Topic: Kliss: I'm Half-Obsessed with Sliders

Hi everyone, new here so I thought I'd drop a quick word of introduction.

I'm half-obsessed with Sliders. Discovered it when it was first aired on French TV and became an instant fan--as in "making cardboard timers and sliding with my friends after school" fan. I was obsessed with it for years, and the endless reruns were(n't) helping with that. But then no more reruns, and while Sliders was still very dear to my heart, it was beginning to be only memories.

A few years ago I started rewatching it, and man did it rekindle the fire! ... but I had to stop halfway through the 4th season, cringing and being bored does that to a man. I'm currently rewatching it from scratch, and I'm a few episodes into the 5th season (which I never watched since it was only aired on cable TV here).

The temptation to skip some episodes is very strong. But I'm fighting the urge: I have to see what the beast called "Sliders" really is, the whole of it. And actually, once you accept what it has become in the later seasons, I've found that I was able to extract great fun from it-- mostly of the involuntary kind, granted, but also some of the genuine kind.

I couldn't help but notice this forum isn't exactly overcrowded haha, but I might have some thoughts to share about the series (and... about the reboot?) and other stuff as well, so here I am. smile

Re: Kliss: I'm Half-Obsessed with Sliders

Welcome aboard!

Re: Kliss: I'm Half-Obsessed with Sliders

Thanks!

Re: Kliss: I'm Half-Obsessed with Sliders

We don't know if there's going to be a reboot. There has been an icy silence on the subject. Jerry O'Connell and John Rhys-Davies were investigating it. So far, the problem seems to be ownership: NBCUniversal should, in theory, own the rights to SLIDERS.

But SLIDERS expert Temporal Flux, the de facto authority on the show, has observed: SLIDERS was also produced by St. Clare Entertainment. St. Clare Entertainment is now defunct, but it would have owned 33 per cent of SLIDERS which is now split across Robert K. Weiss (the co-creator), John Landis and Leslie Belzberg. NBCUniversal may need to come to an agreement with all three parties separately, a series of legal challenges that may be too troublesome to explore.

The other issue I would take with a reboot on a strictly personal level that is in no way representative of SLIDERS fans: after 19 years of fully obsessing over SLIDERS (as opposed to half-obsessing) -- I have come to the conclusion that SLIDERS is about THE sliders -- Quinn Mallory, Wade Welles, Rembrandt Brown and Professor Arturo as portrayed by Jerry O'Connell, Sabrina Lloyd, Cleavant Derricks and John Rhys-Davies.

If you read the scripts, the characters are defined in very general terms and it's the synthesis of scripted dialogue and actors' interpretations that make them whole. Quinn, on paper, was a socially awkward nerd who lived in his head; Jerry O'Connell transformed him into a traumatized, self-isolating athlete. Wade was a girl with a crush; Lloyd made her a social crusader. Rembrandt was an inept coward; Cleavant built Rembrandt into comedic picture of trauma that made Remmy's torment funny instead of cruel. Arturo was an insecure wreck; Rhys-Davies played Arturo as the father figure of the group. Certainly, the writers eventually capitalized on what the actors brought in.

But if your reboot has other actors as Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo, you're creating new characters at which point, a studio is likely to wonder -- why reboot SLIDERS at all?

Why not come up with a new title and a new set of characters exploring parallel universes? Why not create an original work about alternate histories that doesn't rely on paying royalties to the original creators and including them in the creative process? Why not produce a new series that doesn't require facing all these legal challenges? Especially when a reboot, even if it uses the old titles and names, is effectively a new series with new characters?

And yet -- the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA reboot might as well have had different character names and a different title. MACGYVER was rebooted with Lucas Till and MACGYVER's original show is very much like SLIDERS: the original intent for the character is very distant from the onscreen results. Originally, MACGYVER was supposed to be a Richard Dean Anderson adventure show featuring a cocky hotshot named MacGyver in action stories depicted in real-time.

The pilot episode was set in a single location to facilitate that, necessitating MacGyver using whatever objects were available to fashion solutions to his problems for this opening story as a plotting necessity. The real-time element was dropped from the series; the use of everyday objects remained in the pilot and was then heightened as the defining aspect of the show while Anderson changed the characterization in his performance from arrogant to humble. All that was an accident -- and the reboot has sought to deliberately and precisely recreate what the actor and writers stumbled into unwittingly.

