Head Programmer at Project Quantum Leap. He also works the contorls for the Imaging Chamber. He made a frantic call to Al when Sam Leaped the first time. Gushie (or Gooshie) is described as a short guy with red hair and bad breath, He and Tina once had an affair, and when Sam briefly changed history, they were married. While playing Poker, sam covered up an exclamation about Gushie by saying "Gushie" was Navajo for "I'll see it". Al once called him "jockstrap breath". Gushie is a bit absent-minded. When Leon Styles escorted Al into the hallway at gunpoint, Gushie just looked up and acknowledged "Dr. Beckett". He drives a blue Ford Probe, which he got after his car had been stolen the year before. At Al's suggestion, he had a tracking device installed in his new car and was able to redirect its signal so Ziggy could track it after Styles took the vehicle. Gushie was also the name of the old mailman in the town of Cokeburg, Pennsylvania. Coincidentally, he also had bad breath.
Is she or isn't she married to Sam? Only God or Time or Whoever knows. In the history as Sam remembered it when he met her as a student in Lawrence College in 1972, Donna was just turning 30 and leaving the Star Bright Project when they first met around 1982. The wedding was on the 5th of June at Old Mission Chapel, and Sam remembers it didn't happen. Al told Sam she didn't show up for the wedding, and then Sam recalled it had something to do with her father. He had abandoned her when she was 8 and had no more contact with her. Donna was so upset she blocked out her dad's name, Wojohowitz. She left another man at the alter before Sam. Sam arranged for Donna to meet her father at the Watergate Hotel the morning he shipped out to Vietnam. Al gave no clue that Sam may have changed history; in fact, he speculated that maybe she married the first guy after all. When Sam and Al changed places and he ended up back at the Project, all of his memories came flooding back and Donna was there- as his wife. Donna explained to Sam that she begged Al not to tell him he was married, for she felt he couldn't act freely with that knowledge. When Sam asked if he did anything to hurt her, her reply was no. When Sam had to Leap again in order to save Al, she begged him not to leave, but realized in the end she had to let Sam go.
Al's most of the time girlfriend/lover. The woman Al picked up the night Sam first Leaped was called Tina, but she's obviously not the same Tina, as Al and his Tina met over a Poker game in Las Vegas. Al had a flush. She had a pair. Sam never remembered her until he briefly Leaped back to the Project. Her name, according to Al, is in a tatoo "on a super-secret part of her anatomy". Al also claimed Tina though Sam was kind of cute. When Sam Leaped back to 1999, Tina appeared to be very ditzy. Ziggy told Sam during this time that she was having an affair with Gushie. In the alternate history created when Al was convicted of murder, Pulse Communications Technician Tina was married to Gushie. Once Tine did have an affair with the programmer. Al was crushed, saying, "She took my second most favorite organ and stomped it to death with her 4-inch spiked heels." Tina later told Al that she only saw Gushie to make Al jealous, then gave the programmer a case of mouthwash and sent him packing. Al used Tina in every sense of the word. At one point he had her sleep with Weitzman and he blackmailed the committee head with the information in order to regain his job. Tina owns either a crocodile or an alligator that she keeps in a pit. By the Dr. Ruth Leap, Al and Tina had been going out for a little over 4 years.
DR. VERBINA BEEKS
When Al first mentioned her, Sam thought the Observer was talking about anti-depressants. In fact, she's the project psychiatrist. Al used to think she was cute, but seems to have little use for her observations most of the time. We first see her in Shock Theatre.
ZIGGY
Sam designed this parallel hybrid computer to run Project Quantum Leap. Originally the computer was called a "he", but after Sam Leaped home to 1999, it was shown Ziggy had a female voice. Shortly thereafter the pronoun "she" was used almost exclusively. Ziggy was given an ego, which was a real breakthrough in computer development. Unfortunately, Sam chose to give the computer the ego of Barbara Streisand, which caused a number of problems. During Sam's first Leap, Ziggy refused to accept responsibilty for not being able to bring Sam back, and cut power to most of the Project, leaving only essential items available. Ziggy's ego won't allow for a change of mind, either. The computer was also prone to mood swings, and wouldn't project what would happen to Tim Fox for fear of being wrong. One time Ziggy crashed and did screwball things like putting an extra zero on everyone's paycheck. Then the computer began to spit out data in foreign languages. Al blamed the problems on foreign microchips. When Elvis Presley was in the Waiting Room, Ziggy became starstruck and operated at a diminished capacity. Ziggy's main control panel is located in a room that leads to the Imaging and Accelerator Chambers. While in the room, anyone can speak directly to the computer. While Al is in the Imaging Chamber, he communicates with Ziggy, Gushie, and others via a handlink. The handlink has undegone a few design changes, most likely to make them hardier. Al tends to abuse them quite a bit, and one handlink died a spectacular death while Al was attempting to retrieve information about Harry Spontini's divorce. Using the handlink, Ziggy can project images that Sam and others who can see Sam and Al can view. The computer projected the trajectory pool shots for Sam, and Al used the link to show Teresa Bruckner pictures of dinosaurs. While masquerading as the Ghost Of Christmas Future, Al used the link to project images of Blake Tower and news videos of the millionaire's eventual downfall. Ziigy can get a mental signal from people close to Sam, but has a difficult time with people who havea few synapses missing in the brain. Al modified Ziggy's sensors to be a sort of metal detector so he could attempt to find a bullet lodged in the wall of a church in 1971, but he required Teresa Lorrea to be there in order for the computer to center in on her brain waves. This gave Ziggy a cleared sensory base to pull from. Ziggy nearly lost it when Sam Leaped into Jimmy LaMotta for the second time. She went into maximum overload and kept insisting that history was changing and that things had changed for the LaMotta family, even though Sam wasn't doing anything. Dr. Beeks tried to reason with her, but received a shock that sent her halfway across the room. Sam programmed Ziggy's memory banks for music, loading in all of Elvis Presley's hits and even a rap song. Ziggy digested the entire works of Shakespeare in a matter of seconds, explining that with a one-million-gigabite capacity, she was perfectly capable of rubbing her belly, patting her head, and doing a trillion floating point operations at once. Using Al's handlink, she was able to create a force field using the electric fences at Mallard Correctional Facility for Women in order to keep Thames from getting a lock on Alia. Ziggy was also the nickname of a miner Sam encountered at Al's Place. His real name was Simo Servanovich, but he got the moniker Ziggy after he was thrown into a steam radiator during a donkey basketball game. He zigged and zagged for the next week. Ziggy has a bit of a problem with words, often substituting a sound-alike word instead. "Cabbages" instead of "cartriges" or "canal" instead of "channel". To Sam, Ziggy looked exactly like Moe Stein.
