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Fandom Overview: Quantum Leap
Quantum Leap was a science fiction tv series that ran from 1989 to 1993, or roughly five seasons (I say roughly because the first season was very short and the fifth season was very strange). It followed the adventures of Doctor Samuel Beckett (no relation) as he travelled through time, and his best friend Admiral Albert Calavicci who could communicate from the future in the form of a hologram. Together they solved crime, and fought evil, and were instrumental to Buddy Holly writing "Peggy Sue," for which we are all grateful.
The Premise
Like much of late '80s-early 90s SF, the show was high concept to say the least. It also waved the word "quantum" around like a red flag in front of a bull. If you try to make it make sense, you will be gored. Stay with me here, and remember that the answer to "why?" is always "because!"
In around about 1995 (the future!), Sam and Al were working on a revolutionary new time travel technology, but weren't getting there fast enough and the government/military threatened to pull their funding. To prove that it would work, Sam stepped into the quantum accelerator and leaped back into the past. This had the following consequences:
Sam is not alone in his quest, his best friend Al can appear to him from the future in form of a hologram. There was an explanation for how that worked, but I don't remember it except I think it involved them having linked brainwaves. Al cannot touch anything, even Sam (though he really, really wants to!), and can't be seen by anyone except Sam, small children and animals (and "blondes with very low IQs"). He does however have access to all the historical records and resources of the future, as well as a sentient supercomputer that he and Sam built, so he can suggest solutions and give advice, as well as play watchman and scout for danger. He communicates with the computer via a handlink that looks like it's made of glowing translucent lego, and stops working about as often as the plot needs it to.
Every episode, Sam leaped into a new time, usually at the most inconvenient moment possible, figured out the problem, chased dead ends for a while, fixed the problem, and leaped into the start of the next episode. It was also never a show that met an anvilicious social message that it didn't want to pass on. The tone ranged from crack comedy, to sappy, to genuinely moving, to deeply pedantic, and for all that it always seemed to have a good heart.
Important Characters
Dr Samuel Beckett – "Sometimes I wish I could go home, but... I can't. Then all I have is what I remember, which isn't a whole hell of a lot."
Sam grew up in Elk Ridge Indiana, to a farming family. He had an older brother who died in Vietnam, and a younger sister who had two marriages the first of which was abusive. His father died of a heart condition while he was away at college, and there's angst about all those things, but for the most part he seemed like a generally well-balanced and extremely nerdy kid. Fast forward to the start of the project and he has an improbable number of Doctorates, one in actual medicine, a Nobel Prize, and speaks something like eleven languages. Time called him the "Next Einstein." He also knows at least four martial arts, can sing and dance, and appears to provide excellent hugs. Oh, and he's adorable in drag.
He's also lived in something of an intellectual bubble and has missed a lot of day to day normal people things (though some of this comes from the Swiss cheese memory mentioned above). He has a tendency to believe in people, true love, and everything happening for a reason. He is also pretty sarcastic, especially when narrating or talking to Al.
Admiral Albert Calavicci – "I have loved every woman I ever slept with... at the time I slept with them."
In contrast to Sam, Al has the most tragic backstory in the history of the world. Someone suggested that every week the writers pulled something out of the tragic backstory jar and assigned it to him. Anyway, he was born in the thirties, and by the time he was eighteen had a dead beat mom, and an actual dead father and sister. He mostly grew up in an orphanage, alternating with on the street. Then it got worse: He joined the navy and became a pilot, married the love of his life, got shot down over Vietnam and spent some number of years (canon varies on how many) MIA in a camp. When he finally got out and got back, he found he'd been declared dead, and his wife had married someone else in the meantime. Anyway, he did the natural thing under those circumstances and joined the space program. He actually went around the Moon. He managed to go to MIT at some point, though I'm unsure when. He also married four more times, all of which ended badly. How he looks in drag has yet to be determined, but his general sense of style is... alarming.
Al is a mildly-homophobic, cynical womaniser. His abandonment issues have abandonment issues, and he thinks Sam is impossibly naive. For all that, he actually does care about the world he lives in, was pretty involved in various Civil Rights causes back in the day, and has an Environmentalist streak a mile wide, and will rant to both effects. And if you don't think he's adorable around small children, you haven't seen the right episodes.
