Topic: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

Back in the early 2000s, Temporal Flux was working on producing a SLIDERS comic book series. In the end, the cost of licensing matched with artists and printing proved too high and the gross too low. But what I found really intriguing was TF's attitude towards continuity.

Revival?
I assumed that TF would revive SLIDERS in comic book form by doing a post-"Seer" story to resurrect the Torme cast, reset all the deaths and continuity alterations to just after Season 2 and go back to basics: four adventures, parallel Earths, boundless adventure. But TF wasn't doing a reset.

Reboot
I thought that TF, having declined the reset option, would then reboot SLIDERS: if the comics started in 2001, then we'd deal with 2001-era doubles of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. Quinn could be working on his doctorate, Wade might be running the Doppler Computers, Rembrandt and Arturo would be about the same as they were in 1994. This was how TF imagined a SLIDERS feature film and if he did it in the comics, he could create a comic book version of the sliders who wouldn't be superseded by any film revival from Robert K. Weiss who was attempting one at the time.

Remix
But TF wasn't doing that either. No, instead, TF was going to do what I shall refer to as a remix version of continuity. He was going to tell stories set during past seasons of SLIDERS. He was going to tell Season 1-2 style stories of light comedy and cheerful social satire, Season 3 style stories of action and adventure, and there would be a few stories set during Seasons 4 - 5 as well. However, TF was going to use this anthology format to add depth and shading to SLIDERS' tapestry: for example, the original quartet would encounter a Maggie double *before* they met her in "The Exodus," creating a more meaningful relationship that would add weight to the onscreen character.

The tentpole moments: the deaths, the cast changes, the continuity alterations -- TF was simply going to work within them and tell stories within each era but focus primarily on the characters exploring alt-history. That said, TF did think that once the comic was up and running, there was some possibility of a spin-off or mini-series to take place after "The Seer."

I don't know how I feel about this: I think I would have wanted either a reset or a reboot. A remix? I couldn't wrap my head around it.

Power Rangers Remix
And yet, I was recently reading BOOM Comics' POWER RANGERS comics: they have two main ones: MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS (MMPR) is set shortly after the Green Ranger was freed from evil mind control and joined the Power Rangers. GO GO POWER RANGERS (GGPR) is set immediately after the pilot episode where the Rangers first got their powers.

Both serieses, despite being continuity implants within the 1993 season of POWER RANGERS, are yet at odds with the TV show in subtle and distinct ways. The comics are set in the present day, not 1993, so all the Rangers have social media accounts and smartphones. The characterization is distinctly not the TV show: all the rangers are nervous and suspicious of the Green Ranger who is suffering from post traumatic stress.

Past Eras in Present Day
The world at large is aware of Rita and world governments are debating whether to surrender to her or count on the Power Rangers who don't answer to any governing body. The population of Angel Grove is fleeing due to the constant monster attacks. The Rangers are written as actual teenagers who are in over their heads and Zordon and Alpha's rationale for giving alien weaponry to kids: they could exist outside the establishment in secret and the telepathic-biological link between Zords, Power Ranger weapons and users is more effective when paired with someone starting at a younger age. Zordon also doesn't want Zord and morpher tech falling into military and corporate hands.

Billy has become so insecure over being bullied at school and being a superhero in secret that he's been living his life morphed in the blue suit but with a holographic face and civilian clothes on top. Kimberly's parents are getting divorced. Trini's mother is a control freak. Jason's father is sick.

This is a modern vision of POWER RANGERS. It's almost like a RIVERDALE version of POWER RANGERS -- if RIVERDALE insisted at every turn that every episode is set between issues of the 1941 comic books despite having markedly different characterization and a different time period. And yet -- the POWER RANGERS TV show was generally set in a juice bar, a classroom and then reused superhero effects footage from cannibalized Japanese TV shows. The show only ever showed the Rangers in costume or at athletic events with almost no exploration of their lives outside superheroing and sports.

The comic book seems to imply that the POWER RANGERS TV show in 1993 was a child's fuzzy, selective memory of the more complex and psychological and militaristic series that is the POWER RANGERS comic.

Looming Future
There are continuity issues that will become glaring if the series continues: Tommy must eventually lose his powers and the orignal Rangers will see the Red, Black and Yellow Rangers leave to go into politics. Writer Kyle Higgins (MMPR) and Ryan Parrott (GGPR) have insisted that their comics are set within the 1993 season with future TV events lying ahead of their comics, yet they have also in interviews hinted that the future on TV may not be set in stone. There was a POWER RANGERS: PINK comic written by Brendan Fletcher and Kelly Thompson which was set after the Pink Ranger had left the team and TV show and focused on her solo adventures, but is again set in the present day.

The BOOM creators have called their comic continuity a "remix," taking place between past events yet shown to be in the present. Kyle Higgins remarked that he didn't want to write the POWER RANGERS he saw on TV; he wanted to write a comic that reflected how the TV show made him *feel.* The sales seem good and readers seem happy getting an updated version of POWER RANGERS that draws on their memories of the TV show without being constrained by its continuity. I can understand why the writers wouldn't have wanted to just retell the TV stories in comic form to give themselves a reboot continuity when they could just have that continuity from their first issue onwards.

