Quantum Leap — a reboot/sequel of the 1990s sci-fi series about a scientist trapped in time, temporarily “leaping” into other people and helping them solve problems along the way — has been a success for NBC, so much so that the network extended its order for the show’s first season.
Now that the first eight episodes have aired, including last Sunday’s fall finale, the show goes on hiatus until January 2, returning with 10 more episodes following the decade-hopping adventures of Dr. Ben Song (Raymond Lee), his fiancée/hologram companion Addison (Caitlin Bassett), and the rest of the team overseeing the top-secret, government-funded Quantum Leap project: leader Magic (Ernie Hudson), security chief Jenn (Nanrisa Lee), and AI whiz Ian (Mason Alexander Park). The original Quantum Leap has long been a cult favourite, thanks in no small part to stars Scott Bakula (as time-traveller Dr. Sam Beckett) and Dean Stockwell (as his zany hologram pal Al), as well as the wildly diverse settings Sam found himself in from episode to episode.
So how does the new, slicker, 21st century Quantum Leap stack up? With a plot that digs into not just Ben’s leaps, but also the high-stakes intrigue swirling around Quantum Leap HQ, it’s more sprawling and episodic. Though its attempts at emotional depth sometimes come up a little short, it’s consistently entertaining, offering a blend of silly escapades and perilous scenarios that Ben and company have to scramble their way through. With plenty of time to catch up before Quantum Leap returns, why should you watch? Here are 10 reasons it’ll lure you in, with very minimal plot spoilers, but just in case you want to go in totally unspoiled…
Ben
There’s no replacing Scott Bakula, but Raymond Lee’s Ben is still an appealing lead: he’s a scientific genius, has a photographic memory, is fluent in multiple languages, and somehow also has an everyman quality that makes him easy to root for. His ability to be immediately empathetic is probably his greatest skill, and is also what allows him to adapt so quickly into life-or-death situations that have forced him into being an undercover cop, an astronaut, a boxer, a bounty hunter (a female bounty hunter, to be specific, in Ben’s first and so far only gender-swapped leap), an ageing Wild West gunslinger, an earthquake survivor, a priest tasked with performing an exorcism, and a runaway teen.
Dr. Ben Song
He’s the same character, yes, but the good-hearted “Ben” who’s been making all those leaps isn’t quite the “Dr. Ben Song” we met at the start of the first episode. That guy entered the time-travel machine before the technology was fully ready, and without telling any of his colleagues — including the one he’s engaged to. Ben has leap-induced amnesia so he couldn’t explain himself even if he wanted to, but the split in his character makes it clear this guy has layers. Maybe even some darkness?
Team Quantum Leap
The 1990s series rarely dipped back into Sam’s own timeline. The new Quantum Leap makes the home team a major part of the action, with subplots involving high-tech wizardry (usually wrangling “Ziggy,” the resident AI supercomputer), the subterfuge needed to keep Ben’s unauthorised leaping a secret from their government and military overlords, and just being co-workers who care about each other. The latter manifests in scenes where Magic, Jenn, and Ian rally to cheer up Addison — who misses Ben and is in a constant state of panic about keeping him safe, but is also furious with him for obvious reasons — but also bonding moments, like a sequence in which Magic opens up to Ian about his deeply personal reason for restarting the Quantum Leap program: while serving in the Vietnam War, he himself was a “host” for Sam, a story point that offers a nifty callback to the original series.
Ian
And while we’re praising the home team, here’s an extra shout-out to Ian, easily the coolest (and most stylish) character on the show. In addition to being the person on Quantum Leap you’d most want to work with and/or be friends with, they happen to be non-binary (as performer Mason Alexander Park also happens to be), which Quantum Leap integrates effortlessly into its scripts. Nobody in this world ever stumbles over using Ian’s pronouns, something the real world could stand to take some notes from.
The settings
You have to imagine the writers’ room for Quantum Leap is dominated by a giant whiteboard with potential leaps scrawled on it, which are then narrowed down to destinations that offer the right combination of drama, humour, and danger — plus the opportunity to inch Ben’s emotional journey forward a bit, and just enough WTF-ness to feel like a complete 180 from the previous adventure. So far my favourites have seen Ben helping the residents of a rough-and-tumble Wild West town work together (nonviolently, he’s a pacifist!) to defeat a common enemy, and — in a nod to classic Quantum Leap’s fondness for working horror themes in from time to time — a Halloween Exorcist homage that saw sceptical science guy Ben poking into the realm of demonic possession.
Janis
Equal parts intriguing (she’s the daughter of original Quantum Leap character Al, who passed away recently in the show — as actor Dean Stockwell did in real life) and menacing (she drugged her own mother to get her hands on some of Al’s vintage Quantum Leap tech!), Janis (Georgina Reilly) is one of the show’s biggest question marks at this point. Magic prevented her from joining Quantum Leap proper, so she and Ben worked together in secret, writing special code that would allow him to leap beyond his own lifespan, something even Sam Beckett could never do. Then she went into hiding, but made her chaotic presence felt by hacking her way into Ziggy — and at one point even appearing as a hologram, trying to deliver a garbled warning to Ben on one of his leaps. Where is all this going? We don’t know!
Leaper X
He has a name — Martinez (Walter Perez) — but we prefer Ian’s moniker for the mysterious other time traveller who first appears during Ben’s Wild West visit, calling him by his real name, saying he knows what he’s up to, and insisting that he stop following his travels, or else. Team Quantum Leap was just as startled as the audience at this revelation, and things only got weirder when Magic and Jenn tracked down Martinez in 2022, finding a squeaky-clean soldier who clearly hadn’t yet become Leaper X. Where is all this going? We don’t know!
Ben and Addison
At first, Ben didn’t remember Addison at all, much less that he was in love with her — though she never forgot — but his memory slowly trickled back. Of course, she’s a hologram, so physical contact is impossible. Though the show has mostly skirted it so far, it’s inevitable that Ben is going to leap into people who are already in relationships, potentially adding even more drama into what’s already been a pretty dramatic test of Ben and Addison’s affections.
The format
As we’ve established, the new Quantum Leap diverges quite a bit from the classic show. But it wisely keeps the basic format of Ben’s leaps the same as Sam’s: in order to move to the next story — and hopefully one day return home — he has to figure out who needs help, then figure out how to help them, always working against a ticking clock. Each episode ends with a brief glimpse of what he’ll be facing in the next episode, so you get a propulsive mini cliff-hanger every time.
All the intrigue to come
As you can guess, the questions we’ll be bringing with us into the rest of the season mostly involve Janis and Leaper X. But also, given that reveal at the very end of episode eight: what happens to Addison that makes Ben want to leap into the future — something the old Quantum Leap never did — to save her? (And how does he know what’s going to happen to her?) After that nosy congresswoman, who’ll be the next government heavy to tap on Magic’s door and ask what’s up with all those energy spikes coming out of the Quantum Leap lab? Will we ever see the fabled “waiting room” where people whose lives are being inhabited by Ben (and Sam before him) hang out while he’s on each mission? And — yeah, yeah, we know Scott Bakula said he wasn’t going to be on this Quantum Leap, but the character of Sam Beckett has to appear or at least have a presence somehow, right?
We’ll be wondering a while, but fortunately not too much longer: Quantum Leap returns January 2 to NBC, streaming the next day on Peacock.
Want more Gizmodo news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water.