SLIDERS REBORN: The twentieth anniversary special continues on EP.COM

Thank you so much, I was waiting for several months the next entrances of Sliders Reborn. You did a really good job recapturing the spirit of the initial seasons while taking account of the later ones. So much than i'm considering those stories as canon, as the finally bring closure to the sliders saga.
I'm downloading now the pdf to read them.
Thank you

Congratulations Ibrahim!

Thanks for adding these to the Sliders universe!  Another thing for us to chew on!

Ha. Going to vote no.

Wow, that is erie.

Huh? Jerry O'Connel kind of looks like Jeff Bridges now. Weird.

That fashion isn't too out of line with how people dress today. Jeans, plaid shirt, boots... it's pretty timeless. Could his style change? I suppose so, but a lot of grown men are wearing those clothes today and we wouldn't look twice at him if he were wearing them in public.

His hair would be different though, I think. If not in length, then in style. The center part isn't done a lot these days.

SPOILERS

Hi again. My reasoning was this:

We had the original version of SLIDERS -- call it the Tracy Torme version -- for four years. Then in Season 5, we had the events of "The Unstuck Man" where Quinn and all his doubles were ripped out of reality. This wasn't just a case of Quinn's doubles going missing; they retroactively never existed.

Quinn remained in existence as scar tissue on a damaged multiverse, but removing his doubles cracked reality and broke the concepts of cause and effect. Quinn and his doubles were sliders, many entrenched and entangled in the history of infinite numbers of Earths; ripping them out would be like tearing out load bearing pillars in a building.

This retroactively affected past events. This manifested in small ways at first -- episodes happening in the wrong order, additional sliders vanishing and being forgotten -- but the effects became more pronounced closer to the ground zero point: magic and the supernatural in Season 3, the nonsensical Kromagg Prime backstory of Season 4 -- and then we had the present of Season 5 in which reality was now dying, the symptoms shown via parallel Earths shrinking and collapsing (hence all the episodes set in the Chandler hotel and on the Backlot). And there were no more Quinn-doubles, hence Quinn's peculiar absence from Season 5.

So, the version of SLIDERS that we saw on TV is actually a Geiger-corrupted version of the *real* SLIDERS.

In Season 5, we have a paradox: how can be there no Quinn-doubles? The only explanation is that not only were all of Quinn's doubles deleted, they were retroactively erased from history. But if he doesn't exist, who created sliding? In most time travel movies, paradoxes are resolved before consequences arise; this is what happens if they're not resolved. You get the craziness of Seasons 3 - 5; things stop making sense and it ripples into the past as well.

I will confess that the logic of this doesn't make clear, linear sense, but I feel this can be excused if the story declares that reason, rationality, cause and effect are broken concepts after the Geiger experiment with the effects affecting both past and present.

It is, essentially, a metaphor for the FOX Network's interference. :-)

But if it's confusing, a re-draft may be in order.

Ireactions I have to ask if you have ever seen the British Comedy Sci Fi "Red Dwarf"?

There was an Episode called "Inquisitor" which featured a Genengineered Lifeform who is Biologically Immortal who had a Dilemma very much like that of the Alien who became Immortal via an accident with a Rubberband, Hot Beverage and Experimental Tech ie Lack of Purpose.

What to do with Eternity?

The HHGttG Alien chose to Time Travel and Insult Everyone in the Universe who ever existed.

The Inquisitor chose to Judge whether or not Worthy Lives have been lived.... Or if People have squandered their chance at life.

Mallory as a Living being from an infinite Multiverse has a lot in common with Dave Lister in that Episode mentioned above. The road not travelled.

Which Sperm reached the Egg? Both Sperm and Ovum Combinations in that Episode are named Dave Lister but both Physiologically are different iterations of Combining the same Genetic Codes of the Parent Donors but in different ways.

I like your ideas for Mallory in some ways but I think an infinite Multiverse has no need to exclude a different version of Quinn. It managed a Gender Divergence after all in Logan St. Claire and who knows how many other Female Quinns.

