ireactions wrote:

It is nobody's sexual fantasy to have their neck snapped by a parasite.

I've been on the internet long enough to know that anything and everything is somebody's kink.  I'll agree this is likely not a common one.

You find me an example of this and I'll revise my statement accordingly.

"Lisa the Iconoclast" sees Lisa banned from the Springfield Historical Society for three months, but I worried that "three months" would be taken seriously whereas three minutes can be taken seriously and still be harmless.

As you "didn't mind" "The Breeder," I have no choice: you are hereby banned from the SLIDERS community; you, your children and your children's children. For three minutes.

I would say that the most scathing indictment of "The Breeder": the Season 3 showrunners wanted to make a softcore porn movie and yet, even by those standards, they completely failed; "The Breeder" is not sexy.

It is nobody's sexual fantasy to have their neck snapped by a parasite.

I couldn't help but chuckle at your Simpsons reference there in the first line.

I tried watching it. Once. It was God-awful. And all it did was reinforce why I hated Peckinpah's takeover of Sliders and everything that happened thereafter.

It is nobody's sexual fantasy to have their neck snapped by a parasite.

I've been on the internet long enough to know that anything and everything is somebody's kink.  I'll agree this is likely not a common one.

I would say that the most scathing indictment of "The Breeder": the Season 3 showrunners wanted to make a softcore porn movie and yet, even by those standards, they completely failed; "The Breeder" is not sexy.

It is nobody's sexual fantasy to have their neck snapped by a parasite.

ireactions wrote:

On the Season 3 monsters in general -- I always figured Quinn and Arturo would whip up some inventive solutions with something of Torme's sense of humour -- such as where the key elements to defeating the zombies, animal-human hybrids, vampires, scarab and robots could be a stick of butter, a jar of aspirin, a tin of peanuts, an insulin kit, cough syrup and a case of golf balls. I've been thinking about this a lot.

Yes, what Sliders really needed was to be more like Macgyver

I always felt I learned about penicillin from the Fever episode.   Seriously.  And I think its more what JRD wanted Sliders to be. So it could inspire young people around science, etc.

On the Season 3 monsters in general -- I always figured Quinn and Arturo would whip up some inventive solutions with something of Torme's sense of humour -- such as where the key elements to defeating the zombies, animal-human hybrids, vampires, scarab and robots could be a stick of butter, a jar of aspirin, a tin of peanuts, an insulin kit, cough syrup and a case of golf balls. I've been thinking about this a lot.

Yes, what Sliders really needed was to be more like Macgyver

But I mean... What did you *really* think?

It is so obvious from watching "The Breeder" that nobody writing or producing this show has any respect for the concept or characters and that nobody in charge cares about this show or its viewers and fans. "The Breeder" is David Peckinpah and Alan Barnette looking at you, Surf Dance Chris and sliders5125, and telling you flat out, "We think you are worthless."

And yet... I think that when looking at a franchise, it's important to treat all of its past elements with love and respect even as you avoid their flaws. Tracy Tormé would beat me senseless for saying this, but I see no reason why SLIDERS can't do monster movies. Any story is conceivably a SLIDERS story.

But preferably, the result would be a SLIDERS story that happened to feature monsters ("Invasion") as opposed to a monster movie that happened to feature the sliders (Season 3). Admittedly, my favourite Season 3 monster is David Peckinpah.

In my view, creatures like the radioactive worm and the scarab and the breeder parasites originate from realities which seem to have been damaged by some cosmically indescribable event resulting in the (pseudo)scientific nature of reality having been bent and mis-shapen. However, I imagine that Quinn would declare that while the principles of science, logic and reason are bent, they are not broken.

In his view, each and every one of these supernatural and paranormal creatures operate on rules, just not the rules he'd expect.Understand the rules and the sliders can use reasoning and curiosity to identify a weakness.

In a real SLIDERS story that happens to feature a monster, the monsters themselves would represent insanity and mental illness and the sliders' defeating the monsters would represent the triumph of literacy, knowledge, ingenuity, teamwork and friendship.