However, MACGYVER was a cultural force to be reckoned with. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA had a certain brand value that I'm not sure SLIDERS does for the general audience. And yet -- these things can be built and rebuilt.

THE X-FILES is synonymous with paranormal investigations. MACGYVER is a brand for do-it-yourself cleverness and espionage. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is a brand for space opera. THE MATRIX is a brand for virtual reality. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE is a brand for crazy espionage stunts. BOND is a brand for men's fashion and lifestyle.

Could NBCUniversal and whatever wreckage of St. Clare Entertainment exists make SLIDERS a brand name for parallel worlds?

It's not impossible, but it currently looks difficult to the point where studios and networks might decline to bother.

Selfishly, I would like SLIDERS to be left alone as it is now. But I must not be selfish and instead hope that SLIDERS will somehow return and delight and inspire a new generation of fans and preferably make it through five seasons without losing three-quarters of its cast and being disavowed by its creators.

5 (edited by Kliss 2019-09-18 13:35:09)

Re: Kliss: I'm Half-Obsessed with Sliders

ireactions wrote:

St. Clare Entertainment is now defunct, but it would have owned 33 per cent of SLIDERS which is now split across Robert K. Weiss (the co-creator), John Landis and Leslie Belzberg.

So Tormé doesn't have any rights on it? (I know next to nothing about how this kind of things work.)  Any idea as to what his involvement might be if there was a reboot?

ireactions wrote:

I have come to the conclusion that SLIDERS is about THE sliders

You seem to exclude the possibility that the original cast would return, is there a reason for that (other than the fact that most of the characters are essentially dead) or am I misinterpreting you?

That said, I agree. All things being equal, an episode like Dinoslide would've been way more unbearable if it didn't have the original cast+characters in it, and its only redeeming feature (the scenes between Wade and Rembrandt, which I actually loved) would probably have been lost as well. And in the case of episodes that were very solid on paper already e.g. Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome, I'm not sure I would've loved them as much if they had had different sliders.

Generally speaking, I'm more of a plot guy, with the character-actor items being almost secondary. But as I was rewatching Sliders and the cast kept changing, I realized how much the original cast made a difference, to the point where I genuinely can't tell whether I was more attached to the concept/plots or to the characters. Usually it's not really a meaningful question, especially when both the scripts and the characters are compelling, but Sliders poses it in a serious way due to its peculiar history.

ireactions wrote:

Certainly, the writers eventually capitalized on what the actors brought in.

I think that's one of the things that make season 5 generally bad. The cast is not really factored in the writing. Other people could have played those characters without having much of an impact on the overall work, and the characters weren't very well fleshed out to begin with. I mean for instance, what would it mean for Mallory to act out-of-character? What/who IS his character? I've definitely had moments where I went "oh, I didn't know he could do or say that!", but at some point I stopped noticing those things. I've accepted the fact that Sliders became a "generic character A does x, generic character B does y" type of show. (Though on a side note, I think in this particular case it also has to do with the fact that Robert Floyd was a big casting mistake IMO, and it's frustrating because I'm convinced he could be very interesting in a role that suits him.)

ireactions wrote:

Why not come up with a new title and a new set of characters exploring parallel universes?

To be honest that's pretty much how I envision a Sliders reboot, as a new show. That's not what I would LIKE, but I'd be prepared for it. I don't think it could get much worse than the later seasons anyway. But there's also the slight possibility that magic happens.

Re: Kliss: I'm Half-Obsessed with Sliders

Kliss wrote:

So Tormé doesn't have any rights on it? (I know next to nothing about how this kind of things work.)  Any idea as to what his involvement might be if there was a reboot?

The traditional (but not universal) arrangement: show creators own 10 per cent of the franchise. It's not a controlling stake; it entitles them to consultancy (the way Torme had an Executive Consultant credit on Seasons 4 - 5 but no control over the show) and a cut of the profits. Torme, as far as I can tell, was not a co-owner in St. Clare Entertainment; that was Robert K. Weiss, John Landis and Leslie Belzberg.