Thank you very much for your clarification and additions.
As with any finale, making everyone happy is always impossible, but you were quite close enough .
I guess you just have now to print and send it to Fox once finished, with a note saying :
"Guys, I just did for free for this TV Show what you paid some people to do poorly, and I even fixed their mess, isn't that nice ?"
Although Fox attitude toward Sci-fi shows changed after that (Fringe for example).
I'll be sure to tell my friends that finally, this jumped the shark show finally got the ending it deserved .
It was the best way you could tribute to this fantastic show for its anniversary.

Sorry -- I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

Whether you like Laurel or don't, I am completely baffled by how anyone could look at REBORN and say she needs to be removed from the story when the original sliders would not reunite if she were not present. I'm finding your criticisms about Quinn's work... unintelligible. I have no idea what you're trying to say.

I'm looking over our E-mails. You read the original outline, where Part 2 is composed entirely of action set-pieces where Maggie and Hurley are killer cyborgs that the sliders fight and Laurel manifests telepathic powers.

You told me that these story elements were implausible and unbelievable and advised that I find more grounded means of advancing through the story. The scripts for REBORN, as posted online, do not contain killer cyborgs or telepathic powers and there are only two fight scenes in Part 2, each one lasting less than a page and both confined to the first third.

You and Matt had a lot to say to me. I agreed with all the problems you guys raised, but I came up with my own solutions to addressing them. A reader in this thread raised problems as well that prompted a rewrite.

I have thought hard on your post and I cannot understand what you're saying at all -- which is so very odd, because I had no difficulty understanding your extremely negative reaction to the first REBORN outline and making changes.

I'm thinking maybe reading only 50 pages isn't enough to offer an opinion -- or at least not one that I can put to use in making revisions.

SPOILERS

"Reunion" starts with all the sliders separated and distant. The reason: I have two wishes for the sliders: to know that they made it home and that the 1995 series ended happily, and to see them sliding again. The two are mutually exclusive; sliding, while fun to watch for me, was hellish for them. So I started with 3/4 of the characters retired from sliding. The Laurel Hills character was a plotting necessity; her situation forces the sliders to reluctantly get the band back together and step back into the vortex. 

If you read only 50 pages, then you missed all of this.

There is no way, in my mind, that a Rembrandt in his 60s and an Arturo in his 70s would resume the kind of random sliding that drove the 1995 show. But random sliding is SLIDERS' storytelling engine, so that's where I needed them to end up. If a story requires characters to agree to something they very much don't want to do, the story must construct reasons and situations to justify it. Therefore, REBORN doesn't have the sliders back together until its final pages, and they only start sliding again on its last page. I had to earn it and Laurel was a plotting necessity to make that happen.

As for Quinn's situation -- I don't really know what you're talking about. I do not understand how to apply your comments to my scripts. But on that subject: REBORN has a serious problem at the outset; if Quinn has full control of sliding, then the character is vastly too powerful and impossible to write. However, if after 20 years, Quinn doesn't have full control, then he's incompetent. "Reunion" has Quinn saying he has to be careful with sliding, that he can't make waves, that caution is why he isn't saving the world with slide-tech, and the narrative clearly and unambiguously establishes that he is lying. It's stated outright in the dialogue. All is explained in "Revelation."

If you only read 50 pages, then you missed this as well.

In terms of patterns of feedback, the response to "Reunion" has been uniformly good, the response to "Reminiscence" has been good aside from one area of confusion (fixed). The response to "Revelation" has been more varied -- the main criticism is that the plot is extremely unwieldy and haphazard. Because it's presented entirely in terms of the sliders sitting around talking and the character voices are vivid, it's enjoyable and satisfying as an experience, but troubled and inconsistent as a work of science fiction. It doesn't explore the ideas enough; it's more interested in treating the SLIDERS like sitcom characters where listening to them talk is an end in itself.

Complaints have also been that some "Revelation" scenes are *extremely* long -- although given that REBORN is all about spending time with the characters again, 10 - 15 page scenes of the sliders chattering may not be excessive but instead going above and beyond in giving the readers their reunion.

I would say the most problematic aspect of "Revelation"'s plot is the universal key card that works as a credit card and key with any lock or banking system in any universe. That's ridiculous. At the same time -- Smarter-Quinn is a genius; I don't see how he could function interdimensionally without something like this universal key. I have no idea how it would work; I just know that it's something Smarter-Quinn would have.

