Topic: Sliders Season 4....so what do we REALLY think about it?

The Comet TV Sliders schedule just finished it's season 4 portion last week.  I've been rewatching, mainly via DVD's, although the transfer/upscale on those were awful compared to the Fox season DVD's.  But I digress.  Back at the time, after Fox canceled the show, Sci-Fi infamously picked it back up.  Clearly the budget was scaled down to next to nothing, resulting in frequent Chandler stays.  All in all, I've felt for years that the season featured quite a bit of good science fiction, even if it was often a bit "main stream" at that point.  Bill Dial, Chris Black, Marc Scott Zicree, and co. made sure of that.  The guest acting was largely okay as well, particularly the Kolitar guy, Thomas Mallory, and a number of others.  Charlie O'Connell was fairly unbearable, but what can you do?  He was cheap.  Anyway, my point is that I feel like it holds up well.

Re: Sliders Season 4....so what do we REALLY think about it?

Grizzlor wrote:

The Comet TV Sliders schedule just finished it's season 4 portion last week.  I've been rewatching, mainly via DVD's, although the transfer/upscale on those were awful compared to the Fox season DVD's.  But I digress.  Back at the time, after Fox canceled the show, Sci-Fi infamously picked it back up.  Clearly the budget was scaled down to next to nothing, resulting in frequent Chandler stays.  All in all, I've felt for years that the season featured quite a bit of good science fiction, even if it was often a bit "main stream" at that point.  Bill Dial, Chris Black, Marc Scott Zicree, and co. made sure of that.  The guest acting was largely okay as well, particularly the Kolitar guy, Thomas Mallory, and a number of others.  Charlie O'Connell was fairly unbearable, but what can you do?  He was cheap.  Anyway, my point is that I feel like it holds up well.

Certainly, as you mention, just the video quality is pretty decent, making it look less aged than earlier stuff.  So yea, in some senses it holds up well.  And there are some decent episodes.  They really tried to make it work.  It is hard on a smaller season budget to get the most out of scripts.  I have the most time digesting s5 because only one main character remains.

Re: Sliders Season 4....so what do we REALLY think about it?

I'm glad you like Season 4 because I never want anyone to have a bad time. I said the same thing to REWATCH PODCAST when they gave "The Exodus" a positive review. Grizzlor has done so much for the SLIDERS community. There is no subjective point of disagreement with him that in any way diminishes him. Season 4 is trash.

It's frustrating because there's clearly a lot of talent in Season 4: Marc Scott Zicree and Chris Black are highly engaged, Kari Wuhrer shows actual talent, but the majority of Season 4 episodes are clumsy, unprofessional, sloppy and dull, but the absence of Season 3's excesses make it seem less abrasive, obnoxious and unwatchable. If you watch "This Slide of Paradise," any TV episode that comes after "This Slide of Paradise" looks brilliant just by being not as incompetent and inept as "This Slide of Paradise."

But it's a terrible season. "Genesis" trashes the SLIDERS storytelling platform by making our home Earth a Kromagg outpost and Quinn an interdimensional refugee; he and Rembrandt can no longer compare parallel worlds with their own without angst and grief for the audience if not the characters. Jerry's performance in most episodes is sleepy and he is clearly hungover in most episodes. Cleavant Derricks retains his usual gusto, but his character has lost his everyman charm, his penchant for song, his comedic voice and the musical background that Tracy Torme brought to the character. Kari Wuhrer's performance is an improvement in that it's actually a performance, but it's so painfully performative and over enunciated and overconsidered. Charlie O'Connell has no idea what he's doing and has been overpromoted from playing Quinn Mallory's corpse and Jerry's occasional body double to a regular role for no good reason whatsoever.

The stories are unable to focus on parallel worlds. The script editor, when present, did a half-decent job of making the stories filmable and with some worthwhile ideas. But the ideas are entirely focused on technology rather than culture and the people living in these worlds: instead of facing dogma, prejudice, bureaucracy, tyranny, sexism, monarchies, and other forces of society, the sliders now fight spaceships, superweapons, superviruses, superdrugs, cryogenics, clones, virtual reality, virtual reality, cybernetics, cryogenics, bubble universes and superweapons.

Marc Scott Zicree contributed two teleplays to Season 4, introducing the slidewave and the slidecage and that's great, but when nearly every episode of Season 4 is fixated on technology, it's repetitive and monotonous and detaches the stories from characterization and cleverness. Despite Zicree giving up on the show after the first third of Season 4, the remainder of the year features his worst habits but without his inventiveness, wit or charm for most of it. Keith Damron does a good job with "Virtual Slide." Chris Black does a good job with "Slide By Wire." But they're the exception instead of the rule.

Wade's non-exit exit is an abomination in "Genesis," playing rape as a joke. Even worse is the follow up in "Mother and Child," where Jerry's reaction to learning that Wade was/is near is to hurry off camera without performing any reaction, likely because he was drunk. Every arc in Season 4 is treated with the same contempt: the team leaves Earth Prime in search of a superweapon. They find a superweapon in "Common Ground" and "World Killer" and and "Slidecage" and "Mother and Child" and "Revelations" and use none of them.

