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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?

Just a small follow-up --

What happened with David Peckinpah and Bill Dial could have happened to any one of us. We've all held crazy grudges to the point where they warp logic, reason, sense and basic facts. We've all engaged in ill-advised and hurtful pranks because causing people alarm and annoyance seemed more important than regarding each other with respect and kindness. Turning Quinn into a pivotal Chosen One in an interdimensional war is something any fanfic writer might misguidedly do after a long STAR WARS marathon. Turning home into a Kromagg battleground is something any artist might do when mistaking cynicism and horror for depth and meaning.

It's just that when we screw up, we're probably not doing it on a national stage, but that's merely due to circumstance. David Peckinpah had the grave misfortune to be in a very bad place when he was creating broadcast drama. Don't know much about Bill Dial other than many staffers describing him as a petty jerk and Robert Floyd describing him as a sweet and loving genius. But given that Dial spent his post-SLIDERS career getting in stupid online fights with slider1525, it's safe to assume he was a pretty messed up guy as well.

Could've been any of us. For that reason, my final SLIDERS script will be dedicated to David Peckinpah and pay tribute to some of the ideas he introduced to the show.

Hmm. Never mind. I was having a bit of a creative crisis here, but I've decided that being derivative is okay so long as the borrowed ideas are, if not SLIDERS-esque in their presentation, at least presented in a way that's tailored specifically to Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. I think SLIDERS REBORN has, up to this point, been a fun read. It's not a transcendental experience that will expand your consciousness and redefine every preconception you've ever had, but it's a good time! And so long as it stays a good time, it's worthwhile. Thank God. I can go to bed now.

Scene from "Regenesis":

QUINN: "We travelled so far and saw so much. And now everyone we ever met, everything we ever saw -- Remmy, it's all gone. What was the point? What was it all for?"
REMBRANDT: "Well, it's been twenty-one years and the four of us are still together. Living in the same house with eighteen Maggie Becketts and your mom. What else d'you need to know?"
ME: "Crap. I think I stole this sentiment from GIRL MEETS WORLD. Damn it. WHY AM I SO INCAPABLE OF ORIGINAL THOUGHT?"

Ian McDuffie once said SLIDERS would destroy you. I protested that it would simply reveal you, and what I feel is being revealed here is that my writing is good and original, but the parts that are original are not good and the parts that are good are not original.

Sometimes, I feel so crushingly insecure about my writing. Nigel Mitchell gave me alt-histories, I picked and chose from his ideas and I may have picked and chosen all the wrong things. And then there's the, well, stealing. "Good artists borrow, great artists steal?" That's actually a misrepresentation of the actual philosophy, which is that bad artists imitate while great artists may imitate but will ultimately improve on the original. I don't know if that's what's happening here.

The resurrection of the sliders is stolen from THE WOLVERINE. Quinn's seeming indifference to people in trouble only to reveal he's been formulating a plan to help is stolen from... oh, any number of DOCTOR WHO novels, throw a rock at my shelf and you'll hit one just like it. The recitation of events from absurd Season 3 episodes with exasperation or deadpan calm is likewise stolen from DW along with the doomsday clocks modelled on "The Power of Three"'s McGuffins. The scripting style is lifted from Dan Harmon's episodes of COMMUNITY, Laurel is written by looking at my friend Laurie and replacing all her biographical details while keeping the attitude, the doomsday situation is stolen from "Last Days," there's a bunch of bantering exchanges in "Revelation" modelled on the brother-sister arguments in WONDERFALLS, the disarming of the doomsday clocks is stolen from the disarming the bombs sequence in the FLASH/ARROW crossover, the technobabble is modelled on Steven Moffat's approach to plot devices, Quinn's intelligence is portrayed in sequences 'inspired' by SHERLOCK, the confrontation is stolen from "The Other Slide of Darkness" and it's kind of ironic that a series like SLIDERS is really revealing my own failures of imagination here. I'm writing "Regenesis" now and it has weaponized sliding -- the ability to teleport anything and anyone to anywhere on Earth is the most dangerous weapon ever conceived -- and it is so painfully obvious to me that I'm treating sliding like superspeed in THE FLASH.

That said, the audience doesn't seem to mind too much, at least not the ones who write to me -- they notice parallels with DOCTOR WHO, but they say reading the scripts was a great time. And I'm glad. But it *bugs* me.

Um. I have pretty much the same opinion of the sixth episode. Well. I'll say this for HEROES REBORN; it's certainly efficient to review! All you need is an initial review and to set it up like a form letter.

