Topic: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

chaser9 wrote:

Why would anyone want Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo to have been left in the states they were in at the end of Season 5 for 16 years? That's depressing. They made it home.  Okay?  It's over and done.  No need to resolve any of that mess, and as someone who worked on 4 season 6s and a post alt-S5 fanfic dealing with this mess, I get to say that.

Time to go start the REBOOTING Sliders in the Twenty-First Century thread.

--Chaser9

I once asked Temporal Flux how a new SLIDERS could start over again without all the baggage of the past. Could we reboot without losing what makes SLIDERS special? TF replied that he would love to see a reboot with the original cast, and he gave me his idea, which I updated for 2015:

  • In 2015, Wade Welles is a fortysomething tech journalist who failed to build a life beyond reviewing smartphones and laptops.

  • Rembrandt Brown is a coffee bar owner in his sixties who failed to hang onto his 15 minutes of fame.

  • Professor Arturo is a genius in his seventies who failed to find a career outside of writing high school study guides for science students.

  • Quinn Mallory is a fortysomething tax accountant who lost his passion for science after failing to create anti-gravity -- but twenty years after giving up, he realizes that he discovered something else instead.

  • Quinn has not spoken to Wade Welles or the Professor since a strange day in 1994 when they accused him of strange behaviour he didn't recall and ended their respective associations with him.

  • Quinn has never been able to explain why the Professor recalls him being rude and abusive in class or why Wade remembers Quinn kissing her.

  • In fact, those hours of his memory are missing, which he attributes to sleep deprivation over his failed science project.

  • When Amanda Mallory dies, Quinn goes back to his old house to clear it out and sell it. He uncovers his old anti-gravity machine and his video cassettes. Watching one of them, one he doesn't remember making, he is struck by inspiration.

  • He restarts the machine with some adjustments and opens a new vortex.

  • After an initial slide, he eagerly invites the Professor and Wade, finally realizing what happened in 1994.

  • They open a gateway to explore once again, accidentally drawing in a passing Rembrandt -- and the adventure begins again.

  • SLIDERS: A journey through what could be and might have been. Sometimes, getting lost is the best way to be found.

Matt Hutaff came up with a simple way to bring this reboot method into continuity:

  • Quinn in 2015 will find video diaries from the Quinn of the 1995 series.

  • The video journals will explain the sliding concept to the 2015 Quinn.

  • The journals will later have the 1995 Quinn reveal that due to an interdimensional war, he has found a way to alter history to remove sliding from reality.

  • This brief journal will reveal to the fans that the older doubles are the original sliders, just living in an altered timeline where sliding's discovery is delayed to the present. New viewers will not realize this, nor do they need to.

I've yet to see anyone offer a tidier, cleaner, better approach -- which tells you how clever TF and Matt are. :-)

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

ireactions wrote:

I've yet to see anyone offer a tidier, cleaner, better approach -- which tells you how clever TF and Matt are. :-)

To be fair, a 'tidier, cleaner, better' approach would be a day-zero reboot with a fresh cast and no tangled ties to the past...

BUT having just said that, I do like the concepts mentioned above, as it handles the obvious aging of the original cast, which is in itself an inherent problem. It is, by far, the best outline I've heard to almost reset the entire show with the original cast. However, I can't help but feel some nagging niggles concerning it though. For better or worse, I feel that wiping out 5 seasons as 'their doubles adventures' is ... kinda dangerous. It reminds me of that information I read somewhere about how one episode was going to feature doubles of our Sliders, but the audience won't realise this until the end of the episode. It sets up a feeling of unease that, at any time, the audience might not even know who they are really watching. The audience is automatically on the backfoot and feel like personal investment in these characters are skewed, because at any times, it could be doubles or character-switch outs.

It's not really a logically thing, it's a feeling, but feelings are what gives births to massive fandoms and reactions, and this one could be quite dangerous to implement. Again, I'm not sweeping these concepts under the carpet, because as I mentioned earlier, it is the best damn structure I've heard to reboot the show with the originals ... but it does come with a cost.

Personally, I think it's a cracking idea that fans could play with, but if we're then taking the step up to discussing commercial aspects of a modern day reboot, then the actor's ages and ties (no matter how subtle or hidden) to the old show is baggage that would hold any network back. It would need to be a complete reboot with a fresh group of actors as our fab foursome from day one. I would love to see more modern storytelling tools of a more tightly woven character development arcs for each of the characters over the course of their journey, and for that friendship angle to not immediately be there from the start - but to slowly grow.

