Search options (Page 74 of 78)

You have completely missed the point of the story proposal.

Story Element: Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo discover sliding in 2015 instead of 1994.

Purpose: This gives SLIDERS a new start but with the original actors; we have the original chemistry, the original faces -- but we can start the show again and do it right this time without being encumbered by having to resolve plots like Logan St. Clair, the Professor's illness and which one slid, liberating Earth Prime, saving Wade, splitting the Quinns, recovering Colin, overturning the Quinn from Kromagg Prime backstory.

Your Revision: Rembrandt and the Professor have been hiding sliding from Quinn.

Your Result: The fresh start is lost, because your version has Rembrandt and the Professor, for whatever reason, still remembering sliding and the 1995 show. Meaning that this Pilot Redux would once again be forced to deal with the anti-Kromagg virus and all the other debris of Seasons 3 - 5. The result would be a story that is completely alienating to an audience who hasn't seen those episodes and it would distract from the point of SLIDERS, which is to have them exploring at least one new parallel world every week.

That's what a mass media, broadcast version of SLIDERS has to be about. Every episode features at least one new parallel Earth. It's not about Kromaggs. It's not about saving Colin. It's not about following up on Quinn's offspring. That is just noise. Debris. If a revival of SLIDERS on TV doesn't create a new series that can reach a new audience, it is pointless to make one.

Story Element: Sliding was erased from history due to unknown means that are mysterious and never fully explained, allowing everyone in reality to live the lives they would have lived had slide-tech never existed.

Purpose: This clears the slate, allowing a new audience to begin the journey with the sliders on the ground floor with nobody remembering the 1995 show. They can discover the multiverse for the first time.

Your Revision: Rembrandt remembers everything and is traumatized by it.

Your Result: Sliding isn't new, it's old and tired and the characters are actually bored and irritated by it -- which are not the emotions I'd want to provoke in a potential new audience.

Story Element: The videotaped journals from 1994 are the only aspect of the original timeline.

Purpose: This isolates any continuity references to one specific area -- the videotapes. They might be incomplete. They might be out of order. They might be damaged or unintelligible in places. This controls how much continuity the show has to deal with and allows the show to focus on creating new stories rather than being obligated to rehash and resolve old stories.

Your Revision: Rembrandt would constantly bring up the past.

Your Result: The show is incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't seen those episodes.

?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

TF suggested a way to restart the series with the same old faces discovering sliding, which I updated for 2015. Matt suggested a story direction that would make it so they aren't just the same faces; they're the same people. And I found a way to bring in the past that would be controlled and isolated in this Pilot Redux so we could focus on new worlds and new stories. Each of these ideas made the Pilot Redux "better" by widening its appeal to fans and newcomers.

One would think that to make this story "better," as others have, you would look at the story's goals of providing a simple, welcoming, accessible introduction to SLIDERS and find ways to make it even more so.

When your 'improvements' take the simple, welcoming and accessible and render it convoluted, alienating and confusing, then you haven't made it "better" -- you have made it worse.

I find you delusionally arrogant. Temporal Flux and Matt Hutaff may be at odds, but they're two of the most imaginative and creative people in this fandom, and when I combined their concepts, the results were magnificent. You are seriously punching above your weight to declare that you will make their ideas better by replacing them with your own -- especially when your ideas are empty rehashes of Season 4 - 5 plots which are devoid of parallel worlds concepts, originality or creativity.

When these are the ideas you have to offer, you've no business telling anyone how to make their story "better."

[SLIDERS REBORN SPOILERS. READ IT HERE FIRST.]

I've yet to commit myself to the idea that I'm writing about your double from a TV show version. It's possible that I'm reconstructing events based on eyewitness accounts, documented evidence and the Professor's blinkered and egotistical version of events. Given the pan-dimensional nature of the events of SLIDERS REBORN involves two altered timelines that culminated in the city of San Francisco being merged with 800 parallel versions of itself and then being attacked a year later by pancake parasites, fat-craving zombies, animal-human hybrids, rockstar vampires, radioactive slugs, Dream Masters, super-intelligent snakes, dinosaurs... and toy cars with laser cannons, very odd... anyway. For all we know, this is merely the three-dimensional perspective on a cosmically indescribable event taking shape in a five-part documentary in which noted actors Jerry O'Connell, John Rhys-Davies and Cleavant Derricks play Quinn, the Professor and Rembrandt, Taissa Farmiga plays Laurel Hills and Angie Everhart plays you if Sabrina Lloyd won't come back from Uganda.

Or I'm just completely insane. Who can tell? Anyway -- on my end of the multiverse, Quinn has a daughter. A bratty half-pint of a 15-year-old. She's sardonic and curious and troubled and anomalous and gay. You're not her mother, though -- she's the product of Quinn's awkward fumbling with that Jane Hills lady on that Earth where all the men died off and in-vitro wasn't available for... uh, some reason. Given your double's relationship with Quinn developing, she feels some responsibility to Laurel -- but she also finds Laurel an uncontrollable hellraiser. But that's not important!

Currently, I've compiled my perspective on events into three screenplays and a novella. One long-time follower of your exploits informed me that he very much enjoyed the material and felt the characters truly came alive, that he could hear their voices so distinctly, so vividly. He could hear all of you. Quinn. Rembrandt. Arturo. And of course, Wade. He enjoyed the scripts so much he wrote a TV Tropes page on the story. And he wrote little descriptions of Quinn, Rembrandt and Arturo -- how Quinn is the Guile Hero who bypasses violence with cleverness. How Rembrandt is the incompetent who turns out to be more capable than he realizes. How Arturo is so smart he figures out Quinn's master plan without Quinn ever verbalizing it.

And then he got to Wade -- and he couldn't identify anything remotely unique about your portrayal in SLIDERS REBORN. Certainly, he'd enjoyed your character and you'd had many amusing lines and hilarious observations and helped save the world -- but he couldn't point to any specific goals or actions that reflected something unique and individual to you and you alone. You were funny. But all the sliders were funny, so in terms of what you brought to the table, you were The Girl.

This embarrassed me so deeply that I spent weeks wandering the streets wondering what exactly defines Wade Welles, what makes her stand out when standing next to Quinn, Rembrandt and Arturo. The only thing that came to mind is that she's been, in some documentaries and reconstructions, played by Sabrina Lloyd. That's what defines you. Which seems to be something similar to the problem you're having in that you have no idea what you bring to the table in your relationship with Quinn.

I finally decided that your primary character trait would be a streak of relentless practicality that allows you to execute absurd and difficult ideas in grounded and realistic terms matched with an aptitude for resolving interpersonal conflict that completely eludes Quinn, introverted little weirdo that he is. An ability to delegate effectively and also produce practical application to otherwise theoretical concepts. It troubles me that I could only figure out what your deal is by Part Five of Five and find ways to demonstrate it in order to complete your double's arc... but better late than never?

So maybe you can also put this to use in sorting out your stuff with Quinn.

Earlier, I said that in pre-REBORN discussions, Matt had come up with a way to do the "older doubles make their first slide" Pilot Redux -- but with a twist to indicate that these older doubles were in fact the original sliders we met in 1995.

Recent discussions have made it clear that the REBORN finale will be the end of the road for my SLIDERS writing -- so I think I feel okay with sharing the secret twist of how the 2015 Pilot characters would have been revealed to actually be the 1995 characters.

Matt was really not onboard with the in-continuity approach I proposed for REBORN. My first draft was poor and made a lousy case for treating SLIDERS as a unified supermyth.

In response, Matt offered a simpler story for a new Pilot -- set on Earth Prime where the Kromagg invasion never happened. At first, it seems like the Pilot Redux characters are older doubles of the originals discovering sliding for the first time.

However, the Pilot Redux ends with a revelation: these aren't older doubles at all. They are the original sliders -- they lost their memories of sliding because sliding was erased from history.

Matt left it up to me to sort out the execution of this twist. My thoughts on how to do this at one point went very surreal but have now become very grounded -- it's a new version of the Pilot, a new beginning for a new audience. I would use Temporal Flux's take, but updated for 2015.

Quinn Mallory is a tax accountant who lost his passion for science after failing to create anti-gravity. Wade Welles is a tech journalist who has lost her enthusiasm for writing gadget reviews after failing to get her journalism startup to succeed. Rembrandt Brown is a coffee house owner whose only joy is singing for an audience on open mic nights (a reference to the Java Jive and, I think, more in tune with Rembrandt's jazz-and-soul background than a nightclub). And Professor Arturo is a writer of high school science study guides who failed to keep his tenure after a scientific theory for which the world was not prepared.

Quinn is estranged from Wade and the Professor after a strange incident in 1994 that he has never been able to explain. When Amanda Mallory dies, Quinn goes home to clean out his stuff and sell the house. He encounters his anti-gravity machine but also finds something that wasn't there before -- videotapes he doesn't recognize. A video journal he never made, featuring a 1994-Quinn who did discover sliding. Quinn follows what he sees in the video journal and opens a vortex for the first time.

In terms of the plot, the video diaries would serve the role that Smarter-Quinn played in the Pilot: explaining sliding to our Quinn.

Throughout the Pilot Redux, the 2015 Quinn would be watching these videos to try to benefit from his double's experience. In addition to the 1994 video diaries, there'd also be video diaries from 2001 where 2001 Quinn apologizes for his lengthy absence. Subsequent diaries would have 2001 Quinn describing a terrible cataclysm on the horizon; an interdimensional war on all fronts and how all his friends are dead.