I was a huge fan of MY SECRET IDENTITY, featuring Jerry O'Connell as a superpowered teenager. And when I saw the Pilot commercials with Jerry saying, "Same planet -- different dimension," I was very keen to see more. I found the Pilot rather alienating and ugly as a child and "Fever" was extremely disturbing, but I felt utterly compelled by the characters and their situation. I wasn't too keen on the show until "Prince of Wails" -- Rembrandt's grumbling monologue about wishing he'd taken the freeway instead of the shortcut past Quinn's house made me laugh uncontrollably. Quinn inspiring the rebels, Wade inspiring the Prince and the Prince's entire arc through the episode delighted me. And at that point, I just loved SLIDERS so much, although I preferred the light comedy to the darker episodes. The Professor was the father figure I'd always wanted; wise but flaws, and when he gets angry, it's not terrifying, it's hilarious.

I really love the comic side of SLIDERS, which you can probably tell from the more recent screenplays I've written. Abed Nadir on COMMUNITY, as scripted by Dan Harmon and Chris McKenna, says the following of TV:

"There is skill to it. It has to be joyful. Effortless. Fun. TV defeats its own purpose when it's pushing an agenda. Or trying to defeat other TV. Or being proud or ashamed of itself for existing. It's TV! It's comfort. It's a friend you've known so well and for so long. You just let it be with you. And it needs to be okay for it to have a bad day. Or phone in a day. And it needs to be okay for it to get on a boat with Levar Burton and never come back. Because eventually, it all will."

The sliders were my friends. That is the saddest, most pathetic thing I have ever said about myself. But anyone who has ever read my writing or seen my posts on this Bboard already knew that to be true.

I would say that a huge part of what's kept SLIDERS in my life is the (online) friendships I've made. Because there was a time when I fled SLIDERS. The horror show of Seasons 3 - 5 reminded me a bit of how bleak and miserable Russian World and Fever World were and I stepped away from SLIDERS when the Professor died. It was too bleak. Too horrifying. When it started airing weekly on the SPACE channel in Canada, I rediscovered it and loved it and despised it in equal measure. And then Temporal Flux and I would instant message a lot over AIM and I asked him so many questions and pleaded with him to help me understand how SLIDERS could have become such a mutilated monstrosity. TF was so patient. So kind. So reassuring. And there was that time I accidentally uploaded porn onto the Sci-Fi Channel server and he came to my aid.

If you must know: I was working on some manipulated images for the Infinite Slides fanfic project and they needed a decent photo of Season 3 Maggie where she wasn't glaring or scowling or sexually aroused. I searched the web and was also combing through the Sci-Fi Channel's FTP server. I found a neat photo (not on Sci-Fi's site) where Kari had an unusually neutral expression and Season 3-esque hair, but she was also naked. I was also dragging Season 4 photos off the Sci-Fi Channel site, thinking I might be able to mix and match faces and hair. At the time, my computer was really slow and prone to freezing up and I managed to drag the nude photo of Kari onto the Sci-Fi Channel server and replace one of the publicity photos with the nude image.

I was so sure Sci-Fi was going to track me down and sue me for this. I was also afraid that my mother would find out I had a nude image of Kari Wuhrer on the computer. I was 13-years-old. I swear to God I only had the nude photo for artistic purposes, but I didn't think that would fly with her.

TF talked me off the ledge and helped me sort it out, finding me the contact info for Sci-Fi's web design firm and they amended the situation. I also hear he saved Christmas for someone awhile ago.

I've also become really close with Transmodiar over the last few years, although I probably won't share too much of the nonsense we've been engaging with until I finish the twentieth anniversary special. Unless I change my mind.

Well, you can see one fan's version of "Slide Effects" here. That said, it is a *fan*work. The second half of the 46-page script consists almost entirely of the Season 2 sliders watching clips of Seasons 3 - 5, horrified by the future ahead of them. This would not have been how Tracy Torme would have done it.

For one thing, Torme would never have bothered to watch Seasons 3 - 5 in their entirety. For another, TV doesn't really work that way; you can't have two whole acts confined to the same location with people standing around talking. I imagine that, rather than a clipshow, Torme's story would have had the Kromaggs tempting the sliders with offering a permanent illusion of home and happiness in exchange for information that would allow them to invade the sliders home Earth.

The sliders would have the chance to live (dream) lives of life where sliding was never created. But the sliders would reject the offer, declaring that sliding has made them all the best they can be and that they would never trade their adventures and friendship for anything.

At this point, they would escape the simulation, escape the Kromaggs, and slide off to new adventures, having realized that as long as Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are together, they're home.

