The Knight and the Jester by McPoodle
Series Primers and Credits
The intended audience of this story is fans of Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers. So for those of you willing to sit through a "refresher course" on the two crossovers, here are short primers on Quantum Leap and The X-Files. If you scroll all the way to the end, you'll get to the legally mandated and extraordinarily long credits for the story.
A Quantum Leap Primer
The following is adapted from the Quantum Leap Information Kiosk by Go-Captain Alvarez, one of the leading sites on information about the series:
On March 26, 1989, Quantum Leap debuted on NBC as a mid-season replacement series. The series centers on the adventures of the multi-talented quantum physicist Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) whose time travel experiment has gone awry. Project Quantum Leap was developed in order to send a person traveling through time. Theorizing that one can time-travel within the span of one's own lifetime, Dr. Beckett's theories are brought into reality in a top-secret project hidden deep in a mountain somewhere in New Mexico. On the verge of losing funding for the project, Sam sends himself back into the past exchanging places with a young US Air Force test pilot, demonstrating beyond any doubt that Project Quantum Leap is a success. Although the project keeps its funding, its principal investigator can't be brought home. Due to the failure of the retrieval system, or perhaps due to the intervention of a higher power, Sam finds himself leaping through the years from life to life, moving on only when he puts right what once went wrong in each person's life.
Time travel is not easy for Sam Beckett, especially when you can't control where you might end up next. As an added complication, leaping messes with your mind. Although Sam usually remembers who he is after a leap, parts of his memory get scrambled each time, making it difficult for Sam to remember previous leaps, skills he possesses, and information he may have already known about the current time period (the swiss-cheese effect). Sam is assisted by a support team anchored in the "present" (the late 1990s). Rear Admiral Albert Calavicci (Dean Stockwell) is the Observer and he's also Sam's best friend. A small amount of neural material collected from both Sam and Al allows Ziggy (voice of Deborah Pratt), the semi-sentient, hybrid supercomputer to track Sam through time. While he is in the Imaging Chamber, Ziggy can project a holographic image of Sam's time period around Al. Sam, in turn, can see an image of Al in his own mind. Through the handlink to Ziggy (a palm top data terminal) Al can provide advice and information to Sam, which will help him determine the nature of his mission and then complete it.
Exactly what Sam is supposed to "put right" each leap often remains a mystery well into each episode. When Sam leaps, he trades places with someone in the past. That person ends up in the "future" in the Project's Waiting Room (often scared and confused) while Sam takes their place. People in the past don't see Sam Beckett; they see the person he is replacing. Small changes for the better in the lives of seemingly anonymous people will often have major repercussions on significant historical events in our recent past.
A few other details I didn't find in the above summary:
Ziggy's main contribution to each episode is "her" connection to all of the major government and news databases, allowing her to figure out what it is Sam must do for the leap. At the Project, Al is the only one who sees the guest in the Waiting Room for who they are (everyone else sees Sam). At the end of a leap, the guest usually has few memories of the Waiting Room, due to the same "swiss-cheese effect" that plagues Sam.
In addition to Al, there are a few other known characters working at Project Quantum Leap. Gooshie (Dennis Wolfberg) is Ziggy's programmer, Verbena Beeks (Candy Ann Brown) is the staff psychologist, and Tina (Gigi Rice) is a "Pulse Communication Technician" who has affairs with both Al and Gooshie.
There are a few exceptions to the general rule that people in the past are unable to see Sam for who he is: Al, young children, animals, the "mentally absent", those on the verge of death, and psychics. A few times members of these groups were even able to see Al. Also, when Sam looks into a mirror he sees the person he leaped into instead of himself.
There is a great deal of fan fiction for this series, including fully authorized published novels. I haven't read very much of it, but what I have noticed is a larger than normal amount of crossover fiction, something that is to be expected given that the original series included homages to a number of standard styles (mobster story, musical, film noir, and sports story, to name a few off the top of my head). A good place to look for amateur fan fiction is the alt. ql. creative Archives.
