NBC’s new tackle Quantum Leap, premiering this Monday at 10/9c, will see Ben Tune (performed by Kevin Can F**ok Himself‘s Raymond Lee) leaping via time and house whereas serving to these in want.
Although a brand new crop of characters anchor the story — aside from Herbert “Magic” Williams (Ernie Hudson), who appeared within the OG collection within the Season 3 episode “The Leap Residence, Half 2 (Vietnam)” — the present is a continuation fairly than a full reboot. For showrunner Martin Gero, the choice so as to add to the story as an alternative of redoing all the pieces was a no brainer.
“Everybody felt like the unique present was so iconic, it could be loopy to solid a brand new Sam and a brand new Al (initially performed by the late Dean Stockwell) and simply begin once more,” he tells TVLine. “We might by no means be capable to recapture the magic of these two characters, so to have the ability to do one thing completely new however in the identical house — creating as a sequel greater than a reboot — that simply made sense to your entire inventive crew.”
The present facilities round Ben, whose unexplained soar within the Quantum Leap accelerator mirrors that of his predecessor Sam Beckett (performed within the authentic collection by Scott Bakula). Sam by no means made it again dwelling, and now Ben faces an identical dilemma.
“Ben is [Sam’s] non secular successor,” Raymond Lee, who performs Ben, explains. “He will need to have seen what Sam Beckett did and the algorithm that he wrote and received actually enthusiastic about the truth that [Sam] was in a position to step into the accelerator and make a leap, and [Ben] was most likely impressed by that. And in some unspecified time in the future, he joined the venture to become involved with one thing of that nature.”
Ben’s sudden leap leaves the remainder of his crew scrambling to determine why he did it and easy methods to deliver him dwelling. That crew consists of Magic, the venture chief; Addison (Caitlin Bassett), an Military vet who seems as a hologram solely Ben can see and listen to; Ian Wright (Cowboy Bebop’s Mason Alexander Park), who runs the Synthetic Intelligence unit “Ziggy”; and Jenn Chou (Bosch’s Nanrisa Lee), who heads up digital safety.
In keeping with Lee, the NBC revival’s inclusion of an entire crew supporting Ben permits the viewers to “perceive the internal workings of how these leaps have been put collectively and [what] it takes for these leaps to occur and the sort of politics which can be at play which can be exterior of it,” which is one thing we by no means noticed within the authentic present.
One other main change was centering the collection round a romance as an alternative of a friendship, as seen within the authentic collection between Sam and his holographic co-pilot Al. Now Ben is accompanied on his leaps by his fiancée Addison, in hologram kind.
“Al and Sam, they’d an unimaginable chemistry — [a] bromance for the ages — and we’d be foolish to attempt to recreate one thing like that,” Lee notes. “Additionally, it’s a special time. Buddy comedies are nice, however why not see a romance as an alternative of a bromance? I feel it is a nice alternative to dive into totally different dynamics of what these leaps can really feel like, particularly if there’s extra at stake than only a friendship.”
Of Quantum Leap’s essential romance, Gero provides, “It’s only a actually neat twist on what’s finally the worst long-distance relationship, like actually totally different time zones in a means that I don’t assume anybody has skilled.”
