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So, one thing I am struggling with in SLIDERS REBORN: five characters. Five lead characters for a 120 page script is too many, and absolutely none of them can be dropped. I mean, a SLIDERS without Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo is false advertising. And the Laurel character was designed as a plot device to reunite the original sliders, but dismissing her after that feels artificial. And I do not have the energy to write 3 - 4 episodes of SLIDERS; three feature-length scripts and a novella are taxing enough.

The unfortunate result is that the characters are carried along by the momentum of the plot. Their actions do not define them. I seriously hit a point of irritation when Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo spent two scenes working on opening a door. And it also means that the parallel Earths aren't particularly well-defined -- which, quite frankly, is a blessing in disguise because world-building is not one of my strengths.

I'm trying to compensate for this by focusing on pastiching the actors. Making sure that while they may not do anything superbly definitive, every line resonates. And at times, I find myself swapping lines and rewriting them to avoid the reader forgetting that the character is in the room. So, maybe Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo spend a lot of time working that door, but they have a hilarious argument as they work it. This results in scripting where Matt Hutaff once exclaimed in dismay, "Everyone's comic relief!" And yes. This is my peculiar impression of Dan Harmon's SLIDERS only with a lot less ability, talent and literacy.

Back on the old Bboard, Informant remarked that no work is flawless and no piece of art excels in every area. That writers must have a vision and then decide what the priorities are in serving that vision. I'm okay with SLIDERS REBORN being less about sliding and more about the sliders, but it makes me feel a bit like Tim Kring -- in that it would probably work better if I paid Bryan Fuller to turn my scribblings and ramblings into finished content.

Another weird thing that happened: Laurie (whom the Laurel Hills character is based on, although the resulting character is actually nothing like Laurie) finally finished her box set of FIREFLY. And she hated "Objects in Space" because the evil and sadistic bounty hunter threatened to rape Kaylee. I said I didn't understand why a villain being a rapist was a problem. Laurie said that it triggered feelings of fear and vulnerability and powerlessness that FIREFLY had no business triggering unless it was really going to explore the subject of rape -- and that Kaylee whimpered pathetically when all the men got to fight the bounty hunter. I pointed out that River defeats the bounty hunter and Laurie said that I couldn't possibly understand how it feels to be a woman watching a show where rape is raised so casually.

After that, I went home and went back to a scene in Part 2 of REBORN where Laurel Hills is cornered by three thugs who claim they have uses for "fresh, young flesh" -- presumably, to force her into sexual slavery. I changed this to the thugs wanting Laurel for "fresh young kidneys" and "virgin lungs" and "mint condition eyes" and rewrote some of the earlier bits of Nigel Mitchell's world-building to include a huge demand for black market organs. I asked Laurie if this was acceptable and she said sure. I don't understand at all, but I found forced organ harvesting to be equally threatening and therefore an acceptable rewrite.

Anyway. I have finished 1/3 of Part 2, which, because of the darkness and misery, was really slow-going. The final 2/3 are more the oddball bantering and lunacy I prefer to write, so I expect I'll have a rough draft done by the end of the weekend. And spend the rest of the month adding setups to my payoffs as well as more jokes.

That's pretty cool. I can't see myself going out of my way to get a smartwatch, but I shall monitor the technology with interest.

I recently got a super-cheap Bluetooth keyboard and attempted to write some of Part 2 of the SLIDERS REBORN script on it. It was actually helpful to be able to use only one app at a time and have to focus completely on the Google Docs app. Also, it was a lot easier to carry a lightweight tablet instead of 2.5 pound laptop along with all the other stuff I carry in my bag. I found I got a bit stuck at times in scenes, forgetting what was supposed to happen next, so I had to have the outline on my phone. I'm copy-pasting the Google Docs text into Final Draft later to do the formatting.

But I'm wondering, if a 2.5 pound laptop is annoying to carry around is an indication that I really need to start carrying fewer items in my bag.

The answers are not case sensitive.

