Tag Archives: time travel

Book Review of Redux: the Lost Patrol, A SciFi Time Travel Novel

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Some weeks ago, author Gregg Cunningham asked if I’d mind reading and reviewing his novel Redux: the Lost Patrol, A SciFi Time Travel Novel. To that end, he sent me a PDF formatted ARC copy.

I started to read Part One of the novel “War Pig.” I’ve read War Pig at least twice and so burned through it a third time. Then I hit Part Two “The Lost Patrol.” I was most of the way through Chapter 1 “Time” all the while feeling like I’d read this before. Then I checked Amazon and saw I had bought the book last May. Yikes.

I checked my reviews and I hadn’t published one, but when I checked the digital book on my Kindle Fire, I found my notes. I feel really dumb. I’d read Gregg’s book months ago, but never wrote the review.

Sorry about that, Gregg.

Well, it’s never too late so here we go.

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Review of Quantum Leap Ep8 “Stand by Ben”

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Scene from the Quantum Leap episode “Stand by Ben”

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I just finished watching the new Quantum Leap season 1, episode 8 Stand by Ben. I suppose that’s a play on the title of the 1986 film Stand by Me starring Wil Wheaton and River Phoenix. This episode certainly milked  a lot of teenage angst films from the 1980s.

Except Ben leaps into July 10, 1996 into a 16-year-old kid named Ben “Klepto” Winters as he and three other teens steal a car and escape a juvenile detention boot camp. The kids are happily planning what they’re going to do with their futures when there’s a blowout and the car tumbles down a ravine. Miraculously, they’re all okay, but this is just the beginning.

Oh, Spoiler Alert!

Addison shows up and explains that in the original timeline, the kids are reported missing on a school nature hike and die of heat exhaustion. The real story in the timeline is the kids walk away from the car wreck, split up to go their separate ways and die of the same death. The school covers it up, and the head of the school Sullivan (Eric Lee Huffman) files an insurance claim for his wrecked vehicle. So much for the kids.

What? After the kids boosted the car in front of everyone, the school couldn’t have called the cops and have the car pulled over? That’s the first thing I’d do, especially since each of these kids is identified as a juvenile criminal. Of course there could have been other reasons as outlined below.

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Review of Quantum Leap Ep5: “Salvation or Bust”

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QUANTUM LEAP — “Salvation or Bust” Episode 105 — Pictured: (l-r) Yaani King Mondschein as Frankie, Raymond Lee as Dr. Ben Song, Nicole Alvarez as Valentina — (Photo by: Ron Batzdorff/NBC)

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This week, Ben Song takes his biggest leap ever, back to 1879 in the old west. specifically to a town called Salvation. He finds himself as an old Mexican gunslinger named Diego De La Cruz (Alberto Manquero) whose granddaughter Valentina (Natalia del Riego) has called him out of his retirement in San Francisco to come back and defend their town.

Diego had left Salvation after his wife and son (who was the first mayor of Salvation) were killed. Salvation is a unique town in the west relative to the 21st century because it’s more progressive and inclusive than most cities in the first world are today. But, in this case, true to many western TV and film tropes, the evil railroad company wants to drive the population out and take their land. Actually, the episode is loaded with old western tropes. Oddly though, although the bad guys are all white, they don’t hurl even a single racist or sexist insult to the townspeople, which is pretty strange.

The railroad has hired wanted gunman Josiah McDonough (William Mark McCullough) and his gang of violent miscreants to “convince” the inhabitants to clear out. Ben has leapt into the body of the aging and alcoholic Diego his granddaughter believes can defend the town. The only problem is that Ben is a total pacifist and hates guns and violence (which didn’t seem to bother him in the episode Somebody Up There Likes Ben when he had to beat a boxer to unconsciousness, but never mind that…character traits and personal histories appear out of nowhere in this episode).

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Review of Quantum Leap Ep4: “A Decent Proposal”

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From the Quantum Leap episode “A Decent Proposal.”

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Alert! Here be spoilers!

Last night I watched Quantum Leap season 1, episode 4 A Decent Proposal guest starring Justin Hartley and Sofia Pernas. Since I knew Ben would be leaping into a bounty hunter, in preparation I watched the original series episode A Hunting We Will Go in which Sam (Scott Bakula) leaps into a bounty hunter. Turns out the two episodes have little in common. I was looking for a connection.

I should have watched The Leap Home Part 2 (Vietnam) April 7, 1970 but I’ll explain that in a bit.

It was fun to see Hartley again. He played Oliver Queen/Green Arrow in the Smallville TV show. In this episode, he plays Jake, fellow bounty hunter and would-be fiancé to the woman Ben leapt into Eva Sandoval (Anastasia Antonia). Yes, this is Ben’s first leap into a woman which didn’t seem terribly awkward for him. Incidentally, Sofia Pernas who plays Tammy Jean in the episode is Hartley’s real-life wife.

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Comparing the Original “Quantum Leap” to the Current Series, Part 2

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From Quantum Leap Ep3 “Somebody Up There Likes Ben”

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Continuing to try and figure out the course of the current Quantum Leap TV show on NBC by looking at the past show, I ran across a few things such as the current show’s ratings.

According to Comic Book News, the show is hemorrhaging viewers, but their opinion is in the minority. Besides, even though the show airs on NBC Monday nights, it is available for streaming starting the next day. As far as I can find out, Episode 3 “Somebody Up There Likes Ben,” had an uptick overnight. I suppose that includes me. People could continue to view it throughout the week, or for that matte, for weeks to come.

So far, the leaps Ben (Raymond Lee) takes aren’t particularly remarkable. Episode 2 Atlantis was the most interesting thus far because Ben leapt into an astronaut just as the space shuttle was launching. Other than that (there have only been three episodes aired to date), Ben leaps into someone and helps fix a life with the help of Addison (Caitlin Bassett), much as it happened with Sam (Scott Bakula) and Al (the late Dean Stockwell).