Ziggy
Ziggy is the sentient computer that Sam and Al built, and who is called upon to search historical records and calculate probabilities as to what Sam's there to fix. Alternately referred to by male and female pronouns (and eventually voiced by one of the female writers), Ziggy's a bit of a prima donna. He can have fits, stop working, decide not to produce information, or generally be a pain in the ass. Her meltdowns tend to happen with the Frequency of Plot. He also considers Sam his father, and randomly hits on people. (Sorry about the screen caps, there weren't a lot of publicity pics of anyone not Sam and Al).
Gushie (spelling subject to debate)
Keeps the machines running, and gets yelled at by Al to fix bugs. Referred to usually as the "little guy with bad breath," we don't know much about him. He seems to be second in command at the Program, and steps in as Observer when Al can't do it. He's also been known to date Tina.
Dr. Verbena Beeks (spelling subject to debate)
The program psychologist, who seems to spend equal time counselling Al through various freakouts (once by suggesting he had repressed homosexual tendencies), and trying to get people who suddenly find themselves in the future to not only not freak out, but to provide useful information so Sam can get the job done. Two general notes: All women in The Future will have holes in their tops, and because there wasn't a lot of printed tie in material about the minor characters, the spelling of their names varies wildly.
Tina Martinez-O'Farrell
Computer technician at the Program, and Al's sometime girlfriend, though they seem to spend as much time sleeping with other people as with each other. Has something of a bubble head persona, but presumably knows her stuff. In an alternate timeline where Al isn't on the project, Tina still is.
Beth Calavicci
Was an military nurse during the Vietnam War, though stationed in the US. Al's first wife and the love of his life, she mournfully gave him up for dead, married someone else, and vanished. In an alternate timeline, she waited for Al and they had four daughters.
Dr. Donna Elesee (spelling subject to debate)
Another physicist. Original timeline: she and Sam met on an earlier project; they fell in love; she left him at the altar, and he never got over that. Alternate timeline: they got married, and she now works at the Project, trying to get that pesky retrieval program working. Sam mostly doesn't remember she exists, which allows for a lot of romance plots that would otherwise be pretty out of character.
Important Plotlines
Picking out a few episodes that tend to get mentioned in fic a lot. Here there be spoilers!
101 - "Genesis" - Sam ends up back in time with no memory of who he is or why he's there. Al's response to the situation is to get blind drunk, then rally from there. Together they figure out how to navigate the time travelling thing and come up with the idea that Sam's there to fix something.
102 - "Star-Crossed" - Sam runs into a younger version of his future wife, and helps her deal with her abandonment issues in hopes that she won't leave him at the altar. Al is temporarily pulled from the Observer position for helping Sam mess with his own timeline (a much ignored No No), but gets back in by getting Tina to sleep with someone on the board then blackmailing him. Al's plot manages to be less skeevy than Sam's plot, to give you an idea.
109 - "Play It Again, Seymour" - Not actually an important plot, but it guest stares Claudia Christian and Willie Garson, so I'm fond. To justify this inclusion: The Project makes various failed attempts to retrieve Sam over the course of season one (which is only nine episodes long). The theme is pretty much dropped here after.
201 - "Honeymoon Express" - If Al can't prove that Sam's actually making a difference (or is in the past at all), the Project's finding will be cut, and the mechanism that allows Al to talk to Sam along with it. Al tries to get Sam to prevent the U2 spy plan from going up, figuring that a major historical change will about do it. Sam fails, but other changes get Al a more sympathetic committee.
222 - "M.I.A." - Al tries to convince Sam that he's there to keep Beth from leaving him. When Sam figures out who Beth is, and that Al's trying to alter his own timeline, he refuses, and goes off to do what he was actually there to do. Al cries a lot. Viewers accuse Sam of fairly massive hypocrisy (see episode 102, though to be fair Sam probably doesn't remember episode 102).
301 "The Leap Home, Part 1" - Sam leaps into himself as a teen and immediately tries to fix all the things that went wrong with his family (see editorial on episode 222, which to be fair, again, Sam probably doesn't remember). However, since he is unable to convince his brother not to go to Vietnam, his father to eat right and exercise or his sister not to merry the creep, he just gives up, enjoys a Thanksgiving with his family, and fixes what he was supposed to. Al might have yelled at him a bit to facilitate this.
