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In "World Killer," Quinn-2 believed that he had killed everyone and in thinking that, he didn't believe there was any redemption for him or any way to set things right. When realizing that the Earth's population has merely been displaced, he regains his engagement (and also his arrogance).

As for REBORN -- "Revelation" reveals that the multiverse is dying and Quinn blames himself with his altruism in "Reunion" actually representing his overwhelming guilt, grief, shame and his coping mechanism, so I don't think he's exactly an uncomplicated do-gooder even in REBORN. RCLF actually didn't bother to read past Page 50 of "Reunion" so he missed all that.

Quinn's facade of relentless positivity in "Reunion" was based on his characterization in "Last Days" where even after his double's sliding machine fails, Quinn is convinced to do something positive with what time he has left and cook a meal with Wade and give some comfort to his friend and also "The Guardian" where he reacts to the inevitability of the Professor's death by mentoring his younger self. In "Reunion," he's decided to use what time he has left to make things better as best he can.

That said, for all his abilities, Quinn Mallory is still a slapdash incompetent, emotionally withdrawn, prone to improvising to disastrous effect, a messy dresser, something of a cowardly liar and his idea of a home is a facsimile of the basement in his mother's house, so while he is and ever shall be my childhood hero, he's pretty messed up.

From the thread on The Breeder
http://sliders.tv/bboard/post.php?tid=220&qid=4102

It is oddly reminiscent of disagreements between John Rhys-Davies and Tracy Torme. John saw Arturo as a valiant, stalwart, heroic figure of revolutionary outrage -- he wanted Arturo to be the Doctor from DOCTOR WHO. In contrast, Torme saw Arturo as a working class bungler plodding his way through life with his education and body of knowledge obscuring an insecure and deeply troubled personality.

Strangely, RussianCabbieLotteryFan might have liked the alternate SLIDERS REBORN's version of Quinn. In the early stages, there was some discussion that REBORN might be set on an Earth where sliding wasn't discovered in 1994; Quinn then lost his passion for science. Cut to the present: everyone lives as they would had sliding never existed.

Quinn is a fortysomething tax accountant. Wade reviews smartphones for CNET. Rembrandt runs a coffee bar, but his only real joy is open mike nights when he performs. Arturo is writing study guides for lazy high school students. When Amanda Mallory dies, Quinn revisits his basement for the first time in years, finally realizes what he created 20 years ago, opens a vortex, accidentally drags the other three in with him, loses their home coordinates, and the adventure begins again.

In this version, Quinn most definitely would have been a normal person going about his life without much intention or hope of changing the world around him.

The disagreements over this project have been very interesting. Transmodiar's wish was that SLIDERS REBORN be something that NBCUniversal could and would conceivably fund and film if they were inclined to bring SLIDERS back and when you set aside his issues with plotting, characterization, screenwriting and dialogue, that's his main problem with REBORN, and it's a very reasonable one.

And I accept that; I'm more concerned with imagining it happening within the reality of SLIDERS than imagining it being filmed in our reality. I think the screenplay format can mislead slightly in giving the impression that I honestly think this would be the SLIDERS feature film series. I saw SLIDERS REBORN as being SLIDERS' equivalent of William Shatner's STAR TREK novels where he resurrected his dead character and ended up doing a nine-book series meant not for a general audience, but for people who like STAR TREK so much that they buy STAR TREK novels.

Well, it was very pleasant to hear Jim and Dan back together again and their guest-star added a reasonable third voice to discussing "Double Cross," inexplicable digressions into "The Guardian" aside. As usual, Jim brought a thoughtful, measured and gently sardonic presence to the proceedings while Mr. Stargate relentless ragged on SLIDERS for the crime of not being some other television show entirely.

At one point, Mr. Stargate rants that "Double Cross" uses "throwaway lines of dialogue" to establish the depletion of natural resources as though dialogue written with some naturalism and subtlety to establish the setting is inappropriate and a sign of bad writing due to some arbitrary and completely random set of standards that only Mr. Stargate can apply or appreciate.

