"QUANTUM LEAP" PROGRAM, UCLA, 11/26/90

Transcribed by Sally Smith

# audience laughs
% audience applauds


(The host introduces Deborah Pratt, Michael Zinberg, and Don 
Bellisario. She is halfway through Dean's introduction when Scott 
strolls out on stage. The audience laughs, and Dean drags Scott 
back offstage. She finishes Dean's intro and he comes out. Then 
she reads Scott's intro, but he's nowhere to be seen, finally 
entering on the opposite side of the stage as the others, 
laughing at having fooled everyone.)


SB: (to audience, cheerfully) Hi, folks.

DS: How you all doing? You like those two eps you saw? % Well, 
(pointing to Don) this guy created it all. %

Q (male): I read an article, I think it was in the Times, with 
Mr. Bakula, and he was saying in the article that he'd like to 
play a character with AIDS. Number one, is there anything like 
that coming; and number two, is there anything that's off limits, 
that you won't touch?

SB: Well, the off-limits line, I think you should direct to 
Don or Deborah or Michael. I think there's an episode out there 
about AIDS. I don't know what it is exactly, and I don't know if 
they have something in the works, but I don't think that a show 
like ours needs to be bound by too many of the normal things you 
can or cannot do. And I think so far that we live up to that, so 
hopefully...It's unfortunate that there is even an AIDS show to 
do. But I think we might be able to do a different one than the 
other shows and shed some different light on it. Don can answer 
the rest of it. Or Deborah.

DB: Yeah, it's a tough one. We do not have an AIDS show in the 
works, although I don't feel that there's anything off limits for 
"Quantum Leap" at all. We have been working on a show where Sam 
leaps in as a gay (audience goes "Woo..."). That has _not_ worked 
out to date. It's been written by...we've had a gay writer 
working on it. I'm not happy with the script. # There are a lot 
of reasons... It's a tough subject. Because I want to present it 
in a balanced light. I want to be able to represent all views. I 
hate _any_ kind of bigotry, be it against gays, blacks, 
minorities of any kind, in its form. It just--sucks, and life's 
too short. # % But we have some pitches coming in.

DP: We got a pitch about a twelve year old boy, and the story 
basically was dealing with his family's acceptance of his fate. 
And it's _so_ heavy. It's a matter of finding the heart and the 
warmth and the humor. And I think we'll do it.

DB: We will eventually do them both, probably. The difficult 
thing is to do the show within the parameters of the show. The 
show is a very difficult show to write. It looks easy; it's not. 
It's a very tough show to write, with all the parameters we've 
set up for it. So, yes, there's nothing off limits. I've never 
had the network say to us, "You can't do this, or we don't want 
you to do this." So, I think we'll (indistinct).

Q (same): Just one quick thing on the lighter side: My sister-
in-law, and a couple of people in the family, my fiancee 
included, think that Dean and Scott are probably two of the 
sexiest guys on TV. # %

DS: They're right! They're right! They're right!

Q: I wondered if there's anywhere they could write and get a 
glossy, y'know...

SB: Send to Universal. "Quantum Leap", care of, I think it's 
100...

DB: Tokyo, now. #

DS: 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, California... 
anybody know the zip?

SEVERAL AUDIENCE MEMBERS, IN UNISON: 91608! #

DS: 91608. Thank you. And we are. We're the sexiest guys... # 
Probably because it rubs off from me onto him.

Q: (female) Hi, this is a question for Deborah Pratt. It's 
very unusual to find a lot of women in the position that you 
have. I was wondering whether or not you were planning any shows 
(indistinct) on abortion. And I know that you've written a lot of 
the (indistinct) and I was wondering (indistinct) research for 
shows like that.

DP: A lot of it comes from my past. Summers in the South. 
Summers in California, 1965 (laughs slightly). Just experiences. 
Life experiences and trying to understand them and help people to 
understand what goes on in some situation. And the unique, 
wonderful thing about taking Sam Beckett and putting him into 
someone's life is that all of a sudden you have these fresh eyes 
looking on a perspective from the middle out. And I get to just 
say a lot of things that I believe, that I question, and--so far 
it's worked out pretty good. I'm writing a show now where he 
comes back as a sixteen-year-old pregnant woman, eight and a 
half--a sixteen-year-old pregnant girl, eight and a half months 
pregnant. # %

(Scott stands up and begins walking like he's pregnant; the 
audience laughs and applauds more)

Q: (same) This is also a question for Mr. Bakula. You sang on 
the very first episode, "Imagine". Are you...

DS: (interrupting) Ever hear of Milli Vanilli? # % (Dean 
points to himself smugly, indicating that _he_ had done the 
singing.)

