Topic: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

A member of another board which I admin posted the following:

I spent the weekend at Pensacon in Pensacola, Florida.  One of the guests was John Rhys-Davies and he was a part of a Raiders of the Lost Ark Reunion Q&A panel in which I attended.  An audience member asked the guests if anyone was involved in any new projects, in which Rhys-Davies said: "If you're a Sliders fan there may be something in the near future..." 

He was pretty subtle with it, and who knows what it could be.  If there is something, I bet it's a Sliders reboot.

Glancing down the board, I didn't see any mention of it, so there you go. I won't be holding my breath.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Didn't Jerry say in an interview last June that Torme was gunning for a reboot? Could just be the same 'thoughts in the wind' discussions going back and forth.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

I think it was lost to the old board, but some may remember a post I made about Universal’s habit of rebooting shows around 25 years after the original.  Well, next month will see us 24 years out from the debut. We’re due.

The logic of the rule?  That’s about the length of time it takes for a child or teen who loved the original show to grow into a position where they could sell an idea in Hollywood.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

The funny thing about a reboot of a show with an interdimensional mythos is that reboots are kind of irrelevant. You could always just pick up with another group of Sliders without having to resolve the issue of what happened to the other ones.

Or, if you wish to look at it from a more positive angle, every episode was technically a reboot! It was just more noticeable on the worlds where the characters had doubles. smile

Of course, if the reboot does come to pass, they'll probably cast actors who look so unlike the originals that it would strain the credibility of even this premise. (And, yes, I realize that the show recast characters with completely different actors, like Gomez Calhoun. But that broke the credibility for me even then.)

I think I remember Kelsey Grammer saying he'd like to play the Professor. He'd certainly do a good job!

And at any rate, I really enjoyed the reboots of Battlestar Galactica and the 2018 Lost in Space, so I would certainly give any new Sliders a chance!

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

yeah, I always figured having the possible child that Quinn may of had from the planet where women were in the majority.  He would have only his dads  photo, and the legend he was a Slider, maybe his Mom passed away, and she didnt feal that his living in secrecy would be a good life, so he constructs the sliding device to search for his dad.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Well I don't think you need to re-use the original characters, especially since Rembrandt is a character who really no longer exists in this day and age.  The one holdup would be where would it go?  NBCU has very little invested these days in science-fiction, perhaps the least of any network.  I guess SyFy, but that network is pretty barebones these days.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

I would wager it goes to a streaming service if anywhere - Hulu, Amazon, Apple.  There’s also Netflix, but I doubt that one.  I believe Netflix would have went for Sliders by now if they were interested.

Using Sliders strikes me like a company trying to use a brand name to play catch up and get some attention.  Under that thought, Apple makes the most sense as a candidate.  Also don’t forget that Apple already has an announced series mining old Universal Studios sci-fi - “Amazing Stories”:

https://deadline.com/2018/12/amazing-st … 202513882/

If Apple was already talking to Universal, it’s pretty easy to believe Universal slid the rest of their catalog over and said “look at these too and see what you think”.

8 (edited by Grizzlor 2019-03-16 19:32:20)

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

John seems to be talking about this at each convention panel he does.  The ownership issue is quite odd.  How do they NOT know who owns it?  One would assume it's NBCU/Bob Weiss?

https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2019/03/ … s-revival/

“Jerry had been pestering me for a number of years and we’re actually talking to NBC at the moment to see if there’s any possibility of rebooting the series,” Davies said. “They’re looking into the basic question of who actually owns it? At the moment we don’t seem to be able to find that out.”

“I would do it again, if just to show how it should be done. It could have been the best show on television, it could still be on the air. I think maybe if we got another chance at doing it with the new technology, but also new stories, I think we could do something quite extraordinary. I wouldn’t want to do it for the rest of my life, but I would do it for a season or two if it was right.”

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

The issue may be St. Clare Entertainment. If it had an ownership interest (which is possibly the case), then it creates a problem because St. Clare is now a defunct production company.  If the company doesn’t exist now, then where did those rights revert?  The company was founded by Robert Weiss, John Landis and Leslie Belzberg - would each have a 33% stake in St. Clare’s share of Sliders now?  So instead of dealing with one company and one president / chairman; NBC would need to get all three to agree separately?

I’m not sure about any of it except that St. Clare doesn’t exist now (it hasn’t produced anything since 2002).  But talking to Bob Weiss would be the place to start on figuring it out; and you would think that at least Jerry and JRD would know that.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

I hope SLIDERS will return and delight a new generation with its limitless storytelling platform. I remember back in 1999, shortly after the cancellation was announced, someone made a wistful, longing post where they shared a clipping from 1995 where the SLIDERS pilot was described as the beginning to a sci-fi show that couldn't ever run out of ideas.

At the same time, on a personal level, if SLIDERS were to return, it would be difficult for me. Awhile ago, I wrote a letter to Rewatch Podcast to resign as their researcher, remarking that everything in me was been a reaction to "The Exodus." The Professor's death left a hole in my heart that never truly healed and so much of my life since then had been building around that absence, trying to ignore the void, trying to edge around it and only eventually finding a way to fill it. I don't really know who I am without SLIDERS as the wrecked, shattered series it became, but it would be selfish of me to want it to stay dead in the dark.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

I don't understand. Ireaction, you make it sound like your father died. I mean I love Sliders and it sucked when the Professor was killed off, but was like what you describing. If it was then his would be an incredible thing wouldn't it?

If it comes back at all, it would be great. If the original characters (and actors, ala X-Files) it would be Amazing!

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

I'm tired and ill today. Can someone step in and explain me to JWSlider3 on my behalf? Maybe Slider_Quinn21 or Transmodiar.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Same information already presented here, but this is the first time I’ve seen some sites pick up on a Sliders report:

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/03/18 … t-revisit/

https://tvweb.com/sliders-reboot-reviva … ys-davies/

https://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/slid … s-revival/

https://geektyrant.com/news/john-rhys-d … rs-revival

Seems to be a small snowball effect happening which is good in bringing Sliders back to social awareness.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

JWSlider3 wrote:

I don't understand. Ireaction, you make it sound like your father died. I mean I love Sliders and it sucked when the Professor was killed off, but was like what you describing. If it was then his would be an incredible thing wouldn't it?

If it comes back at all, it would be great. If the original characters (and actors, ala X-Files) it would be Amazing!

Recently, I was visiting my niece and yelped at the sight of a book lying on the floor. She asked me what was wrong and I pointed a shaking finger at the man on the book cover. "He killed Dad!" I shrieked. My niece picked up the book. It was an autobiography of Roger Daltrey (Colonel Rickman v1.0). "You know he's just an actor, right?" my niece said gently.

I sheepishly asked to borrow it and read it and Mr. Daltrey is a very pleasant and funny soul and no, he didn't kill my father (who is still alive) and the Professor isn't my dad. I have an unusually personal connection to SLIDERS and the Professor's death was *like* the death of a parent. I realize that this connection is neither sensible nor sane, but it wouldn't be any more sensible or sane to deny it.

I was 10 years old when SLIDERS first aired and I was excited to see my fantasy figure hero from MY SECRET IDENTITY playing a boy genius. Quinn was everything I would have wanted to be: scientifically literate, physically capable and daringly adventurous. He also seemed at ease with women without being inappropriately flirtatious (until "Dragonslide" when he fell in love with an unconscious woman).

My father wasn't around when I was a kid. My mother regularly told me that her divorce was my fault and regularly shriek at me that Dad left because I forgot my homework at home or didn't make the track team. It didn't really matter what I did or didn't do; Mum was always going to find some excuse to blame me for the failure of her marriage and beat me and hold knives to my throat and starve me and destroy my schoolwork. The only relief I had was BOY MEETS WORLD for the comfort of a familial setting and SLIDERS because it presented a father figure.

The Professor was wise, amusing, bombastic, grandiose and seemingly all-knowing while also arrogant, cowardly, egotistical and insecure. He was a real person, wonderful but human. Wade was a delight, Rembrandt was hilarious and the sliders were my friends. This is the most pathetic thing I've ever said about myself, but not as pathetic as it would be to lie about it.

When I was 13, my mother took to randomly ripping the cable out of the television because she wasn't happy with my piano playing. She also threw me down the stairs. I barely managed to reconnect the TV in time to catch the second half of "The Exodus Part II" and for my trouble, I saw the Professor get his brain sucked out. Then Colonel Rickman shot him and Arturo's corpse was left on a planet that exploded. I felt like I'd watched my father die.

Anyway. My father and I have a pretty close relationship these days with weekly Friday phone calls and I find that my mother's invective towards me was largely a self-portrait where my grandparents weren't speaking to her and my father had fled her, not me.

But from age 13 - 26, I never really grasped that. The Professor's death was a horrific incident that left me forever shaken and unsure. In 2000, after SLIDERS was cancelled, I had a conversation with Tracy Torme where I described how much the Professor had meant to me and Tracy apologized for what happened, explaining that he had not been in a position to choose his successor on Season 3 and that he'd needed to spend time with his ailing father. "I'm sorry you lost your dad," said Tracy, taking my grief dead seriously when a less sensitive person would have rolled his eyes and moved on. "I lost my dad too."

