This is very interesting. (A little sad, but that's speaking to my child mentality where you wish for all the people on a show you like to have gotten along on set lol.) But based on this, it shows how taleneted Davies must be cause it appears during the first two seasons, he improvised some things on set. Based on hearing this, it sounds like Torme wanted Arturo to be more like how he is in El Sid all throughout. Whether or not this is the case, and because it sounds like he didn't want him playing father figure at all in the show, it would be interesting to know how the other writers saw the character. They are of course low on the totent poll and would have virtually no say, but we still get kind, fatherly Arturo in those two seasons as well. Whether that was incorperated by Davies or the other writers, I have no idea.
The Pilot also has a lot of scenes of Quinn trying to flirt with a girl only for her and her friends to mock him; it's hard to imagine Jerry O'Connell being laughed at by women after he asks a girl named Stephanie out. That makes no sense visually; Stephanie would have told Jerry O'Connell: "Oh, that's so sweet, thank you, Quinn, but I have a boyfriend. You are a very cute boy, though, and I promise you there is some girl out there who sees that and is single."
(Or she would have told him, "Yeah, thanks but no thanks, Jerry; I know you're a player who never remembers anyone's name in the morning and don't get me wrong, you might have the best body I've ever seen and your hair is sexy but you're disloyal, shallow, untrustworthy, and I think you might be stupid. Like, I actually think you might have some kind of reading disability that you haven't even tried to fix because you've been coasting through life on your good looks.")
(Jerry seems to have grown the hell up, though; his recent podcast with Macaulay Culkin where he reflected on parenting and how to encourage his children speaks to a quantum leap forward in empathy and consideration.)
SLIDERS expert Temporal Flux says the Quinn/Stephanie scenes were filmed but cut. They may have been cut for time, but they may also may have been cut because they made no sense whatsoever visually.
I can see they were probably cut, not because they didn't make too much sense, but also because it was just extra filler. There is no pay off of Stephanie at all later in the pilot.
The tidbit about her may have been kept in. In an earlier script, it was mentioned that Smarter Quinn's wife was in fact Stephanie. They just took the name referance out in the final version. (Fun fact, when I first watched this, I assumed that Smarter Quinn's wife was Wade lol.)
Now I don't really know much about Jerry O'Connell, but based on what you said about him getting fired from the Kangaroo movie and such, probably had some things to do with it. I also think we may have to remember that he was in his 20s and a new star, and wasn't seeing the forrest for the trees. (Michael J. Fox, the actor is rumored to be a nice person but for a period of time, people reffered to him as cocky. Makes sense as he was new to stardom.) Just saying that may have played into Jerry a little bit too during those days.
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On another note I wanted to bring up from the podcast. In the Weaker Sex/Eggheads episode, it was brought up about the 50s/60s style mentality towards gender in Feminist World. I think this works and helps to make the epiosde stronger. This is a world where they had already gotten to experience what men are like in power, and had decided on their own that they didn't like it. So it makes sense that things would be reserved to the point that men are only seen as sexual objects and can only get certain jobs as nannies, teachers or secretaries.
I feel like if they had gone with the alternate attitude type thing like you mentioned there was in Eggheads (say that in this world, the people just prefer to have women in power) then I feel like it would have been more to the style of how gender politics played out in the 90s.
On the note about Quinn and Wade in this episode. You mentioned about him drying her hair. There is also the part where she lies and says that he's her boyfriend to get him the job. This is interesting because all three men tried to get jobs there. I assumed she just went "oh, these are my friends Rembrandt and Professor Arturo," so the fact that she says that Quinn is her boyfriend probably shows that the two were getting closer since their brief encounter in Last Days. It would be after this epiosde and before Luck of the Draw where I assumed they had a talk togethr about not getting involved while sliding. (Which could have been it's own epiosde in itself. Oof, I might be getting the urge to write that story out but probably won't lol.)