Search options (Page 22 of 23)

Hey Rewatchers!

New episode is up now! "California Reich" and "The Dying Fields.' http://rewatchpodcast.podomatic.com/ent … 6_13-08_00

It is coming to the E4 Channel (Channel 28 & 29 is a Plus 1 Channel) on the 8th of December and one of it's cast used to be in the U.K. (original) version of "The Inbetweeners".

Check out the Youtube Trailer below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3-OF6SS … ata_player

It did look better than Netflix...it was not remastered, they just put black bars on the left and right of the screen since HUB is an HD network and Sliders was a standard definition show.

Universal took almost 10 years to release all 5 seasons with the finale release being the re-release of Season 1 and season 2 separately(for some reason, I'm guessing Jerry's Funny or Die skit generated some interest or maybe it is doing better on Netflix than I think.)

I'm guessing it sold good enough because  last year they released the complete series on DVD.

It has been said up converting would cost money because of all those glamorous special effects would have to be redone for blu ray

RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

I thought after putting in all that time to producing these pieces, the series deserved to be read and commented on by the dedicated members here.

First, I never expected a PDF screenplay series sequel to a TV show cancelled in ignominy and disgrace 15 years previous to have a huge readership beyond the 15 - 20 people who have read it and sent me messages.

SPOILERS

"Reunion" starts with all the sliders separated and distant. The reason: I have two wishes for the sliders: to know that they made it home and that the 1995 series ended happily, and to see them sliding again. The two are mutually exclusive; sliding, while fun to watch for me, was hellish for them. So I started with 3/4 of the characters retired from sliding. The Laurel Hills character was a plotting necessity; her situation forces the sliders to reluctantly get the band back together and step back into the vortex. 

If you read only 50 pages, then you missed all of this.

There is no way, in my mind, that a Rembrandt in his 60s and an Arturo in his 70s would resume the kind of random sliding that drove the 1995 show. But random sliding is SLIDERS' storytelling engine, so that's where I needed them to end up. If a story requires characters to agree to something they very much don't want to do, the story must construct reasons and situations to justify it. Therefore, REBORN doesn't have the sliders back together until its final pages, and they only start sliding again on its last page. I had to earn it and Laurel was a plotting necessity to make that happen.

As for Quinn's situation -- I don't really know what you're talking about. I do not understand how to apply your comments to my scripts. But on that subject: REBORN has a serious problem at the outset; if Quinn has full control of sliding, then the character is vastly too powerful and impossible to write. However, if after 20 years, Quinn doesn't have full control, then he's incompetent. "Reunion" has Quinn saying he has to be careful with sliding, that he can't make waves, that caution is why he isn't saving the world with slide-tech, and the narrative clearly and unambiguously establishes that he is lying. It's stated outright in the dialogue. All is explained in "Revelation."

If you only read 50 pages, then you missed this as well.

In terms of patterns of feedback, the response to "Reunion" has been uniformly good, the response to "Reminiscence" has been good aside from one area of confusion (fixed). The response to "Revelation" has been more varied -- the main criticism is that the plot is extremely unwieldy and haphazard. Because it's presented entirely in terms of the sliders sitting around talking and the character voices are vivid, it's enjoyable and satisfying as an experience, but troubled and inconsistent as a work of science fiction. It doesn't explore the ideas enough; it's more interested in treating the SLIDERS like sitcom characters where listening to them talk is an end in itself.

Complaints have also been that some "Revelation" scenes are *extremely* long -- although given that REBORN is all about spending time with the characters again, 10 - 15 page scenes of the sliders chattering may not be excessive but instead going above and beyond in giving the readers their reunion.

I would say the most problematic aspect of "Revelation"'s plot is the universal key card that works as a credit card and key with any lock or banking system in any universe. That's ridiculous. At the same time -- Smarter-Quinn is a genius; I don't see how he could function interdimensionally without something like this universal key. I have no idea how it would work; I just know that it's something Smarter-Quinn would have.

The first half of the climax is a long, long, long speech from Smarter-Quinn delivering a massive infodump. But -- it's the voice of Smarter-Quinn, which, to me, is interesting because it's the voice of Smarter-Quinn and a darker pastiche of Jerry O'Connell. Your mileage may vary.

My personal dis-satisfaction with "Revelation" -- the world-building's fine, but there's not enough of the little incidental, minor details of alt-history that Tracy Torme always peppered into his scripts. Tracy's comedic voice is present in the characters; his sense of social satire is not as strongly in evidence.