I asked him what he would do if he had one last episode of SLIDERS. He said he would open a new season with Quinn waking up to find time rewound to the Pilot. Wade, Rembrandt and the Professor would be alive with only Quinn having any memory of sliding. The scenario would be revealed as a Kromagg trick along with any episodes after "The Guardian." It was a pleasant dream.

Over time, I found other shows -- I fell in love with DOCTOR WHO when DOCTOR WHO had been cancelled and obsessed over the Eighth Doctor novels which carved out their own place in a defunct TV show. I loved William Shatner's STAR TREK novels which resurrected Kirk after GENERATIONS. I found ways to placate and avoid the hole that the Professor's death left in my life, but sometimes, I found myself staring right into it.

In 2005, DOCTOR WHO was revived and one of the first novels for the new show was "The Stealer of Dreams" by Steve Lyons in which the Doctor and friends visit a planet where fiction is illegal and those who traffic in art are institutionalized and lobotomized. This stirring, beautiful novel was everything that "Map of the Mind" wasn't and when reading it, I wept for SLIDERS. The wound had never healed. For a time, I could ignore it, but it always came back.

In 2009, Tracy did the EP.COM interview and mentioned his story idea. EP.COM asked me to write essays and reviews. In 2011, I wrote his story idea up as the "Slide Effects" script and I felt a little better at offering a vision of how we could step back from Seasons 3 - 5. But it wasn't enough -- it was an idea of how we could have done Season 6 in 2000, but we were 11 years removed and all the actors had aged.

Later on, I became enamoured with the TV series COMMUNITY which is about a study group of misfits at a community college. As an exercise, I would take COMMUNITY scripts, do a find-and-replace to put the cast of SLIDERS into COMMUNITY screenplays and was astonished at how true and heartfelt results would seem.

REMBRANDT: "Whoa."
ARTURO: "What?"
REMBRANDT: (looking at Arturo's plate) "That's a lot of pasta for no veggies."
ARTURO: "You're not in charge of what I eat!"
REMBRANDT: "That's true. Wade?"

Wade steps in front of Arturo and glares at him and his pasta-covered plate. Arturo takes a fearful step back to the cafeteria counter.

ARTURO: (to the server) "And some damn broccoli!"

There was something so vivid, so distinct, so full of life in these transposed script pages. Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo gained vivid definition on paper as scripted sitcom characters and I longed to see them written so in full-fledged adventures.

I was also spending a lot of time in psychotherapy and it became apparent that SLIDERS was a potent metaphor for my childhood trauma and abuse. Meanwhile, THE X-FILES had returned in comic books continuing their mythology at the present day with THE X-FILES: SEASON 10 with Mulder and Scully reopening the X-Files in 2013. I wanted SLIDERS to have a similar product. "Slide Effects" had proven that Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo could come alive in the screenplay format, THE X-FILES comics had demonstrated how to pick up on a long-removed cliffhanger and go back to basics despite an extensive catalog of unresolved plots.

And I realized that if I avoided looking into the gaping hole in my heart left by the Professor's death, I would never mend it. It would never heal.

From 2015 - 2016, I wrote a six part series of SLIDERS REBORN screenplays with the original sliders 15 years after the events of "The Seer." My therapist described these scripts as the equivalent of a doctoral thesis. The first two scripts were posted on EarthPrime.com on March 22, 2015, twenty years to the day that Quinn's first adventure aired on FOX. "You finally did it," I crowed to myself. "This is YOUR show now." My sister, visiting that week, overheard me, knew what I was talking about and remarked, "Doesn't that just tell you how nobody else wanted it?"

I posted the final script on December 27, 2016 and felt complete and fulfilled. SLIDERS now had a series finale that was respectful and inclusive of every season of SLIDERS and my childhood torment was at an end. I was the researcher for REWATCH PODCAST when they were covering SLIDERS -- my role was to send them bullet-point emails documenting everything Temporal Flux had ever shared with this community about SLIDERS which they would mention in their podcasts. For LOIS AND CLARK, I read all the teleplays and sent them deleted scenes.

But after SLIDERS REBORN was complete and as the LOIS AND CLARK rewatch was winding down, I sent The Rewatch Podcast an email telling them I felt it was time to step away from covering other people's creations. "Everything in my life has been a reaction to the death of Professor Arturo," I wrote without a hint of irony although I knew Tom and Cory would laugh. I explained that it was time to move forward, try creating work of my own, and let SLIDERS be something to remember fondly rather than keep it in my present.

And I guess that's part of why SLIDERS returning to NBC or Netflix or Apple or whatever would be difficult for me. SLIDERS REBORN was very much about confronting my childhood trauma. I resolved SLIDERS, I put it aside, and I revisit it largely in terms of turning each and every conversation about other TV shows back to SLIDERS on this message board (and only this message board).

If we see Quinn and the Professor onscreen again played by Jerry and John, then SLIDERS is very much in the present and future and that could be a little uncomfortable for me. But I shouldn't be selfish. A true fan of SLIDERS would want SLIDERS to be bigger than any one person's experience of it.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

In Season 2 of COMMUNITY, there's an episode where Abed traipses about the cafeteria in a cape to pay tribute to his favourite TV show that week, THE CAPE. His cape knocks over Jeff Winger's lunch. "Show's going to last three weeks!" Jeff shouts at him. Abed, running away, cries back: "Six seasons and a movie!" In the Season 6 finale (also the series finale), Jeff lightly protests Abed leaving town for a job. "But Abed," says Jeff imploringly, "six seasons and a movie."

"Jeff," says Abed, "I know it comforts you to look at things through that meta lens, but this is reality. TV’s rules aren’t based on common sense, they’re based on the studios wanting to milk their properties dry." And Abed would also point out to me that no matter what my relationship with SLIDERS may be, it is not and never was based on my trauma; that's something I applied to the show.

In the spirit of letting go, I once again present Temporal Flux's SLIDERS REDUX.

When I was 15, Temporal Flux told me how he would rebootquel SLIDERS in a feature film. It's weird; rebootquels came into vogue with STAR TREK (2009), but TF was (as always), a decade ahead of the game. Every 4 - 5 years, I update TF's original idea, so here's the latest iteration.

Sliders Redux | Story by Temporal Flux

The Opening

  • We begin with the original footage of Quinn (Jerry O'Connell) in 1994.

  • He opened something in his basement, he's not sure what. He may have also knocked out the power.

  • Cut to: 25 years later.

  • Quinn (Jerry O'Connell) is a tax accountant.

  • His great claim to fame: he devised an algorithm that would allow accountants to process returns in five minutes but require human beings to perform the calculations, raising productivity by 2,405 per cent while making layoffs impossible.

  • Quinn's next customers are Wade (Sabrina Lloyd) and Arturo (John Rhys-Davies), neither of whom are happy to see him.

  • Wade is irritated that Quinn kissed her 25 years ago and then acted like he didn't remember it.

  • Arturo is angry that Quinn humiliated him in class 25 years ago.

  • Quinn has no memory of these events or of September 27, 1994.

  • Wade goes from irritated to angry.

  • WADE: "Were women just playthings to you? Did you have some sick bet with Hurley? Were you laughing it up in the lounge later? Probably jumping up and down on that broken sofa like two 12 year old boys!"

  • Arturo is outraged at Quinn's profession.

  • He says that Quinn allowed one failure to take away his passion for science.

  • ARTURO: "You could have changed the very nature of mathematics and engineering and quantum mechanics, but instead, you sit here filling out forms! You appall me!"

  • The phone rings. Quinn answers it, listens, then hangs up. He looks blank and lost.

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

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

  • Wade and Arturo stare at Quinn, unnerved. A long silence.

  • ARTURO: "But perhaps I'm being too hard on you."

  • WADE: "Yeah, I mean, I barely remember working at Doppler's."

The Quartet

  • Cut to a blur of funeral arrangements, Wade and Arturo shamefully assisting Quinn.

  • Later, Quinn is cleaning out his old house alone.

  • As he reviews his abandoned sports equipment, his dusty blackboard and his worktables, the coils, the anti-gravity apparatus, we see Wade and Arturo going about their lives.

  • Arturo writes science study guides for high school students after losing his job at Berkeley.

  • Wade is a bored tech journalist reviewing smart speakers and self-warming coffee mugs.

  • She does most of her work at Brownie's, a jazz-themed coffee bar owned and run by Rembrandt (Cleavant Derricks).

  • Rembrandt is adrift, longing for the fame of the Spinning Topps, competent at running his business but only ever truly coming alive on open mic nights when he sings.

  • Quinn uncovers his old VHS cassettes and a VHS player.

  • He plays some of his journals made as a 20-year-old and then he finds a new tape, clean and untouched.

  • It shows himself describing opening a gateway. Quinn has no recollection of this journal, and he notes that he is also older in this video.

