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ME: "I would never roleplay as Quinn. I would never try to be him -- I could only fail."
MATT: "You are roleplaying as Quinn. That's what SLIDERS REBORN is."
ME: "I am not. I'm roleplaying as Dan Harmon if Dan Harmon were a fan of SLIDERS and NBCUniversal inexplicably gave him the series and 15 million dollars to do three SLIDERS movies."

I wonder how much SLIDERS REBORN would actually cost to film. DOCTOR WHO is on about 2.25 million US dollars per episode and the most expensive thing in REBORN hundreds of thousands of small digital clocks flying through the air and flying into the vortex. I guess there's the location filming (Vancouver) and the shopping mall that's been converted into an impromptu art and creativity studio and the giant pillar of digital clocks. But SLIDERS' greatest asset is Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo sitting around bantering. That's the greatest special effect ever made. The finale is going to become like the climax of a superhero movie, however -- less MAN OF STEEL superfights and more SMALLVILLE-style supersaves, however. I would be curious to see someone estimate the necessary budget for this someday.

!?!? I have no idea how you can say JESSICA JONES and DAREDEVIL didn't cross over. The crossover was pretty blatant to me.

As for the rest -- I liked JESSICA JONES a lot, but it's just personal taste.

Wade sent me a private message that I didn't read because I forgot to check my private messages. I'm going to answer the question here.

ME: "Quinn, what do you think of Wade?"
QUINN: "I've been worrying about her iron levels; I don't think she's handling her vegetarian diet in the healthiest way. It also bugs me that she likes to keep a netbook under our pillows because that's where I want to keep the timer."
ME: " ... no, what do you think of the other one?"
QUINN: "What other one?"
ME: "Timeline 616.32."
QUINN: "You might as well be asking me what I thought of Wade back in 1999 during Year Four when we got stuck in a VR trap and faced off against religious fundamentalists and accidentally saved a Kromagg commander and later had to deal with that haunted hotel. It's a timeline almost 16 years in the past. And I have memories of the other version. The one with the Chasm."
ME: "I would like to know thought of Wade back then, actually. For biographical purposes."
QUINN: "Buddy, I don't remember if I liked what I had for dinner 16 minutes ago; you can't ask me what I felt 16 years ago."
ME: "I thought you had a photographic memory."
QUINN: "That just means I can bring things to mind if I read them."
ME: "Quinn."
QUINN: "I never liked people. I didn't hate them and I wasn't indifferent to them -- but I had real reason to doubt I'd ever get along with any of them. I was in junior high at age 10, everyone hated me because I made them feel like less -- which was ultimately not my fault. I don't walk into a room to make people feel worthless, but if they feel that way to begin with, my presence makes it hard for them to forget it. A few cracked ribs and black eyes later, I'd pretty much accepted that my interaction with the human race was going to be isolated and limited and the basement would be my world. And the classroom, the repair bay at Dopplers' -- basements of a different kind."
ME: "I can't tell -- are you still dissembling?"
QUINN: "Dunno. Who can tell where this monologue is going?"
ME: "Hmm. Carry on."
QUINN: "I met Daelin at a science fair. She presented models in statistical sociological experiments in non-verbal communication and linguistic constructs. Her mathematical sequences were subtle and sublime. We'd spend hours in my basement. Experimenting on every corner of the chalkboard. I thought this would work -- another scientist. But then she moved. Continuing with what I'd learned from that, I found another scientist to fill the void. And then another. But it never worked. It was like I was trying to find a Daelin-shaped piece to fill in the gap. But people aren't like molecules in fixed equilibrium geometries -- and relationships can't operate in the simple duality of covalent and ionic bonds. Relationships are more like the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory in which objective realities cannot exist and since that was complicated enough, I decided to put my focus there and stop worrying about life partners."
ME: "Uh... "
QUINN: "I clicked with Daelin, she moved, I couldn't find a Daelin substitute, so I stopped worrying about girlfriends and decided to keep myself busy."
ME: "Thanks."
QUINN: "When I opened the gateway in my basement, I saw a symplectic manifold equation mapped to three dimensional space. A photonic construct of a theoretical mathematical model given shape and form within a physical reality -- allowing quantum theory to reconcile harmonic oscillation and equipartition theorem with local coherence and probability amplitude. So did the Professor. But Wade saw a doorway to anything and everything that might have ever happened and anyone and everyone who might have ever lived. I looked at the Revolution on the Soviet-ruled America and I saw a sociological inevitability of insurrectionary instinct against a fascist dictatorship that would likely be stamped out within a few weeks of our departure. But Wade saw the indomitable human spirit battling for justice, equality and fairness for all. I saw an asteroid hurtling towards the Earth and felt panic and fear and failure, but Wade felt like she was connected to all her doubles and to me. I couldn't connect with people. I didn't think myself above them, but I didn't know how to stand next to them and I'd stopped trying a long time ago. But Wade connected just by going about her day -- it wasn't even something she refined or practiced or honed -- it was something she did. She didn't fill the void. She connected the distances. She was my bridge."
ME: "Well, sometimes, the whole bridging and engaging with life approach was kind of myopically stupid -- like on the Lottery world where she was so wrapped up in dresses and money and luxury and parties that she didn't try to figure out why people would receive everything for nothing and she made you feel like you were the crazy one for asking questions and wanting answers."
QUINN: "Nobody's perfect."
ME: "Were you actually planning on answering the question or were you just going to ramble until I left?"
QUINN: "I don't pretend to know where I'm going to end up. Not anymore."

Parody and review are covered under fair use -- meaning Sliders Rewatch and Sliderscast are free to produce podcasts with sponsorship and Ian McDuffie is free to charge money for his "Paradise Lost" comic and Mad Norwegian can publish DOCTOR WHO episode guides and reviews for profit. The line gets hazy at fan fiction which is technically a derivative work. Copyright holders do have legal grounds to order that producers of fanfic and fanfilms cease and desist. Warner Bros. shut down the BATGIRL SPOILED with threats of litigation, FOX did the same with an ALIENS fanfilm.

Paramount permits STAR TREK fanfilms and Lucasfilm had no issue with numerous STAR WARS fanfilms. Fan fiction is generally tolerated. Copyrights are viewed as potentially lost unless vigorously defended -- but most studios seem to think that fan fiction poses no threat to their copyrights due to being (a) profitless (b) free advertising. If an audio drama were profit free, I doubt NBCUniversal would object, although they would be well within their rights to shut it down for any reason or for no reason and it'd be a lot of work to hang on the whim of some executive.

**

Matt's project wasn't the Lego, unless there's something he's not telling me.

On the old-old Bboard, Matt revealed his SLIDERS projects, so I feel it's alright to reiterate what he previously posted. The first SLIDERS project was going to be Tracy Torme's long-awaited series finale to SLIDERS. Tracy contacted Matt back in 2009. Tracy wanted to write fanfic! Tracy wanted to write a movie-length script for SLIDERS that would act as a grand series finale. The officially unofficial finale of SLIDERS, unapproved by NBCUniversal and therefore apocryphal, non-canonical and nothing but some random guy's fanfic on the Internet -- except that it would be fanfic from the co-creator of the series.

Tracy also intended to send it to Temporal Flux at the Dimension of Continuity. Both would have the script. I imagine that Temporal Flux, in his infinite cleverness and daring, would have found some artists to illustrate various key moments of the story and perhaps written some prequels and sequels and missing scenes, the way Marvel blockbuster movies have comic book tie-ins. Matt, meanwhile, would have posted the script and aided in producing an audio drama version with Jerry, Sabrina, Cleavant and John.

Unfortunately, after the 2009 interview, Torme got too busy with various paid projects -- too busy to write fanfic, and the project slowly faded away like a date he could never find time to schedule.

I was told what the story was in bits and pieces and I think I have a full picture of the tale. I will decline to reveal what the story would have been because I would like to let Sliders Rewatch talk about it when they do their podcast for "The Seer" (and, possibly, when they do their podcast for SLIDERS REBORN) and I am going to mercilessly tease information to promote their podcast because. However, Matt has no need to restrain himself. ;-)

I will say that Tracy's story featured Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo (of course).

