I got an email recently asking if I collaborated with Tracy Torme when writing the "Slide Effects" screenplay based on his story idea.
https://earthprime.com/etcetera/slide-effects-2 The short answer is no and putting Tracy Torme on the title page is somewhat deceptive. (My email writer can stop reading now. Haha!)
Torme told me his story idea in 2000 and I dismissed it until 2011 when I wrote it. In addition, the script as it stands is severely contradictory to his wishes and style. It is not the script Torme would have written nor does it achieve the goals he would have wanted to accomplish with his concept. But it's his idea; while I have some gifts for writing stories about *the* sliders, I simply don't have the talent of coming up with Torme's simple, straightforward, elegant, beautiful means of restoring Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo in his hypothetical Season 4 premiere.
Having Quinn wake up to find that time has been rewound to the Pilot is the perfect way to open a new season of SLIDERS where a lot of confusing events have taken place in the previous season(s). Finding Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo alive and well in this scenario is ideal. Revealing that the situation is a Kromagg trick along with all the episodes produced during Torme's absence from the show is very clever and a little mischievous.
The thing about "Slide Effects" as Torme conceived it: he came up with the idea before the cast was mutilated, so he wasn't trying to come up with a story to fix everything that went wrong. He just wanted a season premiere that would re-establish the characters and the concept; he didn't imagine this premiere coming after all the characters and the concept had been warped and twisted and broken. And had he actually produced it, it's unlikely Torme would have consented to watch the episodes he'd missed, so there would have been no specific references to the episodes he was removing from continuity.
The "Slide Effects" script has 'clips' from episodes of Seasons 3 - 5 with the sliders of Season 2 reacting to them. There's a specific explanation for the continuity gaffes. There's an explanation for Quinn's odd behaviour in "Mother and Child." It's very clearly a psychodrama produced by an upset fan demanding an in-universe explanation for real world negligence, and I simply don't see Torme (or any professional TV producer) making television that exists to comment on other television so specifically.
I think Torme would have, instead, focused on the characterization: what if Quinn is tempted to stay in this perfect simulation of home and to let his friends have the illusion of having never been away? What if the Kromaggs offer Quinn this conclusion to the sliders' journey instead of whatever horrors may await them -- in exchange for some aspect of the sliding equation that will further empower the Dynasty? And what if Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo refuse, saying that while they miss home, sliding has made them stronger, smarter, kinder, better -- and they wouldn't trade their friendships and adventures for a facsimile?
Also, the "Slide Effects" script ultimately declares that everything after "As Time Goes By" was part of the Kromagg simulation and that Quinn had the tracking device in his brain. This is fundamentally at odds with Torme's wishes; he would have rewound time to after "The Guardian" and he believed the tracking device was in Arturo, not Quinn. I decided to change that because I wanted the implant to be the reason why Quinn was experiencing Seasons 3 - 5 and because, if "Slide Effects" were the last SLIDERS story, the unfinished threads of Logan St. Clair and the Professor's illness would no longer be a factor.
It's not inaccurate to have Torme's name on "Slide Effects," but I do consider it a degree of false advertising because it suggests that Torme would have written or would approve of this version of his story. I did that because, in 1996, after Captain Kirk had been killed off, there was a STAR TREK novel called THE RETURN which resurrected the character. It would have been dismissed as a meaningless STAR TREK novel like the 40 - 50 published every year, but THE RETURN had significance because it was STAR TREK: THE RETURN BY WILLIAM SHATNER.
While STAR TREK novels are not canon, Shatner's name gave THE RETURN weight even though in reality, the novel was written by veteran TREK novelists Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens based on phone calls with Shatner who would read the manuscript before it was published -- and I was unquestionably stealing that marketing by using a memory of an AOL Instant Messenger chat session with Torme, knowing that TRACY TORME'S SLIDE EFFECTS grabbed more attention than IREACTIONS' SLIDERS FANFIC.
I'm actually seeing a lot of this sort of crediting in post-"Slide Effects" spin-off media with other franchises. Two years after "Slide Effects," comic book publisher IDW announced THE X-FILES: SEASON 10, a comic book continuation with series creator Chris Carter's name on the covers, given top billing and suggesting that he was writing the comics. In reality, the comics were scripted by comic veteran Joe Harris and Carter would review the scripts at most. Carter vetoed one element of the comics -- the SEASON 10 villain was originally a teenaged William Mulder. Carter asked that the comics not use William and the writer complied.
Later, the FOX Network commissioned a tenth television season of THE X-FILES which flatly ignored the comic books and made it clear that the only 'canon' was on TV. IDW would relaunch THE X-FILES comics with the same writer, now doing standalone tie-ins to the TV SEASON 10 and continued to put Carter's name first on the cover -- but the SEASON 10 comics being ignored by the TV's tenth season made it clear that the name was meaningless marketing.
Carter's name on the X-FILES comics, like Torme's name on the "Slide Effects" script, certainly suggested some legitimacy to the material. The IDW comics publisher understood that fans would only engage with the content if it were presented as an actual, approved continuation to THE X-FILES.
I'm seeing a lot of that now even after THE X-FILES comics imploded. The BUFFY comics were steered by Joss Whedon working with writers from the TV show, but the finale series, BUFFY: THE RECKONING, was by Whedon's own admission largely written by Christos Gage with Whedon merely polishing the scripts after Gage was done.
A recent run of FIREFLY comic books boasted the WHEDON writing credit on the covers. The writer was Joss Whedon's brother, Zack, although Joss himself did review the material. Whedon's name is prominent on the subsequent comics written by Greg Pak and he is billed as overseeing the FIREFLY novels even though writers James Lovecraft and Tim Lebbon are the ones who really write them. The name sells the product. In some ways, the name is somewhat deceitful, but it's also part of the game. It's an invitation to let fans accept the tie-in as canonical while leaving their decision to their own discretion.
Anyway. In the next few days, I am going to revise the "Slide Effects" title page to make it clear that this is not a script that Torme wrote or would write, but that the idea is his and his alone.