A question about leaping

He may leap, but he will always have to come back. Hench the multiple leaps in LHO. The double leap in Double Leap.

Strawpah is the one that strings to mind the best. He told Sam he was in this place many times before. He kept coming back until he figured out a way to save the minors.

Becky, I think it's something that wasn't thought of until afterwards, which is why there's a difference in continuity.

I think it's called "pulling a 'Red Dwarf'"

:lol

ziggysego said:

He may leap, but he will always have to come back. Hench the multiple leaps in LHO. The double leap in Double Leap.

Click to expand...

In theory, yes, Sam could always leap back to any of his previous missions to correct them in the event that he failed. However, I doubt this would happen in terms of GFTW placing him back there. In fact, I think the only times something like that did happen in the series was in "Deliver Us From Evil" and "Mirror Image." In the first case, that was only because of the damage Alia later inflicted. In the second, Sam made a conscious decision not to change Al's life the first time. He then sent himself back into "M.I.A." under his own control to correct a mistake he felt he made. A point that seems to have been indirectly made in the series is that some things were meant to be. Cases in point: Lonnie's death in "Black On White On Fire"; Sam's family's fate in "The Leap Home"; Neil and John Walters' fate in "Promised Land"; and John F. Kennedy's assassination, among others.

ziggysego said:

Strawpah is the one that strings to mind the best. He told Sam he was in this place many times before. He kept coming back until he figured out a way to save the minors.

Click to expand...

I've always found that comment to be very ambiguous. Was Stawpah saying that from his experiences as a Leaper? Or was he saying that from his experiences as a miner and the danger associated with his job?

Lonnie's death in "Black On White On Fire";
Sam was sent back to stop Susan from being killed. Lonnie, apparently, died in the original history and wasn't sent back to change that.

Sam's family's fate in "The Leap Home";
Again, Sam was sent back to win the basketball game, not alter his family's lives

Neil and John Walters' fate in "Promised Land";
Sam saved the farm, which is what he was sent back to do

John F. Kennedy's assassination
Sam was sent back to save the live of Jackie Kennedy, not JFK. He was successful. Just a bitter-sweet success

Surley it is the type of success Sam achieves. In some leaps Sam follows Ziggies predictions to the decimal point, in others, he not only puts right what once went wrong in Ziggies databanks, but adds his own little bit. So if he only followed Ziggies advice and predictions, he should in theory leap, even if what he personally wants to do does not get done. Am I right or am I wrong?

Gareth

Correct Gareth. Ziggy does the calculations and determines what is the purpose of Sam leaping into this person's life.

Ziggy predicts what is statistically the reason Sam is there, but s/he's not always right. Like in Last Dance Before an Execution, the whole focus was on proving Jesus' innocence, and Al went on that wild goose chase to find the bullet, only to discover, literally at the last moment, that that was not the reason Sam was there. Or, sometime's Ziggy's prediction is incidental to the mission GTFW actually wants accomplished. In Raped, Sam surmises that his mission is to press charges, so that the rapist couldn't do it again. If that's the case, he failed, since the guy's acquitted and goes free. But then Sam beats the crap out of him, which I assume either cures the bully, or leads to his being arrested, therapied, and rehabilitated - and shown to the town for the scumball that he was. I think it's ambiguous a lot of the time what "success" actually means.

As to the original question, I think Sam will leap if he changes the original outcome. He's a mensch, so usually he leaves things better, but I guess he could theoretically make a different, yet equally wrong decision as the original history, and still leap. Ziggy's predictions are always based on "here's what happened in the original history," and Sam's focus is on, I can't let that happen. But that doesn't mean that there are only two choices. Take "Play Ball." Is the leap trigger (1) getting Chucky back with his dad (2) winning the game (3) getting Doc to the majors as a coach or (4) avoiding sleeping with the boss lady or her daughter? What if he'd convinced Chucky to get his GED and become a quantum physicist, bribed the scout to take Doc to the show, and tossed over his shoulder, Hey, kid, that's your dad right there. Would he still have leaped? The outcome would have been different from the original history, so, yeah, I guess he would.

I think Sam thought that he was there to fix things (which would be success, happily ever after), but he was really there to change things (hopefully for the better). If nothing changed, he was stuck there. When it did, he leaped.

That's my theory anyway. Clearly, I need chocolate.

Great explanation. I agree completely. I think the "inconsistency" in the series from early episodes to newer ones can be explained with that theory. It's just that I think both Sam and Al were under a different impression during his leaps in the beginning. As he kept leaping, I think he and Al eventually realized that success actually didn't have anything to do with it.

Everyone else has already had excellent things to say, so I'm tossing in my two cents not as an argument, but more like just something else to chew over.

"Vietnam" is the only time I can think of where Sam flatly did not accomplish his mission. His mission, according to Ziggy, was to rescue the MIAs. Sam wanted his mission to be to save his brother's life. He did, but at the expense of Maggie's life, and at the expense of Al's freedom. So he learned a lesson about sticking with the right mission.

From a behind-the-scenes persceptive, I think Bellisario was interested earlier in the series with the suspense being on "What if Sam doesn't leap? What if he's stuck living this other person's life forever?" At some point, though, it became obvious that Sam was going to leap every time, so Bellisario changed the focus to the more suspenseful idea: "What if Sam doesn't accomplish the mission?"

Of course, as mentioned, there are Sam's bittersweet victories (Freedom, Good Night Dear Heart, MIA, Leap Home Pt. 1, Black on White on Fire, Last Dance Before an Execution, Trilogy Pt. 1, etc.), as well as the times when history looped back on itself. There are three examples of this, which I list below.

In "Deliver Us from Evil," Sam didn't actually leap back in to change anything, only to find that he had prevented Alia from ever being there in the first place. (Which raises the question, why didn't that happen again when history changed for the better in EL II/III? But that's a whole 'nother topic...)

In "Mirror Image," Sam didn't leap back in to Jake from "MIA," he just leaped in as himself at the moment after he left the scene. (Which raises another interesting question, which I'll start another thread for.)

And the one I'm surprised no one mentioned yet--"The *********." (Maybe no one mentioned it because of the name. Should I call it "the Halloween episode" instead?) In this case, history does actually seem to loop back on itself, and Sam gets a second chance to put things right. In this fascinating scenario, simply stopping Tully's death was enough of a chain reaction to prevent everything else from happening--even though the deaths were unrelated to each other, and in theory, "Al" could have made another attempt on Tully's life, or just started killing the others.

Of course, it's possible that the whole episode was just a dream--or, if you will, a vision given to him by GFTW so that he would know how to stop the whole thing in the first place. But Al did say that PQL lost contact with Sam completely for a few minutes...which suggests that Sam was briefly taken outside of time in order to make the second leap.

One final note: by the time of LHO, who knows what Bellisario was thinking? He also has Al remind Sam of the time they switched places--even though, according to Al himself in "The Leap Back," Sam doesn't remember anything of the experience, and reminding Sam of that runs the danger of reminding Sam of Donna! So was Al lying, or...

Ooof. My head's spinning. I think I need chocolate now.

As for the LHO ep with Al reminding Sam of the time they switched, do you think it's possible that when Sam started leaping again the "reverse reverse swiss chesse effect" could have brought back his memories of his previous leaps but erased the memory of when he leapt home. He could have known he leapt home, but have no memory of what happened during that time.

Just my theory.