While the original show was almost exclusively focused on Sam and Al and their adventures in the past, the current show toggles back and forth between Ben and Addison in the past and the Quantum Leap team in the present. Add to that, Al’s oldest daughter Janice or Janis (Georgina Reilly), her mysterious relationship with Ben, and how and why she seems to be manipulating Ben’s leaps.

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Review of Quantum Leap Ep3 “Somebody Up There Likes Ben”

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Scene from the Quantum Leap episode “Somebody Up There Likes Sam”

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I just finished watching the current Quantum Leap show, episode 3, Somebody Up There Likes Ben. It’s October 2, 1977 in Las Vegas and Ben has leapt into a boxer named Danny Hill (Jermaine Alverez Martin). Danny’s got a complicated life. He’s been trained by the old brother who raised him Daryl (Bayardo De Murguia). He’s also seeing a woman named Angela (Danielle Larracuente) who is his boxing opponent’s girlfriend. Confused, Ben gets almost knocked cold by his sparing partner.

Oh, Spoiler Alert!

Long story short, Daryl missed his shot at a boxing career because he served in Vietnam. He’s married, no kids yet, and suffers from PTSD, which was a lot less well understood in the 1970s. Addison is having a hard time pulling data from Ziggy for some reason but eventually figures out that Daryl is in hock up to his eyes and if Danny loses the championship fight the next evening, they’ll lose the gym and Daryl will commit suicide.

At this point, Addison doesn’t mention that Ben has leapt back before his lifetime, but we’ll get there.

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Review of 1993’s Quantum Leap Series Finale “Mirror Image” and What It Means for the Current Series

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Image from the Quantum Leap episode “Mirror Image.”

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I’ve been watching the Quantum Leap revival and reviewed episodes 1 and 2. I’m particularly interested in the mystery around why Dr. Ben Song (Raymond Lee) chose to make an unauthorized leap after receiving a text message from Janice (or Janis) Calavicci (Georgina Reilly), daughter of Al Calavicci (played by the late Dean Stockwell).

However, even before seeing episode 2 “Atlantis,” I formed the same theory that every other fan has; Ben leaped in order to find Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula), the creator of Project Quantum Leap who has been missing for thirty years, and to bring him home.

But there are so many missing pieces. While I watched a lot of the original series, I haven’t seen every single episode. Key among them is the controversial series finale Mirror Image – August 8, 1953. More or less for giggles, I decided to watch it last night and it does not disappoint. Further, the story and the history behind it yield vital clues as to what Ben and Janice are up to and why.

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Review of Episode 1 of the New “Quantum Leap”

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Promotional poster for “Quantum Leap”

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I’ve been a long-time fan of the original Quantum Leap (1989-1993) starring Scott Bakula and the late Dean Stockwell so naturally when the series relaunch starring Raymond Lee and Caitlin Bassett was announced, I was curious. At first, I had no intention of watching the show. So many reboots and remakes of classic TV shows and films lately have been total disasters so why would I waste my time on another one?

Like I said, I’m a fan of the original show, but I can’t say I’ve seen every episode. I don’t recall seeing the series closer at all, and maybe I should since it’s rather infamous. NBC cancelled the show with no warning at all, and after Sam (Bakula) changed history saving Al’s (Stockwell) marriage, there was only a text notice at the end saying that Sam (misspelled last name because they did it in a hurry) never made it home.

Bakula and Stockwell lobbied NBC for years to do a made-for-TV movie to resolve the show but they always said no. That might be one of the reasons why Bakula refused any connection with the new show.

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Book Review of “Out of Time” (2022) by Dave Sinclair

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Cover art for Dave Sinclair’s “Out of Time”

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I don’t remember what made me buy Dave Sinclair’s time travel/spy book Out Of Time: An Atticus Wolfe Novel. It’s the first of the three-part series (somehow, I think readers expect series these days rather than standalone books). I suppose it was the theme. An MI6 agent in 2024 is suddenly thrust backwards in time to London, November 1963 and joins the same agency, encountering all manner of anachronisms from sixty years in the past.

Atticus Wolfe is an accomplished MI6 agent currently in London. He’s been stalking an international terrorist named Omar Ganim who has been raiding various scientific organizations and is believed to be building a devastating weapon. Wolfe has been unsuccessful in finding Ganim, that is until a twist of fate puts him behind his quarry on a street. With no time to call for help, Wolfe pursues and corners Ganim. He finds Ganim apparently ready to activate a bomb.

Wolfe plays for time, trying to talk Ganim down. Ganim insists he’s not a terrorist or murderer. He appeals to Atticus as a man of color, who, like him, has never experienced justice from the white system. He says he’s going back to fix the mess that the French and English made of the Middle East. There seems to be an explosion.

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Book Review of “The Titanic Paradox” by R.L. Corn

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I finished the short book The Titanic Paradox last night. It was written by R.L.Corn and published just last month. I happened upon it by chance when it was being discussed on Facebook (see, social media is good for marketing books).

Admittedly, I’m a sucker for time travel stories, especially involving the Titanic and I come about this preference from what some might call a silly source.

In 1966 yet another Irwin Allen production The Time Tunnel was launched. In the pilot episode Rendezvous with Yesterday, two scientists, Tony Newman (James Darren) and Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert) used an experimental time displacement device to go back in time. More specifically, they ended up on the Titanic less than a day before it was destined to sink.

Like all of Allen’s production, action was promoted over historical or scientific accuracy, but it was great entertainment for kids.

Corn, in his “Titanic” book, did a great deal more research to produce his time travel thriller.

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