All three members of St. Clare Entertainment ceased to have an active creative role in SLIDERS after the first season due to other commitments. I would speculate that Weiss, in addition to owning 11.1 per cent of SLIDERS via St. Clare Entertainment, also owns 5 per cent via the 10 per cent he'd (presumably) share with Torme or that creator's 10 per cent is folded into St. Clare Entertainment.

Please note that this is entirely speculative on my part.

Kliss wrote:

You seem to exclude the possibility that the original cast would return, is there a reason for that (other than the fact that most of the characters are essentially dead) or am I misinterpreting you?

I don't think there is any story reason to prevent the original cast from returning to SLIDERS, but there could be marketing and situational reasons to impede it. Sabrina Lloyd seems to have stepped back from acting to travel and focus on family. Jerry O'Connell thinks SLIDERS would be best with a young, new cast rather than having him headline the show. A studio and network, if they wanted to reboot SLIDERS, would likely want to start over with Quinn and Wade played by actors from ages 21 - 25 and Rembrandt and Arturo played by actors between the ages of 40 - 50 -- just to get a good, long run out of them should the opportunity present itself.

That said, in 2000, Temporal Flux came up with a very clever way to both reboot SLIDERS and feature the original actors playing their original roles while discovering sliding for the first time. The EarthPrime.com webmaster, Transmodiar, subsequently came up with a very clever way to retrofit this story idea so that the characters wouldn't be doubles but instead the original characters we met in the Pilot -- and yet, still stepping into the vortex for the first time. You can read it here. http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=8527#p8527

Kliss wrote:

I've accepted the fact that Sliders became a "generic character A does x, generic character B does y" type of show.

As for the original cast and how the changes affected the show -- I've said all this before, but for awhile, Transmodiar and I had a debate between us. I took the view that SLIDERS losing the chemistry of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo rendered SLIDERS pointless because I watched the show to hang out with my four friends.

Transmodiar pointed out that the original cast is hardly a marker of quality given episodes like the incomprehensible "Time and Again World," the energy-sapped "The Good, the Bad and the Wealthy," the noticeably underwritten "El Sid" which seems to be short by about 15 - 20 pages of script. Most alarmingly, there's the escape-capture repetition of "Love Gods" which seems like it was written by a computer program producing script pages through an algorithm.

Transmodiar insists that he's had lunch with Paul Jackson and that these are real people. I remain suspicious and have graduated to suspecting that Transmodiar may in fact be a 90s-era artificial intelligence. He also felt that Seasons 4 - 5 had many gems and that Charlie O'Connell found his feet while getting less and less to do, that Kari Wuhrer had a lot of charm and passion for Maggie and that episodes like "World Killer" and "The Return of Maggie Beckett" and other strong entries show SLIDERS doesn't depend on Jerry, Cleavant, Sabrina and John to function properly.

Another fan, Slider_Quinn21 has gone so far as to say that while he's fond enough of the original cast, it's really the concept of exploring an new alternate history every week that carries the show, not any particular set of actors.

And this debate continued for years until Informant, a former member of this community, pointed out that SLIDERS is fundamentally about its concept but that its concept is intrinsically connected to the original cast.

While Earth Prime is subtly not our Earth (unless Berkeley's campus is now next to Golden Gate Park), it was sufficiently similar that Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo shared a common frame of reference with the audience. They could react to parallel worlds the way the audience would react. Informant observed that with each character being removed from the cast, a central point of connection was lost. The Professor came from our world; his outraged frustration and confusion with parallel Earths spoke to and for the audience.

Maggie does not come from our world or anything like our world; we have no sense of what Maggie's perception of normalcy even is, so we can't react with her and feel like we're on a journey with her. This problem reached another low point in Season 4, Informant said, when Earth Prime was invaded by Kromaggs. There was no Kromagg invasion in our world, so now Quinn and Rembrandt were no longer characters the audience could connect to with a common frame of reference.

However, none of this in any way prevents a MACGYVER style reboot with new actors playing the sliders who would, ideally, come from 'our' world and never find their home Earth invaded by Kromaggs or have their backstories retcon them into Kal-El of ****ing Kromagg Prime.