302 "The Leap Home, Part 2" - Sam leaps into someone on his brother's SEAL team in Vietnam, the day before his brother is supposed to be killed. He his able to save his brother, but at the cost of not completing his mission and saving the POWs the team was sent after, which turns out to include Al. Boy howdy is there angst fic about that! Also Andrea Thompson is in it, and she takes her clothes off, so there is that. If you're into that kind of thing.
322 "Shock Theatre" - Sam jumps into someone undergoing electroshock therapy and starts to take on all the personalities of the people he's leaped into. To sort himself out, he needs to get shocked again, which, combine with a simultaneous leap and a thunderstorm, causes Sam and Al to change places.
401 "The Leap Back" - Sam and Al change places, with Al as the leaper, and Sam the observer. Sam is able to go home and make out with his wife (of whom he regains his memories), but when Al's life is in danger, he changes back. Sam also forgets Donna again, and she tells Al not to mention her to him.
407 "The Wrong Stuff" - Sam jumps into a chimpanzee.
412 "Running for Honor" - Sam jumps into someone in a military school which is undergoing outing, hazing and bashing of closeted gay students. We learn that Al has pretty much taken on the Navy party line regarding homophobia, though Sam yells at him a lot, and he might have changed his mind by the end.
422 "A Leap for Lisa" - Sam leaps into Al when Al was young. Unfortunately he screws up the leap and gets Al convicted of murder and erased from his timeline. Sam briefly has another observer, but he disappears and Al comes back once he fixes the timeline.
505 "Killin Time" - Sam leaps into a killer, who promptly busts out of the waiting room and runs amok until Al hunts him down and hauls him back. Gushie stands in as Observer while Al's gone, making one of the few times we see him, or the workings of the Project. The Future is by this time 1999, and it looks every bit as silly as it did when it was 1995.
507 "Deliver Us from Evil" - So season five was kind of odd? Sam runs into a team of leapers who are going back in the past and screwing things up, working counter to Sam, and generally being shitty people. Like Sam, they appear to be the people they've leaped into, up until Sam touches them whereupon he can see them as they are. There's also an Evil Observer and an Evil Project. Evil Leapers also seen in 516 (The Return of the Evil Leaper) and 517 (The Revenge of the Evil Leaper).
508-10 "Trilogy" - Sam leaps into the life of a Abigail Fuller at multiple points (childhood, youth and adulthood), and keeps saving her. They fall in love and he has a daughter by her, Sammy Jo Fuller. Al reveals that Sammy Jo has come to work on the project, and is also working on the retrieval program. Good luck to you, Sammy Jo!
520 "The Leap Between the States" - Sam leaps into the US Civil War and almost prevents his grandparents from meeting. Go Sam.
522 "Mirror Image" - Sam leaps into a super odd mining town, then finds out he's leaped into himself, and there's a bartender named "Al" who might be God. He tells Sam that he's been subconsciously controlling the leaps all this time, and then basically emotionally blackmails him into continuing to leap FOREVER; Sam cries a bit and decides that he has to keep leaping to save all the people he can (his wife is apparently chopped liver). The last thing he does in the episode is go back to the last scene in episode 222 and tell Beth that Al's alive. The title cards at the end say that Beth and Al have four daughters, and that Sam never does go home. This ending is controversial.
There's a scripted alternate ending where, after telling Beth Al's coming home, Sam leaps into the future, and Al, now having a wife and four daughters, leaps after him and ends up on a space station, which only goes to show that season six, had it happened, would have been even stranger.
Shipping
Gen: There's a fair bit of gen in this fandom, often with background canon ships like Al/Tina. It tends to take the form of episode-fic, behind the scenes/what's happening at the program fic, and smarm between Sam and Al. H/C is a thing, which fits as the show is pretty H/Ctastic. Recurring theme: Al and Sam would really like to hug but they cannot. Favourite bit of fanon: Al always has a cigar in one hand and the link in another to give him something to do with his hands, as he can't interact with Sam's world.