The final entry would be 2001 Quinn addressing 2015 Quinn -- saying that he has been forced to take drastic measures. He's found a way to retroactively alter reality so sliding never existed -- meaning everyone will live the lives they would without sliding. The only remnant of a multiverse with sliding will be these videotapes.

2001 Quinn says that he will take measures to prevent his amnesiac self from ever reconstructing the technology. But, he confesses -- he doesn't believe he can stop his future self from creating sliding -- his best hope is to slow the process down so that when he does rediscover sliding, he'll be older, wiser and more prepared for the responsibility.

So, the 2015 Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo would be validated as the 1995 characters, but they wouldn't remember the 1995 TV series outside of the video journals. It would just be background; the fact that this has happened before would be a subtle, low-key note in an otherwise new beginning.

Good? Bad? Too subtle? Too much? I don't know. I really liked Matt's idea, I really liked Temporal Flux's reboot idea. I decided not to do it, but now it's here. Someone else can use it.

I do not believe Quinn would have ever stopped pursuing Rickman. But I also don't believe Quinn would have killed Rickman, at least not if he were written correctly.

I think Quinn would have found some way to strand Rickman in a state of quantum suspension, imprisoned and 'frozen' inside the interdimensional tunnel -- with the intention to one day find a cure for Rickman's condition, release him from limbo and repair his damaged body and mind.

Anyway. I thought NDJ raised an interesting approach to Season 4. "Mother and Child" has a plothole: why don't Quinn and Rembrandt try to use the anti-Kromagg virus on their home Earth? NDJ suggested a missing scene / plot where their memories were erased.

It makes me think: Season 4 is filled with awkward beats and characterization that were could have been made reasonable with some added scenes.

What if "Mother and Child" in addition to the Kromagg mindwipe, there was also another scene? A scene where Quinn abruptly separates himself from Colin, Maggie and Rembrandt -- making some flimsy excuse that doesn't fool Rembrandt. Rembrandt finds Quinn  Quinn is crying. The failure to find Wade again has hit him hard, and Quinn rages over how they've broken into 15 Kromagg bases trying to find Wade and "we never have time." He wonders if this is pointless, if they should give up. Maggie calls for Quinn and Quinn suddenly pulls himself together, his face resuming the cold stoicism he had before.

And maybe the final scene is Quinn staring blankly at wall in the Chandler and then Rembrandt drags him outside and down the street. Rembrandt points across the street. We see, at a distance, a slender redhead with an apron waiting on a table at an outdoor restaurant. Rembrandt says that on a lot of worlds, Kelly Welles and Wade opened a chain of Internet cafes; any time Rembrandt sees a Turing Treats in the phone book, he knows Wade's around.

Rembrandt tells Quinn: watch her. Go up to her and talk to her and take her to the movies, or walk by once and then walk away. He tells Quinn to do whatever he has to do, but he can't give up. They have to keep searching for the superweapon. They can't give up. And we'd end on Quinn alone, looking at the Wade-double. Does he approach? Does he leave? Fade out.

Another major sticking point is "Revelations" where Quinn is apparently not going to accompany Rembrandt back to Earth Prime to liberate it from the Kromaggs. I would probably imagine a missing scene where Colin confronts Quinn about this: and Quinn reveals that now that they have the weapon, they can free their home Earth, but Wade and Amanda Mallory are still out there. Rembrandt and Quinn had an agreement: Rembrandt would take the weapon home. Quinn would go search for Wade and his mom.

It would add weight to Jerry's half-hearted performance in the final scene when Maggie tells Quinn she hopes he gets home someday and Quinn says he does too -- but what he's really thinking about is how his search for Wade is once again on hold.

That said, I think the whole Kromagg Prime arc of Season 4 was awful awful awful no matter how many tweaks might have been made. But "Commander Wade Welles" and Quinn putting on a brave face for the others while crying over Wade when nobody's looking would have helped a little. (A little.)

{{First, something for intangirble. Matt Hutaff of Earth Prime sent me a box of SLIDERS clippings from the Sci-Fi Channel's press office. He never had time to go through the 2,000 clippings. I reviewed the material and found 12 items of interest for future addition to EP.COM's article archives.

{{I just wanted to share this for intangirble first -- a clipping where Sabrina Lloyd is interviewed and reacts to the rape camp.

}}

[SLIDERS REBORN SPOILERS. READ IT HERE FIRST?]

Hi, Wade. How's the hair growing? It may be hip-length by the time you finish reading this message.

From what I can tell, I'm not currently working with your Quinn. I'm working with a different Quinn. Your Quinn appears to be 23 - 24, engaged with random sliding and he may or may not overcome the demons of his past. Both our Quinns have the same origin.

Quinn skipped two grades and was smaller than his peers, ostracized for his intellectual prowess, abused and threatened. When 11-year-old Quinn approached his father for help, his father refused to intervene. Quinn screamed at his father that he hated him, Mr. Mallory withheld any response and left -- and those were the last words Quinn ever spoke to his father. Mr. Mallory died in a car crash afterwards.

Later, Quinn was attacked by one of the bullies. Quinn defended himself with a baseball bat and permanently injured the boy. Quinn blamed himself for his father's death and for nearly crippling Brady.

From these incidents, Quinn developed an instinct for withdrawing and isolating himself -- except in one instance. He made an exception for Daelin. There is no data consistent across parallel universes with regards to Daelin except in one area: she left him. Not by choice; her parents moved -- but she left him and Quinn, once again alone, closed his heart.

By 1995, Quinn was an incandescently charismatic youth but with humility and restraint. In some instances, this was to his credit: in his classes with Professor Arturo, he pretended not to know the answers a show of solidarity with his classmates.

In others, this was socially damaging and psychologically crippling: despite you being clearly besotted with him, he pretended not to notice. Recall that day you told him you'd scored the hockey tickets, brimming with eagerness and hope for your outing.

Thank back. Was he oblivious? Or was he cautiously avoiding eye-contact and direct engagement? Shielding himself? Because when you two were faced of the end of the world and you told him that there were things about you he didn't know, he leaned in to kiss you, indicating he'd always known how you felt. I noticed, when you visited his house, his mother didn't recognize you and you peered about the interiors with great curiosity -- meaning that despite being on such good terms with Quinn that you would be going to hockey games, he had never invited you over. Not once. Not ever.

Note also that while on friendly terms with his classmates, he was close to none of them and his mother didn't know what he was doing in the basement. And why was Quinn creating sliding in a basement lab? Using discounted Doppler products and junkyard finds? Why not a university lab? Why not as a school project?

Why wasn't Quinn, an athletic, attractive grad student, dating? He likes women; his relationship with his mother shows clear respect for them, he wouldn't have had any trouble appealing to others.

The answer is that Quinn's life was defined by his secrets. Distance let him keep his secrets. But it also deepened the damage and led to the carelessness and recklessness of the first slide where he got himself and three others lost.

I think your Quinn and mine have consistent adventures up to 1996 or so. Our Quinns most definitely grew during the first two years of sliding; the boy who was overwhelmed by the Soviet World is not the commanding and clever man who trounced Logan St. Clair and Prototronics with ease as he forced them to release you from their custody and engineered an escape.

I don't know what happened next to your Quinn. Maybe he continued to grow and advance, becoming a master of the interdimension and seeking ways and means to topple injustice, bring equality and freedom to world after world and solve every single problem of civilization with knowledge and ideas. Maybe he got you all home but continued to be driven by curiosity and wanderlust and never stopped exploring. Maybe he created a team of sliders to continue exploring while he moved into a different situation where you and he could start a family with a stable environment. Or maybe he became a tax accountant.

Regardless, the man who mentored his younger self and addressed his guilt and remorse was now prepared to fall in love again someday.

What happened to my Quinn, however, was more unfortunate. He learned of a Kromagg plot to collapse the multiverse and restore it with only Kromagg-approved variations on reality.

Quinn set out to stop them and succeeded, but at a terrible price: in 2001, the multiverse was destroyed and Quinn only managed to rebuild a portion of it; every Earth in existence now had an identical history up to March 22, 1995 (or, in your timeline, September 27, 1994) with variations in history existing only after that point. To make matters worse, no new Earths would split from post-1995 decision points.

Quinn was able to send his friends back home, and with the shift in reality, home had never been invaded. His friends could resume their lives after a six year absence. But Quinn discovered that the 1995-limitation had damaged the multiverse. The injustices and failings of Quinn's home Earth were now multiplied to infinity without divergence or alternative.

The concept of sliding was broken and Quinn would now devote the rest of his life to alleviating the harm he'd caused.

Once again, Quinn's life was defined by a shameful secret. A secret well beyond misplaced guilt over his father's death in an automobile accident or injuring an attacker in self-defence. A secret for which he despised himself, a secret he could not bring himself to share with anyone.

And fourteen years later, Quinn has degenerated back into the state he was in when you first met him: isolated, withdrawn, alone except for his mother and even she is kept at a distance. And every failure to create new universes has made him pull farther and farther back. He's dressing the way he did in 1995 (flannel and jeans), even has the same hair -- which is attractive, but also indicates his mental downturn.

