Quantum Leap: Time Travel Fiction in a World Without a Future

Caitlin Bassett and Raymond Lee in the Quantum Leap soft reboot

I’ve heard good things about the newly-launched soft reboot of the 1980s TV series Quantum Leap. Though only the first episode has streamed at this writing, friends and reviewers who’ve watched it describe it as a worthy relaunch of the story concept, without trying to retell the exact story. Yet I can’t bring myself to watch it. The very thought of yet another soft reboot from the Hollywood dream factories just makes my skin crawl.

Fans use the term “soft reboot” to signify a story that’s technically an extension of the original, but which attempts to shoehorn new characters into the protagonists’ role. The way, for instance, Disney gradually wrote the original trinity of characters out of Star Wars in favor of younger, handsome successors. Or the way Terminator: Dark Fate slowly squeezed Sarah Connor and the T-101 in favor of a new resistance and a new, looming future terror.

According to reviews, this Quantum Leap exists in parallel to the original. It’s unclear whether any actors from the original series will appear, though Scott Bakula has given interviews from the sideline. (The only other actor to appear throughout the original series, Dean Stockwell, passed away in 2021.) The new series features entirely new characters, and apparently mentions the original characters, so it’s possible that original protagonist Sam Beckett will reappear in the unspecified future.

Thus Quantum Leap joins the ranks of previously ended shows, like Roseanne, iCarly, and The X-Files. These series had clearly delineated final episodes, and came to definitive conclusions, sometimes under poor circumstances. Sure, Quantum Leap was remembered more fondly in its absence than when it actually aired. But Roseanne languished for literally decades, its final season a subject of mockery and scorn, before somebody decided to try again.

But somehow, nostalgia won out over derision.

It’s easy to pooh-pooh these studio reboots. In an era when instant digital interconnectedness puts thousands of writers within easy reach, the studios aren’t seeking new ideas or new thinkers; they’re ransacking the vaults to retool old ideas with minimum effort. But this isn’t a new complaint. Cultural snobs disparaged the love of remakes and sequels at last back to the 1980s, when I began paying attention. This is something worse.

I don’t think the studios believe there’s a future anymore.

Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell in the original Quantum Leap

This is perhaps remarkable to say when so many reboots, hard and soft, are in the science fiction realm. We currently have four Star Trek series currently in production, the largest simultaneous output the franchise has ever seen. But the future depicted in Star Trek is the future Gene Roddenberry envisioned sixty years ago. Resurrecting characters like Captain Pike and Mister Spock isn’t visionary, it’s downright cowardly and retrogressive.

Quantum Leap takes this to new heights. Though it’s an essentially optimistic show, grounded on the idea that we can be better people if we’re given the opportunity to make better choices, it’s also necessarily based on regret. Series protagonist Dr. Ben Song wants to rewrite the past and make historic mistakes just disappear—a feeling familiar to anybody who survived middle school. On some level, he just wants to make the past go away.

In fairness, this approach possibly could help audiences deal with today’s issues. Faced with a present where old issues—racism, war, religious nationalism, and environmental devastation—are happening all over again, maybe it helps to revisit past mistakes and consider what choices we could’ve made, but didn’t. It depends on how showrunners handle the developing story. We’ll need to see whether they show imagination and courage, or retreat into low-friction storytelling and cheap fan service.

I’m not entirely averse to reboots and relaunches. Both Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica came back from the Hollywood graveyard with new approaches to addressing modern issues. When America felt adrift post-9/11, with little unifying us except a poorly defined enemy, Galactica made that mission drift appear literal onscreen. It gave Hollywood appropriate tools to dissect America’s political malaise, and our need to find an identity if we wanted to handle our modern problems competently.

But these are outliers. Most reboots, hard or soft, aren’t addressing today’s problems with today’s tools. The recent Twin Peaks third season or today’s orgiastic Star Wars smorgasbord are attempts to snuggle up in past media products like a security blanket, and avoid addressing today’s issues. Hollywood studios are essentially throwing their hands in the air and refusing to even look at the world around them. And it shows in the reheated product they’re producing.

See also: Quantum Leap, the Enlightenment, and “Laplace’s Demon”