The need to save Earth Prime is their core mission in "Genesis" but mentioned incidentally in "Revelations." The search for Kromagg Prime is their main goal in "Genesis"; they have the coordinates and the means to bypass the slidecage in "Revelations," they don't use them. "Genesis" establishes that the sliders are being permitted to survive Kromagg outposts to locate Kromagg Prime; "The Dying Fields" and "Mother and Child" show the Kromaggs actively trying to kill the sliders and the plot is forgotten.

Ultimately, Season 4 is only superficially different from Season 3 due to the lower budget. But like Season 3, the fourth season alienated its most talented creator; it introduces arc elements that are forgotten almost immediately; it savagely mutilates another original cast member; it has an unwatchable season finale -- this time because it's tedious, a third of a beat sheet stretched out to fill the entire timeslot. And once again, they tied up their budget with another standing set -- a hotel instead of a cave -- and created a dull, repetitive look to nearly every episode.

Season 4 was billed as the return of SLIDERS with all the creative support and freedom it had been denied. And this is how it chose to use it. I would rather SLIDERS had been cancelled with Season 3.

Re: Sliders Season 4....so what do we REALLY think about it?

It’s kind of funny thinking about it, but many of us lived Sliders while we were watching it.

The Sliders left home and had some fun adventures, but they kept becoming more lost as time passed.  They continued to slide, though - the hope being that their next slide would take them home.

With the show, after having some fun adventures in season one and two, the show kept becoming more lost as time passed.  We kept watching, though - the hope being that the next episode may bring us back to the show we loved.

Season four is also a pretty good encapsulation of that principle.  The season started with promise - a tantalizing mystery setting up a semi-serialized approach.  But after Slidecage, the story became more and more lost; and the reason for watching became the hope that the next episode may give us a pay off to the story arc.

In retrospect, I do somewhat regret fighting so hard to keep Sliders alive; but I was just trying to find my way back to the show I loved.  And if the show was cancelled - if the slide was missed - it would be 29.7 years before we could try again.

We’re now at 20.3 years since we missed the slide on February 4, 2000.   9.4 more years and we’ll get the chance to try again if we have the heart for it.

Re: Sliders Season 4....so what do we REALLY think about it?

The main reason I stand up for season five is that it started to feel like Sliders again.  No more monsters, only one Kromagg episode, and lots of worlds with potential.  Much of it is wasted due to budget restrictions and poor leadership, but it's a huge improvement over S4 and the last 2/3 of S3.

Re: Sliders Season 4....so what do we REALLY think about it?

Well yes, I would agree the Pukingpah stamp on the season is unmistakable.  I'm just trying to put that aside, as well as the fact that Torme could have had the reins again.  I guess what I really meant to say was that when the season first came out, I was in college, not even 20 years old yet.  My sensibilities were quite different, and I was annoyed with much of it, particularly the infamous rerun hell in which I would miss episodes over and over.  I'm now over 40, and so part of my reason for rewatching Sliders again was to judge how I view the show now.  I'm not saying that S4 has "grown" on me, for given the budget, and the general lack of care from the network, I'm just saying that it wasn't as bad as I last viewed it.  S5 I guess I'll have to suffer through next.

Re: Sliders Season 4....so what do we REALLY think about it?

TemporalFlux wrote:

In retrospect, I do somewhat regret fighting so hard to keep Sliders alive; but I was just trying to find my way back to the show I loved.

It is important to review results -- in this case, the misbegotten mess of Seasons 3 - 5; a show that sci-fi writer Warren Ellis described as "an abortion" watched and renewed "by a bunch of cultural rejects every fucking year."

But. It is also important to review actions separately from results. To view them not in terms of the outcome, but in terms of the quality of these choices based on the information available at the time these decisions were made. The effort to save SLIDERS was at its greatest with Season 2 likely to end in cancellation.

The fans rallied to save the show; as far as the fans knew, a third season of SLIDERS would be filmed in Vancouver with Tracy Torme, Alan Barnette, Tony Blake, Paul Jackson, Nan Hagan, Scott Smith Miller and Jon Povill and with Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo continuing as the actors were contracted for several more years. The campaigning fans had no way of knowing that Season 3 would be run by David Peckinpah; the fans gave the show a fighting chance.

The result wasn't worth it, but the effort was absolutely worthwhile in the moment at which the effort was given.

Re: Sliders Season 4....so what do we REALLY think about it?

ireactions wrote:

The fans rallied to save the show; as far as the fans knew, a third season of SLIDERS would be filmed in Vancouver with Tracy Torme, Alan Barnette, Tony Blake, Paul Jackson, Nan Hagan, Scott Smith Miller and Jon Povill and with Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo continuing as the actors were contracted for several more years.

Funny, that's what Jon Povill thought, too - right up until they didn't renew his contract because of his friendship with Jacob Epstein.

Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™

Re: Sliders Season 4....so what do we REALLY think about it?

You know something just dawned on me, was the "prom" blue tuxedo worn by Jerry intentionally similar to the Spinning Tops Cry Like a Man Rembrandt tuxedo?