Sam/Al: This is probably the biggest ship, and takes three forms:
Past: Sam and Al before the show, either on their previous project (Starbright) or building Project Quantum Leap. It's mentioned that they met when Al was in the dumps and binge drinking, and Sam kind of saved him from himself, while Al used his political swing to support Sam, so that comes up. The general approach to Al's canonical homophobia in these fic is "LALALALA! Not listening!"
Present: Sam and Al during the show, which would seem unlikely as they can't touch, but they often manage to at least declare their love for one another, and Al has an excellent phone sex voice. Alternately, Sam can leap into one of Al's lovers, and have sex with him like that. Never really figured out how that worked when he jumped into a woman. DETAILS!
Future: Sam gets to go home after all. Recurring theme: Al and Sam would really like to hug and they finally can!
Al/Beth: Usually set in the AU where they're married all along, often bringing Beth into canonical events, or dealing with Al coming home from Vietnam, and resulting PTSD. However, there's a small section of Al and Beth meet as older people, often with Sam's intervention.
Al/Tina: Tends to be more background in gen, but follows the tune of they get tired of playing games and settle into a more conventional relationship. Alternately, they don't, but are fine with that.
Sam/Donna: Similar to Al/Beth, as it often centres on bringing Donna into canon events, but there's a bit of fic where Sam comes back and has to remember having a wife and so on.
Gushie/Tina: Common background pairing for Al/Someone Else, but not much past that.
Al/Donna: Comforting each other in Sam's absence. No one actually ships this except me.
Resources
It's a pretty old fandom, with basically nothing active on LJ, but the AO3 tag gets a few hits a month, and there's lots of older fic there and on ff.net.
Other Archives include: The Quantum Leap Information Kiosk, The Quantum Leap Slash Archive, and a bunch of sites that say URL NOT FOUND.
Al's Place is still running, with episode guides and a (gen) virtual season, and there's a decent wiki here
The Premise
Like much of late '80s-early 90s SF, the show was high concept to say the least. It also waved the word "quantum" around like a red flag in front of a bull. If you try to make it make sense, you will be gored. Stay with me here, and remember that the answer to "why?" is always "because!"
In around about 1995 (the future!), Sam and Al were working on a revolutionary new time travel technology, but weren't getting there fast enough and the government/military threatened to pull their funding. To prove that it would work, Sam stepped into the quantum accelerator and leaped back into the past. This had the following consequences:
- Every time Sam leaps (what the show calls travel from one time period to another), his memory gets somewhat scrambled, giving him everything from near-total amnesia to forgetting the name of an old girlfriend.
- Sam can leap anywhere within his own lifetime, so between 1953 and 1995. This is explained by characters taking a piece of string, crumpling it into a ball, and showing it to each other. This is also explained by the costume budget. (At one point Sam did leap into his great grandfather during the Civil War, but mostly people pretend that episode didn't happen (unless they're writing a crossover that's set outside the show's usual period, then they don't)).
- When he leaps, he replaces (leaps into) someone in the past. His physical body appears in their place, and that person ends up in the Project in the future.
- HOWEVER, to everyone except small children and animals Sam appears to be the person he leaped into, and the person he replaced, who's in the future for the duration, looks like Sam. Sam also sees the person he leaped into when he looks in the mirror.
- How Sam in his own body is then able to fit into all of the clothes of the person he leaped into, including bras and bathing suits, is never explained.
- Sam sometimes takes on aspects of the person he's leaped into, especially if that person has a mental illness. Why this is the case when he doesn't take on the person he's leaped into's physical attributes isn't explained. Other then they wanted to add more drama in the later seasons.
- One of the things Sam didn't get to finishing before he leaped was the retrieval program, so he doesn't have any way to get back to his own time, and he really wants to go home.
- Sam can only move from time period to time period by "making right what once went wrong," that is fixing a large or small tragedy that historically happened to the person he leaped into, or to someone near them. Once he fixes it, he'll leap to a new time period and a new person.
- Why this is the case is also never clearly explained, but the show implies that God (actual Abrahamic God) is responsible. It was the '80s, okay!
