Fun fact: In one episode, they talk about how a leap has to be completed in a certain amount of time in order to guarantee the ability to leap home. They say that the amount of time that each leap must be completed within falls by a certain percentage each time. I did the calculation once. Sam was still within the threshold even after all the many seasons. He should have leaped home.
And it would have been to the alt-timeline where Al and Ziggy were replaced by St.John and Alpha, the one which showed up when Sam previously leapt into Al and temporarily changed history.
All the pieces were there.
(If this feels familiar, I have posted this online before.)
One interesting thing about the Quantum Leap finale is that God is played by Bruce McGill (who shows up in a number of Bellisario’s shows, but ignore that for now). Which doesn’t seem particularly interesting until you realize that Bruce McGill also appeared in the Quantum Leap pilot, implying that God has been involved in the whole “Leap that went wrong” thing from the very beginning. I’ve never been entirely sure how I felt about that, but it was an interesting bit of casting, regardless.
The dude is intrinsically linked - in my mind at least - to time travel plots too. He’s in Timecop as the boss of the time agency, Quantum Leap as “Bartender Al/God(?)” and Voyager as Braxton, the rogue time-travelling captain who repeatedly breaks the temporal prime directive to get back at Janeway.
I can’t get over how Scott Bakula starred in two shows involving time travel and both had infamously bad finales.
Fun fact: In one episode, they talk about how a leap has to be completed in a certain amount of time in order to guarantee the ability to leap home. They say that the amount of time that each leap must be completed within falls by a certain percentage each time. I did the calculation once. Sam was still within the threshold even after all the many seasons. He should have leaped home.
And it would have been to the alt-timeline where Al and Ziggy were replaced by St.John and Alpha, the one which showed up when Sam previously leapt into Al and temporarily changed history.
All the pieces were there.
(If this feels familiar, I have posted this online before.)
I mean, the rules kept changing, because the big idea behind it all was that it was being consciously controlled by God. And a little by Sam.
But, really, the biggest point is that the finale wasn’t intended to be the finale. They thought they had another series, but then got cancelled.
One interesting thing about the Quantum Leap finale is that God is played by Bruce McGill (who shows up in a number of Bellisario’s shows, but ignore that for now). Which doesn’t seem particularly interesting until you realize that Bruce McGill also appeared in the Quantum Leap pilot, implying that God has been involved in the whole “Leap that went wrong” thing from the very beginning. I’ve never been entirely sure how I felt about that, but it was an interesting bit of casting, regardless.
The dude is intrinsically linked - in my mind at least - to time travel plots too. He’s in Timecop as the boss of the time agency, Quantum Leap as “Bartender Al/God(?)” and Voyager as Braxton, the rogue time-travelling captain who repeatedly breaks the temporal prime directive to get back at Janeway.