  • The VHS journal describes a series of revisions to the anti-gravity equipment. Quinn makes them on his machine.

  • He opens a gateway.

  • He is transported to a world where social media was bought up by government surveillance agencies and he is hunted when he attempts to use cash to buy a newspaper. He barely escapes in the return vortex.

The Beginning

  • Quinn calls Wade and Arturo, eager to explain his discovery and that he thinks his double may have insulted Wade and Arturo all those years ago.

  • Wade and Arturo arrive at the Mallory house. Wade realizes she left her laptop at the coffee shop and phones Rembrandt.

  • Rembrandt agrees to drive it over.

  • Quinn opens the vortex to show Wade and Arturo. They are astonished.

  • Quinn plays them the VHS journals. They watch some of them, although sections are overrun with static and they leave the tape playing.

  • Wade is eager to explore the multiverse.

  • Quinn widens the vortex to allow them all to step in.

  • They enter and disappear.

  • The overpowered vortex rises through the house and accidentally ensnares a visiting Rembrandt.

  • The four sliders land on a world where the Russians rule America.

  • The timer is damaged, forcing them to slide randomly or risk being trapped for 29.7 years.

  • The search for home begins.

  • We go back to Quinn's empty basement one more time and see the VHS cassette still playing and reaching a final segment.

  • A segment where Quinn, who looks about 26 - 27, describing the wonder of the multiverse, the infinite possibilities out there, and his hope that his double will see them all.

Bonus Content
And then, on the SLIDERS website, we have some bonus content!

  • We have an additional segment from the VHS cassette where this 27 year old Quinn says that the multiverse is at war.

  • His friends are dead and his world is gone.

  • A slider died to bring Quinn back from quantum limbo.

  • This Quinn has one last move left.

  • He will alter universal constants in the multiverse so that attempting anti-gravity will no longer open a gateway.

  • This will retroactively rip sliding out of existence, out of history, out of reality.

  • It will as be as though no person ever invented sliding.

  • There will be no more Kromaggs. No more Zercurvians. No more Reticulans. No more Prototronics. No more Gieger Applied Research.

  • No more sliders.

  • Everyone will live the lives they would have led had sliding never been created.

  • But Quinn knows himself too well; he knows that a double will create sliding eventually by altering the localized vibrational frequencies of the planet

  • It might be a decade, maybe two -- but at some point, Quinn Mallory will create sliding.

  • He has planted the solution on one Earth in advance of the reset. It will survive.

  • And he wishes his future self all the very best and hopes that Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo will slide again and get it right this time.

Originally, TF's idea was that Quinn would be working on his doctorate, Wade would be running the Doppler's, Rembrandt would be a music teacher and the Professor would be about the same. I just like to update the jobs. Also, in TF's version, these were older doubles whereas I have made them the original sliders with amnesia. Transmodiar had some ideas for SLIDERS REBORN that I didn't use, but they are in the web content points.

TF also wrote some imagined ad copy for SLIDERS and I like to update that every 4 - 5 years, too:

Wade Welles is a dreamer who failed to find direction outside reviewing gadgets for websites. Rembrandt Brown is a coffee bar manager who failed to stay a superstar. Professor Arturo is a genius who failed to find recognition for his brilliance. And Quinn Mallory is a tax accountant who failed to create anti-gravity -- but 25 years after giving up, he realizes that he discovered something else instead...

SLIDERS: four misfits on the adventure of a lifetime.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Funny enough, I think their best bet (movie or TV show) is to do it Ghostbusters (2016) style.  Full reboot.  New actors playing the four main actors with guest spots / cameos from the original actors. 

My reasoning is twofold:
- JRD is 74 years old and acknowledges that he couldn't do it for much longer.
- I think there's more nostalgia with the concept than the actors themselves.

If JOC is the driving force, he can either have a bigger role or he can play Arturo.  Sabrina could play Mrs. Mallory.  Cleavant could play Rembrandt's dad/uncle or maybe his manager.  Or some sort of bigger role on whatever Earth they slide to.  JRD could do the same.

For plot, don't overcomplicate things.  I'd essentially remake the Pilot.  Quinn finds sliding, recruits some friends, something bad happens, Rembrandt is taken along for the ride, and they get stuck somewhere.  Update the alt-world jokes, update the main world they go to, and that's it.  If it's a show, you end with the realization that they're not back home.  If it's a movie, maybe you just hint that something is wrong and end Inception-style.

That's, of course, if you're doing something mainstream.  If this is a Veronica Mars - style show with a targeted audience, I like the TF/ireactions stuff quite a bit.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

That's, of course, if you're doing something mainstream.  If this is a Veronica Mars - style show with a targeted audience, I like the TF/ireactions stuff quite a bit.

Judging from interviews, my read on John is that he has an obsessive knowledge of Season 1 - 2 scripts but may not have ever seen a full episode of the actual show. As for Jerry O'Connell's mindset, I noticed that he wrote the moderate masterpiece that is the "Narcotica" comic but on Twitter, referred to "Love Gods" by the wrong title ("The Weaker Sex") and he blatantly indicated that he has barely any memory of Seasons 3 - 5 in his Funny or Die improv/sketch (because he was wasted for most of it).

John wants to see SLIDERS as a full-fledged science fiction franchise akin to STAR TREK although he'd accept being THE ORVILLE. Jerry, however, just wants to hang out with the equivalent of his college buddies again and re-engage with those years as a more mature adult.

As a result, I'm not sure what this means for SLIDERS if they shepherd a revival. I can't tell if it's a shift back to what I like to call 'our' show about an unlikely group of misfits who formed friendships and a strong proficiency for saving the day under unlikely and increasingly impossible circumstances or if it's a move to repackaging SLIDERS as a serious science fiction drama engaging with modern day allegories involving capitalist critiques and suspicion towards establishment figures and institutions and questions of how the sliders get money and secure housing without identification or work and credit histories.

Or maybe it'll be a shift towards questions I find more compelling such as what would Wade and Arturo order in a restaurant and who is Quinn Mallory as he approaches 50 and could someone as high-energy as the Professor ever be happy with retirement and what would Rembrandt do if he had to consider that his career will never regain the high point of his original fame and what is reality, what constitutes sanity, what does one consider normal when traipsing across the multiverse, and is Michael Mallory really dead because the Pilot set up the idea that he faked his death and I'd like the gang to really get to the bottom of that sooner rather than later.

I can only be certain that it is definitely a dismissal of questions other fans seem inordinately interested in like whatever happened to Colin and the Kromagg spy plot and will we ever catch up with Logan St. Clair and are Kaldeen and Thomas still living in the slidecage? That will not happen.

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

If JOC is the driving force, he can either have a bigger role or he can play Arturo.  Sabrina could play Mrs. Mallory.  Cleavant could play Rembrandt's dad/uncle or maybe his manager.  Or some sort of bigger role on whatever Earth they slide to.  JRD could do the same.

For plot, don't overcomplicate things.  I'd essentially remake the Pilot.  Quinn finds sliding, recruits some friends, something bad happens, Rembrandt is taken along for the ride, and they get stuck somewhere.  Update the alt-world jokes, update the main world they go to, and that's it.  If it's a show, you end with the realization that they're not back home.  If it's a movie, maybe you just hint that something is wrong and end Inception-style. That's, of course, if you're doing something mainstream.

Well, I should never demand that SLIDERS verge away from serving as wide an audience as possible. It's called broadcasting for a reason and good shows Chang. I mean they change. I meant to say that good shows change. I've been rewatching COMMUNITY with audio commentary.

I would like Corey Fogelmanis (GIRL MEETS WORLD) to play Quinn, Isabel May (ALEXA AND KATIE) to play Wade, Keith David (Elroy from COMMUNITY) to play Rembrandt and Victor Garber (LEGENDS) to play the Professor. I would like Quinn 2.0 to be trying to build anti-gravity based on video journals made by his deceased father Michael (Jerry O'Connell). In future episodes where the sliders encounter doubles of their families, I'd like Wade's mother to be played by Sabrina Lloyd, Rembrandt's father to be played by Cleavant Derricks and Arturo's father to be played by John Rhys-Davies and I think Jerry and John should direct episodes and act as story consultants and acting coaches.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

I have no interest in a revival, for many reasons. "Sliders" filled a very specific niche in my life that no longer needs it, and I guarantee any reboot or reimagining will fail to capture the spirit of the original.

Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

I don't doubt that a revived SLIDERS would be different from the show that aired in 1995, but 2019 has had over two decades of refinement and advancement in television storytelling and over 20 years of culture and societal upheaval and technological development for SLIDERS' satirical perspective.

I wouldn't want SLIDERS to come back fixated on the Berlin Wall and the Summer of Love; I wouldn't want SLIDERS to lack running plotlines or see characterization evolve only between season finales and premieres; I wouldn't want SLIDERS to have guest-stars leap into the vortex at the end of one week only to not be mentioned the next week. And if SLIDERS in 2020 has different priorities and goals than the 1995 incarnation, then it's being exactly what it needs to be because good shows change to face the issues of the era in which they air.