I'm not sure what's worse, making Quinn a mythic chosen one in an interdimensional war or HIGHLANDER II revealing that immortals are aliens from the planet Zeist. I guess they're all trumped by the NINJA TURTLES comics revealing April O'Neil as a being of pure imagination created by a magic pen.

Kliss wrote:

Robert Floyd was a big casting mistake

How do you mean?

They wanted to hire a Jerry O'Connell lookalike. They found one (although they sheared Floyd's hair so short that all of his facial similarities to Jerry were obliterated). Floyd was also a gifted mimic with an unnatural ability to recreate Jerry O'Connell's voice, body language, line deliveries, facial expressions and screen presence -- although production seemed unaware of this since they didn't have him record the dialogue for Quinn's, "Go! Go!" If you wanted to hire a talented actor who looked like Jerry and could sound like Jerry, Robert Floyd was the absolute best choice.

The mistake was allowing Jerry to leave. In American TV, all regular cast members sign multi-year contracts. David Duchovny was tired of THE X-FILES by Season 2; he was obligated to complete his seven season contract. If an actor leaves, it's either because they are no longer capable of performing their role (like WITCHBLADE where the lead actress going into rehab ended the show) or because, as was the case with SLIDERS, the network and studio were grossly incompetent.

The Sci-Fi Channel foolishly failed to budget for a fifth season of SLIDERS and their contract with Jerry expired before they found the money to renew the show. As a result, SLIDERS found itself needing to replace Jerry and they did so with great casting but an inept story editor who tied himself into knots to explain how Quinn's memories could be present in Robert Floyd's character but then jettisoned the Quinn character before the writers (and the actor) could capitalize further on the dramatic potential. That's writing and production, not casting.

Re: Kliss: I'm Half-Obsessed with Sliders

The biggest problem with getting the original cast back to do a series is age.  John Rhys-Davies is 75 years old.  Will he be willing or able to fall out of the wormhole every week?  If they use a body double, would it be believable?  Cleavant Derricks is 66.  He's a little more likely to be able, but for how long?

I think a reboot is best.  All new characters, or younger doubles of the originals (The Guardian establishes this possibility), or some of both.  If they really want to throw a bone to viewers of the original show, have the New!Sliders encounter one or more of the originals during a slide.  Ireactions liked this idea when I first proposed it, and he doesn't like many of other people's ideas.

8 (edited by Transmodiar 2019-09-18 15:37:27)

Re: Kliss: I'm Half-Obsessed with Sliders

Kliss wrote:

To be honest that's pretty much how I envision a Sliders reboot, as a new show. That's not what I would LIKE, but I'd be prepared for it. I don't think it could get much worse than the later seasons anyway. But there's also the slight possibility that magic happens.

Excellent. EXCELLENT. wink

ireactions wrote:

Transmodiar insists that he's had lunch with Paul Jackson and that these are real people.

For better or worse. And, by the way, I'm not some special snowflake for having a Rolodex of Sliders writers at my fingertips. All I did was write them through the WGA 15 (!) years ago and they wrote back. Believe it or not, television writers are usually not mega-celebs and will respond to fans. Even Tony Blake, who is a notorious sourpuss, wrote me back and talked a little about how much he hated the goddamn cave set.

ireactions wrote:

I remain suspicious and have graduated to suspecting that Transmodiar may in fact be a 90s-era artificial intelligence.

Your suspicions... have merit.

Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™

Re: Kliss: I'm Half-Obsessed with Sliders

Welcome Kliss.  It is awesome to have you.

An underappreciated reason why SLIDERS hasn't made it's way back is at a fundamental level, it is an expensive show to do well.  Even with today's CGI.  It narrows it's opportunities.  You need a lot of locations, and most of these shows are kept at a reasonable budget by not having a lot of locations and having a lot of fixed costs for the "world" they operate in.

If Sam Esmail had wanted to do Sliders instead of Battlestar Gallactica, I am sure we could have had it back.  A proven tv guy who carries a lot of weight.  But for most, if not all, the cheesiness of the last couple of seasons lowered the brand to the point where the current talented folks in Hollywood are less likely to want to be associated with it.  It's obviously not seen as "cool."