At the same time, one wonders if the GO GO POWER RANGERS series, set shortly after the first episode, but have published a #0 issue that would have adapted the pilot for this new continuity. I wonder what SLIDERS fans would have made of a remix style comic book.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

Sliders would work more easily in this context, since the world at large changes every issue.  The only continuity is among the Sliders themselves.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

I had no idea TF was planning to produce Sliders comics, of course that was about the time I went AWOL from Sliders. I had thought of something very similar but for Audio Dramas for Sliders (in hopes of getting all of the original actors to reprise their roles). Big Finish does this for Classic Doctor Who on a regular basis. Comic or Audio wise it would be fairly simple to fit single stories, if not entire story arcs into existing continuity (if memory serves, they even stop mentioning what year it is in the last half of the series).

Also it would be a great way to see (or hear) some of those lost stories like "Twisted Cross" and "Beauty World".

Really sorry that didn't happen TF, it would have been cool to see.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

The comic book medium is very different from TV and audio (or fan fiction). The average comic is 22 pages, and the page count to undo Seasons 3 - 5 would have been gargantuan. Telling lost stories set during Seasons 1 - 2 would have immediately presented the SLIDERS concept and characters: four friends, parallel worlds, boundless adventure, entry level stories.

That said, in 2000, the majority of the fanbase *wanted* the original sliders resurrected, the loose threads wrapped up -- and I just don't think TF's lost stories approach would have served that wish. However, SLIDERS should never be presented as a back catalog of unfinished plots to be resolved. I can't think of anything worse than opening a new SLIDERS comic book with a post-"Seer" story and all its complexities.

If the comic book adventures of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo had sold well and led to spin-offs, it'd have been nice to do a "Slide Effects" extra-sized comic in which Tracy Torme's plot for resurrecting the original sliders in a single story with the ongoing comic set after Torme's story and Seasons 3 - 5 no longer casting a shadow over the ongoing comic. But that's a 2000 - 2005 proposition. After that point, I think a SLIDERS comic would need to present SLIDERS as a comic book, not a tie-in to a TV show that was no longer in production or recent memory.

If we were to do a SLIDERS comic today, I would probably advise going with something similar to TF's approach. Start with the sliders already sliding, introduce the characters and concept immediately, have them convey their backstory to a guest-star in a single-issue premiere comic. Indicate that this is a rebooted version of the sliders, not an extension of the 1995 series. If the comic did well, then there could conceivably be a SLIDERS: ORIGIN mini-series that would be a comic book adaptation of the pilot set in the modern day -- and perhaps a SLIDERS CLASSIC series to resolve the 1995 series as well.

The QUANTUM AND WOODY comic book, a superhero series, was in a similar position. It was a popular superhero comedy from the 90s that unfortunately got cancelled. When the comic came back a few years ago, it was a reboot with a new writer. However, once the reboot series was up and running, the publisher hired the original writer to come back and do a wrap-up series for the original series continuity.

5 (edited by JWSlider3 2018-06-17 16:30:19)

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

I think TF's way would have worked fine, then or now.

I also don't remember saying anything about undoing season 3-5.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

You didn't. I was commenting on the 2000 - 2005 situation for the fans during which (a) Robert K. Weiss was attempting a series revival (b) TF was hoping to do SLIDERS comics and (c) the fans were hoping that SLIDERS could resurrect its original cast and get back to the Season 1 - 2 situation.

It's a difficult scenario for any creator and the remix approach is intriguing because it immediately restores what made SLIDERS worthwhile in the first place -- the concept and characters -- and puts that center stage rather than splitting the Quinns and defeating the Kromaggs. And that's great for the SLIDERS property, but I don't know if it's good for the fans? Because the fans would have read and enjoyed these comics, but there would be a terrible shadow over any Quinn, Wade and Arturo story given their eventually fates on TV. I wonder how it would have been received had the comics gone through.

7 (edited by Slide Override 2018-06-18 12:16:17)

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

I would have easily have lapped up TF's 'slice of life' (or slice of slide lol) style comic adventures in order to expand on characters or worlds within the show. As much as my gut wants everything to be nicely wrapped up, a continuation comic would have been extremely difficult to pull off for various reasons, number one being that so few fans can even agree on what a written story continuation would be composed like, let alone something in a visual medium. There is just no pleasing everyone there and you could end up doing a lot more damage than good. I just don't think it would have worked.

However, I have absolutely adored the new Power Rangers comics, how it has woven an insane amount of depth into the show's loose fabric whilst also maintaining what makes the show so special. It is pretty much a Reboot, since it flies in the face of show continuity all the time. I personally would have loved a Sliders comic, in that vein, back then or right now.

8 (edited by Slider_Quinn21 2018-06-18 12:25:37)

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

I think there can also be a 4th option - Revision.

There's a Halloween movie starring Jamie-Lee Curtis that's going to come out later this year.  The premise is that it's a sequel to the first movie only.  Michael escaped - Loomis chased him - Michael killed several and came after Laurie Strode - then he was recaptured at some point and has been locked up since the 70s.  It doesn't care about the later sequels, even the ones that Jamie Lee Curtis came back for (the original Halloween II or H20). 

