ireactions wrote:

I will do this for you. I still have the Word file. And I just got some new screenwriting software that can convert a Word document into a properly formatted screenplay (although some minor edits are needed to correctly mark dialogue as dialogue, transitions as transitions, etc). It'd also be good to get a proper version of the SLIDERS: DECLASSIFIED logo as you envisioned it. I will send you the PDF in a few days.

There’s probably a few minor revisions I’ll make first.  I’ll send you that when I can.

I just, in a forum PM, sent you a link to a draft of the PDF. It obviously doesn't have your revisions, but I made a title page and put a graphic on Page 4 and put it together because I wanted you to get a sense of how the PDF can look. I'm so excited that you'll be releasing DECLASSIFIED!

**

My niece writes SUPERNATURAL fanfic and my opinion is generally that she struggles with converting Sam and Dean into prose. The characters were designed to be performed.

When I put "Slide Effects" together as a screenplay, it first like an awkward substitute for an actual TV episode. But then, as I included more description than a real teleplay would contain and put all the acting into the script, I found that that the script wasn't a second-rate alternative – it was a meaningful experience in its own right. At the time, I attributed that to the content being an actual story from the show's creator and because it could lay some claim to canonicity.

Later, I read SLIDERS DECLASSIFIED and I realize TF wrote it as a blueprint for a film or a comic and not a product for the audience to consume. But I found his script had all the strengths of the screenplay format. His scene descriptions choose sparse but select details that evoke a wider picture. His dialogue is tight and immediate and conveys characterization within a few sentences. His exposition is efficient and clear. His script pages are filled with personality, warmth and that trademark SLIDERS charm and humour of the Torme era.

I loved SLIDERS DECLASSIFIED as a script and it made me realize that the screenplay format was not a substitute for TV and should and could be treated as a valid medium in its own right with its own strengths and advantages to capitalize upon.

Every page left me with a goofy smile and I think that's why I proceeded to write eight more SLIDERS scripts and focused so heavily on comedy myself. That said -- while I have a lot of messages from readers telling me that SLIDERS REBORN felt like SLIDERS, I think what they really meant was that the *sliders* felt like the characters we all knew (although Transmodiar considered them overwrought, overwritten, overly exaggerated caricatures).

In contrast, SLIDERS DECLASSIFIED felt like SLIDERS: it has none of the original cast, but it has that elusively comedic and satirical tone, that whimsical sense of gentle dramedy, that charming sense of wit and insight touched with uncommon wisdom voiced by flawed and troubled characters. Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo aren't in DECLASSIFIED, yet DECLASSIFIED truly captures the spirit of the show whereas REBORN only captured the fan memory of the characters.

The only issue I take with DECLASSIFIED now: I felt there was a role in there who was clearly written for Allison Mack which is never again going to be a good thing to feel.

I would love to see a new comic book series with stories that take place in between episodes from all seasons of Sliders. The Acclaim series of comics did this back in the day, but it happened during the Arturo years, so we never got to see any post Arturo comic book stories. Stories about the worlds the show didn’t show (or the ones that only existed in bumpers).

Back to The Future’s comic book series by IDW that has been around since 2015 has been amazingly good. This series tells canon stories that take place either before, during, for after the trilogy. Nearly every story has been beyond amazing. This would work well for Sliders.

The main problem is that it would have limited appeal to people who aren't already Sliders fans.  It will be very confusing to newcomers once you start jumping around the timeline; one issue is the original quartet, next one has Maggie & Colin, the one after that has Diana & Mallory.

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Would you be okay with a new version of Sliders where we start a new journey with a different group of Quinn/Wade/Rembrandt/Arturo?  So Sliders Season 1-5 was the same Rembrandt, but now there's a new group?

I'm not quite sure I follow. Are you suggesting we have the exact same actors playing their characters now from the beginning all over again?

Yes.  Would that be disingenuous to the original characters to say "those events happened, but now we're following a different set of sliders played by the same actors"?

Would you be okay with a new version of Sliders where we start a new journey with a different group of Quinn/Wade/Rembrandt/Arturo?  So Sliders Season 1-5 was the same Rembrandt, but now there's a new group?

I'm not quite sure I follow. Are you suggesting we have the exact same actors playing their characters now from the beginning all over again? Or new actors playing those same characters as alternates ala Mallory and Logan?

Yeah that would be really interesting to see.