Sam is not alone in his quest, his best friend Al can appear to him from the future in form of a hologram. There was an explanation for how that worked, but I don't remember it except I think it involved them having linked brainwaves. Al cannot touch anything, even Sam (though he really, really wants to!), and can't be seen by anyone except Sam, small children and animals (and "blondes with very low IQs"). He does however have access to all the historical records and resources of the future, as well as a sentient supercomputer that he and Sam built, so he can suggest solutions and give advice, as well as play watchman and scout for danger. He communicates with the computer via a handlink that looks like it's made of glowing translucent lego, and stops working about as often as the plot needs it to.
Every episode, Sam leaped into a new time, usually at the most inconvenient moment possible, figured out the problem, chased dead ends for a while, fixed the problem, and leaped into the start of the next episode. It was also never a show that met an anvilicious social message that it didn't want to pass on. The tone ranged from crack comedy, to sappy, to genuinely moving, to deeply pedantic, and for all that it always seemed to have a good heart.
Important Characters
Dr Samuel Beckett – "Sometimes I wish I could go home, but... I can't. Then all I have is what I remember, which isn't a whole hell of a lot."
Sam grew up in Elk Ridge Indiana, to a farming family. He had an older brother who died in Vietnam, and a younger sister who had two marriages the first of which was abusive. His father died of a heart condition while he was away at college, and there's angst about all those things, but for the most part he seemed like a generally well-balanced and extremely nerdy kid. Fast forward to the start of the project and he has an improbable number of Doctorates, one in actual medicine, a Nobel Prize, and speaks something like eleven languages. Time called him the "Next Einstein." He also knows at least four martial arts, can sing and dance, and appears to provide excellent hugs. Oh, and he's adorable in drag.
He's also lived in something of an intellectual bubble and has missed a lot of day to day normal people things (though some of this comes from the Swiss cheese memory mentioned above). He has a tendency to believe in people, true love, and everything happening for a reason. He is also pretty sarcastic, especially when narrating or talking to Al.
Admiral Albert Calavicci – "I have loved every woman I ever slept with... at the time I slept with them."
In contrast to Sam, Al has the most tragic backstory in the history of the world. Someone suggested that every week the writers pulled something out of the tragic backstory jar and assigned it to him. Anyway, he was born in the thirties, and by the time he was eighteen had a dead beat mom, and an actual dead father and sister. He mostly grew up in an orphanage, alternating with on the street. Then it got worse: He joined the navy and became a pilot, married the love of his life, got shot down over Vietnam and spent some number of years (canon varies on how many) MIA in a camp. When he finally got out and got back, he found he'd been declared dead, and his wife had married someone else in the meantime. Anyway, he did the natural thing under those circumstances and joined the space program. He actually went around the Moon. He managed to go to MIT at some point, though I'm unsure when. He also married four more times, all of which ended badly. How he looks in drag has yet to be determined, but his general sense of style is... alarming.
Al is a mildly-homophobic, cynical womaniser. His abandonment issues have abandonment issues, and he thinks Sam is impossibly naive. For all that, he actually does care about the world he lives in, was pretty involved in various Civil Rights causes back in the day, and has an Environmentalist streak a mile wide, and will rant to both effects. And if you don't think he's adorable around small children, you haven't seen the right episodes.
Ziggy
Ziggy is the sentient computer that Sam and Al built, and who is called upon to search historical records and calculate probabilities as to what Sam's there to fix. Alternately referred to by male and female pronouns (and eventually voiced by one of the female writers), Ziggy's a bit of a prima donna. He can have fits, stop working, decide not to produce information, or generally be a pain in the ass. Her meltdowns tend to happen with the Frequency of Plot. He also considers Sam his father, and randomly hits on people. (Sorry about the screen caps, there weren't a lot of publicity pics of anyone not Sam and Al).
Gushie (spelling subject to debate)
Keeps the machines running, and gets yelled at by Al to fix bugs. Referred to usually as the "little guy with bad breath," we don't know much about him. He seems to be second in command at the Program, and steps in as Observer when Al can't do it. He's also been known to date Tina.