SB: In his _dreams_. # (to questioner, politely) I'm sorry 
that that rude boy interrupted you. #

Q: I was wondering, are you planning to pursue any kind of a 
singing career, and if you'd like to go back to Broadway?

SB: I'd love to go back to Broadway sometime. I sing as often 
as I can. Before I came out here, I spent ten years in New York, 
doing predominantly musical theater, and I had a rock band from 
the fourth grade on, so I... # I've been singing a lot. They're 
very good about letting me do it on the show, and they work it in 
very nicely, in a lot of different ways. So I'm real lucky that 
way.

Q: Is there a certain song you'd like to sing on the show?

SB: (nonchalant) No. # I mean, I think getting to sing 
"Imagine" was probably--one of the greatest songs ever written % 
And Don wrote that episode. Don actually wrote both of the 
episodes you saw tonight, and Michael Zinberg, at the end, 
directed the Vietnam episode. %

Q: This question is for Scott Bakula. Can you tell me what 
your favorite episode was, and why?

SB: (laughs, sighs; so does the rest of the panel)

DB: We always get that. 

SB: Yeah. Y'know...

DS: (interrupting) That's two questions, that's too high to 
count.

SB: What?

DS: Two questions, and he can't count higher than that. #

SB: (gives Dean a dirty look) That's hard for me. There are 
certain aspects of every episode, almost, that I enjoy, because 
every episode is different. I really loved the first episode this 
year, going back home. That ranks as one of my favorites. I love 
the episode where I played a young retarded man. I love the "La 
Mancha" episode that Don directed. I loved the Watts show. I 
loved the episode where I played a lawyer in the deep South, I 
love the episode where I did...it goes on and on. # I'm the 
luckiest guy in town, to play this show.

DS: And he'll get an Emmy for the coming home show.

SB: (makes an upset face) No, no. %

DS: He should have gotten it this year, but...

SB: He said I'll get it this year, and I said that's the kiss 
of death, and who was right? # So that takes care of next year.

DB: You saw him playing his father in that episode, which was 
a terrific job.

DS: (to Don) Was that him? #

DB: That was him.

SB: (to Dean) It was _you_ again. You sing for me, you played 
my father...

DB: Dean's not around enough to _know_ who's playing what, 
y'know? # The guy works one day a week. # He has the _softest_ 
job in television and he's trying to think, "Should I come back 
at him now, or will it show up in the next script?" (Panel 
laughs)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: But they're great days.

SB: Yes, they are. (indistinct)

Q: I'm a big fan of the show, and I think Scott and Dean are 
the best actors on TV % I'm a late fan of the show, and I missed 
the first pilot movie, and I was wondering if there were any 
plans to rebroadcast that movie.

DB: That's interesting. Not at this time they don't. They did 
rebroadcast it once, the second year, I believe.

Q: (indistinct)

DS: Yeah. I betcha there's _someone_ here that _might_ have it. # 

Q: (indistinct, wanting anyone with a tape to meet her 
afterwards)

DP: I heard that "Quantum Leap" is the second-most taped show 
on television. #  People _collect_ "Quantum Leap".

DB: That's because we're on Friday night at eight. # 
(indistinct) People are not watching television. We're trying to 
move back. We've been trying. Hopefully we _will_ move back, to 
Wednesday night at ten (smiles)--or perhaps Wednesday night at 
nine. % NBC, I think, will move us back. Because our audience is 
definitely not a Friday night audience. We have a pretty hip 
audience, and those people aren't hanging around watching 
television on Friday night.

AUDIENCE MEMBER (Sally Smith, natch): Yes, we are! #

ANOTHER AUDIENCE MEMBER (Sally's friend): Yes, we are!

DS: Don't misunderstand. The people that really love the show 
are gonna watch it no matter where it is.

DB and SB: (simultaneously with Dean) No matter where it is.

DS: The other people who want to watch it, they have their 
lives, and they go _out_ on Friday... (audience begins to laugh 
as if to say "Thanks a lot" as Dean realizes that didn't come out 
at all the way he meant it to)

DB: Look, they're leaving right now! #

DS: They're taping this.

DB: He didn't mean it.

Q: I want to say, first of all, that I have been taping the 
show since its inception and thank God for "Quantum Leap". It's 
the first time in fifteen years that I can say on television that 
they've actually done something creative. The writing is 
excellent, the production is _wonderful_, and it's a real 
pleasure to see that on commercial television. I'd almost given 
up on it. One question that has been with me since I first saw 
the show, is where did you get the idea for the series?

(Scott laughs knowingly as everyone looks at Don; Dean again 
tries to take credit) #

SB: I'll take him outside for a while.

