1 (edited by Grizzlor 2020-04-27 20:30:38)

Topic: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

We've likely gone through this before, but I've come up with 5 critical points in the history of the series from which you might declare, everything after this is just plain trash and won't count.  The assumption being that a project, such as the one Jerry O'Connell and John Rhys-Davies have spoken about, could not possibly be written as a continuation of The Seer, or can it?  For me at least, the primary pieces of continuity over the years, for fans, deals mainly with the cast changes.  Arturo is killed off, but was it the Wrong one?  Wade is captured by Kromaggs, sent to a breeding camp (disgusting), then put in a jar.  Quinn is merged with "Mallory" and never heard from again.  But even he gets this nonsensical backstory of being an foster child from another dimension.  That story creates Colin Mallory, who eventually gets turned into atoms.  Along the way, we pick up Maggie, Mallory, and Diana Davis, do you wish to keep them around?  Last but not least, there are story lines that either went unresolved, such as Logan St. Clare, or were distorting horribly by later writers, such as "smarter Quinn" giving sliding to Kromaggs or the Kromaggs themselves becoming a race of lame Nazi's from the Planet of the Apes.  So I found the moments in time where you could "return to," in a sense, or maybe you scrap it all and write a new series that reintroduces Quinn, Arturo, Rembrandt, etc.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

Keep nothing. Save everything!

Sliders Redux | Story by Temporal Flux

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.

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 courtesy of Transmodiar:

  • 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. His own Earth. 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.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

I'm on #TeamReboot.  Get a whole new group of sliders.  Take the concept, leave the rest.  Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

Jerry, Sabrina, Cleavant and John could always play the parents of the new Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo.

5 (edited by Slide Override 2020-04-28 12:24:30)

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

A complete Reboot is needed at this point. Fresh actors, keep the core concept of the show, and have a tightly scripted joint into the multiverse.


Edit: Just to clarify, I mean a day one reboot. New actors playing the original characters.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

It depends on what's happening:

Is Jerry instrumental in getting it done?  If so, I think Jerry is going to want to star in it.  He's going to want to be Quinn.  Making him Quinn's dad wouldn't be enough for him.  Maybe you make him Arturo?  I don't know if that works.  I think in that case, you do what Halloween did, what Terminator did, and what Jurassic Park did - the sequels didn't necessarily happen.  You pick up with the four sliders who have been sliding for 20 years or they've settled somewhere.  The Pilot happened but the rest of the adventures aren't important or didn't happen.

If Jerry isn't involved, I think you do a full reboot.  Get the original four to do cameos (like in Ghostbusters 2016) but no other attachment.  But, and it comes down to this, doing a full reboot of Sliders is needlessly expensive.  If you're going to do a story about people going from universe to universe, Sliders as a brand has too much baggage and not enough cultural power.  You don't have to deal with rights or fans.  Make Coasters with Danny, Jake, Annabel, and Dr. Whitman.  Change enough not to get sued and you can do whatever you want.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

I have no interest in a continuation for personal reasons. Ib knows why.

Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

Transmodiar has told me that it's not appropriate for me to discuss his inner thinking in this forum, so I'm going to leave that to him -- but I will confess that for my own personal reasons, I too am okay with SLIDERS not coming back. SLIDERS was an intensely personal trauma for me that I worked through on my own intensely personal terms. When the Professor died, I was 10 and it was like seeing my own father die. Everything in my life since then has been a reaction to the death of Professor Arturo and when I brought him back to life in "Slide Effects" and later again in SLIDERS REBORN, something changed in me -- for the better, I think. If SLIDERS came back, I would be starting that journey again -- albeit on a parallel track.

However. I would like SLIDERS to come back for the fans, for Temporal Flux, for Slider_Quinn21 and for Informant and SLIDERS should come back for the people who miss it rather than stay away for the people who don't, if that makes any sense. And it is for the people who want it back that I would like Quinn to be played by Corey Fogelmanis (geekboy Farkle on GIRL MEETS WORLD), Wade to be played by Isabel May (hyperactive Katie on ALEXA AND KATIE), Rembrandt to be played by Levar Burton (you know who he is) and Arturo to be played by David Warner (look him up).

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

Oddly enough my father did die of a stomach aneurysm between the 3rd and 4th season.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

Seems like a lot of you would be interested in what I'm working on. wink

Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

For each person, the question comes down to why do you love Sliders?  Is it the characters?  The actors?  The overall concept?  The writing?  Is it the brand? (which includes everything - especially the name).

I think the brand is important because it draws in people.  The fond memory is there labeled as Sliders; and millions of people watched Sliders on Fox.  There is pop culture that can keep it alive in people too (as I’ve noted on this board several times, that little blue vortex still occasionally pops up in shows sending people to other dimensions; and I don’t believe that to be a coincidence).

To give an example of why I feel brand is important, I would cite the original Knight Rider vs Viper.  Both shows feature a man and his super car fighting crime.  Both shows can be considered successful - Viper lasted for four seasons on network and in syndication - Viper made people some money.  But how many of you even remembered Viper until I brought it up now?  I bet you’ve remembered Knight Rider more despite its failed reboots that didn’t respect the brand.

I’m really not interested in some other show that evokes a legally distinct echo of what I’ve loved. It would be extremely hard to capture my heart as a fan; that space is already filled.  I would only be left comparing the pretender to what I loved; and it would likely never live up to that memory.  The same can be true of a total brand reboot; but at least the brand is there to draw you in and give it a chance.

I would note an exception in Orville, though; and I was initially repulsed by the idea.  The only reason I tried it was because of the creators involved, and they didn’t disappoint.

So, what would I like to see with Sliders?  A continuation with new characters that play in the same multiverse as the original series.  It could retain the brand; give the new show room to live and breathe; and leave the door open to occasionally visit the memories as more than a subtle wink.  It would be part of the family and not a stranger at the door.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

TemporalFlux wrote:

What would I like to see with Sliders?  A continuation with new characters that play in the same multiverse as the original series.  It could retain the brand; give the new show room to live and breath; and leave the door open to occasionally visit the memories as more than a subtle wink.  It would be part of the family and not a stranger at the door.

The genius of Sliders is that everything is potentially part of their multi-verse.  So, yeah, a reboot could run across any or all of the old Sliders either together or separately.  They could revisit the world with living flames or Caffeine World or Einstein World or whatever.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

I remember VIPER and caught myself thinking about it recently because it was the first time I ever saw Canadian national treasure Keegan Connor Tracy onscreen and she keeps popping up in Vancouver-filmed TV shows although she's been directing more lately.