Jim and Ian correctly point out that the lack of natural resources and the electricity rationing is actually key to the plot, and even to set up the climax where Logan and her goons can't get into the hotel. However, Mr. Stargate makes up for this with an astute observation that Logan could easily be Evil Scientist #2 and her being Quinn's double doesn't really factor into the story as well as it could or should. If not for this, I would seriously urge Mr. Stargate to reconsider his aptitude and ability to analyze and discuss television on any sensible level.

Overall, it's very nice to have Sliderscast back and to hear them discussing the show again, but due to the massive time gap between this podcast and the last, they have unfortunately forgotten how Season 2 ended. As a result, they are incapable of discussing the massive gulf in style, filming, writing, acting and location that they would see if comparing "The Young and the Relentless" with "Double Cross." Perhaps I shall provide them with yet another lengthy voicemail on the subject.

Debate!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryp51N21vOU

The Avengers wade into the election!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRp1CK_X_Yw

John Oliver compares Hillary and Trump's scandals!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Lfd1aB9YI

SOUTH PARK observes that we are caught between a rock and a hard place!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlqKFlU7YAs

According to Temporal Flux, the period after Sci-Fi bought SLIDERS was one where Torme made a bid to regain control of the show. Torme hoped Universal would see that SLIDERS was a mis-managed mess of unprofessional behaviour under Peckinpah. Unfortunately, with Torme's contract having expired and Peckinpah's contract having another year on it, Universal decided to just go with who they had despite the fact that their producer had alienated two lead actors, permitted shoddy safety standards that got an actor killed, received the worst possible reviews for his episodes in the press, permitted financial mismanagement that resulted in the low production values of the back nine and treated the making of "The Exodus" as a giant rock concert with Roger Daltrey and the Who hired to perform with making the episode treated as something to do between binge drinking sessions.

Looking back -- the problem is probably that television was not seen as a meaningful platform for dynamic pieces of visual art that should court critical and widespread acclaim as well as a devoted and adoring fanbase. Instead, TV was seen as filler between commercials, something produced because you couldn't just show static when not showing ads. It wasn't until the early 2000s that this changed, and it's too bad -- because we were this close to getting this as our Season 4 premiere.

I think what is really sad about aborting the Colin Mallory arc is: it wasn't aborted for story reasons. They didn't find a better storyline; they didn't think it would make for a better show. The arc was aborted because (a) Peckinpah and Dial wanted to upset Marc Scott Zicree and (b) Jerry O'Connell didn't like the idea that Colin wasn't his character's brother. These reasons should not have been allowed to influence the onscreen product, but if David Peckinpah cared about making sure the onscreen product didn't suffer from behind the scenes personalities, John and Sabrina would never have left the show.

And Surf Dance Chris taps into why fans kept watching SLIDERS: hope. The hope that if SLIDERS could get just one more season, at some point, the original sliders would come back to us and be restored. That's why I personally don't mind the ending of "The Seer" with nothing resolved, nothing wrapped up, Rembrandt leaping into the vortex without us knowing what's on the other side. I think that Quinn, Wade and Arturo were waiting on the other side.

I think Season 4 is pretty bad, but a number of strong and stand-out episodes make it look better than it is. "Prophets and Loss" is the first episode in ages with a proper alternate history. "World Killer," "The Alternateville Horror," "Slidecage" and "Slide By Wire" have great science fiction concetps. "Way Out West" is fun.

The main problems are that the production has become just as bad as Season 3 with numerous stories and directions that are even crasser and darker than the monster movie marathon of the latter Season 3 episodes. Home has been invaded, all the sliders' families are dead, Wade is in a rape camp -- and these are subjects SLIDERS can't handle without the characters being too traumatized to explore a new world episodically each week, so they're just ignored. Rembrandt's trauma in Seasons 1 - 2 could be played for laughs, but the subject of Wade is too horrific to deal with in this fashion and it makes it so that lighthearted fare like "Alternateville" and "West" feel completely out of sync.

The show either goes for softball challenges where the stories are wrapped up with clumsy happy endings that don't make sense ("Just Say Yes," "Virtual Slide") or bleakly miserable endings that are depressing ("Common Ground," "The Dying Fields"). Season 4 also has a very compressed, artificial look because of the producers' stupid beyond stupid decision to erect a massive and expensive standing set with the Chandler that forces them to use it in every single episode whether it should be used or not. The early seasons got around this by having generic studio space with set dressing that could be wheeled in and out to turn a single room into a bar, store, cafe, courtroom, hotel, office, etc..