The same was planned for a Neil Blomkamp Alien film.  The plan was to make a "True Alien 3" that would've ignored Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection, which would've included Hicks, Newt, and Ripley after the events of Aliens.

Another great example is the Toho Godzilla films.  They get a reboot every decade or so, and every reboot starts as a sequel to the original Godzilla movie (which has stayed in canon for each iteration).

If I wanted to do stories with the original four sliders, this is how I'd handle it.  Don't burden yourself with coming up with convoluted ways of explaining every continuity issue (it's going to sound like I'm teasing ireactions, but I'm really talking about the backflips I did for my own alternate Season 6) - tell the stories that make up "Vancouver Season 3" - so ignore everything that filmed in Los Angeles.

What's great about Sliders is that you could do whatever you want without harming any continuity.  Just say the Season 3-5 Sliders were doubles of the originals.  We know that there are other groups of Rembrandt/Quinn/Wade/Arturo sliding out there - just say that Season 3-5 was another group.  If you really want, have the "real" Sliders run into post-Seer Rembrandt.


**************

That all being said, the new Power Rangers series sounds pretty cool.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

I know that you were just throwing out one single idea, and not exactly pushing/advocating it, but I do have a serious issue with:

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

What's great about Sliders is that you could do whatever you want without harming any continuity.  Just say the Season 3-5 Sliders were doubles of the originals.  We know that there are other groups of Rembrandt/Quinn/Wade/Arturo sliding out there - just say that Season 3-5 was another group.  If you really want, have the "real" Sliders run into post-Seer Rembrandt.

Once you get to the point where these characters that you have been watching, witnessing their journey together, and going through emotional dramas with ... are not the characters that we all thought that we were watching - then that is the point where you completely lose the audience and their emotional investment. This is something that is extremely difficult to get back, if ever. The moment that you lose that precious trust and bond with the audience, it's game over.

If a show can, at any time, just turn around and say that these weren't really the characters but here are the characters now, it just loses so much. You no longer feel an attachment to the characters. You begin to question everything. Are the people that you are currently watching, really your characters? Did they go through the events that you thought they originally went through?

That bond between audience and material evaporates very quickly. Peril no longer holds any meaning whatsoever. If a character dies, those questions continue to bubble away - is it really the character that you thought had died? Could it be someone else? Will you always be second guessing if your character will simply pop back up in an episode or two with another 'Surprise! that was just a double!' fake out? If the show doesn't go the way you imagined with a character, could you always hide behind a 'that was just a double' sentiment?

That emotional attachment is just gone.

Aside from some minor moments in shows or twists in some movies, there is a really good reason why you just don't do this. I apologise if I haven't articulated this properly as I'm tired as I'm typing this, but this idea just really doesn't sit well with me. One of the Sliders aficionados here will probably quote the idea pitched for the show that was shot down. And quite rightly too.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

I think Slide Override is referring to "Heat of the Moment," and I totally agree with his criticisms.

Anyway. A SLIDERS comic book in 2000 shortly after the series was cancelled is a very different proposition from a SLIDERS comic book in 2018. TF's story ideas were all about his craft for world-building and social satire and none of them depended on being set in 1995 - 1996 aside from the presence of the original sliders.

2000
In 2000, SLIDERS fans were pretty traumatized by the events of "The Exodus," "Genesis," "Mother and Child," "Revelations," "The Unstuck Man," "Requiem" and "The Seer" which mutilated the cast and concept. It's a fair argument that it's emotionally disengaging to reveal the Season 3 - 5 events happened to a different set of sliders.

However, one could argue that the damage was done on TV already and picking up from the Season 2 finale and having these sliders encounter a post-"Seer" Rembrandt would be repairing harm that happened long before the comics saw print.

I think a comic book version of SLIDERS in the 2000 - 2005 era featuring Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo would have needed to find some way to cast off the shadow of Seasons 3 - 5. I personally imagine SLIDERS #1 (2000) seemingly set between Season 2 and Season 3. But then a year in, there'd be a SLIDERS #0 (2001) to adapt Tracy Torme's "Slide Effects" and reveal Seasons 3 - 5 were a Kromagg simulation and the comic has been replacing Season 3 and onward all along. Hopefully, a full year of issues would have gotten the audience so invested in the comic that deleting Seasons 3 - 5 would be acceptable and dodge SlideOverride's objections.

Something similar happened with IRON MAN comics. Tony Stark was, in 1995's "The Crossing," transformed into a mind-controlled murderer who'd been in thrall to a villain since his origin story and then killed off. When Tony returned in 1998's IRON MAN #1, he was heroic again and there was no reference to "The Crossing" until 2001 when it was hurriedly explained that Franklin Richards, Mr. Fantastic's son with reality warping powers, had restored Tony and the mind-controlled period was retconned, scaled back to a few months. Most readers were so pleased to have Tony back that when the explanation for his restoration came three years later, it felt like old news.

2018
With 2018, I think a comic book SLIDERS shouldn't return as an extension of the TV show but instead be a reboot that exists on its own terms. But the Pilot story is *very* long for the 22 page comic book format, so it'd probably be best to open with SLIDERS #1 (2018) again featuring the sliders having already been sliding for 3 -6 months, explaining their situation to a guest-character and do the origin story later.