I'm sorry it didn't happen because I know you would have all appreciated it. On a selfish level, however, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. The fact that Tracy Torme was going to write fanfic and use the format of PDF screenplays inspired me to write "Slide Effects" and eventually SLIDERS REBORN -- if it was good enough for Tracy, why not for me? If Tracy had written his finale story, I wouldn't have written REBORN and I wouldn't have this opportunity to lay some demons to their final rest.

Matt's other project was a spin-off web series for SLIDERS, to be done in collaboration with an amateur (but now professional) filmmaker in England. A series of short films with original characters, set in the SLIDERS multiverse in which sliding is now an urban legend.

While a first season of scripts were completed, only bits and pieces of the project were ever filmed and I don't believe it will ever see the light of day. However, there were periods when I did not believe SLIDERS REBORN would ever see the light of day (well, like 36 hours), so who knows. SLIDERS REBORN was merely delayed due to the writer learning what he jokingly refers to as his craft; maybe the web series is just the same. Matt completed his end of the project by supplying the scripts. I read all of them and they were creative, daring, thrilling and a terrific reworking of the SLIDERS platform. The people who wanted to film it, like Tracy, got side-tracked with stuff that could pay the mortgage. No shame in that.

Cool to hear that Lester Barrie is doing well! I made sure to give him a big scene in SLIDERS REBORN showcasing all of Diggs' peculiarities -- not because I was enamoured with the character, but because Tom and Cory kept talking about him.

So, regarding "Lipschitz Live" and MacArthur Mallory, a character who is inexplicably Colin's stepfather with the same last name: I have no data on this, but I wouldn't be surprised if MacArthur Mallory were originally Michael Mallory to be played by John Walcutt, only for an unexpected unavailability to see the script awkwardly patched. I now await Matt Hutaff to blow this theory out of the water with his Bazooka of Truth. :-)

(You'll find this hilarious next week.)

I loved Tom and Cory theorizing how Will Sasso would have played Gomez Calhoun in "Lipschitz." I imagine he would have been less hostile, more distracted.

QUINN
Excuse me --

GOMEZ
(excited)
Shh!
(gesturing at the TV with delight)
Can't you see this is important! Guy's
got a psychic dog!

He laughs incredulously.

QUINN
I'd like a room --

GOMEZ
(not turning from the TV,
lightly indifferent)
We're booked up.

QUINN
Booked up!? This place is never booked
up!

GOMEZ
(cheerfully)
Big corporate wedding!

Gomez casually jabs a finger towards a sign on the desk, indicating that there's a TV corporate summit here.

QUINN
Then I'd like to leave a message for
my friends.

Gomez remains utterly fixed on the television.

GOMEZ
(dreamily)
D'you have a room?

QUINN
Not according to you!

GOMEZ
(distant)
Then you can't leave a message.

QUINN
Why not?!

GOMEZ
(lazily)
We're a full service hotel, but only for
guests -- no guests, no service.

He continues to watch the TV.

Later, when Colin approaches Calhoun --

COLIN
I'd like a --

Gomez holds up a finger, as though asking for a minute. Without turning around, he picks up a piece of paper and hurriedly reads off the sheet.

GOMEZ
(reading this prepared statement)
We've got no rooms, no suites, you can't leave
a message and I haven't seen any of your friends.

And then he returns his full attention to the TV. The boredom instantly disappears from his face, replaced with gleeful enthusiasm.

COLIN
(appreciative)
Thank you!

He walks off.

I thought Tom and Cory did a nice job this week. I sent them a bunch of script pages (that I wrote myself) so they'd have a lot of options for doing some Quinn and Rembrandt impressions if they were inclined to do them. They picked a really nice page to perform -- so below are the other ones.

But first -- Tom and Cory wondered why, in "The Dying Fields," the Kromaggs try to kill the sliders when they're counting on the sliders to help reclaim their homeworld. Tom theorizes that after Quinn got to the Slidecage and came back out, the Kromaggs felt that their plan had failed.

I don't think this makes much sense; the Kromaggs already knew about the Slidecage (indicated by Rembrandt's dialogue when under hypnosis in "Slidecage"), meaning someone who worked on the cage must have failed to get back to the homeworld before the doors closed and was captured and interrogated. As for why the Slidecage was set to contain rather than repel -- it was likely made so because the Kromagg Prime Michael Mallory was trying to imprison any soldiers who might otherwise wreak havoc on the multiverse from which he was isolating Kromagg Prime.

My theory would involve putting an additional scene at the end of "The Dying Fields":

EXT. HUMAGG HUNTING GROUNDS - DAY

Quinn nods to Colin -- and Colin raises the timer and triggers the vortex. It splits open the air with its blue and green energy, beckoning to the sliders. But Kryoptus brandishes his rifle --

KRYOPTUS
Nobody move! I'll kill you all --

And Kyra steps forward. She shields the sliders with her body --

KYRA
You won't!

She moves towards Kryoptus.

KYRA
You won't shoot me -- you have
feelings for me -- I can feel them!

And when Kryoptus hesitates, Kyra turns to the sliders.

KYRA
Go!

Maggie doesn't need telling twice. She sprints towards the gateway and leaps. Rembrandt follows --

REMBRANDT
Quinn, let's go!

With a flash, he's gone too. Colin dives in next and Kryoptus watches. Letting them leave. Kyra smiles with relief, and Quinn watches Kryoptus turn his gaze onto Kyra and only Kyra --

KRYOPTUS
You're right, Kyra -- I can't deny
who I am --

His hand traces her temple. He leans forward, kissing her. And as Kyra kisses him back, Kryoptus unsheathes his knife and STABS Kyra through the heart. She chokes. Her body stiffens with shock. Her eyes focus on nothing --

Kryoptus locks eyes with Kyra, brutally cold as Kyra slumps forward, betrayal in her face --

And Quinn casts a stunned look at Kryoptus  and Kyra's body on the ground. Disappointment flashes across Quinn's face -- disappointment and despair -- and then suddenly, there is nothing. Quinn watches Kryoptus yank his bloody knife from Kyra's corpse -- and we can see the blank finality on Quinn's face. The emptiness. Everything he tried to do for Kyra is lost. Change is worthless. It doesn’t exist. Life is cruel and bloody -- there is nothing worth feeling --

Kryoptus raises his rifle to bear on Quinn and Quinn dives out of the line of fire. Leaping into the vortex. Kryoptus fires just in time to miss the gateway as it closes. The burst of energy strikes a nearby structure and Kryoptus stands alone with Kyra's body at his feet.

Silence. For a moment.

Then a humvee rolls up. General Kronos climbs out with a small squad of Kromagg soldiers. General Kronos walks up to Kryoptus.

GENERAL KRONOS
The humans killed her?

KRYOPTUS
(numbly)
No. I did.

The General arches an eyebrow.

KRYOPTUS
(indicates Kyra)
The humans had turned her.
She was helping them escape.
I had no choice.

GENERAL KRONOS
And the humans?

KRYOPTUS
Three dead inside. Six more
escaped.

GENERAL KRONOS
Three kills. Well done. You surprise
me. Welcome to the Elites.

KRYOPTUS
(flat; stares at Kyra)
Thank you, sir.

General Kronos turns to the Kromagg soldiers. 

GENERAL KRONOS
Move out. We have humans in
the area.

Kronos turns back to Kryoptus, indicating Kyra's body.

GENERAL KRONOS
Dispose of that.

KRYOPTUS
Yes, sir.

Kronos walks off.

Kryoptus stares at Kyra's face, confusion expanding across his face. He kneels next to her prone, lifeless shape. Kryoptus begins to experience SADNESS, his confused emotions turning to PAIN and ACHING GRIEF.

Kryoptus lifts Kyra's motionless body in his arms and gently carries her off as we --

CUT TO:

INT. HUMVEE - DAY

General Kronos sits in the passenger seat of the Humvee. As his driver handles the vehicle and speeds along the path, Kronos reaches for the viewscreen controls in the dashboard before him.

GENERAL KRONOS
(to the viewscreen)
One-one-three. Connect me to
the cage.

There's a burst of static from the viewscreen speakers and on the screen itself -- and then on the screen, we can make out the vague figure of a person, cloaked in darkness and shadow.

GENERAL KRONOS
Your proposal was successful. The
humans have departed, never once
suspecting that they were permitted
to leave.

We see the figure on the screen shifting within the shadows -- as though bowing.