The first half of the climax is a long, long, long speech from Smarter-Quinn delivering a massive infodump. But -- it's the voice of Smarter-Quinn, which, to me, is interesting because it's the voice of Smarter-Quinn and a darker pastiche of Jerry O'Connell. Your mileage may vary.

My personal dis-satisfaction with "Revelation" -- the world-building's fine, but there's not enough of the little incidental, minor details of alt-history that Tracy Torme always peppered into his scripts. Tracy's comedic voice is present in the characters; his sense of social satire is not as strongly in evidence.

The most critical complaint with "Revelation," in my view: while all the characters have lively and distinctive voices, Professor Arturo and Wade suffer from the overstuffed plot. While they both have lots of funny moments and neat things to say, they do not have personal goals that are fulfilled by the narrative and it's hard to say who they are as people based on SLIDERS REBORN. Arturo is the wise Professor, Wade is.................................................. funny. But all the characters are funny. I'm going to see if I can't give Wade a good finale in the final script.

I certainly don't think my work is perfect, but I feel like the flaws you point out aren't flaws as much as they are different choices. I chose A. You would choose B.

I hope you will not take this remark harshly given our long friendship, but I firmly believe that good, reasonable criticism is accompanied by specific examples and a proposed solution and not based on a mere 18.12 per cent of the existing material.

Well, I did want to give you some sort of response, as I mentioned before, because I thought after putting in all that time to producing these pieces, the series deserved to be read and commented on by the dedicated members here. The worst thing (in my mind) would be to not read and comment at all.

I'm obviously not giving you feedback that you feel you can use, or is actionable, or is necessarily legitmate... it is good to hear that Reunion has been embraced by those who have given you feedback.

It is true that what I read was a small portion of all the work you produced here, but I felt what I read was substantial enough (an hour's worth of screen time if this were a movie) to provide the type of reactions one might solicit in audience testing, for instance.

But as you said, maybe I just prefer B to A.

I'm not troubled by a small readership for various reasons.

First, I never expected a PDF screenplay series sequel to a TV show cancelled in ignominy and disgrace 15 years previous to have a huge readership beyond the 15 - 20 people who have read it and sent me messages.

Second, I wrote REBORN because I wanted a twentieth anniversary special, and when NBCUniveral (correctly) declined to commission one, I made my own. It's something of a SLIDERS tradition that the fans have to make their own merchandise, their own collectibles, their own DVD cases, and now, their own anniversary special.

Third, because I was writing REBORN as a niche project, I wrote it as a sequel to Seasons 1- 5 with all continuity intact (or memories of the continuity intact, at least), meaning that the project is likely incomprehensible to anyone who didn't see all five seasons of the show.

Fourth, the PDF screenplay format is still lengthy and requires time and commitment and it's probably best enjoyed on an e-reader or a tablet and preferably one with a good-sized screen. This isn't something you can read on your phone.

Informant liked "Reunion." Cyrokin liked Parts 1- 4, as did intangirble. Martin Markov liked it. Nigel Mitchell liked it. Slan, Christian, i_am_scifi, James Clarkson, general_vulcan, Do De, "Erika," rootofunity, NeutroBlaster96, Hondoh, Aaron Orenstein, Omountains and noothername liked it. Slider_Quinn21 said he'd get back to me on it.

I once asked Nigel Mitchell why he published ebooks on Amazon to a small audience. He replied that their existence made him happy. That's good enough for me as well.

I just re-read "Reunion" and I see nothing that indicates Quinn is trying to save infinite numbers of Earths. Within the script, his attempts to improve situations are confined to his home Earth.

If Quinn Mallory being a force for good is something you find out of character -- that is so incomprehensible to me that I can't see you enjoying any of this project even if you get around to finishing it. I don't understand how that could possibly be a problem; I don't see how (or why) I could possibly address that. That is simply a non-starter for me.

"Killer cyborgs are silly," "Laurel brings about global collective consciousness is silly," "Try to find a more plausible way to get from point A to B" -- "You have crafted set pieces strung together by the flimsiest of machinations that make no sense," "Your continuity references are so thick I have no idea what you're referring to and I've seen the show enough for most" -- "I don't understand how the Season 5 Combine affected events in Season 1" -- those are criticisms from you and Matt and Christian that I can understand.

