![]() ![]() “It just added one more string to the bow.” “Any show I’ve done, if you can work in a holiday you try to, but the story was never about that,” he said. “So I wanted to pay homage to it.”ĭespite it being the first episode to dip its toe into the realm of the unknown, Shepherd didn’t see it as an out-and-out Halloween episode. “That scared me so much as a kid,” Shepherd said. ![]() Yet, after inheriting the estate, he too begins to notice the figure of his former employer in the house’s paintings rising again to seek revenge. Driven to distraction and, ultimately death, it emerges that the man’s butler has been paying someone to paint each one. One of the stories centered on a man who, after murdering his uncle, finds himself haunted by a family painting that keeps changing, which appeared to show his uncle rising from the dead. Taking inspiration from The Twilight Zone, Shepherd also cited the feature-length first episode of creator Rod Sterling’s follow-up anthology horror series Night Gallery as a major influence. So might as well have a ghost, right? It’s a pretty simple story otherwise with her brother trying to gaslight her while there’s this burgeoning love story between Timothy and Troian.” “We were dealing with a guy who leaps back in time, right? He’s popping into people’s bodies. Weaving in a real-life earthquake to maintain the show’s credence to “paying homage to a specific time and place,” Shepherd, who co-wrote the script with Bellisario, based on a story Shepherd penned with John Hill, had no qualms about things taking a supernatural turn. Stoltz, with Sam leaping seconds later while Al can be heard to remark “you look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” Ultimately, Jimmy would be revealed as the culprit, but there would be a further twist in the tale after an earthquake – the real-life 1971 San Fernando Valley earthquake – ended up unearthing the body of Ms. I always found it interesting that dynamic predated The X-Files.” “So having Al believe in ghosts gave things another dimension. “There was this unique bromance to their relationship,” Shepherd said. While Sam is skeptical of any supernatural involvement, Al is cast as believer in the spirit world, creating an interesting dynamic explored throughout the show’s run and fleshed out further in other network shows. As the episode progresses, Troian finds herself haunted by the presence of wet footprints by her bed and the reappearance painting she previously threw into the lake. There are two suspects: Troian’s brother, Jimmy, who stands to inherit the estate, or the housekeeper Ms Stoltz, who occupies a strange role in the house and appears to be able to see Al. Al soon reveals, however, that Sam is there to stop Troian from drowning in the same lake where Julian died. Timothy Mintz (Bellisario played the real Mintz’s reflection), a parapsychologist employed by wealthy heiress Troian Claridge to investigate whether her deceased husband Julian is contacting her from beyond the grave. Quantum Leap’s first foray into the world of the supernatural came midway through the show’s second season with the ghostly “A Portrait for Troian,” co-written by Shepherd. “That was when I understood what the show was about.” “When they tested that episode with the audience, the ratings were off the charts during that particular scene,” Shepherd said. Shepherd recalled an early test screening of the show’s two-hour opening episode, “Genesis.” Sam finds himself transported into the body of a baseball player in the 1950s and realizes, at that precise point in time, his father is still alive. “It had this heart and Don Bellisario would always talk about ‘the heart of the show’ and what Sam was about.” But it wasn’t about that at all,” he said. “When I first saw the show, I initially thought it was like Back to the Future, where he’s jumping into all these weird, fun situations. However, while the format offered plenty of freedom, Shepherd stressed every episode required one key ingredient. It could go to any genre and tell a story,” he said. “The show could go from being about a baseball player to an astronaut to a cabaret singer to a ghost hunter. That’s what made every episode feel fresh – you didn’t quite know what was going to happen.”įellow writer and producer Scott Shepherd agreed. It also had this rare blend where you could have humor, action, romance, social commentary and even the supernatural. “You weren’t just writing a hospital show or a cop show. ![]() “The great thing about Quantum Leap was that every episode could be vastly different,” writer and producer Chris Ruppenthal told Den of Geek. ![]()
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