Sam didn't know sign language.
    • Some people (particularly the social ones) learn languages to let them communicate, others (particularly the introverted ones) do so they can say read a book in the original Greek. Sam's more the latter category and wouldn't have much reason to learn sign language. Alternatively, some people (particularly those with high I Qs) might pick up languages simply through overhearing them in public places which isn't practical with sign language which you'd have to go out of your way to watch people using to start to pick up.
  • In "A Leap for Lisa", when Al is replaced by Edward St. John, why doesn't Sam explain what happened to the new guy? Instead of telling him that the timeline had been changed, Sam pretends that everything is normal and he simply "lost his memory" about Edward, as if Edward were a contemporary from whom time travel needed to be hidden.
    • Perhaps Sam feared that Edward would sabotage his efforts in order to keep his job, except that seems an overly cynical reaction on Sam's part, particularly on such short notice.
      • I think it makes sense. He knows literally nothing about this guy. St. John has a working relationship with Sam but Sam doesn't know what that is. He knows Al. He wants to change the timeline in a pretty big way and he needs help to do it. He can't afford to trust this stranger who just showed up here.
  • In Pool Hall Blues (I think, it may have been another episode), why would Al, a Vietnam Veteran and former POW, consider "Hanoi Jane" Fonda a viable source of fanservice?
    • One does not necessarily need to support or approve of someone's politics to find them physically attractive.
  • If the theory around time travel is that it lets you time travel in your own lifetime, how exactly does this work from the perspective of the person Sam leaps into? If Sam leaps into an old man in the 50s or someone on death row, then they're brought to the future, haven't they travelled outside their own lifetime? I understand the idea that they may look like Sam in the future but if Sam's body travels through time (and just looks like the person), doesn't that mean the person's body has travelled through time (and just looks like Sam)?
    • If we assume that Sam is the 'active' time traveller (i.e. the one who actually stepped inside the time machine and started pinging around through different points in time) and the people that Sam leaps into are 'passive' time travellers (i.e. basically 'receptacles' for Sam to leap into, who go forward in time only for as long as Sam is occupying their bodies before returning to where and when they should be when he leaves), then presumably the whole "time travel through your own lifetime" things is from the perspective of the active time traveller, not the passive time traveller.
  • In the episode "Another Mother", Sam is looking for the leapee's teenage son, who has been abducted, although his classmates — who have spent much of the episode mocking him for being a virgin — don't know that. After Sam demands to know where he was last seen and heads off to look for him, one of them laughs, "Man, with a mother like that I'd still be a virgin too." Al overhears this, and remarks that he is still a virgin and will continue to be one for the next six years, information he apparently got from the handlink. The problem with this is that, throughout the series, the indication has been that Ziggy gets all her information from official records. So... does this mean that the United States government, since some time before 1981 (when this episode takes place), has been keeping tabs on its citizens' sex lives and recording the information for posterity? And if so, why???!!!
    • Yeah, this was one of my biggest problems with the whole series. It was just a throwaway line for laughs but really creepy to think about. Another concern is that Al mocks the kid (out of the kid's hearing, of course) for losing his virginity at the age of, what, 20? That's not unusual and probably preferable.
    • Preferable, yes, but Al was just trying to hit him where it hurts, considering the kid in question just mocked one of his "friends" for being a virgin.
    • Preferable from the perspective of a grown adult, yes. Embarrassing from the perspective of a kid who wants to lose his virginity as soon as possible.
    • There seems to be little reason why Al and Ziggy shouldn't be omniscient. Al can clearly see things happening in the past through the imaging room even if Sam would have no way of seeing it. "The Color of Truth" shows us that Al can even go places completely separate from Sam.
    • Al could just be making it up in order to get a cheap shot in at a rather snotty kid.
    • The US government isn't omnipotent, no — but whatever's powering Ziggy seems to be, and it's heavily implied at several points that the ultimate power behind Ziggy, Sam and all of this is God. Who, actually being omnipotent, probably would know when a kid managed to lose his virginity.
    • Even if Ziggy only gets information from other sources, if the son gave an interview later in life where he admitted to when he lost his virginity, Ziggy could reference that.
  • In "Quantum Leap S 1 E 05 How The Tess Was Won" at the end after Sam Did Not Get the Girl Al tells Sam to look in the mirror, and he does. He sees the real Daniel Young looking back at him. Which is normal. But Al says "you had a lot to overcome." Sam seems to non-verbally agree. But what did Sam/Daniel have to "overcome?" That he wears glasses? Also why doesn't Sam have to wear glasses in the episode even though his reflection has them? And also also, they seem to imply that Sam never looked in the mirror in that episode until then. Sure he didn't on camera but he had to shave if for no other reason.
    • The man in the mirror appears to be hispanic, or perhaps biracial. Al and Sam are noting that Dr Young probably had a lot of racial stigma to overcome.
    • Not only that, but he's noticably older than Tess. This was actually the first thing I noticed—that he looked like a middle-aged (if not outright old) man, while Tess was clearly in her 20s.
  • There seems to be this meme among many fans that Sam lost contact with the Project immediately after "Mirror Image". While Sam Beckett never returned home (subject to change), it certainly did not imply that "Mirror Image" was the last time Al saw Sam. Where did this idea come from?

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