By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues
I was recently made aware of just how many movies and television shows the younger generation have never heard of, never mind seen. So to that end, we look back at some characters you really need to see before you kick the bucket.
“We’ve clawed our way out of hell to land simple assignments like home wrecking and adultery. You don’t want to go back to the horror we lived through before.”
For every yin there’s a yang, for every Batman there is a Joker but for Sam Beckett, his nemesis came in the form of a leaper that undid the good he did. While multiple leapers is nothing new for the new series of Quantum Leap, back in the original series it was Sam and Al alone jumping through time.
Sam had previously leaped into the body of Jimmy, a man with Down Syndrome who was destined to be put into an institution if Sam didn’t prove that Jimmy could be a functioning member of society. It really is one of the best and heartwarming episodes of the show. Sam sorted it all and to his surprise he once again became Jimmy in Deliver Us From Evil. His initial delight was quelled by the realisation that the life he had fixed was slowly being unraveled. Jimmy lived with his brother Frank (Seaquest’s John D’Aquino) and sister-in-law Connie (Laura Harrington) as well as his nephew Corey. Frank and Connie’s marriage is falling apart and Frank is on the verge of having an affair. Corey is deeply unhappy and will run away never to be seen again if Sam doesn’t stop him. When Sam confronts Connie he grabs her by the arms. This triggers an energy surge and Connie is revealed to be a leaper named Alia. She comes across at first as delighted to meet another leaper as she thought she was alone and is trying to get home. Sam is delighted that he is not alone and has many questions. Al is not so sure and advises caution.
Alia has a holographic helper too in the form of super bitch Zoey (Carolyn Seymour). She has a hand held device similar to Al’s and they are both serving a computer called Lothos. Alia is being forced to leap with Zoey her keeper. She urges her that this could be the leap that gets her home so Alia has to complete Lothos’ commands. They are part of an evil version of the Quantum Leap project in which they must undo everything Sam has done. Alia’s mission is to ensure Jimmy is put into an institution and destroy Frank and Connie’s marriage. But with the reveal of Sam’s existence, she is ordered to kill him. She engineers a situation where she and Jimmy are alone. After spinning Sam a story about the loneliness she feels as a leaper, she asks him to make love to her. But suddenly she is gouging her cheek with her fingernails and ripping her dress, to make it look like Jimmy has tried to rape her. She pulls a gun and threatens to shoot Sam. He talks her down while both holograms freak out; Zoey urging her to pull the trigger and Al shouting at Sam to move. Sam believes there is good in her as she is being forced to do these things. Zoey reminds her what they have gone through to land simple assignments and they cannot go back to it. Sam persists they are both part of the same coin and cannot exist without one another. Alia does not want to die but doesn’t want to go back to the horrors Lothos has in-store for them. She has killed many people and sees Sam as a way to escape. He manages to get through to her. This causes Zoey and Alia twist and distort as time snaps back to a time when Sam had saved Jimmy and the family. It’s the first time that time has reversed in the show and now Sam knows he is facing a new enemy that he cannot see and could wear any face just like him.
In season five Alia and Zoey return along with another evil observer, Thames. When Sam leaps into a campus nerd that parades as a superhero as a way of coping with his parents’ deaths, he encounters Alia gain. She is there to make sure Arnold is killed but sees in Sam a way to escape the Evil leaper Project. It is a punishment to leap and controlled by Lothos, her version of Ziggy. Sam thinks that if they are touching when they leap then they will leap together and end up in the same place and time. Alia helps save Arnold along with Al who persuades the young man to face his trauma. Now Alia has no idea if Sam’s idea is going to work so for her to take the risk indicates just what a horror show she is desperate to escape. It is more likely that she would be killed if the double leap doesn’t work.
Sam and Alia end up in a women’s prison as inmates Angel and Liz who have been accused of murdering fellow inmate Carol. Alia is now being hunted by Lothos and is on the verge of a breakdown from sheer terror. Sam hypnotises her into believing she is in fact Angel, changing her brain waves keeping her from being detected. Zoey has been forced to be a leaper as punishment for not killing Arnold. She leaps into prison warden Myers who is increasingly frustrated by not being able to track Alia. It’s interesting that they cannot track Sam at all and are relying on locating Alia to capture him too. As a leaper, Zoey is assigned an observer, Thames.
He has a smart mouth and seems to relish in his position of power. But Zoey is not taking any of his nonsense. She comes close to almost discovering that Sam and Alia are Liz and Angel. Alia’s mental state is crumbling and Sam is becoming desperate. Al gets Ziggy to reconfigure the prison’s electric fence to help unscramble Thames’ tracking device. Sam discovers what really happened to Carol and persuades sympathetic guard Vivian to help them. Once outside the perimeter, Thames manages to locate Alia. There is a shootout and Alia leaps independently as does Sam once the truth comes out that Myers got Carol pregnant and left her to bleed to death after an abortion gone wrong. Vivian cannot believe that Liz, Angel and Myers were all shot at point blank range but have no wounds. Zoey and Thames are ripped away by Lothos once they reveal that Alia is off their radar completely. Sam takes some comfort in the fact Alia is now beyond the reach of the Evil leaper Project but knows he will be hunted now too.
Thames played by Hinton Battle is almost a mirror version of Al with his smart remarks, fashion sense and seemingly position of power over the fallen Zoey. He is well suited to the task because he is intent on seeing Alia dead and anyone else that happens to get in the way. He revels in the suffering of others. From what we can gather from Alia and Zoey, Lothos controls the entire project and becoming a leaper is forced to do horrific deeds like murder in order to be elevated to simple things like home wrecking. It seems an observer is a step-up from leaper. The inclusion of Thames confirms the theory that leaper and observer go on this ladder of evil together as Zoey states that she and Alia have been a team from the start of their rule by Lothos.
With Quantum Leap’s cancellation we would never get to see that world but with the show’s parameters expanding, it is certain we would have gotten to see Lothos’ cruel world. As we know from the final episode that God has been watching over Sam but does not control the leaps; Sam does. So the inference we can take is that Lothos represents the Devil in the show with the likes of Thames and Zoey demons. Alia would be a sinner condemned to suffer in Hades while Sam and Al are the forces of good. Al could be described as as Sam’s guardian Angel. Indeed they both met a real Angel in the episode It’s a Wonderful Leap. Sam became a New York cab driver who has to get his medallion. He meets singer Angelita who is here to help him and can see Al with whom we get many comedic golden moments. In the Halloween Boogieman, Sam fights the Devil disguised as Al but this was shown to be a dream.
While the new series has their own version of an evil leaper, it is a totally different story. However as it is a continuation of the original series and not a rebbot means that Zoey, Thames, Lothos and Alia are still out there. It would be a missed opportunity to not bring them or a new version of them back to face Ben and Addison. Here’s hoping.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 