Al's first wife. Although Al mentioned his first wife was a redhead, Beth is defininetly a brunette. Did Al merely indulge in a little wishful thinking? Only her hairdresser knows for sure. Beth loves calla lillies, Mexican food, and Ray Charles singing "Georgia". She also seems to be a fan of the Supremes, especially the song "Someday". Al declares that Beth was the only woman he ever truly loved. She was upset that he didn't want children because he thought it was unfair to drag them from assignment to assignment. She, on the other hand, felt Al didn't understand what children would have done for her while he was gone. During the eight years they were married, they only spent two together. The rest were spent on seperate assignments. Beth nearly divorced Al when he took off for a second tour of duty to Vietnam four months after the first ended. She didn't feel it was proper to divorce a man going off to war, and after Al was shot down, she wore an MIA bracelet engraved with his name. Beth was working double shifts as a nurse in the burn ward at Balboa Naval Hospital, when, in March 1969, she lost a young Marine that she thought was going to break the odds and live. She apparently gave up hope on Al at about the same time, for on April 1st she met Dirk Simon, and despite Al's trying to change history (through Sam trying to keep Beth away from Dirk), the pair kept running into each other. They finally married in June of that year. Sam got to change history for Al and Beth after he Leaped into Al's Place in Cokeburg, Pennsylvania. When he confessed to Al the bartender his regrets about not saving Al's marriage, he Leaped to Beth's house and told her Al was alive and coming home. Subsequently, they had four children and will celebrate their 39th Anniversary in the year 2000.
If Sam Beckett was able to travel in time, it would stand to reason that sometime another person would do the same. Perhaps it was a greater shock than a surprise when Sam encountered Alia. When they first met, Sam had Leaped back into Jimmy LaMotta's life, and Alia had become Connie. They didn't find out about each other until they touched, which set-up a magnetic convergence field, allowing them to see each other. Alia told Sam that she was with a time-travel experiment, and she too suffered from Swiss cheese memory and had no control over where she went. The one thing she really wanted above all was to go home. She then tried to seduce Sam, saying that he was the only one who could understand what she was going through. Their lovemaking was interrupted by the early return of Frank, Jimmy's older brother. While Sam was digging for his clothes, Alia ripped her slip, scratched her face, and screamed that Jimmy had tried to rape her. Zoey, her Observer, then reported that she had to kill Sam, and that doing it could get her home. Alia explained to Sam that it wasn't God that put them against each other. Sam countered by postulating that evil could only exist because of good, and if she killed him, she may no longer exist, and it would only add to the power of whatever was Leaping her around. Alia has apparently killed a lot of people, but she was unable to bring herself to kill Sam, and Alia and Zoey exited distorted and screaming in pain. When the pair met again, Alia told Sam that she had been tortured, and that the expereince was worse than death. She begged Sam not to let her go through that kind of pain again, and Sam suggested that if they hold each other when they Leaped, they might be able to go together. They did, right into the Mallard Correctional Facility for Women. In an attempt to keep Lothos, the artificial intelligence controlling her Leaps, from locking onto her brain waves, Sam altered them slightly by hypnotizing her into believing she actually was the woman into whomed she had Leaped. While Alia didn't seem to be completely evil (why else would she want to be redeemed?), she did wonder why some people help other people. Apparently, such behavior was either not in her background or had been conditioned out by some means. Alia could see Zoey's Observer, Thames. When Alia was shot by Zoey, she leaped out and Angel Jenson Leaped back in, unhurt. Lothos reported that Alia was lost, and Ziggy reported to Al that she was free.
ZOEY
Alia's Observer. In some ways, she was just like Al -a clothes horse who loved to lech after the opposite sex. After she was able to see Sam as himself, she called him a "studly morsel" and "sweet cheeks". The similarity ended there, for Zoey was quite evil. Apparently Alia and Zoey have been working for Lothos for several years. She told Alia, "We clawed our way out of Hell to land simple assignments like home wrecking and adultery. You don't want to live through the horror we lived through before." Zoey told Lothos she taught Alia "Every nuance. Every twist. Every lie. She was brilliant." Lothos believed sending Alia out was a mistake, and that he always wanted Zoey to carry out his plan. In The Evil Leaper III, Zoey herself Leaped. Sam shot Zoey , as Warden Meyers, and Thames screamed that she was dying. After the familiar flash, Meyers returned and he was unhurt.