I once asked Temporal Flux who his dream showrunner would be for a revived SLIDERS. He said ANYONE could do a great job with SLIDERS because the format is so wide, so varied, so full of boundless potential with a new universe to explore every single week in every single episode. Not everyone has a FRINGE story to tell or a COMMUNITY episode to pitch but absolutely anyone and everyone has at least one amazing SLIDERS story in them.

Transmodiar has left SLIDERS behind emotionally and I confess that over time, I have come to do the same; I no longer have to see it as a representation of my childhood traumas. I don't need the show any more, but television needs SLIDERS and the world needs Quinn and we all need the Professor.

In a world of streaming services and home theatres and digital filming and affordable CG and high polygon effect counts, TV needs SLIDERS to show the limitless platform of its anthology format matched with its vivid and lovable characters who represent every person struggling to cope with a world of constant and confusing change. And on a planet faced with endless conflict environmentally, socially, economically and politically, we need Quinn Mallory and Professor Arturo to show us that every problem can be confronted with knowledge, teamwork, analysis and understanding.

I recognize and respect that Transmodiar has outgrown the show, but SLIDERS is so much more than what Transmodiar or I have ever needed from it and without it, I fear for the future of our civilization and the continued existence of our universe.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

I do believe in season 4 the Sliders team mentioned the rediculous rule that if they took the guy and his mom from the racist world to the  next it was a one way trip and they would leave them were ever they got to.



Here is the thing at this point it would just need to be a reboot, the baggage of season 3/4/5. is to much, sure borrow elements, upside down twisters, dinos, zombies aren't the worst of ideas, nor is a bad guy, Col. Rickman was badly done, so was most of Sliders, it was that show so bad it was good years 3 to 5.  Season 2 had lost the fun energy and wonder of adventure.


I f rebooted how does it keep from being a fun adventure in the get go to a depressing drama as the seasons unfold and their truly seems to be no way home and every world is a slight variation of hell on Earth

21 (edited by Slide Override 2019-03-24 17:11:51)

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

For the sake of it, let's just propose that a reboot / revival / continuation / spin-off / whatever, happens. The more important question becomes: what structure and concessions would be made in order to facilitate such a show nowadays. And what would you personally be prepared to give up in order to let the show succeed?

I mean, are there even any direct comparisons that can be made with other modern sci-fi shows that change locations and a large ensemble cast every week? (Sans Doctor Who, which is a unique beast in of itself). Would we be forced to contend with several two-parters within every series in order to save budget and set costs?

Would we have more regular / familiar guest characters reappearing within every other world in different guises?

Would they even consider changing the premise entirely? Have a return to Quinn's basement (and the constant reuse of that and the surrounding sets) at the end of every episode's adventure, with only the cliffhanger of series 1 being where things go wrong?

What if they try a gimmicky live-time feature? Where the time of the slide is the time remaining until the episode ends, or strict 30 minute slides, with that world playing out as you see it? No time jumping or event skipping?

They will want a staple villain, something recurring. What would you be prepared to be added to the ongoing story and the script? The Kromaggs? FBI agents chasing after them? Rogue sliders? Insane doubles?

What if they changed up the characters and the cast dynamics? What if Quinn and Rembrandt had both dated Wade - creating a love triangle? What if the Professor had originally discovered, but not perfected, sliding? With all of his accolades having been gathered from other worlds?

Just like the show itself, there is so much that could be changed in a reboot or revival, but what would you be prepared to see change, or be adamant that must remain untouched and sacred?

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

What's wrong with going back to the original group? I mean X-Files did it (was there really any reason given for Robert Patrick or the woman that replaced Scully not returning).

And comment about JRD's age. How old is Patrick Stewart or the entire cast of Grace and frankie?

If you're not interested don't watch. I would personally give it a try, it's the concept that I fell in love with (initially).

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

ireactions wrote:

Transmodiar has left SLIDERS behind emotionally and I confess that over time, I have come to do the same; I no longer have to see it as a representation of my childhood traumas. I don't need the show any more, but television needs SLIDERS and the world needs Quinn and we all need the Professor.

I recognize and respect that Transmodiar has outgrown the show, but SLIDERS is so much more than what Transmodiar or I have ever needed from it and without it, I fear for the future of our civilization and the continued existence of our universe.

I haven't outgrown the concept and have selfish reasons to not see this go forward (which you know ALL about). I just don't think there needs to be a parallel universe series called "Sliders" out there, with all the baggage that goes along with it. Because no matter how you slice it, the name/brand has a TON of baggage.

Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Personally, I'm surprised that they haven't given Doorways another shot considering the popularity of Game of Thrones.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

JWSlider3 wrote:

Personally, I'm surprised that they haven't given Doorways another shot considering the popularity of Game of Thrones.

Transmodiar sent me a VHS cassette of the DOORWAYS pilot awhile ago. I watched it. It's one of the worst things ever made and it also broke my VHS player.

Transmodiar wrote:

I haven't outgrown the concept and have selfish reasons to not see this go forward (which you know ALL about).

There may not be a market for lots of shows about parallel universes. But you have plenty of ideas for other shows about other subjects. Marvel executive Joe Quesada was once asked, why should creators ever offer their ideas to Marvel on a work for hire basis with royalties instead of self-financing their ideas and owning all profits?

Quesada replied that Marvel could bring those ideas to life with infrastructure and resources while creator-owned work would be self-financed. He advised that creators always find a good balance between work for hire and self-owned projects and he disagreed with the attitude that one should hoard ideas strictly for creator-owned projects, saying that creators who do so take the view that imagination is finite and then spend more time obsessing over past ideas rather than developing new ones.

If your concept is no longer competitive, if you can't reconfigure parallel worlds into time travel or underground cities or alien planets or virtual realities, then you can always cycle to the next idea.

JWSlider3 wrote:

What's wrong with going back to the original group? I mean X-Files did it (was there really any reason given for Robert Patrick or the woman that replaced Scully not returning).

Robert Patrick had scheduling issues; he was written to appear in the Season 11 premiere, but he couldn't make it and was replaced with Christopher Owens. Annabeth Gish did return; she was in four episodes of the revival. Admittedly, fans weren't happy with her character's portrayal...

Slide Override wrote:

what would you be prepared to see change, or be adamant that must remain untouched and sacred?

The only thing I would insist upon: the sliders are lost in the multiverse, they're trying to find a way back home. This rules out returning to Quinn's home Earth on a regular basis as SLIDERS' drama functions on being away from any sort of reliable home environment. This rules out strict 30 minute slides as after a few worlds, the sliders would simply stop sliding as 30 minutes isn't enough to search for a way back home. If you lose the platform of exploring an unfamiliar new Earth every week while searching for the familiar, it's not really SLIDERS.

Outside of that, I think any showrunner could tailor SLIDERS to their talents and interests whether it's recurring villains, altered backstories and relationships, two-parters, etc..

Transmodiar wrote:

I have no interest in a revival, for many reasons. "Sliders" filled a very specific niche in my life that no longer needs it, and I guarantee any reboot or reimagining will fail to capture the spirit of the original.


JWSlider3 wrote:

If you're not interested don't watch.

Transmodiar once informed me that his car had been totalled in an accident (he was not at fault, don't raise his rates). At another point, he informed me that he had been laid off from his job. He announced both instances of financial and professional devastation in a cool, solution-oriented, good-natured fashion and explained that he'd been receiving care packages at his office and he wanted to inform his social circle that it was no longer his office.

He then went about securing a new vehicle and new employment in a somber, goal-driven, emotionally healthy approach. I assume he took the same route when SLIDERS lost three-quarters of its original cast and was cancelled with Season 5. Should SLIDERS return and interfere with his professional creativity, Transmodiar will create another concept in another market and do so in a positive and appropriate manner. Transmodiar always moves forward.

Transmodiar sees television and film with high definition clarity, very much like a TV producer. He can see that a SLIDERS revival would simply be an exercise in cycling through an archive of a presently unused copyright and making an effort to monetize its existence. It's a perfectly valid perspective from a person who views things as they are without becoming overly sentimental over anything other than his wife and children and a scattered assortment of family and friends. I think we should welcome such perspective.

And on the subject of story structure, since Slide Override raised it:

There's some other stuff with Transmodiar and Slide Override that I... "dislike" is a mild term and would still be too strong a world. Transmodiar and Slide Override will often declare that elements of plot and characterization are "ridiculous" because the story doesn't meet a standard of plausibility that they have personally defined and they take the view that this standard is an objective measure universally agreed upon by all rather than a subjective perspective.

I'm not knocking it; I'd just say it's an area where we have agreed to disagree. Slide Override declared PARALLELS ridiculous because he said that a building that can travel the multiverse is a ridiculous concept. Transmodiar said he disliked the Claymation episode of COMMUNITY because a sitcom offering a Claymation story is ridiculous. Neither have ever offered any clear rationale for where they draw the line between plausibility and absurdity or how this subjective scale could be applied by others, so it's clearly a personal view on which we shall have to agree to disagree.