DB: (laughs) It, uh...Where do you get an idea? No, I won't go into that.

DP: (resigned) Four o'clock, one morning...

DB: She can tell you that. We happen to be married, so (Deborah takes 
Don's hand and the audience goes, "Aww..." and applauds)...

DP: Four o'clock one morning, he goes, (quietly) "Hey, hey, 
hey! Listen to this! OK. There's this guy, he travels around in 
time. But he only travels within his own lifetime, so he doesn't 
go back, 'cause that's not believable..." (a bit sarcastically) 
As if traveling in time is believable? # % (continuing) "And 
that's believable. And he's got a sidekick who only _he_ can 
see." I said, "Yeah, but when he goes in, doesn't he..." He says, 
"No-no-no. He goes _in_ and people see him kinda..." And I'm 
going, "Wait, it's four o'clock in the morning. At least let me 
get a cup of coffee and wait here!" #

DB: It's true. Actually, what happened was, I wanted to create 
a series that was different, and I wanted to be able to do an 
anthology. Which--television networks and studios don't want to 
do anthologies, because people really don't watch them and 
they're very hard to syndicate so that they can recover their 
money; they deficit-finance these things. And I just wanted to do 
something that would have a different story to tell every week. 
And I thought, "How can I do it?" And I was reading Timothy, 
uh...I can't think of it, "Coming of Age in the Milky Way". I was 
reading Einstein's theory of time, and I suddenly went, "Wait a 
minute, what if I did a time-travel show? No way, nobody believes 
a time-travel show." Like Deborah said, I woke up at four one 
morning and said, "What if he only travels in his own lifetime? 
People will believe _that_." (audience and panel laugh) "And if I 
can get a star or two that people will _like_ to watch every 
week, they'll tune in to watch _them_ on their adventure and then 
I can do any kind of story I want to do every week, and that'll 
be a lot of freedom." And, boy, was I wrong on that. It's so hard 
to write this show, as I say. I was right and I was wrong. That's 
how it really came about.

Q: (female, to Scott and Dean) My little sister turned sixteen 
last week, and I was wondering if you could hold up a sign and 
let me take a picture? #

(They do! %)

SB: What's the sign say?

Q: Happy sweet sixteen, Violeta.

(Everyone says "awww")

Q: Yeah, actually this question is directed to the three 
producers, or maybe to Mr. Bellisario. I know that you write a 
lot of the episodes yourself, and your wife, and I was wondering 
whether or not all the episodes are staff-written, or whether or 
not you have some free-lance submissions to the show.

DB: No, the episodes are not all staff-written, although... We 
take outside submissions if they come through an agent, that's 
fine. We look for writers all the time. It's very difficult to 
find a writer that can do the show. It doesn't matter how good 
the writer is, the show is a really tough show to write. You have 
to know what's really going on and what we're looking for. But, 
yes, we do have outside writers. This year we had how many...?

DP: Four.

DB: Four. And we're always short of scripts. Even among the 
staff. So we're always looking.

Q: I was just curious. Because you mentioned how difficult the 
show is to write a number of times, and I was wondering whether 
or not you publish a guideline for writers as to what the rules 
are?

(Deborah holds her fingers about two inches apart to indicate)

DB: Yeah, it is about that thick.

DP: It's about _that_ thick.

DB: Yeah, the rules of what you can and cannot do. And then 
the story arenas that we're looking for, and people come in with 
some--hopefully, people come in with fresh ideas. Usually, what 
happens is that people come in with the ideas that we've already 
been exploring. Which is what makes it difficult.

Q: (female) (This question was very indistinct and 
unbelievably rambling. It was something to do with wanting to 
know Al's birthday)

DB: Yeah, I do, for him, not Dean.

SB: 1928. #

(panel dissolves into smart remarks at each other)

DB: Dean's birthday...

DS: But I can _still_ play fourteen. #

Q: (more babbling)

DB: Being my alter ego, Dean's birthday's probably my birthday.

Q: Which is? #

DB: Actually, he's a little younger than me... #

Q: The year doesn't matter, just the day.

DB: Oh. August eighth.

Q: He's a Leo, obviously (more indistinct rambling, asking 
why, since Don had been a Marine, he made Al an admiral, and 
something about Al's attitude being non-Navy, making the panel squirm)

DB: I don't think his attitude is military at _all_. # % His 
attitude is more, "Hell, no, we won't go." Or it was. I made it 
because I wanted to have him play off of something different than 
what I thought the character was really like. I wanted it to be a 
shocker. Why I made him an admiral? I dunno. The uniform looks 
good on him. #

Q: (Yet more babbling, saying she'd have liked Marine dress 
blues better than Navy white--audience disagrees. Question trails 
off incoherently)

DB: I don't know. I just liked him as a Naval admiral. (to 
Dean) You like being a Navy admiral, or would you rather have 
been a Marine general?