Could he have met someone new? He couldn't let anyone into his life, because if he did, he would have to reveal his secret. It would never be an equal relationship and Quinn would never risk letting anyone get close enough to have to expose himself.

Would he have dated casually, had the odd liaison? Perhaps -- but given his bedroom is now enmeshed with a recreation of his basement lab, Quinn clearly set up his life so that it would be impossible to ever bring anyone home.

Could Quinn have just gone the route of casual sex with bringing dates to a room at the Dominion Hotel or the Motel 12? He may have considered it, but ultimately chosen to maintain his emotional and physical seclusion. He wasn't going to look up Daelin; he wasn't going to track down Holly the Chandler-manager. Quinn, for all his faults, never lies to himself. He was alone. He accepted it.

There's really only one person whom Quinn might let into his life and his heart at this point. Only one person who might pierce his boundaries and barriers. Just one.

Which is why Quinn so carefully avoided you (or rather, your double) for 14 years.

That said, I have some hope for Quinn -- the recent discovery that he has a daughter forced him to open up. He wasn't going to isolate himself from his child; he wasn't going to deny her a father or himself a daughter -- and opening himself up to his kid will force him to open up to others. But this Quinn is so fundamentally damaged and so entrenched in interdimensional matters -- I have serious doubts he could relate to a 'normal' person at this point.

Anyway. I assume the 1995-limitation will be addressed seeing as we're having this conversation. And I wouldn't assume that your Quinn has the deficiencies of my Quinn. (I imagine he has plenty of his own.)

Another note -- I have decided to take a break from this forum. I am experiencing a considerable amount of RAGE within two threads and I need some time to cool off. So, this isn't good bye, but I will see you all again after a sufficient interval of time. Rest assured that if you experience any technical difficulties, any odd glitches in the Bboard, any trouble at all with the software and web hosting -- TOUGH. I'm taking time off.

See you next week. Don't burn the place down while I'm away.

http://rewatchpodcast.podomatic.com/

New episode! "World Killer" and "O Brother Where Art Thou"!

I just re-read "Reunion" and I see nothing that indicates Quinn is trying to save infinite numbers of Earths. Within the script, his attempts to improve situations are confined to his home Earth.

If Quinn Mallory being a force for good is something you find out of character -- that is so incomprehensible to me that I can't see you enjoying any of this project even if you get around to finishing it. I don't understand how that could possibly be a problem; I don't see how (or why) I could possibly address that. That is simply a non-starter for me.

"Killer cyborgs are silly," "Laurel brings about global collective consciousness is silly," "Try to find a more plausible way to get from point A to B" -- "You have crafted set pieces strung together by the flimsiest of machinations that make no sense," "Your continuity references are so thick I have no idea what you're referring to and I've seen the show enough for most" -- "I don't understand how the Season 5 Combine affected events in Season 1" -- those are criticisms from you and Matt and Christian that I can understand.

"Quinn Mallory should not be heroic" -- sorry. We have come to a parting of ways on this project.

You're free to like or dislike however much of REBORN you read, but at present, REBORN is 276 pages. You read 50 of them. I don't see how you can claim scenes need to be cut when you have no way of gauging whether or not they paid off at a later point; I don't see how you can declare Laurel Hills needs to be removed from the story when you don't really know what the story is. The fact that there is no telepathy or war games across San Francisco should tell you the scripts bear little resemblance to the outline I first sent you.

This is not the first time you have spoken badly of my writing. In the past, you have called my writing clumsy and poorly conceived and badly executed. Matt has also regularly noted serious errors and glaring discrepancies and logical failures in my writing. I was always happy to see that, because the criticisms were specific to the material and therefore very helpful as opposed to -- as opposed to whatever the hell this is supposed to be.

I don't see what you could possibly have to say about REBORN beyond the general impression that you're not really into it and probably won't finish it, which is the only fair or reasonable reaction I think any reader could have after reading 50 pages out of 276.

SPOILERS

You've lost me on this one. Maybe we have different views of the character, but my vision of Quinn is that he is a moral and social crusader. A nomadic wanderer who battles injustice and is filled with compassion for the weak. He rallied the rebels in "Prince of Wails," he stood with the sick and dying in "Fever," he fought to restore the Constitution in "Time and Again World," he used Gillian but inspired her in "Gillian of the Spirits," he fought the effort to change education into commercials in "Young and Relentless."

Why wouldn't Quinn want the world to have global wifi? "Time and Again World" has him appalled at the idea that people could have knowledge and history withheld from them. "Young and the Relentless" had him believing in the power of education.

Once Quinn made it home in 2001, he had sliding. The power to transport any object to any location he chose. I think that a Quinn who would not be committed to using his power for the benefit of all is a Quinn who has no business being the star of this show. And why wouldn't Quinn be protecting our world? His mom lives here, man. His mom lives here!

The real question is why he hasn't done *more* -- addressed in "Revelation." (Sliding is broken.)

Sorry -- I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

Whether you like Laurel or don't, I am completely baffled by how anyone could look at REBORN and say she needs to be removed from the story when the original sliders would not reunite if she were not present. I'm finding your criticisms about Quinn's work... unintelligible. I have no idea what you're trying to say.

I'm looking over our E-mails. You read the original outline, where Part 2 is composed entirely of action set-pieces where Maggie and Hurley are killer cyborgs that the sliders fight and Laurel manifests telepathic powers.

You told me that these story elements were implausible and unbelievable and advised that I find more grounded means of advancing through the story. The scripts for REBORN, as posted online, do not contain killer cyborgs or telepathic powers and there are only two fight scenes in Part 2, each one lasting less than a page and both confined to the first third.

You and Matt had a lot to say to me. I agreed with all the problems you guys raised, but I came up with my own solutions to addressing them. A reader in this thread raised problems as well that prompted a rewrite.

I have thought hard on your post and I cannot understand what you're saying at all -- which is so very odd, because I had no difficulty understanding your extremely negative reaction to the first REBORN outline and making changes.

I'm thinking maybe reading only 50 pages isn't enough to offer an opinion -- or at least not one that I can put to use in making revisions.

I don't disagree, of course. Two of my favourite moments for Rembrandt: his shotgun slinging in "Into the Mystic" and his intimidating the secretary in "Murder Most Foul."

I just think that there is more to being a hero than beating people up. Force and violence are easy. Fists and guns, knives and bombs -- I imagine that there are plenty of potential SLIDERS stories where Quinn would have to use such things. But I would never want to be the default-setting for Quinn. I would never measure a person's worth or competence by how many people he can hurt.

There are times in the series when Quinn's physical inabilities have been nonsensical, most notably in "El Sid" and "The Young and the Relentless." I get that Sid is tough, but it's ludicrous that Quinn is completely unable to defend himself. And Kyle Beck intimidating Quinn and withholding the timer when Quinn is muscled and toned and towers over Kyle -- absurd. I just don't think fighting is particularly interesting as a solution or resolution. Any TV hero can shoot a gun or punch a villain; it's a science hero who can think his way to victory and that's what makes Quinn great.

I'm not saying you can't have Quinn punch and kick and shoot his way out; I'm just saying it doesn't really speak to Quinn Mallory. It's generic. And I don't know how much more you can really showcase Quinn's physicality beyond "As Time Goes By" and "Double Cross."

I found myself thinking about this quite heavily when writing SLIDERS REBORN. Jerry is like Tom Cruise in the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movies. Tom Cruise is jumping onto planes that are taking off, leaping off rooftops, diving out of skyscrapers, and I imagine Quinn being as superhuman if not moreso. But I found it more important, in the fight scenes here and there, to emphasize how Quinn is skillful rather than how Quinn is strong. When captured by two police officers, he slips out of his handcuffs, handcuffs one to a bikerack and knocks the other one unconscious and proceeds to steal their car -- but it's the police radio that's really useful because it helps him dodge the manhunt. That's how I see it -- the physicality is a component, but it's not the defining trait.

Note: Please don't feel obligated to consider REBORN as supporting evidence in our discussions.

Congratulations! I've never had that experience with an SSD replacement before. Probably because the hardware around the SSD was a bottleneck to any SSD advantages.

It's strange to me, however, that your computer was getting slower and slower. When my computers are slow down, the solution is generally a combo of defragmentation, reviewing the startup apps and cleaning out the internals. Of course, if a hard drive is breaking down due to wear over time, replacement is the only option.

I replaced the HDD once on my AMD laptop, putting in an SSD and boosting the RAM from 4GB to 8GB. The results weren't super-inspiring. On the HDD, the laptop was slow. Constantly stuttering and regularly unresponsive. It was the kind of laptop that couldn't play HD Netflix video (although it did fine with SD video). With the SSD and extra RAM, the laptop didn't freeze anymore. It was still slow in that programs took more seconds than I wanted to start and connect, but it didn't freeze up anymore. Still couldn't play Netflix HD, though.

This home theatre PC is still on an HDD. I'm interested in switching to SSD, but I'm still using the 500GB storage space and I'm not sure I can reduce to 128GB right now, which is about all I'm willing to pay for presently with SSDs.

You're sorry? You are indeed sorry. I am not sorry.

I am not sorry to tell you that there is NO SCENE in "Mother and Child" where the Kromagg telepathically removes knowledge of the anti-Kromagg virus. It is not in the script. First, you raised the telepathy as a possibility; now you declare it is a certainty. It is not. You just made that up.

