Sam's father, John Samuel Beckett, is a recurring character in which Scott Bakula takes on dual roles in the two appearances he makes of John with son Sam Beckett on Quantum Leap. Newell Alexender appears as John in part two of the series pilot story arc "Genesis: Part 2".
About Sam's dad John[]
Character description[]
John is a kind, hard-working, and honest man who never degrades or belittles his wife. He smoked, and claimed he was healthy because he worked hard, slept good, and ate plenty of dairy products. He worked on the dairy farm, sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. Despite his hard work, the farm was initially taken away from him. The sequence changes in one of Sam's leaps to his hometown in 1969.
Named after his grandfather John Beckett, who was a Union Army officer who served in the American Civil War, John was a dairy farmer and was married to Thelma Louise Beckett. John and wife Thelma are the parents of Sam, Tom and Katie. He died due to a fatal heart attack, mostly because he smoked too many cigarettes daily. In the episode "The Leap Home, Part I", Sam tries to make his father stop smoking cigarettes but couldn't convince him to change his diet, start exercising and give the cigarettes up.
John, Sam's dad, again appears in the Season 5 episode "Promised Land", as Sam, who leaped into William "Willie" Walters, Jr., an acquaintance of Sam whose family is acquainted with the Beckett family in Oak Ridge, IN in 1971, also, one of three brothers who are robbing the town bank in order to pay off a loan, runs into John beforehand, as he's headed from the bank, as he asks how Willie's family is doing, as Sam, who almost slipped and tried to introduce himself as his son before getting reminded by Al that his dad can only see he as his leapee Willie, as he then wishes John and his family a "Very Merry Christmas".
Image gallery[]
Appearances/References[]
- "Genesis: Part 2" - Played by Newell Alexender
- "The Leap Home, Part I" - Scott Bakula in dual role, also appearing as Dr. Samuel Beckett
- "Promised Land" - Played again by Bakula, again in dual role
- The novel Independence is where we learn that John was named after his Civil War ancestor.