Honeymoon Express

    

Summary:

1957: Sam's brief leap into a fireman forces him to fight his vertigo while heroically rescuing cat Ginger from a tree ...

1960: Police officer Tom MacBride and his wife Diane are on a honeymoon train to Niagara Falls. Being Tom, Sam must save her from her mad ex-husband Roget, who is on the train as well and intents to kill him.

Al tells him he also has to prevent the U-2 from being shot down, or the committee will end Project Quantum Leap for good ...

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Episode Number: #2x01 / #9

German Title: Gefährliche Flitterwochen

Italian Title: Luna di Miele

French Title: La Maure aux trousses

Personal Review:

Very intriguing and diverting episode that offers an introduction for newcomers and does so successfully without starting to become dull.

Original Air Date: Wednesday, September 20, 1989

Writer: Donald P. Bellisario

Director: Aaron Lipstadt

Producer: Harker Wade

Supervising Producers:

Deborah Pratt
Paul M. Belous
Robert Wolterstorff

Co-Producer:

Paul Brown
Jeff Gourson
Chris Ruppenthal

Music by: Mike Post

Regular Cast:

Scott Bakula as Sam Beckett
Dean Stockwell as Al Calavicci

Guest Cast:

Alice Adair as Diane MacBride
Mathieu Carrière as Roget
Hank Rolike as porter
Warren Frost as committee's chairman

Also Starring:

James Mastrantonio as Henri
Fitzhugh G. Houston as black senator
King Moody as southern senator
Virginia Paris as woman senator
Kirk Scott as Yankee senator
Dona Hardy as gray-haired lady
William McDonald as conductor
James Clark as engineer
Stan Garner as assistant engineer
Ron Chabidon as Tom MacBride/mirror

Guest Cast Notes:

Alice Adair portrayed Jan Bogomil in Beverly Hills Cop II, a film Dean Stockwell also co-starred in.

Warren Frost had a recurring role as Billy Lewis on the 1990's crime/lawyer series Matlock.

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Place:

#1 leap: unknown
#2 leap: train to Niagara Falls, NY

Leap-date:

#1 leap: Summer 1957
#2 leap: Wednesday, April 27, 1960

Leapee's Name:

#1 leap: a fireman
#2 leap: Lt. Tom MacBride, NYPD

Project Trivia:

Al is trying to get approval from a government committee to get funding for one more year. The committee, though, especially the chairman, is not convinced Sam ever leaped at all.

Sam and Al have come to the conclusion - after exhausting every other possible scientific explanation - that God has taken control of project Quantum Leap to "put right what once went wrong".

It seems that Al is writing reports about Sam's leaps for the committee.

The project is officially named "Project Quantum Leap". That's what it said on the folder the committee's chairman was reading from.

The committee is of the opinion that the changes Sam made were not exactly "earth-shattering". They obviously would rather see him to have an impact on the "domestic and global conflicts of the recent past".

The project cost $43 billion.

Quantum leaping has made Sam suffer from partial amnesia.

Al says that Sam seems only able to impact on people and events God (or Time or whatever) wants to have changed.

Sam and Al appear to each other as holograms; they can see and hear each other but not interact physically. Since the experiment was designed around Sam's and Al's brainwaves, no one else can go into the IC and see or hear Sam.

The committee is reluctant to give further funding to a project as expensive as Quantum Leap only on the word of one individual.

PQL costs $2.4 billion a year.

Ziggy's referred to as "he".

Al says that Ziggy would never change her mind. Her ego wouldn't let her.

They had to pull Ziggy's research unit off-line because it's the end of the month and funds were getting a little low. Al had to switch some funds from the motor pool.

handlink: first version

no IC door seen, but heard on occasions

Future Trivia:

They still use a lot of paper. No one had a pad, or a notebook or something like that on the committee hearing.

In fact, the only thing futuristic in the entire room where the small, transparent microphones that blink red.

Other QL episodes mentioned:

there were references to:

Genesis: "...saving the life of a test pilot and his unborn child..."

The Right Hand of God: "...helping Sisters of Charity build a chapel..."

The Color of Truth: "...being instrumental in the integration of a small town..."

How the Tess Was Won: "You expect us to believe that God leapt Dr. Beckett back into '56 just to help Buddy Holly with the lyrics to 'Peggy Sue'?"

Sam Trivia:

Sam remembered the rock group U-2, but not the homonymous plane.

On his first train ride, at age two, Sam was confused, frightened and sure that everybody on board was out to get him. To calm him down, his mother gave him a book to read.

Al says that Sam was a child prodigy. He could already read at age two, do calculus in his head at five and beat a computer at chess at age 10.

He thinks that it's not morally right to sleep with a woman that you don't love.