Some very-technical points that you probably don't need to know:
"Leaping" as a process involves a swapping of bodies, while the "aura" or physical appearance is left in place. What this means is that if Sam leaps into someone with no legs he is still capable of walking, even though to other people it would look like he is floating. As to the matter of height differences it has been speculated by some fan writers that Sam is physically "mapped" into the height of the person he's leaping into. As for the "aura" and why some individuals can see through it, my best theory is that this aura is in some sense transparent, rather like a ghost, so that when someone looks at Sam (in the past) or at the leapee (in the future) what they see is both images at once. However, the conscious mind (in most cases) is only able to concentrate on one of the two images at a time, and apparently the aura is easier to focus on than the actual image "behind" it. The fact that this is actually a psychological trick (seeing what you want to see) is revealed by who can see through it-those with no prior expectations as to what reality is supposed to look like. In a few episodes, a character close to Sam or the leapee was able to see through the aura through a process of concentration or by somehow tuning their mind to Sam's "wavelength". A similar tuning would explain how anyone could see Al, since as near as I can tell he has no physical existence in Sam's world and only exists as a hologram in Sam's visual cortex.
The show never stated explicitly who or what was controlling Sam's leaps. Sam and Al's best guess is that this controller is God, based on the fact that Sam only seems to leap into lives in crisis and because he only leaps out once he has materially improved the leapee's life. If this were correct, then this would make Sam into a sort of honorary "guardian angel" whose job is to correct lives that have been disrupted. The flipside of this speculation is the question of who has been disrupting these lives in the first place. If Satan is at work behind the scenes, he is even more secretive than God. His most likely agents are the "Evil Leapers", introduced in Season Five of the series. The "Evil Leapers" come from several decades after Project Quantum Leap, possibly in an alternate future. Rather than improve people's lives, the other project's goal appears to be to use the potential of time travel to amass riches and exploitable information. The leaper in this project is named Alia, and her Observer is Zoey. Their computer is called Lothos.
An X-Files Primer
This is an absolute bare-bones summary of the series. Using any search engine on the planet will yield dozens, if not hundreds, of websites you can visit for more information.
The X-Files debuted on the Fox network in 1992 and is (at the time I wrote this) still on the air. The series is about two FBI agents investigating the paranormal. The two are frequently opposed by agents of a shadowy conspiracy that controls the world.
Fox Mulder [David Duchovny] is a misanthropic genius of sorts, with a photographic memory and an in-depth knowledge of human psychology. These talents started his career in the FBI as a profiler, but once he had recovered the memories of his sister's abduction by aliens, he resurrected the X-Files division in an attempt to find out The Truth (Mulder speaks in capitals a lot).
Dana Scully [Gillian Anderson] was assigned by sinister agents to stop Mulder's mission by debunking it. Her specialty is post-mortem examinations. She has a very ordered scientific mind, and at least in the first few seasons of the show, she was constantly challenging Mulder's bizarre explanations for every unexplained phenomenon they came across. This is helped by the fact that they are always separated when the really weird stuff happens (this is the reason for the almost-constant cell-phone use, especially in the theatrical movie that was made after Season 4). In one episode she revealed that she had written a paper on the theoretical possibilities of time travel (something I briefly use in my story).
Assistant Director Walter Skinner [Mitch Pileggi] is Mulder and Scully's immediate superior. He is a hard man who is hard to judge. He appears to be under the control of the Conspiracy at times, but at others he has risked his life to defend the two agents.
The true name of Mulder and Scully's nemesis is unknown, but they call him the Cigarette-Smoking Man, for obvious reasons. The CSM takes his orders from equally anonymous men, such as the "Well-Manicured Man" [John Neville]. He has agents, some of which appear to be of extraterrestrial origin (like the shape-changing Bounty Hunter [Brian Thompson]). Like any really good villain, even his apparent defeats serve to advance his insidious plans. Some of his agents (such as "Deep Throat" [Jerry Hardin] and "X" [Steven Williams]) have attempted to help Mulder or Scully, with deadly consequences (for them, not for Mulder or Scully). The double agent currently at large (once again, this is 2001 I'm talking about) is Alex Krycek [Nicholas Lea], who appears to make a living out of betrayal and revenge.
