Scott Bakula is the hero who could have been you…or you…
or your mom…or even your dog.

Quantum Leap came across my agent's desk and then to me," recalls Scott Bakula. "I liked the material so much I just said, 'Let's do it!' Since then, the worry has always been, 'Will NBC give us enough time to find an audience?' They've been great about it. They hung in there with us last year. They renewed us. We didn't jump out of the gate like crazy this year. What we've done, very slowly and gradually, is build a pretty solid audience for NBC in our Wednesday at 10:00 slot. My past experience has always been not getting support from our network. That's not a problem here."

The program calls for Bakula's character, Sam Beckett, to "leap" into other people's bodies during different eras and deal with their individual situations. He's aided, abetted and annoyed by Al (Dean Stockwell), his partner in Project: Quantum Leap, who now projects himself to Beckett via holographic imagery. The premise and the two main figures remain constants; the stories and time periods change each week.

To delve too deeply into the show would destroy the fun. Suffice it to say, scientist Beckett attempted to play with time, time found out, got mad and got even. "Once you can get beyond that and realize we're not dealing with fancy spaceships and all kinds of gadgets, Quantum Leap really becomes, in many ways, a simple show," suggests the St. Louis-born Bakula.

Beckett has leaped into a pre-civil rights black chauffeur, a regional theater understudy, a football jock and even an '80s mom. People see Beckett as the person into whom he leaps, allowing Bakula (which rhymes with Dracula) to temporarily become anyone. "I never have to be Tootsie," Bakula explains. "It's just me in the body of the mother, trying to deal with her kids, her life and whatever happens to her.

"In one episode, I play an FBI agent in the witness protection program. I leap in and am supposed to protect a woman from bad elements who are after her. It becomes a love story. I play an Indian in another episode, basically a Western. My grandfather is in a jailhouse and I break him out so he can go and die with his forefathers in the wilderness."

Quantum Leap benefits greatly from the levity the ever-wry Stockwell (STARLOG #90) instills in Al. It's evident that Bakula and Stockwell share a unique chemistry. "We really do have a good time. We are fortunate to have that," he acknowledges. "You never know in any given situation who you're going to be cast with. Dean called me this morning, in fact. He was just nominated for a Golden Globe Award for our show. That's just great to hear."

One day, Bakula hopes to write and/or direct a Leap. However, time constraints now forbid that idea. "Some day, time permitting, but right now we're too up against it every week. Pretty much, we work hand to mouth," he comments. "The episode we finished last Thursday will be on the air three weeks from today. We've eliminated boredom from television making, but it kills all of us. It's really tough on the writers and very tough on the crew. Every set is built the day before, or so it seems.

"Everyone is really scrambling all the time. It's a credit to all of them that the shows come out as well as they do and that they look as good as they do."

When Magnum, P.I. creator Don Bellisario (STARLOG #150) developed Quantum Leap, he set certain guidelines. Beckett can only travel as far back as 1953, the year of his birth, and travel only as far forward as today. And Beckett can never touch upon any landmark events. "I'm never going to appear on the knoll in Dallas during the Kennedy motorcade and change what happened that November 22. You don't know if things have been changed in time before if they're the way they are today," explains Bakula. "Somebody could have leaped into my body yesterday and made me take a right turn. If I had made a left, perhaps I would have been killed in a car accident. But I don't know that for a fact, so as far as I know, my life is the same.

"We've gotten letters from people saying, 'How dare you break the rules of time travel!' Who really knows what time travel is, anyway?

"If you really want to get into discussing the time travel and quantum physics and all those theories, you could get lost. We're not going to affect any major events people know to have happened. Again, I'm not going to appear on the knoll in Dallas. Everyone knows what happened there."

Though Leap has held its own against such stiff competition as Wiseguy and China Beach, both Bellisario and NBC still hope to reach a broader audience. The game plan calls for developing the characters further and maintaining a conservative approach to the storylines. While this effort may succeed, it's a leap of faith to assume fans won't be turned off. After all, the show's pr ogress can't be impeded for the sake of potential viewers. "We are adding a saga cell at the top of each show which, much like The Fugitive and The Incredible Hulk, is a brief capsule of what the show is about. They still feel they have some tune-in with people not knowing what our show is about," Bakula explains, "and unless people have seen the show [regularly], the network feels as if we are losing people."