I am not sorry to refuse to follow you in your tortured logic where I am somehow at fault for declining to take into account a scene that does not exist outside your imagination. Perhaps you have your own version of "Mother and Child" in your head; I am not obligated to review it, only the version that aired. At least 29.7 had a deleted script page; what have you got? Nothing whatsoever.

I am also extremely not sorry to declare that it is a moral tipping point for Quinn to be blissfully unconcerned with ALL THE PEOPLE Rickman will kill.

I'm not sorry to point out that you defending Quinn for refusing to let his friends go home in "The Exodus" is you declaring that  kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment is okay by you!

I never likened Quinn to Superman. As for Batman, he never needs to kill as demonstrated in an issue of DETECTIVE COMICS Batman put R'as Al Ghul in a mental hospital with faked paperwork to keep the man in a permanent coma.

Superman has superstrength/heat vision/invulnerability/flight/a fortress in the Arctic. Batman has infinite money and over 20 sidekicks and a limitless utility belt of plot convenient gadgets. Quinn had a god-damn TV remote. Of course Rickman should have been killed. If they didn't have the stomach to do it personally, they could have sent him to Earth Prime (where he'd suffocate) or send him back to the military settlement (where his own people would have executed him) or they could have stranded him on some wasteland world where the lack of fresh brain fluid would have seen him die.

Once again -- I am astonished that stopping murderers is any sort of moral conundrum for anyone with even a splinter of conscience, responsibility or concern for their fellow human being.

I congratulate you -- you've achieved three firsts in the SLIDERS community. Lots of posters have said that Quinn's arc across four seasons make sense because he's a bad person -- but you're the first to do that while expressing that you're totally cool with Quinn holding innocent people prisoner and letting murderers run free, and that your dream-journal version of "Mother and Child" is canon.

There are, sadly, people in this world who think it's okay to strip others of their freedom and self-determination. People who see injustice done and choose to turn a blind eye. And people who would rather fabricate scenes in TV episodes rather than admit their argument has some gaping holes. It's a defect of humanity to be concerned with only one's self and to be indifferent to the suffering of others. And to rationalize it, saying we'd all be twisted and mutilated by bad experiences and so too would Quinn.

We shouldn't do that to Quinn. We should not make the sliders more like us. We should be more like them. We should regard the unknown with curiosity and wonder and confront problems with knowledge, strategy and confidence in the power of ideas.

I suspect the reason most fans see no issue with tearing Quinn down is because few, if any, have ever regarded him an iconic superhero; they don't see the precious creation that is being destroyed. And that's fine. That's just a difference of opinion -- but this is the first time I've ever seen anyone declare that kidnapping and enabling of a serial killer is in any way sympathetic or morally defensible.

That's delusional, deranged and diseased -- and you demonstrate precisely why I object so strongly to rationalizing Quinn's Season 3 - 4 behaviour as in-character.

Regarding "Genesis" and "Mother and Child" -- I think Quinn and Rembrandt would have relentlessly hammered the Kromagg facilities with attacks on their computer systems until they had a trail on Wade. They would not have stopped until they died. As for the Kromaggs wiping the sliders' memories of the virus or the Slidecage equations not working -- I honestly think that once you're left with making up unwritten and unaired scenes to justify the story, it's pretty clear that the story is broken. As for Quinn being selfish, not in a hurry to go home or to catch his mentor's killer, being a bad person -- dear God.

WARNING: The following post contains ANGER because I am absolutely furious. However. Please be aware that my fury is directed towards someone's opinions and thoughts as opposed to the someone who is opining and thinking them. I mean, you can be pissed off with a person's opinion while still liking the person, right?

I get very upset -- I get incredibly angry -- when fans portray Quinn as a sociopathic monster. I'm not sure which one makes me angrier; the show doing this or the fans doing it afterwards -- Ian's blog of "Revelations" where he describes Quinn as a bad person who isn't worth your time infuriated me almost as much as the episode.

I'm also torqued about this because I asked a fellow fan, recently, if he had any opinion on whether Quinn and Wade might be a couple in 2015 and he responded with a response similar to what's above: declaring that Quinn Mallory is a piece of trash and of course Wade wouldn't want him. It pissed me off. I think what he really meant was that Wade wouldn't want to marry Jerry O'Connell.

The reason I get so upset: Quinn is an icon of genre fiction, an analytical science hero who can stand next to Mr. Spock, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. House, Spider-Man, Indiana Jones, Batman and the Fourth Doctor. He is one of the greatest fictional characters created in the twentieth century. Quinn Mallory is a superhero -- his superpower is his superbrain, his ability to improvise absurd and efficient solutions on-the-spot in moments of crisis. A character who is driven by tragedy and loss but emerges from his trials not only intact but renewed and inspired and possesses a revolutionary spirit and a sense of wanderlust and is guided by an impeccable sense of morality and compassion.

And he created sliding. You can do anything with this character, put him in any kind of story in any kind of role. He can be a bystander or a hero, a catalyst or a leading figure, a background element or an icon who inspires.

These efforts to declare that the Season 3 - 4 character is the same as the Season 1 - 2 character simply emphasize his character flaws -- his myopia, his impulsive nature, his recklessness -- but declare them to be the whole of his character, seeking to rationalize periods where the character was being written badly as explorations of his darker side, ultimately ending with the conclusion that Quinn is a selfish, hateful, uncaring villain.

This strikes me as astonishingly pointless in the extreme: attempting to rationalize poorly-considered screenwriting for a superb figure of science fiction by saying he was never a hero at all. You've justified Quinn's incoherent trajectory by replacing him with a completely different character.

If Quinn Mallory is so unworthy of our respect, if he is not a force for good, then SLIDERS is and always has been a pointless waste of time and so is this Bboard, the websites, the fanfics, the screenplays, the essays, the blogs and the reviews. Yet, many fans -- in fact, I would say most fans -- take this view of Quinn because it lets them maintain the in-universe perspective. NDJ. Ian McDuffie. Slider_Quinn21. Informant. I list their names not to demonize them, but to observe that I am in a minority (probably of one) when I express my distaste for their rationalizations.

From the in-character perspective, these rationalizations don't build Quinn up as a multifaceted character; they just take away what make him unique and powerful and immortal. In trying to insist that the post-Torme Quinn is the same character that Torme and Weiss created, all you end up doing is destroying what Torme and Weiss created.

And it just infuriates me. Because Quinn is one of the greatest science heroes of television. You can do anything with this character. He does not need to be a refugee from an advanced parallel Earth and a pivotal figure of an interdimensional war. He does not need to be a vengeful hunter pursuing a fugitive, he does not need to be a gunslinging warrior, he does not need to be a callous cowboy, he does not need to be paired up with a Baywatch babe, he does not need a convoluted origin story.

And he most definitely does not need to be a man who refuses to let his friends go home and isn't interested in bringing his mentor's killer to justice and is indifferent to his friend being raped and is unconcerned about everyone he knew back home being enslaved and murdered. None of that deepens the Quinn Mallory character at all. None of that touches upon what makes him special. That's just drug addiction, alcoholism, family tragedy and depression talking, most of it David Peckinpah's.

In fact, it's not even deliberate. All of that is entirely *accidental*, filmed and aired because the actor was hungover that day. Because the scripts weren't properly reviewed. Because rehearsals were slapdash. Because the writers saw screenwriting as something to do between Solitaire binges. (That's not an exaggeration.)

Quinn is a very simple character to use. All Quinn needs is to be put in crazy, bizarre, ludicrous situations of intense risk and danger to life and sanity and to come up with clever, on-the-spot solutions to save the day. That's it. That's all you have to do. If you are having trouble coming up with plausible ways for the characters to advance the plot, use Quinn's genius to fast-forward the process. That's what this character was built to do. He cuts through narrative like a knife cuts through butter.

There's also the fact that all of these efforts to demonize Quinn both onscreen and after the fact make no sense whatsoever. Because if Quinn were really selfish and lazy and uncaring, he would not be a slider. He would find some paradise world and retire. That's what Jerry O'Connell would do with sliding, and the constant inability of fans to distinguish between actor and character is absolutely maddening and infuriating for me. That's what I see here, in these rationalizations. In these attempts to explain the inexplicable. A conflation of actor and character.

In ireactions-world -- which you need not take seriously and where absolutely nobody but me lives -- there is Quinn Mallory as created by Torme and Weiss. And then there is a second role with the same name and actor but written with little thought and care by David Peckinpah, Bill Dial, Keith Damron, Steven Stoliar.

One is an icon of genre fiction, an analytical science hero. And the other is a character also played by Jerry O'Connell, an actor who has played many roles, including Woody Hoyt, Andrew Clemens, Charlie Corbone and Phil Ohlmyer.

Jerry O'Connell is not Quinn Mallory. Jerry is just the mask that Quinn wears.

In my mind, to argue that the Season 3 - 4 character is the same as Season 1 - 2 is the equivalent of claiming that Jerry's CROSSING JORDAN and CAMP WILDER characters are the same person as well, except this is far more destructive. And if these analyses serve only to tear Quinn down, then they're pointless and useless. Admittedly, I say this as someone trying to write Quinn and therefore have a vested interest in seeing the character as a going concern. Which, as a goal in itself, is completely insane, so feel free not to take any of this into account.