Did this really worry you?

omnimercurial is referring to my "Slide Effects" script. I'm flattered. But to be frank, none of my SLIDERS stuff is meant to be a 'realistic' portrait of a SLIDERS revival. Neither "Slide Effects" nor REBORN were written to be filmed, only written to be *conceivably* filmed. By that, I mean for "Slide Effects," I wrote scenes that you could have physically filmed in 2000. And if it were 2000 and Tracy Torme returned for a Season 6, then sure, you could do "Slide Effects." But writing in years later, the idea was more to create a script where the reader could imagine these images in their heads without thinking it impossible to have been made or too distant from what SLIDERS was like as a TV show.

It's the same thing with SLIDERS REBORN (I'm 1/3 finished Part 2 and 2B is done). It's not meant to be a realistic picture of how to revive SLIDERS as a going concern in 2015 -- but I'm hoping that fans will read it and feel like the images described are *possible* even if it would never actually be filmed.

A realistic SLIDERS revival does not bother with Seasons 3 - 5 or even Seasons 1 - 2. A realistic SLIDERS revival is introducing the concept to the audience for the first time.

In terms of updating SLIDERS -- I don't see that anything has to be updated beyond what comes naturally with moving a 20-year-old Quinn into 2015. You could update the topical references and timeframe in the Pilot, film it today and it'd be great -- the differences would come in the form of how *different* TV filming and editing have become. Scenes are shorter. Dialogue is faster. More happens in less time. I think modern production alone would make SLIDERS seem more modern. As for updating the characterization -- it was already there in the original series, it just wasn't always capitalized upon.

So, some moody lighting and grimly intoned statements are all it takes to win you over, huh? :-)

In 1997, Quinn was 23 - 24 (as he was born in 1973). Kari Wuhrer, born in 1967, would have been 30 - 31. Within the context of the show, Jerry and Maggie were being treated like they were pretty much the same age. Which is ridiculous.

Quinn was a grad student (having skipped several grades) while Maggie had been a spy, a fighter pilot and had an extensive career in espionage. So, I would have put Maggie in her late thirties or early forties and let Kari play an older character. I think she should have seen herself as the practical, experienced woman of action who considers Quinn to be a reckless child in need of care. And I like to think of Wade learning from Maggie and maybe crushing on her. (Would Sabrina Lloyd have been able to play that?)

Rembrandt, I think, would find Maggie somewhat disturbing and terrifying in her ruthlessness while Maggie would consider Rembrandt to be her favourite because he's very pleasant and goodhearted.

I miss Brand_S. And WrongArturo. And rafproductions. I've done my part in bringing the Bboard back! You people bring them back!

Wow. Can he be my brother too?

What do you do with a smartwatch, anyway?

On my gadget front -- I found my T100TA netbook/tablet/convertible a little slow when I first bought it. I thought it'd be fine for data entry and typing, especially with its 10 hours of battery life. But Chrome kept crashing when I was typing E-mails and I had to switch to browsers that wouldn't crash but would be laggy and slow and I grew to despise this thing. However, after a few recent updates, Chrome is crash-free and suddenly this computer feels like the perfect little laptop. It's weird how one app running well vastly elevated my opinion of this machine. It's still hopeless as a tablet, however. The Windows tablet app store is terrible.

Hmm, that's neat. Untold stories! I've always wondered how Marty met Doc.

CHUD.com has a pretty great retrospective on every installment on BACK TO THE FUTURE. Hopefully, the comic will be a worthy addition. The retrospective did a nice job of pointing something out: BTTF isn't really built as a series and the sequels had to tie themselves in knots to wring more story out of the concept. The comics, doing untold stories, seem to be cautiously steering around those difficulties.

http://www.chud.com/119028/franchise-me … he-future/
http://www.chud.com/121291/franchise-me … future-ii/
http://www.chud.com/122429/franchise-me … uture-iii/
http://www.chud.com/123059/franchise-me … tv-series/
http://www.chud.com/124087/franchise-me … -the-game/

To be honest, I actually found PARALLELS a little more plausible than SLIDERS in some ways -- or rather, it presented the implausibilities more effectively than SLIDERS' pilot. The nature of the building is a mystery; as a result, I didn't find its creation or existence or discovery unlikely because there is no information for me to consider plausible or implausible. In a fairly realistic world where punches hurts and families fall apart, the building is a peculiar mystery box of delightful impossibility.