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

Yeah. You could recast. I just think using the original cast is preferable. I do think that it's inevitable that SLIDERS move into NEXT GENERATION territory. John Rhys-Davies is in his 70s; you can't have him do five years of random sliding. Which is why I'd think of this as four Netflix movies a season or a 13-episode first season. I think the first season would have to be the one and only season of random sliding with the original four -- at which point, I think the sliders would have to make it home. If there is a second season, the sliders could be sliding in a more controlled manner and new characters could be brought in as younger sliders. Fans are always talking about a NEXTGEN approach; I think you'd need to give the first generation their due in order to create a good foundation to build on for the future.

It's possible my bullet points were unclear -- but Matt's idea was that these are not doubles of the original sliders. These are the original sliders. But they have forgotten Seasons 1 - 5. The video cassettes, I think, are a great way to bring in continuity but isolate it entirely to these fragments of video diaries. The video diaries would serve the role that Smarter!Quinn played in the Pilot of explaining sliding to Quinn. New viewers, however, would just think the videos are from a double of Quinn.

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

ireactions wrote:

Matt's idea was that these are not doubles of the original sliders. These are the original sliders. But they have forgotten Seasons 1 - 5. The video cassettes, I think, are a great way to bring in continuity but isolate it entirely to these fragments of video diaries. The video diaries would serve the role that Smarter!Quinn played in the Pilot of explaining sliding to Quinn. New viewers, however, would just think the videos are from a double of Quinn.

That's going to be very confusing and off putting to new viewers.

I think recasting is the best way to go.

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

Well, once again -- the video journals show up in Quinn's basement, and 2015-Quinn thinks that they may have been left by a double. The video diaries guide Quinn through sliding.

The fact that these are the same sliders from the 1995-show is something very subtle, something only fans would notice. New viewers would simply go along with Quinn's assumption that the cassettes were left by an interdimensional double, presumably the same one who insulted the Professor and kissed Wade in 1994.

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

ireactions wrote:

Well, once again -- the video journals show up in Quinn's basement, and 2015-Quinn thinks that they may have been left by a double. The video diaries guide Quinn through sliding.

The fact that these are the same sliders from the 1995-show is something very subtle, something only fans would notice. New viewers would simply go along with Quinn's assumption that the cassettes were left by an interdimensional double, presumably the same one who insulted the Professor and kissed Wade in 1994.

You're trying to introduce the concept of doubles before you've established the premise of the show.  You're going to have new people thinking it's about time travel.

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

Oh wow. I completely misread the 'altered timeline where sliding's discovery is delayed to the present' the '2015 and 1999 Quinns' and put down the not remembering Wade's kiss and the rant at Arturo as something that happened because of their doubles passing through. I thought that you were proposing a concept about the group's doubles, but if we're talking about this reboot being the actual originals with just their minds wiped ... then I am really confused here!

Apart from what pilight mentions, there's a whole host of questions that are immediately thrown up, ones that old fans will demand to know from the onset of this reboot. How in the world is Quinn alive and well? What happened when Rembrandt stepped through the final slide? How did they all get their memories wiped? How was sliding purged from the multiverse? Where's Colin? How is the Professor and Wade with the group? What happened to the Maggs? Where are the other Sliders? Etc... Etc...

Having their memories wiped doesn't negate the need for these questions to be answered.

If these are the originals, you'll eventually (sooner rather than later due to fans) will have to provide answers. If they aren't, then what's the point of the journals? I don't think you could make it completely subtle that we're not supposed to know ... because these are the original actors here. And just like I mentioned about the other concept and sweeping 5 seasons under the carpet - this does the exact same thing. I just ... I honestly just don't get it. It feels very confusing.

The only thing I see it serving a purpose for is to allow the original actors one more slide ... but the audience (both old and new fans) aren't going to get that feeling because these aren't the originals. Time has passed. People have changed. It's going to be weird to see them try to recapture their younger selves or get people to shift to a new older dynamic - especially if we're ignoring 5 seasons worth of continuity and development.

I just ... I just don't get it. Honestly, you're really going to have to explain this one again to me in simpler terms, as now that I think about it, it's even more confusing than most season 6's I've read.

