I've written 10 SLIDERS screenplays. The first one, "Slide Effects," opens with Quinn waking up to discover time has been rewound to the Pilot. All his friends are alive and well, home is normal, only Quinn remembers sliding and the deaths of Wade and the Professor and the Kromagg invasion and the cliffhanger. The situation is revealed to be a Kromagg telepathic simulation along with all of Seasons 3 - 5.

"Slide Effects" was a plot by series co-creator Tracy Torme. It was the Season 4 premiere he would have done had he returned -- but he would have reset the show to after "The Guardian." My version of his story, however, erases "The Guardian" and all of Seasons 3 - 5 because to me as a fan, SLIDERS is the original cast with scripts by Tracy Torme and Robert K. Weiss and Steve Brown and Jacob Epstein and filmed in Vancouver. All these episodes set in Los Angeles strike me as an awkward Kromagg trick anyway.

Later, I wrote a 2013 reboot of SLIDERS which never went anywhere after the pilot script, but it led to writing the six part SLIDERS REBORN, my idea for what a 20th anniversary Netflix movie series would have been like for SLIDERS. REBORN made references to Seasons 1 - 5 in totality: the first script has guest-stars/doubles from all five seasons including Dr. Sylvius ("The Breeder"), Arlo ("Please Press One"), Jack ("Net Worth"), Ms. Hanley ("The Guardian), Amy ("The Chasm"), Sheilah Brice ("Slide Like an Egyptian" and "Heavy Metal") and the later scripts brought in Maggie, Diana, the Dream Masters, the dinosaurs, the super-intelligent snakes, the remote controlled cars that shoot lasers, the underground Morlocks and others. There's even a special script featuring Mallory and a role for Charlie O'Connell in the finale.

My feeling by REBORN was that it was important for a 20th anniversary story to respect *all* of SLIDERS, not just the two seasons and to declare that it is all canon and it's all SLIDERS so long as Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are presented as *the* Sliders.

So, when you ask me to be selective with Season 3 episodes -- that's not something I can do myself because if I were to be selective, I'd only want Seasons 1 - 2 and if I were to look at Season 3, I'd accept all of it, embrace all of it and find some way to reconcile and build upon it.

At this point, you're asking us to tell you what your opinion would be if you watched the episode, and since only you are you, the only way to answer the question of whether or not it's worth watching for that plot thread is for you to watch it yourself and determine if it was worth your time.

Yeah, I'll probably do that and see for myself, but if you're not sure, the episode is probably not that essential.

ireactions wrote:

Bolin wrote:

Thanks for your replies.
Is "Last of Eden" really essential? does it conclude something about the professor?

It has Rembrandt learning that the Professor is sick which is pretty essential...

(... for the Mike Truman scripts on Earth 317!)

I mean essential if we're talking about the produced episodes, if we want to stop mid season 3.

At this point, you're asking us to tell you what your opinion would be if you watched the episode, and since only you are you, the only way to answer the question of whether or not it's worth watching for that plot thread is for you to watch it yourself and determine if it was worth your time.

Bolin wrote:

Thanks for your replies.
Is "Last of Eden" really essential? does it conclude something about the professor?

It has Rembrandt learning that the Professor is sick which is pretty essential...

(... for the Mike Truman scripts on Earth 317!)

I mean essential if we're talking about the produced episodes, if we want to stop mid season 3.

Thanks for your replies.
Is "Last of Eden" really essential? does it conclude something about the professor?

It has Rembrandt learning that the Professor is sick which is pretty essential...

(... for the Mike Truman scripts on Earth 317!)

The Fire Within to me is terrible.  It also starts out pretty good imo but then just gets awful.  I like the location they used though (the old factory). 

And Exodus Part 1 is good.  Again, the second part gets ridiculous.  Rickman really was as bad as the Kromaggs for sliders.

Thank you!  But could we move a better episode at the end to work better as a finale? would "Murder Most Foul" work? or would the professor's illness create a continuity problem?

If you don't necessarily care about the order, move "Season's Greedings" to the end. It's got such a wrap-up vibe it even ends with a freeze frame before rolling to credits.

I can have a successful collaboration with a writer who produced a good chunk of content and together mine those ideas for original content and still think it's ridiculous. I even contributed to the madness back in the day. But at the end of it all, none of my stories were turned into a produced and televised episode of the third season of Sliders, so I can't recommend any of it to someone who is looking for a best-of list.

And I would argue that efforts like Earth 317 and T4 are course corrective. They literally exist to provide an alternative to the way the show ran off the rails.

That's the short version?

The Season 3 I propose is merely 23 stories which is certainly shorter than the 25 episodes in the actual Season 3 and the Mike Truman Season 4 is a mere 13 stories.