I will do this for you. I still have the Word file. And I just got some new screenwriting software that can convert a Word document into a properly formatted screenplay (although some minor edits are needed to correctly mark dialogue as dialogue, transitions as transitions, etc). It'd also be good to get a proper version of the SLIDERS: DECLASSIFIED logo as you envisioned it. I will send you the PDF in a few days.

There’s probably a few minor revisions I’ll make first.  I’ll send you that when I can.

I think I’ll go ahead and just put the script out there for any interested.  It will take some time to get it into a presentable format on PDF, but maybe it will bring back something of what you loved about the series.  It’s called “Sliders: Declassified”.

I will do this for you. I still have the Word file. And I just got some new screenwriting software that can convert a Word document into a properly formatted screenplay (although some minor edits are needed to correctly mark dialogue as dialogue, transitions as transitions, etc). It'd also be good to get a proper version of the SLIDERS: DECLASSIFIED logo as you envisioned it. I will send you the PDF in a few days.

While the comics proposals were a collection of ideas with some sample art, I took it further in 2008 when SL4ever proposed on this forum the idea of a fan film.  It would be bare bones budget with likely no access to the actors (at best the possibility of one); and I was inspired to write a full script for it.  It was new characters; new situations; and served as a continuation but in more of a Next Generation context.  It was again a creation of something I would like to watch; something I would buy.  And in the end, I really love it.

With no fan film materializing, I had considered making a bare bones online comic adaptation of the script (like the pencils only “The Ten Doctors”), but it just never came together.  The last few years have been especially difficult since my father’s stroke that left him unable to take care of himself; my time just seems to evaporate.

I think I’ll go ahead and just put the script out there for any interested.  It will take some time to get it into a presentable format on PDF, but maybe it will bring back something of what you loved about the series.  It’s called “Sliders: Declassified”.

From a 2000 standpoint -- all the emotional difficulties Slider_Quinn21 raises are too convoluted for SLIDERS because they interrupt what should be a very simple, straightforward premise: the sliders are lost in the multiverse trying to find a way back home. Addressing merged Quinns and Kromagg invasions and Kromagg Prime origin stories and resurrecting Wade and wrong Arturos is too complicated, and even pilight's dismissals (Quinn and Wade don't remember their traumas!) would still require addressing them. There is, in fact, a decidedly unsettling undertone to saying Wade should simply forget that David Peckinpah raped her.

I agree with all of that.  I'm just saying that if someone were determined to do a revival of the original series with the original characters there are ways of making it work.

IMO, the best we could hope for in that ballpark would be a reunion movie that served as a jumping off point for a new generation of Sliders.

**

From a 2000 standpoint -- all the emotional difficulties Slider_Quinn21 raises are too convoluted for SLIDERS because they interrupt what should be a very simple, straightforward premise: the sliders are lost in the multiverse trying to find a way back home. Addressing merged Quinns and Kromagg invasions and Kromagg Prime origin stories and resurrecting Wade and wrong Arturos is too complicated, and even pilight's dismissals (Quinn and Wade don't remember their traumas!) would still require addressing them. There is, in fact, a decidedly unsettling undertone to saying Wade should simply forget that David Peckinpah raped her.

It's also counterintuitive to bring all this continuity into a story only to say none of it matters anymore -- and it's also far more than could fit into a TV episode or a comic book, and even if you could, what is the point of any version of SLIDERS that's more concerned with resurrections and de-mergings than it is with exploring parallel worlds? That's probably why TF's LOST SLIDES concept is getting such a good response in this thread.

Slide_Override's dismay at wiping out 65 episodes is well-founded, but that's like a patient protesting life-saving surgery because he's scared of sharp objects. Tracy Torme seemed conscious of this as well when he came up with "Slide Effects" as a Season 4 premiere that would erase everything after "The Guardian" and when he suggested it as a hypothetical Season 6 premiere. His story would have had Quinn waking up after "This Slide of Paradise" or "The Seer" to discover time rewound to the Pilot with home uninvaded, Wade and Rembrandt and Arturo alive and well and only Quinn remembering sliding. The emphasis would not be on the traumas of Seasons 3 - 5 but rather Quinn's disorientation and confusion at his present/past situation and how sliding doesn't seem to exist.