When working on SLIDERS REBORN together, Transmodiar would often tell me that plot points were "ridiculous" and I took the view that if Transmodiar felt something was implausible, it didn't mean he was telling me not to do it; it meant he was telling me that my writing needed to do more to earn the Transmodiar's suspension of disbelief.

Transmodiar would inform me that no, he was genuinely telling me not to write a script where Mallory exists as an individual entity within Quinn's subconscious mind. I ignored that part but appreciated that his words were delivered out of sincere concern.

This happens with all friends whether close or distant. There are areas where Tracy Torme and I agreed to disagree in 2000 (I think SLIDERS could totally do monster movies and horror stories and Torme does not). There are areas where Robert Floyd and I agreed to disagree (he voted for Trump). There are areas where Slider_Quinn21 and I agreed to disagree (he doesn't like the line in SLIDERS REBORN where Smarter Quinn tells Quinn, "Everything around you is just mediocre fanfic that doesn't matter and doesn't count").

I think true friendship is where both parties can find it fun to debate these disputes. I think Transmodiar should continue to express his lack of interest even if SLIDERS is revived and that his ideas go well-beyond distaff SLIDERS pitches.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

I need to hire you to write my biography. tongue

Transmodiar said he disliked the Claymation episode of COMMUNITY because a sitcom offering a Claymation story is ridiculous. Neither have ever offered any clear rationale for where they draw the line between plausibility and absurdity or how this subjective scale could be applied by others, so it's clearly a personal view on which we shall have to agree to disagree.

My clear rationale is that it wasn't a funny episode of COMMUNITY. Even on rewatch, it's just boring. Granted, that's a personal view, but I'm hardly alone in that opinion.

When working on SLIDERS REBORN together, Transmodiar would often tell me that plot points were "ridiculous" and I took the view that if Transmodiar felt something was implausible, it didn't mean he was telling me not to do it; it meant he was telling me that my writing needed to do more to earn the Transmodiar's suspension of disbelief.

My suspension of disbelief depends entirely on the story being told. It's why I thought COMMUNITY fell apart so hard after the first two seasons - the show setting was a community college, and its students were normal people. Plots that tethered themselves to that reality were generally better, in my opinion. For REBORN, I'll admit that you took all the pure nonsense SLIDERS spit out over five seasons, mainlined it, and went into a writing fugue state of epic proportions. But for me, a SLIDERS story was a wrinkle in the timeline that our people have to adapt to and understand under extreme circumstances. The best stories came out that way. Embracing the lunacy? I give you props for fully committing, but I can't sit down with it and think it's really happening to those characters.

(Of course, we went through so many iterations of that concept - and my memory is so faulty - that I have no idea what made it through the editing process.)

JWSlider3 wrote: If you're not interested don't watch.

It's because of you that I don't have TIME to watch, silly. smile

Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Doorways was rubbish, plus it's possible Martin doesn't have the rights on it or whatever.  I would counter Transmodiar's angst over Sliders baggage though, as probably 0.0001% of viewers have any clue what went on BTS during the show like we do.  I think one problem they might have is budget, unless they deviate from how Tracy wrote the first season especially.  The issue there is that the old characters are already established.  The great novelty of early Sliders was that we didn't know the characters, so it was fun to see their alternates and how they interacted.  I think it could work, for sure, though they may have to go more into comedy.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Grizzlor wrote:

I would counter Transmodiar's angst over Sliders baggage though, as probably 0.0001% of viewers have any clue what went on BTS during the show like we do.

You do realize that 99% of the people most clamoring for a reboot are either here or were on the BBoard back in the day? Sliders doesn't have a lot of casual fans; that's why it a reboot against the "brand" doesn't make sense aside from cynically mining pre-existing titles to try and drum up an audience high on nostalgia.

Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

ireactions wrote:

And on the subject of story structure, since Slide Override raised it:

There's some other stuff with Transmodiar and Slide Override that I... "dislike" is a mild term and would still be too strong a world. Transmodiar and Slide Override will often declare that elements of plot and characterization are "ridiculous" because the story doesn't meet a standard of plausibility that they have personally defined and they take the view that this standard is an objective measure universally agreed upon by all rather than a subjective perspective.

I'm not knocking it; I'd just say it's an area where we have agreed to disagree.

Slide Override declared PARALLELS ridiculous because he said that a building that can travel the multiverse is a ridiculous concept.

It is absolutely a ridiculous concept, but you might need to re-read that thread if you believe that my only issue with it was because of a multiverse traveling building. There were various - much of them significant - reasons why I disliked it. And yes, on many objective and measurable levels which can define 'good writing', it falls far short. You don't have to agree with that, but that's fine. Opinions and all that. Not everyone agrees that the Wizard of Oz is the definitive young woman's coming of age story, but you'd certainly raise some eyebrows in pretty much any serious literary circle if you try to say otherwise.

But this is all by the by. I'm not going to get back into the discussion, as I don't care about Parallels to even want to talk about it again. So, back to the subject at hand?

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Slide Override wrote:
ireactions wrote:

Slide Override declared PARALLELS ridiculous because he said that a building that can travel the multiverse is a ridiculous concept.

It is absolutely a ridiculous concept, but you might need to re-read that thread if you believe that my only issue with it was because of a multiverse traveling building. There were various - much of them significant - reasons why I disliked it. And yes, on many objective and measurable levels which can define 'good writing', it falls far short. You don't have to agree with that, but that's fine. Opinions and all that. Not everyone agrees that the Wizard of Oz is the definitive young woman's coming of age story, but you'd certainly raise some eyebrows in pretty much any serious literary circle if you try to say otherwise.

But this is all by the by. I'm not going to get back into the discussion, as I don't care about Parallels to even want to talk about it again. So, back to the subject at hand?

It can be relevant when contemplating a revival/reboot of SLIDERS in response to your questions. It is very difficult to understand what your parameters of plausibility are and to provide material that works within them.

I think you have a great sense of structure, plotting and how an audience reacts to material. However, your criticisms of PARALLELS: you described every instance of advanced and/or mysterious technology and declared it a plothole or an absurdity, an approach that would dismantle any work of science fiction or fantasy. Given that you're on a SLIDERS board, you're clearly capable of suspending your disbelief, but you have a specific standard for what is and isn't worthy of your suspension that you haven't been able to elaborate.

I imagine you have a rationale, but without a clear sense of how you evaluate absurdity and science fiction contrivances, it's impossible to offer material that would meet with your approval because any aspect of a SLIDERS pitch could be targeted as absurd by a standard that, to the outside observer, looks like an arbitrary yet blanket rejection of any sci-fi elements.

With Transmodiar, it was clear why he disliked SLIDERS REBORN. To me, a story where Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo have come back from the dead to save the multiverse is a superhero story. Spider-Man's died and come back to life and he's fought twisters, dream masters, vampires, zombies, dragons, animal human hybrids, radioactive worms, intelligent living flames and remote controlled cars that shoot lasers and he's seen the multiverse crushed to nothing, combined and rebuilt.

The sliders all died. The Professor's brain was sucked out, he was shot and blown up. Wade was sent to an alien prison camp. Rembrandt saw home invaded by aliens. Quinn lost his body, was merged with another person and 'lost.' Pretty much the same things happened to Spider-Man over six decades of publishing with most of these examples happening in the 90s. From 2013 - 2014, Peter Parker was merged with another person and 'deleted' and that was actually one of the less eventful periods in his life and he came through all of that and he always came back. He's a superhero and if the sliders could be superheroes, they could come back as well.

That was my mission statement and it just didn't work for Transmodiar because for him, SLIDERS is not a superhero series and it was just a bizarre psychodrama from an emotionally troubled friend with screenwriting software. I understand that.

With you, Slide Override -- I just don't understand your metric.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

The part that concerns me about the news is that they seem to be looking at it as a NBC network show.  Networks tend to have a house style - everything from film stock to lighting to overall production design are often a finger print that identify it as ABC, CBS or NBC.  That’s what people flip to those channels for; and once there, the house ads feed into that idea promoting that flavor to keep you watching that channel.    To use an analogy, people don’t go to Burger King looking for a Big Mac.

Look at NBC.  Do you see Sliders fitting there?  In the best case scenario, it would fit in the lonely slot NBC holds for shows like Timeless and Revolution.  In the worst case, it would fall in the hole Knight Rider was buried in.

I would love to see NBC try to recapture what they used to be; back in the 80’s, NBC was *the* sci-fi destination which reached its apex with Quantum Leap.  But NBC hasn’t been that network in a long time; and I see no indication that they want to make an effort to recapture that flavor.  Even in this case, it’s someone from the outside going to NBC to try to convince them; the reality is that NBC wasn’t seeking it out.