The second season premiere, in fact, approximated an extended saga cell. Wisely, the episode also served double duty as a refresher for the faithful, cleverly addressing questions viewers ask about the project by having Al answer to a Senate budget committee threatening to pull the plug.

"Al was the only scientist involved. They were saying to him, 'We have no way of knowing you haven't fabricated this whole thing. Sam Beckett could be hiding on a mountain somewhere and you're taking the money and wasting it and using it for your own self-satisfaction.' Al asked if he could get Sam to change something in history over the weekend, would they then accept that he's back there. They said, 'Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure,'" Bakula begins.

Al then jumps into Sam's story and demands Sam alter the U-2 incident. Sam refuses to do so. Bellisario's Law. Finally, Al warns Sam that if he doesn't change some sort of history, doesn't let the committee know he exists, they will cut off the Quantum Leap project's funding and, Bakula notes, "I would have been stuck out there forever. Of course, we don't do it. We can't. But I was able to affect the life of the woman I was involved with in the story. In the [altered] course of history, she became the chairman of that committee hearing my case and said, 'Let's do another year of the experiment.'"

Bakula sounds quite comfortable with his show and foresees a bright future. The recent past, he says, merits praise as well. "I love the La Mancha episode because I got to sing in it. Man of La Mancha is one of my favorite musicals," says Bakula, who received a 1988 Tony Award nomination for his performance in the Broadway musical Romance, Romance. "I worked with John Cullum in that episode. I've always been a huge fan of his. So, that was great. I loved the episode where I played a black man. It had a lot to say and was well-handled. I like the first episode where I played a woman. That was special for television.

"We are at a place right now where the writers may be thinking of a story or just an idea. If they want input, they come to me or Dean and they talk to us. I helped a lot on the La Mancha show. I've done a lot of theater. Paul Brown, who wrote it, came to me and we just talked summer stock stories for a while. I have ideas for the show, certainly, but so does everybody in the world. That's kind of fun."

When it's mentioned to Bakula that he never really appears to be acting as Sam Beckett, he laughs, noting the compliment in the comment. It's true, admits the actor, that the role isn't all that much of a stretch, but, he adds, it should be noted the more relaxed an actor essaying a role is, the more convincing the performance. "There is a lot of me in Sam. Don wrote a character that attracted me to it and attracted him to me. So, I fit in many ways. Originally," Bakula says, "I think he pictured Sam to be a little bit more outrageous than I've played him to be. But Don has told me that he's very happy with how I am portraying this guy.

"They keep writing Sam in a way I really like. I like his values and I like his relationships with people around him. I'm a real people person. One of the reasons I got into this business was that I really like working with people. I can't sit at a computer all day and be fulfilled. The whole series is me getting into other people's lives and relating with the people in that person's life. I like that a lot."

Bakula frequently displayed his easy-going persona in previous TV series, among them the ill-fated Gung Ho and the equally-ignored Eisenhower & Lutz. Genre fans, however, may best remember two TV movies, actually back-door pilots, called I-Man and Infiltrator. "I-Man was a two-hour movie-of-the-week for The Disney Sunday Night Movie. I shot that in fall 1985 and it aired in 1986. I've done a few of these strange kinds of shows," jokes Bakula. "That one had me playing an indestructible man. That was the original title of it, but there was a movie in the '50s with the same title and they wouldn't buy the title, so it was shortened to I-Man. That would have been a tough one to do for a long time. It did very well, actually. It was one of Disney's highest-rated movies for that year. I think it was second to Winnie the Pooh. For what it was, it was a lot of fun. It would have been a great 8:00 show for kids.

