![]() Oddly, it’s the sci-fi element that adds an extra emotional kick to the usual structure. The sci-fi part goes like this: having developed a means to travel through time (limited to the scope of his own lifetime), super-smart Dr Sam Beckett tests his device on himself and… vanishes! Sam now “leaps” into people of the past, inhabiting their bodies (unknown to observers) and working to fix whatever problems they’re facing so that he can “leap” again, hopefully back home to his own time.Īt its core, it’s the classic episodic, wandering hero structure the protagonist (Richard Kimble, the Incredible Hulk, The Lone Ranger, etc.) arrives in a new place, observes a problem, solves it thanks to his or her (usually his) particular traits and characteristics, and then moves on, now loved by all but nevertheless driven for one reason or another to wander on alone. Those questions remained abstract, rooted in speculation and uncertainty and, ultimately, they had no choice but to simply get back to business, facing the real, earthy, often mundane matters before them.ĭespite its idiosyncratic sci-fi concept, the guiding narrative in Quantum Leap was purely traditional for episodic television. Heroes Sam (Scott Bakula) and Al (Dean Stockwell) might question things like the justice and order that seemed to be guiding them, but answers were never forthcoming or really particularly relevant. Despite the potential for cosmic navel-gazing in its sci-fi concept, the show operated at its best on the intimately personal level.īefore it devolved into celebrity stories (Elvis, Marilyn Monroe) and perpetually-popular points in history (the Civil War, the JFK assassination), the stories could be intimate and personal to the point of near-irrelevance culturally, let alone cosmically. Warmly-remembered series Quantum Leap (1989-1993) frequently hinted at a cosmic order behind its narrative (GFTW was the internet shorthand for the oft-invoked suggestion of “God, Fate, Time, Whatever”), but the series never really let itself get too bogged down in the “What does it all mean?” question. If the butler had turned out to be the chief villain all along, or if he’d been in “purgatory” the whole time, well, so what? The famous ending of The Prisoner might infuriate literal-minded viewers, but it also forces the viewer to start looking at the proceedings less as a series of “events” and more as a representation of abstract social ideas that culminate in a particular cultural or philosophical tension: questions rather than answers. The not very interesting “you thought it was x but it was actually y” approach has sustained all kinds of stories but, to those who see the general arbitrariness of narrative construction, evasiveness and abstraction may be the only suitable endpoint for cosmic mysteries. Of course, for some viewers, the literal, mechanical parts of a narrative linking together without too many leftover parts are all that matter. Universal “explanations” tend to be simplistic it’s actions in difficult localised circumstances that are complex. Hell, purgatory, characters trapped in an old Twilight Zone episode – but what does “what it all means” actually mean anyway? The multiple audience interpretations offered for something like Lost – all more or less entirely workable – essentially demonstrate the problem it can all mean whatever the producers decide they want it to mean. For a while (and perhaps still), “What does it all mean?” became a popular question around which to construct a drama shows like Lost (2004-2010) and The 4400 (2004-2007) piled perplexity upon perplexity in the hope that audiences would tune in each week, each year, to discover the grand design governing the mysteriously mysterious mysteries.įor some reason, this transparent narrative sleight of hand sometimes managed to keep viewers tuning in. Retro Remote isn’t here to explore the conflicts of religion and atheism (well, not much), but the same idea might be well applied to TV drama (a topic that both the devout and the atheists can presumably agree isn’t divinely inspired). “Why are we here?”, according to Richard Dawkins, is a meaningless question that “doesn’t deserve an answer” after all, the question relies on the implicit assumption that a) there is an intended purpose and b) that it can be answered in some way that won’t just lead to further presumptive questions about the purpose of that purpose. Quantum Leap, “Mirror Image – August 8, 1953”, Quantum Leap treated ordinary people’s problems as the real matters of cosmic importance. Grand “explanations” are simple, it’s actions and decisions that are complex.
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