Mulder is frequently assisted by a trio of men who call themselves "The Lone Gunmen". Melvin Frohike [Tom Braidwood] is the dirty old man, a surveillance expert with an eye for Scully. Ringo Langley [Dean Haglund] is the grungy hacker and easily the most paranoid of the bunch. Finally, John Fitzgerald Byers [Bruce Harwood] is the calmest of the three and the expert on a whole array of technical subjects.
My interest in the show lasted until the fourth season. Up to that time, most of the episodes were unrelated and Scully remained the doubter, but by the fourth season she had begun to believe and the show came to focus on the vast conspiracy. I got tired with all of the false leads and the extremely slow revelations, so I gave up. I was especially sorry to see Mulder lose his dry sense of humor.
Credits and Acknowledgments
The series Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers and the characters Chip, Dale, Monterey Jack, Zipper, Gadget, Foxglove, the rock band Iron Goose, Flash the Wonder Dog, The Red Badger of Courage, Sheerluck Jones and Howard Bass, Kablammo Man, Stan Blather, the Happy Tom Cat Food Factory, Fat Cat, Mepps, Wart, Snout, and Mole (gasp!) are copyright 1989 Disney. I consider myself a fan of this series (I have all the episodes on tape, I've visited dozens of web sites (especially the RR Database), and I've read practically every fanfic and viewed every piece of fan art on the series ever made publicly available).
The series Quantum Leap and the characters Sam Beckett, Al Calavicci, Ziggy, Verbena Beeks and Gushie are copyright 1993 Bellasarius Productions and MCA/Universal. I consider myself competent on this series (I have seen nearly all of the episodes once, I looked at three or four websites (especially the FAQ at the Quantum Leap Information Kiosk), and I have read through a somewhat random selection of fanfic at the alt. ql. creative Archive looking for the perfect Quantum Link-X-Files crossover story). On the other hand, I think I actually understand all the rules of Leaping, and that, in and of itself, may be grounds for classifying me as a fan.
The series The X-Files and the characters of Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Langly, Frohike, and Myers (the Lone Gunmen) are copyright 2001 Ten Thirteen Productions and Fox ("2001" when I wrote this, update with the current year as necessary). I consider myself familiar with this series (I have seen a lot of episodes once, especially from the first few seasons). I haven't really looked for web sites, but I have read a lot of (bad) fanfic via their MiSTings on Web Site Number 9. I have deliberately tweaked the characters of Mulder and Scully in this story for two reasons. First, I liked Mulder's sense of humor, which showed up a lot in the first season and appears to be almost completely dead now. Second, I despise all the (bad) fanfics that contrive to make the two agents fall in love with each other. I say, if you want to evolve the relationship between Mulder and Scully in a healthy direction, why not make them act like siblings?
No, I don't have permission to do any of this. If someone from one of the above companies can show me the harm I have done with this little story, then it will go away.
The original concept of this story (a cross-over of Rescue Rangers and Quantum Leap where Sam leaps into Chip) first appeared in "Quantum Chip", an as-yet unfinished story by Jeff Parkes I found on the internet about a year (now three years) ago; you can and should visit his site, Rescue Ranger Adventure, and go to the "Other Contributions" page to read "Quantum Chip". I hereby grant to Mr. Parkes as well the power to kill this story with a withering glance. It's been two years now, so I'm hoping he's not the slow-burn type : )
The "Great Thing from Beyond" was named in accordance with the H. P. Lovecraft convention for naming extra-dimensional entities (for information about the famed horror writer, see the H.P. Lovecraft Archive website). The character was inspired by Paddywhack, the villain of the Darkwing Duck episode "The Haunting of Mr. Banana Brain," while his dialog was inspired by every over-the-top piece of dialog I have ever come across. His theme song, which you should have been hearing in your head over the first two scenes, is "Enter Sandman" by Metallica.
