Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration) (Page 3 of 9)

I'd say Virtual Slide looks better than Fever.  But that's not a surprise.  The season 4 episodes always looked pretty decent to my eye, whether it be universal dvds or mill creek's.  The season 1s (and 2s to a degree) are where I have found it most lacking.

TF posted a screencap of "Prince of Wails" in another thread. Compare it to the upscale and note where the AI struggles: onscreen text that's blurry is unreadable even after upscaling.

At least we did get a glimpse of what was intended through Phil Gough (who was responsible for making most of the paper props in season one and two):

The actual prop master was Don Buchanan, and Phil put his face on the money being thrown around during the Robin Hood montage. Another detail that just doesn’t come through with the resolution we have.

That is pretty awesome! Thanks TF!

JWSlider3

i think ireactions is gonna kill us 

Rotoscoping sounds interesting, but I'm afraid I'm too busy to do anything other than plug and play solutions. But I'll be happy for other people to build on this.

Two FakeD clips today: "World Killer" with Quinn versus Quinn and "Double Cross with... well, I guess it's technically Quinn against Quinn again. https://mega.nz/folder/5E1WnZxJ#Zgg_4d2jHZTolIin-iSevw

His punches have the power of KICKS.

Why does Torme hate the ending of Season's Greedings? What a grump!

Thanks!  Do you have the copy that doesn't have the credits scrolling, to upscale?

https://vimeo.com/42207203

Good luck cleaning THAT up!

HD scenes from "Dead Man Sliding" (Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo corner Quinn-2) and "Prince of Slides" (Rembrandt faces off against Rembrandt & Quinn Mallory apparently knows how to swordfight now -- which could be part of Quinn's sports obsession except there was no fencing gear in his room in the Pilot).

https://gofile.io/d/7MIbW5

Watch David Peckinpah's beautiful "Murder Most Foul" conclusion in HD -- and also check out the gorgeous effects work in "The Alternateville Horror"!

https://mega.nz/folder/5E1WnZxJ#Zgg_4d2jHZTolIin-iSevw

Rembrandt's date from "Asylum" and Maggie visits the Maggie museum in "The Return of Maggie Beckett," upscaled to HD: https://mega.nz/folder/5E1WnZxJ#Zgg_4d2jHZTolIin-iSevw

Everything looks superb.

When the Freaks & Geeks blu-ray was done, they actually went from 4:3 to 16:9 because the stuff in the film scan was good enough to use.  Looking at these upscales -- particuarly of the later seasons -- the only thing that's holding them back from looking like something shot in the last 10 years is probably a 16:9 frame.

Thank you! xD

There's a name for people like you. I'll let you figure out what that name is.

I remember as I was working on "Net Worth: The Quinn and Wade Edition," you remarked, "I don't even need to ask you why you'd go to all this trouble for such a nothing episode. I already know why. You're a loon!"

In this case -- I feel that as a fandom, we must take opportunities when they arise to recognize extraordinary contributions to SLIDERS that went above and beyond merely watching it. Such people have earned extraordinary consideration and recognition.

You are one of those people. As are RussianCabbie (for his phone call with Torme), Grizzlor (for sharing his meetings with cast members), Recall317 and Nigel Mitchell and Slider_Quinn21 (extensive contributions to SLIDERS fiction), Annie Fish (the lengthy blog of all 88 episodes), Blinker (for slidersweb.net), Chaser9 (for lighting the first spark of post-"Seer" creativity), intangirble (for the Wade Welles roleplay), JWSlider3 (for script and document sharing) and, of course, Temporal Flux (for being the most Temporal Flux of everyone around here).