But this really just deepens TF's point: VIPER is obscure whereas KNIGHT RIDER is *the* brand for artificial intelligence in cars and SLIDERS could be *the* brand for parallel universes. I mean, it's not going to be PARALLELS or THE BUILDING. I enjoyed FRINGE a lot, but that was a paranormal procedural in the vein of THE X-FILES despite its parallel universe premise.

STAR TREK (2009) did something neat where you weren't asked to accept new actors as William Shatner's Captain Kirk, Leonard Nimoy's Mr. Spock. You were asked to accept Chris Pine as Jim, a reckless cadet who might someday become James T. Kirk. You were introduced to the troubled Spock who might grow into the science officer and cultural icon that is Mr. Spock. So maybe Corey Fogelmanis, Isabel May, Michael B. Jordan and Julian Sands are not replacing Jerry, Sabrina, Cleavant and John in this rebootquel but playing younger versions who were born at a later date and perhaps discover sliding at a younger age -- and in the Season 1 finale, they encounter the older versions of themselves.

14 (edited by Slider_Quinn21 2020-04-29 12:10:06)

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

pilight wrote:

The genius of Sliders is that everything is potentially part of their multi-verse.  So, yeah, a reboot could run across any or all of the old Sliders either together or separately.  They could revisit the world with living flames or Caffeine World or Einstein World or whatever.

Yeah I was going to say the same thing.  They've already established that time moves differently on different worlds and that people can be the same person and look differently.  It can be a complete reboot in every way and still be part of the continuity.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

TemporalFlux wrote:

I think the brand is important because it draws in people.  The fond memory is there labeled as Sliders; and millions of people watched Sliders on Fox.  There is pop culture that can keep it alive in people too (as I’ve noted on this board several times, that little blue vortex still occasionally pops up in shows sending people to other dimensions; and I don’t believe that to be a coincidence).

I’m really not interested in some other show that evokes a legally distinct echo of what I’ve loved. It would be extremely hard to capture my heart as a fan; that space is already filled.  I would only be left comparing the pretender to what I loved; and it would likely never live up to that memory.  The same can be true of a total brand reboot; but at least the brand is there to draw you in and give it a chance.

Despite the fear of the last sentence, everything you mentioned before is exactly why I want a total reboot.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

Continuing with the reboot-recast-continuation mode -- something TF said that really hit home with me is how a legally dissimilar show about parallel universes could never replace SLIDERS. And he's right: the willful differences would remove SLIDERS' strengths (even if this legally dissimilar production would have its own merits).

The appeal of SLIDERS to me is the characters (and yes, the actors) who are perfectly suited to each other in their contrasts. You have youth in Quinn and Wade and age in Rembrandt and Arturo. You have revolution in Quinn and Wade and conservatism in Rembrandt and Arturo. You have science in Quinn and Arturo and art in Rembrandt and Wade. You have academics in Quinn and Arturo and blue collar workers in Wade and Rembrandt. You have mathematical brilliance in Quinn and Arturo and emotional genius in Wade and Rembrandt. And what makes SLIDERS function best is that each episode is set in its own continuity of a separate parallel universe. You have the versatility of an anthology with the intense relatability of the characters; every demographic is addressed by at least ONE of the four sliders.

So, in a reboot, I'd like to see Quinn and Wade as teenagers and I don't mean as RIVERDALE teenagers but as the teenagers who play children on Disney shows like GIRL MEETS WORLD and LIV AND MADDIE -- and we could have a Rembrandt and Arturo played by actors in their 50s. I think an even larger age gap between Quinn & Wade and Rembrandt & Arturo would emphasize the strengths of the show and the specific strengths that cannot be imitated by any other parallel universe show that would have to file off the serial numbers.

Also important and legally distinct: the sliders are not agents of a government organization or employed by some tech conglomerate or some black ops force. They are essentially four misfits thrown together by circumstance, essentially four homeless people, so I would also emphasize that further: Quinn is a homeless kid who assembled a makeshift lab in a Doppler storage locker and sleeps in the staff lounge and Wade is a juvenile delinquent on probation for shoplifting whereas Rembrandt and Arturo are more stable adults (but not that much more stable).

So, ideally, a reboot would focus on all the things that make SLIDERS so distinct that any other show attempting to do the same would be sued for infringement. From a scripting standpoint, I think a rebooted SLIDERS should do remakes of the existing episodes but updated accordingly. A world where the Russians won the Cold War can be adjusted to the Russians having co-opted American elections and covertly controlling America. A world where the Summer of Love never ended can delve into drug culture gone out of control like Jerry O'Connell's "Narcotica" comic. Versions of "Please Press One" and "Map of the Mind" that are actually good.

And we could still have the rebooted cast meet the original cast to establish that the new actors are playing younger versions of the originals like STAR TREK (2009).

I'd like to see different genres in the show. Originally, the show had a very tight formula of the sliders entering a dystopian world, saddling up with the local resistance, toppling the dominate regime and leaving. I'd love to see that again, but I'd also like to see the office comedy episode, the mumblecore episode, the cyberpunk episode, the mockmentary episode, the reality TV episode, the superhero episode, the crime procedural episode, the romcom episode, the game show episode, the bedroom farce episode, the filmed-live episode, the found footage episode and constantly be unsure as to what SLIDERS is going to be each week.

And I think TF has really hit on something. What could a SLIDERS reboot do that no other show could without Torme and Weiss' lawyers going after it?

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

Geez, a complete reboot was not one of the choices!!  Ha ha, I posted this poll because I've been rewatching on Comet TV.  At first, I figured everything after Vancouver ought to go.  However, Season 3, granted full of movie rip-offs, was not that bad, prior to The Exodus.  There were good stories, and as I watch now, for the first time in at least a decade, I can better appreciate dialogue, directing, things like that.  The characters remained true to their cores.  The Rickman episodes after The Exodus were utter garbage, with The Other Slide of Darkness being one of the worst.  The Smarter Quinn giving Kromaggs Sliding tech was so unbelievable stupid, I never got over that.  Season 4 and 5 had a lot of good science fiction scripts, but Wade raped, Earthprime conquered, and Quinn being adopted, no, no no!!!  So my pick was The Exodus, which for many fans, was the jump the shark moment.  I can't tell you how many times I read or get told that someone stopped watching after JRD left the show.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

Grizzlor wrote:

Geez, a complete reboot was not one of the choices!!  Ha ha, I posted this poll because I've been rewatching on Comet TV.  At first, I figured everything after Vancouver ought to go.  However, Season 3, granted full of movie rip-offs, was not that bad, prior to The Exodus.