GENERAL KRONOS
Their easy escapes from Outposts 161
and 147 followed by the discovery of
their friend's sleeper programming
risked incurring their suspicions.

We can now make out the outline of the figure's garments -- a long, white gown.

GENERAL KRONOS
Your stratagem has re-established their
certainty that to contend with the Kromaggs
is to court their deaths. And soothed away any
skepticism towards their seeming
competence in defying the Dynasty.

We see the figure on screen raising a pair of hands -- clasping them together in a prayerful gesture of deference.

GENERAL KRONOS
Such calculated cruelty. Bringing one
of the humans to the brink of death
with a Nobelium weapon. Manuevering
our weakest link in the Humaggs towards
healing the human. And then letting them
leave thinking they'd scarcely survived --
your precision does your masters proud.

We see the figure on the screen parting hands in a serene movement.

GENERAL KRONOS
You are a rare credit to your kind. Tell
me, child -- how does a mere human
equal the crystalline clarity of the
Kromagg mind?

And then we see the figure learn forward, out of the shadows and into the light.

It's Mary.

MARY
I know their leader. I know his passions
and his fears.

Kronos nods, contemptuously impressed.

MARY
I know his bravado, his groundless
confidence, his arrogance and ego.
I know the strings within his heart,
how to pull and pluck as we see fit --

Kronos regards Mary on the screen as though she's an amusing pet.

MARY
Quinn Mallory is our soldier -- and he
shall be the Dynasty's greatest hero.

And Mary stares through the screen, at Kronos, at us --

BLACKOUT.

I feel like that's the only explanation that still upholds the original Season 4 arc. "The Dying Fields" was staged for the sliders' benefit. It wouldn't be the first time.

Tom and Cory did an great job of examining The Scene and noted that Jerry's acting throughout Season 4 is extremely poor. Here's the breakdown I sent Tom and Cory of all the problems with The Scene:

As filmed and aired:

REMBRANDT: (grabbing Quinn's arm) "If Wade is back there, we gotta do something! "
QUINN: (brushing off Remmy's arm and walking off-camera) "I don't know if we have enough time."

Points of concern:

• Jerry O'Connell conveys no emotional reaction to learning that Christina knew Wade. Jerry performs a total lack of interest or attention towards Christina despite her knowledge of Wade.

• The onscreen dialogue lacks any moment where Quinn questions Christina about Wade; he doesn't seem interested in learning more about Wade's whereabouts or well-being.

• When Rembrandt grabs Quinn's arm, declaring they must find Wade, Jerry pulls his arm away and declares, "I don't know if we have enough time" and then walks off-camera -- giving the impression that Quinn feels no empathy or concern for Rembrandt's current state of agony and feels no need to console him.

• As Quinn is walking away, Rembrandt shouts after him that he doesn't care if there's not enough time -- and Quinn does not respond and is off-camera, so we see no reaction.

• Christina then establishes that Wade has already been moved off-world -- yet Jerry inexplicably had Quinn walk away from Rembrandt after "I don't know if we have enough time," indicating that if Quinn knew Wade wasn't on this world anymore, he had no intention of giving Rembrandt this information -- or that if Quinn didn't know this information, he wasn't interested in finding out anything more from Christina. The ambiguity here is clearly not intentional; something has been severely miscommunicated.

• Cleavant Derricks plays Rembrandt in agony when hearing about Wade. Jerry O'Connell, in contrast, plays the same scene with nothing. It's impossible to discern Quinn's state of mind or motivations from Jerry's acting because Jerry is providing no information whatsoever. Jerry's same approach to acting is present in "Slidecage" when Quinn thinks Maggie is dead and Jerry takes a scene of Quinn breaking down and plays it with near-total neutrality.

• In a later scene, Quinn threatens a Kromagg with death and demands the location of Wade Welles -- which is completely at odds with Jerry performing Quinn as indifferent about Wade in the earlier scene.

And let's look at the actual script:

REMBRANDT: "If Wade's in that camp, we've got to do something!"
QUINN: "We don't have much time -- "

So first, we have Jerry changing his line. It was scripted as a risk assessment; but Jerry changed it into a refusal. It's unlikely this was on purpose; SLIDERS hasn't worried about actors delivering lines as written since Season 3. Jerry delivered an approximation of what was on paper -- but to disastrous results, turning it from Quinn acknowledging danger to Quinn shrinking from danger.

Also: the way The Scene is blocked is bizarre: why does the director have the lead character of the show declare he's not going to try to save his friend from a rape camp? Why is Jerry made to practically dive off-camera after delivering his line? Why wouldn't the director make sure to keep Jerry and Cleavant in the same frame for this critical scene? The script does not contain any of this behaviour from Quinn. The script actually contains very little scene direction, leaving it completely open to the actors how they want to play the scene.

My theory is that Jerry was drunk on set the day they filmed this. The Scene goes out of its way to get Jerry out of shot as quick as it can -- suggesting to me that Jerry was not fit to be on camera that day. Because Jerry isn't on camera when Rembrandt protests leaving without Wade, it makes it feel like Quinn doesn't care about Wade.

So, here's the direction I would have given for The Scene.

EXT. WOODS - DAY

REMBRANDT
(desperate)
If Wade's in that camp,
we've got to do something!

Quinn nods in agreement. He starts towards the path to the camp. Rembrandt is right next to him. Ready for war.

QUINN
We don't have much time --

REMBRANDT
(determined)
I don't care. We're going down
there.

CHRISTINA
It's too late for that!

Quinn and Rembrandt freeze in place. Staring at Christina in dismay.

CHRISTINA
She's gone. The Maggs shipped
out all the other prisoners yesterday
to make way for new arrivals. Wade
was with them --

Quinn's face fills with agony. Something inside him breaks. Rembrandt is forlorn, lost, helpless...

And then with subsequent scenes -- I think this episode should have been played as Quinn Mallory's descent into madness after meeting Christina. Here's a re-directed version of the scene where Quinn questions the Kromagg soldier -- again, no changes to the script dialogue, only the direction.

EXT. ROAD - DAY
The Kromagg soldiers from the Humvee are unconscious, except one. A young soldier.

CHRISTINA
Could we go to my world?

QUINN
Only if I knew the coordinates --

CHRISTINA
They would be in the
Kromagg central data bank!

Everyone looks at the conscious Kromagg -- and Quinn storms over to him. Hauling him to his feet. Grabbing him by the collar -- and then slamming him into the side of the Humvee. The Kromagg's head bashes into the glass and Quinn's face suddenly shows a cruel satisfaction.

QUINN
(nearly spitting into
the Kromagg's face)
Okay -- ! Here's the deal!!

He leans in. The Kromagg shrinks, terrified by this furious human.

QUINN
(snarling)
You help us. Or you die!

And Quinn's voice lingers on the threat -- on some level, he's hoping the Kromagg will give him an excuse. Maggie watches this, troubled by Quinn's anger -- but she joins in, moving her Kromagg gun to the Kromagg's head.

MAGGIE
Category too difficult for you?

KROMAGG SOLDIER
I'll help --

Quinn shoves the Kromagg towards the Humvee computer, making sure that the Kromagg bangs into the door by the shoulder. His face is sadistically contemptuous.

QUINN
(cruel)
Right answer.

CUT TO:

THE KROMAGG SOLIDER at the computer keyboard. Quinn leans over to BARK IN THE KROMAGG'S ear --

QUINN
Bring up the prisoner files!

KROMAGG SOLDIER
What are we looking for?

QUINN
Pull up anything on Christina
Griffin and Wade Welles -- !

It's only with the mention of Wade's name that Quinn's angry tone softens.

KROMAGG SOLIDER
I'll need their ID numbers -- we don't
keep their human names on file --

CHRISTINA
I don't know Wade's -- but mine's Jay
Kay one one two five --

QUINN
(watching the Kromagg type)
Now cross reference! To her
homeworld!

SOLDIER ONE
(typing, suddenly astonished
by the report on Christina's
world)
File says the last of our battalions withdrew
six months ago -- !?

QUINN
Withdrew?

The sliders are amazed. Christina is hopeful.

CHRISTINA
My parents! They could be
alive.

QUINN
(to the Kromagg, dangerously)
Read off the slide coordinates!
(as the Kromagg points to the screen
and mutters digits, Quinn programs the timer)
Got it --

REMBRANDT
Now for Wade!

