SCOTT BAKULA

Who He is and why he makes hearts twitterpate: He sings, he dances, he plays piano, he can write a song, he can bring a tear to your eye, is there anything this man can't do?  I will always have a special place in my heart for Scott because he was the star of one of my all-time favourite tv shows, QUANTUM LEAP. Scott played Sam Beckett, a genius to boot and inventor. With an IQ that was probably in the ranks of Albert Einstein, Sam lead a group of scientists in project Quantum Leap. Basically they wanted to travel through time (within the time frame of Sam's own life time). When Sam and his team were pressured to produce results or lose funding, Sam rushed the test run of the experiment and due to some miscalculations, they weren't able to pull Sam back to their present (which was 1995-1999 during the shows run in the early 90s) and while waiting for the others to try to fix whatever went wrong, Sam took it upon himself to put right what once went wrong. When he would accomplish a leap (usually with a happy ending), some mystical force would make Sam leap to another life to help someone else. Whenever Sam leaped, he would leap INTO a person, and that person would be yanked into Sam's present.  Those around Sam in the past would not recognize that he was a different person because they could still see the "aura" of the person who'd leaped out (or, I THINK that's what it was, bear with me, I haven't seen it in a long time) or at least, for the most part. There were the usual exceptions in small children and animals. Along his many journeys, Sam is aided by his only link to his present, his best friend Albert Calavicci (portrayed by Dean Stockwell), better known as Al.  By tuning their brainwaves to similar... wavelengths (?), Al is able to keep in contact with Sam by projecting Al into the past. Al appears as a hologram that only Sam can see and hear (along with the kids and animals and psychics and people in mental hospitals). - note: Dean did a great job opposite Scott as the woman-crazy hologram.
    Although the show was a little optimistic in their assumption that we'd have time-travel capabilities by 1995,  I still love it. Scott was perfect in the part of Sam, who was truly altruistic in all manners. In his adventures (or misadventures?) Sam got to meet (or become) people like Marilyn Monroe, JFK, Donald Trump (as a kid) and (of all people) Dr. Ruth. Yes, he got to be many people regardless of age or gender. He was a mother once or twice.  He did everything from fight for African-American as well as gay rights, he fought in Vietnam, he almost got hung by the KKK, he was a hairdresser, he once leaped into a girl who had been raped and no one beleived her (having a hologram that no one can see or hear is helpful when you need some investigating to be done discreetly), he was a doctor on a soap opera, oh, and he even got to be himself as a kid once. Hmm, okay, I've written a book here, and that's JUST about Quantum Leap! Scott has done many other things in his career,  from movies (feature film and animation) to television, and even a little broadway if I'm not mistaken... I'll have to check on that... but Quantum Leap is by far my most favourite of his endeavors. I just wish that Donald P. Bellisario, Scott and Dean would all get together to do a Quantum Leap Movie (and not some made for tv special, it would have to be a full-length feature film in theaters)!!!

And here's Sam and Al, best buddies through the ages... literally :)

Aww, in this episode he had to protect his older sister from her violent boyfriend, Kevin Spiritas (I hope I got the spelling right) possibly better known as Dr. Craig Wesley from Days of Our Lives. Oh, apparently, Scott's had that streak of white in his hair since he was a child. I like it, I think it adds character, but they occasionally touch it up.

  He looks so cool :)

Another shot of Al and Sam (tee hee, look at Al's "futuristic" shoes :)  )  There's some appeal about a tux, I just dunno what it is though :)

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