And it doesn't really fit as a broadcast net show - it just isn't broad enough.  SyFy is a natural home for it, but you have to overcome the expense issues, and you need a very credible tv person behind it with a vision that will help it overcome all of the other projects in that vein coming to SyFy (who has limited resources -- just look at how they had to walk away from going to series with the Tremors/Kevin Bacon project).

So much of the tv business has changed over the last five years... it's certainly made it more complex. Yea, streaming would be a possibiity for it because they can do some larger budget shows but then you'd need the creators/showrunners who are seen as credible in Hollywood to want to do "SLIDERS" rather than "TRAVELERS" or "TIMELESS"  or "COUNTERPART" etc etc.

With something like the Peacock network the challenge is, would the amount of viewers SLIDERS bring to it justify the cost?  A reunion movie would be $2-3m  A series would be $15-$25m (or more) in production costs.  There's still somewhat good brand awareness of what sliders is for folks 35+ to say 55 who might care but it's just not big enough to really support those costs on name alone.  So you'd need to start fresh (story wise), with an incredible vision, and a respected tv showrunner to believe, yes, this could earn it's money back.  And then that goes back to the brand issues again, where the people who could produce that would rather do their own thing.  Not to mention, if you aren't just using the original story premise/format/characters, it really becomes it's own thing, different enough from SLIDERS where even with the awareness of that brand, it's not necessarily worth it  to put a story in that "package" and box it in like that.

Re: Kliss: I'm Half-Obsessed with Sliders

pilight wrote:

The biggest problem with getting the original cast back to do a series is age.  John Rhys-Davies is 75 years old.  Will he be willing or able to fall out of the wormhole every week?  If they use a body double, would it be believable?  Cleavant Derricks is 66.  He's a little more likely to be able, but for how long?

I think a reboot is best.  All new characters, or younger doubles of the originals (The Guardian establishes this possibility), or some of both.  If they really want to throw a bone to viewers of the original show, have the New!Sliders encounter one or more of the originals during a slide.  Ireactions liked this idea when I first proposed it, and he doesn't like many of other people's ideas.

I was highly inappropriate in the Reviving SLIDERS thread. The only things I should have said:

A revival of SLIDERS needs to make sense to a general audience who has never seen or heard of the show. It's called BROADcasting for a reason. These story ideas would be better suited to SLIDERS novels, comic books and audioplays than they would to general audience television. I'm going to start a new thread, Rebooting SLIDERS. Thank you.

I like pilight's idea of gender-swapping all the sliders, however. As with Starbuck on BATTLESTAR, it immediately makes it clear that Quinn Mallory, Wade Welles, Remi Brown and Maxine Arturo are reinterpretations rather than trying to pastiche previous performers.

It allows a rebooted, gender-flipped SLIDERS to have some continuity with the old show as the variation here is, as the Professor would put it, "the difference of an X chromosome and a Y chromosome." It allows for a neat reversal of the male-dominant original cast by altering it to three women and one man.

Just speaking on the subject of my view on the Revival thread ideas -- it's interesting to look at THE X-FILES which had two revivals. There was the Season 10 - 11 revival of 17 episodes. And there were the IDW comic books: THE X-FILES: SEASON 10 (25 issues), THE X-FILES: SEASON 11 (eight issues), THE X-FILES: CONSPIRACY (a Lone Gunmen series that ran six issues), THE X-FILES: YEAR ZERO (a five issue miniseries featuring the first X-Files investigation in 1946), and also MILLENNIUM (a five issue conclusion to the TV show with a guest-appearance from Fox Mulder).

The IDW comic books were, to be blunt, geeky stuff. They were professional fan fiction, very much like the ideas in the Reviving SLIDERS thread. I loved it all, loved how writer Joe Harris was stitching the mythology into something coherent and whole, resurrecting the deceased villains and restoring the paranoia and sense of forward motion that THE X-FILES once possessed. He revealed that the Lone Gunmen had faked their deaths, showed that the 2012 invasion had been stalled by a new faction, brought modern political forces into the old conspiracy -- but he also told stories that could not be understood by the average viewer. They were for fans.