Season 4 is so depressing that even the fun episodes are diminished, it looks cheap and ugly and Jerry O'Connell looks half asleep onstage and Charlie O'Connell's main acting experience came from playing Quinn's dead corpse in "The Young and the Relentless." A few flashes of inspiration from Marc Scott Zicree and Chris Black can't sustain a whole season, sadly. Comparing it with Season 3 isn't terribly meaningful; Season 4 is just bad in different ways.

I have another question for Informant.

I think that when writing "Slide Effects," I was extremely contemptuous of Seasons 3 - 5. I have tried to not do that with SLIDERS REBORN and gone to some lengths to be respectful. Rembrandt grumbles about the time he had to fight 2D beings and a radioactive worm. Arlo Higgins from "Please Press One" has a cameo as does Crowley from SUPERNATURAL (well, Jack from "Net Worth"). It's all played for laughs, but not in a mean way, I think. For example...

From off-camera, Laurel screams. The sliders rush over to her. Laurel points a trembling hand at a display case. Inside is the lifeless corpse of a man in his mid-twenties slumped against the glass.

WADE: "Deric?"
REMBRANDT: (peering at the case) "That's the psychic guy?"
WADE: "No, the other one! Man. He's looking good!"

Laurel looks ready to start crying.

LAUREL: "The guy's dead! He's been mounted like a trophy! He's -- "
WADE: "It's fine, he's a robot."

Laurel looks relieved.

I mean, that's not dismissive or contemptuous, right? I refer to episodes I hate in humourous way, but not in the sense of saying, "My god, that was so stupid!" but rather, "My goodness, we and the sliders have certainly seen a lot of crazy crap, haven't we?"

But... um, I'm concerned about Colin. The character of Colin has never sat well with me simply because I think Quinn works best as a loner, an isolated only child, and the Charlie O'Connell role may have made Jerry happy but did not serve Quinn at all. However, a reader, Christian T. Chung, suggested that I might address the Colin spy-plot and reveal that he was a Kromagg clone. At this point, Colin is so distant from SLIDERS REBORN's concerns that I couldn't see how it could in any way serve REBORN.

But then came a scene where Rembrandt is doing up the Sliders Incorporated boardroom and he puts up a portrait of Mallory, paying tribute to a comrade and friend who is sadly not with us anymore. It then occurred to me -- wouldn't Rembrandt want to put Colin's photograph up as well? But... I just didn't want Colin on the wall. I don't like him, Informant! I don't want him!!! I have accepted Maggie Beckett, Diana Davis, Mallory, the zombies, the mini-scoops and the pirates, but I don't want Colin Mallory!

REMBRANDT: "Could we get Colin up here too?"
QUINN: "Could we not? I'm still getting over finding out that he came out of a Kromagg cloning farm as one of fifteen replicants programmed to kill us."

I was thinking Quinn encountered that Kromagg cloning farm at some point during the 15 year time gap between "The Seer" and SLIDERS REBORN. But now that I've been expressing the importance of respect and courtesy -- isn't it kind of mean-spirited to bring up Colin just to write the bastard off? And also -- I don't put too much stock in actors, but I'm having trouble imagining Jerry O'Connell being prepared to say this line. I think he would refuse to perform it. Unless John were around to tell him to get his ego out of the way and that this is what he gets for bringing his talentless sibling into a leading role?

A part of me wonders if I can argue that Quinn's dialogue is simply reinforcing the original creative intention for Colin. But let's be honest, that line is there because I hate Colin so god damn much. But then shouldn't I just avoid referring to him at all? At the same time -- if Mallory's portrait is going on the wall, it raises the question of why Colin isn't there. Or do we just decide not to have Mallory's portrait at all? What would Informant do? What would Informant do?!?!

So, having been nothing but rudely scornful of my thoughts on the Season 3 monsters and how they could be done well, your proposed alternative is... simply to paraphrase my own ideas back at me but with an extra sentence about negotiation. When it comes from me, it's too much like MACGYVER, but when it comes out of your keyboard, that's absolutely fine.