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

Okay, here's what I was thinking happens in the Pilot Redux:

  • Opening scene: same footage from the Pilot where Quinn knocked out the power in 1994.

  • Cut to 2016.

  • Quinn, a tax accountant, has been assigned to income tax duty.

  • Wade and Arturo are sent to his desk, where, as he does their taxes, they rant at him for various sins (giving up on science, ridiculing Arturo in his class, abandoning his life's passion, kissing Wade and pretending it never happened).

  • Quinn tells them he has no idea what the hell they're talking about and he's done fine for himself. He failed in his ambitions for science -- he moved on. Wade leaves in disgust. Arturo tells Quinn he should be ashamed of himself.

  • ARTURO: "You abandoned your gift! You could have changed the world with your intellect and body of knowledge, but what have you done with it instead? Learned how to fill out forms and reduced yourself to a calculator on legs!"

  • The phone rings. Quinn picks it up. Then he hangs up. He looks blank and lost.

  • ARTURO: "What the devil is wrong with you now?"

  • QUINN: "My mom had a heart attack. She's dead."

  • ARTURO: " ........................... but on balance, Mr. Mallory, perhaps you shouldn't be too hard on yourself."

  • A blur of funeral arrangements, farewells, followed by Quinn going to his old house.

  • He explores his basement, which he has not visited in years.

  • He finds a video cassette on the floor, one of several. Pops one of these into a VHS player and TV.

  • He sees his younger self (Jerry in young-age makeup, obscured by low VHS quality video) talking about adjustments to make to the anti-gravity machine.

  • Quinn can't remember making this video or these adjustments -- but now he makes them. He triggers the machine. It doesn't work. But these adjustments inspire him to try a subsequent configuration. He triggers it again.

  • A vortex opens and sucks Quinn in.

  • He ends up in a parallel universe, explores it, and then the sliding machine back home re-opens a tunnel to bring him home.

  • (Some explanation about how Quinn set up a double-entry gateway, purely by accident.)

  • Quinn returns to his basement, excited. Starts playing more of the VHS cassettes -- and urgently calls the Professor and Wade to his house.

  • He plays them the videos, saying that his alternate universe double must have left him these tapes all those years ago -- probably as an apology for screwing up his life.

  • They review the footage, although some is missing due to some tapes having been broken over the years. They construct a timer while various segments of VHS-Quinn play.

  • VHS-Quinn speaks in reverent, eager tones about what must be out there in the multiverse, how excited he is to explore.

  • (Presumably, Quinn recorded these entries in 1994 between speaking to Smarter-Quinn and welcoming Wade and Arturo into the basement.)

  • Quinn, Wade and Arturo slide out, accidentally ensnaring a passing Rembrandt as they do, who happens to be driving past the Mallory house for reasons too terrible and complex to explain here (read: I haven't thought of any yet).

  • They have another adventure, but triggering the timer early causes them to be lost in the multiverse.

  • All the video journals are left behind on Earth Prime except for fragments here and there that Wade finished converting to keep on her smartphone (as a convenient aid for future episodes if the writer gets stuck for a plot device).

And then, on the website! We have some exclusive web content. We have:

  • Clips of VHS-Quinn talking. It's established that he's recording these segments in 2001. We have him recap individual episodes of the 1995 series from his perspective along with worlds we never saw.

  • We have clips of Quinn explaining the function and properties of sliding.

  • We have clips of Quinn talking about his childhood, which is precisely the same as "The Guardian."

  • And then a final clip.

  • It's Quinn in 2001, saying that terrible things have happened.

  • His friends are all dead.

  • His world is gone.

  • The only reason he's alive now is because a fellow slider sacrificed himself to bring Quinn back from quantum limbo.

  • Quinn has been forced to make a terrible choice.

  • He has commandeered a Kromagg weapon.

  • It is a reality warping weapon. He has modified it. He has reprogrammed it.

  • He can alter reality. He can change the past. He can make it so that no one has ever created sliding, not himself, not his doubles, not the Kromaggs.

  • Everyone will live the lives they'd have had if sliding had never been created.

  • But this is only a delay; he knows his amnesiac self will reconstruct some variant on the technology eventually. So he's left him these tapes to guide him.

  • He hopes his amnesiac self has the wisdom and perspective in the future that Quinn lacked in 1994 and wishes his future self luck in his adventures, speaking of the infinity and wonder of the multiverse and everything that awaits him once again.