DS: (considering) Uh...  (comments from panel) # I'm just 
trying to think who would get the most... _whacks_, y'know? # The 
Marines? No, I like the way it looks. It's _clean_, y'know what I mean?

Q: (different, female) I have to agree with you on the Navy 
whites, 'cause I'm going into the Navy, so... % This is to 
Deborah Pratt. Do you have any ideas in the works for maybe Sam 
jumping into the future? It would still be during his own lifetime.

DP: Yeah, we have ideas, of _course_ we have ideas. But we 
(indistinct) # Or into the far past.

DB: When does _Michael_ work on these things?

DP: Actually, we've had pitches and we've tossed around Sam 
coming into the future. And there's a whole trip that's one 
stumbling block after another. And one from a production 
standpoint of view--when you create the future, it's pretty well 
all new. So we do have a budget, and we do have to adhere to it. 
And we have a very short shooting schedule. So we have not quite 
come up with a way to do it. 

DB: Well, we probably will go into the future at some point. 
We were talking earlier--we talked about this earlier with Dean.

DP: Yeah.

DB: Where we go back and follow Dean in the future, back at...

DS: This is me in...?

DP: At the imaging chamber.

DB: The imaging chamber. %

DS: It's a hard show to write. We've been trying to think of an
environmental story, and it's hard to fit it into the "Quantum Leap" equation.

DB: See, we really like to do an upbeat show as much as 
possible. The one you just saw now was about as bittersweet an 
ending as we do. That, and the one that Deborah wrote, in Watts. 
The one in Watts was probably the most "down" ending we've ever 
done. I just didn't want to do that kind of show. I wanted to do 
a show that was fun and uplifting and everybody walked away with 
a good feeling, and maybe learned a little something in the 
process. In the future, I wanted to take Dean and have him take 
us through the waiting room, and the imaging chamber % and all of 
those things. And that is a big production problem, and it's very 
costly.  

Q: Also Dean, and/or Scott, do you have any future projects in 
the works besides "Quantum Leap"?

(They look at each other. #)

SB: No, not at this time.

DS: No, I'm just trying to learn to play this (holds up a 
recorder he's had in his hand the whole time).

SB: (mock-exasperated) Will someone _please_ ask him to play 
it, so he can get it over with? # %

DS: The reason I'm learning to play this is because I have a 
five and seven-year-old, and we're educating them in the home, 
and they have to learn to play this. So I have to teach it. I've 
been playing this now for ten days or two weeks.

SB: Do they have to play it with cigars? (Dean is also holding a cigar)

DS: No, they don't have to play with cigars. (He begins to 
play, fairly well, then makes a mistake and # %) I wrote that 
myself. (Don laughs, someone says it sounded like "Mr. Tambourine 
Man", and Scott laughs) I don't believe it. I wrote that myself! #

SB: I know what that is...

DS: It's called, "Hey, Sugar, C'mon Over".

SB: With your tambourine man...

DS: No, leave him outside.

Q: Hi. First I want to say, Dean, when I was seven, my father 
taught me to play the recorder just before Christmas...

DS: All right!

Q: This question is for Don and for Scott as co-creators of 
Sam. I wonder, what is Sam's theory as a person who spends time 
in the lives of these different people? What is Sam's theory of 
their experience the moment that Sam leaps out of their lives? 
Are they aware that... (Don and Scott look at each other #)

DB: I can tell you where they go while Sam is living their 
lives. They're in the waiting room, which is a medical-looking room.

DP: Very antiseptic.

DB: Very antiseptic, with people in white garments or robes, 
all enclosed and examining them and probing them and checking 
them; a lot of strange lights, futuristic. And when they come 
back and leap back, they immediately think that they have been 
kidnapped by aliens. # And if you check, that's when it all 
started, y'know, right about the time Sam started leaping. # All 
these encounters of the third kind began to happen. They were all 
quantum leaps.

We're going to be doing a show at the end of this season; 
hopefully, _if_ ...(looks pointedly at Deborah)

DP: I'm working on it! #

DB: (overlapping) ...somebody I know...

DP: I'm working on it! 

DB: ...will get the script written. # Which will be a three-
parter (audience goes, "Ooo"). And it'll be a three-parter that 
will take place in (indicating Scott and Dean)...Notice how 
they're hanging on everything I say, too? #

DS: I'm hoping it's a golf story. #

SB: With a recorder in it.