If Sliders were to come back, I would much rather see it in a situation like Amazing Stories on Apple.  Streaming is still young enough that companies are allowing experimentation.  Sliders needs that.  When done correctly, Sliders is a new experiment in story telling every episode; it’s the sideways look at reality we had in the Twilight Zone except with the camera following Rod Serling each week as he tries to survive the world he’s in.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

TemporalFlux wrote:

The part that concerns me about the news is that they seem to be looking at it as a NBC network show.  Networks tend to have a house style - everything from film stock to lighting to overall production design are often a finger print that identify it as ABC, CBS or NBC.  That’s what people flip to those channels for; and once there, the house ads feed into that idea promoting that flavor to keep you watching that channel.    To use an analogy, people don’t go to Burger King looking for a Big Mac.

Look at NBC.  Do you see Sliders fitting there?  In the best case scenario, it would fit in the lonely slot NBC holds for shows like Timeless and Revolution.  In the worst case, it would fall in the hole Knight Rider was buried in.

That's ridiculous. You're ridiculous. COMMUNITY is a show about a gang of wayward misfits finding their way through the parallel universe style insanity of a community college and the perfect spiritual successor to SLIDERS and NBC kept it on the air for five seasons, four and a half more than any other network would have kept it alive.

... although they did cut the episode order to 13 episodes in Season 4 and another short season of 13 in Season 5 and permitted the firing of the original creator and slashed the budget every year until the crew couldn't afford to film outdoors and had to lose about half of their extras and then they cancelled it with Season 5 and I think I see your point, you're right, NBC is the wrong place for SLIDERS.

In all seriousness, you are right, and I can't think of anything more terrifying than SLIDERS returning under the thumb of Robert Greenblatt, current chairman of NBC, also the man who cancelled SLIDERS in Season 3 while lauding the monster movies and how the characters were constantly at each other's throats. And yet, Greenblatt renewed COMMUNITY and CHUCK and PARKS AND RECREATION for multi-year runs when anyone else would have cancelled them after six weeks and he recently saved BROOKLYN NINE NINE, so despite my issues with him, he's been balancing the scales. If he saved SLIDERS, he would have set right his original sin and I would finally consent to lift the voodoo curse I placed on him so many years ago.

33 (edited by Slide Override 2019-03-27 00:38:02)

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

ireactions wrote:

It can be relevant when contemplating a revival/reboot of SLIDERS in response to your questions. It is very difficult to understand what your parameters of plausibility are and to provide material that works within them.

With you, Slide Override -- I just don't understand your metric.

Your continued fixation on the observations that I made about a single back-door sci-fi pilot will never lend you any aid in understanding my metric. A metric which absolutely has no relevance or bearing on the questions that I posed to the board.

I did not ask people to present their perfect version of Sliders, my perfect version, or even a Sliders that I would personally deem would be good enough. I asked, knowing the trappings and format of TV in today's climate, and with the unique setup of the show, what would you personally be prepared to see change or altered to accommodate a revival/reboot? And what would you define as the core aspects of the show that you would demand would need to remain?

Again, you do not need to know or understand my metrics to answer that. Again, move on. I ain't discussing Parallels. Next.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

lol

Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Hunnh. Robert Greenblatt quit NBC last year. Moved to Warner Bros. I guess all bets are off with NBC, but we should probably trust TF's assessment.

Slide Override wrote:

I did not ask people to present their perfect version of Sliders, my perfect version, or even a Sliders that I would personally deem would be good enough. I asked, knowing the trappings and format of TV in today's climate, and with the unique setup of the show, what would you personally be prepared to see change or altered to accommodate a revival/reboot? And what would you define as the core aspects of the show that you would demand would need to remain?

Artist Joe Quesada once advised that people always be free and open with ideas and I agree with that, but it makes me nervous to offer ideas in response to a question when the person asking that question may excoriate those ideas based on reasoning that, to the uninformed observer, looks suspiciously random.

Anyway. I'm going to offer a vision of a SLIDERS reboot done to Slider_Quinn21's specifications, built on ideas offered in this community, and I'll hope Slide Override won't be mean to me about it. This is a reboot, not a rebootquel, not a revival and it is an effort to do it in Transmodiar's style and play it completely straight.

No monsters! No crossovers! No superhero elements! No multiversal crises! No psychodrama! No Kromaggs! No continuity with the original show! Transmodiar won't have anything to complain about with this vision (aside from its existence). In fact, he will love it. The goal here is to make something Transmodiar would love.

SLIDERS (2020) - Season 1
Featuring:

  • Corey Fogelmanis as Quinn Mallory (he plays intelligence well)

  • Isabel May as Wade Welles (she has this geek girl energy that reminds me of my niece)

  • Keith David as Rembrandt Brown (great voice)

  • and Victor Garber as the Professor (wise and older)

Crew:

  • Executive Producers: Jerry O'Connell and John Rhys-Davies (figureheads)

  • Story Editor: Scott Smith Miller (that's right, I want the imagination behind "Eggheads" on staff to do nothing but conceive and detail alt-histories, but I don't want him writing scripts, have you read "Raging Quinn"? Jesus.)

  • Script Editors: Marc Scott Zicree and Megan Ganz (to rewrite shooting scripts to be filmable and coherent)

  • Consultants: Tracy Torme and Robert K. Weiss (I don't know if they're available or willing to run a modern day TV production)

  • Veto Rights: Transmodiar (if he says something's "ridiculous," it is to be stricken from the story, no negotiation, no redrafting)

  • Special thanks to George R. R. Martin (clearly one of SLIDERS' biggest fans)

1.1 - "Doorway" (story by Tracy Torme and Robert K. Weiss, script by... me? Temporal Flux?)
Wade Welles is a tech support worker who failed to find direction in life. Rembrandt Brown is a former superstar who failed to hang onto his 15 minutes of fame. Professor Arturo is a genius who failed to find recognition for his brilliance. And Quinn Mallory is a grad student who failed to create anti-gravity but discovered a gateway to parallel worlds instead...

On Quinn's second slide, he brings his co-worker (Wade) and his academically disgruntled professor (Arturo). The gateway accidentally ensnares Rembrandt and the episode ends on a cliffhanger with the sliders facing down a nuclear missile with 50 minutes left on the timer. Dedicated with love and respect to George R. R. Martin who I'm sure is very excited about a SLIDERS revival.

1.2 - "Gaming the Throne" (to be written by Slider_Quinn21)
I assigned this story to Slider_Quinn21 because he still owes me the second half of a SLIDERS pilot. Cough it up, Rob!

Triggering the vortex to escape the missile fries the timer, creating the 29.7 risk should they miss the window and random sliding. The sliders land on an Earth where the Russians have co-opted the American government and the resistance is viewed as absurd conspirators alongside flat earthers, birthers, 9-11 truthers and anti-vaxxers. Dedicated with great fondness to George R. R. Martin who I'm sure cannot be more thrilled about SLIDERS coming back.

My niece points out that Slider_Quinn21 served as the script editor on SLIDERS REBORN after I fired Transmodiar and Nigel Mitchell, shortly after they quit -- and that I should really let it go that Slider_Quinn21 never delivered on the SLIDERS (2013) pilot.

1.3 - "The Feasting Crows" (to be written by Informant)
The sliders visit an Earth where all health care is free, but participants are required to take part in medical experiments with side effects that range from mild to deadly. When Quinn gets his wisdom teeth removed, he balks at the price of testing an experimental vaccine that might leave him paralyzed.

The sliders are hunted by bounty hunters looking to settle the bill. Initially, all the sliders abandon Quinn at his instruction to keep them safe as he blames himself for their predicament. But by the end, they return to save him and slide out together.

I assigned this story to Informant so he could rant about Obamacare in a fictional context. Dedicated with warm admiration to George R. R. Martin who I'm sure is overjoyed to know SLIDERS is producing new episodes.

1.4 - "Songs of Stars" (story by Tracy Torme and Chaser9)
On this Earth, Rembrandt's double is a deranged and egotistical celebrity and Remmy is forced to confront his past, realizing that his career went south in the 90s when he went onstage crying after a breakup and was branded "The Crying Man" for his performance. Remmy was humiliated and went into musical hibernation and when he came out, his career had dried up.

His double, in contrast, embraced the nickname, became a superstar and went mad with fame and power. Feeling affirmed in both his art and his life's choices, Rembrandt goes from being irritated with sliding to being grateful for the experience.

The revised backstory for Rembrandt here was created by Chaser9.

Dedicated with adoring appreciation to George R. R. Martin who I'm sure is deeply moved by these titles that pay tribute to books he's written.

1.5 - "Fourth Wall" (story by Transmodiar, lifted from his fanfic)
The sliders visit an Earth where freedom of the press has been suppressed by decades of anti-communist paranoia and Wade falls in with an underground newspaper and rediscovers her passion for computers and journalism. (I ran out of George R. R. Martin titles to copy.)

1.6 - "Please Press One" (story by Keith Damron)
On a world of fully automated retail experiences, Quinn and Arturo seek components to upgrade the timer but run afoul of an artificial intelligence seeking to ensnare the sliders and take their technology. Meanwhile, Wade and Rembrandt encounter a former retail engineer looking to blow up the shopping mall after being denied a refund on a broken chair.

