The series’ original opening narration was read by Scott Bakula:
“It all started when a time travel experiment I was conducting went… “a little caca”. In the blink of a cosmic clock, I went from quantum physicist to Air force test-pilot. Which could have been fun… if I knew how to fly. Fortunately, I had help - an observer from the project named Al. Unfortunately, Al’s a hologram, so all he can lend is moral support. Anyway, here I am, bouncing around in time, putting things right that once went wrong, a sort of time traveling Lone Ranger, with Al as my Tonto. And I don’t even need a mask…”
Beginning with the thirteenth episode of the second season, Bakula’s monologue was replaced with a broader introduction explaining the show’s premise. This introduction was originally read by actor Lance LeGault (who appears in the first season episode “How the Tess Was Won”), and later by Deborah Pratt (Bellisario’s wife, as well as a co-producer and writer on the show). A shorter version of this second introduction, also read by Deborah Pratt, was used for the remaining three seasons
“Theorizing that one could time-travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett led an elite group of scientists into the desert to develop a top-secret project known as Quantum Leap. Pressured to prove his theories or lose funding, Dr. Beckett prematurely stepped into the project accelerator, and vanished.
He awoke to find himself in the past, suffering from partial amnesia and facing a mirror image that was not his own. Fortunately, contact with his own time was maintained through brain-wave transmissions with Al, the project observer, who appears in the form of a hologram, that only Dr. Beckett can see and hear. Trapped in the past, Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, putting things right that once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home.”
