On Sam and home

leaper1

leaper1

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Sep 1, 2002
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A random thought came to me as I was washing up earlier.
Sam and the Project and the fans all bemoan the fact that he doesn't get to go home, and to all intents and purposes, apart from 'The Leap Back' and some fanfic, he doesn't.
Now I'm no scientist, but it seems to me that he must 'pass through' between every leap, though only for an indiscernible fraction of a second.
My thinking is this...
The only time we really see it is when Dr Ruth says 'Next' and we then see the Vampire in the Waiting Room. On the surface, this would support the suggestion that Sam doesn't come back between leaps. Yet if you follow the logic of what we see, it should be Dr Ruth who ends up in the castle for the Blood Moon. In order for it to be Sam who swaps places each time, he must swap at the end of the leap, and then with the next person at the start of then new leap. The only way this can work is if he returns to the Project fleetingly.
So perhaps the flaw in the retrieval program was that they tried while he was mid-leap, rather than trying to calculate the instant between leaps when he was closest.

Like I said, I'm no scientist, and I've not explained it very well, but what do the rest of you think?
 
Like you I'm not a scientist but I think it makes perfect sense. The more I thought about it the more I thought "Leaper1 might be onto something..."
 
Well, there could be another 'waiting room' a more etherial one by GTFW.
so maybe the switches happen there and then the host is sent to the normal waiting room.

Although I do like your theory Helen :) We should talk to Gooshie about it :D
 
Well, Avilos has a point.
Sam being in a Leap and the host being in the waiting room certainly coincide. But actually, it does not imply that there is a physical 'switch'. When Sam leaps in or out there could be one force moving him into the host's position and another pulling the host into the future and vice versa. So when Sam Leaps out he would go straight either into the next Leap or the intermediate stage while the host is being put back in his old position.
 
Is there any mention in the show as to what happens when sam leaps?

Does he leap home? Or directly to another person?

I don't seem to have noticed if any mention to this has been made.

Cause that has me wandering now......

Good points everyone makes here.
 
angvav said:
Is there any mention in the show as to what happens when sam leaps?

Does he leap home? Or directly to another person?

I don't seem to have noticed if any mention to this has been made.

Cause that has me wandering now......

Good points everyone makes here.
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In Genesis, after Sam leapt from Tom Stratton to the baseballer, Al told him that while it felt instantaneous to Sam, the leap actually took a week.

So some time definitely does pass in between leaps - the question is, how much?

The only other time we see something like this is in "Dr Ruth" after Ruth leaps out of the Waiting Room and the vampire leaps in - in this case it was instantaneous... THOUGH it could have just been "sped up". My theory would be that it depends on how far apart in space and time Sam's leaps are.
 
leaper1 said:
Now I'm no scientist, but it seems to me that he must 'pass through' between every leap, though only for an indiscernible fraction of a second.

The only time we really see it is when Dr Ruth says 'Next' and we then see the Vampire in the Waiting Room. On the surface, this would support the suggestion that Sam doesn't come back between leaps. Yet if you follow the logic of what we see, it should be Dr Ruth who ends up in the castle for the Blood Moon. In order for it to be Sam who swaps places each time, he must swap at the end of the leap, and then with the next person at the start of then new leap. The only way this can work is if he returns to the Project fleetingly.
Click to expand...
Interesting theory. ;)

In the pilot, they made a big deal about leaps taking days to complete. In Dr. Ruth, it was ambiguous whether there was a passage of time between Dr. Ruth leaping out and the beginning of Blood Moon. It could have been artistic license.

When he leaps out of a person, I believe he is traveling, body-and-all, through time and space but unaware of what is going on until the next person who needs help is found.

Further expanding upon this was Sam's ability to willfully leap as himself to talk to Beth.

It is why the lack of a 6th season of Quantum Leap is so painful. There are so many things that could have been done here, and so much emotion and storyline to go into as it is now Sam's choice to keep leaping. In some storylines, the best choice could have been for Sam to leap as himself, rather than in the guise of another person.