"Quinn Mallory should not be heroic" -- sorry. We have come to a parting of ways on this project.

You're free to like or dislike however much of REBORN you read, but at present, REBORN is 276 pages. You read 50 of them. I don't see how you can claim scenes need to be cut when you have no way of gauging whether or not they paid off at a later point; I don't see how you can declare Laurel Hills needs to be removed from the story when you don't really know what the story is. The fact that there is no telepathy or war games across San Francisco should tell you the scripts bear little resemblance to the outline I first sent you.

This is not the first time you have spoken badly of my writing. In the past, you have called my writing clumsy and poorly conceived and badly executed. Matt has also regularly noted serious errors and glaring discrepancies and logical failures in my writing. I was always happy to see that, because the criticisms were specific to the material and therefore very helpful as opposed to -- as opposed to whatever the hell this is supposed to be.

I don't see what you could possibly have to say about REBORN beyond the general impression that you're not really into it and probably won't finish it, which is the only fair or reasonable reaction I think any reader could have after reading 50 pages out of 276.

Feedback of WHAT? Whatever your feedback is in this thread, it clearly hasn't any bearing on my story since you didn't bother finishing to read even one of the full-length scripts before telling me it was bad.

With the SLIDERS 2013 project, you told me that the scene where Malcolm tells Rembrandt the entire world history made no sense; Malcolm doesn't know Rembrandt's from a parallel Earth, he'd see no reason to impart generally known, common information. I rewrote it, moving Malcolm's exposition to the news snippets.

At one point, you told me I shouldn't try to work so closely with other posters who would never match my level of commitment and that I would always be disappointed. I switched to writing all the outlines myself but running them past consultants.

Withe the first draft of the REBORN outline, you said that characters often moved the story along through means that made no sense, such as the action sequences, Laurel being telepathic, etc.. Specific. Clear. Which made me think that I could count on you for reasoned criticism that would actually relate to my writing.

Instead, you read 18 per cent -- 18 per cent -- of SLIDERS REBORN and proceeded to tell me 100 per cent of it should be rewritten. I didn't realize it was such a stressful, overbearing, taxing requirement that people read the material before saying how it should be revised.

If some other poster read 1/5 of my writing and told me I should change the other 4/5, I would have shrugged it off, but I valued your opinion. I sent you outlines and scripts for this as early as 2014 and I seriously considered your advice and I thought we were friends. Apparently, not so much, since you don't feel you need to read the damned scripts before declaring that plots and characters need to be cut.

It's great that you've got so much time to type up your thoughts on SLIDERS REBORN but no time to actually read it first. Your criticism has been largely incomprehensible in that way critiques are when the critic is largely ignorant of the material: vague and inaccurate, irrelevant to the actual material (because you don't know the material) and utterly worthless.

Spare me -- and this thread -- anymore of your less-than-useless opinions on stories you haven't actually read.

How would you know? ;-)

During the four seasons Quinn was on the show, he was sliding randomly. When during the show did he ever have the chance to demonstrate long-term planning and project management skills? Does the fact that he was never in onscreen situations where he could plan long term mean he was incapable of doing so? Or that he couldn't learn?

That said, a Quinn with no long-term thinking who has been made this way by sliding -- that's a valid take on the character. There are definitely Quinn-doubles like that out there; some other writer might write Quinn in this way and it would be a legitimate interpretation. It's just not mine. The Quinn of REBORN is not a nomadic college student. He's a 42-year-old man who has had 14 years to refine his technology, methodology, body, mind, spirit and soul and make himself superhuman while still remaining socially awkward, troubled, disturbed, withdrawn, isolated, and a messy dresser who forgets to get haircuts.

**

Anyway. Some excerpts from the final SLIDERS REBORN script. Up to this point, this scene best represents what I ultimately want for SLIDERS.

               EXCERPT FROM SLIDERS REBORN: REGENESIS

               For Rob Floyd

               INT. SLIDERS INC. BOARDROOM - NIGHT

               Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo step into the boardroom,
               followed by five Maggie-doubles (Allison, Mags, Bex, Peggy
               and Meg) as well as Diana. Everyone sits. Rembrandt is
               carrying a LARGE, FRAMED PHOTO -- and he puts the photo frame
               in the vacant chair next to him.