It's just one abandoned building on one Earth as far as the inhabitants are concerned.

The Pilot, in contrast, explains *everything* about sliding and piles upon endless unlikely plot points. The idea that Quinn was trying to build anti-gravity and created something else is plausible, but then you have a ridiculous coincidence: a double just happened to visit Quinn's Earth at the very same time Quinn slid out and was absent, a double uniquely suited to explain the sliding concept to Quinn. In an infinity of Earths, how likely is it that a Quinn-double would just happen to stumble across an Earth in such a plot-convenient fashion?

PARALLELS, quite smartly, cloaks its absurdities in mystery to avoid having to justify them at all or failing to.

It was so weird. It is weirdly common in many blockbusters -- GI JOE RETALIATION had London, England destroyed entirely and nobody even mentioned it afterwards.

Well. Maybe you're right.

I rewatched PARALLELS just now and I realized that RussianCabbie's idea of a next-gen approach is creatively full of potential. Imagine:

Two new characters, Ronan and Beatrix, are searching for their missing father. Their last names are not mentioned. The father's face is not shown in any photos or security cam footage. They stumble into a building, the address of which they found in "Dad"'s things. They find the building that is a rift between parallel universes.

They have two crazy adventures and flee back into the building. A villain follows them. Threatens to blow up the building unless the creator comes out to face him. The elevator dings. The doors open to reveal Ronan and Beatrix's father -- Quinn Mallory. That's PARALLELS (minus the Quinn reveal), but I guess the next-gen route isn't a dead end. However, at that point, one still has to wonder why sequelize SLIDERS instead of making an original work, and I'm not seeing the advantages.

And the rebootquel approach could be neat: Quinn is in his mid-forties. He failed to create anti-gravity in his 20s. Blacked out the house. Gave up on science and went to work as an accountant. Twenty years later, Quinn is a miserable loner nursing a crush on one of his clients (Wade) and plays chess his other one (Arturo). After Quinn's mother dies, he goes back to the old house. Wade and Arturo go to help him pack. Quinn starts rooting through the basement. Accidentally triggers the vortex. It accidentally sucks in Rembrandt, who is driving by for Reasons. And the adventure begins again?

But a reboot is probably best.

I find it really hard to read tom2point0's posts now without imagining his podcast voice reading every line.

I didn't mind Season 3? I enjoyed the individual episodes and I didn't find the flaws as grating as some. But it added up to a rather limp and awkward season-long arc overall. Nice ending, though.

No network will ever commission a TV show that only makes sense to people who've watched Seasons 1 - 5. It's too insular. It's called *broad*casting for a reason.

Jerry playing a Quinn who is in his mid-forties when he first discovers sliding in a 2015 version of the Pilot with the original cast? That might function. But there is no way SLIDERS could possibly return as the long-delayed 19th episode of Season 5.

I don't think it can be avoided that some of the cast are permanently Greendaled. Jeff, Britta, the Dean and Chang are probably lifers and that's fine. They're adults, they bounced around out in the world and Greendale is where they ended up. So maybe Annie is spending a year teaching a forensics class at Greendale as a working sabbatical and Troy came to campus to spend two days installing a new fire sprinkler system and never got around to leaving and Abed is on campus shooting a college romantic comedy and decides to make our new character the leading role and use that as an entry point to Greendale's craziness.

So, shall we use this thread for that old favourite of our topics? How would we revive SLIDERS? The reboot option with a new cast is the most general audience friendly. Gregory Smith as Quinn. Allison Mack as Wade. Colin Salmon as Rembrandt. Victor Garber as Arturo. But with the original cast... ?