Oh, anyone can do a short list. You've done a great job!

Only one of these stories actually qualifies as course-corrective; the rest are just stories of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo exploring a parallel world. And I don't think you really consider any of these stories "ridiculous" seeing as you have had a fairly intense and (creatively) successful collaboration with the writer who produced a good chunk of this content and together eagerly mined a lot of his fanfics for ideas in original content.

The Truman era picks up after "Murder Most Foul" (and "The Last of Eden") and contains a resolution to both the Logan St. Clair arc and the Professor's illness and is the only game in town for that.

Bolin, if you want a reduced season three that keeps the main cast and deals with its lame attempts at continuit, try this, in this order:

Double Cross
Rules of the Game
Dead Man Sliding
The Guardian
Desert Storm [ONLY FOR THE ARTURO ILLNESS STORYLINE]
Dragonslide [mostly for the Wade/Rembrandt B-story]
The Prince of Slides
Seasons Greedings
Murder Most Foul
Slide Like an Egyptian
Last of Eden [ONLY FOR THE ARTURO ILLNESS STORYLINE]

The following episodes are dumpster fires and should be avoided:
Electric Twister Acid
The Dream Masters
The Fire Within (one of the worst episodes produced with the original cast)
State of the Art (one long boring yawn of storytelling)
Paradise Lost

Followed by some stories written by Nigel Mitchell, arguably the best SLIDERS writer to ever work on the property.

All For One
http://freepdfhosting.com/c2567b8241.pdf
Weightless
http://web.archive.org/web/200710140743 … tless.html
Bloodline
http://freepdfhosting.com/464c4d00fa.pdf
Double Trouble
http://web.archive.org/web/200808280600 … ouble.html
Summer's End
http://web.archive.org/web/200710140745 … ummer.html
Keep On Trekkin'
http://web.archive.org/web/200808280601 … ekkin.html
Underground
http://web.archive.org/web/200810110948 … rgrnd.html
No Smoking
http://web.archive.org/web/200810110946 … oking.html
Chase (with Jules Reynolds)
http://web.archive.org/web/200811212316 … chase.html
High Society (with Jules Reynolds)
http://web.archive.org/web/200810110948 … ciety.html
Your Ad Here
http://web.archive.org/web/200811212230 … ur_ad.html

Followed by some selections from Diana Jones:

For The Child's Sake
http://web.archive.org/web/200710241156 … dsake.html
A Second Chance
http://web.archive.org/web/200710241608 … chanc.html
Wade's Idea
http://web.archive.org/web/200710241554 … eidea.html
The Cry of the Birds
http://web.archive.org/web/200710241556 … birds.html

One story by Maureen Johnson:

To Dream of the Promised Land
http://web.archive.org/web/200710240240 … mised.html

And then some stories by Jules Reynolds:

Depthcharge
http://web.archive.org/web/200710140750 … hchrg.html
Consequences
http://web.archive.org/web/200710140749 … onseq.html
The Gift
http://web.archive.org/web/200710140751 … /gift.html
Chill
http://web.archive.org/web/200710140752 … chill.html

A final two stories by Nigel Mitchell:

Slide Rulers
http://web.archive.org/web/200710140744 … ulers.html
Sliders/X-Files
http://freepdfhosting.com/2e80122e71.pdf

I think the crossover with the X-FILES makes for a great season finale and that all of the above form a very nice alternate Season 3 or Season 6. I like to imagine that right after "The Seer," the show reset itself and carried on with the original journey for Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. And while I think it could go on forever, there comes a point when a conclusion is longed for.

It's at this point that we move into some Season 3 episodes, first "Double Cross" (Logan St. Clair is introduced) and "The Guardian" (it's revealed that Arturo is dying). We watch all the episodes up to "The Last of Eden" (it has Rembrandt finding out that Arturo is sick). But we don't go to "The Exodus" after that.

Instead, we go to some selections from Earth 8950, all terrific stories by Mike Truman, set post-Season 3 but ignoring Arturo's death:

From Earth Prime With Love, by Mike Truman
http://www.slidersweb.net/otherworlds/8950/401.htm
Nobody Move
http://www.slidersweb.net/otherworlds/8950/403.htm
The Thriller is Gone
http://www.slidersweb.net/otherworlds/8950/405.htm
The Missiles of November
http://www.slidersweb.net/otherworlds/8950/407.htm
Checkers
http://www.slidersweb.net/otherworlds/8950/409.htm

After that, we come into the homestretch -- a final eight-episode run of stories by Mike Truman where he brings the SLIDERS saga to a grand climax and a fitting conclusion. Truman's E317 series is meant to replace the final eight episodes of Season 3 (so nothing from "The Exodus onward happened in this continuity) and I think it serves our purposes well here.

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