Clearly, it was a waste of time to take any interest in your opinions since you have none to offer, only sneering derision followed by parroting back the very viewpoints with which you disagreed.

So what you're saying is that there's an episode of MACGYVER where he fights zombies, vampires, animal human hybrids, killer robots and Morlocks? I'm only in the first season; when does he start fighting monsters? I'm looking forward to it.

Well, this post of yours makes me feel better. I think you will approve of how this turns out.

From the Breeder thread:

pilight's sarcastic response hurt my feelings a bit (not that it should stop anyone) because I finished outlining a sequence that has the sliders charging into battle against zombies, dragons, animal-human hybrids, Morlocks, vampires, scarabs, killer robots and the sliders' key armaments are indeed a stick of butter, a bottle of aspirin, bag of peanuts, a flashlight, an insulin kit, some cough syrup and a number of golf balls.

Matt continues to maintain that I'm completely insane on this. I did have to lose the pancake parasites, snakes and the amusement park, sadly. The mini-scoop from "Please Press One" is a maybe.

This ties into yet another question I have for Informant; have you ever had to revise a previous work because your next installment went in an unexpected direction? My issue is that in Part 5, there was a glimpse of the future and that glimpse had a storm of Season 3 monsters attacking the city. However, as I nail down all the details of Part 6, it's become clear to me that a few of the monsters will have to omitted -- specifically the super-intelligent snakes and the pancake parasites (the latter of which already appeared in Part 2, so it's not a snub).

The reason I'm eliminating them -- Part 3 has Quinn briefly reconnecting with the intelligent living flame from "The Fire Within" and Part 6 was originally going to have Quinn defeat the pancake parasites by calling upon the intelligent flame to create a massive burst of fire that would draw in all the heat-craving parasites and cold-blooded snakes and incinerate them but leave the flame too exhausted to contribute more to the fight. I've decided not to do this because... well, there's a certain tone I'm aiming for by using the Season 3 monsters -- a funny, comedic, pleasing, absurd tone of crazy images -- and Quinn burning his enemies to death was not the tone I wanted.

... so I'm going back into Part 5 and removing the lines that specify that the parasites and snakes are coming for the city. It still leaves the zombies and vampires and Morlocks and robots and remote controlled cars that shoot lasers and the animal human hybrids.

Anyway. I'm wondering where Informant stands on this kind of digital chicanery.

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.

Once again, the Rewatch Podcast has seen fit to tell outrageous lies about me. In their Season 2 finale podcast on LOIS & CLARK, Tom and Cory claimed that I'd declined to appear on the podcast and had not recorded an appearance. This is untrue -- I went to extensive efforts in scheduling for us to meet for three hours in Melbourne in the same airport terminal during a layover where we could record together. And despite giving Tom and Cory a second chance, they deceitfully cut my segment from the podcast and made an excuse for my absence.

What follows is a transcript of the missing segment. Draw your own conclusions.