Which is why, despite my utter loathing and contempt towards the rock star vampires, the breeder parasites, the dragon, the amusement park that feeds on negative emotions, the remote controlled car that shoots lasers and that... Cajero the Spirit of the Skys... thing... well, I accept that they are part of SLIDERS. The problem isn't the ideas; it's their execution and presentation.

There is absolutely no social commentary or satirical points made in the US Government treating the poor as organ farms; there is no effort to explore what kind of mindset produces such a society or to give any meaningful characterization to the people who live in it.

Dr. Sylvius written innanely and flatly as nothing but a malicious antagonist, completely failing to represent this world or its history. The plot deliberately and lazily avoids having the sliders engage with this society at all: they only seek out health care because of Maggie and the focus is on her parasite, not this world.

The sliders are portrayed as ineffectual. Quinn and Rembrandt inexplicably interfere with the authorities arresting a woman, and even if you set aside their total ignorance as to what they're getting involved in, they themselves prove incapable of rescuing the woman and are shown to be incompetent blunderers despite nearly three years of sliding.

The sliders are also portrayed as abrasively toxic towards each other and the world around them. Wade, expressing her emotional turmoil in response to all the death she's seen, receives not comfort from Quinn but verbal abuse. Rembrandt is offended when Quinn fails to check out girls. And at the end, our so-called heroes abandon an entire world to the parasite that they brought into this environment.

The entire production for "The Breeder" is inept by any measure of scripted and visual storytelling. The sliders leaping into the vortex is presented in a take where Jerry O'Connell misses his mark and visibly walks offscreen. The shot of Maggie assaulting the man in Diggs' bar is missing sound effects. Maggie is frozen at the beginning of the episode with no ill-effect on the parasite, yet freezing is presented as the solution at the end. The performances are pathetic as Jerry and Kari are clearly on the verge of laughing at this ridiculous script throughout.

It's very obvious that the creators do not care if their material turns out well and have absolutely no concern for viewer enjoyment whatsoever. And that and everything else in this episode is a complete betrayal of SLIDERS.

I'm not saying Seasons 1 - 2 were perfect television, but they demonstrated effort and care in crafting plausible physical environments that resembled the real world with a meaningfully documentary-style aesthetic in Season 1 that gave way to a more shadowy and vivid approach in Season 2 with great attention to set and prop design, sound, cinematography, blocking and performance -- as opposed to "The Breeder" which can't even render the sliders leaping into the vortex correctly.

Seasons 1 - 2 also made sure that despite the darkness and horror of sliding, it was livened up by Cleavant's comedy, the student/mentor relationship between Jerry and John, the heartfelt compassion of Wade and the friendship with all four. "The Breeder," in contrast, presents the sliders as so utterly poisonous that no viewer would want to spend any time with these people. If the worlds aren't compelling and the people aren't worthwhile, what exactly is the point of this series?

And finally, "The Breeder" turns the sliders into idiots and villains. They can't work together, instead fighting and arguing pointlessly and making every bad situation worse. They are incompetent in trying to save innocent people. Maggie murders several people throughout the episode and this has no emotional consequences for her, presenting a crassly indifferent view to human life that is totally at odds with SLIDERS' original faith in the power of ideas to save people's lives. And then the sliders condemn this world to a fate they inflicted upon it.

"The Breeder" features a poorly considered script that makes little to no use of the SLIDERS storytelling engine and is the production is fundamentally unprofessional in all areas of television storytelling. If you like this episode, you are simply wrong. I can prove it with charts.

The breeder parasites, this script, this episode and the entirety of its contents should be put in the ground, dug up, shot repeatedly to make sure its dead, buried again, and then expunged and erased from SLIDERS history.

Anyway. I made sure to include the breeder parasites in SLIDERS REBORN, specifically on Page 2 of the second script ("Reunion") and the parasites will return again in the sixth and final script. I'm sure you understand why.

the only show I can think of that did not require its female cast members to dress skimpy was Babylon 5.
this show had its fair share of hot babes (Patricia Tallman, Claudia Christian, Andrea Winters, Tracy Scoggins, etc) but it never made a point of showing their curves or bodies.
I applaud this show and its creator...