When the NEW 52 BATMAN comics started up, there had been a recent reboot, but the NEW 52 BATMAN comics didn't start from day one. They started in the present with Batman already established with about 5 - 10 years of experience. After a period of time, there was a flashback arc, YEAR ZERO, which depicted Batman's origin.

Remix?
POWER RANGERS comics have gotten away with shifting the 1993 show into a floating timeline of perpetual now because the 1993 show seemed to be set in a bubble of a few standing sets and reused footage from Japanese superhero shows. The original POWER RANGERS had no backstories for its characters and showed nothing of how the larger world reacted to aliens on the moon launching weekly attacks on a single American city. The comics have a nearly blank slate outside the onscreen bubble and their filling it in is satisfying even if those details don't always line up with the show itself.

I don't think SLIDERS could get away with shifting the 1994 - 2000 continuity into a floating timeline since SLIDERS' world-building wasn't vague and foggy like POWER RANGERS. I also don't think the SLIDERS concept does well when satirizing a period of time that's over two decades in the past. SLIDERS should always be set today.

Also, while the actors on POWER RANGERS were treated terribly, the characters were inoffensively written off: they left the team to join a peace summit, compete in gymnastics, become archaeologists and some returned from time to time. Nobody reads GO GO POWER RANGERS and feels sad about how Billy's search for a place to belong will end with him getting shot and blown up because he wasn't. The LOST SLIDES approach would have gotten SLIDERS back at the height of its powers, but the dark future of Seasons 3 - 5 would have been a problem.

One of my favourite episodes of the SLIDERS REWATCH podcast had Tom and Cory talking about how they thought "The Alternateville Horror" was a fun episode, but it was hard to enjoy anything lighthearted when home had been invaded and Wade was in a rape camp. I think LOST SLIDES would have had a similar problem.

I have never seen a single HALLOWEEN film, but the continuity fascinates me.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

I would love to see a new comic book series with stories that take place in between episodes from all seasons of Sliders. The Acclaim series of comics did this back in the day, but it happened during the Arturo years, so we never got to see any post Arturo comic book stories. Stories about the worlds the show didn’t show (or the ones that only existed in bumpers).

Back to The Future’s comic book series by IDW that has been around since 2015 has been amazingly good. This series tells canon stories that take place either before, during, for after the trilogy. Nearly every story has been beyond amazing. This would work well for Sliders.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

Slide Override wrote:

Once you get to the point where these characters that you have been watching, witnessing their journey together, and going through emotional dramas with ... are not the characters that we all thought that we were watching - then that is the point where you completely lose the audience and their emotional investment.

That's not necessarily true.  If John Rhys-Davies had wanted to come back to the series and they brought him back saying it was really our Professor who got left behind on Azure Gate Bridge world, would anyone really have been upset?

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

Slide Override wrote:

Once you get to the point where these characters that you have been watching, witnessing their journey together, and going through emotional dramas with ... are not the characters that we all thought that we were watching - then that is the point where you completely lose the audience and their emotional investment. This is something that is extremely difficult to get back, if ever. The moment that you lose that precious trust and bond with the audience, it's game over.

I 100% understand this sentiment, and honestly, I'd agree for most shows.  What I'm talking about is an in-canon explanation for how you could conveniently fix continuity errors without worrying about everything falling apart.  Saying that the Season 3-5 Sliders were a different group works because we know there were other Sliders.  Even quotes from the Sliders in seasons 3-5 that refer to events from Seasons 1-2 can be written off by the idea of landing on similar worlds and having similar experiences.

We can also go back to an idea I've had for a while - can Sliders branch off worlds of their own?  In other words, is it possible that the events of Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome created it's own parallel universe with sets of Sliders that each left with a version of Arturo.  There'd be two groups of Sliders (one that left with the "right" Arturo and one that left with the "wrong" one) and there'd be two versions of Azure Gate world - one with the original Arturo and one with Azure gate Arturo.

If that's the case, then you could even say that they *were* our characters....and now we're going to go back and follow the adventures of the *other* group of Sliders that, again, were also our characters.

Another example - the TV show "Archer" - in that show, there were about seven seasons that took place in standard continuity.  Then, season 7, Archer was shot and left for dead in a pool.  Seasons 8 and 9 have both taken place in Archer's head, each taking place in a different dream where Archer is the hero with the supporting characters playing other characters.  Season 8 was a noir 1970s detective piece, and Season 9 was a 1930s adventure serial taking place on an Island.

In both cases, we're watching different versions of our characters that have no connections to the originals.  Nothing that happens in the coma will have impact in the real world, and there aren't any stakes.  But the episodes are still enjoyable, and you can still use what you know about the characters in the "real world" to add to the enjoyment of these, otherwise unconnected, characters.

******

I'm offering up just another scenario that you could use to reset the playing board.  It's one of the great "fixes" in Science Fiction, and it works because there are so many problems with resetting the continuity.

Sliders left the four main characters stranded on four different worlds in four different sets of peril.  To reunite the original Sliders is extremely problematic and depends on a number of different fake-outs, coincidences, and unbelievable scenarios to pull off.  Even if you could write it off with a time jump (where Quinn or Arturo has found his friends in the past, and we catch up to them in the present), there are still a number of problems that you'd, realistically, have to deal with.  Wade was captured and raped, and her friends didn't look for her.  Arturo was replaced with an evil imposter, and none of his friends noticed.  Rembrandt was forced to watch all his friends die one by one.  Quinn was locked in a prison in his own mind.