Primarily he's a quantum physicist.

He doesn't think he could make it through leaping without Al.

Al Trivia:

The committee's chairman called him "highly respected and decorated".

Al's a Rear Admiral and obviously still with the service.

He says he loved every woman he ever slept with - at the time he slept with them.

Miscellaneous Trivia:

First episode in which Sam has to kill someone.

Aside from the very first scene of Genesis, Honeymoon Express is the first episode to have scenes take place in the future.

Aside from the pilot, this is also the only episode that has Sam leap into two completely different situations.

Songs: usual background music

Predicted Outcome:

Because of the committee's threat to end the project if Sam can't prove that he's really in the past, Al tries to convince him to stop the U-2 from being shot down.

Ziggy, on the other hand, gives it a 78.6 % chance that Sam is supposed to help Diane MacBride pass her bar exam.

Soon, though, Sam realizes that Diane is on the verge of being kidnapped by her insane ex-husband Roget.

Altered History:

Sam's unable to stop the U-2 incident, but saves Diane and Tom.

Since he also manages to help Diane pass her bar, she replaces the committee's chairman in the future and grants one more year of funding for PQL.

Kiss With History:

Diane's father, Senator Max Brown, is President Eisenhower's golfing buddy. Al says Sam should get Diane to call her father to get Eisenhower to drop the U-2 mission.

Roget used to smuggle arms into France for the Resistance during WWII.

Historic Events Mentioned:

On May 1st, 1960, the U-2, a top secret spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers, was shot down over Russia. This torpedoed the "Big Four" summit in Paris, the disarmament talks in Geneva, the Test Ban Treaty, which prolonged the cold war for decades.

Dwight David Eisenhower, best known under the nickname "Ike", was the 34th president of the US.

Al's Outfits:

1. white naval uniform

2. a jacket striped in two shades of green; lime green shirt; forest green trousers; dark shoes

3. white naval uniform

4. multi-colored shirt (mostly red, black and orange) - wildly patterned in the front, black in the back; shiny salmon tie with a red sun glasses pin; red slacks; black belt

5. white naval uniform

Sam's Outfits:

1. brown fireman's uniform

2. gray jacket; blue shirt; dark tie; light-gray fedora; holster and gun as well handcuffs in a special pocket

Al's Women:

Al mentioned having spend his honeymoons with his first, third and fifth wife on a honeymoon train to Niagara Falls.

His fourth wife is named Sharon; she wore pink baby dolls. His fifth wife's name is Maxine; she wore nothing at all.

Miscellaneous Bloopers:

In the subtitles on the DVD, when Al tries to convince the committee that God is leaping Sam around, they wrote Him and His in small letters. Referring to God, it has to be capitalized, though.

Quotes:

Al: "He works in mysterious ways."
Chairman: "Evidently, so does this project."

Comments on Leaping:

They believe that God has taken control of the project and uses Sam to "put right what once went wrong".

The committee's chairman said that Sam's actions in the past were all "commendable, but not exactly earth shattering changes".

"Quantum Leaping has left Dr. Beckett suffering from partial amnesia. He's unable to recall many significant events of his lifetime. And even if he were, he seems only able to impact people and events that He wants changed." (Al)

"If you kill this project, you will end one of the greatest adventures mankind has ever undertaken. And more important, you will leave a brave man back there alone." (Al)

"In all the leaping around we have done, we've never affected anything beyond individual lives. I think that's the way He wants it." (Sam)

"In case you haven't noticed, Al, I don't need the project. They aren't leaping me around, God is." (Sam)

Open Questions and Logic Flaws:

Even though chess computers existed since the early 50's, I seriously doubt that a small town like Elk Ridge had the money to afford a computer that could play chess at the time Sam was ten, as they were just being invented and computers had the sizes of whole rooms. Then, even if Sam would have had the chance to play against one of these, maybe at a visit to a college or a science department, the chess computers of the mid to late 60's played - according to various chess web sites - as well as an average high school chess player. That's still not bad for a 10-year-old, but you just can't compare it to the chess computers we know today.

If Sam had changed the history around the U-2, the committee wouldn't have remembered it was ever shot down in the first place. So there still would have been no proof that Sam leaped.

Why would Tom MacBride take his gun and his handcuffs along on his honeymoon? It would have made sense if he'd known about Roget, but, apparently, he didn't.

One of the senators implied that Al had stated in his report Sam leaped into Doc Young (How The Tess Was Won) just to 'help Buddy Holly with the lyrics to Peggy Sue.' But obviously, Tess didn't marry Wayne in the original history either, or Ziggy would have known. So getting Wayne and Tess together was the real reason Sam was there. Helping Buddy Holly with his song was just something on the side.