From: shaw@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Mark Shaw)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.tv
Subject: Re: QL is bogus!
Date: 17 Oct 92 00:01:47 GMT
Article-I.D.: aries.shaw.719280107
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana


In article <1blklrINNv0@crcnis1.unl.edu>, aberigan@nde.unl.edu (A. Berigan) writes:
> 
> Mark Shaw <mshaw@uiuc.edu> writes:
> 
> >How come Sam never feels the effects of what he was feeling or doing from
> >one leap to the next?  For example, at the end of one emotionally trying
> >leap, he can instantly recover when he leaps into someone new.  And when
> >he's running a lot or getting beat up, why isn't he tired in the next
> >leap?  What happens when he leaps at the end of a day into the morning
> >and has to stay awake for another 12 hours or so?  - doesn't he get tired?
> >
> >The fact that Sam's awareness is discontinuous between leaps is bogus...
> 
> If you can handle the occasional leap-in-to-rerun, why can't you handle
> that?  Indeed, if he recapped for the audience what happened in the
> previous leap in the new leap, you'd have less time for the new leap,
> and you'd mess up the transitions between eps during reruns.

I wasn't really talking about a recap.  I agree this would be hazardous
for reruns.

> Also keep in mind that he's been doing this for awhile.  He has shown
> that at times he can sense a leap is coming, and so it wouldn't take
> much to think that he has learned to forget what he was thinking and
> prepare himself for another new situation at such times.

I could believe this in some (perhaps most) situations.  But there are 
those few where he isn't prepared or is involved heavily in something
else.  For example, I don't know the name of the episode, but it's the
one where he is an Indian and his grandfather wants to die on the reservation
land - he gets very emotionally involved in the leap and as he's carrying
the old man across the river and laying him on the ground he is acutally 
crying.  So, he is very sad right at the point of leaping, but then fine
the next moment, assuming that it only takes a moment for him.
 
> Or you can reason that he gets a bit swisscheesed between leaps, and
> enough of the leapee's mind gets retained to keep him in sync with the
> leapee's biological clock.

But, that would still be jarring, wouldn't it?  I mean one minute Sam's 
'biological clock' is in the mood of sadness and the next it is curious
or sedated or whatever he is when he enters a new person.

> >Mark
> >mshaw@uiuc.edu
> 
> Time to trade up from a +2 to a +3 Suspenders of Disbelief, Mark.
> 

In fact someone else posted a plausible answer that there
is more space than we see between leaps and that Sam is held in limbo for
an unspecified amount of time.  I can upgrade - I will, I will, I WILL!

But, there's one other thing that bothers me too.  What happens to the
people that are in the waiting room after they get back into their own
lives.  Sam seems to leap into people's lives at key moments and changes
them (usually for the better) rather significantly.  So, are we just 
supposed to believe that when the original person gets back they just
accept all the changes (most of which they probably don't even know
about)?  Sam makes their lives all fine and dandy, but how do we know
they don't have to go through the whole ordeal again simply because
they don't know what has been done by Sam?

Any explanations for that so that I can trade up from +2 to +3?

Mark      
mshaw@uiuc.edu