It's all dark, depressing stuff.  And in today's works of fiction, it's the type of stuff that would have to be dealt with.  Laughing it off and having normal adventures would be insensitive to the characters themselves.

And I'm not saying you couldn't do a realistic version of the above.  It'd just be hard to tell a realistic story about the Sliders having fun on a world where everything is built out of candy, since it'd be hard to have a single scene where at least one character doesn't break down in tears because of all the horrors they'd experienced.

So you either ignore it and start over (reboot or remix), or you ignore what you don't like (revision).  So whether you say the events of seasons 3-5 happened to another group of sliders or just didn't happen, you're saying that the season 3-5 characters simply didn't matter.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

Sliders left the four main characters stranded on four different worlds in four different sets of peril.  To reunite the original Sliders is extremely problematic and depends on a number of different fake-outs, coincidences, and unbelievable scenarios to pull off.  Even if you could write it off with a time jump (where Quinn or Arturo has found his friends in the past, and we catch up to them in the present), there are still a number of problems that you'd, realistically, have to deal with.  Wade was captured and raped, and her friends didn't look for her.  Arturo was replaced with an evil imposter, and none of his friends noticed.  Rembrandt was forced to watch all his friends die one by one.  Quinn was locked in a prison in his own mind.

Wade and Quinn would be pretty easy to deal with.

She was drugged and the Kromaggs have mind altering abilities, so she likely wouldn't remember any of what happened after she was captured.  When they encountered her in Requiem she didn't even know where she was.  As for rape, the series never said that explicitly.  I prefer to think she was used as a surrogate; Kromagg egg fertilized by Kromagg male implanted in her for gestation.  Still bad, but not quite as bad.

Quinn also might not remember his time being merged.  Certainly he wouldn't have any memory after New Gods for Old.  It's a manageable problem.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

pilight wrote:

[She was drugged and the Kromaggs have mind altering abilities, so she likely wouldn't remember any of what happened after she was captured.  When they encountered her in Requiem she didn't even know where she was.  As for rape, the series never said that explicitly.  I prefer to think she was used as a surrogate; Kromagg egg fertilized by Kromagg male implanted in her for gestation.  Still bad, but not quite as bad.

Quinn also might not remember his time being merged.  Certainly he wouldn't have any memory after New Gods for Old.  It's a manageable problem.

Possibly.  But this is all assumption.  There's just as equally a chance that Wade's experiences would closely match Jessica Jones' (Netflix version).  Even if she couldn't remember everything, she'd view it as a huge violation, and she'd have huge trust issues even if she didn't know that her friends, essentially, stopped looking for her.  And the last we saw her, she was a head locked in a computer smile

As for Quinn, you're right that he could've been "asleep" after New Gods For Old.  Alternatively, there's a chance that he still experienced everything but couldn't say or do anything.  That's a Black Mirror episode if there ever was one.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:
pilight wrote:

[She was drugged and the Kromaggs have mind altering abilities, so she likely wouldn't remember any of what happened after she was captured.  When they encountered her in Requiem she didn't even know where she was.  As for rape, the series never said that explicitly.  I prefer to think she was used as a surrogate; Kromagg egg fertilized by Kromagg male implanted in her for gestation.  Still bad, but not quite as bad.

Quinn also might not remember his time being merged.  Certainly he wouldn't have any memory after New Gods for Old.  It's a manageable problem.

Possibly.  But this is all assumption.  There's just as equally a chance that Wade's experiences would closely match Jessica Jones' (Netflix version).  Even if she couldn't remember everything, she'd view it as a huge violation, and she'd have huge trust issues even if she didn't know that her friends, essentially, stopped looking for her.  And the last we saw her, she was a head locked in a computer smile

As for Quinn, you're right that he could've been "asleep" after New Gods For Old.  Alternatively, there's a chance that he still experienced everything but couldn't say or do anything.  That's a Black Mirror episode if there ever was one.


It would make a good Black Mirror episode.  It would not make a good Sliders episode.  I've been on the reboot team for a long while, but if they decided to continue the old characters 20 years later it could be done without making it quite so dreary.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

I mean, it's possible, but would it be honest to the characters.

Arturo was left behind*.  If you look at him as a 360 degree character, he'd immediately be expecting rescue.  Our Arturo had no respect for PTSS Arturo, and he'd assume that the other Sliders would immediately realize he's a fraud.  A lot of Sliders fanfic (mine included) assumes that Arturo could invent a sliding machine and go after his friends, or at the very least, do something with sliding.  When, in reality, the safest thing he could do is stay where he's at and wait for rescue.  Rescue that would never come.  How long would he wait?  Would he want to slide by himself in his late 50s?  60s?  70s?  Or would he just accept the fact that PTSS Arturo had conned his friends and that he was stuck on this facsimile forever?  If the Sliders found him, he'd either have given up or accepted his fate.