In contrast, the TV revival of THE X-FILES was for a general audience. The mythology of Seasons 1 - 9 was summarized in a very vague, undetailed form that didn't require remembering it. Viewers who had never seen an episode of THE X-FILES could watch the Revival. That said, the Revival became convoluted and confusing due to poor script editing: Mulder and Scully were depicted as separated/living together, out of touch with FBI work/carrying out their duties like no time had passed, searching for William/never discussing him, facing a global contagion/never thinking about it.

However, the goal of the TV revival -- whether it was achieved or not -- was to create television that could be enjoyed whether you were watching your 201st episode or your first one -- which was not the goal of the comic books.

Any TV revival of SLIDERS will have to aim for the same goal as THE X-FILES revival. Comic books, novels and audioplays can aim for a more specific audience of 50,000; a TV show with such a scant audience won't survive.

Re: Kliss: I'm Half-Obsessed with Sliders

@ireactions: thanks for all the info (including the speculative part)!

I like the Sliders Redux thing, particularly 1) the fact that we would see them slide for the first time, and 2) it does away with the need to explain what happened in the last 20 years, since basically nothing happened. But I think, leaving age issues aside, a true continuation with the original cast and characters would be possible. The real Arturo is presumably still alive; he's a genius, has fixed the timer at least on one occasion, and he certainly learned a lot from Quinn about sliding, so he rebuilds a timer; finds his way back to earth prime, and reunites with Rembrandt; they go back to seer world and reunite with the others, and with their combined knowledge and maybe some outside help (another surviving Geiger or a Quinn double?), manage to untangle Quinn from Mallory; it seems the writers couldn't decide whether Wade was still alive or dead so I guess we could go with the former, and so stuff, more stuff, Wade is back!

Contrived, not to mention I left out the part where earth prime is overrun with Kromaggs, but in-world it wouldn't be that far-fetched, except maybe in the case of Wade.

ireactions wrote:

He also felt that Seasons 4 - 5 had many gems and that Charlie O'Connell found his feet while getting less and less to do, that Kari Wuhrer had a lot of charm and passion for Maggie and that episodes like "World Killer" and "The Return of Maggie Beckett" and other strong entries show SLIDERS doesn't depend on Jerry, Cleavant, Sabrina and John to function properly.

A big YES, a small no, and a big YES. The adorably naive and clueless Colin of the first couple episodes he was in was a better match to Charlie's acting abilities IMO. Also, damn I've grown to like a Maggie quite a bit in seasons 4 and 5. To the point that at the end of season 5 (I've finished watching it by the way!), she actually felt like a legit slider to me. Also, that scene in To Catch a Slider where Rembrandt and her are on the phone with Mallory? Pure gold.

But I agree, some of the episodes I disliked the most had the original cast in it. Dragonslide--and not Dinoslide as I mistakenly said in my previous post--, The Fire Within and Dream Masters come to mind.

There was no Kromagg invasion in our world, so now Quinn and Rembrandt were no longer characters the audience could connect to with a common frame of reference.

Good point, though I guess I could buy the whole thing as taking place in a near future without it breaking my connection with the characters too much. If you allow relativistic time dilation to happen (e.g. when they're inside of the vortex), it would be pretty neat: we're due for a Kromagg invasion, but we don't know when!

Kliss wrote:

Robert Floyd was a big casting mistake

How do you mean?

They wanted to hire a Jerry O'Connell lookalike.

By that metric, I agree it was a rather good decision, but personally I've only felt the O'Connell vibes in The Unstuck Man and to a lesser extent in Applied Physics, after that it was either too subtle for me or completely absent. So, short-sighted decision to say the least.

But I guess the bigger problem for me is that Robert Floyd as the hot-blooded/daredevil/womanizer/former thug Mallory's supposed to be, doesn't cut it from me at a very fundamental level: I just don't get Mallory vibes from Robert Floyd.

Also, while I do think he had potential as an actor, and for some reason I find the Robert-Mallory item to be remarkably likeable, I don't think he's a great actor. I'm sure you guys have discussed/heard discussed his performance a lot over the years, and some fans may have been too harsh on him, but at the end of the day I think he lacked experience, and wasn't as skilled as the other members of the main cast (except Charlie O'Connell, and Tembi Locke maybe). He kept making odd acting decisions, very unique but not often in a good way. That said, he does have his moments.

pilight wrote:

John Rhys-Davies is 75 years old.  Will he be willing or able to fall out of the wormhole every week?  If they use a body double, would it be believable?