Now, I have had some creative reservations about LEGO SLIDERS. (Zercurvians. Oh, the Zercurvians.) But -- let us never conflate personal taste with objective success. John Rhys-Davies loved the Lego so much that he wanted his own set. Jerry, Cleavant, Kari and Sabrina have all hailed LEGO SLIDERS. Cez and Agata -- like you -- have earned whatever the SLIDERS equivalent may be of the Presidential Medal of Freedom is for doing so much to free Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo from the shackles of Seasons 3 - 5 and if Cez wants all eight opening title sequences in HD, I will crawl across broken glass to get him nine.

this reminds me.  I have to watch the excised Exodus!
https://vimeo.com/33034252

ringringringringringring

IB: " -- and in other news, Lauren -- Transmodiar asked me for help getting some upscaled shots for his fan edit of 'Genesis.' Ha! Like I'd ever want to get involved in that turkey. It's really beyond me why someone would invest that much time, effort and energy into a show that's been off the air since 2000."

LAUREN: "Yes. Beyond you. Not like you've written nine SLIDERS screenplays or anything."

IB: "Look -- that show was really traumatic for me. Matt knows that, he knows that it triggers all sorts of traumas for me, and his project apparently needs the two parter where the Professor gets shot and blown up after getting his brain sucked out and the episode where Wade gets turned into a head in a jar. That along with 'Genesis' and 'Common Ground' is like 45 hours of CPU processing! The answer is no. If he wants to do his foolhardy fan edit of 'Genesis' that maybe 20 people will watch, he can do it in low bit standard definition."

LAUREN: "How many people read your SLIDERS fanfic epic?"

IB: "Twenty that I know of."

LAUREN: "Did Matt like SLIDERS REBORN?"

IB: "He did not."

LAUREN: "And how much of Matt's life did he spend reviewing your story outlines and script excerpts and each and every creative crisis even as he built a section of his website for SLIDERS REBORN?"

IB: "He spent two and a half years of his life on it."

LAUREN: " ....................................................... "

IB: "I'll rip the DVDS."

LAUREN: "Yes, do that."

IB: "But it'll have to wait until tomorrow to start on upconverting them, the computer is currently upscaling 'Eye of the Storm.'"

LAUREN: "I don't know what that means, but it sounds terrible."

I have uploaded the endings for "Genesis" and "Prophets and Loss."
https://mega.nz/folder/5E1WnZxJ#Zgg_4d2jHZTolIin-iSevw

I didn't plan to upscale these, but Transmodiar asked for "Genesis" and "Common Ground" footage in HD for his fan edit and I accidentally ripped "Prophets and Loss" from the DVD and decided to upscale that too.

The results are actually quite nice (in terms of video quality). (I'm guessing that) Seasons 4 - 5 switched from 35mm film to 16mm film that was transferred to video with a high level of grain that was retained in Mill Creek's overcompressed release. It's grain that the AI can latch onto for a good result.

My God, I can only imagine what poor Linda Henning made of her appearances Seasons 4 and 5.

*sigh* Our journey through the Season of Hell (3) and the Season of Despair (4) will unfortunately be extended due to ****ing REWATCH PODCAST. I asked them if they wanted to see any particular scenes in HD and Tom said he'd really like to see "Slide Like an Egyptian" (for the destruction of the dope-ass cell phone as Annie Fish calls it and the introduction of the TV remote), "The Last of Eden" (as it's an extra Arturo episode after he was killed off), "Dinoslide" (for the dinosaurs?), "The Other Slide of Darkness" (for Smarter Quinn's return), "O Brother" (for Colin's first appearance), "Lipschitz Live" (I guess it has the first Colin double), "Roads Taken" (he may be the only person in the world who likes this episode) and "Revelations" (because it's the last appearance of Quinn Mallory as played by Jerry O'Connell).

I told him I wasn't doing this and Tom pointed out that as a superhero comic book fan, surely I could appreciate the value of having the first appearance and the last appearance of significant story elements, props and characters whether I liked the episode or not. "The Last of Eden" was the last time Professor Arturo appeared onscreen. "Revelations" was the last time we saw Quinn Mallory.

That rings true. I'm a pretty devoted superhero comic book fan and feel that Peter Parker and Quinn Mallory would have a lot to talk about. In fact, my own SLIDERS writing is clearly based on GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH. I found myself grudgingly agreeing with Tom which means that I also have to upscale "This Slide of Paradise," the worst hour of television ever made, because it has Wade Welles' final onscreen appearance.