The situation would be revealed as a Kromagg trick along everything after "The Guardian." But, as a concession to the 21 or 65 episodes he'd be erasing, Torme had *Quinn* retain all his memories while Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo would only recall Seasons 1 - 2 and the first five episodes of Season 3. That was his solution to SlideOverride's protests: one slider would remember all of it, the other three would only remember the Torme era. Is it a perfect solution? There is no perfect solution, but a post-"Slide Effects" SLIDERS is certainly in a better place than a post-"Seer" SLIDERS.

More importantly, "Slide Effects" is a story that could fit into a 42 minute timeslot or a double-sized comic book whereas neither Slider_Quinn21 nor I nor pilight nor Temporal Flux have ever been able to present a point-by-point repair process that could reunite the original characters within those constraints. I think even a resurrected Ernest Hemingway would defer to Torme's story on this one.

Admittedly, it's a moot point now since no hypothetical 2018 revival of SLIDERS should be trying to turn clock back to 1996 -- at least not without a successful reboot first (whether in TV or comics). The reimagined BATTLESTAR GALACTICA TV show had a lot of media tie-in comics and inevitably, that led to a comic series set in the original continuity (although it wasn't the first) and that paved the way to a crossover where the 2004 BSG characters met the 1978 version in a universe-spanning storyline.

That's not necessarily true. If John Rhys-Davies had wanted to come back to the series and they brought him back saying it was really our Professor who got left behind on Azure Gate Bridge world, would anyone really have been upset?

There are always exceptions to the rule, but there is a serious underlining reason why it is generally not done. I absolutely would not be upset if they pulled a 'wrong slider slid' scenario ... but that is side-stepping the point at hand.

There is an unspoken pact made between the person who reads/watches/plays a piece of work and the creator of said work. Outside of some obvious exceptions - and they are usually blatant exceptions - that pact states that we will happily go on a journey with a creator in order to explore the worlds, characters and the situation that you have created, regardless of the innate fact that we know full well that no harm will ever come to the main characters of this story. We will create a suspension of disbelief. There may be hundreds of instances where these character will be thrown into mortal danger, and though we know that they will 99.9% of the time always come out of it in one piece, we happily embrace any and all suspensions of disbelief specifically because it is the journey that the creator wants us to go on, that is of critical importance above all else.

However, there are limits to that suspension of disbelief.

When you take away that journey, when you begin to say that death doesn't matter, or even what you thought you saw with that character doesn't matter, then there is a subconscious detachment that takes place. You may very well state that it wouldn't matter personally for you, but it is something that happens on a subconscious level. You take away death, you take away even the fake peril from that pact between creator and viewer, then nothing matters. At what point then does a viewer begin to ask that, if they no longer like a particular aspect of that journey, that they want that changed, since if death doesn't matter, nothing matters. Forget even rules of the world that you have created, if death is something that someone can easily come back from, then everything is fair game. Suspension of disbelief is well and truly shattered.

There may be joy at the 'real' Arturo now ... but where does that lead? I don't like Action Man Quinn compared to the original. Do we then say that there was a real Quinn still sliding out there and I want him back? I detest the character assassination of Head-In-A-Jar Wade. Can I just wipe that entire journey clean, pretend it didn't happen, and pick up a sub series 3 Wade? Can I seriously, and easily, just wipe out series 3-5 as just 'fake alternates' and embrace a series 6 in the shape of the 'real' series 3?

The moment you tell an audience that the journey doesn't matter, that it was a dream, a coma, the wrong character slid -whatever reasoning you want to come up with - you make a huge impact in that suspension of disbelief and, whether you are conscious of it or not, create a divide between the work and the viewer. Hand-waving death in the fashion mentioned here, and ignoring entire character stories and arcs, is a suspension of disbelief one step too far.

On a side note, there is also an entirely separate discussion that could be had about wiping out 3 seasons worth of content, including all of the hard work put in by actors, writers, crews and everyone else contained within that, but that's a whole other discussion to be had.

Arturo was left behind*.  If you look at him as a 360 degree character, he'd immediately be expecting rescue.  Our Arturo had no respect for PTSS Arturo, and he'd assume that the other Sliders would immediately realize he's a fraud.  A lot of Sliders fanfic (mine included) assumes that Arturo could invent a sliding machine and go after his friends, or at the very least, do something with sliding.  When, in reality, the safest thing he could do is stay where he's at and wait for rescue.  Rescue that would never come.  How long would he wait?  Would he want to slide by himself in his late 50s?  60s?  70s?  Or would he just accept the fact that PTSS Arturo had conned his friends and that he was stuck on this facsimile forever?  If the Sliders found him, he'd either have given up or accepted his fate.