               The photo frame holds an image of Mallory (Robert Floyd).

                                   ALLISON
                             (to Rembrandt)
                         Okay. Who's the guy in the photo?
                         And why do you always bring that to
                         meetings?

                                   REMBRANDT
                         He should be sitting at this table.
                         He ain't here anymore, but he sure
                         earned his place.

                                   ALLISON
                         Nobody knows who he is!
                             (looking to Quinn)
                         Mallory! Tell your buddy he's being
                         weird.

                                   QUINN
                         Remmy, you're being weird.

               Rembrandt looks furious.

                                   QUINN (CONT'D)
                         Just hang his photo on the wall.

               Rembrandt's eyes widen as though this simply failed to occur
               to him. He stands, picks up the photo frame and moves to the
               wall --

                                   QUINN (CONT'D)
                         I already drilled in a hook in the
                         center.

               Rembrandt finds the hook and hangs the photograph of Mallory.
               Mallory now overlooks the boardroom table.

                                   REMBRANDT
                         Could we get Colin up here too?

                                   QUINN
                         Could we not? I'm still getting
                         over how he was one of fifteen
                         clones programmed to kill us.

               Rembrandt nods and happily returns to his seat, Laurel comes
               in, pushing a cart of coffee and tea. She sits down while
               Diana stands and moves to the head of the table.

                                   DIANA
                         Alright, this is the forty-third
                         weekly meeting on the subject of
                         addressing the 1995-limitation on
                         the multiverse as well as reality's
                         inability to split and generate new
                         dimensions. Thank you all for
                         coming to brainstorm.

                                   ALLISON
                         Whose turn is it to throw out an
                         idea this week for fixing the
                         multiverse?

                                   PEGGY
                         Uh -- Brown's up this week, right?

                                   DIANA
                             (checking a notepad)
                         Yes!

               The Maggies all groan with dismay. Rembrandt looks hurt.

                                   ALLISON
                         Why are we asking the soul singer
                         for scientific theories?

                                   ARTURO
                         Ms. Beckett, I am most disappointed
                         to witness such intellectual
                         elitism.

                                   MEG
                         Oh, look who's talking.

                                   ARTURO
                         Mr. Brown is an artistic spirit
                         with a creative mind.

                                   MAGS
                         He's only going to come up with
                         useless bullshit.

               Rembrandt looks longingly at the door to the boardroom.
               Arturo looks to Quinn for help, Quinn mouths something
               vaguely.

                                   ARTURO
                         Mr. Brown is also the only slider
                         in this room who didn't die; he has
                         seniority and it's his turn.

                                   LAUREL
                         Stop mentioning that you all died!
                         It's god-damn creepy!

               As Arturo nods agreeably, Rembrandt stands while Diana sits.

                                   REMBRANDT
                         Well, I was kinda taken with the
                         other Q-Ball's idea -- the one he
                         tried last year. You know, with the
                         doomsday clocks.

                                   WADE
                         Well, yeah. Quinn's always been
                         very smart.

               She smiles fondly at Quinn and Quinn can be seen flushing
               with pleasure.

                                   WADE (CONT'D)
                         Aside from ripping off an episode
                         of Doctor Who and nearly killing
                         everybody, the doomsday clock plan
                         did have the benefit of being one
                         that would work.

                                   LAUREL
                         I'm sure Rembrandt isn't suggesting
                         we go with Smarter Quinn's plan to
                         kill everybody -- and yes, I'm
                         calling him that, I went there,
                         it's fine.

               Everyone looks to Quinn to confirm this, he shrugs
               indifferently.

                                   REMBRANDT
                         Well, uh -- I know the big problem
                         is that we want to take out the
                         1995-limitation without taking out
                         the people living under it. I was
                         wondering if we could try doing
                         Smarter Quinn's plan after
                         everyone's died. Like, we could set
                         it on a timer.

                                   ALLISON
                         What?

                                   PEGGY
                         I don't understand anything you
                         just said. Is that word salad? Are
                         you having a stroke?

                                   DIANA
                         I believe what Rembrandt's asking
                         is this: is there the possibility
                         of employing Smarter Quinn's plan,
                         but making preparations so that the
                         collapse and replacement of our
                         reality takes place after the human
                         race has gone extinct?

