Four episodes in to this new series, lets take a look at how this re-imagining of Quantum Leap is going so far.

In high school, my best friend and I waited over an hour to buy tickets to the new Batman movie. This was the first movie I'd ever literally waited in line to see, and that fact added more than a little to the intensity of the experience.

Up until that day, Batman was a fun--if silly--show that played in reruns on snowy UHF stations (don't ask, kids). I had no experience with the comics, so the campy, pun-loving Adam West was my only vision of the dark night. Ninety minutes later, I walked out into the blinding sunlight--it was only $5.50 back then if you went to the matinee--a changed man.

In crafting his version of Batman, Tim Burton tossed out everything that had come before and started over. He re-imagined the entire story, updating the details and mechanics to fit a new generation. He made Batman "cool." No one had ever told me that you could do something like that before. I was in awe.

In Burton's vision, Batman wore military grade body armor instead of blue spandex. The whole bat persona was used to intimidate the street thugs he fought in the alleys. And the man behind the bat was a little bit insane--actually tossing muggers off buildings in a twisted blood lust vendetta to avenge his murdered parents.

"You know," I said to my friend after the movie as we made our way through the parking lot to his '87 Hyundai hatchback, "next they should trying doing that to Spiderman!"

(As a side note here, wouldn't it be a great point in this story if I told you my friend was, in fact, Toby McGuire? Yeah, he wasn't. But, damn, that would have really been cool.)

From that time forth, I've been a sucker for this idea of retelling a story and updating it to fit the state of the genre. So when I saw the first commercials for Journeyman this summer, I immediately setup a season pass on my Tivo.

Journeyman basically takes the skeleton of the Quantum Leap premise and applies it to a more modern fantasy / sci-fi tale. Initially forgoing all of the techno babble, we jump into the story at full speed in the pilot episode, as Dan Vasser (Kevin McKidd, Rome) simply passes out and wakes up in another time, seeming as baffled by what is going on as we are--well, a little more so, since we had a chance to see the previews.

A nice grounding device they use early on is the character of Livia Beale (Moon Bloodgood, Pathfinder), Dan's long assumed dead fiancée. A journeywoman herself, Livia plays the Al role of sorts, giving Dan some desperately needed guidance but also giving him (along with the audience) a clear indication that this is all real. Through her coaching, Livia cryptically reveals that there is some sort of structure and purpose through these trips through time. She also sets a bit of the tone for us, implying that these trips aren't always successful or desirable.

Dan's initial reaction to finding Livia also illustrates what I consider an amazingly satisfying choice the writers are making with Journeyman. While in true Quantum Leap fashion we encounter some tragedy in the past each week that must be set right, the main focus of each episode is on Dan struggling to hold his life together through all of it. While compelled to help these strangers he meets, Dan's top concerns are things like making sure his wife doesn't leave him, keeping his job, and making it back to see his kid's recital. The people he goes back to help seem almost an annoying background task for him. Deep down he is a good person and his own moral compass compels him to help these people, but he reacts to the situation in a realistic way, putting his family first.

This is the reaction I would expect a normal guy to have when thrust into this fantastical situation, and that ring of believability helps hold the rest of the story together. To that end, while the premise of Journeyman could be described as simply a San Francisco newspaper reported being strangely whisked through time, ostensibly to put right what once went wrong, this premise merely plays as a frame for the main--and much more interesting--story arc. In the pilot episode we learn that the apparent death of his fiancée sends Dan into a downward spiral, ending in eluded to gambling and drug addictions. We infer from the dialog so far, that Dan finds his way back from that depression and destructive behavior with the help of Katie (Gretchen Egolf, Martial Law), his brother's ex, who he later marries. Upon meeting up with Livia, however, we soon discover that Katie may not be so much the love of his life as she is someone to fill a void.

On a worrisome note, Journeyman is a time travel story which follows Dan as he leaps journeys from one time period to the next, and not always sequentially. While regular sci-fi fans (as are most of the people on this site, I would assume) will find this kind of thing pretty straightforward and enjoyable, I've already seen grumblings on message boards that the stories can be hard to follow. To survive, Journeyman is going to have to find a mainstream audience the way Lost and Heroes did. I personally love the subtle time shifting cues (the soundtrack of the era always brings a smile to my face) and feel they go a long way to immersing the audience into the story. I wonder, though, if this subtly will become too much for the mainstream audience.

Like any good fantasy or sci-fi work, Journeyman is a compelling story about likable, relatable characters first, and seemingly magical time travel second (are you paying attention, Bionic Woman writers?). We have a complex love triangle--or perhaps square, if you include Jack (Reed Diamond, Homicide: Life on the Street), Dan's brother--and it really isn’t clear yet who we should be rooting for. To my thinking, it has been a strong start, and I look forward to bringing you my thoughts on the episodes each week as they air. If you have an Apple iPhone, be sure to check back often. Hopefully, we can get these review ranked on the first page on Finder-spideR.