* If he wasn't left behind, any hope of resurrecting Arturo is zero

Wade saw Quinn (the love of her life?) fall for some sleazy bimbo, saw her world invaded by monsters, and she was sent to a breeding camp.  Even if she was drugged and didn't know anything that was happening to her, she'd know that her body was used for monstrous experiments.  Then her body was mutilated and she was turned into a sliding computer.  At the end of that episode, she's strongly in a place where she's ready to die.  While she seemed to be quite at peace, it's still a dark place for her to be.

Rembrandt was ripped from his home involuntarily, drafted into a war he didn't fully understand, and eventually found himself adopted into a strong family.  Then he lost a friend and mentor figure, lost his home world, lost other friends, and then found himself in another situation where he'd have to abandon everyone and everything on what could've easily been a suicide mission.  I mean his plan in the Seer is truly nuts.  Has he cracked?  Would five years of sliding be enough?  Is there anything that would draw him back into the fight? He'd be in his 60s now, as well.

Quinn might be the most mentally healthy of them all, but all the others' pain would also weigh on him.  Especially if he ever emotionally returns to his Season 1-2 self.  Once he realizes how much he sacrificed for Kromagg Prime, he'd probably be a wreck too.  Yes, there's a chance that he simply lost the fight with Mallory and retreated into some sort of comatose stage.  But what if he didn't?  All he'd have left to do would be to sit and think about all the mistakes he'd made.  And that'd be 24 hours a day, depending on whether or not a merged consciousness has the ability to sleep.

I mean, you're right.  Maybe Arturo was optimistic, and maybe he understood that PTSS Arturo could trick them.  Maybe Wade really was at peace and getting her body back (somehow) would cleanse her spirit.  Maybe Rembrandt, the most optimistic of them all, could really handle anything the multiverse threw at him.  And maybe being stuck in Mallory also cleansed Quinn's spirit.  As writers, we can spin it however we'd like.

pilight wrote:

[She was drugged and the Kromaggs have mind altering abilities, so she likely wouldn't remember any of what happened after she was captured.  When they encountered her in Requiem she didn't even know where she was.  As for rape, the series never said that explicitly.  I prefer to think she was used as a surrogate; Kromagg egg fertilized by Kromagg male implanted in her for gestation.  Still bad, but not quite as bad.

Quinn also might not remember his time being merged.  Certainly he wouldn't have any memory after New Gods for Old.  It's a manageable problem.

Possibly.  But this is all assumption.  There's just as equally a chance that Wade's experiences would closely match Jessica Jones' (Netflix version).  Even if she couldn't remember everything, she'd view it as a huge violation, and she'd have huge trust issues even if she didn't know that her friends, essentially, stopped looking for her.  And the last we saw her, she was a head locked in a computer

As for Quinn, you're right that he could've been "asleep" after New Gods For Old.  Alternatively, there's a chance that he still experienced everything but couldn't say or do anything.  That's a Black Mirror episode if there ever was one.

It would make a good Black Mirror episode.  It would not make a good Sliders episode.  I've been on the reboot team for a long while, but if they decided to continue the old characters 20 years later it could be done without making it quite so dreary.

[She was drugged and the Kromaggs have mind altering abilities, so she likely wouldn't remember any of what happened after she was captured.  When they encountered her in Requiem she didn't even know where she was.  As for rape, the series never said that explicitly.  I prefer to think she was used as a surrogate; Kromagg egg fertilized by Kromagg male implanted in her for gestation.  Still bad, but not quite as bad.

Quinn also might not remember his time being merged.  Certainly he wouldn't have any memory after New Gods for Old.  It's a manageable problem.

Possibly.  But this is all assumption.  There's just as equally a chance that Wade's experiences would closely match Jessica Jones' (Netflix version).  Even if she couldn't remember everything, she'd view it as a huge violation, and she'd have huge trust issues even if she didn't know that her friends, essentially, stopped looking for her.  And the last we saw her, she was a head locked in a computer

As for Quinn, you're right that he could've been "asleep" after New Gods For Old.  Alternatively, there's a chance that he still experienced everything but couldn't say or do anything.  That's a Black Mirror episode if there ever was one.