The most critical complaint with "Revelation," in my view: while all the characters have lively and distinctive voices, Professor Arturo and Wade suffer from the overstuffed plot. While they both have lots of funny moments and neat things to say, they do not have personal goals that are fulfilled by the narrative and it's hard to say who they are as people based on SLIDERS REBORN. Arturo is the wise Professor, Wade is.................................................. funny. But all the characters are funny. I'm going to see if I can't give Wade a good finale in the final script.

I certainly don't think my work is perfect, but I feel like the flaws you point out aren't flaws as much as they are different choices. I chose A. You would choose B.

I hope you will not take this remark harshly given our long friendship, but I firmly believe that good, reasonable criticism is accompanied by specific examples and a proposed solution and not based on a mere 18.12 per cent of the existing material.

Personally, I think Quinn had gotten as action-oriented as he needed to in "As Time Goes By" and "Double Cross" in his multiple fight scenes and physical confrontations. But I don't really think that the willingness to fight or engage in hand to hand combat or gun battles is a sign of progression; the more meaningful growth would be to see Quinn use his intelligence to bypass the need to threaten or attack others. I think Quinn's maturity as the seasons passed should have been shown in higher levels of responsibility and ability -- not in fighting, but rather with sliding technology.

How would he use his knowledge and scientific skills to better the multiverse? To create interdimensional relationships between worlds? To take on larger-scale problems? I think, had Tracy Torme stayed on the show and brought in Marc Scott Zicree, there would have been more variants on the sliding technology: the slidewave, the slidecage, maybe the Combine and other aspects. "Into the Mystic" touched upon interdimensional economics; Zicree approached interdimensional politics.

I also think that part of Quinn's maturity would have been mentoring new characters; as the show progressed, I think new sliders should have been introduced with the originals serving as teachers to the next wave of sliders.

Not sure what amc is?
Production Company? Abbreviation or Acronym?

But yeah, nothing visionary. Enjoyed it though.
It was on Channel 4 here in the UK.

There was the British Actress with Red Hair who was in the I.T. Crowd and the British Actor who played the Assassin in Utopia... A few other familiar faces too.

It's time to revive that old chestnut: how would you bring back SLIDERS at this point?

At least one or two boards ago, we talked about bringing SLIDERS into the twenty-first century and updating it with ongoing continuity and characterization and more complex backstories. I think I messed that thread up -- basically, I declared that we should write scripts based on the thread and we managed to complete one, but it drained the fun out of the thread. It turned a laid back discussion into Work. Since then, I have learned my lesson. So. No work here! Just chatter! You have unlimited budget. Unlimited casting! How would you bring back SLIDERS?

(I have always had a secret fondness for Pete1525's story idea where John Rhys-Davies revisits the characters and locations from "This Slide of Paradise" and confronts animal human hybrids.)

D'you think Quinn in 2015 would still dress the way he did in 1995?

Because this is a question I have to ask myself.

.

Tom said I should do my own SLIDERS podcast. I think the stuff I have to say about SLIDERS is better said in scripts.

SLIDERS REBORN is an effort to give SLIDERS something that it currently lacks, even with "Slide Effects." You'll see what I mean.

"Slide Like an Egyptian." I honestly don't know what to make of this episode and my reaction mirrors Tom and Cory almost exactly. The episode is very strangely edited with scene to scene progression lost as character motives fade in and out of the story. Quinn's death is a moment in a muddled, confused, disorienting episode and leaves me completely cold. The sliders stumbling across a replacement timer that works pretty much the same way the old one did is just baffling to me. It knocked me out of the story completely. The scarab special effect is appalling. Why are the creators of Season 3 so utterly convinced that special effects will attract an audience when the special effects are so terrible?

I really can't figure out what the point of this episode was beyond David Peckinpah's wish to have the Torme timer destroyed and replaced with one he can call his own. As Cory and Tom note, Michael Mallory's advice to Quinn is meaningless nonsense. There's no real exploration of the Egyptian alt-history. This episode is a boring mess and it's hard to tell what they were going for.

With "Paradise Lost," we come to one of the most loathed episodes of SLIDERS ever made. Tom and Cory note all the obvious, glaring errors throughout the story from misdelivered dialogue to silly chronological errors and baffling contradictions in how this town keeps its secrets or discovered the immortality-granting substances.

"Paradise Lost" features two of the worst guest-characters on SLIDERS. Trudy is appalling, claiming to be trying to save innocent people while only ever providing vague, unspecific warnings that have never saved a single person. Laurie is a non-entity paraded in front of the camera as a Baywatch babe, so dull that Tom and Cory have trouble remembering her scenes. And there's an alarming lack of oversight such as Quinn addressing the Professor as "Max" or actors confusing the words "do" and "don't."