* If he wasn't left behind, any hope of resurrecting Arturo is zero big_smile

Wade saw Quinn (the love of her life?) fall for some sleazy bimbo, saw her world invaded by monsters, and she was sent to a breeding camp.  Even if she was drugged and didn't know anything that was happening to her, she'd know that her body was used for monstrous experiments.  Then her body was mutilated and she was turned into a sliding computer.  At the end of that episode, she's strongly in a place where she's ready to die.  While she seemed to be quite at peace, it's still a dark place for her to be.

Rembrandt was ripped from his home involuntarily, drafted into a war he didn't fully understand, and eventually found himself adopted into a strong family.  Then he lost a friend and mentor figure, lost his home world, lost other friends, and then found himself in another situation where he'd have to abandon everyone and everything on what could've easily been a suicide mission.  I mean his plan in the Seer is truly nuts.  Has he cracked?  Would five years of sliding be enough?  Is there anything that would draw him back into the fight? He'd be in his 60s now, as well.

Quinn might be the most mentally healthy of them all, but all the others' pain would also weigh on him.  Especially if he ever emotionally returns to his Season 1-2 self.  Once he realizes how much he sacrificed for Kromagg Prime, he'd probably be a wreck too.  Yes, there's a chance that he simply lost the fight with Mallory and retreated into some sort of comatose stage.  But what if he didn't?  All he'd have left to do would be to sit and think about all the mistakes he'd made.  And that'd be 24 hours a day, depending on whether or not a merged consciousness has the ability to sleep.

I mean, you're right.  Maybe Arturo was optimistic, and maybe he understood that PTSS Arturo could trick them.  Maybe Wade really was at peace and getting her body back (somehow) would cleanse her spirit.  Maybe Rembrandt, the most optimistic of them all, could really handle anything the multiverse threw at him.  And maybe being stuck in Mallory also cleansed Quinn's spirit.  As writers, we can spin it however we'd like.

18 (edited by Slide Override 2018-06-19 11:50:58)

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

pilight wrote:

That's not necessarily true. If John Rhys-Davies had wanted to come back to the series and they brought him back saying it was really our Professor who got left behind on Azure Gate Bridge world, would anyone really have been upset?

There are always exceptions to the rule, but there is a serious underlining reason why it is generally not done. I absolutely would not be upset if they pulled a 'wrong slider slid' scenario ... but that is side-stepping the point at hand.

There is an unspoken pact made between the person who reads/watches/plays a piece of work and the creator of said work. Outside of some obvious exceptions - and they are usually blatant exceptions - that pact states that we will happily go on a journey with a creator in order to explore the worlds, characters and the situation that you have created, regardless of the innate fact that we know full well that no harm will ever come to the main characters of this story. We will create a suspension of disbelief. There may be hundreds of instances where these character will be thrown into mortal danger, and though we know that they will 99.9% of the time always come out of it in one piece, we happily embrace any and all suspensions of disbelief specifically because it is the journey that the creator wants us to go on, that is of critical importance above all else.

However, there are limits to that suspension of disbelief.

When you take away that journey, when you begin to say that death doesn't matter, or even what you thought you saw with that character doesn't matter, then there is a subconscious detachment that takes place. You may very well state that it wouldn't matter personally for you, but it is something that happens on a subconscious level. You take away death, you take away even the fake peril from that pact between creator and viewer, then nothing matters. At what point then does a viewer begin to ask that, if they no longer like a particular aspect of that journey, that they want that changed, since if death doesn't matter, nothing matters. Forget even rules of the world that you have created, if death is something that someone can easily come back from, then everything is fair game. Suspension of disbelief is well and truly shattered.

There may be joy at the 'real' Arturo now ... but where does that lead? I don't like Action Man Quinn compared to the original. Do we then say that there was a real Quinn still sliding out there and I want him back? I detest the character assassination of Head-In-A-Jar Wade. Can I just wipe that entire journey clean, pretend it didn't happen, and pick up a sub series 3 Wade? Can I seriously, and easily, just wipe out series 3-5 as just 'fake alternates' and embrace a series 6 in the shape of the 'real' series 3?

The moment you tell an audience that the journey doesn't matter, that it was a dream, a coma, the wrong character slid -whatever reasoning you want to come up with - you make a huge impact in that suspension of disbelief and, whether you are conscious of it or not, create a divide between the work and the viewer. Hand-waving death in the fashion mentioned here, and ignoring entire character stories and arcs, is a suspension of disbelief one step too far.


On a side note, there is also an entirely separate discussion that could be had about wiping out 3 seasons worth of content, including all of the hard work put in by actors, writers, crews and everyone else contained within that, but that's a whole other discussion to be had.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

Would you be okay with a new version of Sliders where we start a new journey with a different group of Quinn/Wade/Rembrandt/Arturo?  So Sliders Season 1-5 was the same Rembrandt, but now there's a new group?

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

In 2018, I think any hypothetical SLIDERS comic would have to start fresh and create a new version of the characters going sliding for the first time. I think any TV show or movie would have to do so as well.