                                   REMBRANDT
                         Yeah!

                                   QUINN
                         It'd be humane. It's sensible. It's
                         currently not feasible.

               Rembrandt's face falls.

                                   QUINN (CONT'D)
                         I said currently not feasible! The
                         problem is that there might not be
                         enough of a multiverse left to
                         rebuild at the endpoint -- but this
                         is an avenue we need to explore.

                                   ARTURO
                         Well done, Mr. Brown.

               Rembrandt nods, looking relieved. He takes a seat. Diana
               leafs through her notes.

                                   DIANA
                         I believe the Professor wished to
                         raise a concern?

                                   ARTURO
                         Thank you, Dr. Davis.

               The Professor stands.

                                   ARTURO (CONT'D)
                         My friends, I have been privileged
                         to see the convergence of ideas
                         over the past forty-three weeks.
                         However, I would be remiss if not
                         to advise that we begin
                         consideration of what is becoming
                         an uncomfortable truth.

                                   LAUREL
                         If this is going to be a long
                         speech, can I go to the bathroom
                         first?

                                   ARTURO
                         We may need to consider that there
                         is no way to remove the 1995
                         limitation without destroying this
                         present incarnation of reality.

                                   QUINN
                         Professor!

                                   ARTURO
                         We must consider how to confront
                         this situation.

               Quinn stands as well. Facing his teacher.

                                   QUINN
                         We are confronting it. We're going
                         to fix this.

                                   ARTURO
                         Mr. Mallory -- I believe that a
                         multiverse without the 1995
                         limitation is essentially a new
                         multiverse entirely -- one that
                         cannot co-exist with our own. They
                         would be mutually incompatible. One
                         would replace the other.

                                   QUINN
                         There's got to be some way to make
                         new universes form around the ones
                         we have right now --

                                   ARTURO
                         The notion is ridiculous.

                                   QUINN
                         Oh, come on. It happens all the
                         time!

               The Professor looks incredulous.

                                   ARTURO
                         What?! When?

               Quinn looks like he's struggling to think of something. His
               hands flail desperately, then --

                                   QUINN
                         It happens in Star Trek?

               Arturo glares at Quinn.

                                   ARTURO
                         Star. Trek?

                                   LAUREL
                         Oh, yeah! The 2008 movie! There was
                         a rebooted continuity, but the
                         novels and video games still take
                         place in the old timeline.

               Arturo looks to the Maggies, Wade and Rembrandt for help.
               Then he looks to Diana.

                                   DIANA
                         There are some contradictions
                         between novels and the games?
                         Specifically, Wesley Crusher, who --

                                   ARTURO
                         All right! So, in our search for
                         positive examples, we have a single
                         feature film --

                                   REMBRANDT
                         Well, hang on, Professor. The new
                         Terminator did the same thing.

                                   LAUREL
                         Did it? I thought that the Genisys
                         continuity replaced the Terminator
                         II timeline --

                                   DIANA
                         Yes, but the Guardian and the
                         version of Skynet in the film were
                         also from separate timelines,
                         suggesting co-existing timelines in
                         a quantity of at least --

                                   ARTURO
                             (roaring)
                         Will you people shut up?!

               He glares around the room at Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt, Laurel
               and Diana. When his glower hits the Maggies --

                                   BEX
                         Hey! I haven't even spoken yet!

                                   ARTURO
                         This conversation has degenerated
                         into a pointless discussion of
                         cultural trivia that has no bearing
                         whatsoever on our deliberations!

               Wade stands.

                                   WADE
                         What the Professor's saying is that
                         he's really happy with all the
                         great ideas that've come out of
                         this group.

                                   ARTURO
                         If we have assembled merely to
                         debate the merits of the latest
                         effort to exploit overexposed
                         copyrights, kindly be certain to
                         exclude me from any subsequent
                         concursions!

                                   WADE
                         The Professor's also impressed with
                         you, Remmy -- the whole idea to
                         blow up the multiverse after life
                         is done living in it? Really good.

                                   REMBRANDT
                         Hey, thanks, Professor!