KROMAGG SOLDIER
But without her ID number --

Quinn throws his hand into the Kromagg's head and smashes the soldier's forehead into the doorframe of the Humvee.

QUINN
We'll do it the hard way!

The Kromagg soldier winces with pain -- and Quinn furiously pushes the Kromagg at the computer.

QUINN
Pull up records as fast as
you can!

Maggie is stunned at Quinn's behaviour. She looks to Rembrandt with concern, as does Colin, but Rembrandt has eyes only for the computer as the fearful Kromagg follows Quinn's orders --

QUINN
(to the Kromagg)
When we see her picture, we'll
stop you --

The Kromagg tenses at the threat in the words. But then, from the radio --

KORINDOS (RADIO)
Unit Four! This is Base. What are
you doing? Those are classified files!

And then on the computer, an error message shows. Quinn seizes the Kromagg by the back of his collar --

QUINN
What's the matter!?

KROMAGG SOLIDER
(reading off the screen)
Network error! 807! Please notify system
administrator --

Quinn pushes the Kromagg against the computer. Panicked. Desperate.

QUINN
Try it again!!

The Kromagg urgently types away. But the error message doesn't clear --

REMBRANDT
I don't like this -- they could be onto us,
sending other units --

Quinn nods grimly --

QUINN
Right.

Then Quinn suddenly yanks the Kromagg from the Humvee computer and throws him to the ground. He looms over the Kromagg solider -- and throws a kick into the soldier's face. The Kromagg's hands raise just in time to brunt the force of the kick -- but then Quinn kicks the Kromagg in the STOMACH -- in the HEAD --

And then Maggie grabs him by the shoulder. Quinn spins around. A moment of shock, but then his face becomes stoic and he steps away from the fallen Kromagg, moving back towards the Humvee --

QUINN
(calm)
Colin! Maggie! Everybody on board!
We're getting out of here.

And he moves towards the driver's seat, this loss of control abruptly buried.

Tom and Cory didn't understand: why does the Kromagg soldier follow Quinn's instructions to pull up prisoner files? The only way to make this scene work is for Quinn to be absolutely terrifying, so enraged, so out of control that no sane person would be able to refuse him anything.

Jerry failed to play this scene correctly or apply any additional characterization to the words, resulting in a massive plot hole. One might say that that's the writer's fault -- but it's an actor's job to make the material come alive.

A subsequent scene also has a strange moment where a Kromagg says of the sliders:

KREESHAX
We were ordered not to detain them, but
things have changed. They are now
considered to be extremely dangerous
and to be taken down by whatever means
necessary.

Why do the Kromaggs suddenly want the sliders dead? And if there's now a kill-order on the sliders, why doesn't Korindos shoot them all at the end?

The answer I suggest: in "Mother and Child," the sliders went to Outpost 71 -- Christina's world on which a deadly anti-Kromagg virus was released into the atmosphere. Travel to Outpost 71 is a Kromagg capital crime as the Kromaggs are trying to contain the virus. The sliders going to Outpost 71 overrode the protective order and called for their deaths.

As far as the Dynasty's concerned, the chance of reclaiming Kromagg Prime isn't worth the risk of the sliders getting the virus.

This is clearly not the writer's intention. If it were, the line would be adjusted to: "We were ordered not to detain them, but they have travelled to Outpost 71. The protective order is countermanded; they are now considered to be extremely dangerous and to be taken down by whatever means necessary."

It explains why Korindos doesn't shoot all the sliders the second he has the antidote and the baby. If the Dynasty has a cure for the anti-Kromagg virus, then Outpost 71 will no longer under Kromagg quarantine and the Kromagg Prime plot is back in play. Korindos is risking execution by travelling to Outpost 71; he can get away with it by producing the antidote, but the Dynasty won't excuse Korindos for torpedoing their intentions to use Quinn as their unwitting agent if the antidote eliminates the risk. Tom's explanation is fine for a scene here and there, but my explanation covers everything -- because I'm an obsessive lunatic and Tom is comparatively normal.

Anyway. With the above revisions, we now have an episode entering dangerous territory; the sliders have no protection from Kromaggs on Outpost 71, Quinn is emotionally self-destructing -- and I would end Quinn's character arc in "Mother and Child" with the following sequence -- again, this is taken from the script, no dialogue altered, just the direction for the actors:

EXT. BACKYWARD - DAY
Korindos, holding the baby and the laser gun, backs into the yard. The sliders, Jonathan and Christina follow, held at bay by the gun.

Korindos hits a switch on his belt. Activating a VORTEX that opens behinds him. He starts backing towards the open vortex --

We see Quinn's watching this with icy fury, his mouth tight, his fists clenched --

But it's JONATHAN who CHARGES at Korindos. Korindos FIRES the laser pistol -- Jonathan takes a hit in the chest and KEEPS GOING. Korindos tries to leap into the vortex, but Jonathan GRABS Korindos BY HIS BIOHAZARD SUIT and pulls him back. Korindos SHOOTS Jonathan again, but Jonathan grips the suit tight, his body shielding the sliders from Korindos' gun --

And the sliders RUSH forward. All of them tag-teaming Korindos. Quinn grabs Korindos by the shoulder. Rembrandt grabs Korindos' gun-arm. Colin wrests the gun from Korindos' hand. Maggie GRABS CHRISTINA'S BABY and pulls the child away --

And then Quinn pounces on Korindos. His face is crazed with rage -- he shoves a knee straight into Korindos' stomach. Korindos gags --

Quinn grabs Korindos by the suit, then forces him backwards, farther from the sliders. He KICKS Korindos' legs out from under him. The Kromagg falls. And a split-second after Korindos' back has hit the ground, Quinn drops right on top of him, pinning the Kromagg. The disarmed commander looks up at Quinn from within his helmet. Smug even in defeat.

KORINDOS
You can't win.

Even lying flat on his back, Korindos expresses dismissive contempt.

KORINDOS
You must know that --

And then Quinn's face shows DEMENTED HATRED --

QUINN
(spitting out the words)
No! I don't know that! You see --

Quinn raises his arms, wrapping one hand around a fist and swings down STRAIGHT INTO KORINDOS' throat.

QUINN
(screaming)
I'm only human -- !!!

And then whatever he says next is lost in howling fury. It's impossible to make out Quinn's words -- it could be noise, it could be Wade's name -- he SHRIEKS with uncontrolled anger as he drives his fists into the fallen Kromagg over and over again -- you can't tell if he's shouting or crying --

From a distance, Maggie is pressing the baby into Christina's arms and then looks at Quinn's frenzied assault. She's horrified. Rembrandt and Colin are stunned but frozen --

And we go back to Quinn. He strikes Korindos in the throat once more and then stops for a moment. Seething. Shaking.

Inside the suit, Korindos has coughed up enough blood to smear the helmet visor. He's beaten and helpless. But Quinn looks down at this Kromagg, seeing Christina's rapist, Wade's captor --

And then Quinn notes the breathing hose in the front of the suit. Protecting Korindos from the lethal virus in the air of this Earth. And Quinn reaches for the hose, grips it and PULLS. The hose is TIGHTLY inserted, it resists Quinn's hand -- Korindos' mouth forms a plea for mercy --

And Quinn TEARS THE HOSE from the suit.

Korindos' face tightens into a rictus of agony. His body seizes. Convulses. From inside the suit, there's the sound of choked inhalation as Korindos struggles to breathe air that's poisoning him. And Quinn watches as Korindos unleashes a terrible, shuddering, gagging noise and is silent and still.

Quinn looks away -- looking backwards, looking at Rembrandt, at Maggie, at Colin and Christina. Horror and regret in his eyes, his body still shaking with rage -- and the sliders look at Quinn with sadness and pity.

And then Jonathan lets out a gasp. Christina runs to her fallen father, holding her child in his arms. Jonathan's eyes show the life fading from him. He looks at his daughter and grandson one last time.

JONATHAN
Take good care of him.

CHRISTINA
Oh, Daddy --

JONATHAN
Don't cry, love. Don't cry...

Christina holds the baby up so Jonathan can see him.

CHRISTINA
He has a name now. Jonathan.
After you.

But Jonathan is gone.

And Christina weeps over her father's body while Quinn remains on top of the helpless, disarmed and defeated soldier he just murdered in a fit of rage.

