Topic: Doctor Who: Regeneration and Mallory

I have a rare medical condition: I'm constantly thinking about SLIDERS. My niece comes down the stairs in jeans and flannel and I think of SLIDERS; I pass a stand selling mini-hamburgers and think of SLIDERS. And recently, I was watching the new DOCTOR WHO where the Doctor, played by the late-50s Scotsman Peter Capaldi, has suffered a mortal injury. To heal his body, he regenerates into a 36-year-old actress named Jodie Whittaker who's immediately plunged into a new adventure. At the climax of this new Doctor's debut, she confronts the villain and tries to convince him not to follow his instinct for violence.

"We’re all capable of the most incredible change," the Doctor says, her new voice filled with certainty and self-realization for how she's now a woman. "We can evolve while still staying true to who we are. We can honour who we’ve been and choose who we want to be next."

It made me think of Mallory as played by Robert Floyd and how Season 5 of SLIDERS handled the dual-identity for the Quinns so clumsily and thoughtlessly. Quinn being melded with this fraternal alternate was played like it was this awful curse of body horror and torment and grief when, if the series were to truly embrace the concept, it should have been played an incredible, life-affirming, death-defying miracle of wonder and joy in which Quinn and Quinn could look at the multiverse through a unique and beautiful perspective.

And it really speaks to SLIDERS ultimately being a cheap American knockoff of DOCTOR WHO that DOCTOR WHO was what inspired Keith Damron to preserve Jerry's character through the merging concept in the first place, and yet, SLIDERS completely failed to capitalize on Quinn's regeneration and only addressed it in two episodes before forgetting all about it.

Re: Doctor Who: Regeneration and Mallory

the problem with sliders was as crazy as everything was on the show the main 4 were grounded in reality pre season 4, it was always what 4 people from our earth would do if they went from alternate earth to alternate earth.  I think the problem for me was after, season 5 premiere their was now a risk that had never been of jumping through the vortex and merging with an alternate youand now being a diffrent person, also Collin disintegrated in the vortex.

more should of bern said of how it is safe to travle through the vortex or the risk vs rewards.

Re: Doctor Who: Regeneration and Mallory

I was watching the DOCTOR WHO premiere again in which the Doctor discovers that she is now a woman. And then it occurred to me (probably not for the first time) that rather than staggering drunkenly behind DOCTOR WHO, SLIDERS should really have taken this chance to be ahead of the curve. "The Unstuck Man" should have opened with Rembrandt and Maggie coming out of the vortex with Quinn missing -- and then they'd come across a dark-haired woman whom Rembrandt would only vaguely remember. "Who are you?" she asks.

"Who are we?" Rembrandt says. "Who the hell're you?"

"I'm Quinn!" says the woman. "Quinn Mallory." Rembrandt and Maggie are disbelieving, but then the woman displays a flash of memory regarding "Roads Taken" and Rembrandt suddenly recalls having briefly seen this woman once -- a female alternate of Quinn. Season 5 should have been Quinn merged with his female alternate as played by Zoe McLellan. The dual identity would be less of an issue; this female double was a braindead coma patient used in an experiment. And I think ideally, Quinn should have protested any effort to change back into a male body; s/he'd find being a woman so fascinating and such a new perspective that s/he'd be thrilled to go with it. That way, we wouldn't be perpetually waiting for Jerry O'Connell to come back.

SLIDERS could have leapt ahead of DOCTOR WHO instead of lagging behind it.

Re: Doctor Who: Regeneration and Mallory

Not sure you can apply Dr. Who or really ANY logic to what was written in scripts about Mallory early in S5.

Re: Doctor Who: Regeneration and Mallory

Grizzlor wrote:

Not sure you can apply Dr. Who or really ANY logic to what was written in scripts about Mallory early in S5.

Damron said that the merging of Quinn and Mallory was inspired by DOCTOR WHO's regeneration concept.

Re: Doctor Who: Regeneration and Mallory

makes since, as it was as close to the source material as any of the movie inspired episodes they made in the series.

it is odd they felt the need to randomly slide in hopes of running into someone that could unmerge the quinns, if it was to pursue dr geiger because he would have a cure, or diana knew of possible earths with the tech to fix them. 

instead it was random sliding with hopes of a solution to something Rembrandt hadn't experienced in his 5 previous yeats of sliding

Re: Doctor Who: Regeneration and Mallory

To compare Sliders to Nu Who is a little ridiculous. Yes the amalgam Quinn was based on Doctor who, but classic who. Back in the day it was simply "here's the new doctor".

I really believe that if talks with Jerry would have gone better, it would have been a tad bit more interesting. Still I think of all the actors who left Sliders, Mallory was the most tactful resolution the ever had.

Re: Doctor Who: Regeneration and Mallory

JWSlider3 wrote:

Still I think of all the actors who left Sliders, Mallory was the most tactful resolution the ever had.

Shit. When you put it like that ... that is so incredibly sad. And true. sad

Re: Doctor Who: Regeneration and Mallory

Slide Override wrote:
JWSlider3 wrote:

Still I think of all the actors who left Sliders, Mallory was the most tactful resolution the ever had.

