Quantum Leap - "A Little Miracle"

Title:

A Little Miracle
 
Format:
Single-camera filmed television drama episode
 
Country:
USA
 
Production company:
Belisarius Prodctions, for Universal Television / NBC
 
Year:
1990 (first broadcast on the NBC network in the US on December 21^st that year)
 
Length:
45 minutes
 
Setting:
New York City, December 24^th 1962

Background:
Quantum Leap was an American science-fiction series which ran from 1989 to 1993, portraying the adventures of Dr Sam Beckett, the scientist behind the Quantum Leap project in the futuristic year of 1999, exploring the possibility of time travel. When Beckett stepped into the machine at the beginning of the series he began leaping from life to life, inhabiting the bodies of different people across the period of his lifetime in the late 20^th century, never knowing where he’s going next and aided only a hologram of his friend and colleague Al. This episode came in the show’s third season, although the second to be full-length.
 
Cast and crew:
Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell are present and correct in their regular roles as the series leads Sam and Al. Stockwell had been a child star in the 1940s, while Bakula’s name was made by Quantum Leap. He would later take the lead role in the Star Trek series Enterprise and a supporting part in the Oscar-winning feature film American Beauty.

 Charles Rocket is the episode’s main guest star, as the Scrooge-type businessman Michael Blake. Rocket had become famous, or perhaps infamous, as a member of the comedy troupe on the American Saturday night sketch and entertainment show Saturday Night Live, from which he was fired after swearing live on-air. He had notable film appearances in Dumb and Dumber and Hocus Pocus. Melinda McGraw is the other significant guest star, as Salvation Army officer Captain Downey; if like me you’re a fan of The West Wing you may remember her making several appearances as an advisor to Alan Alda’s presidential candidate character in the final season.
 
This particular episode of Quantum Leap was written by Sandy Fries and Robert Wolterstorff, from a story by Fries. Fries had written for an assortment of shows through the 1980s, including animated efforts such as The Smurfs and Thundercats and also an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This was Fries’ only credit on a Quantum Leap episode; Wolterstoff did work on a couple of other episodes of the show, and like Fries had also written for other fantastical series, such as The Incredible Hulk. He’d also co-created the short-lived Street Hawk, which suffered from accusations of being “Knight Rider but with a motorbike,” mainly because it was… well… Knight Rider but with a motorbike.
 
Director Michael Watkins handled several episodes of Quantum Leap, although this was the first. He went on to have a long and extensive career in high-profile American TV drama series, directing episodes of very well-known series such as The X Files, Grey’s Anatomy, NYPD Blue and Law & Order.

"Oh boy...!"

Underdone Potato:
Sam finds he has leaped into the body of one Reginald Pearson, valet to a greedy, cold-hearted millionaire businessman called Michael Blake in New York City. It quickly becomes apparent that Blake wants to demolish a local Salvation Army mission, and has to do so by New Year’s Eve in order not to lose the contracts to build his dreamed-of “Blake Plaza” tower block. Captain Downey of the Salvation Army has come to his apartment to try and persuade him otherwise, but he sends her away.
 
During an early scene, Sam and Al are surprised when it turns out Blake and see Al, whose holographic form should be visible only to Beckett, which I think may have been a first for the series. Al explains this away as Blake having neurons close to Sam’s, and “changes frequency” so that Blake can no longer see or hear him, but unsurprisingly this becomes relevant later.
 
Sam is usually at a particular place and time to prevent a tragedy, often a death, but Al says he seems to be here for a very different reason on this occasion – to save Blake’s soul. To do it, Sam comes up with the idea that “We Scrooge him”.

"Facing mirror images that were not his own..."

Past:
By a quite extraordinary coincidence, it turns out that the Salvation Army mission Blake wants to demolish to build his tower block is on the very street where he grew up as a child in the 1920s – oddly, he doesn’t appear to realise this until Sam conspires to find a way to take him down there in his car.
 
