‘Quantum Leap’: A Forward Move for NBC

Imagine it: A male time traveler who each week occupies a different body, surfacing as a blind concert pianist or a rabbi or a woman or an understudy to the lead in “The Man of La Mancha.�

Talk about reaching for the unreachable star.

That is exactly what Sam Beckett does each week on “Quantum Leap,� the NBC hour (10 p.m. Wednesdays on Channels 4, 36 and 39) that ranks among the boldest, freshest and most-entertaining dramatic series on TV. Bravo to NBC for having the vision and good taste to renew it (despite border-line ratings) for the entire season.

Given the mine fields of TV and its production deadlines, delivering any drama of intelligence is a quantum leap for prime time. To do so on a weekly basis as this series does, however, is truly spectacular.

Created by executive producer Don Bellisario, “Quantum Leap� is hardly TV’s first venture into the intriguing realm of time fantasy. “The Twilight Zone� sometimes employed the time-travel device, and characters in such series as “The Time Tunnel� and “Voyagers� dived back into history and tried to rearrange it for the better.

Yet no series has done the job more creatively than “Quantum Leap,� whose hero, played by Scott Bakula (rhymes with Dracula) is a young scientist trapped in time as a result of a fouled-up experiment. In a constant state of turmoil and bafflement, he boomerangs through time from the mid 1950s to the 1970s, temporarily becoming people he doesn’t know with the aim of using their identities to avert terrible wrongs.

He is, as Sam himself notes, a “time-traveling Lone Ranger, with Al as my Tonto.� The “Al� is Albert. Unseen by anyone but Sam, he’s a puckish holograph, played by Dean Stockwell, who encourages and coaches Sam and gives him support at critical times. At the end of each episode, as Sam is about to be zapped to another time and identity, Al fills him in on what ultimately happens to all the people whose lives he’s now leaving.

Nostalgia is swell. Set a story in the ‘60s and you’ve hooked half of us already. The true genius of “Quantum Leap,� however, is that while everyone in each story sees Sam as the person he’s pretending to be, viewers continue to see him only in his Bakula form. That changes only when his image is reflected in a mirror as the “other person.�

Bakula walks an actor’s perilous high wire here, being Sam on the inside and outside while somehow staying in focus as a new character. It’s this delicate understatement--a sort of lower case Tom Hanks in “Big�--that gives credibility to characters easily stereotyped.

In one of last season’s episodes, Bakula, who is white, played an elderly black man who angered the rednecks when sitting at a whites-only lunch counter in pre-civil rights Alabama.

Another daring episode was this season’s “Jimmy,� finding Sam as a mentally retarded adult who, despite being able to hold a job and contribute, was cruelly ridiculed and stereotyped by his fellow dockworkers. More than anything, the hour conveyed the isolation often felt by not only by the Jimmys of the world, but also their families.

For bizarre potential, nothing topped this season’s episode which cast Sam as a gorgeous secretary who resisted rampant sexual harassment in the office where she worked. The year was 1961, and Sam’s assignment as “Samantha� was to stop another secretary from committing suicide after learning that her married former boss had been stringing her along with his promises of marriage.

Big, bulky Scott Bakula in drag, being sweet-talked by men? Cheap burlesque seemed inevitable. Once past the initial jolt the episode wasn’t even remotely bizarre, mainly because the controlled Bakula stayed true to Sam as well as Samantha by refraining from exaggerated feminine gestures.

The story nicely dramatized indignities suffered by female office workers, even though, as in other lesser “Quantum Leap� episodes, crucial plot elements lacked credibility. A woman driven to jump off a building after rejection by her boyfriend? She abruptly changes her mind after some soothing words by a friend? Then onward to happy ending? Not likely.

If ever story and execution did fit perfectly for “Quantum Leap� it was the recent episode where Sam suddenly found himself understudying the role of Don Quixote in a road production of “The Man of La Mancha.� Tony winner John Collum played the lead actor.

Written by Paul Brown, what a sweet piece it was, with Sam returning to 1979 to become an actor named Ray Hutton, only to run into the woman (Michelle Pawk) he had a crush on when she was his piano teacher. It turned out she was the new Dulcinea in “The Man of La Mancha� and an old flame of Ray’s.

Their meeting refired Sam’s old feelings, and realities overlapped achingly. It was as Sam that he loved his old piano teacher. But it was Ray whom she loved.

Then on came the music, with Sam (Bakula won a Tony nomination for his work in “Romance, Romance�) finally getting his chance to sing “Dulcinea� opposite his Dulcinea.

“Quantum Leap� does have flaws, another of them being predictability. You don’t know who or where Sam will be each week, but you do know he’ll somehow save the day for everyone. Allowing him to occasionally fail would make him even more interesting, just as forcing him to abandon his beloved Dulcinea made him somehow more real.

The “Quantum Leap� on the air will do nicely, however, as it persists in redefining an old form and striking out in exciting new directions. “The Man of La Mancha� indeed. Here’s a standing ovation for a show that dares to dream the impossible dream.