**

From a 2000 standpoint -- all the emotional difficulties Slider_Quinn21 raises are too convoluted for SLIDERS because they interrupt what should be a very simple, straightforward premise: the sliders are lost in the multiverse trying to find a way back home. Addressing merged Quinns and Kromagg invasions and Kromagg Prime origin stories and resurrecting Wade and wrong Arturos is too complicated, and even pilight's dismissals (Quinn and Wade don't remember their traumas!) would still require addressing them. There is, in fact, a decidedly unsettling undertone to saying Wade should simply forget that David Peckinpah raped her.

It's also counterintuitive to bring all this continuity into a story only to say none of it matters anymore -- and it's also far more than could fit into a TV episode or a comic book, and even if you could, what is the point of any version of SLIDERS that's more concerned with resurrections and de-mergings than it is with exploring parallel worlds? That's probably why TF's LOST SLIDES concept is getting such a good response in this thread.

Slide_Override's dismay at wiping out 65 episodes is well-founded, but that's like a patient protesting life-saving surgery because he's scared of sharp objects. Tracy Torme seemed conscious of this as well when he came up with "Slide Effects" as a Season 4 premiere that would erase everything after "The Guardian" and when he suggested it as a hypothetical Season 6 premiere. His story would have had Quinn waking up after "This Slide of Paradise" or "The Seer" to discover time rewound to the Pilot with home uninvaded, Wade and Rembrandt and Arturo alive and well and only Quinn remembering sliding. The emphasis would not be on the traumas of Seasons 3 - 5 but rather Quinn's disorientation and confusion at his present/past situation and how sliding doesn't seem to exist.

The situation would be revealed as a Kromagg trick along everything after "The Guardian." But, as a concession to the 21 or 65 episodes he'd be erasing, Torme had *Quinn* retain all his memories while Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo would only recall Seasons 1 - 2 and the first five episodes of Season 3. That was his solution to SlideOverride's protests: one slider would remember all of it, the other three would only remember the Torme era. Is it a perfect solution? There is no perfect solution, but a post-"Slide Effects" SLIDERS is certainly in a better place than a post-"Seer" SLIDERS.

More importantly, "Slide Effects" is a story that could fit into a 42 minute timeslot or a double-sized comic book whereas neither Slider_Quinn21 nor I nor pilight nor Temporal Flux have ever been able to present a point-by-point repair process that could reunite the original characters within those constraints. I think even a resurrected Ernest Hemingway would defer to Torme's story on this one.

Admittedly, it's a moot point now since no hypothetical 2018 revival of SLIDERS should be trying to turn clock back to 1996 -- at least not without a successful reboot first (whether in TV or comics). The reimagined BATTLESTAR GALACTICA TV show had a lot of media tie-in comics and inevitably, that led to a comic series set in the original continuity (although it wasn't the first) and that paved the way to a crossover where the 2004 BSG characters met the 1978 version in a universe-spanning storyline.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

ireactions wrote:

From a 2000 standpoint -- all the emotional difficulties Slider_Quinn21 raises are too convoluted for SLIDERS because they interrupt what should be a very simple, straightforward premise: the sliders are lost in the multiverse trying to find a way back home. Addressing merged Quinns and Kromagg invasions and Kromagg Prime origin stories and resurrecting Wade and wrong Arturos is too complicated, and even pilight's dismissals (Quinn and Wade don't remember their traumas!) would still require addressing them. There is, in fact, a decidedly unsettling undertone to saying Wade should simply forget that David Peckinpah raped her.

I agree with all of that.  I'm just saying that if someone were determined to do a revival of the original series with the original characters there are ways of making it work.

IMO, the best we could hope for in that ballpark would be a reunion movie that served as a jumping off point for a new generation of Sliders.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

When thinking in terms of a proposal, I put focus on something we often overlook - how do you sell it?  And the more I thought on that, I came to realize the best way to sell it is by appreciating why I bought into it in the first place.  So I stopped looking at how to fix Sliders; I just looked at why I liked it.

While the comics proposals were a collection of ideas with some sample art, I took it further in 2008 when SL4ever proposed on this forum the idea of a fan film.  It would be bare bones budget with likely no access to the actors (at best the possibility of one); and I was inspired to write a full script for it.  It was new characters; new situations; and served as a continuation but in more of a Next Generation context.  It was again a creation of something I would like to watch; something I would buy.  And in the end, I really love it.

With no fan film materializing, I had considered making a bare bones online comic adaptation of the script (like the pencils only “The Ten Doctors”), but it just never came together.  The last few years have been especially difficult since my father’s stroke that left him unable to take care of himself; my time just seems to evaporate.

I think I’ll go ahead and just put the script out there for any interested.  It will take some time to get it into a presentable format on PDF, but maybe it will bring back something of what you loved about the series.  It’s called “Sliders: Declassified”.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

TemporalFlux wrote:

I think I’ll go ahead and just put the script out there for any interested.  It will take some time to get it into a presentable format on PDF, but maybe it will bring back something of what you loved about the series.  It’s called “Sliders: Declassified”.

I will do this for you. I still have the Word file. And I just got some new screenwriting software that can convert a Word document into a properly formatted screenplay (although some minor edits are needed to correctly mark dialogue as dialogue, transitions as transitions, etc). It'd also be good to get a proper version of the SLIDERS: DECLASSIFIED logo as you envisioned it. I will send you the PDF in a few days.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

ireactions wrote:

I will do this for you. I still have the Word file. And I just got some new screenwriting software that can convert a Word document into a properly formatted screenplay (although some minor edits are needed to correctly mark dialogue as dialogue, transitions as transitions, etc). It'd also be good to get a proper version of the SLIDERS: DECLASSIFIED logo as you envisioned it. I will send you the PDF in a few days.