I don't think it would necessarily have been spiteful and angry towards Seasons 3 - 5 -- in that I don't think Torme would have been sufficiently familiar with the episodes to say much about them.

I think the NEXT GENERATION approach is something you only get to do if the previous generation was a success, which SLIDERS simply wasn't. Also, I think it is a little selfish to inflict a NEXT GENERATION approach onto a modern day audience. We got to see Quinn discover sliding. Step into the vortex for the first time. Experience a parallel reality for the first time. Knowing that he was a pioneer.

I feel like if we restart SLIDERS with sliding having been around for 20 years, we are denying our fellow audience members the chance to experience the joy and wonder of discovery that we got to feel in 1995. Admittedly, the Pilot undermines this almost immediately with Smarter Quinn having discovered sliding before our Quinn, so this is *entirely* a personal opinion that you can easily dismiss.

LOST ROOM is great. Eerie. Mysterious. And filled with ideas; it's like five seasons of a TV show in three movies, and I loved the hypercompressed, concept-filled story with a series finale built right into it. The ending was suitably ambiguous, serving both as a conclusion AND allowing for more stories someday. It wasn't like PARALLELS; LOST ROOM was fine all by itself -- although I certainly wouldn't mind seeing more. Best kind of ending. :-)

The explanation only makes sense if you've read "Revelation" and "Regenesis," so let me know if/when you ever do. :-D

God damn it. I hate the whole world and everything in it -- but I only feel that way when I'm trying to get iTunes to work on my computer.

... but you guys plugged SLIDERS REBORN and I owe you. Fine. Fine fine fine fine fine. I will find some way to get iTunes going. Dagnabbit, it CRASHED AGAIN. Uh. I think my friend, Laurie, has a MacBook. I'll go see her tomorrow.

Generally, I think that when a show premieres, the actors have about 10 years where they still look to be relatively the same age as when they started. Tracy Torme conceived a story, "Slide Effects," to undo the David Peckinpah era in a single episode and get back to basics with Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. The story rewinds time to the Pilot, then reveals the scenario (and all the episodes from "The Exodus" onward) to be a Kromagg simulation. This story, however, depends on the actors still looking to be close to their 1995 ages. You could sort of get away with a 31-year-old Jerry pretending to be 20 again -- lengthen the hair, watch the angles -- and then, when Quinn wakes up, you could have the lines and age in his face come off as the texture of reality versus the softened look of the simulation.

"Slide Effects" was a viable one-episode solution to getting SLIDERS back on track until about 2005. It's a shame the show wasn't brought back before that point for at least a short six episode run. That was the simplest, most effective, most immediate way of creating a bridge from Seasons 3 - 5 back to the simplicity of the original concept.

After 2005, the options became more complicated.

The only viable route I can see to reviving the show today and with the original cast is having older doubles discover sliding at a later point in their lives. Possibly with some gimcrackery to subtly hint that these are the same people we met in 1995 -- it's just that, for some reason, their memories were altered or history was changed.

Thanks, Informant. It may be "Reassemble." It may be "Remix." It may be nothing. I'm going to finish Part 5 and see if the time gap is a something that should be filled or something that should be left alone.

SLIDERS (2013): http://freepdfhosting.com/ab3f9e4b78.pdf -- It was an interesting enterprise. Writing a reboot script for SLIDERS with all the advantages that shows like FRINGE, CHUCK and COMMUNITY enjoyed. It didn't work out for a variety of reasons. The main reason is that I think it was asking way, way, way too much of the message board posters to work together on the story.

Posters gradually stopped contributing; I posted the script and received pretty much no feedback for almost half a year from the very people who'd written the outline. Why? Because I had turned a fun discussion into Labour and Effort and it wasn't a good time for them anymore. They didn't want to form a writer's room; they wanted to banter about an imaginary reboot. My fault, everyone. I seek to atone with this thread.

At the time, this zero-budget, PDF screenplay format seemed to be the future of SLIDERS, but the project quietly faded away like a lavishly planned date that we suddenly found we couldn't afford. Except that really *did* turn out to be the future -- in format if not in content.

Uh. Read "Revelation" and "Reminiscence" before you commit to that opinion. :-)

It's odd. Reboot used to mean restarting continuity. Now it means bringing back any series that's been away for awhile. SLIDERS REBORN is not a realistic revival. It only appeals to 15 - 20 people on the Internet. I don't think of SLIDERS REBORN as the 2015 live-action revival anyway, I think of it as the 2015 comic book. REBORN is not something that can introduce SLIDERS to a new generation of fans.