The story made an obscure reference to the Rescue Rangers fan fiction "There and Back...AGAIN?" by Matt Plotecher (Chapter 1) a more obvious reference to "The Times of Their Lives" by Steve "Indy" Hamrick (Chapter 3) another obscure reference to "Home Is Where You Hang Upside-Down" by Roy Neal Grissom (also Chapter 3), and an extremely-obvious reference to "Home Is Where You Hang Upside-Down" in Chapter 6. I have gratefully incorporated suggestions by these authors into this story, but any flaws that remain are entirely my own fault.
And finally, for those of you playing along at home, here are the answers to the Obscure Reference Contest (it also serves as an excuse to get the rest of the copyright violations out of the way):
CHAPTER 1
Tiamat...Trego the Terrible Puppet: All are actual deities or historical persons/events with the exceptions of Flash the Wonder Dog (from Rescue Rangers) and Trego the Terrible Puppet (from my own twisted imagination). If you really want to get depressed, try looking all of them up in an encyclopedia.
A noted archeologist in New England: This was a veiled reference to Indiana Jones, which I believe is the property of Lucas Arts Entertainment, followed by a nod to the archetypical setting for the stories of H. P. Lovecraft.
Iron Goose: Iron Goose is a heavy-metal band in the Rescue Rangers universe (the episode "Risky Beesness").
an almost-closed door between dimensions: The door was definitively closed in the Rescue Ranger fanfic "There and Back...AGAIN?" by Matt Plotecher (which can be found on the RR Database).
CHAPTER 2 was otherwise copyright-violation free.
CHAPTER 3 (chock-full of pop-culture goodness)
"Sort of like an animal rescue aid society": An obvious reference to the Rescue Aid Society from the Walt Disney animated films The Rescuers (1977) and The Rescuers Down Under (1990), which were the original inspirations for Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers. These in turn came from the Prisoner's Aid Society in the Miss Bianca series of books (starting with The Rescuers in 1959 and ending with Bernard the Brave in 1978), all by Margery Sharp-the first few at least were quite good.
"Makes sense": This was meant to be a reference to the running joke in the MiSTing of Premier Ma[r]qui{s}, a Star Trek: The Next Generation "Marissa" story by Stephen Ratliff; MiSTed by Loren Haarsma, Jarek Myszewski and David Conner. It can be found on Web Site Number 9.
Unsolved Mysteries: This 1987 television show is copyright Cosgrove/Meurer Productions.
"Maybe it's because I've traveled through time before.": This being my plug for "The Times of Their Lives", the excellent (although extremely-convoluted) Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers time-travel saga by Steve "Indy" Hamrick. It is available at the Rescue Rangers Database.
"There's a human I can trust in the FBI...": This then would be my plug for "Home is Where You Hang Upside-Down" by Roy Neal Grissom. I can only hope you read that story before this one, or else you'll end up rather mad at me when you read Mr. Grissom's masterpiece. This story can also be found at the RR Database.
The meeting between Fox Mulder and Sam Beckett: Actually, I couldn't find this hypothetical fanfic when I was doing the research for this story. The closest I'd gotten was Leap of Faith by "Livengoo" (Sam leaps into Scully, but Mulder and Scully are left with no memory of Project Quantum Leap by the time the story is over) and Top Secret by Julie L. Jeckel (Sam does not leap into either Mulder or Scully, but both characters end the story aware of Project Quantum Leap; also, the story is a crossover with Lois and Clark, and I object to Superman being in the same continuum with either Quantum Leap or X-Files on esthetic grounds-write me for the full rant on this one). You can visit the .creative Archive for these and many other Quantum Leap fanfiction stories (if it's still around, that is-it was extremely static when I visited it).
"We're ready to believe you!": One of many quotables from the movie Ghostbusters (1984), copyright Columbia Pictures.
