Is Journeyman Just a Clone of Quantum Leap?

How is this for the premise for a TV series? A man is forced to travel back in time within his own life time to change the past for the better to alter the future. He doesn't know why he is sent on these trips, whether by God or time or fate?

If this sounds familiar, one can be forgiven for thinking so. It was the exact same premise for a long running series called Quantum Leap, which ran for a number of years in the late eighties and early nineties, starring Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell. It is also the premise of a new series, premiering on September 24^th, 2007, called Journeyman.

Journeyman stars Kevin MacKidd, most famously seen as Centurion Lucius Vorenus in the series Rome. He plays Dan Vassar, a newspaperman living in San Francisco, who finds himself unstuck in time for some reason that he can't quite figure out. Unlike Bakula's Sam Beckett, Vassar trips back in time in his own body at random times. In the premier episode, Vassar's leaps-er-trips are confined to the San Francisco area, so he also has to be careful about meeting people he knows, including past versions of himself.

Like Sam Beckett, Vassar has to fix some event in history for the better. In the premier episode it involves three trips to various time periods involving a man with relationship and family problems.

After each time Vassar fixes what he is suppose to fix, whether it is to stop a man from committing suicide or to get a fractured family back together, he returns to his home time, plus whatever period he spent in the past.

This feature of Vassar's trips confuse his family and friends. Apparently to them, Vassar simply disappears for unknown reasons, only to return with an imperfect story about where he has been. Naturally they suspect a drug habit. Vassar has to be very creative to prove that he is in fact going back in time.

There is one other interesting feature. Vassar has a lost love named Livia who died several years back in a plane crash. It turns out, though, that Livia too has become unstuck in time, which is fortunate for her since otherwise she would have been part of a smoking crater.

On its own merits, Journeyman is a pretty decent show. True, MacKidd struggles a little to maintain his American accent, but he conveys the confused and somewhat anxious mien of a man who is having incredible things happening to him.

Gretchen Egoff plays Vassar's long suffering wife Katie. Moon Bloodgood plays Vassar's lost love Livia. (Now here's an interesting thought about a love triangle that exists across time.)

Naturally Journeyman is going to be judged against Quantum Leap, a show of which it is obviously a clone. If it is to survive on the air, it will have to establish its own identity. It will be interesting to see if it does.