I'm going to get all these done along with the rest of the Season of Grief (5) selections before I go back to Seasons 1 - 2. I don't want to end this project with the animal human hybrids.

Exodus was heavy stuff.  Looked great.

Today in HD: "The Last of Eden" where Rembrandt learns the Professor's secret -- and the final scene with a pretty strong performance from Jerry O'Connell where Quinn gives a Captain Kirk style speech to the natives, a moment that has not aged well but is still John Rhys-Davies' last first-air broadcast appearance on the show.

Also in HD: the Quinn versus Quinn scenes of "The Other Slide of Darkness."

https://mega.nz/folder/5E1WnZxJ#Zgg_4d2jHZTolIin-iSevw

I had to rewatch this entire episode to write the Smarter Quinn scenes of SLIDERS REBORN and... I remain utterly baffled by what's happening in this episode. I don't understand it.

I am mystified by Smarter Quinn's inexplicable ability to recognize Quinn as the same double he met in the Pilot despite no distinguishing characteristics to make our Quinn separate from any other double. Smarter Quinn's claim that he gave the Kromaggs sliding technology is nonsensical; the Dynasty was not a two year startup operation in "Invasion."

And I am at a loss as to what happened in the final scene. Transmodiar says "Time and Again World" is incomprehensible, but "The Other Slide of Darkness" is unfathomable.

I ended up blowing off Smarter Quinn's appearance in this episode when scripting him in REBORN, having Smarter Quinn vaguely refer to how, "I felt my memories being rewritten, turning me into a faith leader lording over savages in the wild. I went insane. But I found myself eventually." I also had a line from Rembrandt where Rembrandt remarks to Smarter Quinn, "Say, weren't you wearing a crazy wig and face paint the last time we saw you?" I concede that line doesn't necessarily make sense; Rembrandt never saw Smarter Quinn in "The Other Slide of Darkness" -- but somebody had to say it.

One is a failure of plotting, while the other is a fundamental misfire of characterization. There's something in the production draft pf the script that lends a little extra air of desperation to Smarter Quinn's plan for Vanilla Quinn, and the ending makes things a little more explicit, but there are too many logic holes to create a coherent narrative.

If they'd spent five more minutes at the mountaintop and five fewer minutes with Rickman and Maggie and the hillbillies in town, it would have helped a lot. Smarter Quinn being humbled by his cocky donation of sliding to the Kromaggs is interesting, but it presumes two things: 1) the Quinns have met before, and 2) VQ knows about the Kromaggs.

Again, it doesn't take much - SQ could rant about how things were perfect, he was a genius, etc., and then he encountered a whole new species on another earth. The revelation would shock his world and pave his way to scientific greatness. But then the Kromaggs betrayed him...

A look of familiarity crosses VQ's face and SQ sees it. "You know of the Kromaggs?"

VQ can relate some of the story - "we barely escaped with our lives" (giving some backstory VO on top of Invasion scenes, maybe) - and the SQ apologizes. "Why are you sorry?"

"Because I gave Kromaggs the key to sliding."

A few more moments where they digest this revelation; VQ says that can't be possible - they encountered an invasion fleet, were interrogated in a prison on another world... then SQ says they were already advanced. Instead of stumbling onto sliding, they perfected anti-gravity.

They enter the cave - the equation is on the wall.

"All I gave them... was a little push."

Now we have motivation for SQ wanting to help the Sliders. They've suffered unintentionally by his hand. SQ's world is ruined, the first world conquered by the invading army that now has the ability to slide at will. But he will help Quinn and his friends in ways he couldn't help his own. Maybe it leads to his salvation.

It was all right there, just slightly off the page, and they went for titillation and bag CGI. A shame, really - it had a lot of potential. Would love to read Scott Miller's original draft that made Peckinpah lose his lunch.