Blake appears to soften very quickly during this segment, and it’s not entirely clear whether what follows is an extraordinary coincidence or something that Sam has deliberately engineered with help from Al’s ability to research Blake’s life. They bump into Captain Downey – which certainly was set up – but also Blake’s old childhood friend Max, who is selling chestnuts on the street.
 
Blake and Max reminisce about their childhood, and Blake asks what happened to his former best friend Charlie. Max explains that Charlie killed himself after losing his job at a bakery called Henderson’s – which we know from dialogue earlier in the episode was a business which Blake had bought up and fired most of the staff from by turning its processes over to automation. Blake storms off, upset, and Max leaves the ambiguity hanging as to whether or not he was set up to be there by Sam by turning and asking him and Downey, “Did I do something wrong…?”

Present:
Moping back at his apartment, a drunk-ish Blake is persuaded to go back out to the area of the mission by Sam, who’s been persuaded by Al that their efforts to change Blake’s outlook are working. Sam manages to persuade Blake to go back to his old neighbourhood again, where they end up hearing those in the mission singing the Carol of the Bells, and go inside.
 
This is where it all starts to be laid on a bit thick. There’s a gap-toothed orphan child, and for reasons which are never adequately explained Captain Downey just happens to be an expert in making traditional Polish Christmas treats which take Blake right back to his childhood.
 
It’s all too much coincidence – or even if you’re being charitable and saying Sam set it all up, him overdoing things – but the episode manages to pull itself back from the brink by undercutting things here. Blake himself realises that it’s all a bit much, decides he’s being tricked and storms out, leaving Sam having to try and come up with another way in which to save the day.

Yet to Come:
Sam realises, as he probably should have done a lot sooner, that if they’re going to “do a Scrooge” on Blake, then they really ought to go the whole hog and take advantage of the fact that Blake can actually see Al – and have Al play the part of the “Ghost of Christmas Future” as that particular spirit almost always seems to be referred to by Americans.
 
At first, Blake isn’t particularly convinced by this, remembering meeting Al in the lobby of his apartment building earlier on. He also points out that Al is wearing chains, whereas the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come had a cloak, and it was Marley who wore the chains. However, he quickly changes his tune when it transpires that he can walk right through the hologram, and nobody else can (apparently) see or hear it.

Once again we go down town to the mission location, where through the medium of photographs and future news footage, Al is able to put the frighteners on Blake. Oddly, the previous versions of the Carol which the episode most resembles here are some of the silent ones – where the Scrooge figure is shown projections rather than actually stepping into the visions himself, and is also shown a picture of his grave.
 
Blake has a bit of a breakdown and finally becomes a changed man, knocking on the mission door and asking Captain Downey is she has room for one more lost soul.
 
What’s To-Day:
Not much of this, although Al is able to use the database at his disposal to tell Sam that the mission is saved, becoming part of the Blake Plaza development Blake builds, and that Blake and Downey end up getting married. Sam comments on Al’s projection of a Christmas star to lead Blake to Downey’s door, but Al says this wasn’t him – we then get some snowfall to go with it, before Sam leaps out to his next adventure.

And he's off!

Review:
This is not a particularly good episode of Quantum Leap. I hadn’t watched the series for many years, although I had enjoyed it as a child, but I bought a second hand copy of the series three DVD box set to be able to watch this episode, and ended up going through the season from the start. I might have enjoyed this more in isolation, but ten episodes in it clearly lacked the wit of many of those around it.
 
That said, it’s by no means awful, and it does save itself by having Blake point out just how overly saccharine everything is getting and refusing to be taken in by it. We then get the highlight of Dean Stockwell clearly having a whale of a time as Al hamming it up as the ghost, perhaps enjoying the opportunity of having something a bit different to do with the character for a change.
 
This probably isn’t worth especially seeking out unless you’re keen to watch Quantum Leap again, although I would certainly recommend that – it still holds up as a very enjoyable show. And this is clearly miles ahead of the Highway to Heaven effort, which is probably the closest comparable Carol I’ve covered on he blog so far.
 
In a nutshell:
Not the finest episode of Quantum Leap by a long chalk, but in terms of established series using the trappings of the Carol there have been far worse efforts.
 
Links:
IMDb