(Does it scare you as much as it scares me that Keith Damron teaches screenwriting? Hope to God his students are slow learners.)

1.7- "Map of the Mind" (story by Robert Masello with Steve Lyons)
The sliders visit an America where fiction is illegal. Rembrandt is imprisoned for singing, the Professor and Quinn go undercover with the police while Wade falls in with the local resistance and starts to suffer from delusions. The sliders discover that pulp and paper on this continent have been contaminated with a psychoactive substance that causes hallucinations and the Professor conceives a cure, cures Wade and shares the formula before they leave.

1.8 - "Birthright" (story by Transmodiar, lifted from his life and fanfic)
In a US where all citizens are evaluated by a social credit program at all times, the Professor encounters a double of the son he neglected back home. Meanwhile, Wade becomes obsessed with using the social credit system to track down a mugger who once robbed and traumatized her.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Quinn and Rembrandt run afoul of the credit system after being accused of flashing a female janitor who walked into the restroom when they were using the urinals.

1.9 - "Shadowed" (by Temporal Flux)
In a world of constant reality TV, the sliders are followed everywhere by documentarians making a reality show version of SLIDERS and much trouble ensues when... when... when I can bring to mind what TF's plot was for this concept, I can't remember. Anyway. The reality TV episode!

1.10 - "Footprints" (to be written by Robert K. Weiss)
In a once robot-operated San Francisco where all digital data has been corrupted and left the machines inoperable, an enterprising police detective attempts to find the sliders who are responsible for this situation. It turns out that the sliders left this world weeks ago and they did what they did to prevent a city-destroying flood that would have been caused by a malfunctioning dam.

I assigned this one to Weiss because he seems to like robots.

1.11 - "Invasion" (story by Nigel Michell)
The sliders visit a world that is ruled by the Kromaggs, an interdimensional race of neo Nazis who are an alternate evolutionary path of humans. (Yes, we're using the Season 4 costumes and makeup.) Our heroes encounter fearful civillians in thrall to their distant rulers, terrified that anyone they know could be a shapeshifting Kromagg.

However, further investigation reveals that this empire is a ruse crafted by a slider who left the world a long time ago. The sliders liberate this Earth while wondering who this slider was and if the Kromaggs really exist and commenting on how terrible the makeup was.

I assigned this story to Nigel because he wrote two great Kromagg stories: Mary's life's story and one where the late Season 3 sliders encounter a Kromagg dominated Earth and Maggie is determined to raise a resistance.

1.12 - "Heavy Metal" (story by Chris Black)
The sliders visit a world where the means to extract aluminium from bauxite were never created and air travel is non-existent. Landing aboard a seafaring ship that's taking them out of the timer's geographical limits, the sliders must race the timer to get back into the city before it's too late. It becomes clear that the limitations of the timer will leave the sliders dead or stranded unless the problems are addressed.

1.13 - "The Great Works" (story by Temporal Flux)
The sliders land in a vast and largely vacated library on a world where all copyright laws have failed and ceased. They find a Quinn-double who has been developing sliding in this patent-free world and may offer the means to reach home.

However, this double reveals that our Quinn deliberately got the sliders lost and has been using them in a twisted psych and engineering experiment to map parallel histories and perfect his invention, deliberately putting them in one deadly situation after another to gradually eliminate witnesses.

The sliders turn on Quinn and Quinn flees the library. The sliders accept this new Quinn-2 as their friend, but later, the Professor finds the Kromagg makeup and prosthetics. Wade analyzes a photo of a Kromagg from "Invasion" and digitally removes the prosthetics to reveal Quinn-2's face as the slider who created the Kromagg ruse in "Invasion." 

Our Quinn returns to discover that the library's garden is full of dead bodies -- bodies of Quinn-doubles with Quinn-2 stealing his counterparts' knowledge and information and, in this instance, framing his alternate for Quinn-2's sociopathy. And Rembrandt finds medical records indicating that Quinn-2, when he had his wisdom teeth removed in his teens, experienced brain swelling that has led to his current psychopathy.

Quinn-2 defends his actions, declaring that every Quinn-double he encountered was a reckless, random slider with a malfunctioning timer that would inevitably get him killed, that the multiverse is full of horrors, and that our Quinn is the only one he's ever met who was additionally stupid in bringing friends, that he put them on a nightmare journey and that only Quinn-2 deserves to have them.

But Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo protest: they have rediscovered their talents and skills in the course of sliding. They miss home, but they are proud to be sliders and Quinn is their friend.

In the final confrontation, Quinn-2 is caught in a vortex that will leave him permanently between dimensions. The sliders use Quinn-2's stolen hardware to upgrade the timer to allow it to track wormholes, store and target previous coordinates, and they slide off with renewed trust in each other, increased control of their travels and a home base in this library.

This entire season is dedicated to George R. R. Martin whose ranting about DOORWAYS and its superiority to SLIDERS even decades later has regularly gotten SLIDERS back in the press and into the public eye.

Writing to Transmodiar's tastes has been a really fulfilling exercise. Maybe... maybe I'm now equipped to write original fiction.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Okay, when John Rhys-Davies is referring to NBC, I'm sure he meant NBC/Universal who has the distribution rights, Universal doesn't give that stuff up (that's why Kevin Smith can't do Mallrats 2).

I am also positive that George R. R. Martin owns the rights to Doorways, given in 2010 IDW published the a comic book series based on the Pilot and was going to publish (in comic book form) the six other scripts written for the series. That was all before the popularity of Game of Thrones.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

NBC/Universal also owns SyFy...

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Transmodiar wrote:
Grizzlor wrote:

I would counter Transmodiar's angst over Sliders baggage though, as probably 0.0001% of viewers have any clue what went on BTS during the show like we do.

You do realize that 99% of the people most clamoring for a reboot are either here or were on the BBoard back in the day? Sliders doesn't have a lot of casual fans; that's why it a reboot against the "brand" doesn't make sense aside from cynically mining pre-existing titles to try and drum up an audience high on nostalgia.

touché!

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

https://bunnyears.com/sliders-jerry-oco … avid-bell/

Jerry and Mac Culkin chat while munching on "Sliders."

http://surfmypictures.com/photo/d919a83bc15b1ef3/x2pjm/mac_and_joc.JPG
Uploaded with surfmypictures

Starts goofing about Sliders around 30 minutes in.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

It's strange -- I haven't really listened to Jerry for awhile. The last time I was really paying attention to his voice, I was watching Season 4 episodes and it was truly disturbing to hear an odd rasp in his voice, the aftereffect of many late nights at open bars and to hear the peculiar indecisiveness in his tone that's unique to an actor who has skimmed his dialogue and is performing hungover. It was comforting to hear him in this 2019 recording and find that his voice has regained its original qualities of clarity and well-timed control of tone and pacing.

I also noticed his almost Pavlovian reaction to being described as "the fat kid from STAND BY ME" where he nearly shrieks (somewhat jokingly but not) that he was "husky." It reminds me of that episode of COMMUNITY where Jeff tells Annie, "YOU -- are insecure. Because you didn't get hot until AFTER high school," a remark that seems true of Jerry O'Connell and explains his post-SLIDERS choices in roles (BODY SHOTS, MISSION TO MARS, TOMCATS, and KANGAROO JACK) where his character was defined largely by being an attractive young man, and something he didn't cast off for years.

It was also intriguing to hear Jerry's voice describing a science of sorts -- the science of acting and auditioning and for a moment, if one imagined Quinn pursuing acting instead of quantum mechanics, this would be the sort of thing Quinn would talk about and the way in which he would describe it.

I haven't been overly keen on Jerry for many, many, many reasons, but I have felt in recent years that his acting his regained the skill he seemed to lose after John Rhys-Davies was fired, and I really liked hearing a Quinn-adjacent voice in this podcast.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Well, I saw Jerry perform in person off Broadway (American Hero), and he was terrific.  Very funny, all the goofy mannerisms but he also had great timing.  He would/could be a terrific sitcom actor, and I'm not sure why he hasn't made it into that realm.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

he tried a couple times with Carpoolers and Guys Like Us...Maybe his spots in tbbt as Sheldons brother will get his name back out their.  He seems to be typecast even in his sitcom roles, George Cooper is tge 1st time he has really done anything diffrent.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Carpoolers was terrible

His latest show, Carter, is not bad

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Ireaction psychoanalyzing aside, I really enjoyed that podcast/interview very insightful on both Jerry and Macaulay I can understand a lot more of their life choices. It is kinda odd that no one has ever bought Jerry a slider until that interview.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

JWSlider3 wrote:

Ireaction psychoanalyzing aside, I really enjoyed that podcast/interview very insightful on both Jerry and Macaulay I can understand a lot more of their life choices. It is kinda odd that no one has ever bought Jerry a slider until that interview.