DB: Which will be a three-parter that will take place in the 
same town over three decades, in which Sam will leap into three 
different people. So he will solve some problem in the first 
decade, the Fifties, and there will be an overall story, probably 
a murder to solve, a three-decade long murder. And he will leap 
into one character, leap out, and be in the same town ten years 
later, and in another character. And then we will meet the first 
character that he leaped into, who has now come back. So we'll 
have to address exactly what you asked. And Deborah's addressing 
that at the moment (She laughs, so does the audience). (to Scott) 
What do you think?

SB: Well, y'know, I make up a lot of my own stuff as we go. # 
But this is just in my own, y'know, little mind as I'm doing some 
of this stuff. There's a part of me that feels--in this make-
believe world that I find very real--that deep, deep, deep in 
this person's body, in their subconscious, that part of that 
subconscious is aware of what happens. Just as part of my 
subconscious that's left in the present is aware of what's 
happening. It doesn't manifest itself while I'm in that body. But 
when I'm gone, there is a trace, there are traces of what went 
on. (to Don) We did--we _have_ addressed this. 

DB: Jung.

SB: _You_ wrote it. The double leap, in the Italian episode.

DB: That's true. One of the very first shows.

SB: And the guy came back and he was like, "Whoa." And the 
girlfriend said (in accent), "You look like you got hit on the 
head or something, you got a headache". And he said, "I don't 
remember anything", or whatever.

DP: "Talk about your earth moving".

SB: (laughs) Yeah, that's right. # So that's, y'know, that's 
just my own little rationale. So, he or she, they're not coming 
back totally...Someone says, "Just yesterday, you saved that 
little boy from drowning and you breathed in his mouth." And 
there's something that says, "Oh, yeah, did I? I don't..." So 
it's not like total amnesia. But see, that's just me. I made that 
all up myself, and he's over there...

DB: (shrugs) Works for me. No, works for me. #

DP: On page 7 of the handbook that comes out like this 
(indicating thickness again) you always say that when Sam leaps 
out, he leaves that person's life a better place for when they 
come back in. So if he is in...Friday, you walked out with the 
biggest term paper of your life due, and Monday--it was _done_. # 
% Would you quibble? #

SB: And, I mean, just as I feel that I leave that person's 
life a better person--Sam does--I feel like there's like a little 
swap going on. So--that's it.

Q: First of all, I'd like to say I would like it if someone 
could leap into my life, because I came here instead of doing a 
paper. # And, secondly, I'd like to address my question to Mr. 
Bakula. As an actor, how did you feel working against no one, 
doing the scenes with you and yourself as your father, and then 
having to play against nothing, and then...

SB: Yeah. It was very hard. I think when they did "Back to the 
Future", the guy who _applied_ my makeup was not the same guy who 
designed it--but he had done all the makeup for "Back to the 
Future"--  and he talked about, y'know, "For six months, we 
worked on this one scene". And we did it all in ten days. I was 
scared to death about it. Because I, literally, I was up at two-
thirty, and I went into prosthetics at three, and at seven 
o'clock, everybody came in to start work, and I'd be ready to 
shoot at around eight o'clock. We'd shoot my father all morning, 
and then at lunch, I'd take the makeup off and shoot the other 
side of the scene the rest of the afternoon. It was scary because 
you don't know what it's gonna come out, how it's gonna come out. 
And I had to trust my director. I had input from everybody else 
who was watching dailies--Don, Deborah, Michael--(indicates Dean) 
and _this_ guy helps me tremendously all the time.

DS: And my _mother_.

SB: And your mother was there, that's right. # And, y'know, it 
was kind of a little bit of a crapshoot. Fortunately, I felt the 
script was exceptionally well-written, and so most of my work in 
that area was already done. So I just had to hope that I was 
pulling it off, and you don't always know. I hadn't done this 
ever before.

DS: He never pulled it off, though, until the end of the day, 
when the work was done.  (audience groans, Scott gives him a 
look) I meant the prosthetics (he pantomimes taking off the makeup). #

DB: It was a...Scott always goes into every character. It's an 
interesting thing. Doing television--in doing television, you're 
so rushed. And Scott studies the character for the next script 
that he's gonna play while he's playing another character. So he 
has to prepare for one character while playing another character, 
which is extremely difficult. In this case, he had to do, y'know, 
two of them to prepare for. And then Scott came to us and said, 
"Gee, I'd like to come in and loop some of those lines 'cause I 
want to make sure that the dad comes off really the way I'd like 
to see him come off." And I don't think you had, to my knowledge, 
that much to do, because it _all_ came off. So he hit it in front 
of the camera. He was consistent in playing his father in the 
mornings, and then he was consistent in playing himself the rest 
of the day--according to the character--playing himself at age 
sixteen, which is very difficult, and I think a tribute to his 
acting ability. %

SB: You don't often get a chance to ever play anything like 
that _anywhere_ in your career, so, y'know, I felt lucky to even 
make a stab at it. So that was thanks to Don who said, "You wanna 
play your father?" And NBC fell dead on the floor.

