The top 10 Quantum Leap episodes. The Stephen King episode didn’t make the cut. Sorry.
Brace yourself for chimps, Elvis and God himself in the top ten episodes of Quantum Leap. Oh boy
10 the wrong stuff (Season 4, episode 7)
There’s no getting around it: Sam (Scott Bakula) jumps into a chimp, and has to save himself (Bobo), and another chimp (Cory), from testing safety helmets to death as part of the space programme. It’s a ridiculous premise, but Bakula monkeys about with enough sincerity that we buy it. His physical performance somehow treads the line between “convincing as an ape” and “not completely ridiculous” — and there’s a kind of logic in expanding the show’s empathic mission to include our nearest species’ relatives.
9 deliver us from evil (Season 5, episode 7)
The “Evil Leaper” plot quickly became ridiculous, but the raw hunger for connection that Sam displays as he first meets another leaper here gave the whole concept enough weight to work initially. In all his vast, endless loneliness there is someone in the same boat — which makes her betrayal (faking an assault) so much more shocking. Alas for the forces of evil, Sam’s shining goodness overwhelms his counterpart and her mission falters. Suck it, Satan.
8 good morning, Peoria (Season 2, episode 6)
Sam leaps into radio DJ Howlin’ Chick Howell and crusades for free speech in a 1955 town that tries to ban rock ’n’ roll: think Footloose without the ’80s hair. Bakula’s stage background allowed the show lots of musical flourishes (he even leapt into Elvis at one point) but this birth of rock ’n’ roll episode is huge fun. Just one thing: we’re not convinced that Sam “Marty Mcfly” Beckett really taught Chubby Checker (playing himself 30 years on) how to dance.
7 the leap back (Season 4, episode 1)
After being struck by lightning, Sam and his holographic guide Al (Dean Stockwell) switch bodies, allowing Sam to finally go home. We meet his wife, Donna (Mimi Kuzyk), who has been waiting for him in a hopeless vigil. Of course, danger threatens Al, and Sam must resume leaping in order to save his one true friend. He doesn’t remember Donna once he leaps again — a small mercy for his sanity — but the audience does and it kills us.
6 the color of truth (Season 1, episode 7)
Sam awakes as a black chauffeur in 1955 Alabama, which could have been another white saviour mess. But instead the drama stems from Sam’s refusal to recognise the danger a black man faces in the segregated South. For all his speeches about change, it’s the warier Al who accomplishes the mission of saving a former governor’s wife from a car crash. It’s an early example of the show’s capacity for walking a mile in someone else’s shoes to, generally, good effect.
5 raped (Season 4, episode 6)
This is a tougher story than many as Sam jumps into the body of a rape victim and must carry her fight for justice to the courts. Katie (Cheryl Pollak) is brought into Al’s holographic chamber so that she can give her evidence to Sam first-hand: Al supports her as the camera gradually shifts from Sam to the leapee. The rapist escapes justice, but Sam’s presence allows Katie a final moment of closure, and her attacker a righteous punch in the teeth.
4 JIMMY (Season 2, episode 8)
In the body of a man with Down’s Syndrome, Sam’s mission — in the less enlightened times of 1964 — is to help him keep his job on the docks, amid constant bullying, and avoid lifelong institutionalisation. Sam’s frustration at his predicament is instructive: even when he knows what to do, no-one listens to Jimmy. It brings home to the physics genius the reality of life for someone without his mental gifts, and proves key to his developing empathy.
3 The Leap home, parts I And II (Season 3, episodes 1 and 2)
In the body of his 16-year-old self, Sam tries to save his family from everything the world has in store. It’s a moving concept — what would you go back and change, if you could? — given heartfelt intimacy by Bakula and the cast. Leaping may not be able to save everyone, but at least in the second episode he is allowed to rescue his brother from death in Vietnam, a small moment of personal victory amid his selfless quest.
2 M.I.A. (Season 2, episode 22)
With his Swiss-cheese memory, Sam relies heavily on Al. But here, Al goes off mission. When Sam leaps into a San Diego detective, Al swears it’s so they can ensure that a woman named Beth doesn’t remarry while her husband is missing in action in Vietnam. It turns out that Al was the missing husband and Beth the love of his life, and now his (understandable) selfishness threatens the righting of wrongs. Still, there’s tragedy in Al’s desperation, and his loss gives depth to his now rather tiresome leering.
1 Mirror IMAGE (Season 5, episode 22)
After years facing mirror images that were not his own, Sam Beckett is shocked to see his own face in Al’s Place, Cokeburg, PA (named for creator and episode screenwriter Donald P. Bellisario’s dad’s bar and hometown). The owner (Bruce Mcgill) might literally be God, and he gives Sam a choice: return home, or right wrongs forever. Some found it overly mystical, but what else apart from the Almighty could explain Sam’s by-now highly unscientific adventures? The emotional hit — he never goes home — is as devastating an ending as TV has ever seen. helen o’hara
all five Seasons of quantum leap are available on itunes