How in the world is Quinn alive and well?

History was altered. Sliding was never created by any civilization; not by the Kromaggs, not by any Quinn and so everyone lives the lives they would have had from 1994 - 2015 had sliding never been created.

What happened when Rembrandt stepped through the final slide? How did they all get their memories wiped? Where's Colin? What happened to the Maggs? Where are the other Sliders? How was sliding purged from the multiverse? How is the Professor and Wade with the group?

I don't feel this matters enough to be explained onscreen aside from a blanket explanation: Quinn, in 2001, found himself in trouble on all sides due to an interdimensional war. He took a desperate measure; he altered specific universal constants, reshaping reality so that sliding doesn't exist and can't exist -- at least not for awhile.

(Unnecessary scientific explanation: he restructured reality with a commandeered Kromagg weapon so that sliding is no longer unlocked by negating gravity but rather by the altering spherical harmonics of the Earths' electromagnetic field in order to produce the exotic matter needed for an interdimensional gateway. Whatever! He found a way to remove sliding from reality. This event is really a metaphor for the cancellation of SLIDERS.)

This rewrite of the universe rewound time back to 1994 -- and then let it proceed as though sliding had never been created.

So everyone in every universe lives a sliding-free life. The Kromaggs? They're on their own world. Sliding doesn't exist.

How much of this would ever need to be onscreen? I'd say very, very little. Preferably as little as possible.

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

So Quinn's mother left all his equipment intact in the basement for 20 years even though he gave up science?  A 20 year old VCR that's undoubtedly buried under a mountain of dust still works?

I know what you're talking about and I still find it confusing.  I can hardly imagine what a virgin slidehead would think.

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

WADE: "Why the heck was all that junk still in your basement? You gave up on science two decades ago."
QUINN: "My mom wouldn't throw it out -- she said she still held out hope. Even when I'd given up on myself, she still believed in me."
ARTURO: "Then she was a wise woman, Mr. Mallory."
REMBRANDT: "So what you're saying is that if she'd cleaned house once in the last twenty years, you'd never have built that machine, you'd never have discovered sliding -- AND I WOULDN'T BE HERE!"

I don't think a virgin slidehead would see the VHS tapes as anything more than an artifact left behind by a Quinn-double 20 years previous. The veiled revelation that the Quinn-double was actually this Quinn would just be a small, subtle note for the fans.

To be absolutely frank, I suspect you and Slide Override have spotted some recurring flaws in my writing -- flaws that I tend to cover with jokes. And since the jokes have not been written -- well, the flaws are glaring. Sorry.

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

I love this idea. I would watch this.  I would write fan-fic about this.  wink but if sliding has never been invented on any earth, how do the events with Smarter Quinn, Arturo and Wade still happen in 1994?


--Chaser9

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

Hmm. Well, the whole "Quinn kills sliding to reset reality" was a suggestion from Matt Hutaff for SLIDERS REBORN. So, as with REBORN, the explanation would have been that Smarter-Quinn was in an interdimensional tunnel when reality was rewritten and therefore his timeline and his effect on Earth Prime survived the revision. However, his parallel universe did not survive the revision.

In this Pilot Redux, I imagine Smarter-Quinn then found himself stranded on a parallel Earth and his attempts to rebuild sliding failed. I probably wouldn't ever, ever, ever deal with this onscreen... but I would address it in a web comic.

Again, I think this is one of those flaws in my writing. A hole from which I would distract with a joke or emotional intensity.

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

ireactions wrote:

Hmm. Well, the whole "Quinn kills sliding to reset reality" was a suggestion from Matt Hutaff for SLIDERS REBORN. So, as with REBORN, the explanation would have been that Smarter-Quinn was in an interdimensional tunnel when reality was rewritten and therefore his timeline and his effect on Earth Prime survived the revision. However, his parallel universe did not survive the revision.

In this Pilot Redux, I imagine Smarter-Quinn then found himself stranded on a parallel Earth and his attempts to rebuild sliding failed. I probably wouldn't ever, ever, ever deal with this onscreen... but I would address it in a web comic.

Works for me!

--Chaser9

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

Well, Slide Override and pilight could still be right that it's too confusing. I dunno. In my mind -- the new viewer is going to be misled into thinking that VHS-Quinn is a double and they'll be left to think that. Even the end-scene would simply suggest that VHS-Quinn is a double reaching out to another double. The issue of Smarter-Quinn won't come up for them -- only a fan would think about that, so that's why there'd be a web comic.