DB: Right. But they gave us a little extra money to let you do 
it, and...although we went _way_ over, didn't we, Michael?

Michael Zinberg: (dryly) Not _way_ over. # "Way over" is a relative term.

Q: Hi. My question is pretty basic since I just started 
watching the show this season. Who is this person that Dean 
Stockwell's character speaks to all the time and how does he know 
all this information and why is Dean Stockwell's character a 
hologram and...

DS: Ziggy, you mean?

Q: Yeah.

DS: Ziggy's not a person.

DB: There's Gooshie...

DS: This was explained, as it were, in the pilot. Ziggy is a 
name given for a huge computer, a state-of-the-art computer in 
the present/future tense. And he's operated by a guy with bad 
breath named Gooshie. # 

DB: Little guy.

DS: Ziggy is the name of the computer. The thing that I have, 
Dean Stockwell, is a handlink to Ziggy. (through gritted teeth) 
Which I won't _talk_ about.

DB: Well, he doesn't to talk about it because we changed the 
handlink this year, and he's like a _child_. Y'know, "I want the 
old one back." #

DS: I want my old handlink back.

DB: "I want the old handlink back..."

DS: Who liked the old handlink? (hands go up, and there are 
cheers from the audience)

DB (and SB): Who likes the new handlink? (fewer hands go up) Oh!

DS: All _right_!

DB: Who knew there was a difference? #

DP: And Ziggy is hooked up into every newspaper, every book, 
every piece of information...

DS: Yeah, Ziggy's a huge computer that can really plug into 
everything. And the explanation in the pilot was that he 
(pointing to Scott) has an implant that was put in his neurons--
and what's the other, mesons?

SB: Mesons.

DS: His optical...

DB (laughing): He does _not_ know what he's saying, I'm telling you.

DS: So that he, at a certain frequency can see this hologram...

SB: (mock awe) This is incredible, because I only thought you 
remembered your _own_ lines. #

DS: I _change_ my own lines. # So this hologram can go back 
where he (pointing to Scott) is in time and he can see him, and 
he's the only one who can see him.

SB and DB: (indistinct since they're both talking)

DS: Until the Christmas show.

SB: The Christmas show.

DB: It _sounds_ complex. It's _very_ simple. It simply is 
that, where Dean is standing in an imaging chamber; it's a vast 
chamber, _miles_ across, _empty_, _nothing_ there. And when he 
tunes in, or the computer tunes him in to Sam, everything, Sam 
and everything around Sam appears as a hologram in that chamber. 
And to _Sam_, Al appears as a hologram. There's nothing else in 
the chamber. If he _touches_ something--we did that one episode, 
in the music episode, where he held a music stand.

DP: "Blind Faith".

DB: And the minute he let go of the music stand, it 
disappeared. But if Al is touching something, Sam can also see 
that. That's it. It's just a hologram. They're both holograms to 
each other. One in 1995...

DP: (sotto voce) 1997, we've been on for two years. #

DB: (with a look at Deborah) One in whatever year he's in. It's a _device_.

DS: You said it's a big room. I like that. Miles, huh?

Q: (female) I have a trivial question for Scott and a deep 
question for anybody who wants to tackle it. The trivial question 
is, will Sam ever get that _great_ beard that Scott's character 
had at the end of "Sibling Rivalry" # (and a few women scream). 
Didn't he look gorgeous like that? It was _great_.

SB: (managing not to look embarrassed) I think that would make 
it hard for the woman roles. # Unless we do another circus show.

DS: I _loaned_ him my beard. And it was just for the one movie.

Q: And the other question is, it seems that ever since the two 
episodes we saw tonight, Sam has been a little...um... _cranky_ # 
compared to past seasons. He doesn't hear Al out sometimes, he 
seems to want to get in and get out as soon as possible (audience 
laughs throughout all of this as the panel looks at Scott).

DB: (with feigned innocence) We don't _write_ the scripts that way. #

Q: And then he gets involved and gets to care about them. He 
always gets to love these people by the time he leaves them. I 
was wondering if that was intentional at all. #

DB: We don't write 'em that way. (looks pointedly at Scott) 
This is a personal thing going on... # 

Q: I don't believe that. He's too good.

DB: No, there's nothing intentional, really. I'll have to look at that.