FADE TO:

EXT. GRIFFIN HOUSE

Colin, Maggie and Rembrandt come out of the house. Christina and the baby are with them. Quinn is standing on the grass, gazing off into the distance. Blank and lost. He can hear them coming behind him.

Quinn, not looking at Christina, addresses her.

QUINN
You know, there's no guarantee
where we'll go. We could slide
right into a Kromagg war or
some other madness --

He trails off on the last word. Madness.

CHRISTINA
There's nothing for me here.
(indicating her child)
Or for him.

Quinn finally turns. He looks at the child. The infant born from an act of violence and violation. And he looks at Christina. She cradles the child, gentle and caring. She was raped. But now she's here. Alive. Intact. Kind and loving.

There's a flicker of hope in Quinn's face. For himself. For Wade. He nods to Christina. He will take her to a new world and a new beginning.

I think I can add a small revision to my warnings that sub-16GB phones will not turn out well. I stand by that -- Android will constantly need to download software package updates, app sizes swell with each update, and you'll out out of memory errors very quickly. However, if you can root the phone -- and you'll need to find out in advance of buying it if there's a way to root it -- then you might be okay.

Link2SD is an app that requires root access, and once you have it, you can shift a good chunk of your app files to a microSD card and bypass the 8GB limitation. The Moto E can be rooted. However, if you can't find anything about root access for a sub-16GB phone, you shouldn't buy it.

Currently, my apps use 4.27GB of space, but I've been able to put 2.27GB of that onto the microSD card in the phone. I don't play games, so I could probably manage on an 8GB phone with it's 5.3 GB of storage if I had to -- so long as I had the option of using the microSD. Without it, and on 5.3GB, I'd probably be hitting out of memory errors.

I think the reason Jerry O'Connell couldn't play a romance with Kari: she just wasn't his type. Jerry was in his early twenties, Kari was in her thirties. Jerry wasn't interested in women; he was interested in girls. If John Rhys-Davies had been around to coach him -- the only way I see it working is if Quinn lusts for Maggie, and even that wouldn't last long.

What do Quinn and Maggie really have in common? What is unique to their pairing and partnership? What would they do together when hanging out? What would they talk about over dinner? What would Quinn do to make Maggie feel special; what would Maggie do to make Quinn feel important to her? SLIDERS doesn't know. Jerry doesn't know. Kari doesn't know.

Tom tells me they did something really, really neat and super-flattering to me for the "Mother and Child" podcast, so I'm really looking forward to it. I keep meaning to put the podcasts on my phone to listen during my morning and evening commutes. Instead, the second Cory sends it to me for Earth Prime to link to their web page and promote it, I end up putting up the post and listening in the bath.

What'd you get?

I thought you would have at least considered this one:
http://shop.ee.co.uk/mobile-phones/pay- … ct/details -- low up-front cost, low priced plan, waterproof, modern Android, microSD card expansion.

I bought my Samsung S3 for $0 on a two-year contract where I'm obligated to stay with my monthly service until 2017. I don't make any payments on the phone, but if it were destroyed, I could pay off the current balance of $200 or so (it goes down by 12.50 each month until it hits a balance of $0 by the end of my contract) and then get another $0 phone. Currently, the only $0, 16GB contract phone is the Alcatel One Touch Idol 3, which doesn't have a replaceable battery.

So, I'd either grit my teeth and spend $200 on that phone -- or I'd buy something a bit older from local tech shops with a lot of unsold, discounted inventory. I'd probably get something like a 16GB Samsung S2 HD from 2012 for $150, root it and install Android Lollipop. It's hard for me to recommend the aged and discounted option without knowing the market in the UK, sadly. I guess there's the $150 Moto E with its 8GB of memory. I would hazard a guess that 5.3GB of that 8GB is usable and after installing apps, you'd be lucky to have 1GB of free space left and I wouldn't recommend running Android with so little free space.

Given the fragility of phones, I never recommend spending more than $150 on a smartphone, but some people can get the latest and greatest for $150 because they use higher-cost monthly data plans. I never use enough mobile data to justify it, so my $150 tends to put me in the mid-range of the market.

Disclaimer: I mean no malice or harm by this. Please feel free to critique my stuff in precisely the same manner.

So, here I am, watching TV with my 17-year-old niece, Laurie. Laurie and I watch the new SLIDERS premiere episode.

ME: "Wade! She's alive! Awesome! Kinda sucks that she's been in a cell for 20 years."
LAURIE: "Who is this chick? Why is she in jail? Is she a criminal? What'd she do? Must've been bad if she's been in jail for two decades. Where the hell is this jail? What's a Kromagg? Why are we watching this?"

ME: "Rembrandt and Wade! Together! After 20 years! But man -- he spent 20 years looking for her? He's been sliding for 20 years? That must've taken a toll or he's found help and he has allies and some kind of support staff now -- but man. 20 years? What has that done to Rembrandt! This story is really going to need to deal with that."
LAURIE: "Huh?! What was that giant hole in the area? Who's the black guy? Oh, he knows the girl? Okay. 20 years? He's been sliding for 20 years? He's been going up and down playground slides for 20 years? What the hell is going on? Why is he breaking this girl out of prison?"

ME: "Yes! He's alive! Yes! I knew it! Hahah! We win! We win!"
LAURIE: "What? Who the fuck are these people? What the hell's an Azure Gate Bridge?"

ME: "Of course! The wrong Professor slid!"
LAURIE: "He's a professor? He rebuilt a what? He's been chasing them why? Do these people know each other? How did they meet? How'd they get separated? What do they do together? What's with the holes in the air? What is this show about again? What's it got to do with slides? Is this a PowerPoint commercial? What's this jail about again?"

ME: "Quinn! Yes!"
LAURIE: "Who's Quinn?"
ME: "They're bringing him back!"
LAURIE: "Back from where? What's going on here?!"

ME: "Oooh, a lab!"
LAURIE: "So, what's that hole in the air exactly? Where's it taking them? Why to this lab? Where is this lab? Who are these people? Where was that jail? Are they still in the jail? Where have we gone? How did we get here? What is going on?"

ME: "Quinn!"
LAURIE: "Who's that guy? Where was he? Why'd these other people bring him back? Do these people know each other?"

ME: "Yay!"
LAURIE: "What?! What the fuck is going on?"

... do you see what I'm saying?

No. I am not bothered by it.

I may be bothered *after* I see the movie. We only have snippets of dialogue without context.

Still. Very interesting speculation. It could be accurate. It could be inaccurate. I think these are interesting issues and you've detailed precisely why it could be a problem, but I'd personally stick to speculating until seeing the movie -- then, I could legitimately claim it's a jumbled mess. I dunno -- it's a creative challenge! I'll be interested to see how the creators address it or fail to.

Well, at one point, me and Slider_Quinn21 and Informant and Chaser9 were going to do a reboot of SLIDERS. Not to be filmed; they were filling the former version of this thread with ideas and I offered to write scripts for them. I was thinking we could do 3 - 4 movie-length scripts per season and do 5 - 6 seasons of SLIDERS (2013). It never worked out. We only completed one script. but I really liked the approach -- basically, we looked at it like this: if Tracy Torme and Robert K. Weiss had all the advantages of modern showrunners and were making the show in 2015, what would it be like?

We didn't really change the show. SLIDERS (2013) was the same as the 1995 show in characters, concept, random sliding -- the only difference was the presentation. All four sliders now had detailed backstories and tangled relationships before they even started sliding, with these histories coming out in the course of their adventures. All the stories would have running plots that would carry from episode to episode with ongoing characterization.

I had a new backstory for Quinn: as an adolescent and a teenager, he was a bully. A lazy, selfish jerk, smart enough to get by without ever doing any work, cruel to a smart but socially awkward classmate named Brady Oaks, and Quinn thought Michael Mallory was a loser, slaving away in R&D engineering instead of making a killing and blackjack. Basically, Young!Quinn was an evil Jerry O'Connell. Then Michael died in a car accident.

At the funeral, Quinn was astonished to see collaborators and colleagues speak of how Michael inspired them, helped them, played critical roles in creating so many successful patents -- and later, it'd be revealed that Michael's slaving away at R&D had left Quinn and Amanda Mallory financially secure. In the weeks that followed, Quinn forgot about Brady, but Brady didn't forget him, and seeing Quinn weak, Brady attacked him in a stairwell one day. Quinn pushed away and Brady fell down a flight of stairs and was crippled for life.