I've determined JRD's strongest point when it comes to physicality, to be rolling sideways on the ground. He just loved rolling. I started noticing that when I was well into the show, but a couple days ago I rewatched the pilot, and would you look at that, he was already rolling under that truck like a pro! Maybe he still got his rolling chops.

If they really want to throw a bone to viewers of the original show, have the New!Sliders encounter one or more of the originals during a slide.

Well, from the studio's perspective, I can definitely see how that would be the way to go. They could even have some passing-the-torch moment between Rembrandt and a younger, new slider (his son/daughter?)

RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

If Sam Esmail had wanted to do Sliders instead of Battlestar Gallactica, I am sure we could have had it back.  A proven tv guy who carries a lot of weight.


Yup, or a proven cinema guy for that matter. Being a David Lynch has been shown to work when you want to revive a 20+ years old series. Now of course Twin Peaks and Sliders don't have much in common, but I think it's interesting to note that both shows weren't huge when they were being aired, and TP returned with (mostly) the original cast even though there aren't big names (even less so than Sliders, Gimli has got to count for something), and both were/are kind of niche things. But the revival happened in TP's case, and it was a pretty good one at that.

Anyway you made a lot of good points. IDK what will happen, and it won't be easy anyway. I'll just keep an open mind.

Re: Kliss: I'm Half-Obsessed with Sliders

Kliss wrote:

I like the Sliders Redux thing, particularly 1) the fact that we would see them slide for the first time, and 2) it does away with the need to explain what happened in the last 20 years, since basically nothing happened.

I really like it too. TF transplanted the essence of who these characters were in the Pilot into older alternates. He has a beautiful vision for SLIDERS because he has both the sci-fi skills and a love and understanding of the characters. And Transmodiar was clever to find a way to change them from doubles to the originals.

Every 2 - 3 years, I update the outline. I think next year, Wade will have gone from a tech reviewer to a climate change activist and Rembrandt will be running an AI cafe where all the food and drink are made by robots that play jazz. Meanwhile, Quinn will be a tech support manager at Doppler Computers and the Professor teaches all his classes online via video link as he is banned from the Berkeley campus after an unfortunate incident involving a mayoral campaign, Pavarotti, bungee jumping, a barfight, and a woman named Ambrosia.

Kliss wrote:

But I think, leaving age issues aside, a true continuation with the original cast and characters would be possible. The real Arturo is presumably still alive; he's a genius, has fixed the timer at least on one occasion, and he certainly learned a lot from Quinn about sliding, so he rebuilds a timer; finds his way back to earth prime, and reunites with Rembrandt; they go back to seer world and reunite with the others, and with their combined knowledge and maybe some outside help (another surviving Geiger or a Quinn double?), manage to untangle Quinn from Mallory; it seems the writers couldn't decide whether Wade was still alive or dead so I guess we could go with the former, and so stuff, more stuff, Wade is back!

Contrived, not to mention I left out the part where earth prime is overrun with Kromaggs, but in-world it wouldn't be that far-fetched, except maybe in the case of Wade.

I have written exactly this story in a six part series of screenplays called SLIDERS REBORN at www.earthprime.com/reborn

  • "Reprise" (1): Picking up from the end of "The Seer," we follow Rembrandt into the unstable vortex and find out what happened to him on the other side. A 4 page screenplay.

  • "Reunion" (2): Twenty years after the Pilot and 15 years after "The Seer," we find Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo alive and well and home in 2015. The Kromagg invasion seems to have never happened. Quinn Mallory is missing. But when reality starts breaking down around one of Wade's students, Quinn reappears, regroups the original quartet and leads them on another adventure through the interdimension. 95 pages.

  • "Revelation" (3): Across three parallel Earths, the original sliders search for answers as to why reality is beginning to collapse. The clues will lead them to a confrontation with the sliders' oldest enemy. 151 pages.