Oh, stuff it. Your thread's getting activity and responses. You'll take what you're given! ;-)

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Is Jerry instrumental in getting it done?  If so, I think Jerry is going to want to star in it.  He's going to want to be Quinn.  Making him Quinn's dad wouldn't be enough for him.

And Jerry can stuff it too! He's lucky to be allowed to eat at the crafts services table. His film career was a joke. His daytime TV ambitions have been a wash. He couldn't even get THE MUNSTERS to series. His big TV show, CARTER, produces 10 episodes a year. If he's allowed to play Michael Mallory for a few months of mortgage payments for a few days of work, he'll take it. He's learned not to be a diva and accepted his self-made lot as a working class TV actor.

**

But in terms of the rollback -- Torme told me in 2000 that he wanted to roll the show back to "The Guardian" with his "Slide Effects" script. But when writing it in 2011, I picked "As Time Goes By" because I feel that once SLIDERS left Vancouver, it lost its visual identity. It lost the indie-film look of the show. It lost the washed out, grounded, gray tone of Vancouver as San Francisco. It lost the fiction of being set in San Francisco.

It lost the Temporal Flux branded production approach "travel light" where Quinn's basement was the chalkboard and coils in a storage locker that could be unpacked to make any bare studio space The Basement which could then be swapped out for pews and a stage to be a church or benches to be a courtroom or beds and false windows to make a motel or racks and registers to be Doppler Computers. Instead, production tied up its money in The Cave and The Chandler. If I were going to roll SLIDERS back to anywhere, it'd be "As Time Goes By" -- but I don't think it helps us much because SLIDERS should satirize and explore TODAY -- not 1996.

Slider_Quinn21 once remarked that "As Time Goes By" has the sliders separated, unable to reach each other with their non-existent cell phones and buying paper newspapers out of a box. The past has become another country and I have lost the ability to say anything that Temporal Flux, Slider_Quinn21 and Transmodiar didn't say first.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

ireactions wrote:

And Jerry can stuff it too! He's lucky to be allowed to eat at the crafts services table. His film career was a joke. His daytime TV ambitions have been a wash. He couldn't even get THE MUNSTERS to series. His big TV show, CARTER, produces 10 episodes a year. If he's allowed to play Michael Mallory for a few months of mortgage payments for a few days of work, he'll take it. He's learned not to be a diva and accepted his self-made lot as a working class TV actor.

Oh I completely agree.  My point is that a project like this needs a champion.  Someone has to go into a meeting with Universal and whoever and sell this thing until people give it lots of money.  Something like Ryan Reynolds did with Deadpool or tons of projects that are crowdfunded.  Someone needs to lead those meetings, and so far, no one else is doing that.  And I think if Jerry is going to spend his time championing a Sliders reboot, he's doing it to star in it.  If he's not, I'm assuming he wouldn't champion the project and he'd get whatever Michael Mallory-equivalent role on whatever pilot he can get on Paramount network.

You're right, though, because maybe he champions it and ends up screwed out of it.  Richard Hatch famously spent a ton of time and effort looking to get Battlestar Galactica revived.  He wrote novels and produced trailers to try and sell the project.  And it did generate interest in new Galactica - but not his version.  He ended up settling for a recurring role.

So if that's what happened to Jerry, so be it.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

It seems unlikely that a cell phone from one world would work on the network of another. Maybe they would sometimes and not others, as the plot demands.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

ireactions wrote:

But in terms of the rollback -- Torme told me in 2000 that he wanted to roll the show back to "The Guardian" with his "Slide Effects" script. But when writing it in 2011, I picked "As Time Goes By" because I feel that once SLIDERS left Vancouver, it lost its visual identity. It lost the indie-film look of the show. It lost the washed out, grounded, gray tone of Vancouver as San Francisco. It lost the fiction of being set in San Francisco.

Interesting, didn't know/remember Tracy making that statement.  I'm sure he's including The Guardian because he wrote it, but I'd be fine with that.  As I said, you retain all of his original mysteries by around that point. 

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Oh I completely agree.  My point is that a project like this needs a champion.  Someone has to go into a meeting with Universal and whoever and sell this thing until people give it lots of money.  Something like Ryan Reynolds did with Deadpool or tons of projects that are crowdfunded.  Someone needs to lead those meetings, and so far, no one else is doing that.  And I think if Jerry is going to spend his time championing a Sliders reboot, he's doing it to star in it.  If he's not, I'm assuming he wouldn't champion the project and he'd get whatever Michael Mallory-equivalent role on whatever pilot he can get on Paramount network.

You're right, though, because maybe he champions it and ends up screwed out of it.  Richard Hatch famously spent a ton of time and effort looking to get Battlestar Galactica revived.  He wrote novels and produced trailers to try and sell the project.  And it did generate interest in new Galactica - but not his version.  He ended up settling for a recurring role.

So if that's what happened to Jerry, so be it.

Depends on what medium they're going for.  Peacock service needs content, though one would assume the budget wouldn't be great on there, though Sliders proved over and over again that wasn't a showstopper.  I'm not really sure what Jerry's concept is to say that he might get pushed out.  Terrible example, but look at Saved By the Bell, Mario and Elizabeth are producers and starring, with an all-new teen cast.  Sliders could do the same, especially given that besides Jerry, the other three original stars are somewhat "retired."

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

Grizzlor wrote:

Depends on what medium they're going for.  Peacock service needs content, though one would assume the budget wouldn't be great on there, though Sliders proved over and over again that wasn't a showstopper.

Peacock is planning a new Battlestar Galactica for their service, and that’s likely not cheap.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/ba … ease-date/

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

Grizzlor wrote:
ireactions wrote:

But in terms of the rollback -- Torme told me in 2000 that he wanted to roll the show back to "The Guardian" with his "Slide Effects" script. But when writing it in 2011, I picked "As Time Goes By" because I feel that once SLIDERS left Vancouver, it lost its visual identity. It lost the indie-film look of the show. It lost the washed out, grounded, gray tone of Vancouver as San Francisco. It lost the fiction of being set in San Francisco.