By the end of it, Quinn's inheritance was lost to the lawsuits and medical bills and he and his mother barely kept the house. Quinn was ashamed; ashamed of how he'd misjudged his father, how his cruelty had destroyed what his father had left him and his mother -- and by age 20, Quinn was reformed but isolated and withdrawn, friendless and alone, disgusted by his past and no decent university would touch him. A genius enrolled at community college (with a few classes at Berkeley), Quinn desperately tried to create something to turn his life around and redeem himself.

So, the Quinn of this reboot is exactly like the 1995 Quinn in temperament and behaviour -- but I wanted to explain how someone as attractive as Jerry O'Connell could be so isolated. I had this idea that Young!Quinn wore leather jackets and hoodies and had styled short hair while Modern!Quinn would wear flannel and jeans -- his father's clothes -- and he'd neglect haircuts.

Slider_Quinn21 had this idea that Arturo was a widower who took on Wade as his assistant years ago, only for misplaced feelings to create an awkward situation with Wade fleeing the sciences for humanities. Wade would be Quinn's online friend, but they wouldn't meet in person until the Pilot. All this would create a lot of interpersonal confusion during sliding.

Chaser9 advised that Rembrandt in 2013 remain an R&B singer, but with the idea that one night before a performance, Rembrandt's girlfriend dumped him and he went onstage crying, creating an unforgettable performance that saw him dubbed the Crying Man. His attempt to shed this image destroyed his career.

I suggested that we copy the original SLIDERS' character progression but in reverse: Series 1 would have the sliders constantly arguing and sniping and fighting only to discover that they are all incredibly talented at sliding and enjoy each other's company, leading to a Series 2 where they are the best of friends. Informant suggested that Series 2 end with Rembrandt accidentally left behind while the sliders leave only to discover on the next world that Rembrandt didn't make it.

Series 3 would have the first movie about Quinn, Wade and Arturo shattered by Rembrandt's loss and choosing to stop sliding and focus on their dealing with a single parallel world over the course of a year. The second movie would be about Rembrandt doing the same -- and he would meet Maggie Beckett and Diana Davis, who would eventually help him reunite with his friends in the third movie of the series.

Series 4 would then have the sliders now equipped with a home base and a team and a larger organization, and having adventures in a more prepared and calculated form. Series 5 would feature an interdimensional war that would end with the sliders finally making it home only to find that home was as strange as any other parallel dimension, and the series would end with the sliders deciding that their home is now the multiverse.

Another approach I proposed was for each series to have a movie-length episode, then an episode composed entirely of mini-episode short films, then a movie-length episode to close things out.

It never happened for a variety of reasons I still don't fully understand but can guess at. It doesn't matter, though -- I'm pretty happy writing what I'm writing now.

The appeal of Nexus phones, I suspect, is the operating system. It's clean, simple, straightforward and well-organized. Google does a nice job with Android, but manufacturers such as Samsung, Sony, HTC, LG, Xiaomi take Android and change the colours, layout, controls, nomenclature, graphics, fonts, symbols -- often taking a pre-existing operating system and changing it in random, inconsistent, unconsidered ways.

Some post-Google modifications are light and subtle. Sony's Xperia line adjusts the visuals while leaving the layout and controls alone. Some are ridiculously out of control; Samsung takes a simple series of nine toggles in the notifications shade and makes it 30 - 50, and takes a simple scrolling list of settings and turns it into an incomprehensible tabbed list of categories that aren't organized in any decipherable sense. LG has nonsensical tabbed selections in its settings as well. Xiaomi puts all the app icons on the homescreen instead of giving you your choice of homescreen icons and an app drawer the rest of them. And the noises! All the beeps, bleeps, buzzes and dings at every tap. Noisy and distracting.

The Nexus line is a way of getting away from all that nonsense. It's stupid to take an operating system that works just fine and mutilate it on the most superficial level in an attempt to make Android into a completely different operating system when the Android skeleton is never going to be obscured unless the code is used as little more than a raw base, like an Amazon Kindle tablet's operating system. Nexus phones are Android as designed by the Android team. Android that's coherent, consistent and clear.

To be fair -- earlier versions of Android lacked a lot of features that manufacturers had to build in, but there's no need for that anymore, hasn't been since Jelly Bean.

Your link seems to indicate the Nexus 5x battery is very much non-replaceable. And there's no microSD expansion, sadly. The reason I like a microSD -- it lets me buy a cheaper phone but still have lots of storage for multimedia as well as little tweaks where Link2SD shifts the app data to the card while leaving the app on the phone. I bought the Samsung Galaxy S3 twice -- but I installed Cyanogenmod both times. Cyanogenmod is indistinguishable from the Nexus version of Android except there's extra settings available (overclocking, animation frame-rate adjustment, superuser access). I guess I like Samsung hardware with Nexus style software.

I don't understand. Why can't you do these things in a story? What tenets of storytelling does this violate? Why is this a problem for you? I would like to understand your thinking and learn from it.

The length doesn't necessarily have anything to do with quality or even my opinion.

It's more about extremely tangled and confusing behind the scenes situations. "Mother and Child" has one of the most convoluted behind the scenes situations in the history of the series and the onscreen result is at times in stark and glaring contrast to the actual screenplay as well as the Season 4 arc -- and it's due to the season-wide circumstances as well as the situation for this one episode.

The situation is the same for "Revelations," "The Unstuck Man," "Applied Physics," "Strangers and Comrades," "The Great Work," "New Gods for Old," "Requiem," "Eye of the Storm" and "The Seer" -- the original Season 4 finale, the intention to use that finale story for the Season 5 premiere, the original plan with Jerry O'Connell before he refused to return, the initial plans for Diana Davis, the original plan for the third episode of Season 5, the removal of the Kromaggs and the interdimensional library from "The Great Work," the original story pitch for "Requiem" (which had nothing to do with Wade) and the screenplay that followed (which was hacked up for the screen), the original Season 5 finale, the plans for Season 6, the plans for the SLIDERS feature film, the series finale that Tracy Torme intended to produce that would taken place after "The Guardian" and declared everything afterwards to be apocryphal -- there's a lot to unpack. I would say that the Season 4 finale, the Season 5 premiere, the delayed Season 4 'resolution' in Season 5, the Wade-episode of Season 5 and the Season 5 finale (as planned versus as filmed) will be the long E-mails filled with analysis, information and, well -- theory.

There's a lot of bits and pieces here that I've stitched into something resembling a coherent narrative while being careful to indicate where conjecture fills in some gaps, so it's also important to distinguish between known fact and supposition.

Having given you my minimum standards for an Android smartphone -- there are some additional things that I think are worth a little extra money.

For me, I won't buy a smartphone without a removable battery. The reason for this: now that I've discovered gel cases and tempered glass screen protectors, I'm very confident that my Samsung S3 (2012) will last me many more years. But all batteries degrade over time and smartphone batteries are constantly being charged and discharged until they lose capacity.

Smartphones with sealed batteries (like the Moto G and the Alcatel Idol 3 that I suggested) will eventually lose the ability to hold a full charge or anything close. If the manufacturer has no battery replacement option, then an aftermarket shop may perform the replacement -- but I've always found that such shops do poor work; the phone is dismantled and then reassembled, but the casing or screen may be slightly crooked, the catches and pins will be loose -- smartphones weren't made for surgery.

So, if you're prepared for some extra cost, I'd choose something like the Samsung S5 Neo where you can buy replacement batteries from reputable suppliers like Anker.

Another neat feature I would pay extra money for (but haven't yet) -- waterproofing. Smartphones are fragile, they get dropped and they can get wet. The Moto G I recommended is waterproof which is surprising to see in a budget smartphone. And a battery-removable, waterproof phone like the Samsung S5 Neo is definitely worth the added cost.

And finally -- this feature doesn't necessarily cost money -- but I wouldn't buy an Android smartphone unless it were officially supported by Cyanogenmod. I have very little patience with manufacturer-altered versions of Android; the Samsung version of Touchwiz is like Samsung tried to use Android as a basis for their own operating system and the result is a conflicting mess. Android's simple menus become an overwhelming selection of 30 - 40 toggles and 5 - 6 submenus of vague categorization. Cyanogenmod is the Google version of Android with some added customization options (root access, overclocking, forcing apps to close, button-remapping) and that's the OS I prefer to use.