There’s probably a few minor revisions I’ll make first.  I’ll send you that when I can.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Would you be okay with a new version of Sliders where we start a new journey with a different group of Quinn/Wade/Rembrandt/Arturo?  So Sliders Season 1-5 was the same Rembrandt, but now there's a new group?

I'm not quite sure I follow. Are you suggesting we have the exact same actors playing their characters now from the beginning all over again? Or new actors playing those same characters as alternates ala Mallory and Logan?

"TemporalFlux wrote:

I think I’ll go ahead and just put the script out there for any interested.

Yeah that would be really interesting to see.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

Slide Override wrote:
Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Would you be okay with a new version of Sliders where we start a new journey with a different group of Quinn/Wade/Rembrandt/Arturo?  So Sliders Season 1-5 was the same Rembrandt, but now there's a new group?

I'm not quite sure I follow. Are you suggesting we have the exact same actors playing their characters now from the beginning all over again?

Yes.  Would that be disingenuous to the original characters to say "those events happened, but now we're following a different set of sliders played by the same actors"?

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

Honestly, I personally just don't see the point in contriving such a structure. This was brought up in another thread, but even if you don't factor in JRD's age, how long do you want this 'restart' to last? I love the actors as well but seriously, if you are going to start over, then you might as well just start over and do a complete reboot.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

Surf Dance Chris wrote:

I would love to see a new comic book series with stories that take place in between episodes from all seasons of Sliders. The Acclaim series of comics did this back in the day, but it happened during the Arturo years, so we never got to see any post Arturo comic book stories. Stories about the worlds the show didn’t show (or the ones that only existed in bumpers).

Back to The Future’s comic book series by IDW that has been around since 2015 has been amazingly good. This series tells canon stories that take place either before, during, for after the trilogy. Nearly every story has been beyond amazing. This would work well for Sliders.

The main problem is that it would have limited appeal to people who aren't already Sliders fans.  It will be very confusing to newcomers once you start jumping around the timeline; one issue is the original quartet, next one has Maggie & Colin, the one after that has Diana & Mallory.

Re: Remix Continuity: Power Rangers and SLIDERS

TemporalFlux wrote:
ireactions wrote:

I will do this for you. I still have the Word file. And I just got some new screenwriting software that can convert a Word document into a properly formatted screenplay (although some minor edits are needed to correctly mark dialogue as dialogue, transitions as transitions, etc). It'd also be good to get a proper version of the SLIDERS: DECLASSIFIED logo as you envisioned it. I will send you the PDF in a few days.

There’s probably a few minor revisions I’ll make first.  I’ll send you that when I can.

I just, in a forum PM, sent you a link to a draft of the PDF. It obviously doesn't have your revisions, but I made a title page and put a graphic on Page 4 and put it together because I wanted you to get a sense of how the PDF can look. I'm so excited that you'll be releasing DECLASSIFIED!

**

My niece writes SUPERNATURAL fanfic and my opinion is generally that she struggles with converting Sam and Dean into prose. The characters were designed to be performed.

When I put "Slide Effects" together as a screenplay, it first like an awkward substitute for an actual TV episode. But then, as I included more description than a real teleplay would contain and put all the acting into the script, I found that that the script wasn't a second-rate alternative – it was a meaningful experience in its own right. At the time, I attributed that to the content being an actual story from the show's creator and because it could lay some claim to canonicity.

Later, I read SLIDERS DECLASSIFIED and I realize TF wrote it as a blueprint for a film or a comic and not a product for the audience to consume. But I found his script had all the strengths of the screenplay format. His scene descriptions choose sparse but select details that evoke a wider picture. His dialogue is tight and immediate and conveys characterization within a few sentences. His exposition is efficient and clear. His script pages are filled with personality, warmth and that trademark SLIDERS charm and humour of the Torme era.

I loved SLIDERS DECLASSIFIED as a script and it made me realize that the screenplay format was not a substitute for TV and should and could be treated as a valid medium in its own right with its own strengths and advantages to capitalize upon.

Every page left me with a goofy smile and I think that's why I proceeded to write eight more SLIDERS scripts and focused so heavily on comedy myself. That said -- while I have a lot of messages from readers telling me that SLIDERS REBORN felt like SLIDERS, I think what they really meant was that the *sliders* felt like the characters we all knew (although Transmodiar considered them overwrought, overwritten, overly exaggerated caricatures).

In contrast, SLIDERS DECLASSIFIED felt like SLIDERS: it has none of the original cast, but it has that elusively comedic and satirical tone, that whimsical sense of gentle dramedy, that charming sense of wit and insight touched with uncommon wisdom voiced by flawed and troubled characters. Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo aren't in DECLASSIFIED, yet DECLASSIFIED truly captures the spirit of the show whereas REBORN only captured the fan memory of the characters.

The only issue I take with DECLASSIFIED now: I felt there was a role in there who was clearly written for Allison Mack which is never again going to be a good thing to feel.