I have really, really, really tried -- on two separate occasions -- to rationalize S1-2 Quinn with S3  - 4 Quinn. When writing Quinn Mallory in stories, I have always left myself open to the possibility that the post-Torme characterization can be rationalized. When writing "Slide Effects," I wrote that Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo would witness the moment in "Mother and Child" where Rembrandt says they have to go find Wade and Jerry delivers, "I don't know if we have enough time" with absolutely no emotion.

I wrote in _______________ in the outline for Quinn's reaction. I decided: when actually scripting that scene, Quinn would say whatever came naturally. He could explain himself. He could justify himself. I left it up to the character. And when I got to that page of the script, Quinn's explanation was that the scenario was part of a Kromagg mental simulation and he was subconsciously aware that the events he was experiencing weren't real and that was the point where he no longer believed in the situations he was living. I didn't plan that. I put Quinn in that scene, and that was what he had to say for himself. When writing REBORN, I again put Quinn in the same situation and got largely the same answer; he didn't recognize what he was seeing. Wasn't him.

Again. This is just my personal opinion and you will, of course, note that this entire post is almost like I'm trying to defend Quinn as though he's a personal acquaintance. As though he's my loved and treasured friend. From reading this post, you might think that I have a relationship with Quinn in the way some people have relationships with Jesus. You'd be right.

I meant eccentrically formal in that you sometimes wore what might be considered office-attire, but with some unusual colours or flourishes like a neck-scarf or a blazer with pipe-lining. Sorry to hear about the buzz cut.

If you and Quinn were spending more time together and he needed to get some new clothes, how would you have him dress these days? I get the sense he'd take the path of least resistance with clothes. Would you have him still in flannel and jeans? Or would you have him move on to the sporty shirts and sweaters and leather jackets that he favoured when the geographic spectrum stablizer had you all landing in LA? Or something else? Blazer and sweater-vest geek chic?

And how about the hair, hmm? The Quinn I've been working with has experienced a, shall we say, psychological reversion and he's back to wearing his hair the way he did when he was living a lonely life in his basement workshop and rarely remembered to get it cut. But the last I saw him, he was reunited with Wade again. Do you think you'd encourage him to get it trimmed back to the shorter length he had in LA?

Hunnh. I found that outline that a poster, KerrAvon (not sliders5125) wrote as a follow-up to Season 3's cliffhanger where Arturo stars in a sequel to "This Slide of Paradise"! But first:

There was one poster on this Bboard, awhile back -- his posts have most definitely been deleted from existence. Let's call him Jensen. Jensen declared that he was going to save SLIDERS because he had the magic words -- more specifically, Jensen had the magic numbers. Numbers that, in a specific sequence, formed Tracy Torme's phone number. He proclaimed that he would be contacting Torme to do something about a SLIDERS revival.

He followed up by posting his shocking, heartbreaking, tragic discovery that phoning Tracy Torme and telling him to revive SLIDERS wouldn't actually bring about that happy outcome as Torme doesn't control the rights to SLIDERS. (I think, as creator, he shares about 10 per cent with Robert K. Weiss.) Jensen, in the course of this phone call, attempted to pitch his ideas to Torme. Jensen told Torme that the best way to revive SLIDERS would be:

• To do a new version of Season 4 set in 1998

• To follow up on the Season 3 cliffhanger with a remake of the Kromagg Invasion of Earth and the sliders' search for a superweapon

• Also explain why the Season 4 Kromaggs looked different from "Invasion" by saying the Season 4 Kromaggs were the foot soldiers

• To have Wade return to Season 4 a quarter of the way in as a brainwashed villain for the rest of the season

• To then reveal that the Earth in "Genesis" wasn't the Earth in the Pilot

• To have a huge Kromagg War blowout to end the series.

Try to imagine Tracy sitting through this phone call.

Jensen proceeded to lament that Tracy seemed resistant to hearing anymore of these ideas and that it was a real shame and did anyone on this message board have an agent so they could properly pitch these ideas? Torme, said Jensen, declined to hear more without an agent involved. Jensen then declared that clearly, SLIDERS was on its way back and Torme was clearly keen to do some SLIDERS stories if only someone would please get Jensen an agent.

Message board posters had many questions for Jensen. Why did he want to have a 2014 revival of SLIDERS set in 1998? Why did he wish to explain plot holes in Season 4 if his story was designed to replace Season 4 with his own version? Why did he want to revive a series loved for its characters and make one of them an evil villain? How did he expect the 2014-era actors to play their 1998 characters? Why was his pitch for SLIDERS devoid of any ideas for parallel Earths? Why did he want Tracy Torme to write this story when Torme has not even seen Season 4 and couldn't write a Season 4 Kromagg war epic even if he were forced to? If he didn't have any interest in the characters or parallel Earths, why was he trying to revive SLIDERS?

At this point, the web host crashed and the conversation ended. Let's move on.

Okay. I remember it being a lot longer -- but maybe what I mis-remembered (besides the poster) was the idea that this... outline... be executed over the course of eight episodes. I also mis-remembered the content; I thought there were scenes of Arturo fighting animal human hybrids. There aren't. I feel like this outline really tries to convert hammering the CTRL+Z on the keyboard into a logical sequence of events. It's trying to play fair.

It is also weirdly obsessed with continuity. I think there are three ways to use continuity. One is to seek to use continuity to try to make multiple stories feel like one big story by highlighting their connections and telling sequels. Another way is to feel the need to address previously established plot points individually in an effort to follow-up or reverse them. And then there's using continuity in an effort to create a sense of shared experience for both characters and the audience.

There is something completely derivative and unimaginative and crushingly dull about doing a sequel to "This Slide of Paradise" -- but that's not what this author is trying to do here, not really. This writer is, instead, seeking to confront the horror of that episode and expel it, leaving the sliders purified and renewed at the end of this exercise. And I kind of admire that. There's genuine interest and respect for the characters in this outline. There's a real desire to put the characters in difficult situations -- like being forced to wander through "This Slide of Paradise."

Anyway. Arturo is totally going to fight animal human hybrids in SLIDERS REBORN. I know it's crazy. I've been warned that this is not going to turn out well. But -- I really think I can pull this off AND make it feel like a Season 1/2 episode. And if I can't -- Tom and Cory will give a detailed account how it all went so horribly wrong in their podcast! :-D

While many, many fans have tried to wrangle Jerry's performances and the clumsy characterization into some kind of logical arc, it's never made sense to me in an in-universe perspective. I don't think it ever will.

We've seen what Quinn Mallory is like when he's depressed and... well, it's not like late Season 3 or Season 4. I think Quinn, when depressed, actually hides it with efforts to ride the momentum of desperation. The Torme/Weiss Quinn faces the horror of discovering the Professor will die by trying to mentor his younger self. The Torme/Weiss Quinn reacts to Wade's apparent death by grimly accepting he'll have to carry on without her. And while losing Arturo would have been tough -- we *already* had an example of how Quinn reacted to losing his (real) father and it wasn't like "Slither." Which is not to in any way diminish how awful Quinn can and will feel -- I'm just saying that depression and grief are a little more subtle if this character is written correctly.

In real-life, Jerry O'Connell is super-charming and winning and endearing. In SLIDERS, the Jerry O'Connell megawatt smile is a falsehood. Jerry O'Connell is simply what Quinn allows you to see of him. I guess what I'm trying to say is that even a depressed Quinn puts on a pretty good show. The abrasive loon of late Season 3 and the emotionless weirdo of Season 4 aren't Quinn at all -- just the actor playing a different role that happens to have the same name.

I thought I was obsessed with SLIDERS -- I mean, I can't stand Season 4 and I will be rewatching most of Season 4 in the weeks to come for REASONS -- but I've got nothing on this Martin guy and his obsession with DOORWAYS and his constant insistence that the show was awesome and SLIDERS ripped him off. It's really pathetic -- DOORWAYS is unwatchable. The only reason that Pilot isn't the worst hour of television ever made is because of "This Slide of Paradise," and even then, they're nearly tied. The is only one reason Martin constantly declares DOORWAYS to be a masterpiece -- he knows that barely anyone has ever seen it.

Good God, man -- move on. While I am ridiculously fixated on SLIDERS, I think it's pretty obvious that SLIDERS brings me a lot of joy as opposed to bitterness, recrimination and delusion.

... so, in addition to watching GIRL MEETS WORLD and BEST FRIENDS WHENEVER, I am also watching LIV AND MADDIE.

LAURIE: "What the ****? That's for teenaged girls."
ME: "It's intriguing."
LAURIE: "Because it asks meaningful, relevant questions that all young girls grapple with, like the pressures of being a famous actress? Holy ****, they're really in tune with youth culture."
ME: "Yeah, but -- I mean, it's like -- like every episode of SLIDERS that ever had a double."
LAURIE: " ...... I've never seen that show. What're you talking about?"
ME: "It's like ORPHAN BLACK."
LAURIE: "Wait, what?! It has one actress playing a hundred different characters and having crazy amazing chemistry with herself?"
ME: " .... well, it's one actress playing two characters. And they have lots of scenes together... but usually through a body double or an obvious splitscreen effect. And there's not much chemistry between the two characters because they don't have the budget to do actual physical interaction with both their faces in frame... And to be honest, the actress doesn't really do a very good job of distinguishing between her two roles as the tomboy and the diva -- it takes like 10 episodes because she starts giving her diva persona a higher-pitched voice."
LAURIE: "Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait -- you watched TEN EPISODES of this?"