DP: In any good script, you look for conflict. And sometimes 
that works as conflict. I think if it's in there, it's just to 
give Dean something different to play, or give Scott something 
different to play, so that we can give them different attitudes 
about different situations. It's good scriptwriting.

SB: (shrugs, grins) I've...had my period? #

Q: I have a question for the writers. Why do you seem so 
unwilling to go into like a different century or something, stuck in...?

DB: Ah! It's going to sound crazy, but I _truly_ believe that 
you leap him into the Civil War, you leap him into Rome, it 
becomes unbelievable. It's believable if he's in the '50's or the 
60's, because--y'know, people have cars, they look a lot alike, 
they dress the same, they talk the same. It's more believable 
that way. It's the only thing I can tell you. It's just a 
personal thing, that's why I did it. I just felt it would be 
totally unbelievable, everybody would be looking and going 
(derisively), "Oh, yeah, right, he's wearing a Roman toga, yeah, right." # 

Q: Well, I wasn't born in the Fifties, so it's unbelievable for me, too.

DB: The Fifties? Well, see, I'm so _old_ it's... #

Q: I have a question for Dean. Why are you holding your cigar? It's not lit.

DS: It went out. # I can remedy that. # (He does)

Q: Yeah, since most of my questions have been answered, how 
would you all (indistinct) # I was wondering, since I didn't 
catch on at the beginning of the season, when the show first 
started, how did and why did Sam get chosen to do these leaps?  
He was actually alive before, he had his family and his life, how 
is he doing these leaps, why was he chosen?

DB: Michael, you want to answer that? (Zinberg shakes his 
head. #) OK. Sam, in the beginning episode, the pilot episode, 
Sam is a quantum physicist who has developed an experiment called 
"Quantum Leap", a project, where he's gonna travel in time. He 
goes into an accelerator and figures out how do to this, they 
punch the buttons--voom--he goes flying off into time, but 
_somebody_ interferes. "Somebody" could be Time, it could be God, 
it could be Fate, it depends on what you want to believe it is. 
And that person has said, "How _dare_ you go leaping about in 
time? I'm gonna grab you and I'm gonna use you. And I'm gonna use 
you to do _good_. And I'm gonna use you to change some things 
that went wrong."

Q: (quietly, in tone of enlightenment) OK! Thanks a lot...

DB: And that's the _whole_ concept. And what he's trying to do 
is, if he can continue to change things, maybe _one_ of these 
times, whoever's jerking his string will jerk him back to his own 
time, and he'll then return to where he... But in the _meantime_, 
his attitude is, "I'm gonna enjoy this." Because in the very 
first episode, he got to talk to his father, who was dead. And he 
said, "This isn't so bad." And as Al said at the end of the 
episode tonight, I'd give _anything_ to be able to talk to my 
brother again, my sister, my father, mother, the whole thing.

Q: It's made us all think about, possibly, our own families.

DP: Yeah.

Q: That's great. Also, there was an episode at Halloween time, 
that was great. %

DB: That was written by Chris Ruppenthal...is Chris here?

DP: Is Chris here?

DB: No...

SB: We now call him "Ruppenboogie" because of that.

DB: If he _can't_ be on the stage, he _doesn't_ want to be 
here. No, it was written by Chris Ruppenthal and two or three 
other episodes.

Q: Yeah, and Stephen King, did he have any kind of...

DB: No, Stephen King had no input, but we had to get Stephen 
King's permission to do that.

DP: But he was thrilled.

Q: It was fun.

SB: Yeah, they have the same agent, so it helped. # (panel 
looks at Scott) They have the same agent, Chris and Stephen King.

Q (female): I have two questions. The first is for Deborah 
Pratt. As a journalist making the transition to writing, I was 
wondering how you made the transition from being an actress to a 
writer and a producer and some of the difficulties you had.

DP: I got very angry as an actress, as a black actress, as a 
female actress, because the roles were so limited. And in my 
frustration I was--bitching. And someone said, "Well, change it!" 
So I locked myself up in my apartment and I started writing, and 
I started knocking on doors and using every contact that I have. 
I had a friend whose father was a producer at Columbia and I 
said, "WIll you please read this?" And it was a late-night soap, 
1979. He liked it and he put it into development. It became a 
daytime soap. It didn't sell, but it made me think, "Oh, wow, I 
can do this." And then I had a big background in comedy, so I 
started writing comedy. And Mr. Bellisario hired me as an actress 
and I had the chutzpahs, or whatever you call it, to come up and 
say, "I wrote a script! for 'Airwolf', and would you read it?" 
And he says, "So you want to be a writer?" I said, "Yes." And he 
said, "Well, this is wrong and this is wrong and this is wrong 
and this is wrong and _this_ is wrong...Rewrite it!"

