Quantum Leap Plot Hole
A Quantum Leap Plot Hole
For those of you who may not remember, there was once a compelling sci-fi anthology T.V. series called Quantum Leap. There was a recent reboot, of which I was a fan. If you disapprove of that I suggest you contact the complaints department.
Anyhow, back to the original. It was the story of a genius, Dr. Sam Beckett, traveling through time, inhabiting the bodies of other people and “driven by an unknown force to put right what once went wrong.”
No, not that one.
Sam is aided by Admiral Albert Calavicci a.k.a. Al. Al helps Sam out, appearing as a hologram tuned to Sam’s brainwaves blah blah blah. Now, Al has an interesting and often tragic backstory. There’s a lot, so I’ll just give you the bullet points
- His mother abandons the family because she can’t handle having a child with Down Syndrome, Al’s younger sister Trudy.
- When Al’s father has to go to Saudi Arabia for a job opportunity he’s forced to put Al in an orphanage and his sister in a mental institution.
- His father returns, but the family reunion is short-lived. His father develops cancer and dies, and he and his sister end up back in the orphanage and mental institution.
- When Al is old enough he tries to take custody of his sister only to find out that she died from pneumonia at 16 years old, probably because the people who ran the institution didn’t give a damn.
- Early in his career as a Naval Aviator he is accused of murder, and his girlfriend dies after clearing his name (in the original timeline).
- In 1969 he’s shot down in Vietnam and spends the next 4 years as a P.O.W. in the hands of the North Vietnamese.
- His first wife, Beth, after holding out hope for some time eventually remarries believing him to be dead. This devastates Al when he is released, and impacts his love life in the years to come.
- Al becomes an angry alcoholic and a womanizer who can’t commit, probably because…..oh, come on! See above!
Needless to say, Al’s life has had more heartbreak and tragedy than half a season of This Is Us.
Okay, maybe half an episode.
In one episode Al tries to manipulate Sam into keeping Beth from leaving him, not realizing the he was putting someone’s life in danger by sending him elsewhere. Of course, Sam’s moral compass wins out and he saves who he’s supposed to, but Beth still leaves Al. Watch this scene where Al visits Beth and tries talking to her, even though he’s 30 years in the future and a hologram.
I’m not crying. YOU’RE CRYING!
Throughout all of this there’s one small detail I’ve omitted. Al was an astronaut. Though the exact details aren’t mentioned he said that he was on Apollo 8 which happened in December 1968. So, Al Calavicci was an astronaut, who left the astronaut corps to serve in Vietnam. Just think about that for a minute. Serving in the astronaut corps is the crowning achievement for any military pilot. This is something many pilots in the military strive for and few achieve. Al achieved this, went into space, then left to serve in combat. Then he was captured, classified as Missing-In-Action, and presumed dead. This is where his past starts to not make sense.
Imagine if a former astronaut had been captured by the Vietnamese forces. What would they have done with him? Would they have kept him in some hole that wasn’t even the Hanoi Hilton?
No, not that one.
While the North Vietnamese forces weren’t exactly generous hosts, one thing you can’t say about them is that they didn’t have a hard on for using P.O.W.s for propaganda purposes. Knowing that, it stands to reason that capturing a former astronaut would have been quite the coup for them (though not quite as much of a coup as the one they launched against South Vietnam). If the Vietnamese forces had a former astronaut in captivity they would have plastered his image everywhere saying “Hey, Americans, look who we got! Na na na na! He’s not flying so high now, is he?”
Or, the universal translation.
Therefore Al’s wife would have known pretty early on that he was alive but in captivity, so she never would have given up hope and left him. So when Al was released a few years later he would have come home to his wife without the need for Sam to intervene on his behalf (*SPOILER* which he does in the final episode of the series *SPOILER). Maybe it’s just me, but the fact that none of that happened in the series is pretty difficult to believe.
Of course, this is a series about a guy travelling through time and communicating with a hologram from the future, so maybe a little more suspension of disbelief is called for. What do you think, Al?
.