TOM: "And we are very happy to have our good friend ireactions back to talk about Season 2 with us!"
CORY: "I swear to God, if he mentions that other show -- I will kill him! I will kill him!"
ME: "Tom -- !"
TOM: "He's just kiddin'! Hey, no worries, airport security! Cory here's just kidding! So, Season 2 of LOIS & CLARK!"
CORY: "Well, it's kind of up and down, isn't it? The new writing team's Tony Blake and Paul Jackson -- "
TOM: "And they're very inconsistent! I liked the second half better than the first half. I mean, the first half is kind of a generic superhero show and Blake and Jackson reflect that -- "
ME: "I find that Tony Blake and Paul Jackson tend to reflect the leadership they're given; they're professionals doing a professional's job, but they're not going to go above and beyond."
CORY: "Season 1 ended with Lois calling Clark friend and family -- then Blake and Jackson took over and had her treating him like some guy at the office."
TOM: "Yeah, it's weird how Blake and Jackson came in as the second generation of writers and they have, again, an inconsistent approach to respecting the past, just like on SLIDERS -- oh shit -- "
CORY: "Tom, you idiot -- "
ME: "When I say they're professionals doing a professional's job, I mean Blake and Jackson work under the executive producers and networks, they follow their mandates, so if they're told to do a generic superhero show, that's what they do. If they're told to do more romcom stuff, that's what they do. Like in Season 1; their one script followed romcom tropes by introducing Linda King, Lois' old college roommate --"
CORY: "Oh thank God. We made it -- "
ME: "Just like on SLIDERS where -- "
CORY: "God damn it!!! Tom! What've you done?!!?"
ME: "In Season 2, Blake and Jackson wrote 'Love Gods' and 'Gillian of the Spirits' which didn't exactly reflect a passion for creating alternate histories, but executed them competently and professionally by giving the actors lots of fun and memorable things to do and scenes where they bounced off each other well -- and then in Season 3, they introduced Quinn's female double and managed to mesh a more action-oriented approach with the old style in "Double Cross -- "
TOM: "Cory, it's okay, it's okay -- we can cut out that later, we can cut out that later!"
ME: "But then with episodes like 'Dragonslide' and 'The Exodus' and 'Slither,' Blake and Jackson have been told to do monster movies and horror movies and that's what they do; they do as they're told, they're not looking to rock the boat too much -- "
CORY: "Oh for God's sake -- if I wanted to do Sliderscast, I would do Sliderscast -- "
TOM: "And so -- how would you describe Blake and Jackson in a more LOIS & CLARK context?"
ME: "Well, their first three scripts for Season 2 are the generic superhero show, but then they wrote the episode where Lex Luthor comes back -- "
TOM: "There, Cory, you see? We cut out the SLIDERS stuff, we go straight to this in the edited version -- "
ME: "Which really shows how Blake and Jackson are a solid pair of hands. 'Dragonslide,' for example, isn't the most popular episode of SLIDERS -- "
TOM: "No!!!!!"
ME: "'Dragonslide' was filmed with almost no editing or revision to the script, and what that tells us is that Blake and Jackson can create filmable material really quickly in a pressure cooker environment and their scripts are on time and within the budget. With "Love Gods" and "Gillian of the Spirits," their fast work was matched with Tracy Torme and Jon Povill editing and punching up their material, too. Whereas with "The Exodus," all notions of quality control had vanished in a drunken haze and they were carrying out executive directives like blowing up John Rhys-Davies after sucking his brain out and shooting him -- "
CORY: "Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!!!!!!"
ME: "Gacckkkkkk -- gkkkkk -- ghhhh !"
TOM: "Cory! Let go of his neck! Cory, don't -- !"
CORY: "Shut up!!! Shut up!!!! This is the LOIS & CLARK rewatch!!! This is the LOIS & CLARK rewatch!!!"
ME: "Kggghhhhhh! Knnnngddddd!!!"
TOM: "Cory, you'll kill him! You can't do this -- !!"
CORY: "I can't be dealing with this in Season 3 is what I can't be doing!!!!"
ME: "Slldddsrrbbbb -- !!!"
CORY: "What!?"
ME: "Sliddddsssrbbb -- !!"
TOM: "What's he saying?"
ME: "Sliids -- kghhhh -- rborrrn -- ghhhh -- "
CORY: "Ack! Tom, let go of me -- !"
ME: "SLIDERS -- " (cough)
CORY: "Tom, let me go!"
ME: "REBORN!"
TOM: "Cory! He hasn't finished the sixth and final SLIDERS REBORN script yet! If you kill him, there are like 15 SLIDERS fans on the internet who'll never forgive you! Maybe as many as 20!"
CORY: " ................... fine! Fine! But he is NOT coming back for Season 3!"
TOM: "ireactions, thanks again for being here!"

I'm kidding.

So, what happened here?

While I miss Jim and Dan, I have to confess that the Rewatch Podcast has pretty much made Sliderscast extraneous at this point -- not because Slidercast wasn't or wouldn't be enjoyable, but because Rewatch Podcast was consistently present and made its way through all 88 episodes at a continued and regular pace. In contrast, Sliderscast has seemingly vanished and the fact that Rewatch Podcast started so much later and managed to review "The Seer" AND "Slide Effects" while Sliderscast hasn't even gotten into Season 3 is just... kind of sad. I mean, they were friendly competitors, but there's no competition now. Sliderscast is a complete and total non-entity.