Dr. Verbena Beeks (spelling subject to debate)
The program psychologist, who seems to spend equal time counselling Al through various freakouts (once by suggesting he had repressed homosexual tendencies), and trying to get people who suddenly find themselves in the future to not only not freak out, but to provide useful information so Sam can get the job done. Two general notes: All women in The Future will have holes in their tops, and because there wasn't a lot of printed tie in material about the minor characters, the spelling of their names varies wildly.
Tina Martinez-O'Farrell
Computer technician at the Program, and Al's sometime girlfriend, though they seem to spend as much time sleeping with other people as with each other. Has something of a bubble head persona, but presumably knows her stuff. In an alternate timeline where Al isn't on the project, Tina still is.
Beth Calavicci
Was an military nurse during the Vietnam War, though stationed in the US. Al's first wife and the love of his life, she mournfully gave him up for dead, married someone else, and vanished. In an alternate timeline, she waited for Al and they had four daughters.
Dr. Donna Elesee (spelling subject to debate)
Another physicist. Original timeline: she and Sam met on an earlier project; they fell in love; she left him at the altar, and he never got over that. Alternate timeline: they got married, and she now works at the Project, trying to get that pesky retrieval program working. Sam mostly doesn't remember she exists, which allows for a lot of romance plots that would otherwise be pretty out of character.
Important Plotlines
Picking out a few episodes that tend to get mentioned in fic a lot. Here there be spoilers!
101 - "Genesis" - Sam ends up back in time with no memory of who he is or why he's there. Al's response to the situation is to get blind drunk, then rally from there. Together they figure out how to navigate the time travelling thing and come up with the idea that Sam's there to fix something.
102 - "Star-Crossed" - Sam runs into a younger version of his future wife, and helps her deal with her abandonment issues in hopes that she won't leave him at the altar. Al is temporarily pulled from the Observer position for helping Sam mess with his own timeline (a much ignored No No), but gets back in by getting Tina to sleep with someone on the board then blackmailing him. Al's plot manages to be less skeevy than Sam's plot, to give you an idea.
109 - "Play It Again, Seymour" - Not actually an important plot, but it guest stares Claudia Christian and Willie Garson, so I'm fond. To justify this inclusion: The Project makes various failed attempts to retrieve Sam over the course of season one (which is only nine episodes long). The theme is pretty much dropped here after.
201 - "Honeymoon Express" - If Al can't prove that Sam's actually making a difference (or is in the past at all), the Project's finding will be cut, and the mechanism that allows Al to talk to Sam along with it. Al tries to get Sam to prevent the U2 spy plan from going up, figuring that a major historical change will about do it. Sam fails, but other changes get Al a more sympathetic committee.
222 - "M.I.A." - Al tries to convince Sam that he's there to keep Beth from leaving him. When Sam figures out who Beth is, and that Al's trying to alter his own timeline, he refuses, and goes off to do what he was actually there to do. Al cries a lot. Viewers accuse Sam of fairly massive hypocrisy (see episode 102, though to be fair Sam probably doesn't remember episode 102).
301 "The Leap Home, Part 1" - Sam leaps into himself as a teen and immediately tries to fix all the things that went wrong with his family (see editorial on episode 222, which to be fair, again, Sam probably doesn't remember). However, since he is unable to convince his brother not to go to Vietnam, his father to eat right and exercise or his sister not to merry the creep, he just gives up, enjoys a Thanksgiving with his family, and fixes what he was supposed to. Al might have yelled at him a bit to facilitate this.
302 "The Leap Home, Part 2" - Sam leaps into someone on his brother's SEAL team in Vietnam, the day before his brother is supposed to be killed. He his able to save his brother, but at the cost of not completing his mission and saving the POWs the team was sent after, which turns out to include Al. Boy howdy is there angst fic about that! Also Andrea Thompson is in it, and she takes her clothes off, so there is that. If you're into that kind of thing.
322 "Shock Theatre" - Sam jumps into someone undergoing electroshock therapy and starts to take on all the personalities of the people he's leaped into. To sort himself out, he needs to get shocked again, which, combine with a simultaneous leap and a thunderstorm, causes Sam and Al to change places.
401 "The Leap Back" - Sam and Al change places, with Al as the leaper, and Sam the observer. Sam is able to go home and make out with his wife (of whom he regains his memories), but when Al's life is in danger, he changes back. Sam also forgets Donna again, and she tells Al not to mention her to him.
