Raymond Lee, Nostalgia, and our Big Secret – Stream Our New Episode Here
Leapers!
We’re late with our blog post this week – blame Dennis. Since we recorded and dropped our episode Tuesday talking about the casting of Raymond Lee as Dr. Ben Seong, we learned later Tuesday that Ernie Hudson has been cast as Herbert “Magic” Williams. Then Wednesday, news break with the rest of the main cast.
We’re excited about all of this, but we’re particularly intrigued by the casting of Caitlin Bassett. This is will mark her television debut. She is former military. After leaving the armed forces, she studied at the Stella Adler Conservatory and was later selected for the ABC Discovers Talent Showcase.
Like we said, this week’s episode almost feels like old news, but take a listen as we talk about what we know about Raymond Lee, talk about the pros and cons of nostalgia for the old series, reveal our big “secret” (you probably already figured it out), and make some fun “fan wank” guesses.
Dennis is very excited about our new Revisited series
Hello, listeners, observers, leapers!
Welcome to Quantum Leap: Revisited with Fate’s Wide Wheel – our capsule-sized reviews of the classic series. Our mission is to rank the show on a scale of 1-10 based on five different categories – writing, directing, acting, production values, and mythology. Each category is weighted based on importance – writing, directing, and acting are each worth 25% of the average, production values are 15%, and mythology just 10%. Our original reviews sought to stimulate discussion, contextualize the episode based on when it was set, when it aired, and when our discussion took place. Of course, we also provided background information and our personal opinions of each episode. That, and a whole lot more. We’re proud of those reviews and they will continue to be available for listeners in our archive. Meanwhile, we wanted the opportunity to revisit the episodes with only our opinion of the categories above – giving listeners a compact rating of each episode of the classic series in the lead-up to the premiere of the new series in the Fall of 2022. Have our opinions changed? For the better? For worse? Will this new rubric yield results that surprise even us? Step into the accelerator and find out as Fate’s Wide Wheel revisits Quantum Leap – one leap at a time in 30 minutes or less.
We’re setting aside the start of our promised capsule reviews of the series (*ahem* classic series) to take a moment to talk about diversity.
Diversity.
We’ve heard that word come a lot on Quantum Leap forums the last few weeks as the casting call for the series was released, and that release was confirmed to be genuine. Some fans of the classic series are already saying what’s to come is “too woke”. This past week, our co-host, Sam, got into a civil debate with a fellow fan on Twitter after posting an essay on the matter.
Have a listen, and we’ll be back with our promised capsule reviews next week.
We’re back this week to discuss more of what we know about the new Quantum Leap pilot, including the recent announcement that Helen Shaver will serve as both the pilot director and Executive Producer. We also have some more inside details thanks to our source – who we are lovingly calling ‘The Observer’ – at NBC:
Details on Ziggy and the Handlink
How they’re going to address Al’s absence in light of Dean Stockwell’s passing
More hints on how the producers hope to incorporate Sam Beckett and other original characters into the new mythology
Then, of course, Sam & Dennis make with some serious “fan-wank” with some speculation with the tidbits we do have. Along the way, we talk about the Handlink as the original smart phone, the 80s/90s TV trope of sassy AI computers, and a lamentation of how it only took four years after its cancellation for Knight Rider to get a reboot attempt.