Interesting, didn't know/remember Tracy making that statement.  I'm sure he's including The Guardian because he wrote it, but I'd be fine with that.  As I said, you retain all of his original mysteries by around that point.

Well, in 2000 over AOL Instant Messenger, I asked Torme: how would he resolve the cliffhanger of "The Seer"? Torme said that he hadn't seen it and would prefer not knowing anything about it because he was sure it would only make him depressed and angry. But that if he had to follow up on it, he would use a story he'd come up with before he quit the show with Season 3. His idea was a Kromagg story that would be "surreal and trippy" where Quinn would wake up to find himself home with time rewound back to the Pilot and only Quinn remembering sliding.

He would encounter doubles of characters he'd met during Seasons 1 - 2 and Logan from Season 3 at which point he'd realize that sliding was real. The situation would be revealed as a Kromagg trick, and Torme said that to address "The Seer" without having to watch it, he'd declare that any episode after "The Guardian" to be part of the Kromagg scenario. Torme explained that "The Guardian" was his favourite episode of the series and the last one he was happy with, calling "Double Cross" and "Dead Man Sliding" out as "very mediocre."

So, that's how he'd answer your poll, but when writing his Post-It of a story idea into a script, I elected to make the cutoff point the Season 2 finale. That way, while the "Slide Effects" script ends with the sliders still lost in the multiverse, the Kromagg tracking device has been destroyed and Logan isn't pursuing them and the Professor isn't dying of a terminal illness. Also, as far as Torme was concerned, "Invasion" happened before "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome" and Arturo had the Kromagg tracking device but was stranded on the Azure Gate Bridge world -- which isn't reflected in the actual airdates as "Invasion" aired after PTTS. My "Slide Effects" script uses the original broadcast order and says that Quinn had the implant, another divergence from Torme's intentions.

Later, Torme proposed but did not complete a screenplay for EP.COM. He sent an outline called "The Long Slide Home" which opens with Quinn and the Professor removing Logan St. Clair's whispering gallery system from the geographic spectrum stabilizer and restoring Quinn's original laser gyro system to put their slides back in the San Francisco area, so even in his fanfic, he wanted to integrate "Double Cross" into his selective continuity.

Torme also stated, interestingly, that he intended to gift his script to both Transmodiar AND Temporal Flux and they could feature it on their respective sites as they saw fit. Unfortunately, due to professional obligations, he never finished it.

Also, Torme came up with his Kromagg story that revisits the Pilot before he gave up on Season 3, before John was fired and before Seasons 4 - 5. However, when asked how he would fix his show, his "Invasion" sequel was the story he put forward to roll back the continuity of the series. And when he was asked to where he'd roll it back, he picked "The Guardian."

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

pilight wrote:

It seems unlikely that a cell phone from one world would work on the network of another. Maybe they would sometimes and not others, as the plot demands.

When I sat down to write a spinoff/sequel series to Earth 214 (which I never got passed a half-written pilot and a plan for season 1), one of the ideas I liked was the idea of putting "satellites" in the wormhole to communicate from world to world (with the idea being that wormholes are a river connecting two worlds but that there's a bigger "ocean" that connects them all).

Might be a dumb idea, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work in the continuity of Sliders to allow them to communicate with each other no matter where they are.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

TemporalFlux wrote:

Peacock is planning a new Battlestar Galactica for their service, and that’s likely not cheap.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/ba … ease-date/

Well there went the new series budget! Honestly enough with that dumb show!

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

When I sat down to write a spinoff/sequel series to Earth 214 (which I never got passed a half-written pilot and a plan for season 1), one of the ideas I liked was the idea of putting "satellites" in the wormhole to communicate from world to world (with the idea being that wormholes are a river connecting two worlds but that there's a bigger "ocean" that connects them all).

Might be a dumb idea, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work in the continuity of Sliders to allow them to communicate with each other no matter where they are.

Certainly worked for the Kromaggs!

ireactions wrote:

Well, in 2000 over AOL Instant Messenger, I asked Torme: how would he resolve the cliffhanger of "The Seer"? Torme said that he hadn't seen it and would prefer not knowing anything about it because he was sure it would only make him depressed and angry. But that if he had to follow up on it, he would use a story he'd come up with before he quit the show with Season 3. His idea was a Kromagg story that would be "surreal and trippy" where Quinn would wake up to find himself home with time rewound back to the Pilot and only Quinn remembering sliding.

He would encounter doubles of characters he'd met during Seasons 1 - 2 and Logan from Season 3 at which point he'd realize that sliding was real. The situation would be revealed as a Kromagg trick, and Torme said that to address "The Seer" without having to watch it, he'd declare that any episode after "The Guardian" to be part of the Kromagg scenario. Torme explained that "The Guardian" was his favourite episode of the series and the last one he was happy with, calling "Double Cross" and "Dead Man Sliding" out as "very mediocre."

So, that's how he'd answer your poll, but when writing his Post-It of a story idea into a script, I elected to make the cutoff point the Season 2 finale. That way, while the "Slide Effects" script ends with the sliders still lost in the multiverse, the Kromagg tracking device has been destroyed and Logan isn't pursuing them and the Professor isn't dying of a terminal illness. Also, as far as Torme was concerned, "Invasion" happened before "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome" and Arturo had the Kromagg tracking device but was stranded on the Azure Gate Bridge world -- which isn't reflected in the actual airdates as "Invasion" aired after PTTS. My "Slide Effects" script uses the original broadcast order and says that Quinn had the implant, another divergence from Torme's intentions.

I feel like Quinn in that story, somehow I've forgotten all of this!  Leave it to Tracy though to have devised such an esoteric concept.  There's definitely a bit of Fire in the Sky in that story though.  That may have worked 20 years ago when he proposed it, but the actors are far too old now for that.

ireactions wrote:

Later, Torme proposed but did not complete a screenplay for EP.COM. He sent an outline called "The Long Slide Home" which opens with Quinn and the Professor removing Logan St. Clair's whispering gallery system from the geographic spectrum stabilizer and restoring Quinn's original laser gyro system to put their slides back in the San Francisco area, so even in his fanfic, he wanted to integrate "Double Cross" into his selective continuity.

Torme also stated, interestingly, that he intended to gift his script to both Transmodiar AND Temporal Flux and they could feature it on their respective sites as they saw fit. Unfortunately, due to professional obligations, he never finished it.