It'd look even better if this scene was in it!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cip33f0ebaxxg … r.mp4?dl=0

Finally had a chance to hook up an old laptop to a tv today with an HDMI cable.   I figured a tv would be the true test.  The samples looked terrific.  Really this is everything I would hope for with a Universal release.  What a terrific job by ireactions.  I hope that something like this eventually is done officially by universal -- fans deserve this level of quality.

"Lipschitz Live": the ending in HD. Also at Tom's request! He said, quite reasonably, that it was the first appearance of a Colin double and therefore a significant and critical moment in SLIDERS history.
https://mega.nz/folder/5E1WnZxJ#Zgg_4d2jHZTolIin-iSevw

In another odd turn, I watched another Charlie O'Connell centric episode of SLIDERS and I'm not sure what's happened, but I really enjoyed Charlie's performance and found Colin highly endearing and full of charm. The performance is technically unpolished and clumsy; Charlie's overly over the top overt efforts to distinguish Colin from Colin-2 are workmanlike. But... there's just something to his screen presence that's so pleasant, so affable, so approachable.

I did watch an episode of FEMME FATALES once where Charlie was playing a sleazy college girl pornographer and he was unpleasant and alienating -- although his performance was solid.

It reminds me of Brent Spiner saying he gets lots of fan mail from people who write to him but seem to be writing to Data and that he understands that because Data is such an accessible personality.

I totally agree with you about Charlie entirely and fully -- but I'm just in a really good mood with SLIDERS right now. It's nice to see everyone again. Colin. Maggie with the Betty Page hair. Cleavant fully shaven. Just now, I caught myself looking forward to watching "Roads Taken" in HD tomorrow and I've never been able to stay awake for the whole thing.

I am, of course, also very excited to get back to Seasons 1 - 2 after getting through the last upscales of Seasons 4 - 5.

When I started this upscaling project, it was really just to enjoy the Golden Age of Seasons 1 - 2. I wasn't going to get into the later seasons too deeply. But... every time I try to stay out of the Season of Hell, the Season of Grief and the Season of Despair, I get pulled into 'em. And I think I can explain it now, watching "Applied Physics" in HD. Here are the Mallory scenes.
https://mega.nz/folder/5E1WnZxJ#Zgg_4d2jHZTolIin-iSevw

The thing that's consistently exasperating and captivating about SLIDERS: there's clearly a lot of talent there. "Murder Most Foul" is an excellent episode from writer David Peckinpah. "Prophets and Loss" had that gorgeous almost-in-real-time interrogation of the trio from Bill Dial. "Virtual Slide" is a lovely debut from Keith Damron. "The Alternateville Horror" and "Slide By Wire" from Chris Black are minor masterpieces. "Applied Physics," also by Chris Black, shows that SLIDERS could get a lot out of mining the loss of 3/4 of its cast for drama, tragedy, and even closure. Chris Black can do it. But Chris Black is sadly not running this show.

It's strange: SLIDERS turns Rembrandt into a war traumatized, shell shocked man -- but doesn't like to acknowledge or address it. It turns Quinn Mallory into a schizophrenic with someone else's face. It lost Arturo, the heart of the show, and tries to avoid bringing it up. But on the rare occasions of actually facing these losses, SLIDERS is powerful and stirring. The ability to tell amazing SLIDERS stories is there. But the showrunners are simply not engaged and not interested and the potential is only ever realized in what Annie Fish calls "outliers" like "World Killer" and I'd call this one an outlier too.

Most of the episodes I decided to upscale in Season 5 are "outliers." They are really really good. "Applied Physics" is really, really good. Would that every episode of Season 5 had been this strong.

Today: the ending of "A Current Affair" and all the Wade centric scenes from "Requiem" in HD.
https://mega.nz/folder/5E1WnZxJ#Zgg_4d2jHZTolIin-iSevw

Skippable episode commentary follows.