407 "The Wrong Stuff" - Sam jumps into a chimpanzee.
412 "Running for Honor" - Sam jumps into someone in a military school which is undergoing outing, hazing and bashing of closeted gay students. We learn that Al has pretty much taken on the Navy party line regarding homophobia, though Sam yells at him a lot, and he might have changed his mind by the end.
422 "A Leap for Lisa" - Sam leaps into Al when Al was young. Unfortunately he screws up the leap and gets Al convicted of murder and erased from his timeline. Sam briefly has another observer, but he disappears and Al comes back once he fixes the timeline.
505 "Killin Time" - Sam leaps into a killer, who promptly busts out of the waiting room and runs amok until Al hunts him down and hauls him back. Gushie stands in as Observer while Al's gone, making one of the few times we see him, or the workings of the Project. The Future is by this time 1999, and it looks every bit as silly as it did when it was 1995.
507 "Deliver Us from Evil" - So season five was kind of odd? Sam runs into a team of leapers who are going back in the past and screwing things up, working counter to Sam, and generally being shitty people. Like Sam, they appear to be the people they've leaped into, up until Sam touches them whereupon he can see them as they are. There's also an Evil Observer and an Evil Project. Evil Leapers also seen in 516 (The Return of the Evil Leaper) and 517 (The Revenge of the Evil Leaper).
508-10 "Trilogy" - Sam leaps into the life of a Abigail Fuller at multiple points (childhood, youth and adulthood), and keeps saving her. They fall in love and he has a daughter by her, Sammy Jo Fuller. Al reveals that Sammy Jo has come to work on the project, and is also working on the retrieval program. Good luck to you, Sammy Jo!
520 "The Leap Between the States" - Sam leaps into the US Civil War and almost prevents his grandparents from meeting. Go Sam.
522 "Mirror Image" - Sam leaps into a super odd mining town, then finds out he's leaped into himself, and there's a bartender named "Al" who might be God. He tells Sam that he's been subconsciously controlling the leaps all this time, and then basically emotionally blackmails him into continuing to leap FOREVER; Sam cries a bit and decides that he has to keep leaping to save all the people he can (his wife is apparently chopped liver). The last thing he does in the episode is go back to the last scene in episode 222 and tell Beth that Al's alive. The title cards at the end say that Beth and Al have four daughters, and that Sam never does go home. This ending is controversial.
There's a scripted alternate ending where, after telling Beth Al's coming home, Sam leaps into the future, and Al, now having a wife and four daughters, leaps after him and ends up on a space station, which only goes to show that season six, had it happened, would have been even stranger.
Shipping
Gen: There's a fair bit of gen in this fandom, often with background canon ships like Al/Tina. It tends to take the form of episode-fic, behind the scenes/what's happening at the program fic, and smarm between Sam and Al. H/C is a thing, which fits as the show is pretty H/Ctastic. Recurring theme: Al and Sam would really like to hug but they cannot. Favourite bit of fanon: Al always has a cigar in one hand and the link in another to give him something to do with his hands, as he can't interact with Sam's world.
Sam/Al: This is probably the biggest ship, and takes three forms:
Past: Sam and Al before the show, either on their previous project (Starbright) or building Project Quantum Leap. It's mentioned that they met when Al was in the dumps and binge drinking, and Sam kind of saved him from himself, while Al used his political swing to support Sam, so that comes up. The general approach to Al's canonical homophobia in these fic is "LALALALA! Not listening!"
Present: Sam and Al during the show, which would seem unlikely as they can't touch, but they often manage to at least declare their love for one another, and Al has an excellent phone sex voice. Alternately, Sam can leap into one of Al's lovers, and have sex with him like that. Never really figured out how that worked when he jumped into a woman. DETAILS!
Future: Sam gets to go home after all. Recurring theme: Al and Sam would really like to hug and they finally can!
Al/Beth: Usually set in the AU where they're married all along, often bringing Beth into canonical events, or dealing with Al coming home from Vietnam, and resulting PTSD. However, there's a small section of Al and Beth meet as older people, often with Sam's intervention.