CHAPTER 4
Bubblelicious Bubble Gum: Sadly, this was an unpaid product endorsement. "Bubblelicious" is a trademark of the Warner-Lambert Company and is not made from spider's eggs.
"Shazaam!": This is what happens when I write something without doing research first. "Shazam!" is what Billy Batson says to turn into Captain Marvel (it's also the name of the wizard who gave Billy the ability to do this). Captain Marvel is an old comic book series started by Fawcett Comics and later continued by DC Comics. It's apparently still in print. There was a live-action series I vaguely remember from my childhood that was really cheesy (but then, every kid's show from my childhood was cheesy-the 1970's were not known for quality children's entertainment). Also, Shazzan was a Hanna-Barbera series from the 1960's about a couple of American kids in an Arabian Nights-type scenario who are helped by their genie Shazzan and the inevitable dumb animal sidekick (at least, that's what I picked up from the one time I saw it on Boomerang). Anyway, "Shazaam!" appears to be a common thing for people to say, because I had to look a long time to find a legitimate web site for either one of these properties.
"laser": I actually thought I was being clever when I did that. The joke is of course worn to death by now. Let's see, there are so many companies with their fingers in the Austin Powers pie-I'll just give credit to New Line Cinema, and let the rest of them go unsaid.
"It's based on the principle of harmonic resonance..." and the three pages of dialog that follow.: My limited knowledge of the terminology of acoustics is courtesy of The Theory of Sound, a two-volume book by John William Strutt, Baron Rayleigh (he won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904 for discovering argon). In case you are wondering how you too can produce high-quality scientific pseudo-babble, keep the following in mind when doing your research: Frequent the unused floor of university libraries. Look for multi-volume hard-cover books written by old men with strings of initials after their names, with first publishing dates in the Nineteenth Century, and bound in bent cardboard and cloth. If removing the book from the shelf releases a cloud of dust, you have reason to hope. If you open it at random and see more than one algebraic equation on the page, you may be getting close. If you can't read a whole chapter and understand it the first or even second time through, get out your notepad and start writing the terms down. If you read a paragraph out loud and suddenly find yourself transported to a planetary system located somewhere between the constellations of Hydra and Argo Navis, well, then I think you've gone too far and need to get a different book.
Everyman: The medieval morality play. This may be the only work cited in this story that is not under copyright.
"A ghost-busting Great Dane": Scooby-Doo, copyright of Time-Warner/Hanna-Barbera.
The theme to some forgotten 1930's cartoon: Flip the Frog has a pretty catchy song. The cartoon was made by Mickey Mouse co-creator Ub Iwerks. I believe the Flip copyright is currently owned by Eric Schwartz.
CHAPTER 5
Bela Lugosi: For those of you who don't watch movies in black and white, Mr. Lugosi was the gentleman who played Dracula in the 1931 version, which is property of Universal Studios. For those who are perfectly well aware of who Bela Lugosi was and are getting depressed watching all of the awful horror movies he found himself typecast into at the end of his life, might I suggest searching out White Zombie (1932)? Not as good as Dracula by a long shot, but still pretty atmospheric.
"Crumbly Crunchies": This was a throwaway gag in the 1948 Bugs Bunny cartoon "Haredevil Hare" (the first appearance of Marvin the Martian). Copyright owned by Time-Warner. For the life of me, I can't understand why someone hasn't put a recording of this online.
"His office hours were 10:45 to a quarter of eleven": This is clearly a case of me throwing in obscure references just because I can. There is no way that anyone would recognize this as a reference to "The Wizard and the Princess", the ninth "surpise" (as the chapters of this book were named) from The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People (1903). This book is in the public domain (I think) and in any case you can read this on the Internet. The only reason a book this old and so little known is available online is because it was written by L. Frank Baum of the Wizard of Oz books. Mo was written four years after The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (but before all of the other Oz books) and it is pretty weird, but nowhere near as weird as Baum's American Fairy Tales (1901) or as good as The Enchanted Island of Yew (1903), both of which are online, both of which have nothing to do with Oz, and both of which would at the very least raise the eyebrow of any parent who was considering reading either one to an impressionable child.