And yet -- it's not necessarily a bad thing in that I have often wished SLIDERS had ended with Season 2 rather than getting a long, drawn out, painful demise. Considering Dan Kurtzke's agony in many Season 2 episodes alone, maybe it's for the best that he'll never get into late Season 3.

I hope they come back someday, but if they don't... is the SLIDERS fan community poorer without Sliderscast? Maybe it would be except that the void Sliderscast left was filled by the Rewatch Podcast. The one thing Rewatch Podcast doesn't do, however, is the casual sense of two friends goofing about over SLIDERS -- instead, you get the sense that Tom and Cory treat podcasting like a job whereas Dan and Jim are just chatting and the fact that they record their conversation is incidental. I do miss that.

I've never seen "Species," but "The Breeder" is an abomination. Even if you find Kari's objectification entertaining, the entire episode is witless, crass, clumsy, dull and deeply unprofessional.

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.

Hey! I'm busy scripting the series finale and planning a social media campaign for it. You try making TWELVE posters for SLIDERS REBORN when you have no new images and no photo sessions with the cast. I have my hands full on the Slidology front. YOU make it happen!

I think we might scale down our hopes and aim for an online convention where the stars could participate over Skype and Reddit.

Well. It's too bad you couldn't meet Cleavant. But the important thing is that I've finally accumulated a good amount of Prisma-enhanced graphics to run a SLIDERS social media campaign. I'm not sure what one has to do with the other, but let's call this a victory!

Oh. Well, you caught me.

It IS the Azure Gate Bridge.

Ha! I wish. They're publicity stills run through an app called Prisma that turns photos into 'paintings.'

Is this a serious question?

I guess I'd ask him to talk about David Peckinpah. David Peckinpah has become my primary area of interest for the time being, mainly because as miserable a show as SLIDERS became, Peckinpah's life was truly wretched and so much worse than anything SLIDERS fans had to endure. He fired Cleavant's friends, his incompetence made the show degrade to the point where the lead actor had no affection for it whatsoever, he permitted the show to become totally unrecognizable by the end -- and Cleavant was his friend. Admittedly, that says more about Cleavant than Peckinpah.

Are you still excited even after this post I made in the Bboard issues thread?

Suddenly, I'm worried. The finale of SLIDERS REBORN will feature:

• 40 - 50 sliders

• A pink vortex

• A blonde Maggie

• The sliders developing 'superpowers'

• A spunky teenager who is Quinn's daughter

In addition, the story will have the return of:

• The rock star vampires

• The giant radioactive slug

• The underground Morlocks

• The animal-human hybrids

• The super-intelligent snakes

• The pancake parasites

• The fat craving zombies

• The dinosaurs

• The killer robots

• The Dream Masters

• The amusement park that feeds on negative emotions

• The remote controlled cars with laser cannons

• Diana Davis

And the story will be dedicated to the memory of David Peckinpah and will include the sliders running a detective agency like one of Peckinpah's cop shows and a heavily action oriented approach reminiscent of Season 3.

Are you as nervous about this story as I am? Matt thinks I'm completely insane. God help us all.

Slider_Quinn21 once pondered:

As an egomaniac, I assumed he was talking about ME. But I've taken a hard look at myself and the truth is I think about SLIDERS REBORN far more than I actually work on it. If I had obsessed over it to an unhealthy degree, I would probably have been done by last Christmas.

The truth is that I've regularly blown off working on SLIDERS REBORN. I've blown it off because my niece started talking about her dead dad and I didn't feel I could end that conversation.  Because there was a two week abstract theatre film festival. Because I needed to focus on my health for a bit. Because my niece needed to move. Because I had actual professional obligations.

I've tried to find an example in my life where I decided writing REBORN was more important than something else -- the only thing I can think of is a SUPERNATURAL convention that my niece wanted me go to with her, a convention I declined to attend because I was looking up San Francisco landmarks to put in the third script. "How can you blow off the event of the century to write fanfic?" Laurie exclaimed. "That's not healthy!" I replied, "How come it's healthy to set aside time for YOUR show but not mine?" I like SUPERNATURAL well-enough, but not more than I like SLIDERS.

