Geek Intersect: Scott Bakula

A Geek Intersect is an entertainer - often an actor - who has portrayed more than one seminal role associated with genre television or movies. Someone who has come to MEAN something to fans of genre fiction, and consequently, whose every new appearance takes on a double meaning. To geeks, they've become a connection to important geekery real estate and immediately create a reference or allusion back into the Intersect of All Things Geek. This new series means to celebrate those men and women and what they've meant to us.Scott Bakula: The nicest man in geekdom.

Sam Beckett. Scott Bakula will always best be known for his role as a time-lost physicist in Quantum Leap. There was something so wholesome about Sam, apparently informed by Bakula's own personality. This guy was DECENT, and even if he had spent the rest of his career playing villains, it's still how we would remember him. Quantum Leap was a crossover show. Something my mom enjoyed as much as we kids did. Something I trotted out more than a decade later to much younger friends who also fell in love with it. It was science fiction that nonetheless attracted Emmy nods. It had a great premise, sure, but at the heart of it, it's all about hearing Sam say "Oh boy" after every leap, isn' it? Oh, and those quantum kicks. Definitely.

Captain Archer. We didn't hear from Bakula for a long time, it seems, after Quantum Leap. And then, out of the blue, he turns up as nothing less than the CAPTAIN OF THE ENTERPRISE on Star Trek's last series. After 7 tedious years of Voyager, I might have been willing to give up on Trek, but Bakula being in the cast made that impossible. Archer was imbued with the same decency and gentle humor as Sam Beckett (but again, that's all Bakula), but with a harder, more impatient edge. And I was more than willing to follow him on a tour of early Federation history, no matter how revisionist it would become. Archer was a great captain even if his star never rose as high as Kirk's, Picard's or Sisko's, but he's not far off. Before Chris Pine, he was the last captain of the Enterprise, but he was also the first (and still is).

Stephen Bartowski AKA Orion. Chuck is a show that's great at paying its dues to all the geekery the writers and producers grew up on. Is it any wonder that Chuck's dad would turn out to be Scott Bakula? Bartowski the elder came into the show's second season as a frazzled loser/inventor, not entirely far from a befuddled Sam Beckett, early in any given Leap, nervously looking around for clues as to who he is and talking to his imaginary friend. They referenced the "oh boy" and I thought he might well LEAP as soon as Ellie's marriage was saved. But no, Stephen Bartowski was also Orion, super-hacker and inventor of the Intersect, taking on the Archer-esque hero role in the shadows. It was perfect casting, and not just because of this dual role. One might be angry at a father who mysteriously left his kids when they were teenagers, but who could stay mad at Scott Bakula? He immediately ingratiates himself into our hearts and we forgive him everything. Not because he's got a good excuse, but because we've been conditioned by the Geek Intersect to think of him as a GOOD GUY.

Favorite moments: I've always loved the Man of La Mancha episode of Quantum Leap - really shows off Bakula's versatility. Archer scenes that come to mind all feature his dog Porthos, I don't know why. (Wait, of course I do.) And in Chuck... fight in the cabin? Yeah, fight in the cabin.

Extra credit: Bakula starred in Lord of Illusions, one of the few Clive Barker stories put on film, and more recently, he was cast as the voice of Jake Gillenhall's father in Source Code, SOLELY to make the audience care about a father-son relationship that couldn't have much screen time (and of course, that film borrows Quantum Leap's premise somewhat).

Geekmeter says: Aces, Charles!

What are your favorite Scott Bakula memories?