CHAPTER 6
Marcie and Peppermint Patty: Characters from the comic strip Peanuts by Charles Schultz (characters now owned by his family now, I guess). Copyright owned by the United Features Syndicate.
Quickie Mart: This from The Simpsons (1989 - this year), by Matt Groening and Film Roman (Klasky-Csupo for the early stuff). Copyright owned by Fox.
"...before she takes over the world.": Somewhere or other I came across the questionable statement that no piece of fanfic is complete without a reference to Pinky and the Brain (1995) (owned by Amblin/Warner Brothers). To my mortification I find that I got such a reference into this story without realizing it.
A shape-changing alien: A reference to the Rescue Rangers episode "Dale Beside Himself", where the alien was having fun. X-Files has a similar character, only this one killed people for a living-here you see illustrated the difference in outlook of the two series.
An escapee from NIMH: The MiSTing of Paul Lapensee's and David Gonterman's "The Rangers of NIMH", by Håkan Svensson and Kevin A. Pezzano (available in the RR Database). There is a non-MiST'ed version of this story available, but I can tell you from personal experience that the reading of it causes permanent brain damage. It also was my introduction to the world of Rescue Ranger fandom-a worse first impression could not be conceived.
A super-realistic robot built from self-evolved nano-technology: I wasn't really thinking of anything when I wrote this line, but re-reading it, I'm reminded of a cross between The Iron Giant and Stuart Little (copyrights owned by Warner Brothers and Colombia Pictures, respectively).
"Mulder!" "Scully!": At least 10% of the dialog of X-Files: The Movie (1998) (copyright owned by 20th Century Fox).
"Tetsuo!" "Kaneda!": At least 10% of the dialog of the movie Akira (1983) (copyright owned by Akira Committee Company, Ltd.).
St. Nerses Schnorhali Armenian Apostolic Church: "Home is Where You Hang Upside-Down", by Roy Neal Grissom.
"Unbelievable!": This joke, originally weak, is now completely unrecognizable. Suffice it to say that when I was writing this, Cartoon Network was running a lot of ads for Dragonball Z which always included a character saying this line (wow! a character in a fighting-oriented series is more powerful than he appears! Completely unexpected! ;). DZ copyright owned by Bird Studios.
CHAPTER 7
The Wind in the Willows: Children's book written by Kenneth Grahame in 1908 and originally illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard of Winnie the Pooh fame. This work is in the public domain and available from Project Gutenberg.
"Another visitor! Stay awhile, stay forever!": This is what the evil supercomputer says at the beginning of the classic Commodore 64 video game Impossible Mission (1983, by Epyx).
"Let me 'at him!": I was tempted at this point to fulfill the quota of Monty Python quotations for this story by adding "I'll bite his legs off!", but decided at the last moment that it would be too gruesome, even for Monterey Jack. Monty Python copyright owned by the BBC.
"I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought": Ghostbusters again.
"Are you ca-razy?": Chip says this to Dale at least once in the series, although for the life of me I can't name a specific episode where it happens.
"All in good time my dear, all in good time": One of the less-obscure references: The Wizard of Oz (1933) (copyright owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer).
"Oh, you're no fun anymore": Title of a Monty Python episode, thereby fulfilling my quota of Monty Python references anyhow.
"Wake up...time to die": Blade Runner (1981) (copyright owned by the Blade Runner Partnership, Columbia TriStar, and Warner Brothers).
"Do you feel lucky, punk?" "Go ahead, make my day": Dirty Harry (1971) and Sudden Impact (1983) (both copyrights owned by Warner Brothers).
"Look on, ye mighty, and despair!": "Ozymandias" (1817) by Percy Shelley. Considering the age of this poem, I think it's safe to say it's in the public domain.
CHAPTER 8
"Gee Unc'a Scrooge, what'll we do now?": The Disney series Duck Tales (1988). I couldn't name the exact episode using this dialog, since it was used a lot in the series.