Anyway. I don't think SLIDERS would work on Disney.

Not that I put much stock in trying to iron out the contradictions of SLIDERS' latter years -- but Smarter-Quinn in "The Other Slide of Darkness" was clearly insane and nothing he said could be trusted or taken seriously.

And as obsessive as I am about SLIDERS, I can't offer any real explanation of how it works beyond (laboured) metaphors. Ireactions science is the worst manner of lie in fiction today, created through skimming Wikipedia and randomly choosing words and phrases, seeking to produce technobabble that is an impenetrable fog in the hope that nobody will even try to understand it.

"Common Ground" isn't bad. Chris Black writes a decent script. I liked how Cory observed that Kromanus dies to save the sliders, but it's unclear if he was trying to keep them alive out of gratitude or because he was loyal to the Dynasty. It's pretty solid although the direction is poorly considered.

"Virtual Slide" is perfectly fun. I agree with Cory and Tom that Maggie providing information about the sliding machine is nonsensical and there's no way the script justifies anything she gave up as useful.

But I will argue that the idea of stealing slide-tech info from Maggie *was* perfectly workable -- in that Maggie may have been in the room when Dr. Jensen was working on the concept and may have subconsciously remembered details of his work that the VR could bring to the surface. "Virtual Slide" is a fun, enjoyable sci-fi hour. I liked it. Keith Damron was a promising writer.

Yeah. They're fine. Decent hours of TV. Oh my GOD this show has gone to crap. Uh, but first, I think I should answer Tom and Cory's question.

How the Sliding Machine and Timer Work
Tom and Cory got confused by a plot point in "Virtual Slide": why is it that the sliders, upon missing the slide window, are stranded by 29.7 years? If Quinn can just build a new sliding machine and timer to bypass the 29.7 limit, why can't the existing timer be reconfigured to do the same? Is the timer connected to the sliding machine?

They say it makes no sense. I would say that the onscreen evidence is confusing. Here's how I see it:

Think of parasailing. You've got a parachute helping you float in the sky while tethered to a boat that's tugging you forward, cutting a path through the water and giving you forward motion in a straight line. The boat is moving you forward.

The boat, in this metaphor, is the sliding machine. Then your connection to the boat is cut. You're still in the air, you still have some momentum, but you now you've lost direction.

For whatever reason, you have some cylinders of compressed air. You can keep moving. But you can't create the same thrust that the boat gave you and your direction is now subject to wind and gravity and is now oriented in towards the path of least resistance. The timer is the cylinders propelling you, but due to the loss of the boat, your direction will be random.

I don't think the timer can be connected to the sliding machine back home simply because of story reasons. If there's some sort of interdimensional transmission, that means that any interruption or interference or alteration to the machine back home prevents the timer from working. That's too big a hole to fill, so it's best if the timer works independently.

Okay, maybe that wasn't such a great metaphor; let's try another one. The sliding machine is a sledgehammer that smashed through the walls of the interdimension, allowing you to slide at will; the timer is a tiny scalpel that lets you cut through weak points of occasional convergence between dimensional walls, with the entry vortex creating another weakness that the timer can track, letting the sliders know when that weak point will be fit to create an exit to the next world.

If that point is missed, the timer's processor will need 29.7 years to calculate and create another weak point. Dear God, this is terrible. Somebody help me out here. Temporal Flux! This is your moment! This is your moment!

Is Season 4 A New Show?
Tom and Cory's main defence of Season 4 is that this is a new show and shouldn't be compared to anything in Seasons 1 - 3.

I would not be averse to a new version of SLIDERS, but I strongly disagree that this is in any way a new show. This is, instead, a clumsy, crippled, mutilated version of the old show. It's Season 1 - 2 but without imagination, skill, research or inventiveness. It's using Season 1 - 2 ideas but with the glaring impression that the Season 4 showrunners don't actually understand the ideas they're using.

"Genesis," Prophets and Loss" and "Common Ground" all use Seasons 1 - 2 as a template, but mishandle everything from Seasons 1 - 2.

It's a popular (and accurate) criticism of SLIDERS that most episodes copy the second half of the Pilot; the sliders encounter a dystopian regime, fall in with the resistance, achieve victory, depart.

Formulaic? Yes. But it works -- until now. "Genesis" has no victory -- which means that when the sliders triumph in "Prophets and Loss" and "Common Ground," you wonder why they don't liberate their home Earth as well. As repetitive and contrived as the formula may be, it was uplifting and inspiring -- but now it's just hypocritical and incoherent.

The sliders meeting the resistance is a simple, easy, in some ways lazy plot, used heavily in Seasons 1 - 2 -- and Season 4 depends on it just as much. But "Genesis" destroyed their ability to execute it properly.

The show is also using a Season 2 concept -- the Kromaggs -- and the Season 4 team doesn't understand how to use the Kromaggs.

The first problem is the makeup. It's terrible. The Kromaggs don't look menacing; they look like actors in clumsy prosthetics and the actors use very forced and overly mannered line deliveries to convey their alien natures. It's just awkward to look at.

There's also the fact that "Invasion" wisely kept the Kromaggs at a distance, the Kromaggs barely speaking, only glimpsed in brief scenes, using pawns to communicate with the sliders. "Genesis" and "Common Ground" parade the Kromaggs in front of us as mouthy, chatty, ranting thugs. This is a huge mistake.

That said -- the Season 4 team (probably) understood what the Kromaggs really are underneath the guile and mystique. The Kromaggs are just thugs and monsters. That's all there is to them in "Invasion," too -- but "Invasion" handles it correctly.

The sliders only encounter the military aspects of the culture and are completely in the Kromaggs' power the entire time. The emphasis is on the Kromaggs as manipulators who play sadistic mind games with cruel and twisted lies.

I can't say that "Genesis" and "Common Ground"'s Kromaggs are wrong. Backstabbing, violent, warlike, savage, cruel creatures -- that's what they were in "Invasion," but now there is no distance. No mystique. The sliders are beating Kromaggs up, having conversations with them, tricking Kromaggs into using their death machines on themselves -- and the result is that the Kromaggs are so overt, so up-close, so in focus that their one-dimensional silliness is glaring.

Every Kromagg in Season 4 talks the same way, has the same obsessive fixation on racial superiority -- and I don't buy it. I don't buy that every Kromagg behaves in the same manner, but I especially don't believe in these cartoonish behaviours and more problematically, I can tell that the actors also don't believe in what they're doing.

Not a single Season 4 Kromagg actor has any conviction or ease in their performance; every movement, line and expression is practised and stilted. These poor actors are in an impossible situation due to the scripts, costumes and makeup.

"Invasion" doesn't declare that all Kromaggs are warlike, savage monsters -- which would be as ridiculous as declaring that all women are obsessed with shoes. We only see a Kromagg military operation. For all we know, there are Kromagg poets. Kromagg objectors to the war effort. Kromaggs seeking to stop the conquest. We don't know, but it's possible -- until Season 4 declares that all Kromaggs are the same. Season 4 uses a Season 2 concept and totally mishandles it.

I have only written one Kromagg story -- and I'm not even a very good writer of fiction. Did you read those awful metaphors up there? But one thing I very quickly decided was that the Kromagg in my story would not speak. In my story, the Kromagg menaces Quinn, but always morphs into different human personas in order to deliver dialogue, and deliberately chooses forms to intimidate Quinn. I don't entirely know why I did this, but it was most definitely a reaction against the Season 4 Kromaggs.

The weird, weird, weird thing -- is that Season 4 could easily have been a whole new show. This is SLIDERS, for god's sake. It would not have been difficult to cut ties with the past, most of which had been severed anyway with Arturo's death and Wade and Rembrandt sent home. But this so-called new show seems more interested in destroying the old one instead of creating something new.

It occurs to me that it may be bizarre to address a 43-year-old woman as "young lady."

One of the things that drives me crazy about how women are treated in the media: they're presented as objects for men to win and possess without agency of their own. As though the only point of interest in a woman's life is how they serve as a love interest. It is so frustrating. So exasperating. So infuriating. But I have to ask -- what is the deal with you constantly falling in love with guys named Deric/Derek?

Also, are you still interested in Quinn at all? I ask because I'm working on a dramatization of your life -- or maybe it's one of your doubles, I can't tell anymore -- and I can't figure out if you and Quinn are a couple or not for the final installment.

I find myself writing two versions of each scene; one where you're platonic friends and one where you've coupled up between installments, but it's no big deal and it just means you sit next to each other in most of your scenes together and there's a scene where you're in bed together while discussing Plot. In the platonic version, you have the same discussion in the kitchen before going off to separate residences.

But I'm not sure which one to use. I don't even know if you (or your double, not sure who we're talking about here) have even been *dating* since you got home in 2001. It seems absurd to think that you haven't known love, romance and intimacy in the 14 years since you (or your double) got home. But I hadn't any space to address it.

So let me ask you -- what do you want? Do you want to be a spinster, perpetually single and superbly happy? Do you want to be engaged to Quinn? Do you want to be otherwise involved? Dating different people casually?

Personally, I feel that whether Quinn and Wade are together or seeing other people -- they're friends and comrades and that will never change. It doesn't matter to me.