I'm especially pleased that my Samsung S3 is able to run Android 5.1.1 and will eventually run Android 6.0. Each version of Android has been a performance improvement, requiring fewer system resources with improved memory usage and multitasking. The phone never feels dated thanks to Cyanogenmod's updates.

**

I liked MY SECRET IDENTITY up to a point, I guess. It is a silly children's show and it is written in an often clumsy, maudlin and over-the-top fashion with a frequently didactic, lecturing tone that can be insulting to its audience no matter what their age. For example, there's an episode where an Evil Company CEO declares that the wildlife in the forest should be killed since they're near extinction in order to build a shopping center on the grounds -- evil is rarely so overt and incapable of basic public relations.

I also got annoyed sometimes with Andrew Clemens (Jerry O'Connell) failing to use his superpowers for no adequately explained reason, delaying and hesitating despite having superspeed to go with the superstrength.

I enjoyed the first two seasons -- but I strongly disliked the third and final season because the crimefighting angle of the show became diminished to the point where it barely existed, and Andrew would use his powers in maybe 1 - 2 scenes or not at all, and the show became a half-hour teen soap with the fantasy elements largely absent. It bothered me that Andrew's use of his superpowers was so confined, so limited, likely due to budget -- but there were times when he didn't seem superpowered at all.

It's intriguing how Jerry O'Connell's roles have odd similarities to Tom Welling, who also played a superpowered teenager in SMALLVILLE and wore the same clothes as Quinn in Seasons 1 - 2.

EERIE INDIANA, in contrast, was a brilliant children's show that was so intelligent it went over the heads of most adults. It's like a junior version of THE X-FILES except that all the paranormal monsters were meant to be personifications of adolescent trials. The town of Eerie, a magnet for paranormal events, is never explained; the show never provides any reasoning for why ghosts and monsters and supernatural forces are drawn to it -- and on some level, any explanation would lessen the series. The demons of EERIE INDIANA are the demons of growing up. It's a great show and it didn't last nearly long enough. It spawned a thoroughly pedestrian sequel and some extremely mediocre tie-in novels, including one tragic volume that (*sigh*) tried to offer a scientific explanation for why Eerie is eerie. The TV show, in contrast, had a final episode that did offer answers, but the answers were maddeningly obscure. Also, EERIE INDIANA was an incredibly funny show. Beautifully produced and filmed with amazing direction and eccentric touches from producer/director Joe Dante.

I like THE SECRET WORLD OF ALEX MACK a lot -- it's another fun teen superpower show that kept its identity throughout as a series about secrets and adolescence. It's not a life-changer, it's not filled with brilliance or cleverness -- but it's heartfelt and sincere.

Haven't seen the others.

This is a bit embarrassing for me -- I would be reluctant to change anything for SLIDERS that didn't need changing and I don't feel you need to change much. The structure of the original series was perfect: the sliders are under-equipped and untrained misfits adrift in the multiverse. That's what made them so easy to relate to. The premise of SLIDERS is very straightforward. They're lost in the multiverse, trying to find a way back home. Simple. Elegant. Beautiful. The random sliding situation is also perfect: it creates a dramatic ticking clock while imposing limits on the sliders, yet it can also be an advantage as they can escape consequences. The random sliding situation also makes the show accessible to an audience: continuity is never an issue because every world is a new story with a beginning, middle and end.

The only thing I would really change about SLIDERS in a 2015 reboot whether with the original cast or new actors -- I would give the characters *much* more detailed backstories and constantly have LOST-style flashbacks to their lives back home in order to play up the homesickness. Other updates would simply come with engaging with the present day: cellular communication, social media, economic crisis, scientific skepticism, political and religious fundamentalism, environmental catastrophe, etc..

The random sliding setup with zero preparation or predictive ability is SLIDERS' greatest asset. The fact that SLIDERS ended up incomprehensible and opaque to the general audience is tragic and unfortunate.

This isn't in response to pliight -- but incomprehensibility is why I don't like the Season 6 style pitches. I find such stories fail to understand SLIDERS on a very basic and fundamental level. SLIDERS is about four homeless people. Everyone can relate to wanting to go back home.

Nobody can relate to being the last surviving member of a group of four people who originated from an Earth that's now been invaded by aliens and needing to fight an invasion by finding a superweapon while in the meantime hanging out with a fighter pilot-spygirl, a science fiction scientist and a car-thief-con-artist-lab-assistant-and-test-subject. Nobody can relate to finding a long-lost friend who was replaced by an alternate version while discovering the friend whom you thought dead was merely a clone and the other friend you thought lost is now separated from the man with whom he merged while learning that the home you thought invaded was actually a parallel world and your friend's unstuck brother is a Kromagg clone and also Logan St. Clair.

If people think that's the way to revive SLIDERS, they are wrong and I can prove it with charts.

As for a more military-styled SLIDERS -- I dunno, I can't say I relate to it, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be good and accessible.

I had a poke around on some developer sites -- every Samsung Ace ROM out there is underdeveloped and full of bugs. The Ace devices are the sort of low-end Android phone that I wish manufacturers wouldn't sell.

No one should ever buy a phone running Android on a single-core processor with 500MB of RAM and 8GB of internal memory. An Ace with its 4GB is an overpriced, barely functioning dumbphone on Android -- freezing, lagging and perpetually short of RAM and storage space.

The absolute minimum for Android should be 16GB of memory with 1.5GB of RAM and a 720p screen. Any Android phone with less than 32GB should have a microSD slot. 16GB is just enough to install all your apps while using Link2SD to move the app-storage to the microSD while leaving the app APK and cache on the internal memory. (MicroSDs are too slow for running the APKs.)

Thankfully, the market for low-cost devices with these minimum specs is getting better. The 16GB Moto G (3rd Gen, 5-inch screen) meets these standards -- although Motorola released an 8GB version that doesn't. The Alcatel One Touch Idol 3 (5.5 inch screen) also makes my minimum grade -- although Alcatel released a 4.7 model that fails.

The other thing to think about when buying a phone is the accessories -- nobody should buy a smartphone unless they can also find a fitted case and tempered glass screen protector or a fitted case with a screen cover. A smartphone is fragile and easy to drop. And these low-end phones are always lacking protective accessories, meaning they're inevitably maimed if not utterly destroyed. If you can't find protective accessories on eBay or Amazon, don't buy the phone.

These under-16GB Androids have no business being bought and sold. They are incapable of performing smartphone functions well and completely defeat the purpose for which they were made. The Moto G 3rd Gen 16GB is the bare minimum for a smartphone; anything less shouldn't be a smartphone.

I'm nervous about telling you what ROM to install without a phone model number. What is it? There's several Galaxy Aces. I had a blue one once.

Or you could consider picking up a Moto G! :-D

Well, that makes sense. Okay then! Money for Indie Gogo it is.

Originally, I was just going to send the boys this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/64bv60t89p1ld … d.mp3?dl=0

It's a voicemail, less than three minutes long, where I react to The Scene. But then, upon rewatching the episode for deleted scenes, I began to notice certain things and decided, instead, to send them something more analytical.

I'll see what Tom and Cory do with it -- for now, I'm leaving it for them as their exclusive. "Mother and Child" is one of the most despised episodes of SLIDERS ever made, but no one has ever looked at it with any degree of accuracy or clarity. The Scene -- the loathed, despised Scene -- no fan ever seems to be able to quote it correctly. It's as though their rage, while correct and appropriate, has warped their memory of it -- and I rewatched The Scene today repeatedly while reviewing the script, examining it frame by frame as though I were reviewing the Zapruder footage of John F. Kennedy getting shot. I think I know what happened. If there's stuff Tom and Cory decline to use, I'll share it here.

I laughed out loud when Tom and Cory remarked in their podcast that they had no messages from Earth Prime. I probably won't be writing them too many post-podcast messages as I'm now sending them my retrospectives in advance of their recording.

... I never believed you were dead. In terms of basic quantum mechanics -- if you accept that the multiverse generates new realities through constantly splitting at each point with multiple outcomes of possibility, then all sliders generate multiple versions of themselves across every parallel Earth they visit. An exploration of this concept can be found in the documents and evidence gathered by Mike Truman here: http://slidersweb.net/otherworlds/317/

In terms of raw emotion, I also never believed you were dead because I just couldn't.