This is probably SLIDERS REBORN slipped in its schedule. The original plan was for three feature-length scripts, a short prequel and a novella to be out and done by August 2015. In 2015, I was able to complete two feature length scripts, the prequel and the novella; in 2016, I have completed one 46-page script and will likely finish the final screenplay. It's impossible to treat this like a job; everything else will always come first, SLIDERS REBORN is like my equivalent of other people playing videogames. I will never put my life on hold for SLIDERS.

I'm as shocked as anyone to discover that.

I'm not sure why the Bboard is forcing everyone to answer the questions; I've disabled that for now and I'll watch to see if this leads to more spambot registrations.

As for Slidemania -- well, it is fanfic. Professional grade writing should be seen as a wonderful surprise rather than a basic requirement. I adore crazy fanfic. These are fans expressing their passion; they may not necessarily have the skill to create an enjoyable product, but the fact that they put their stuff out there is to be admired. Slider_Quinn21's vision of SLIDERS in his series was an extension of the Sci-Fi Channel years but with the original-cast and early-season elements blended with the latter-era sliders and storylines, presenting SLIDERS' tangled web as a beautiful tapestry. Slidemania's vision of SLIDERS was very fantasy-oriented, but any story is conceivably a SLIDERS story.

One favourite fanfic of mine is a sequel to "This Slide of Paradise" where Arturo tracks the gang to the world of animal human hybrids and spends an episode wandering around the forest set of that episode.

These days, I find myself looking at Seasons 3 - 5 as a picture of David Peckinpah's addiction reignited after his teenaged son's death made him relapse after two decades of sobriety.

Season 3 is the cocaine high. Everything's mad and random and crazy and driven by one's basest impulses in any direction -- nightclubs and sex and explosions akin to riding the top of a supersonic train or high-excitement motorcycle chases -- but with an ugly, dehumanizing edge if you look closely where people and relationships don't matter, only the thrill of the drug. People who seem to be a buzzkill get dumped in the trash or blown up.

But then the high isn't enough and the addict wants  drugs that go even deeper into the psyche to feed the need for escape -- the miserable monster movies that were "The Breeder" and "Stoker" and "This Slide of Paradise" are a heroin injection, going into depressants that leave one in a state of euphoric bliss. But in truth, anyone sober looking at the heroin addict would see human body that's little more than a corpse that isn't dead yet.

Then we come to Season 4, where it's now all about combining heroin and cocaine into speedballs, resulting in more euphoria that is, however, socially vacant and emotionally dead; there's no real friendships or relationships through heroin and cocaine. The physicality of the bliss these drugs induce has no emotional love or care or fondness or compassion or heart behind it; the body may feel joyous, but the spirit is deadened and empty, much like Jerry O'Connell's performance.

And then we come to Season 5 -- the drugs aren't for pleasure anymore. The constant anesthetic use has created tolerance and painful withdrawal symptoms in their absence; injecting and inhaling has simply become the joyless routine of "The Great Work" and "Java Jive" and the isolating nature of the drugs has left Peckinpah bleak, adrift and alone, going through the motions without even the extremity that made Season 3 a compelling trainwreck. Season 5 is just filling out the time to get through 18 episodes. Then the show died and David Peckinaph had nowhere left to direct his grief aside from his veins. Shattered and alone, he plunged speedball after speedball into himself until his heart gave out. I have nothing but sympathy for the poor man. Peckinpah and SLIDERS on his watch are symptoms of a terrible disease.

I once pondered where bad TV producers go when they die. Temporal Flux says they go to development hell. Most SLIDERS fans say they burn in actual hell. Informant remarked that regardless of whether Peckinpah is in heaven or hell, what he left behind is many terrible hours of television. Those hours speak to how truly sad, lost and alone he must have been.

Anyway. My final SLIDERS script will be a tribute to David Peckinpah and the ideas he introduced into the show.

I think that making a previously Caucasian character black allows SPIDER-MAN HOMECOMING to get some media buzz, make some headlines, spark some chatter and raise the profile in a way the casting wouldn't if they cast Dove Cameron or Sabrina Carpenter to be Mary Jane.

(Yes, I watch LIV AND MADDIE and GIRL MEETS WORLD. Arrested adolescent here.)