                                   ARTURO
                         If none of you here have anything
                         further to contribute, then be so
                         good as to disperse and dispense
                         with any further pretense of
                         meaningful discourse!

                                   WADE
                         And now that we've come up with a
                         neat new angle to think on, we
                         should get some dinner, get some
                         sleep and get back to work
                         refreshed and recharged!

               Arturo turns towards Wade, his face red with fury. Wade
               smiles sweetly at him. Arturo storms out of the boardroom. At
               a distance, the sound of a slamming door can be heard.

                                   LAUREL
                         Dude just hates the new Terminator.

One of my favourite movie reviewers, Devin Faraci (a man with whom I rarely agree but love to read), described THE FORCE AWAKENS as STAR WARS fanfic because it was simply a pastiche of the 1977 movie rather than a new STAR WARS story. He wrote:

"Most fanfic is, on some level, fan service -- fans giving themselves what they want. Bringing together characters they like, killing ones they don’t, redeeming villains they love, exploring concepts barely glanced upon in the original property. They right perceived wrongs, give new endings and reconstruct emotions and relationships. That’s usually dramatically unsatisfying, and very often the best stories are the ones that drive fans the craziest. Getting what you want is fun at first, but it’s like letting a kid have free reign of the fridge - - they end up with a bellyache and maybe even scurvy if you don’t step in soon enough. You gotta eat your vegetables, and fanfic rarely is interested in greens.

"THE FORCE AWAKENS is ice cream for dinner. It’s full of familiar things, sometimes with just a new name on them. It’s filled with familiar characters, who have - in true fan fiction style - reverted to fan-favorite versions of themselves. It reinforces and reiterates what we already love, if slightly changed around and mashed up to be a bit more fan-friendly.

"For STAR WARS to escape the stigma of just being corporate-appointed fanfic someone needs to redefine what STAR WARS is. If STAR WARS has, until now, been George Lucas, the right move isn’t to just ape what Lucas has done but to do something blazingly new."

SLIDERS REBORN is guilty of many of these charges -- wanting to right the wrongs of the 1995 show, mimicking the Pilot episode in plot structure. Matt was telling me about the most emotional script he'd ever written. I remarked that "Reunion" was my most emotional because there was almost no thought put into the plotting -- it was simply my feelings and emotions with regards to SLIDERS. I wanted to know that Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo were okay and had been as of two minutes after "The Seer" ended. Writing it was a process of working my emotions into a 20-years-later pastiche of the Pilot in order to pay tribute to how it all started.

"So what you're saying," Matt crowed, "is that it's easy to be derivative!" Yes. But at the same time, I trust my storytelling instincts. Not my plotting -- my plotting has regularly needed a Nigel Mitchell or a Matt Hutaff to sort it out -- but I trust my instincts in terms of charting an emotional course for the story and making it feel vivid, compelling and worthwhile.

And what my instincts told me was that it would feel false and awkward if in 2015, Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo were hanging out and all lived in the same house and ate all their meals together. That would be ice cream for dinner. Even operating from the position that SLIDERS REBORN is like a DOCTOR WHO novel -- written for fans who know the show inside out -- it wouldn't work to have the original four all together at the start of REBORN.

Most Season 6 fanfics have tried to resolve all the unfinished plots point by point, immediately after "The Seer." It's always a mess. REBORN had a 15-year time gap that could be used to create distance between "The Seer" and today. This allowed for the present-day situation to be whatever was best for the characters with the justification that something in the last 15 years had resulted in an Earth Prime where the Kromagg invasion never happened. It's absurd -- and only feels plausible if the unknown events of the time gap are emphasized -- which required that the characters be distant from each other to reflect the distance of the 1995 series and the way it ended.

"Reprise" showed the characters instantly resurrected. As charming as this is, the sliders being together at the start of the 2015 story would then demand that the magic of "Reprise" be explained, which would immediately sink any sense of mystery or magic. Having the sliders apart left it vague, undefined, mysterious and created a sense of myth and wonder.

Was this delaying what was wanted by some guy who only bothered to read 50 pages before writing the whole thing off? Yes, because you have to stretch before you sprint. The audience has not seen Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo together since 1997; to pretend like they were never apart would feel false, whereas to have them split up and gradually meeting up again would feel real because it mirrors the real-world situation. It would feel like fan service unless it were earned.