You have escaped prisons, holding cells, offices, strongholds, caves and outmaneuvered petty thugs, fascist dictators, corrupt businessmen, murderous doubles and killer robots -- so the idea of the Kromaggs being able to hold Wade Welles captive for long really didn't ring true.

My suspicion has always been that the sliders who survive are ones with an innate sense of risk calculation and spatial awareness, able to capitalize on the smallest of opportunities for the largest of gains. It's what kept you all alive.

In the darkest, coldest depths of my mind, I imagined Wade Welles bound and immobilized, surrounded on all sides by implacable foes and unstoppable forces. Her captors certain she was in their power. But in every imagining, the enemy would look away for the briefest of moments. The merest flicker of the eye -- and in that moment, Wade would be free and there would be nothing and no one who could possibly stop her.

And on some level, that's true for everyone here. Everyone believed that if they sifted through all the evidence, all the accounts, all the records of the sliders' adventures, repeatedly, constantly and endlessly and if the influx of new information never, ever stopped, we would eventually find something to tell us what we all knew to be true -- that you were still out there.

Wow.

It feels like yesterday that I logged into the Sci-Fi Channel chat room and people were bemoaning the cancellation of the show.

Well, they explained how Claire died. Aside from that...

Ugh, this show. I thought it was supposed to be about superheroes. I thought it was supposed to be fun. Instead, it's so laboured, slow, self-important and the sweet, earnest, good-hearted Matt Parkman is a villain? What the hell is that?

This is one of those areas where it's such a drastic 180 from before that some detailed explanation for how and why Matt's turned from good to evil is absolutely required. The vagaries of Tim Kring's characterization are not acceptable in most circumstances; with Matt, it is absolutely impossible to believe his cruelty or willingness to use his powers to murder when the only motivation offered is *money* and a seat of on the lifeboat he doesn't even believe in.

Disgusted.

Tom and Cory, in the recent podcast, said that the SLIDERS comics aren't canon. The canonicity of the SLIDERS comics was an amusing debate in a Sliderscast:

Mr. Stargate: "The comics are not canon!"
The Savior: "They are canon."
Mr. Stargate: "How the fuck can they be canon?"
The Savior: "Tracy Torme said they're canon."
Mr. Stargate: "God damn it! Fuck! Fine! Whatever!"

That said, the comics became irreconcilable with the TV show; "Darkest Hour" has the sliders make it home and leave again and "Deadly Secrets" offers an account of Wade's parents contrary to "Season's Greedings" -- so I think the comics have to feature doubles of the sliders -- which means they are technically canon within the SLIDERS multiverse if not canon for the specific versions of the sliders we saw on television.

"But ireactions! If that's your opinion, why does one of your SLIDERS REBORN scripts have Rembrandt talking about how he once had to fight two-dimensional beings in ARMADA?!!"

..........

Whoops.

In terms of a follow-up on "The Seer" -- I think the only realistic option is distance. In the Pilot Redux arc, 2015-Quinn would find the video journals from 1994 with some additional videos from 2001-Quinn. 2001-Quinn could, in very general terms, indicate what happened after "The Seer."

"Sorry for the long hiatus between diaries -- the last few years have been like an out-of-body experience. Quite literally, in one case. I'm sorry to skip to the end of the story, but here's what's going on -- we're looking at an interdimensional war on all fronts and it's going to destroy all of reality. The Kromaggs, the Zercurvians, the Reticulans, Prototronics, Geiger Applied Research, the Slide Rulers -- it's war and all my friends are dead.

"I have only one option left. I can kill sliding. I have access to a set of cross-dimensional machines. I can rewrite universal constants and remap them so that sliding can retroactively cease to exist in any dimension anywhere. We'll all live the lives we'd have lived if sliding never came to be.

"But I have a feeling this would only be a temporary delay of a decade or two. I know me -- and I know you. Even amnesia, discouragement and a vastly different set of dimensional barriers wouldn't stop me forever. So I'm leaving this message for me -- for you.

"These video journals are an account of everything I did before I removed sliding from the equation. If you're watching this -- I hope you've had a good life up to this point -- that you've been happy. Fulfilled. Maybe you're married to Wade and the Professor's the godfather to your kids and Rembrandt's their music teacher. Maybe you built that flying car after all! I just hope the years have given you some of the wisdom and perspective I lacked before stepping through that gateway.

"Good luck. This message will self-destruct in 10 seconds.

"Kidding."

**

If you wanted a direct follow-up -- what happens next -- I think this would be your only real option given how the actors have aged:

http://www.earthprime.com/content/rebor … eprise.pdf

And now for another episode of Tech Talk:

I just lost four hours of my life. I was trying to design a poster on my little laptop, the T100 Chi -- and the wifi kept cutting out. Troubleshooting processes accomplished nothing, nor did resetting the router. So I ended up uninstalling and reinstalling different versions of the wifi router. Eventually, it dawned on me that Windows 10 had been updating all my drivers and the new wifi driver doesn't work. Which prompted another search for some way to prevent Windows 10 from fixing things that were working perfectly well without being updated. I did, however, manage to watch several Season 4 episodes of SLIDERS during this time and also do quite a bit of laundry and vacuuming and other non-computer stuff while all this was running.

So annoying. I don't understand this obsession with updates outside of security patches and bug fixes. If something is working just fine, leave it alone, Windows! If you have hardware that runs just fine with an older version of the operating system, then don't force upgrades to an OS not suited for the processor and RAM, Apple! This reminds me -- I already don't update iPad apps unless there's a new feature I want; I'm going to turn off auto-updates for my Android phone as well. This obsession with new seems to assume up-to-date means good.

One of my SLIDERS REBORN consultants was telling me recently how he felt so out of place in fanfic writing when Season 4 of SLIDERS rolled around. There he was, working away on his Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo novellas -- and then everything he wrote suddenly seemed stupid, because no matter what adventures he created for them, it'd all end with Arturo dead, Wade in a rape camp, and Quinn and Rembrandt originating not from a world we could consider home but a Kromagg outpost. That it made him feel like all his stories were out of date and worthless because they weren't in touch with what was new even thought what was new sucked.

I wanted to see if I could talk about consumer gadgets and somehow shift it back to SLIDERS.

My advice -- choose one character's internal point of view, even if you continue to use third-person language. Use that one character's perspective on the characters and surroundings and his or her reactions to everything in order to tell the story. This will allow you to use more description in a way that's comfortable for a prose reader and begin the process of adapting the characters to text-description rather than live-action performance.

If you must use a completely detached perspective without an internal viewpoint to create mystery (like with the evil sliders), keep it short.

The best character to use for the internal point of view is probably Colin because his ignorance and innocence are useful for exposition.

The teaser is very intriguing. The content is strong with the idea of two sets of sliders on the same world, one evil, one from Season 4. Evil!Colin's behaviour is instantly disturbing.

I'd say that the main problem is the prose and perspective. The main content of your first scene -- the sliders emerging -- is just dialogue. And the dialogue is fine, but there really isn't any other meaningful information other than the banter between the sliders. Enjoyable banter, surrounded by prose that doesn't inform us about the characters or the setting or the atmosphere or the tone in any meaningful way.

This is not a unique problem in fan fiction. The reason this is happening to you: you are attempting to convert a set of television characters into prose, but your grasp of the characters is in terms of physical performance from the actors and spoken lines of dialogue, all from a detached third-person perspective. Prose, by its nature, requires delving more deeply, either in offering internal perspective within a character's thinking or in focusing on environment, atmosphere or exposition.

The only real way around this is to devise 'literature-friendly' versions of the characters and settings that are suited to the prose format -- or you could just say screw it and write a screenplay.

Or you just carry on as you are now, accepting that flaws and mistakes and material that isn't quite right is all part of the process of learning as a writer and even if this story isn't all you want it to be, you will grow from it. I can promise you that I will read it -- but right now, I have to go out, I have a hankering for potato chips.

Hmmm. This reminds me. Back in the day, we had a betting pool going on whether or not Wade was bisexual.

... if Wade would care to settle it, this would mean the winner would receive a significant sum sufficient for a matinee movie and a small soda. :-D