Also, Torme came up with his Kromagg story that revisits the Pilot before he gave up on Season 3, before John was fired and before Seasons 4 - 5. However, when asked how he would fix his show, his "Invasion" sequel was the story he put forward to roll back the continuity of the series. And when he was asked to where he'd roll it back, he picked "The Guardian."

Now this I sort of remember, and likewise would have been very cool to read.  Similarly, it's probably been too long to use as well.  I'm sure that Jerry probably has never read either concept....

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

Grizzlor wrote:
Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

When I sat down to write a spinoff/sequel series to Earth 214 (which I never got passed a half-written pilot and a plan for season 1), one of the ideas I liked was the idea of putting "satellites" in the wormhole to communicate from world to world (with the idea being that wormholes are a river connecting two worlds but that there's a bigger "ocean" that connects them all).

Might be a dumb idea, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work in the continuity of Sliders to allow them to communicate with each other no matter where they are.

Certainly worked for the Kromaggs!


Perhaps the Sliders could be using borrowed Kromagg technology to communicate

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

I watched a couple more episodes of CARTER which aired its second season of 10 episodes earlier this year. CARTER is about TV actor Harley Carter (Jerry O'Connell) on hiatus from his cop show and vacationing in the small town where he grew up. He starts solving actual crimes with his childhood friend Sam (Sydney Tamiia Poitier), a police detective. Carter views every moment in life as a scene from his TV show and is a grossly incompetent investigator, but through a combination of luck, luck, luck and Sam, he keeps haphazardly closing cases and is accepted as a police consultant. Season 1 of this show is ridiculous with Sam perpetually snarling at Carter that he is not a cop and that life is not a cop show and that his methods won't solve crimes only for Carter to solve crimes because CARTER is a cop show no matter what Sam says.

Season 2 is... about the same. While Syndey Tamiia Poitier brings the Sydney Tamiia Poitier forcefulness and authority to her character, Sydney Tamiia Poitier is now forced to defend Carter as an asset to criminal investigations. Now, this is Sydney Tamiia Poitier. If Sydney Tamiia Poitier told me that the moon was made of cheese and that Charlie O'Connell is a master thespian, I would believe it. Sydney Tamiia Poitier sells the moments in which she declares that Carter is capable of solving crimes.

Jerry O'Connell, however, is not entirely supporting her because his performance is a series of overstrained, overextended and generally overdone smirks and smiles. Carter doesn't seem competent at all and like a danger to himself and others and Jerry's overly twitchy performance makes him seem erratic. I'm not sure when this happened, but Jerry O'Connell seems to have thrown away his ability to be unforced and natural in his acting: every expression is prolonged just a few seconds too long, every gesticulation or nostril flare or furrowed brow is forced to the point where it's not a character reacting to a situation but an actor vastly overplaying his scene.

On some level, it works for CARTER because Carter is treating every situation like a scene in his TV show. But in publicity photos and interviews, Jerry has exhibited quite a bit of this behaviour, often visibly refusing to blink while the camera is on him (which is also present in CARTER), stretching his mouth wide to show every tooth in his smile -- and it makes me wonder if he would bring any of this into playing Quinn Mallory if he were to do so again.

That said, Carter and Quinn are *very* different characters and if Jerry were to reprise Quinn, I would want him to perform Quinn as a quiet, subtle observer, a man who stands at a slight distance to watch and absorb all information, a person who is thinking intensely about everything before he says anything at all. Carter is not a thinker but a character of impulses, so Jerry's acting is appropriate for this character -- I just hope he isn't playing every other role like this these days.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

I'm deeper into Season 2 of CARTER and I'm seeing another side to Jerry O'Connell -- but it isn't necessarily an improvement. In Season 4 of SLIDERS, we saw Jerry at his most disengaged from his material, not infusing his dialogue with emotion, not reacting to onscreen events, staring vacantly off camera and blandly fading into the background. CARTER shows Jerry at the extreme opposite of his last year on SLIDERS; Jerry is determined to mine every syllable for overpronounced, overdetermined emotion and he is so much in the foreground with his (in-character) mugging for the camera that he is exhausting to see onscreen. Carter is one of the most gratingly obnoxious characters that Jerry has ever performed.

However, there's an episode of CARTER where Jerry has to threaten someone and he performs his threat in a low key, offhand, sinister in its laid back delivery with Jerry's suddenly muted body language making Carter seem frightening because his relentlessly intense efforts to engage with others are suddenly absent.

I'm not sure it's the best acting choice to have the Carter character always at a 15 out of 10 on the intensity scale, but it's clear that Jerry retains all his skills as an actor and that his overlaboured effort in CARTER is an acting choice.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

My impression is that while Jerry O'Connell is good actor, Harley Carter is not.  JOC plays Carter as someone always trying to grab your attention and force you to remember him, as bad actors often do.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

I just finished an episode where the legendary Sydney Tamiia Poitier catches Jerry in a very vulnerable moment and Jerry plays this scene very well without all the artifice and mugging that he usually engages in for Harley.

Jerry constantly highlights how Harley is smiling, chattering and asserting authority and expertise but falsely and pretending. Acting is not about pretending. Acting is about presenting emotional truth in fictional contexts and Harley Carter does not present truth except in these few isolated scenes where Jerry tones down Harley Carter's antics.

I could certainly be persuaded that Jerry O'Connell is performing Harley as a bad actor.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

I finished CARTER's second season. I confess that I was not giving it my full attention and had it on the TV while at the sofa photo editing / steam cleaning my clothes and stuffed animals / completing paperwork / arranging meatballs / cutting chicken wings / writing on this message board. I did concentrate whenever Sydney Tamiia Poitier was onscreen, however. This is Sydney Tamiia Poitier, for God's sake; she commands attention and compels me to drop anything and everything to pay attention. Just from her posture and a raised eyebrow and a pleasant yet authoritative smile, Sydney Tamiia Poitier conveys that Sydney Tamiia Poitier is a highly proficient professional of hypercompetent determination.

In contrast, Jerry O'Connell is so obnoxious as Carter (and I agree with pilight that it's deliberate). CARTER is 20 episodes as of Season 2; Carter has a case closure rate of 100 per cent. I don't know how this is possible as Jerry is determined to make Carter the most erratically inept investigator alive. To quote MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, perfect or not, Carter's methods look suspiciously like chance and his results would appear alarmingly like luck.