DB: Page one was OK. #

DP: So by about my seventh rewrite, it got made, and I enjoy seeing
the magic of a script turned into film. One of my favorite things.

DB: Deborah's really good at writing the...she really does 
write wonderful social issues. She likes to deal with those, she 
does great on writing the stories about women. I think you've 
written--three now, where he's leaped in as a woman? 

DP: Just two.

DB: Well, you're writing the third.

DP: Oh, three, yeah.

DB: You're writing the third right now, where he leaps in as a 
pregnant woman. And you've written two where he leaps into a black.

DP: But I wrote fluff, too. "Sea Bride" was fluff. That was it.

Q: Oh, and the second question is for Mr. Stockwell. I was 
wondering who designs the clothing that you wear. # % Is your 
feeling about that clothing reflected in the fact that you're so 
blue-collar tonight? (Dean was wearing jeans and a denim jacket)

DS: Say that last line again?

Q: Who designs...

DS: The last part.

Q: Are your feelings about that attire reflected in the fact 
that...

DS: No, no. No. Well, Al is a character, and I play the 
character, and he has a costume and a costume designer. As a 
matter of fact, when we started this, Don and I had some 
conversations about it, serious ones, about how the guy would 
look. And we decided that we needed someone to help us come up 
with the concept of something really off-the-wall. And Don knew 
of this gentleman, Jean-Pierre Dorleac, who was nominated for an 
Emmy for a show, he _should_ have won.

SB: _Should_. %

DS: But did not win it, unfortunately. And he's the one that 
puts together all of my outfits. We started out together, and we 
went shopping, he made some, and everything, and we got on a 
frequency where we both knew it what was going to be and we liked 
it. And now I don't even have to. Whatever he sends down, I put 
on. Ninety-five percent of the time. # He's good.

DB: (indistinct) He'll change the tie...

DS: He comes up with great stuff. I pick stuff out myself 
sometimes, but we understand it and it's consistent, although 
it's always different. I'm glad you like it. But this is no 
reflection, this is what I go to work in (indistinct, something 
about "no fun") the same thing I work in. #

Q: Hi. My question's been answered, too, but I just wanted to 
comment on the show. I think it's great. I mean, I never watch 
TV, but this is the best show. I think a lot of people were 
nominated for Emmys that should've won. %

SB: Thank you.

(tape ended here, so there is a slight gap until the other one 
picks up)

Q: ... you mulling over it and...

DB: Absolutely, no. When Scott came in and read, I didn't want 
to say right on the spot, "Oh, boy, you're the guy!" y'know, and 
get all excited and then he went wild and ask for y'know, eight 
million dollars. # But he came in, he read, he walked out, 
and...it was the first time I'd met Scott. And I said, "He's 
perfect. This is the guy." And then when I heard Dean would be 
interested in doing it, I was really excited, because I...Dean 
had just finished, "Married to the Mob" was just out about that 
time. % And Dean came in and read and did...I mean, he was the 
_character_. He was just _there_. And it was like, wonderful. And 
it's been that way ever since. These guys are just great to work 
with. Non-star stars. By that, I mean no attitude on either one 
of them. They're just there to work and have fun. And the whole 
set reflects it. It's just a lot of fun.

Q: (male) Whenever Sam leaps into a woman, how come he never 
has to kiss a man? # %

DB: I think we should...

DP: Came close!

DB: I think we, did you see... 

DP: "Gloria"? "What Price Gloria"?

DB: In "Gloria", he came _real_ close! There's some out-takes 
there we're not sure about... #

SB: Aw, come on! Come on...

DP: I always thought of Scott Bakula as John Wayne in heels. # 
The guy's really macho. The first time he came out in "Gloria", 
in that chiffon dress with the stockings and the pumps. And I 
watched him walk like this... (she demonstrates) # He gave me a 
whole new perspective.

Q: My question's for Dean Stockwell. First of all, I want to 
say your work's great, I really enjoy it.

DS: Thank you.

Q: My question is, how difficult was it for you to go from 
being a child actor to an adult star? It seems like in Hollywood 
it's very difficult to make that transition. I was just curious 
how difficult it was for you to do that. 

DS: It was tough. But, I mean, I don't think anyone in any 
field of endeavor, or _no_ field of endeavor, has an easy time 
going from childhood to adulthood. Y'know, it had its 
difficulties and I'm grateful that I made it through and I'm 
doing well. %

AUDIENCE APPLAUDS, PANEL SAYS THANK YOU AND EVERYONE LEAVES