I've always liked Temporal Flux's idea for a reboot. In 2000, he told me his idea for a SLIDERS movie. It would be a new Pilot. In 2001, Quinn Mallory and his friends find the gateway to parallel worlds, but on their first adventure, they lose their way back home. These would be doubles of the original sliders on an Earth where Quinn was older when he discovered sliding. Quinn would be studying for his doctorate, Wade would be designing promotions for Doppler Computers, Rembrandt would be a music teacher and the Professor would be the same. The 1995 - 2000 sliders would be set aside.

As the years passed, I have mentally updated the characters for this reboot. So, in my 2015 approach to TF's idea: Quinn would be a tax accountant who lost his passion for science after failing to create anti-gravity in 1994. Wade would be a tech journalist who has become utterly fed up with doing laptop and smartphone reviews. Rembrandt is running a coffee bar and moderately successful, but he only truly comes alive on open mic nights when he sings for an audience. The Professor is in disgrace after proposing some theory the scientific community was not prepared to accept and is now writing scientific study guides for desperate high school students. They are all failures in some way, some more than others.

Quinn and Wade have not been friends since that strange day in 1994 when Quinn kissed her and then denied it ever happened. The Professor and Quinn lost their relationship in 1994 as well, when Quinn mocked and insulted the Professor in full view of his class. Quinn has no memory of these events and never been able to explain himself.

When Amanda Mallory dies, Quinn goes to the house to clear out his things before selling the property. He visits his old basement for the first time in years, examining his abandoned anti-gravity project. And then he accidentally triggers the vortex. After visiting a parallel Earth and returning, Quinn finally realizes what happened in 1994; he opened a gateway to parallel worlds that must have attracted a sliding double who kissed Wade and insulted the Professor. He calls Wade and the Professor and pleads for them to visit; he explains what happened and shows them the vortex. Wade is eager to explore, the Professor reluctantly agrees, and when they step into the void, they accidentally draw in a passing Rembrandt as well and the adventure begins again.

Interestingly, when Matt Hutaff and I were discussing REBORN, Matt preferred the 'older doubles discover sliding for the first time' angle to a post-"Seer" approach. But Matt had a brilliant idea to make it so that these older doubles actually *are* the 1995 characters and just don't know it. It was a very clever idea that I shall decline to share here, but it might come to something. Someday.

I was *extremely* tempted by the reboot option, especially with Matt's little twist. But I ultimately decided against it.

Part of this was because I did not want to write Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo meeting for the first time. That struck me as the wrong note for an anniversary special. It seemed more appropriate to write a Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo who'd known each other for 20 years. And there was also one other reason that I need to withhold for a little while longer. ;-)

TLDR: The REBORN project is not a realistic revival; think of it as the comic book. There are ways to 'reboot' with the original cast.

That's good to hear! Hey, if you have contact with him, would you mind asking about the status of the LOST ROOM comic? It was announced. But then quietly faded into nothing with no release ever made.

There was once an entire DOCTOR WHO novel written around the fact that "Revenge of the Cybermen" mentioned 12 moons of Jupiter when there are (I think) 63. Possibly one of the most unnecessary efforts ever to explain a minor discrepancy. I mean, next you'll be writing SLIDERS novels to explain why FOX episodes took place in the wrong order.

And now, the recent episode of DOCTOR WHO has presented an in-universe explanation for why the Twelfth Doctor looks just like a previously-seen guest-star who was played by the same actor. I hand over my Award in Obsessive Geekery Towards Unnecessary Explanations to Steven Moffat and Russell T. Davies; clearly, I can't compete and the better men have won.

I just love all the crazy, lunatic ideas in BTTF2. Dehydrated pizza. Spinal treatments that involve tethering one's self to the ceiling and walk around. Flying cars. 3D shark movies with no glasses. Dust-repellent paper. Telecommunications systems with video chat and... fax machines. A paradox that may destroy all of existence or may merely be confined to our own galaxy. A dark timeline so horrific it's funny. And then the second half of the film where Marty time travels back into his own original movie and his past self ends up knocking him unconscious by accident.

There's also all the great, loving humour. Marty's 'inconspicuous' costume is a black hat and a leather jacket that makes him stand out in every scene. Doc Brown disguises himself as... himself. The hilarious hoverboard chase.

I find that most of my favourite movies and TV episodes are overstuffed with mad ideas never explored in great detail but used for striking and memorable visual effect and filled with incidental elements that make the landscape oddly plausible despite the plot's exaggerated absurdity and matched with comedic yet earnest characters whom you could lock in a closet together and still find interesting to watch.

I do think the first BTTF is a better film, but BTTF2 is the one I enjoy most.