This episode is a clear reflection of how the Season 3 production is unprofessional. They commission scripts for SLIDERS even when the pitches clearly lack parallel universe story elements, which reflects the showrunner's indifference to the series. They permit scripts to be filmed without any concern for introducing guest-characters or scene-to-scene progression or reviewing dialogue, indicating that the script editor is not on the job. They permit actors to mis-read dialogue and do not do reshoots, suggesting the script supervisor is either incompetent or being ignored. All this leads to a nonsensical final product.

I think, earlier in the season, some of the Season 1/2 writers (Tony Blake, Paul Jackson, Nan Hagan) were still writing for the show they knew in Season 2, so you'd get episodes like "Double Cross" and "Dead Man Sliding" which merge the Season 3 spectacle/action approach with Season 1/2 storytelling elements. You had writers like Eleah Horwitz writing perfectly decent stories like "The Prince of Slides" and "Season's Greedings," aiming for the same. These were writers who, I think, were willing to do their own quality control on their material. David Peckinpah did the same for himself on "Murder Most Foul."

But then there are the scripts where the writers were either not reviewing their own material or there were changes being made to film material more cheaply and more quickly but without any concern for coherence or watchability.

In Season 1, Tracy Torme, Robert K. Weiss and Jon Povill were often rewriting scripts. "Last Days" and "Eggheads" were heavily redone. "As Time Goes By" had multiple writers working on the individual threads. "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome" was heavily workshopped. With Season 3, little to no effort in this area is present. "Paradise Lost" is a marker -- the Season 3 episodes that follow are mostly from scripts that have not been reviewed for basic professional standards (introductions, exposition, in-character dialogue, basic scene-to-scene progression) or have been rewritten in ways that aren't concerned with those standards.

"The Last of Eden" also reflects all the problems that result when scripts aren't being reviewed with these concerns in mind. Cory and Tom explore how the underground society makes no sense and are wildly inconsistent in the threat they pose and the timeline presented by the episode makes no sense whatsoever. The script raises questions about the Gineers that aren't explored in the slighest. The script plunges the sliders into a plot that makes no effort to explore the surroundings or the civilization in any meaningful or informative way, treating every guest-character in this episode as a threat or a mechanism to move the plot to its tedious conclusion.

Episodes like "Double Cross" and "Dead Man Sliding" showed that SLIDERS could give FOX the light entertainment and action-spectacle they wanted while still telling stories with alternate histories and strangers in strange lands. But in the end, the problem isn't even that Season 3 reducing alt-history for doing monsters and horror and fantasy. Any story is conceivably a SLIDERS story; even a story without a strong alternate history is potentially a SLIDERS story. The problem is that Season 3 is doing *bad* monster movies and horror movies and fantasy movies. This regime has no concern for quality or viewer enjoyment and "Paradise Lost" is the point at which this is consistently indicated in nearly every episode that follows.

My thing with Firefox is purely political. I don't like how they do business, so I won't do business with them. Probably nothing that most people would care about.

I don't think it's a good idea.

I don't think Tom and Cory completely captured my opinion, which is this: you can have new actors play Quinn the boy genius, Arturo the bombastic man of wisdom, Wade the moral crusader and Rembrandt the outdated showbiz icon. But trying to have new actors imitate Jerry, John, Sabrina and Cleavant creates an awkward uncanny valley effect where all the audience will notice is how the imitation is either wildly off-the-mark or close but not-quite-right.

It's also a crappy situation for the actor. Instead of trying to capture the emotion, intensity and dynamic of a scene, they're trying to capture what some other actor might have done with the scene. It doesn't make for a good performance.

Even Robert Floyd, whose Jerry-impersonation is perfect, wasn't keen on imitating Jerry. He didn't think it was a good idea for him to play Quinn 1.0 and only Quinn 1.0. because he felt the audience would get tired of it and he would simply be copying another actor. His opinion was that it would be best if he could constantly shift between Quinn and Mallory. That way, imitating Jerry would just be one part of creating something new.

In any case, guess what? A new episode is up! We discuss Murder Most Foul and Slide Like An Egyptian! Go get it!

RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

You guys really helped me relive the Fire Within. In just a little way, I feel like this podcast (along with sliderscast) have been almost like Sliders returning.  No, it's not new episodes but it allows me to have something new to look forward to every week and to be able to re-engage in the sliders world through a passive entertainment experience.  So thank you.

Thank YOU for listening! We really appreciate it! I agree too, when I started listening to the Sliderscast it felt like it was revival as well!

Getting set to sit down and discuss The Prince of Slides as well as that utterly amazing, incredibly well-written seminal episode, The Fire Within. Got anything to say about those episodes? Post it here within the next hour!