  • "Reminiscence" (4): Set in 2001, this short novella is a transcript of Quinn in a mental institution being questioned by a psychiatrist. As Quinn explains his situation and tells the story of sliding, he explains how he, Wade and Arturo are alive, how the Kromagg invasion has been reversed, why the new sliders of Seasons 1 - 2 vanished, why Season 1 episodes aired in the wrong order, why monsters and magic appeared in Season 3, why Seasons 4 - 5 seemed stuck in the same sets, and why it was 1994 in the Pilot but suddenly 1995 in "Summer of Love."

  • "Revolution" (5): Trapped in a burning building, Quinn Mallory finds that his only chance for survival is to ask for help from Quinn Mallory (as played by Robert Floyd). 46 pages.

  • "Regenesis" (6): It all ends here in this 144 page script featuring Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt, Arturo, Maggie, Diana, Mallory, the breeder parasites, the super-intelligent snakes, the robots, the dinosaur, the animal-human hybrids, the giant scarab, the rock star vampires, the fat craving zombies, the remote controlled cars with laser cannons, the dragon and Hurley.

I had a lot of fun writing this series. I spent two years of my life writing it on evenings and weekends. And I really love it, but it is not a viable route for a general audience revival. SLIDERS REBORN is not a general audience story. When starting out, I really tried to make it entry level: a new audience viewpoint character, indirect resolutions to the Season 3 - 5 plots presented in the form of jokes much like the way FAMILY GUY makes reference to nonsensical, insane events depicted in short cutaways. But it didn't work; the jokes were too obscure and the plot resolutions demanded elaboration, so I embraced that and accepted that SLIDERS REBORN would not be suited to people unfamiliar with SLIDERS.

Even when trying to resolve the old material with humour and distance, the result is like the IDW X-FILES comic books. It's made for a very, very small number of people precisely because it addresses all these plots that only old fans want resolved. A new SLIDERS should be an entry level product like the STAR TREK rebootquel or DOCTOR WHO in 2005.

Re: Kliss: I'm Half-Obsessed with Sliders

Ireactions is right. His vision of what Sliders was/is/should be is clear and specific.  It's beautiful, really.

It is not what any potential revival or reboot will look like.

Re: Kliss: I'm Half-Obsessed with Sliders

Reborn seems glorious smile I've read it mentionned several times here, but didn't know what it was about. I'll give it a go when I have the time but it's looong lol And I'm not the reader I used to be. But: I've just read the first part, and I can tell you know what you're doing which is nice.

Anyway I do agree with both of you. I don't expect it to be that way, and I don't think doing fanservice would be in the best interest of the show, not if interest = lucrativeness anyway.

Re: Kliss: I'm Half-Obsessed with Sliders

Only HALF obsessed???  Welcome!  Would you like an Ice Hat?

Re: Kliss: I'm Half-Obsessed with Sliders

I know I know, but I can still work on the other half. I'll take the hat, thanks big_smile

Re: Kliss: I'm Half-Obsessed with Sliders

pilight wrote:

Ireactions is right. His vision of what Sliders was/is/should be is clear and specific.  It's beautiful, really.

It is not what any potential revival or reboot will look like.

It is very kind of you to say that SLIDERS REBORN is clear, specific and beautiful. I would argue that SLIDERS REBORN is exactly what a revival and reboot of SLIDERS would be -- for the superhero comic book market to be sold in quantities of 25 - 30 thousand copies a month. The 90s were a weird time for comics: I remember Spider-Man being a blonde coffee barista named Ben Reilly, Green Lantern being a coffee shop dwelling hipster named Kyle Rayner, Green Arrow being a twentysomething monk named Connor Hawke drinking coffee with Kyle Rayner, Superman being electric blue and made of energy, Iron Man being an angsty teenager from an alternate timeline, Captain America wearing robot armour -- and in all these comic books, there were ads with Jerry O'Connell's face advertising Season 3 of SLIDERS on FOX. https://transmodiar.com/sliders/wp-cont … ents/5.jpg

Since then, I've often imagined IREACTIONS' SLIDERS to be a comic book with that poster as the cover to the first issue and it'd be written by, well, me, and drawn by Tom Fowler (artist of the comedic superhero series QUANTUM AND WOODY).

Next! A mild defense of Robert Floyd's acting.