Specifically, that's armchair psychoanalysis, a term which specifically emphasizes how the analyst is amateur, untrained, unaccredited and has no professional grounds on which to offer any genuine assessment whatsoever.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

ireactions wrote:

Anyway. I'm going to offer a vision of a SLIDERS reboot done to Slider_Quinn21's specifications, built on ideas offered in this community, and I'll hope Slide Override won't be mean to me about it. This is a reboot, not a rebootquel, not a revival and it is an effort to do it in Transmodiar's style and play it completely straight.

No monsters! No crossovers! No superhero elements! No multiversal crises! No psychodrama! No Kromaggs! No continuity with the original show! Transmodiar won't have anything to complain about with this vision (aside from its existence). In fact, he will love it. The goal here is to make something Transmodiar would love.

Writing to Transmodiar's tastes has been a really fulfilling exercise. Maybe... maybe I'm now equipped to write original fiction.

Too bad I can't read any of this for reasons that are obvious to you! smile

Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

I watched one episode of CARTER, Jerry O'Connell's TV show and it's... not terrible. I'd actually been avoiding watching Jerry in anything for years because I was writing a lot of dialogue for Quinn in my scripts and I didn't want Jerry's persona interfering with his character, preferring to instead use Tom Welling's body language and Tom Cruise's voice (from the fifth MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movie). I knew he'd gotten better because he was terrific in the MUNSTERS reboot and in his guest-appearance on SAMANTHA WHO, but yes.

Anyway, CARTER's gimmick is that Carter (O'Connell) is an actor who plays a detective on TV and now he thinks he can be a detective in real life. It's at this point that I fail to grasp or explain what CARTER's joke is -- CARTER is a TV cop show where the lead cop character is... regularly informed that he is not actually a police officer at which point he... performs the role of a leading man in a cop show... and is reminded periodically that he is not really a police officer and... and... what?

I don't get it. CARTER seems to draw a lot of humour (?) from having characters comment on how Carter isn't the character he plays, but given that this is the only time we've ever seen Carter onscreen and have no scenes of him in his TV show, there is no comparison to be made. There's a lot of noise from this cop show about how life is not a cop show and it's blatantly hypocritical.

Certainly, not all roads of comedy lead to COMMUNITY, but when COMMUNITY did an homage to LAW AND ORDER, COMMUNITY had all the lead characters behaving with deadly serious demeanors as they systematically and analytically sought the truth in investigating the murder of... a smashed yam. At one point, Abed and Troy discuss a suspect behind plate glass and the suspect yells that the wall isn't actually soundproof and the glass isn't one-way. At another, Shirley admonishes Troy and Abed for overstepping, regarding them like a police chief character in a procedural as she intones, "You're not really cops." COMMUNITY took a very silly crime very, very seriously. With CARTER... it's really clueless as to what the joke is unless this is some sort of extended pisstake of Jerry's CROSSING JORDAN role (which I've never seen).

That said, Jerry O'Connell's performance is engaged and sober and he has tremendous charisma as a leading man. On one level, the joke (if there even is one) could be that despite having regularly been criticized for only playing himself, Jerry is mocking his own career trajectory as he plays Harley Carter, a Hollywood TV actor who is slightly less successful than Jerry O'Connell himself, somewhat past his prime and grudgingly accepting that he has to settle for less in his career.

However, the ending of the first episode suggests that Harley Carter became a fake detective because he couldn't be a real one in order to solve the disappearance of his mother when he was a child, a crazily exaggerated, irony-free revelation that Jerry plays with oddly stirring sincerity and... yeah, I'd agree that CARTER is not bad but surely humanity should aspire to heights beyond not bad.

Surely Jerry's talents would be put to better use playing Quinn Mallory in a SLIDERS revival.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Carter, got a year 2 on WGN
www.deadline.com/2019/01/carter-renewed-season-two-jerry-oconnell-wgn-1202539843/amp/

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

I've watched a few more episodes of CARTER and it continues to be not horrible at all, but one longs for more. It is a cop show where the supporting cast tell the lead that he's not a cop and life isn't like cop shows, followed by standard cop show fare in which our Jerry O'Connell does everything expected of a cop.

CARTER calls out procedural tropes like detectives using guesswork and crime scene technicians performing days of analysis in minutes -- but then has them work as they would in any procedural.

One wishes for Danny Pudi's detailed acting and Abed spouting the procedural tropes he wants to re-enact as scripted by Dan Harmon -- except Jerry O'Connell is perfectly capable of all of that. Jerry could have played Abed. Jerry's hypermaniacal, goofball enthusiasm would be perfect to play a leading man obsessed with living the conventions of a detective show. But the scripting never sets up situations to show Carter trying to re-enact a scene only for reality to conflict.

Jerry is, I assume, completely familiar with the structure of police dramas after an astonishing NINETY-THREE appearances as Detective Woody Hoyt on CROSSING JORDAN and LAS VEGAS. Jerry's played a police officer more than he ever played Quinn Mallory and he is a very fine writer ("Narcotica" is a great comic). Jerry's fought more TV crime than you've fought colds.

Jerry should be completely capable of remoulding CARTER from the generic cop show that it groundlessly claims it isn't. He should offer a focused product where Carter is more interested in roleplaying as a detective with zingers, chase scenes, posing, costumes, slang and such than he is with solving crimes.

Why isn't CARTER better? Why isn't Jerry making CARTER better? My theory is that CARTER is an extremely low-budgeted show with showrunner Garry Campbell churning out scripts but distant from the set, meaning the writing isn't being tailored to capitalize on the actors' performances and hasn't been given the be refined and developed. It's made on a tight timeframe and budget with 10 episode seasons and not many calendar days to write and film it. The emphasis is on being functional and airable.

I don't think CARTER's a Season 5 of SLIDERS situation of witless half-assery; it's more like the end of Season 2 of SLIDERS' production where the cast and crew were extremely tired. "The Young and the Relentless" staggered into production with a decent standard of professionalism but limited energy. Jerry is likely filming 10 episodes of Carter a year between other commitments and doesn't have time to revise the writing. He's there to be on set, perform the scripts to the best of his ability and high-tail it back to LA to play Sheldon Cooper's brother, do voice acting as Superman and pester Torme and NBC about SLIDERS.

CARTER strikes me as a faded photocopy of another mediocre cop show, PACIFIC HEAT. PACIFIC HEAT is animated, but it has the ARCHER-esque comedy towards cop shows that CARTER seems to want: PACIFIC HEAT opens with a team of police officers about to storm a building of criminals, but leading man Todd grumbles about who gets to say "lock and load" and protests wearing a helmet because he likes how his hair looks. After bursting into the building, Todd's partner Zac hesitates before a firefight to get a soda out of a vending machine. Todd barks out questions when interrogating people of interest, and when they answer, he has to ask them for a pen because he can't remember the addresses they've given him. En route to pursue a suspect, Todd gets distracted by a pretty girl, drives around in circles and gets lost.

PACIFIC HEAT shows its cop characters as frivolous and incompetent for comedy purposes; CARTER would have a reason for Jerry O'Connell's character to be so unprofessional.

It's funny. Jerry O'Connell once thought he'd be playing Spider-Man in globally released superhero blockbusters. Now he's proudly headlining an affable cable show that produces 10 episodes a year. It says something. It says that he has advanced to the John Rhys-Davies stage where, like John, he's never too proud to turn down smaller projects with good work (not great work, but good), not seeing TV and indie film as being beneath him, and never giving any script less than his all because for all of CARTER's many mediocrities, Jerry's performance is thoughtful and hyperenthused..

I was worried about watching Jerry in anything because I have such fondness for Quinn, but Jerry's performance as Carter is nothing like Quinn. Carter is a childish man of impulses who talks before he thinks and everything he says is regurgitated from a script for a generic cop show than the character presumably performed once as an actor. Jerry plays Carter as a manic innocent who doesn't entirely understand that reality has consequences because he has grown accustomed to living life on TV sets. Carter has nothing of Quinn's calculating intelligence or cunning; Jerry is careful to make Carter guileness without being foolish.

It's a performance from an actor who has thought through the material and done his best to put himself in it. This is a actor who is happy to be working. This is an actor who hopes for more but will settle for less and has made his wife and children his joy rather than any rewards from his career. This is a man who could lead a SLIDERS revival.

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Good news for Jerry.  I  have no clue if I even get WGN!

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

Somewhat related, but Ms. Lloyd is not only more active online (https://www.instagram.com/sabrina.lloyd_/) but she's moved back to British Columbia, Canada!

https://scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/f0194edbf031e3640ae45d47ea34cdc1/5D86C560/t51.2885-15/sh0.08/e35/c0.135.1080.1080a/s640x640/61693031_141315856933490_8618665294915044106_n.jpg?_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.cdninstagram.com

For reference, here's Jerry's IG (https://www.instagram.com/mrjerryoc/)

Re: JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

This feels like season 2 of Firefly.  Or Half Life 3.  Or the “A Confederacy of Dunces” movie starring John Belushi... I mean John Candy... I mean Chris Farley...