I think a direct sequel is out. I've experimented a bit with a quick prequel to reveal that Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo were reunited immediately after "The Seer" -- and that ultimately dooms you to addressing the S3 - S5 plots even obliquely. Also, the general audience isn't going to have any memory of all the stories being undone.

With STAR TREK and TERMINATOR, there's a new trend of rebootquels. Revisiting the original events but with the idea that events have been altered through time travel, allowing the original story to be retold with a different plot and a new outcome. So, what would SLIDERS' rebootquel be?

The thing I found neat about TREK and TERMINATOR: time travel is used to indicate that these aren't alternate versions of the original characters. It's the original characters leading alternate lives.

Would there be a way to put the original sliders in an alternate version of the Pilot in 2015? While making it clear that these are the 1995 sliders for whom reality has been rewritten?

I had a weird Netflix experience. I was watching SWITCHED AT BIRTH, which has lengthy segments in sign language. I was watching it on my Windows 7 HTPC, but when moving to my Windows 8 laptop, I switched into the Netflix Windows 8 app. And all the subtitles were gone! I had no ability to understand the sign language conversations.

But when I used the browser, the subtitle graphics were back on the very same scenes in which they were absent in the app!

Peculiar.

They start talking SLIDERS at the 42 minute mark. Basically saying that there's no hope for SLIDERS returning.

Sad now. My life is ruined.

Sounds like it's going well!

I went back and rewrote "Reprise" to match the filmed version of "The Seer," mostly, aside from dropping a few lines of dialogue. And then replaced the file. Ah, obsessiveness.

On Jerry -- I think he was hungover on set in Season 4. I think it was the tail-end of a downward spiral. In Vancouver, Jerry lived like a normal guy. He went to work, went to the gym, went home, lived a quiet and low-key life. His attitude to acting was always been to play himself regardless of the role. He could get away with that because he had all the technical skills (memorization, hitting his marks, meeting his cues, blocking his scenes) and because he has a natural onscreen charisma. Match that with excellent scripting from S1/S2 writers and his reverence for John Rhys-Davies and John coaching him and Quinn came off as a multifaceted character.

Then Jerry moved to LA. It became all about the night life with making the show as something to do between binge drinking sessions, an attitude shared by the producers. Jerry continued to play himself and now Quinn was a smug, flirtatious, arrogant, brash screen presence and Jerry was only occasionally in character. And by Season 4, Jerry wouldn't even play that most of the time. He is clearly hungover in "Common Ground" and "My Brother's Keeper" and I think Charlie O'Connell, later revealed to be an alcoholic, was enabling him. The scripts in Season 4 were also terrible for Quinn: only in "World Killer" and "The Alternateville Horror" is Quinn scripted as an adventurous moral crusader who is delighted by big ideas; the rest portrayed Quinn as a bland action hero.

Season 5 -- I think that because the producers weren't expecting much, they also weren't asking much. So I guess it was an easy job working on that set and people were having fun making the show even if they weren't making anything good. I mean, you look at X-FILES episodes at the time and you have really ambitious direction and scripting whereas with SLIDERS, the visuals are just people jogging around beige hallways. I don't doubt it was fun to make; it just wasn't fun to watch.

I would have liked Robert Floyd to have played Quinn from the Pilot onward.

Hmm. It could be a tease. I was watching "Collision," where Future Hiro first appeared -- the footage of the older Hiro in the REBORN trailer actually looks like it was lifted from that episode.

Or they refilmed it for some reason.

I enjoyed the "El Sid" and "Love Gods" podcast too! I wish they were longer; I love listening to Cory and Tom during my commutes.

I don't have a lot to say about "El Sid" as an episode. Cory and Tom did a great job exploring Arturo's morality in that his 'betrayal' does point to a lot of angry feelings towards Quinn. "El Sid," to me, is a well-intentioned misfire. The main problem for me, aside from too little script, is that I don't enjoy seeing the sliders at each others' throats. I understand the show wanting to vary the interaction a bit. They don't always get on. I just found it ugly and unappealing and I prefer it when sliders arguing is played for laughs.