I don't know how Sydney Tamiia Poitier's Sam tolerates Carter and Sydney Tamiia Poitier's performance indicates that Sydney Tamiia Poitier is so good at her job that Jerry O'Connell at his twitchiest cannot seriously impede Sydney Tamiia Poitier from accomplishing anything that Sydney Tamiia Poitier sets her mind to doing.

The mysteries are not that interesting. The stakes are always incredibly low. The threats are not convincing. A running 'gag' (I think) is Carter referring to previous episodes of his TV show, CALL CARTER which is (I think) a completely fictional TV series that doesn't exist meaning Carter is referring to nothing whatsoever. I think that it's supposed to be funny but it's meaningless. This show has no reason to exist except that 10 episodes a year of Sydney Tamiia Poitier creates a marginally better world than one without 10 episodes of Sydney Tamiia Poitier except this is Sydney Tamiia Poitier and surely she deserves a better job.

Season 2 ends on a soft cliffhanger where Carter asks Sydney Tamiia Poitier not to leave the small town for New York City because Carter is in love with her. Sydney Tamiia Poitier regards Carter in this cliffhanger with slightly teary eyes, I assume, because the wind blew into her eyes at that point. I have no idea what the Sydney Tamiia Poitier would see in the dysfunctional man child that Jerry O'Connell is playing in this series; she's a responsible, capable career woman and Jerry's version of Harley Carter seems incapable of opening a door without causing a scene. Once again, Sydney Tamiia Poitier plays the moment to indicate that if she were to lower her standards to date an extremely childish Jerry O'Connell, it wouldn't seriously interfere with her goals in life.

A lot of CARTER is Jerry O'Connell engaging in what looks suspiciously like actors' exercises with minor league Canadian stars that may be very amusing to people who are friends with a lot of actresses (raises hand) but meaningless to anyone else.

CARTER is funded by some Canadian media companies and the beneficiary of some Canadian tax credits and is filmed in the small Canadian town of North Bay. It's only just finished airing its latest 10 episodes in America and may or may not get a third season and that decision is probably dependent on funding rather than ratings. CARTER is a marginally diverting hour of television and an interesting study into Jerry O'Connell's acting in the modern era. I'm not sure who else would want to watch CARTER.

I can report that Jerry O'Connell clearly LOVES the show. Perhaps a little too much given how his visible glee and relish for his ridiculous character is so high energy that he noticeably drains energy from ME just from watching him. It is very clear that ever since Jerry quit drinking, his enthusiasm for his work has been cranked up to the point where he's not entirely able to restrain himself at times. I recognize, as pilight observed, that Harley Carter is meant to be a terrible actor and that he sees acting as drawing attention to himself rather than conveying the emotion and meaning of the scene, but when nearly every scene has Jerry at his most manic, then every scene becomes the same.

If CARTER gets a third season, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to have another 10 episodes of Sydney Tamiia Poitier being commanding and driven and somehow above all of Carter's nonsense.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

All this watching CARTER to contemplate how Jerry would play Quinn today prompted a vague memory of my sister having described a series called CASTLE. Which is on Amazon Prime. And I refuse to give Amazon any money due to their work practices. Therefore, I put on a hazmat suit that I stole from a university eight years ago, drove over to my niece's house and broke in while she was walking her dog (alright, I have a key) and cloned her Amazon Prime account off the sideloaded Android app on her Android TV box (alright, the password was written on a piece of paper on a corkscrew board) and exited the house with no one the wiser and watched a couple episodes of CASTLE -- a show about a mystery novelist (Nathan Fillion) who inflicts his annoying presence on Kate, a no nonsense New York City homicide detective (Stana Katic).

It occurred to me that CARTER, airing two years after CASTLE ended in 2016, is a legally dissimilar version of CASTLE attempting to mine the market that CASTLE left open: a procedural where a man from the entertainment industry is paired with a straight laced police investigator. CASTLE was a taut, capable, well-paced, focused series about the belligerent sexual tension between Fillion and Katic and novelist Richard Castle had some actual (if delusional) insight and flashes of brilliance to offer murder mysteries.

In contrast, Jerry O'Connell's Carter is so juvenile that he never comes off as Sydney Tamiia Poitier's equal and in making Jerry's character an actor as opposed to a writer, Jerry's role on his own show is that of an annoying guest-star who should be tolerated for one episode and dismissed entirely. If CARTER is trying to file off the serial numbers of CASTLE to avoid a lawsuit, it ends up sanding down what made CASTLE effective in the first place.

Could something like this happen to SLIDERS if it were revived in the form of a legally dissimilar TV show?

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

ireactions wrote:

CASTLE was a taut, capable, well-paced, focused series about the belligerent sexual tension between Fillion and Katic and novelist Richard Castle had some actual (if delusional) insight and flashes of brilliance to offer murder mysteries.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

Transmodiar wrote:
ireactions wrote:

CASTLE was a taut, capable, well-paced, focused series about the belligerent sexual tension between Fillion and Katic and novelist Richard Castle had some actual (if delusional) insight and flashes of brilliance to offer murder mysteries.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I've only seen the first season of CASTLE. I'm going to assume from Transmodiar's reaction that CASTLE suffers from behind the scenes issues that causes the show to lose its clear, focused sense of purpose which is to have Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic onscreen arguing and the murder mysteries being incidental if not irrelevant. They could be restaurant chefs. I do recall numerous press articles during its later years detailing how Fillion and Katic had become so hostile that by the end, they would not film together for more than two scenes an episode. It could be difficult for a show about Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic arguing endlessly to function if it could no longer have Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic in the same scenes for entire episodes.

Which, I think, speaks to another point of interest with SLIDERS. Over in the DECLASSIFIED thread, reading Temporal Flux's screenplay has made me realize to my shock that SLIDERS does not need Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo to be SLIDERS -- that the SLIDERS brand is in social satire and commentary rather than Jerry O'Connell.

However, if the purpose is to revive SLIDERS as opposed to creating a legally dissimilar series with a different title, then you need to use characters named Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo and keep characters with these names together for five to seven years or you'd end up with Grizzlor's poll here, contemplating where the show should have been allowed to die a quick death. CASTLE and Transmodiar's mocking laughter towards CASTLE may be another indication of this.

Which means it's vital to hire writers who can run a show for up to a decade and actors who wouldn't ditch the show or take it for granted or refuse to be in the same room. The Bryan Fullers and David Duchovnys of the world wouldn't work for this.