The other aspect of fanfic that Faraci critiques is that it rarely creates anything new, instead pastiching what previously existed. A new work on an existing property, to move beyond being just a pastiche, has to find an effective way for the writer to use existing characters to express the new writer's heart. This is a critique that REBORN most definitely does not rise above.

REBORN is a pastiche -- not of the SLIDERS scripts as written by Torme and Weiss, but of the actors who played the characters. It's a print-and-prose approximation of the performers' speech patterns, line deliveries, body language and physical interaction -- and in that sense, REBORN is unlike the majority of most SLIDERS fanfics mainly because most SLIDERS fanfics were written when the show was on the air and shortly after the cancellation as opposed to being written by someone who spent 15 years obsessively studying "As Time Goes By" and "Luck of the Draw." Most fanfic writers can't do that because most fanfic writers have god-damn lives.

My ability at pastiche is mostly from examining DOCTOR WHO novels where bombastic, idiosyncratic actors were re-created in print. The overall effect is a pastiche of a scripting style, but again, it's not Torme's. It's done in the style of Dan Harmon's COMMUNITY scripts, all about idiosyncratic characters with distinctive backstories and odd personal tics and baffling obsessions bouncing off each other as inseparable friends who drive each other carzy.

That said, REBORN is not simply running through the classic SLIDERS tropes. There are new ideas and a new approach. The classic SLIDERS usually took the view that North America at the end of the twentieth century was an ideal situation and most divergences from that end result were regarded as dangerous, threatening, disturbing and an aberration to be corrected as best as possible. This wasn't in any way intended by the writers; it was something of an accidental implication due to the characters' stated longings for home and their suspicion and confusion towards the unfamiliar.

REBORN, mostly thanks to Nigel Mitchell, is skeptical and suspicious of the idea that our world is on the right and proper path, and the story eventually becomes about all the terrible ways the world could end. I give full credit to Nigel for SLIDERS REBORN having new and original ideas. Like George Lucas before his divorce, I am not a skillful producer of fiction, but I'm collaborative and will happily commit to other people's ideas in order to produce the story I wish to experience.

So, yes -- REBORN did not open its 2015 story with sliders already together and it has Quinn exploring new applications of sliding technology.

Sure, this is an unlikely prospect for a 2015 revival, but I like to think SLIDERS REBORN is a SLIDERS production that took place on an Earth where the show's reruns were a hit in syndication with the first two seasons and select Season 3 episodes re-aired as a (rerun) event mini-series. Much like the series EERIE INDIANA became a hit in reruns on FOX in 1997, years after its original run in 1991.

Matt Hutaff, correctly, thinks that anyone who would try to revive SLIDERS in REBORN fashion would be competely insane even on an Earth where SLIDERS reruns were a big hit right up to 2015. I'd like to think that on this Earth, Dan Harmon was a big SLIDERS fan, and that when he was approached by Yahoo to revive COMMUNITY, he asked to do four SLIDERS Internet movies as well and Yahoo wrangled the rights from NBCUniversal and gave Harmon twelve million and three months, and would later report this SLIDERS revival as part of their $42 million loss on new media.

Anyway. I took my time getting the band back together because I felt it had to be earned. Please don't criticize this project without at least finishing the first 95-page script. That's a pretty reasonable request.

I'd like to suggest submitting Sliders 2013 or the Sliders Reborn series to these guys:

http://brokensea.com/?page_id=2

They've done fan fic audio dramas for the Dr. Who and X Files franchises before and the production quality I've heard is really professional. I bet Tom and Corey might even be able to provide some assistance if something were to come to fruition.

Submissions:

http://brokensea.com/?page_id=124

Would you mind if I submitted Sliders 2013 to them for consideration?

I know you weren't happy with it but myself and everyone I shared it with loved it.

I've only listened to the X Files stuff, about an hour of it. They don't use actual X Files characters, they play within the universe. I was very impressed by the quality of production, considering its completely a volunteer-based effort.

Casting some of the Sliders characters could be tough, but given that we presumably won't be getting any audio-visual material out of the franchise going forward, I certainly would like to see someone take a crack at it. If it ends up being really bad, I figure nothing is lost.