Whenever I view "Mirror Image", I change the title card in my head to "Dr. Sam Beckett never stayed home." meaning it became his job, as his choice to keep helping people, but not without returning home from time-to-time. It is his maturation as a character and as a person that he can handle being married AND helping people.
 
Perhaps the time that Sam takes to go between limbo is random. Perhaps one leap could be a week, the next could be a day, the next could be instant. With that logic, therefore, I don't seem how Sam could return to the project because there would be nobody inside the waiting room. If Sam were to return the place of Dr. Ruth and there is a week inbetween leaps, where is Sam during this time? If he returned places with Dr. Ruth, even if he was going to leap again, he should theoretically be back in the waiting room until it is time for him to leap again.

By that logic, therefore, I would have to argue that Sam does not return to the project, but rather that, to continue with the example, Dr. Ruth would return to her former self, and Sam would go to somebody else (the Vampire) and "bump" him out of his body into the waiting room.
 
feldon30 said:
Interesting theory. ;)

Whenever I view "Mirror Image", I change the title card in my head to "Dr. Sam Beckett never stayed home." meaning it became his job, as his choice to keep helping people, but not without returning home from time-to-time. It is his maturation as a character and as a person that he can handle being married AND helping people.
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This is a wonderful way of looking at it. I like it a lot :)
 
it seems to me that he is not in the waiting room at all, and that while he is in 'limbo' he's maybe somewhere, i don't know, 'between time' or an alternate state of existence of sorts.
 
If he were in the waiting room between leaps, and as we found in Killing Time, if the leapee is not in the waiting room, leaping won't work, wouldn't they simply be able to take Sam and move him out of the project?

Or erect some kind of magnetic fields around the waiting room to block his leaping back out?
 
Hm. I wouldn't know what could keep him there. What would possibly prevent a leap? Maybe if there is a way to undo whatever happened when Sam stepped into the Accelerator because that's what started it all.
 
feldon30 said:
If he were in the waiting room between leaps, and as we found in Killing Time, if the leapee is not in the waiting room, leaping won't work, wouldn't they simply be able to take Sam and move him out of the project?

Or erect some kind of magnetic fields around the waiting room to block his leaping back out?
Click to expand...

Surely the fact that leaping won't work if the leapee isn't in the waiting room actually adds credence to my theory. In the case of the outgoing leapee, it would simply mean Sam remained trapped in that person in the past. He wouldn't bounce as far as the waiting room as there would be no 'force' to attract him there, if you get me. I'm not saying he is in the waiting room the whole time between leaps, only that he 'passes through' at the moment of the leap. The rest of the time, he's in the limbo.
 
That's possible.
What is also possible just to have another theory, assuming there has to be a switch, is that it happens at the location Sam is. There also hasn't been a Leap effect shown in the waiting room yet (or did I miss it?) Maybe the waiting room is just the only place the host can return from and perhaps there can not be a void where Sam Leaps out of. Therefore he would need the host to return to his original time and switch with him before he leaps on?
 
jassian said:
There also hasn't been a Leap effect shown in the waiting room yet (or did I miss it?)
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During the episode "Dr. Ruth", the ending shows Dr. Ruth leap out of the waiting room, and Count Bathory leap in. However, it's just like Sam, with the blue light surrounding Dr. Ruth, and then when it disappears, Count Bathory is shown. I think that was the only one, though.
 
ohboy said:
During the episode "Dr. Ruth", the ending shows Dr. Ruth leap out of the waiting room, and Count Bathory leap in. However, it's just like Sam, with the blue light surrounding Dr. Ruth, and then when it disappears, Count Bathory is shown. I think that was the only one, though.
Click to expand...

Oh wow, thanks, I totally missed that one :) yeah... it's starting to come back :D
 
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