Well. I guess it might matter to Quinn. Dude hasn't had a date since 1996 -- although dating his former grade school teacher and dating a female version of himself may have left him permanently scarred. Let's face it; if he's not with you, he's with nobody. That's the curse of being Quinn Mallory. Wade Welles has plenty of options.

So, the Deric/Derek thing? Oh, and did you actually have sex with Wilkins on the world where the Russians rule America or did you just make out? Ian McDuffie and Dan Kurtzke say you totally did but Jim Ford (and I) thought you just kissed.

Swear to God this is the only time I'll ask you about your sex life.

You know, Ms. Welles, I rather thought enslaving the Professor was going ridiculously far no matter what the terms of your bet. I was surprised at you. I know the Professor is a pompous ass who was in desperate need of being taken down, but I think you really should have let him off after a day of servitude at most. Human slavery is no joke, young lady.

I had a weird experience today. As you may know, I was initially not a fan of Sliderscast. I was constantly raging in this thread at Jim and Dan, shrieking at them that the dead air and content free passages and pointless digressions were an agonizing bore and pleaded them to, in the name of all that is holy, edit out all this nonsense before uploading the MP3.

But I listened to the Pilot podcasts from them today -- and absolutely none of that bothered me. I really enjoyed it. The dead-air/digressions/pointless passages didn't register to me at all. What's changed?

What's changed is that I kept listening and became extremely familiar with our two podcasters. I now know Jim and Dan so well that I enjoy listening to them talk nonsense. It was unbearable when I wasn't invested in them as people; now I know and care about them and take pleasure in their conversational meanderings. And so, I enjoy their earlier podcasts as much as I enjoy their latter output; I'm listening for Jim and Dan as much as I'm listening for SLIDERS content.

I'm going to listen to the rest of the Season 1 podcasts and see how they feel now.

SPOILERS

I didn't understand it at all. How could Claire die? I thought maybe the shadow-girl's power-negation ability would play some role, but the dots were never connected.

I continue to be baffled by pretty much every storyline in HEROES REBORN up to this point. Why was Luke hunting Evos? Revenge? He was targeting people who had nothing to do with June 13. The belief that all Evos should be exterminated? Did he really think his murder spree was going to reduce the global population of Evos significantly?

Why the hell does Hiro, the TIME TRAVELLER, tell Noah that they have to hurry upon their arrival at June 13? Why does Hiro refuse to save anyone? If events up to the present have to be maintained, why doesn't he just freeze time and extract every person at the festival one by one and transport them to the 'present' day, ensuring that they will have survived without affecting any events leading up to the present? Why the hell does a TIME TRAVELLER believe in 'fate' or that events can't be changed?

Why did the video game creator seek Hiro's help only to trap him in a video game?

Why did Molly Walker feel the need to kill herself? Why was she afraid of Noah? Why did Noah need to forget about Claire's children, exactly? Why did he order the Haitian to kill him if he ever tried to find out? Are these actual mysteries? Or is it just incompetence?

I just can't figure out what's going on or how to get invested. This series has no relatable characters, no meaningful purpose, no clear plots -- it's just mindless foreshadowing to some story that is never going to be worth the build-up. Tim Kring really needs to find a new line of work.

I think I may have skewed what the featurette was like. It's really cute. They look so happy. The sliders are in their prime. And they're kidding around and the chemistry between them is so natural and genuine and beautiful. I frequently watch this clip before writing SLIDERS REBORN dialogue.

But every single joke they make as they're relaxing between setups -- they're all jokes that would come horrifically true. They did all get fired. Someone actually did die on set. Cleavant really did stick with the show for five seasons because, well, come on, it was a living.

In the Cleavant Derricks interview on EP.COM -- at least in the original version -- Cleavant established that Sabrina was absolutely miserable after John was fired. Kari Wuhrer did upset Sabrina, but Sabrina was upset to begin with. After the original version was posted, Cleavant contacted the EP.COM webmaster and asked for his negative remarks about Kari Wuhrer and the Sci-Fi Channel to be removed and the webmaster, not wanting to do anything to harm Cleavant's professional relationships, agreed to perform a rewrite.

Sabrina and John were very close; you can see here Sabrina's memo inviting people to attend her farewell party for John.
http://dimensionofcontinuity.com/sabin.jpg

I feel like the Quinn/Wade/Rembrandt/Arturo quartet requires Arturo as an instigator with experience. His presence as a flawed father figure establishes the characters as a family. Arturo is an arrogant ass, but he's also someone who inspires people to follow him straight into hell.

It's also essential that he is Quinn's counterpart but as part of an older generation, the way Rembrandt is to Wade. It's weird, but once Arturo left the show, the onscreen dynamics lost the sense that Quinn and Wade are *extremely* young adults. Onscreen, youth needs age to contrast in order to come off as youthful.

I just don't think Quinn, Wade and Rembrandt function properly as characters without Arturo -- and, to be quite frank, I don't think the actors function particularly well in their roles without him, either. This is not their fault; they were cast as part of an ensemble, after all.

Jerry was, at the time, one of those actors who would only read his own dialogue and then play scenes as himself. If you watch KANGAROO JACK or CROSSING JORDAN or MISSION TO MARS, Jerry plays cops, astronauts and barbers in the same way: as a goofy playboy. He played Quinn the same way. Part of this was unavoidable; he was a football player type playing a geek, after all. But in Seasons 1 - 2, Jerry is incredibly convincing when portraying Quinn's intelligence, moral integrity and intense curiosity -- and I suspect this was largely John's influence on him.

The reason I suspect John elevates every other actor in his work: John is genuinely invested in the scripts. John reads all the scenes, not just his own. You can see John in a behind the scenes feature marvelling at the Kromagg organic metal. So he actually knows the whole story, not just his lines. And he is the sort of actor who constantly wants to discuss scenes with the other actors, work out pacing and rhythm, redistribute lines, etc.. The result is a very clear sense of the relationships between the characters and their roles in each scene. Take that out of the equation and leave Jerry, Sabrina and Cleavant to their own devices -- and then things start to shift.

Cleavant is a really good actor, but his clownish comic timing works better with Arturo's stately sarcasm and pronouncements to compare. Sabrina has a certain stagey quality to her line deliveries. She's more focused on hitting certain points of emotion instead of making her dialogue sound spontaneous and unrehearsed. Butwhen working with John, it becomes a rhythmic rapport. And Jerry -- Jerry in the 90s struck me as a genius-actor who was content to be a hack, but working with John made Jerry put a lot of himself into his work.

John is indispensable. Essential. At least to me.

As for whether Quinn is aware of Wade's attraction or not, we've hit an area of personal interpretation. In the scripts, Quinn was most definitely not aware of Wade's interest in him. Jerry's performance, in my opinion, introduces (unintentional?) ambiguity; other viewers don't see it that way.

The reason I started to think Quinn was perfectly aware of Wade's feelings for him the whole time; Wade indicates, in "Last Days," that there are some things Quinn doesn't know about her, presumably, her feelngs towards him. Quinn responds to that by trying to kiss her. But what about in the Pilot when Quinn asks Wade, "What's with the tears?" as though he doesn't realize she's in love with him. To me, that struck me as Quinn foolishly thinking himself invincible as youth often do.

But again. I'm not 'right' anymore than you are 'wrong' -- we're just looking at art with different views. In a recent chat with Matt Hutaff, I commented that I think "The Guardian" is a retcon that attempts to bridge the gap between the scripted Quinn and the onscreen Quinn by offering an explanation for how Jerry O'Connell could lack confidence with the skipped two grades backstory.

As supporting evidence, I cited how the Pilot indicates in a photo that Quinn was in his late-teens when his father died; Jerry plays young-Quinn in the photograph. "The Guardian" changes that to Quinn being played by an 11-year-old actor when his father died in order to make Michael Mallory's death more traumatic.

Matt disagreed. He doesn't think "The Guardian" was a retcon at all; his view is that if Jerry hadn't played Quinn in the photograph in the Pilot, the viewer would have been confused by who the boy in the photo was meant to be.

Another interesting instance: Temporal Flux once described his vision of Conrad Bennish Jr. to me. Bennish, to TF, is someone in a perpetual time warp, representing what was at the forefront of culture but from decades in the past. Bennish dressed and acted like a 60s hippie because hippies were the 'cool' thing when Tracy Torme was a child, but Bennish is only capable of representing the exterior details of the culture without any of the inherent values or deeper meaning behind the movement. That's how I see Bennish too; he's constantly behind. In SLIDERS REBORN, he's a relic of the dot-com boom and bust from the 90s.

Matt disagrees with this take on Bennish. To Matt, Bennish is simply the token pothead student to round out the class in the Pilot and seeing more than that is me adding things to the character as opposed to seeing what's already there. And that is the nature of art. We all look at the same thing and see something different.

Oddly, the skipped-two-grades backstory is in the original draft of "Gillian of the Spirits."

Behind the scenes information courtesy of Temporal Flux.

I would choose Joanna Lumley.

Back on the old Bboard, slider1525 wrote a lengthy plot outline where the Professor, following the sliders, encounters the animal human hybrids of "This Slide of Paradise" and revisits Michael York's lab and gradually reunites with his friends one by one. It was very amusing and sincere, but also exhausting. I have read every Season 6 fanfic ever written with the point-by-point reversals of Seasons 3 - 5 and they, too, are utterly draining and a massive distraction. Television is best, in my view, when its aims and goals are simple and straightforward. The sliders are lost in the multiverse, trying to find their way back home. Simple. Elegant. Beautiful.