"Infiltrator was for CBS roughly three years ago [1986]. Oddly enough, that was about a scientist who was involved in moving atoms around, much like Star Trek does in beaming people up. His project's funding was being cut off because everyone thought his experiment was a waste. As a last-ditch effort, he went into his machine and beamed himself into this woman's laboratory -- unfortunately, into the same space occupied by her multi-million dollar space probe. Their atoms mixed and I became part machine and part human. The machine part only comes out when I'm in some kind of danger, when there's some threat."

What makes producers consider Bakula a suitable genre lead?

"Why me, you mean? All of the roles have had some kind of quirky sense of humor attached to them. For some reason, I seem to fit that bill. It is actually odd if you think about it," admits Bakula. "I love doing these roles. I have to be honest. I have a lot of the little kid in me. I love to believe these things, the science-fiction aspects, can be possible some day."

The numerous genre experiences earn Bakula the FX merit badge. "I've done a lot of them," he understates. "Infiltrator was basically going to be television's RoboCop. That was really wild. That was done by the guys who did the robotics in Terminator. It was great working with them. We have wonderful people on Quantum Leap. Most of the FX concern Dean. I hadn't done a lot of blue screen before this. We do it so much now it's becoming second nature, but it's still amazing, walking through things. The biggest special effect in this series is that I'm working with a guy who is always invisible.

"Actually, the biggest effect I'm involved with in every show are the mirror shots [in which Beckett sees the reflection of the person he's inhabiting]. They can be incredibly complicated. But when they're done right, they can be spooky and eerie and just great fun. The logistics of setting them up each week, of the mind work that's involved, are a very complicated process."

Leap's FX could take a turn toward the extreme if the series progresses in future seasons. Bellisario told STARLOG he would eventually like to see Sam leap into a dog. "I would love to do stuff like that. I would love to come back as a baby in a crib," Bakula confesses. "We can do that. Their big concern this year, our first really solid year, is not to throw too much wild stuff at the audience that might be confusing. Further down the line, we can try anything."

Though personal fantasies include leaping into Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi, or leaping into the captain of the Titanic and averting the deadly disaster, a more likely future scenario may focus on a homeless person. "Sam might also go into the future to change a problem that hasn't happened yet, but whoever is running the show up there knows what's going to happen. It could get pretty intense, which is why we haven't gone there yet," admits Bakula. "Don doesn't want to throw too much out right away."

As the cliché promises, all good things must come to an end. The question of how to wrap up the dilemma of Sam Beckett interests Bakula a great deal. Possibilities abound. The most obvious would be a Fugitive-like finale in which all matters are resolved. "There are so many different ways to end the show, and Don hasn't really talked about them. The Fugitive method is certainly one way to go," concurs Bakula, "where I would eventually leap back. Knowing Don, however, that would probably be a little pat for him.

"I'm not so sure that Sam is ever supposed to go back. According to the way Don has set is up, Sam may be being used as an instrument of healing or humanity or justice, or whatever you want to call it. I think Don coined it last year, that Sam's a Lone Ranger type of guy who gets in there, works out problems, and gets out. I'm not sure, but the intention seems to be that by Sam learning, he will then get back to the present. Sam learns every week, and hopefully, the viewer learns through Sam.

"Again, it's not something Don is trying to beat people over the head with. Subliminally, Sam learns when he is a black man, when he's a woman, when he's mentally retarded. He's constantly being exposed to things. He's becoming kind of, if it's possible, used to leaping in and out of bodies. One of the things that attracted me from the beginning," continues Bakula, "is that Don thinks of great stories and he always puts a twist in them. So, very seldom am I sitting there while reading a script, saying, 'Oh, I know how this is going to end.' I've learned now that I never know how it's going to end, and that goes for the show as a whole."

Bakula hopes to parlay his growing popularity into more roles in the future, be they on stage or screen during hiatuses. Off-days find the actor at his California home with his wife and young daughter or in a city such as Boston, meeting Quantum Leap fans at a science convention. "What I want to do with my career is do good work with good people in any medium. It doesn't matter to me. I would love to do films at some point. I haven't done any yet. I've got some that I'm working on and I'm excited about them. I think it's a terrific medium and I would love to see if I could be successful in it. I love doing Quantum Leap," notes Scott Bakula, "and I would be perfectly happy if we ran five or six years."