Al/Tina: Tends to be more background in gen, but follows the tune of they get tired of playing games and settle into a more conventional relationship. Alternately, they don't, but are fine with that.
Sam/Donna: Similar to Al/Beth, as it often centres on bringing Donna into canon events, but there's a bit of fic where Sam comes back and has to remember having a wife and so on.
Gushie/Tina: Common background pairing for Al/Someone Else, but not much past that.
Al/Donna: Comforting each other in Sam's absence. No one actually ships this except me.
Resources
It's a pretty old fandom, with basically nothing active on LJ, but the AO3 tag gets a few hits a month, and there's lots of older fic there and on ff.net.
Other Archives include: The Quantum Leap Information Kiosk, The Quantum Leap Slash Archive, and a bunch of sites that say URL NOT FOUND.
Al's Place is still running, with episode guides and a (gen) virtual season, and there's a decent wiki here
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I'm glad you liked the overview, in any case.
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My recs are probably going to slant Sam/Al, because that's how I roll, but I'll try to put in some variety.
That's a great icon!
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Yes, Sam did appear to provide excellent hugs. Sam was the essential hug therapist.
Agreed about season 5. Very odd and I wasn't a fan of a lot of what they did (like the evil leapers). I think they were trying anything and everything at that point to pull in better ratings. But a couple of the episodes you mentioned from that season were terrific, like 'Killin Time' and 'Mirror Image'.
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I'll admit to not liking a lot of Mirror Image, though the stuff with Beth pleased me greatly. Sam never getting home, not so much (which, like I know a lot of people liked that ending, but my feeling is that Sam and Al need to actually hug at least once in the show, and Sam doing that insecure hugging himself thing while he's leaped into Al doesn't count).
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The thing that really bugged me about Mirror Image is Sam and Al are only together once in the entire episode and it's such a short and unsatisfying meeting (and depending on how you interpret what happened afterward, it's possibly their last meeting ever). That made me even sadder than Sam never returning home (and I think he should've returned home - he deserved to go home and then there's poor Donna who really got a short end of the stick).
As a sucker for Sam and Al hugging, or at least getting to touch one another on the shoulder or high-five or something, I definitely think Sam needed to leap home at the end and hug Al.
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Donna is the one that really bugs me. Why go to all that fuss to marry Sam off if you're just going to ditch her later? I suspect they forgot she existed.
There needs to be hugging! This month I will be reccing hugging!
I do get why people like the ending as it stood. It was an interesting way to go, and people have done fic things with it, but mostly OUCH.
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It sounds like you are going to have a lot of fun showcasing the fandom. Cheers.
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I couldn't believe it hadn't been recced here before either. Some great crossovers have showed up, but no dedicated posts. I didn't actually figure that out until I went looking for a fandom overview and there wasn't one. I'm very happy to hear that you like mine, in any case.
I am! Though now I'm looking at some stuff I'd flagged and realising that it needs more Beth and Donna.
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There will be Mirror Image fixits and Sam/Al! Also other stuff.
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Recognise Dean in this one?
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How he looks in drag has yet to be determined, but his general sense of style is... alarming.
I remember wanting a lot of Al's clothes when I was young.
I might still want some of them. But I can see where you're coming from.
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Offered for your perusal...
Hi. I was cruising by Crack Van and saw the QL tag for November, and decided to take a look. Cool! I loved QL back in the day, but don't read a lot of the fic. You did a great job with the overview, and I look forward to expanding my horizons.
I'd like to point you to a story that you may or may not have read, and may or may not want to add to your rec list; totally up to you. But I was one of those who hated the final episode, because of those last lines that said, "Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home." It broke my heart into little bitty pieces, and I considered it vastly unfair. I would have been comforted by, "Dr. Sam Beckett has not yet returned home," but TPTB couldn't give us even that sliver of hope.
Then I stumbled across this story from 2008 Yuletide: For I Would See the Sun Rise Upon the Glad New Year. Gen, 7590 words. Summary: Even "never" can be undone when you have time on your side. This story fixes that last line (after many years, and a lot of Al-angst); I found it a much more satisfying ending than what we were given.
I checked; the link is still valid. If you haven't read it, I hope you'll give it a try.
Happy reccing!
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Thanks for pointing it out!