Quantum Leap

Stepping back in time is the premise for NBC's "Quantum Leap," but in reality there's no going back, as NBC will prove conclusively when it closes the show for good next month. Also biting the dust is "A Different World. " When it was launched in 1989, "Quantum Leap" was a critical success, though never a ratings smash. The program tied for 97th in the just-released seasonal ratings, down from 62nd last year. "Quantum Leap" revolves around Sam Beckett, played by Scott Bakula, who finds himself bouncing back and forth through time with a holographic best friend, played by Dean Stockwell.

It's not much of a room: two sets of narrow bunks, a couple of sway-backed single beds, a closet filled with standard-issue white sheets, a poster of a Coors girl, maroon-colored cement-block walls. A table with a clock and a beeper. And, of course, a smoke alarm. But at least for the forseeable future, this is home for District Four's professional firefighters, all so that the folks who live on the east side of town, between Haddonfield and Voorhees, can rest easy. While they're snoozing through the night in their beds, a shift of firefighters will be settling down in their less-than-ideal quarters, ready to run to the rescue at a moment's notice.

Summer's the time when television networks, like office workers on vacation, let down their hair and try some things they might not do in the buttoned-up wintertime. They air short-run series that didn't quite make the big-time fall schedule. They move some of the reruns around, trying them out in different time periods. A few summer-run series have already premiered - like NBC's "Seinfeld" and CBS's "Dave Thomas Comedy Show" - and others will begin next month. And as for tampering with the schedule . . . This week, NBC has something interesting up its sleeve.

It's rare that that a weekly drama series featuring a hunky guy fighting evil-doers evolves into anything more special than the usual macho series - "MacGyver," "B.L. Stryker," "Hunter" and all the rest. But "Quantum Leap," which airs every night this week at 10 on Channel 3, rises above the standard action-oriented dramas. Its hero is a scientist, not an undercover cop, so there's little reliance on guns and fast cars and more on brains. But our hero Sam Beckett (his name is the first of many tipoffs that this is a show produced by college graduates, probably English majors)

Digital TV is coming! Digital TV is coming! Oh (dubious) joy. The Federal Communications Commission has released to commercial broadcasters the airwaves needed to usher in a new generation of televisions offering clearer images and crisper color. What a boon to mankind. For only $5,000 or so, some day soon you can wipe muddy color on the family room tube off your list of crushing life disappointments. Issues more weighty than bluer blues do lurk inside this development.

HIDEAWAY By Dean R. Koontz Putnam. 384 pp. $22.95 Over the last 25 years, Dean R. Koontz has written 55 books, starting with pulp novels. From there he moved to genre fiction and, ultimately, to several bestsellers - Cold Fire, The Bad Place and Midnight, among others. As might be expected, practice makes perfect. His work has become more skillful, more ambitious, more chilling. Hideaway, his latest, continues that trend. In fact, it is a quantum leap forward. This is not just a chilly novel.

Axing old favorite Amen and sending Matlock to the bench, NBC yesterday announced a fall prime-time schedule that includes seven new comedies and two new dramas. The lineup returns James Garner (Maverick, The Rockford Files) and Robert Guillaume (Benson) to series TV, and teams deaf Oscar-winner Marlee Matlin with Mark Harmon. NBC renewed three series - Blossom, Seinfeld and Quantum Leap - that had vocal followings but questionable futures. It also gave a quick vote of confidence to Sisters, which premiered May 11. The one-hour drama about four middle-class sisters will be back in autumn on Saturdays.

By the time the Clearwater Phillies' game against Lakeland started last night at Jack Russell Memorial Stadium, Mitch Williams already had packed his bags and checked out of the hotel where he'd been staying since his Wild comeback attempt began just over two weeks ago. Williams, who was scheduled to pitch one inning, apparently planned to hop into his truck and begin driving toward his improbable dream after his work for the night was done....

Norman Braman agrees: This most certainly is a make-or-break year for the Eagles, the football club he just happens to own. Buddy Ryan, his coach, is the man who first suggested that notion. But it is Braman, with his ever-growing expectations - and his disappointment over last season - who yesterday made it clear that he expects a lot this year. "I think we have to make that quantum leap," Braman said, in town for the opening of the Eagles' three-day minicamp. "And that's (to)

For Villanova's Tom Greis, the draft watch ended at 11:31 last night, when the San Antonio Spurs selected Michigan's Sean Higgins with the 54th and final pick in the NBA's annual shopping spree. They say you can't coach size. But all 27 NBA teams elected to pass on the 7-3 center from Villanova, who once was projected as a potential late first- round choice. And so, at about 11:32, Greis left the home of Villanova alumnus Mike Stack, where he and a few of his former teammates had gathered to watch the TNT telecast.

