Known for his starring roles in such series as “NCIS: New Orleans,” “Star Trek: Enterprise” and “Quantum Leap,” Scott Bakula is heading back to CBS.
According to a report from Deadline, the 72-year-old actor has signed on to a new pilot for the network.
Still in the Early Stages
Bakula will be star and executive producer of the as-yet-untitled pilot, which is being produced by Dean Devlin’s Devlin Entertainment.
The series is described as “a high-concept detective procedural set in Los Angeles,” and is written and executive produced by Michael Sussman, who previously worked with Bakula as a writer-producer on “Star Trek: Enterprise.”
In a clever reference to his 1990s TV hit “Quantum Leap,” Bakula’s character in the upcoming series is described as representing quite a “leap” from the role he played for seven seasons on “NCIS: New Orleans,” NCIS Special Agent Dwayne “King” Cassius Pride.
Once a pilot is shot, CBS will then decide whether to order Bakula’s new project to series.
‘Quantum Leap’ Remains Popular
Of all Bakula’s various series, “Quantum Leap” remains the one for which he’s most associated.
In that series, he played Dr. Sam Beckett, a brilliant scientist who stepped into his time travel experiment and vanished, leaping into the bodies of seemingly random people at different points in history.
“I think the beauty of when you do things that are set in a different time, or era, is that they can have legs. A lot of time travel and science fiction does that. And this [episode] is no exception. It helps that it was a good show, too,” Bakula said of the show’s enduring popularity in an interview with the Television Academy.
The series was created by Donald P. Bellasario, who went on to create “NCIS.”
As Bakula explained, it was Bellarsio who established the parameters of Sam’s time-travel leaps, but occasionally strayed beyond them.
“The beauty of Don was that he wrote all the rules for the show. And then when he needed to break him, he just did — because he could,” Bakula recalled.
When the series was cancelled after five seasons, it came as a surprise to Bakula, who had believed the show would be picked up for a sixth. As a result, “Quantum Leap” never really ended so much as it simply stopped.
“We didn’t know we had been canceled, so Don had to wrap up with what he had,” Bakula said of the episode that wound up becoming the series finale.
“We thought there was a possibility we might be canceled, but, no, nothing certain. So I always say, ‘You take that writing assignment where you have to write an episode like it might be the last episode.’ But, in our case, the episode also needs to be able to continue the series if it goes on. Also, it has to maybe leave the door open for, say, a two-hour wrap-up movie that we tried to pitch — the kind of thing that’s [happening] now. Or, maybe give us a final [limited] run of episodes, like the final six episodes of whatever it was for ‘The Conners,’ something like that,” he added.
“So Don took that task, considering all those aspects, and created the final episode — which had all those potential possibilities [in place] when the episode was over. That’s why it was not satisfying to some [fans] that Sam didn’t get to leap home and all that stuff. But [Don] had to leave the door open because we hadn’t been canceled yet,” Bakula said.
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‘Star Trek,’ ‘NCIS’ Star to Headline New CBS Detective Drama