Top Ten Hoosiers in Fiction: #7

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Top Ten Hoosiers in Fiction

#7

Sam Beckett (Quantum Leap)

Scott Bakula as Sam Beckett

Quantum leap, a sci-fi series running from 1989 to 1993, has one of the more contrived and corny plots in television history, and a theme song to match (don’t use elevator music to introduce science fiction.) The producer of the show admitted the series was primarily an excuse to write a show about different time periods anthology-style.

At the center of the mess was Sam Beckett, a genius physicist working at Project Quantum Leap for science. When the military decides that the science is not science enough for them, he makes a leap for science and jumps into the Quantum Leap device, science ensues, and now he has to go through time switching places with people throughout recent history to right wrongs. If I were to try to explain why or how, this entry would get too long. So let’s skip it and suspend our disbelief for the moment.

Beckett follows in the footsteps of many great Hoosiers in science like Lewis Terman, Elwood Haynes, Andrew Moyer, Paul Samuelson, Phillip Anderson, and Harold Urey. They are quiet leaders in their fields, keeping their noses to the grindstone and letting others take the limelight of their professions. They’re Nobel Prize winners, innovators, inventors, and pathfinders of the modern age. Yet they are low-key, folksy, and keep to their humble roots.

Beckett is no exception. The Elkhart man with an IQ above 260, seven doctorates, fluency in a half dozen languages, and a multitude of patents faces his problems with a sigh and an “Oh boy.” There’s a certain Hoosier versatility and unflappability in the face of new situations that is epitomized in Scott Bakula’s rendition of Beckett.

He might be in a tough, impossible, or confusing situations, but Beckett is going to do what it takes to correct the problem and take a step home. Thank you, Sam, for your humble brilliance.

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