AUDACIOUS, VIOLENT and disquieting, "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" is a summer sequel that's better than it has any right to be. This movie about how apes rise up against the humans who would trap them, cage them and use them in medical experiments is a stunning job of back-engineering the familiar "Planet of the Apes" story and another leap forward in performance-capture animation. As alarming and sometimes bloody as it is, "Rise" doesn't require a "No apes were harmed in the making of this movie" credit.

It's the first rehearsal of the season, and the Greater South Jersey Chorus dives one-two-three into "The Encore Song. " "We worked very hard to get all the songs as polished as we could," the members sing, blanketing the basement of Cherry Hill's Unitarian Universalist Church in a lush blend of soprano, tenor, alto, and bass. Their sound is polished, all right - I swear there's a gleam in the air. These men and women make beautiful music together from equal measures of labor and love.

Cherry Hill East's Jamie Silverberg was a good tennis player as a freshman. She was even better as a sophomore. Now a junior, Silverberg has taken her game to another level. "She's improved 50 percent from last year," Cherry Hill East coach Mary Jewett said. "She took a big jump from freshman year to sophomore year, and now she's taken another big jump. " Silverberg (4-0 through Tuesday) will be the No. 1 seed at this weekend's Camden County tournament at Eastern. She is the defending champion.

Police unfairly targeted the patriarch of a Chester County family linked to two high-profile suburban tragedies, his attorneys argued last month. But in an apparent about-face, Sean O'Neill Sr., 49, of Willistown, is scheduled to plead guilty today in federal court to single counts of possession and use of a fraudulently obtained green card, a false claim of U.S. citizenship, illegal possession of a gun silencer with no serial number, and tax fraud. The government's third charging document, filed Monday, dropped multiple counts of several offenses and added the tax offense.

Eight full baseball seasons have come and gone since Curt Schilling last threw a fastball, down and away, to strike out yet another batter for the Phillies. One full turn of the schedule has passed since he pitched at all. Schilling and his wife, Shonda, haven't forgotten Philadelphia, though. And the region certainly hasn't forgotten them. So they returned yesterday, as they do each fall, for the Curt Schilling ALS Golf Outing, an event held to fund research into Lou Gehrig's Disease.

And then there were Four. While it is almost universally accepted by comics fans and the general public that Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman constitute DC's "Big Three," there is a growing contingent of fandom that feels that gives short shrift to Green Lantern and Flash - and that all the aforementioned should be considered DC's "Big Five. " While DC's recent handling of the Flash pretty much removes him from serious talk of being a top tier hero, Comics Guy has to admit that he never considered Green Lantern to be on that elite level, either.

Now that the joyride is a fond memory, Kathleen "Kat" Lafferty and her Villa Maria Academy volleyball teammates will have to step on the accelerator again. With Lafferty in the driver's seat as a junior setter last year, the Hurricanes raced through the Southern Chester County League, PIAA District 1, and state Class AAA tournaments without hitting a red light. They finished 27-0 and earned Villa Maria's first state volleyball championship since 1996. This year, the ride may be a bit bumpy.

When Angie Wells first attempted the long jump in practice, the results were miserable. When she first tried it in a meet, they were magnificent. Wells, a junior at Simon Gratz, embodies the natural athlete. Without extensive training or much technique, Wells is already one of the best long jumpers in the country. That makes those around her wonder, how much better will she get? As the outdoor track and field season gets under way, Wells will try to find out. The 5-foot-3 Wells won the indoor state meet with a jump of 18 feet, 3/4 inches.

N.D. Kalu, like the rest of his Eagles teammates, is hoping this season ends with a victory in San Diego in four weeks. Part of him is looking past the Super Bowl, past the entire off-season. "I'm looking forward to minicamps," the defensive end/linebacker said this week. "There are some things I really want to work on, like my drops [into pass coverage]. Right now, I know Jim [Johnson] holds his breath when I drop into coverage. I don't want him to have to worry about that next year.

When Conestoga's Joe Simpson knocked down a three-point bomb to open last night's game at West Chester East, it seemed the Pioneers were primed for a big-time effort. It turned out that three was the high-water mark for Conestoga. The Pioneers never did get in an offensive flow. They were badly outrebounded and ended up losing to the Vikings, 54-39, in the second round of the PIAA District 1 Class AAAA boys' basketball tournament. The fourth-seeded Vikings (21-4) will now take on fifth-seeded Chester (15-9)