"A Current Affair" is another very fine episode of Season 5. It's engaging, uses the Sci-Fi budget effectively, has some strong editing to create some crowd scenes with limited extras, creates a good sense of motion and plotting, has some winning and endearing characters -- it's a strong episode written by Steve Stoliar who wrote "Paradise Lost" (shudder). Stoliar seems really cool to me: he wrote an autobiographical novel about his time as Groucho Marx's assistant and this script is also quite strong.

Annie Fish struck on something regarding this episode: Season 5 story editor Keith Damron was too busy to rewrite this script. As a result, "A Current Affair" doesn't suffer from the Damron/Dial rewrite style of having characters standing around reiterating already-established information to fill the page count. Instead, conversations build and flow and reveal.

"Sometimes," Fish remarked of Keith Damron and this episode, "we are blessed with his days off." This week, we see that the SLIDERS storytelling platform can easily resume its social satire and commentary and comedy and sense of fun with terrific actors performing a lively and endearing story -- all it takes is a writer who is professional and capable enough to do a filmable, performable teleplay that uses the series' regular elements and formula effectively and isn't rewritten into flatness. The Season 4/5 vortex looks beautiful in the closing shots in HD.

Then we have "Requiem" where it looks like Damron and Dial put their full attention into rewriting Michael Reaves' original script into whatever this was.

I'm really impressed by the Sabrina-doubling work in HD and the way it feels like Sabrina is on set even though she isn't. Most people have not been impressed; Cory on Rewatch Podcast said it was obviously not Sabrina Lloyd, Annie Fish said in their blog that the body double was "a (kind of okay but not really at all) lookalike." Sabrina Lloyd said, "She didn't really look like me."

They could be right. Sometimes, when rewatching SLIDERS, I'm seeing what I want to, not what is there.

A fanfic writer and I once remarked that leaving Wade as a disembodied consciousness floating through the interdimension would, if nothing else, make it easy enough to somehow resurrect her in the most casual and immediate way through the vagaries of sci-fi comic book science. This same fanfic writer postulated that the disembodied Wade could become a pan-dimensional being of infinite power and longed to write such a story if time permitted. He also suggested that Diggs might be pan-dimensional as well since he always seems to know the sliders and is happy to provide them with expository monologues.

I don't know why high school students are watching SLIDERS, but one recently contacted me and asked me if I could recommend any Season 6 fanfics that resurrect Wade after this episode.

"Oh, any of them!" I said happily. "Except Earth 214; Slider_Quinn21 said it was too confusing and he just used the Azure Gate Bridge Wade."

Another fanfic writer wrote (but deleted) a sweet little story where the disembodied Quinn and the disembodied Wade find each other in the interdimension and fall in love all over again. Another fanfic writer revealed that the Wade in this episode was a clone and the real Wade had escaped the Kromaggs before the Season 4 premiere.

In my fanfic, SLIDERS REBORN, Wade is shown to be alive and well in 2015, no immediate explanation provided. Later, Quinn refers to this episode and says he saw Wade. "You died!?" someone says to Wade. She replies, "I don't know, it was so unclear!" A later passage provides some technobabble-based explanation about reinstating the disembodied Wade to reality and rewinding her timeline to an earlier point, but I think "I don't know, it was so unclear" totally covers it.

After this episode, I always take a bit of time to watch Sabrina Lloyd's movie, UNIVERSAL SIGNS. Love you, Sabrina Ann Lloyd!

(I'm just being sentimental, she's not reading this. Or is she? She's not. Or is she? She's not. Or is she? She is not, but on some level, I think she can feel my appreciation for her gift in the sense that she may have made a few dollars from me when I bought the UNIVERSAL SIGNS DVD from the official website.)

What a tremendous job in restoring all this content to the way it more naturally looked when it first broadcast!  All born out of the love that the original creative team, who cared about the material -- tracy, john, sabrina, cleavant and even jerry -- helped inspire.  Such a gift to fans for us to see this faux-d upconversion.  Technology can be a wonderful thing when the studio won't scan the negatives themselves (although I'll never stop hoping technology one day makes that affordable enough for universal to one day do so).   Nevertheless this looks pretty much close to what we would otherwise get -- especially the close up shots.