NBC’s Time Travel Fantasy a ‘Quantum Leap’ of Faith

“I said: ‘I’m going to pitch an idea that’s going to scare the hell out of you,’ ” writer-producer Don Bellisario recalled, reminiscing about a meeting many months ago with NBC Entertainment President Brandon Tartikoff, who wanted him to create a TV series for the network.

“And then I pitched ‘Quantum Leap.’ ”

Bellisario succeeded in scaring Tartikoff--who has been burned in the past with such science-fiction series as “V,” “Something Is Out There” and “Misfits of Science”--but not enough to keep him from encouraging Bellisario to go forward with “Quantum Leap,” a fantasy series that debuts Sunday at 9 p.m. Its regular time slot will be Fridays at 9 p.m.

Describing “Quantum Leap” isn’t easy, even for those involved.

Star Dean Stockwell, an Academy Award nominee for “Married to the Mob,” compares it to the hit film “Back to the Future.” Co-star Scott Bakula, who previously had the lead in the CBS comedy “Eisenhower and Lutz,” likens it to “Heaven Can Wait,” with an element of Walter Mitty thrown in.

Bellisario quickly points out what “Quantum Leap” is not .

“People look at the press releases and say, ‘It’s another Don Bellisario action show,’ ” said the producer, whose credits include “Magnum, P.I.” “Airwolf” and the short-lived “Tales of the Gold Monkey.”

“The pilot has action, and there is adventure, but it’s not action-adventure,” Bellisario said during an interview. “I didn’t want to do another cop show, another adventure-with-helicopter-type adventure show. It’s a drama, but it really has comedy and heart.”

He also is unwilling to call the show science fiction, despite its strong fantasy element.

So what is it “Quantum Leap” exactly, anyway?

This

edy-drama-but-not-action/adventure-even-though-it-has-action-and-adventure show is set in the mid-1990s and concerns a time travel experiment that goes awry. Young scientist Sam Beckett (Bakula) becomes trapped between 1956 and the present--roughly the span of his own lifetime--and bounces from decade to decade, always finding himself in the body of someone else. He and his scientific colleague, Albert (Stockwell), try to figure out how to get Beckett back to the future.

To the viewing audience, Beckett appears as Beckett. His new face--the one everyone around him sees--is only visible in a mirror. Beckett also loses most of his memory after making the leap.

“He has a real case of jet lag, is what it amounts to,” Bellisario said.

There is another catch: Wherever Beckett goes, he must do something to correct some mistake made in the past before moving on to another time and place. He doesn’t rescue major political figures from assassination or prevent the Vietnam war, Bellisario said; Beckett’s tasks are smaller: saving someone from marrying the wrong person, winning a baseball game, or making peace with his own father, who died in 1974, on a return visit to 1956.

“All the writers come in at first and say, ‘But what about the ramifications of changing history?’ ” Bellisario said. “I say, ‘Don’t worry about that.’ Every time travel show worries about that. We don’t worry about it.”

Beckett can reappear as anyone. In the pilot, he makes his first blast to the past and turns up as a 1956 Air Force test pilot scheduled to break a speed record on an experimental rocket plane.

In upcoming episodes, Beckett will reappear as a black man in the deep South in 1956 (he does not realize who he is until he faces onlookers’ shocked reactions as he sits down at a “whites only” lunch counter and catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror) and as a woman fending off sexual advances from her boss. He also goes back 12 years to meet the young college student who in the future would leave him at the altar--and finds out why.

Then there is the time Beckett visits a time and place he likes so much he refuses to try to help anybody, because once his task is done, he has to leave.

In his original pilot, Bellisario introduced viewers to Beckett right after his first leap back in time, when he awakens to find that he is now an Air Force pilot with an 8-year-old son and a pregnant wife. The intention was to keep the audience as confused as Beckett about what’s going on for about the first half-hour.

At NBC’s request, however, Bellisario added a prologue showing Beckett making the leap, even though he liked the idea of the viewers having to feel the same sense of alienation that the memory-less Beckett does. “I’m still not sure that was the right thing to do, but I did it,” he said with a shrug.

Stockwell, for one, thinks viewers will be able to keep up with Beckett as he rockets through time.

“It’s mysterious,” he said. “I think that there’s a common psychological, or whatever you want to call it, fascination with the idea of going back into the past.”

Bakula agreed. “Every time you do something a little different, you get a little nervous about it--but to me, that’s exciting,” he said. “They’ve done series where they’ve gone back into the past, you know, like ‘Almost Grown’ and ‘The Wonder Years,’ but this is truly a different thing. Every week, you won’t know what to expect. If we can get an audience to lock into what Dean and I are doing, hopefully we can get them to go with us, wherever we go.”