However, Matt and Nigel, when reviewing my stuff, have constantly raised the issue that my plots are confusing and try to cram too many maneuvers or plot mechanisms to possibly work -- and I frequently hit that point in scripts and end up using TV-style editing or hyperbole or humour or I simply alter the story on the spot. So, when I find Slide Override and pilight making precisely the same criticisms that two other editors have made, I'm inclined to give it due consideration.

The truth is that a lot of these plot holes are in some ways deliberate. I want the SLIDERS reboot to have a fortysomething Quinn exploring the abandoned laboratory of his youth, wondering if maybe, despite his complete and total failure, there was something worthwhile in husks and fragments of the world of science he left behind. I want the post-2000 events to be vague, unknowable and cosmically indescribable. These are all metaphors for how I feel about SLIDERS.

This may be why they don't make logical sense in the plot and require awkward half-measures -- the basement still has all the equipment and a working VCR! Sliding was erased in a way that Kromaggs can't rebuild it but our Quinn can?! How can Smarter-Quinn still exist?! I keep choosing emotional sense over logical sense. Slide Override and pilight have fair points. Would either of you care to be retained as my script editor?

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

First of all, I don't want my participation in this exercise to signal that I condone what is happening. smile That said, since Ib is taking some elements I flung at the wall while breaking the REBORN story and presenting them as a reboot, I want to at least adjust the concept to fit this new idea.

A lot of the confusion/plot density is coming from having a situation where everything is in place from the original series EXCEPT the part where they slide. Easy way to simplify this? None of that stuff is there: Quinn is living a regular if unremarkable life and has to come home to help make sense of his house after his mother dies. He cleans out the basement, but finds a tape marked video diary. He scavenges an old VCR, puts it in. It's the same footage we're familiar with, but he has no idea what he's looking at. Why is his younger self talking about Wade and Arturo and why is there a wormhole in the background? Where did this come from?

Now there's the mystery of the origin of the tape - are we watching events on a parallel universe or is this a twist on our own home earth. Why doesn't Quinn know about sliding? And then Quinn decides to try and recreate what he's seeing on the tape - going so far as to enlist Arturo's help. And how does he get the equipment? Wade's career gives him that connection.

So you're actually witnessing the birth of sliding. The three of them have some level of agency in its creation. And when they slide, there's mystery surrounding it all. They don't even have to become lost. They just have to make sense of the fragments left behind in the basement as to where this all began.

Gives you a recurring set (the house), gives you danger (surviving until the timer brings them back), and offers a way to incorporate a Rembrandt if they find a clue that he was a part of all this in the first place.

---

And that is the last you will hear from me on this subject. smile

Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

Ireactions, I would like to give you a statement that is both a profound compliment and a simultaneous criticism all at the same time ... you write like Moffat! wink

You definitely come up with some rather grand and clever concepts, ones that are easily enjoyable and ultimately memorable, however, it does feel like you tend to forget (or like you mentioned, directly ignore in favour of emotional sense) those stray story strands at the other end of the scale, and don't necessarily follow each development thread all the way through to their natural progressions or conclusions. There's nothing wrong with hyperbole or tv-style editing in measured doses - but just don't forget that a well constructed story and solid rules are just as important as the emotional side of character development and fan service.

You've certainly got a talent though, and this is just from the outlines you've spinned - I haven't even had a chance to actually read your work yet. I freelance as a proofreader and trust me, you're definitely headed in the right direction. Just don't forget those dangly threads.

I could really see this concept working as a kickstarter movie or even an audio drama with the original cast.

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

Well. There it is. I *wish* I could write like Steven Moffat -- or Dan Harmon -- I can even do a fairly reasonable pastiche. Match that with a pastiche of the actors and the result is something SLIDERS fans enjoy but may not be suited for a general audience. I still think this is a good route forward.

Or, go with Matt's approach -- give up on doing a Pilot Redux and do the Pilot in 2015, being reimagined but with the same actors at their current ages. That's cool too. I mean -- looking at my above bullet points, they're all to hit emotional points about SLIDERS for SLIDERS fans. The desire to see Quinn at age 40 in his basement, thinking all of it worthless and pointless, only to see the VHS tape footage and change his mind -- that's my personal psychodrama and perhaps not the right intro for a new audience.