Shit. When you put it like that ... that is so incredibly sad. And true. sad

Yeah, that's a really low bar to clear.

JWSlider3 wrote:

To compare Sliders to Nu Who is a little ridiculous.

Back when Matt Hutaff and I were working on SLIDERS REBORN, he'd howl, "That's ridiculous!" to me 8-10 times per script page. I feel like people who reject the ridiculous don't really 'get' SLIDERS (which is not a crime).

That said, I think Matt would argue that I don't 'get' SLIDERS and that what I consider SLIDERS is actually a hybrid of DOCTOR WHO, superheroes, Temporal Flux and Hong Kong slapstick comedy movies.

Re: Doctor Who: Regeneration and Mallory

I'm just saying that it's ridiculous to compare a show with 90's story telling sensibilities to a current day show. I guess comparing Sliders to the mid 90's Doctor who TV movie would be fair, but it didn't do very well did it.

The thing about Sliders that I think is amazing and the reason I still love it is that the 'concept' would allow you to tell ANY kind of story, it's truly limitless! So I think I 'get' it.

Re: Doctor Who: Regeneration and Mallory

SLIDERS is noticeably, at nearly every point of its run, completely out of sync with 90s storytelling sensibilities.

Seasons 1 - 2 feature untrained civilian adventurers in stark contrast to most action-adventure shows focusing on protagonists with military or law enforcement backgrounds. Season 3 and Season 4 shift towards a more militaristic cast (Rembrandt in the Navy, Captain Maggie Beckett the former intelligence officer/fighter pilot/soldier, Quinn as a mythic chosen one and a refugee soldier), but the massive cast changes are most unlike the average 90s show that largely hung onto all their central players.

The bizarre shifts in tone and format are also unlike SLIDERS' contemporaries: across the first nine seasons of THE X-FILES is a basic adherence to formula that is absent with SLIDERS going from alt-history celebrity stories to action-adventure to monster movies to the Sci-Fi Channel years.

And in terms of recasting/regenerating, SLIDERS is noticeably (if accidentally) ahead of the curve. SLIDERS introduced Quinn's female double in Season 3, inadvertently laying ground to presenting a different performer as Quinn should the need arise. DOCTOR WHO did something similar (and deliberately): after decades of the Doctor identifying as a man, the show brought back the character of the Master, a fellow Time Lord like the Doctor -- but who had regenerated into a woman but retained largely the same personality. The show later had a recurring character, also a Time Lord, regenerate into a woman and declare that her previous male incarnation had been the only time she'd ever been a man. The Doctor would later declare (somewhat facetiously) that Time Lords were (ideally) above gender roles.

But SLIDERS achieved the same thing so offhandedly and effortlessly, by establishing Quinn's female double with the character receiving near-universal acclaim and appreciation from the fans. Fans had *already* accepted Zoe as Quinn Mallory and would have welcomed her happily as Jerry O'Connell's successor for Season 5. It's a tragically missed opportunity among SLIDERS' many squandered chances.

Re: Doctor Who: Regeneration and Mallory

I definitely agree about the huge missed opportunity with Logan; and she would have given something back to the group dynamic.  They toyed with the idea of Arturo having some darkness to his character, and Logan would have been perfect for that.  Is she bad?  Is she good?  Is she self serving?  Is she just misunderstood?

I could see it as something like Capaldi’s first season on Doctor Who where we weren’t quite sure what to think of him.  The scene that comes to mind for me is when Clara is trapped in the room with the robots and she asks the Doctor for the sonic; but the Doctor refuses.  Did he really need it?  Did he just not care if she survived?  Did he look at Clara as something he didn’t need anymore?  We weren’t sure.

It’s a shame Sliders didn’t go there.  I think it would have been a role Zoe would have relished with many layers to the character to explore; but as it is, it seems Sliders is something she’s long ago tired of people mentioning.

Re: Doctor Who: Regeneration and Mallory

Did you have some kind of run-in with Zoe McLellan?

Theoretically, I'm not surprised McLellan is fed up with SLIDERS which she probably remembers as 4- 6 days of filming for a couple months of rent money and a hope of returning that never came to pass. Since then, she's been through a ton of insanity. She had a son followed by a nasty divorce in which she was (falsely) accused of child abduction (acquitted, received a character testimony from Scott Bakula). She got fired off NCIS: NEW ORLEANS by notorious sexual harasser Brad Kern. She periodically stepped back from acting and started a motivational speaking program, worked as a life coach, and is currently working on DESSIGNATED SURVIVOR.

I could understand if, with all of this, she barely remembers anything about SLIDERS. That doesn't make it any less fascinating a subject for us, of course. :-)

Re: Doctor Who: Regeneration and Mallory

Wasn’t me, but AlternityOrange ran into her at a Florida convention back in the early 2000s I think it was.  He said he tried to strike up a conversation with her about Sliders, and she was visibly frustrated and said “I’ve done other things too, you know?”  It came across as something she was tired of talking about.

I hadn’t kept up with her except in passing, but she’s had a rough go since those days for certain.