Yes, "Slide Effects" is a massive copout, but I'd argue that getting Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo back onscreen together immediately is far more important than anything else.

But then again, I honestly don't think "Slide Effects" was even meant as a way of deleting the Season 3 episodes. Torme presented it to me that way when we had an online chat as his solution to getting rid of the episodes he didn't like. But the 2009 interview on EP.COM revealed the story had been conceived in November 1996 before John had been fired. It was meant to be a Season 4 premiere and his sequel to "Invasion." In an interview, Torme said:

“I have a very trippy, surrealistic show in mind involving the Kromaggs. It wouldn’t be us landing in the middle of another invasion; it would start in a way that you wouldn’t know it was a Kromagg show.”

With that in mind, the story is clearly not about removing episodes from continuity. Instead, it's about the Kromaggs as manipulators offering the sliders the ultimate temptation. The Kromaggs prey upon the sliders' homesickness and despair, offering them a facsimile: a permanent and eternal illusion of home in exchange for information that will let the Kromaggs invade the actual home Earth. The Kromaggs point out that the sliders, with random sliding, have no chance of ever getting back to where they came from and even if they do, the Kromaggs will destroy it. Surely there's no shame in accepting this beautiful lie of living happy and content lives in a world where sliding doesn't exist and they never left their homes and loved ones?

But the sliders refuse. Sliding took them away from everything they knew, but it revealed their ingenuity, their strength of character, the power of ideas and the friendship between them. They wouldn't trade sliding for anything. They escape the Kromaggs and resume sliding. And so, Season 4 would begin with the sliders reaffirming their commitment to each other and to their adventure.

If mishandled, it could have been a copout; presented correctly, it's a life-affirming character study that communicates the joy of sliding and the wonder of the multiverse as well as the bonds between the quartet.

Also, with time rewound to the Pilot, it's a way of introducing the show to a new audience and offering some nostalgia for the fans.

It's not as simple as that. Sabrina was very upset when John was fired. She held his farewell party at her apartment. She was devastated by his absence. Kari's behaviour was indeed a deciding factor, but Kari or no Kari, Sabrina didn't want to do SLIDERS anymore. Her ultimatum was absurd; she knew full well that Peckinpah would choose Kari. If that hadn't gotten her fired, she would have used salary demands to get removed.

Only John's return would have convinced Sabrina to stay. And John would only have returned if Tracy Torme returned. Don't get me wrong, John and Tracy had tremendous animosity towards each other, same as John and Peckinpah -- but Tracy considered John's talent and character worth any aggravation.

Interestingly, in the Season 2 interviews, John was extremely critical and dismissive of Tracy Torme's writing. After Season 3, John suddenly revised his opinion and spoke extremely well of Tracy; clearly, after Peckinpah, John realized what Tracy had been fighting against.

Had Tracy returned, he would have asked John to re-sign for Season 4 and John would have said yes and Sabrina would also have remained as well.

I put in the two-year time gap so he could be a mentor to a new slider who wouldn't know which end of the vortex was which.

As for Quinn -- we now enter the arena of personal interpretation. Let us be clear: this is strictly *my* vision of Quinn Mallory and it is not Jerry's vision or even exactly Tracy's vision (although it's close).

Quinn Mallory isn't a leader. Good leaders need to be good with people and Quinn is one of the most withdrawn, isolated characters ever created. As scripted before casting, Quinn was a socially awkward geek. Then Jerry O'Connell was hired to play him and Jerry, for whatever reason, did not play Quinn as socially awkward at all. The Pilot script has Quinn too terrified to ask a girl out on a date and he's laughed at for his inability to receive any woman's undivided attention. The scenes were cut from the script and with good reason; can you imagine Jerry O'Connell having trouble approaching women?

And so, we have a charismatic, attractive, confident, athletic young man who avoids women and labours in secrecy and obscurity in a basement laboratory rather than a university lab. Wade is practically throwing herself at Quinn and if you watch Jerry's performance carefully, Jerry plays Quinn as being perfectly aware of Wade's infatuation but cautiously avoiding eye-contact and direct engagement.

The result of Jerry's performance of Torme's script: Quinn is alone because he chooses to be alone. Because he builds walls around himself to isolate himself from others. He is uncomfortable dealing with people; he doesn't even really have *friends* -- he banters with his classmates but is intimate with none of them. Wade has never even been invited to Quinn's house until Smarter-Quinn's behaviour forces Quinn to invite her over.

One of the most-cited plotholes in "The Guardian" is Quinn's refusal to reveal his secret to the other sliders -- that he permanently injured his school bully with a baseball bat. This isn't an error, in my view: Quinn is withdrawn. The backstory "The Guardian" gives us: Quinn skipped two grades, he was smaller than his peers, he was abused, he was later traumatized by his father's death. And while Quinn will function and improve, I think that Quinn's withdrawn, self-inflicted isolation is what makes the character complex and fascinating.

It's also a neat subversion of a heroic type; it's like Torme wrote Q from the James Bond movies and then essentially hired Daniel Craig to play him while splitting the actual James Bond role between the Professor and Rembrandt and Wade.

So, my feeling is that if there's a need to write Quinn as a more conventional leading man type, it'd be best to write some other character who isn't Quinn Mallory. Quinn's just not a leader in the conventional sense; he's an anarchist who passes notes and information to the actual leader and acts independently to support the group. He doesn't command situations; he operates at the fringes. He occasionally *looks* like the leader ("Prince of Wails), but he's really the idea man. And that's totally fine; not everyone needs to be Sean Connery.

That's what makes SLIDERS so interesting to me; conventional roles are twisted and subverted. The leading man character is a troubled geek, the wise older man is an arrogant ass who is deeply insecure, the leading lady starlet is a mousy firebrand and the muscle is actually the comic relief in the form of a trauma victim played for laughs.

Behind the scenes information courtesy of Temporal Flux.

I think I was like 12. And oh dear God, I've created a monster.

The "Commander Wade Welles" concept makes "Genesis" a little less upsetting, but "Genesis" would remain shockingly destructive to SLIDERS concept. If the sliders are no longer from a world that's just like ours, there's no basis for contrast between alt-histories and our history. The show is broken.

The home invasion was just awful. Matt Hutaff and Temporal Flux have gone into what Marc Scott Zicree meant to achieve with the Kromagg Prime arc and I think it's just ghastly.

The original plan was to reveal at the end of Season 4 that the Earth in "Genesis" wasn't home at all and that Quinn's new backstory had been a trick. That still means that, for 21 episodes, Quinn and Rembrandt would still be refugees from a devastated Earth and soldiers in an interdimensional war as opposed to relatable nomads searching for home.

It is impossible to tell SLIDERS stories properly post-"Genesis" and 21 episodes of SLIDERS where it's not possible to do SLIDERS stories is way too many. This should have been, at most, a 6 episode arc. Maybe a three-episode season-ender where home is invaded and a two-episode season premiere where it's liberated.

(But ireactions! Haven't you also broken the SLIDERS concept with SLIDERS REBORN? Well, yes. But it's only a three-part story with a prelude and an interlude -- and it's obviously not a permanent situation.)

A Season 4 without John or Sabrina could have worked. But I would have gone for a simpler route.

Here's a Season 4 version of SLIDERS REBORN: two years after "This Slide of Paradise," a teenaged girl named Laurel on Earth Prime wanders into Quinn's basement and accidentally triggers the sliding machine. She ends up on an Earth where anyone under 25 is a slave who has to earn their freedom.

She is rescued by Quinn; he detected the sliding signature of his original hardware and thought it might be Wade or Rembrandt searching for him. Quinn tries to return Laurel home only to discover his sliding in to investigate also scattered the photon trail. He can't send her home.

He admits that he deleted his home coordinates two years ago and has been sliding alone for a long time.

What happened to Maggie? She encountered a double of Steven and chose to remarry and remain. Why didn't Quinn go home? Shortly after "This Slide of Paradise," Quinn suffered a head injury. He recovered, but a CAT scan revealed the Kromagg tracking device in his brain. Inoperable. Impossible to remove even with the most advanced surgical techniques. Powered by a zero-point energy process that draws fuel from Quinn's body. Programmed to send an alert should Quinn ever stop sliding.

Quinn dared not return home, not even for a moment -- because he feared he'd never be able to bring himself to leave again. He deleted the coordinates from his timer to avoid temptation.

Quinn Mallory is a genius. His timer can take him to any dimension. He's formed trade routes and relationships across a hundred worlds; he's built machines that can process and collate data from a thousand different histories. He has ended hundreds of wars, brokered peace between nations, ended water and energy crises, saved thousands of lives and seen more than anyone can imagine. Quinn Mallory can do anything. Except go home.

For two years, Quinn has rejected every offer of companionship in his endless journey, but Laurel offers him something no one else can -- she is a piece of the home he'll never see again. And SLIDERS begins once again: an experienced, capable, hardened slider and a young girl who will become Quinn's confidante and protege.

I would have released Cleavant and Kari from their contracts as well as Sabrina -- once Rickman died, the Maggie arc was over; once Rembrandt and Wade made it home, their stories were over too. But I would have asked them to guest-star as doubles throughout the season.

There. Season 4. How hard was that?