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

By having 40's Quinn in our world with our Tech Level and a Mystery to solve not only instantly makes Sliders Relatable again but also grabs attention pretty quick.

I have always liked this aspect of the premise.

It is the rewriting of reality/multiverse I have issues with as I pointed out at an earlier point.

Any Change Quinn makes to the Multiverse would essentially create a Split leading to Two Multiverses.

One with the Rewriting Mguffin and One without as per established Canon.

In effect we just end up with a magnified Reality Divergence event.... Except it is now a Mulriversal Divergence Event by Title and Scope.

"It's only a matter of time. Were I in your shoes, I would spend my last earthly hours enjoying the world. Of course, if you wish, you can spend them fighting for a lost cause.... But you know that you've lost." -Kane-

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

omnimercurial wrote:

It is the rewriting of reality/multiverse I have issues with as I pointed out at an earlier point. Any Change Quinn makes to the Multiverse would essentially create a Split leading to Two Multiverses. One with the Rewriting Mguffin and One without as per established Canon. In effect we just end up with a magnified Reality Divergence event.... Except it is now a Mulriversal Divergence Event by Title and Scope.

Well. The simplest explanation that comes to mind is that Quinn commandeered a Kromagg reality warping weapon and made his own modifications. I'm sure Kromagg arsenals have lots of perceptual conceptual armaments. So Quinn found one -- and changed it. The weapon would alter universal constants, change the very nature of reality itself, and do so retroactively, making it so that the changed reality would have always been so.

The nature of the change: originally, Quinn unlocked the gateway to parallel universes by accessing the fundamental interactions within gravity fields. The weapon would switch this so that sliding is now unlocked by tapping into electromagnetic interactions, and retroactively, this has always been the case.

As a result, Quinn's experiments in anti-gravity in 1994 are altered; they never opened a gateway. This is the case for all Quinns in all realities. The Kromaggs, too, experience the same: I'm suggesting with this theory that they discovered sliding when creating their gravity negating aircraft; they succeed, but they don't discover sliding and their civilization remains bound to their own Earth.

The only remnants: the videotape journals and Smarter-Quinn, a paradoxical fragment of the previous multiverse, one preserved deliberately by suspending the tapes between dimensions, the other preserved accidentally by the same means.

I don't think any of this really *matters*, however -- because none of this is why I suggest it. I suggest it because the sliders are superheroes. And superheroes always come back. The sliders' superpower: they have the power to cheat the narrative and side-step the natural and normal consequences of other genres and structures.

For the sliders, death is but a door and the sliding concept and storytelling engine is an avenue to evading any kind of narrative collapse and in turn must allow the sliders to be saved from being detonated, deleted, cyberneticized or getting their TV show cancelled -- or having to be revived in one of those god-awful Season 6 plots in the other thread.

What I'm trying to say: the idea that Seasons 1 - 5 were erased is a metaphor. SLIDERS was cancelled. The idea that Quinn erased sliding from all realities is a metaphor for the fallout of the cancellation: everything good and meaningful and special about SLIDERS was taken away.

To be fair, this is probably silly fanboy psychodrama stuff and I wouldn't fault anyone for thinking it best to do the older doubles route without this multiversal retcon element. I mean, SLIDERS REBORN explicitly declares that the 2000 cancellation of SLIDERS destroyed our world and doomed us all, so -- I'm kind of nuts.

The idea that Quinn, having forgotten sliding, rediscovers it in 2016, is a representation of my faith in the SLIDERS format -- it'll come back. They'll always come back.

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

I DO like that reasoning and perspective.

I kind of like the Tapes unexplained Nature and outstanding Mystery it's just that I would keep the Mystery a Mystery.

Never explain the Reunion/Reboot of the Awesome Foursome and just leave it to Fan Speculation wherein your Reboot/Multiversal Retcon fits.... But so do other theories.

I DO ignore post Season 3 and even half of that I live in denial of so I get where you are coming from.

New Viewers NEED everything fresh and new and us Old Fans need references, gags, parody and returning Characters that are also New Characters to those New Viewers while allowing a New Fan who seeks out any Original Sliders eps to get in on said Jokes and Tips of the Hat.

Adressing all the inconsistencies is not the goal as you say so a balance is needed to avoid excluding any Fans with more familiarity to the parts we dislike while ensuring it does not become Series Six continued.

