Quantum Leap – The Leap Home [3.1]

Sam leaps into himself as a 16 year old, just before Thanksgiving.  Al tells him he is there to win a a big high school basketball game which will change the lives of several of the participants, but Sam is determined to use the time to improve the lives of his family:  helping his sister avoid a disastrous elopement, saving his father from an eventual heart attack, and eventually helping his brother not to die in the Vietnam war.  In the end, Sam wins the game but fails to change his family’s fate, but God or time or fate may give him another chance…

Written by Donald P. Bellisario. Directed by Joe Napolitano

Previous Episode: M.I.A. • Next Episode:  The Leap Home, Part 2

Quantum Leap – Genesis [1.1]

A scientist named Sam Beckett engages with his time travel experiment before its fully ready and ends up traveling into the lives of other people at different points throughout his own lifetime.  The first person he “becomes” is an air force captain named Tom Stratton in 1956.  With the help of his friend and contact, Al, who appears to him as a hologram that only he can see, Sam realizes that he cannot stop being Captain Stratton until he fixes something that went wrong, which in this case turns out to be successfully breaking a flight speed record and surviving, and preventing Stratton’s wife from being born prematurely and dying.  Sam then leaps into a struggling baseball player and prevents him and his team from finishing in last place.  Before he leaps, he is able to remember enough to speak to his father on the phone, who died over 20 years earlier.