Sam Beckett
Sam Beckett is a male television character who features in Quantum Leap.
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Biography
Samuel Beckett was born at 12:30 pm EST on August 8, 1953 in Elk Ridge, Indiana. His mother was Thelma Louise Beckett and his father was John Samuel Beckett, a dairy farmer. He also had a younger sister, Katie Beckett, and an older brother named Tom Beckett. Sam was a child prodigy, as he learned to read at the age of 2, do advanced calculus in his head at the age of 5, and beat a computer at chess at the age of 10. As a child, he had two cats, named Donner and Blitzen, but never had a dog. During Sam's teenager years, his brother, Tom was killed in the Vietnam war on April 8, 1970. Katie also ran away with an alcoholic named Chuck and married him. After Sam graduated from high school at the age of 16 in the spring of 1970, he went to MIT as his brother had once advised him to do. There he developed the String Theory of time travel with his mentor, Professor LoNigro. He stayed in MIT for two years (finishing four year's worth of studies) and then went to different colleges. He obtained seven doctoral degrees: Music, Medicine, Quantum Physics, Archaeology, Ancient Languages, Chemistry, and Astronomy, but not psychiatry or law. Sam also played the piano in a concert at Carnegie Hall when he was 19. While Sam was in college, his father, John Samuel Beckett, died of a heart attack in 1974, mostly because of his cigarette smoking. The guilt of his absence during his family's time of need would stay with Sam for years. As a young adult, Sam was in the Starbright Project, where he met Al, Gooshie, and Donna Eleese. Donna and Sam were engaged, but she left him at the altar. He never saw Donna again but during one of his leaps, he changed history so that Donna actually became his wife.
He invented a theory about time traveling and led a group of scientists to the desert to develop a top-secret Project: Quantum Leap. Under pressure to prove his theories or lose funding, he stepped into the unfinished project accelerator and vanished. He soon found himself trapped in the past, leaping into other peoples' bodies, putting 'right what once went wrong'.
Sam developed the Project Quantum Leap based on his String Theory with Al. He led a group of scientists into the New Mexico desert to develop a top secret project known as the Quantum Leap. After creating Ziggy and the Imaging Chamber, under pressure to prove his theories or lose funding Sam stepped into the Project Accelerator and vanished. He awoke in the past, suffering from partial amnesia and facing a mirror image that was not his own. Luckily, Al, the project observer from his own time, appeared, in the form of a Hologram to Sam. Only Sam could see or hear Al, although later it appeared that also animals, small children, the "mentally absent", and people near death could see Al and Sam. While Sam actually physically travels in time namely that he was jumping into people's bodies, there is an aura around him, which makes others, except for the ones listed earlier, see Sam as the one he has leaped into. Whomever he leaps into goes to the Waiting Room, in Sam's own time, where he or she is kept by the project staff until he or she gets back when Sam leaps into the next person. These people are called Leapees. The final episode has Sam leaping back to the date of his birth and he is himself. He learns he can control his leaps and goes back to Beth, Al's first wife. He tells her to wait for Al, who is alive and will eventually come home. Al stays married to Beth and they have four daughters.
Sam learned from a bartender named AL that he was in control of his leaps and could have returned home whenever he wanted. The bartender reminded Sam that he created Project Quantum Leap to help the world, and that in each leap he changed people and events for the better. Although Sam wanted to go home, he instead chose to return and inform Beth that Al was still alive. Despite his efforts, it was revealed that Sam never returned home.
Overview
Personality and attributes
He liked dry or light beer, and microwave popcorn.
He was noted to had been afraid of heights since he was 9 years old.
It was noted that his favorite song was John Lennon's "Imagine".
Powers and abilities
Sam also plays the piano and guitar, was a good dancer, sings baritone.
Sam speaks 7 modern languages including English, Spanish, French, Russian, German, and Japanese, but not Italian or Hebrew. He knows four dead languages, including Egyptian hieroglyphics. He has won a Nobel Prize in an unspecified field, but probably for physics. For this, Time magazine called him "the next Einstein".
Sam was noted to have a photographic memory and had an IQ of 267.
Sam also knows several kinds of martial arts such as Judo, Karate, Muay Thai, and Taekwondo.
Sam's theory of time travel, developed with Professor LoNigro, is based on an expanding, but finite, universe. A person's life is like a length of string; one end represents birth, the other represents death. If one were to tie the ends of the string together, their life becomes a loop. Next, by balling the loop together, the days in one's life would touch one another out of sequence. Therefore, jumping from one part of the string to another would allow someone to travel back and forth within their own lifetime, thus making a "quantum leap" between each time period.
Notes
- Sam Beckett was created by Donald P. Bellisario where he was portrayed by actor Scott Bakula and featured in the setting of the Quantum Leap universe.
- Scott Bakula stated that he was asked to reprise the role for the 2022 reboot, but made the decision not to be involved in the new series. He stated on Instagram that, "As the show has always been near and dear to my heart, it was a very difficult decision to pass on the project."
Appearances
- Quantum Leap:
External Links
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