"It's only a matter of time. Were I in your shoes, I would spend my last earthly hours enjoying the world. Of course, if you wish, you can spend them fighting for a lost cause.... But you know that you've lost." -Kane-

21 (edited by Arturo6 2016-02-02 00:29:19)

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

Would it be possible to talk to one of the minor comic companies about a new set of Sliders comics?  Series such as Kolchak: The Night Stalker have returned in this form (even without the attention other comic continuations, such as X-Files, Buffy, Firefly, etc., have received).  Moonstone Books publishes Kolchak and numerous other properties that include old radio shows such as Johnny Dollar. 

I imagine obtaining the rights could be an issue, but it's likely a Sliders comic could have a larger waiting audience than many titles currently being published at those outlets.  Even a couple one-shot graphic novels could work well.

                                                                                                                                        Rantin' and Ravin' as Usual,
   
                                                                                                                                                                           Arturo6

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

Temporal Flux attempted a comic revival in the years after the cancellation. The problem, unfortunately, was that the investment was too high and the return too low. Currently, I don't think there's a sufficient readership for SLIDERS comics without a very capable publisher willing to engage in deficit financing. So, it's unlikely, but stranger things have happened with properties even more obscure than SLIDERS.

THE X-FILES: SEASON 10 was what inspired my own SLIDERS stuff. SEASON 10 was very much a for-the-fans product that would be incomprehensible to anyone but the die-hards -- and yet, there was a sufficient readership to make the comic a massive financial success (albeit one that was wholly ignored by the TV show making an unexpected return). However, THE X-FILES was an international success, as was BUFFY. FIREFLY less so, but, like THE X-FILES, there were enough die-hards to make a comic profitable.

I'd be curious to read these more obscure comics of ancient TV shows someday -- but I admit, I'm probably not going to watch SIX MiLLION DOLLAR MAN or KOLCHAK anytime soon.

23 (edited by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan 2016-02-03 21:06:22)

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

I think it would be hard to turn a profit as well. If it's $15k to produce a comic of adequete quality, then you'd have to sell like 5k copies to cover (a bit more due to affiliate fees to the ecommerce platforms).

Out of the gate, it would be very hard to get 5k. Maybe you can get 500 to 1000 readers if you are very lucky. So as a property, it's not really providing any initial return, making it less attractive.

That said, I would encourage folks to email comics@lionforge.com and suggest to them Sliders. I think they would be the best bet. They've done a number of old tv franchises (not sure how its turned out), and they have the benefit of a little more access to capital then most startup comic shops would.

The founder, Dave Steward, would have to be a fan of Sliders, and I am not sure that's the case given it wasn't among the properties they originally brought back.

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

I think a far more cost effective route for SLIDERS would be an even lower budget -- either prose or the screenplay format. However, to really engage with an audience -- well, first, it has to be licensed. Don't get me wrong, a script being posted on EarthPrime.com is official enough for me, but that won't pass muster if aiming for mainstream.

Also, it would have to be in a digital format and be extremely, extremely cheap and also very short. Maybe the Pilot redone as a short novella or a screenplay sold in ePub and PDF. Paradoxically, it would have to be written by a big name writer willing to take a low advance on a brilliant project in the hope of returns down the line.

So, instead of me writing it -- we'd approach JK Rowling or Neil Gaiman or Stephen King or Suzanne Collins or Veronica Roth -- someone huge, prepared to give the series a massive start, and then you'd have me, Informant, Slider_Quinn21, Mike Truman, Temporal Flux and Nigel Mitchell write short novellas with our big name opener returning every 3 - 4 volumes.

This proposal, paradoxically, operates on having a very low budget and yet requires hugely expensive writers to provide their services for pennies on their usual rate to start.

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

What about a Fanmade Comic instead?

Sonic the Comic (The UK version not the Archie Comic) has been continued Online in a Unofficially Official Capacity for years.....

"It's only a matter of time. Were I in your shoes, I would spend my last earthly hours enjoying the world. Of course, if you wish, you can spend them fighting for a lost cause.... But you know that you've lost." -Kane-

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

I think the show should return as a web series focused entirely on the staff of a hamburger restaurant. Quinn works the grill, Wade is the janitor, Rembrandt's on the counter and Arturo is the manager. They are the staff of SLIDERS.

Re: REBOOTING Sliders for the Twenty-First Century

Hardee's har har.