Ideally, you'd want young actors to play Quinn and Wade who have worked in the business for awhile, who've been child actors, who've seen the ups and downs of business and would appreciate a potentially stable job. Kids who've been in Disney Channel type shows that were never huge hits. And you'd want older actors for Rembrandt and Arturo who don't consider themselves above television and wouldn't ditch it for a movie or Broadway and wouldn't drunkenly embarrass a network executive for no good reason whatsoever.

In terms of creators -- you'd want writers and producers who'd form close, personal friendships with their cast and ensure that everyone will be getting along for a decade and who have written material close to SLIDERS' comedy satire.

In the past, I've always though of science fiction writers like J. Michael Straczynski (BABYLON 5) or Jeff Pinkner and Joel Wyman (FRINGE) for SLIDERS, but in the light of DECLASSIFIED, I realize that Straczynski's writing is too preachy for SLIDERS and Pinkner and Wyman are too technology-focused in their science fiction. I also liked the idea of Dan Harmon (COMMUNITY) writing SLIDERS, but again, after DECLASSIFIED -- I realize that SLIDERS is not a situation comedy about wacky characters and that maybe I should have noticed before spending 2015 - 2016 writing just that.

I think I would now want Michael Schur (BROOKLYN NINE NINE) and Greg Daniels (PARKS AND RECREATION) to write SLIDERS as both writers have worked together (on PARKS) and their comedy with police officers and municipal government presented an extremely ambivalent and comedic take on these institutions, never preaching their fundamental importance but never condemning them either. Instead, both Schur and Daniels' scripts focused on the peculiarities and eccentricities of the people within these establishment organizations as they worked with or against or for one another or the public.

I think every long running series is going to have its regrets. But SLIDERS kept falling into holes and Grizzlor's poll shows how SLIDERS kept digging itself deeper with David Peckinpah always having a brand new shovel for Rembrandt with each season premiere. A new SLIDERS needs builders, not diggers, and that attitude has to be reflected among all the cast and creators whether it's Jerry and John playing older versions of the originals (doubles or not) or a new team.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

Castle badly wanted to be a 21st century version of Moonlighting

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

I forgot to mention: in the first two episodes of CARTER’s second season, Jerry seems to randomly improvise “sliders” in his dialogue with Harley Carter being oddly fixated on the mini-hamburger snack during his inane chatter. It seems to be on Jerry’s mind.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

ireactions wrote:

I've only seen the first season of CASTLE. I'm going to assume from Transmodiar's reaction that CASTLE suffers from behind the scenes issues that causes the show to lose its clear, focused sense of purpose which is to have Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic onscreen arguing and the murder mysteries being incidental if not irrelevant. They could be restaurant chefs. I do recall numerous press articles during its later years detailing how Fillion and Katic had become so hostile that by the end, they would not film together for more than two scenes an episode. It could be difficult for a show about Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic arguing endlessly to function if it could no longer have Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic in the same scenes for entire episodes.

I didn't make it to the end. But you don't have to watch past season one to know the show doesn't give two squirts about timing, pacing, or focus. It hopes you like Nathan Fillion or Stana Katic; everything else is incidental.

If you keep watching, just skip over every scene with Castle's daughter or mother. With the exception of the contractually obligated A-story episode they get each season, they add literally nothing to the series. Nada. Bupkus. ZERO.

And if you make it past the episode where the sidekicks get caught in a burning building, I'll buy you a soda. smile

Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

I would tune in if channel solely to catch a glimpse or too of Stana Katic, otherwise gahhhhhh, what trash!

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

Transmodiar wrote:

I didn't make it to the end. But you don't have to watch past season one to know the show doesn't give two squirts about timing, pacing, or focus. It hopes you like Nathan Fillion or Stana Katic; everything else is incidental.

Well, it cares about the timing of Fillion and Katic's verbal sparring. It cares about pacing the course of their arguments along the case of the (incidental, irrelevant) mystery of the week. It is completely focused on what Fillion and Katic are fighting about that week.

Transmodiar wrote:

If you keep watching, just skip over every scene with Castle's daughter or mother. With the exception of the contractually obligated A-story episode they get each season, they add literally nothing to the series. Nada. Bupkus. ZERO.

I think Castle's family add a breather between Castle's antics and show that he isn't just a quip machine but someone with a family that brings out a more sincere side and let him recharge before his next round with Beckett. It helps the timing and pacing of the arguments. I love Castle's sharp-thinking daughter and regal mother.

Transmodiar wrote:

And if you make it past the episode where the sidekicks get caught in a burning building, I'll buy you a soda. smile

I am not there yet. But I've been making my own sodas lately with a Sodastream. It's amazing! I have had to drive a bit farther than I'd like for carbonator exchanges lately. CASTLE is very enjoyable. And Joanne Kelly showed up which makes me remember that I never got around to finishing WAREHOUSE 13 and should get to it. And Transmodiar once wrote a spec script for WAREHOUSE 13 that is on EarthPrime.com for... some reason.

Uh... how to make this post SLIDERS reboot related. How. How. How?! How?! CASTLE is based in New York City and Jerry O'Connell was born there and... and... oh my God, Grizzlor, PLEASE respond to this thread to make it relevant!

Grizzlor wrote:

I would tune in if channel solely to catch a glimpse or too of Stana Katic, otherwise gahhhhhh, what trash!

I don't feel CASTLE is trash (although I'm only in Season 2). It aims low. It hits its target. It seeks to feature Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic arguing. It features Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic arguing. Followed by Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic arguing. Followed by Fillion fencing with his daughter and mother for a breather. Followed by Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic arguing. It does exactly what it sets out to do. Why isn't that enough?

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

Honestly, I cannot watch a series that doesn't have continuity anymore, I feel as though I'm just wasting my time.  Been that way for many, many years.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

ireactions wrote:

And Transmodiar once wrote a spec script for WAREHOUSE 13 that is on EarthPrime.com for... some reason.

Because it's a good read produced by two of the site admins that has to do with a dimension-hopping van. How many more reasons do you need?

If you can promote Tf's spinoff, I can share this: https://earthprime.com/etcetera/warehouse-13-qed

It's fun, if you liked "Warehouse 13."

Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

WAREHOUSE 13 is the undemanding, low stakes procedural that I need right now. The procedural that America needs right now! And I consider "QED" an episode of the show. WAREHOUSE 13 has some interesting parallels with SLIDERS and the potential for legally dissimilar shows about parallel universes. Watching the first several episodes of WAREHOUSE 13, WAREHOUSE 13 is clearly a legally dissimilar copy of THE X-FILES with two government agents (Secret Service, not FBI!) investigating supernatural artifacts (to confiscate and cover them up, not to expose them! Not like THE X-FILES at all!).

