Techtite Feature Article!

"Alia's mission ...was to screw everything up. She succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. Quantum Leap was cancelled just a few episodes later. Mission accomplished, dear!"

---from the article

-------------

Sidebar :

-------------

No sidebar comments for this Feature Story Yet...

-----------------

Feel free to contribute. As always, review submissions are accepted!

------------------

In one of Alia's first scenes on Quantum Leap, she screams like a raving banshee. If only fans could've screamed alongside her. Gone was even the slightest shred of the series' original plan: to show a lone time traveler, leaping from moment to moment in time, and putting right what went wrong. Alia's mission, by stark contrast, was to screw everything up. She succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. Quantum Leap was cancelled just a few episodes later. Mission accomplished, dear!

It's true enough to say that Alia was in all of three episodes. That was enough. Why? Because it totally negated the whole point of the series, in all of one episode. They essentially implied that everything Sam did was slowly being undone, and expected fans to grin and bear it. Time out here: you mean some silly bimbo is slowly undoing everything Sam has ever done...and we're to accept it? What about all the time Sam invested? What about the time fans invested?

Perhaps it would've helped had they introduced Alia as a "slightly bad" villain, and not a totally inhumane one. We first see Alia try to hurt Jimmy; the lovable mentally challenged boy Sam helped in the first season. Alia wanted to turn Jimmy's life back into total crap. Why? Well, her holographic friend in that episode does say that they clawed their way through "hell" to get this assignment, though many viewers think this was just a figure of speech. No, given the routine writing of the series' final season, I suspect Alia's motives are quite simple. She wants time to be worse than it was: because she's a jackass. End of mystery.

Given the way the character was introduced during November sweeps ---not to mention the outrageous promos for her upcoming arrival, in all those Summer Olympics commercials the prior summer!--- one must presume Alia was intended as a recurring character. Yet reaction to Alia was so lackluster, they wound up using her only one more time, in an episode which would resolve Alia's storyline, permanently. Alia leaps just after being shot. Did she survive? The series sure didn't. Nice going, Alia.

-------------------------------

 What was your choice for best/worst sci-fi series, ever...?

Send your opinions to Techtite's Letters page!