Quantum Leap

Oh Boy!

"Theorizing that one could time-travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett led an elite group of scientists into the desert, to develop a top-secret project known as Quantum Leap. Pressured to prove his theories or lose funding, Dr. Beckett prematurely stepped into the project accelerator, and vanished...

He awoke to find himself in the past, suffering from partial amnesia and facing a mirror image that was not his own.

Fortunately, contact with his own time was maintained through brain-wave transmissions with Al, the project observer, who appears in the form of a hologram, that only Dr. Beckett can see and hear. Trapped in the past, Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, putting things right that once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next Leap will be the Leap home."

The show was broadcast over ninety six episodes from March 1989 to May 1993. The plot involves the adventures of genius scientist Sam Beckett and his "hologram" sidekick as they travel through time putting right the lives of the people he leaps into.

In the near future (1995), at a highly classified U.S. government-funded research facility somewhere in the desert of New Mexico, physicist Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) is working on a grand experiment to prove his time-travel theory. Sam is working alongside Gooshie, the lead programmer of Project Quantum Leap. Gooshie also works the controls for the imaging chamber. However, the funding for the project is about to be cut. Sam's colleagues protest that they're not ready, but in a last-ditch effort to prove that his theories are correct, Sam steps into the project's "accelerator chamber" too early and vanishes.

Sam appears in the past with no memory of who he is or where he is. This side-effect this partial amnesia is called Swiss-cheesing this prevents him from remembering most of the details of his own life.

His friend from his original time, Albert "Al" Calavicci (played by Dean Stockwell), appears to him as a holographic projection from the "imaging chamber", usually only visible and audible to Sam, but also small children, animals, the mentally challenged.

Al is the project observer and a retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral.Gooshie continues to work alongside Al in Sam's original time. Along with the supercomputer named Ziggy, Al is able to help Sam "set right what once went wrong" before he leaps out into the next person.

At the start of the show, it was established that Sam could not alter events of historical significance; as a result of this, there was an unofficial rule that Sam would not leap into a famous person, and at the very most would have only loose contact with famous people. Although the series very rarely addresses specific historical events, it often uses its 'ordinary people' plots to address particular social, political, and spiritual issues. Many episodes depict Sam dealing with issues characteristic of particular periods, such as civil rights, racism, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War. The presence of Al helps in these regards, as Al was captured for most of the Vietnam War and had a sister, Trudy, who was born with Down Syndrome and died when Al was young.

At the beginning and end of every episode, Sam leaps into a new person and speaks his catch phrase "Oh Boy!"