The pilot episode of WAREHOUSE 13 seems like something that nobody wanted to make or take ownership of, much like Season 5 of SLIDERS. The original script was written by Rockne O'Bannon (FARSCAPE) and Jane Espenson (BUFFY, ONCE UPON A TIME, GILMORE GIRLS, JESSICA JONES) but Syfy bought it and then retooled it with at least four different writing teams before landing on Jack Kenny, a veteran of children's fantasy show THE SECRET WORLD OF ALEX MACK. By the time WAREHOUSE 13 made it to air, it had become an indecisive, confused product. A photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy with many contradictory sensibilities.

The Pilot has the story elements of a paranoid, conspiracy-minded series of secret agents in a shadow government organization and a simple, Nickelodeon children's show where the heroes look to find and contain dangerous supernatural objects and the questions of who they work for and why is not something kids would ask. WAREHOUSE 13 also seems to be visually very similar to Season 5 of SLIDERS with interior locations being redressed beige hallways if it's not the warehouse set that's the equivalent of SLIDERS' Chandler Hotel.

But WAREHOUSE 13 cast well. And by the end of the first season, WAREHOUSE 13 had succeeded in doing what SLIDERS did in its first two seasons: it created a strong ensemble with the exuberant and childish Eddie McClintock, the bookish and flustered Joanne Kelly, the sardonic Allison Scagliotti and the jaded Saul Rubinek. And their affable, friendly chemistry smoothed out the conceptual confusion of their show. WAREHOUSE 13 was still a legally dissimilar X-FILES shot on a much lower budget, but it was an amiable, undemanding, unchallenging, lightweight X-FILES clone that was soothing and relaxing. Aside from the comedy episodes, THE X-FILES was never fun.

WAREHOUSE 13 being a clone of a pre-existing property and then cloned from subsequent drafts of the clone itself, however, was always something that held it back. I wonder if it is simply bad development strategy to look at a previously successful series and try to replicate it but with just enough differences to a void a lawsuit. But it can work sometimes. BILL AND TED was plainly an American Polaroid of a DOCTOR WHO episode. STAR WARS was an American portrait of THE HIDDEN FORTRESS.

**

What would JOHN RHYS-DAVIES' SLIDERS be like?

Jerry O'Connell and John Rhys-Davies, last year, were very enthusiastic about conceiving a new SLIDERS project. Assuming they could get Cleavant and Sabrina back and that they would be setting the creative direction -- what would Jerry and John want to do with SLIDERS? John most definitely has serious creative ambitions for SLIDERS. He wanted to run the writer's room and write scripts. But he also wanted to be the lead character and for Jerry to be his sidekick. I don't know if that's changed in the years that have passed.

I imagine that John would probably want JOHN RHYS-DAVIES' SLIDERS to just start over from the ground up again and he would want to take ownership of the new show and define it with his personality and interests. And I'm not sure John's interests are in social satire; judging from his personality, he would probably be more along the lines of overt lecturing and moral outrage and it would be a very different voice for SLIDERS having originally been more indirect and comedic.

John also doesn't want to do more than a year or two of playing Arturo before quitting and moving on.

I suspect Jerry doesn't have any real creative ambitions aside from always being happy to be working. He's the executive producer of CARTER and it's very obvious from watching CARTER that Jerry just wants to hang out with his friends on the set for 10 episodes a year.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

Are those two visions necessarily mutually exclusive?  I think it's possible to have a version of Sliders that has a strong voice, that tells important stories, that either has social satire or a stare into the darkest parts of our souls, and also has a character played by Jerry O'Connell who can be fun, funny, and an action hero.  It's an idea that's so simple that it's crazy we didn't think of it.

Have Jerry play Rembrandt.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

Well, I don't think there are two visions between John and Jerry. Despite the brilliance of Jerry's NARCOTICA comic book, Jerry's creative ambitions with every product he's produced have been simply to spend time with his friends. That's why he brought Charlie into Season 4. That's why he wants SLIDERS back now; he wants to hang out with John and Sabrina and Cleavant. It's very obvious from his work on CARTER that Jerry just really likes his co-stars. If SLIDERS were revived as a half-hour series about a hamburger restaurant with Arturo managing the place, Wade on the register, Rembrandt on the grill and Quinn manning the drive-thru, Jerry would take it.

So it's really just John's vision and what he would want to do as Arturo and I think Jerry would go along with whatever John wanted to do.

Re: A highly proverbial Sliders Reboot/Continuation question on canon!

I have to say, while Grizzlor's question was where to cut off SLIDERS continuity, I would personally be in favour of adding to it instead. I would want to add:

A couple stories explaining the gap between Seasons 1 - 2. Season 1 ended with Quinn shot, Ryan and Henry the Dog now joining the sliders. Season 2 dismissed it. So, I'd want to add Mike Truman's SLIDERS story, "All That You Can't Leave Behind," a flashback story where Wade recalls the events that took place between "Luck of the Draw" and "Into the Mystic" where Ryan, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo sought medical treatment for Quinn and Ryan chose to leave the sliders.

http://slidersweb.net/otherworlds/317/321.htm

I'd also want to add a second story after "Into the Mystic." Season 1 had the sliders constantly on the verge of homelessness, getting jobs. Season 2 dispenses with all that; the sliders just have money and stay in a hotel, no explanation given (because it was getting repetitive and stalling the plots).

I'd suggest a story where the sliders land on an Earth where the Cold War never ended and the sliders find in the Dominion Hotel a secret cache of cash, clothing, tailoring equipment and supplies. On each parallel Earth with a Dominion, the sliders will visit the hotel and find the cache in 2/5 versions of the Dominion, which is why we no longer seem them out of money and even alternating between outfits and why Arturo is always in a tailored suit.

Another story I'd want to add to SLIDERS canon: an X-FILES crossover. It's unfortunate that SLIDERS never crossed over with every single Vancouver-filming show airing on FOX. Nigel Mitchell's SLIDERS: "X Marks the Spot" story seems to fit the bill: http://freepdfhosting.com/2e80122e71.pdf

And I'd want to add a story into canon where Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are all reunited after the events of Seasons 3 - 5 in a way that doesn't invalidate or redact anything. :-)

I think any approach to continuity is best additive rather than subtractive.