"Love Gods" is a fun action episode with a hilarious concept, but the breeding program makes no sense whatsoever. There is no way a world this developed could fail to develop in-vitro fertilization. The only explanation I can conceive is that the virus affected even surviving men in some way that their sperm cannot retain viability in storage for some reason. God, world-building is so hard.

I'd disagree with Cory and Tom saying that Quinn was in any way enthused about being so in demand. Jerry plays Quinn as completely disgusted and repulsed throughout the episode. This is not a guy who has any patience or enjoyment for being objectified. Quinn Mallory has a sense of the big picture. This is part of why the character is so special to me. As a kid, I was really confused by girls and hormonal impulses. Quinn's frustration throughout the episode clarified things for me; he wants to be liked for the whole of who he is in body and mind. He's not exactly prudish, but losing his father as a boy makes him hesitate to produce offspring he wouldn't be there to raise. I really felt that in this absurd episode, Quinn Mallory was revealed as everything a man should be in relating to women.

Funny how in the two episodes where Quinn probably had sex (this and "Double Cross"), the show puts in some wiggle room!

Hmm. I'll see if I can edit it together. In other news:

From: ireactions | To: David Gerrold
Dear Mr. Gerrold. I recently interviewed Robert Floyd ("Mallory" from SLIDERS) and asked him: what was his favourite episode of SLIDERS? It was yours. Congratulations.

*sigh*

Two things. First, in preparation for the Rob Floyd interview, I rewatched the closing scenes of "The Seer." And I was horrified to realize -- I messed up my SLIDERS REBORN prequel. "Reprise"'s description and dialogue of "The Seer" -- I copied it out of one of the scripts. Clearly the wrong draft. It doesn't match what was actually filmed, who said which lines, the physical action -- even the final line of dialogue is wrong. Total screw up!

That's embarrassing.

Second, I'm working on the first segment of SLIDERS REBORN's Part 2. Nigel Mitchell kindly rewrote the alt-history for me. And it's going fine, but it's so dark! So grim. I'm not having fun.

It feels like work, for God's sake. It is now more obvious than ever to me that I don't really want to write SLIDERS. I want to write episodes of COMMUNITY with Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo -- and I will totally get back to that at the 1/3 mark, but this 1/3 is so grim.

Thank God tomorrow's a holiday and I can power-drive through the whole script.

Thank me by posting lots and lots!

The new format is superb!

http://www.violetmice.com/

I have *never* been able to get Ian's online store to work. Damn it, Ian! Go to Ian's website and E-mail him. Offer to send him the money via PayPal and he'll send you the book, as he did for me (if he has any copies left).

I've never read the comic, but I felt I owed it to Ian to support this enterprise. "Paradise Lost" -- I've blocked it out of my memory.

I really enjoyed the most recent podcast. I'd politely disagree about the ending of "Into the Mystic." I've always found it haunting, eerie, tragic and logical. The sliders could make it home and not recognize it. There is no way they can ever get home and be sure it's home. I would be interested in better understanding why you guys disliked it; was it badly written? Was it poorly conceived? Did it reflect badly on SLIDERS? I don't think so.

I also gently disagree with the criticisms of the teaser. Having Quinn wake up would have been a bit flat; showing the eerie image of his own headstone was far more striking and compelling.

I think you guys were bang on about "Time Again and World." The episode is baffling with many scenes providing seemingly vital information that doesn't add up to anything. The plot makes no sense whatsoever with the plan to read the Constitution on pirate radio when the Internet is functional and usable. I liked Cory's humility in saying he was relieved to hear that Tom didn't understand the episode either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHClJhC8Wfs

Trailer for HEROES REBORN. God help me, seeing a certain someone finally achieve his destiny -- I actually got excited.