25th Anniversary of Sliders Coming up in six months...

Well, I feel I've done my part for queen and country.

However, as you may know, one of my quirks is to platonically befriend actresses, one of whom recently celebrated her 23rd birthday. She informed me that she'd been celebrating her 23rd birthday for over a decade and a half via a combination of diet, exercise and skin care and that she expected to continue celebrating her 23rd birthday until retirement or finding another line of work. (I think this is the part where Slider_Quinn21 tries to identify who I'm talking about and I tell him I've changed the details to obscure who I'm talking about.)

I expect that I shall celebrate the fifth anniversary of the twentieth anniversary of SLIDERS by finishing up a website for SLIDERS REBORN five years after it first came out.

I have successfully converted the first two SLIDERS REBORN scripts to a mobile format suited to phones and tablets and I am now working on the third. Also fixed one plothole and a typo where I mistakenly referred to the character of Laurel as Lauren (the real life young lady upon whom Laurel is based).

"Reprise" (1): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1awJ … sp=sharing
"Reunion" (2): https://docs.google.com/document/d/10Qf … sp=sharing

I'll definitely get "Slide Effects" and "Net Worth: The Quinn and Wade Edition" into this format as well. However, I think I'm going to leave the Quinn vs. Donald Trump script, "Resistance," alone -- I think its time has passed much like the Captain America and Spider-Man comics where they react to 9-11.

I know, I know. I really need to step it up with getting the scripts adapted into a mobile format.

And now Part 4 of SLIDERS REBORN: "Reminiscence" (4) is converted to mobile.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Qpn … sp=sharing

It's strange: this short novella was mostly me with very little input from others, yet it exists in its current form and position entirely because of Transmodiar. Originally, this was Part 2. Part 1 opens with Rembrandt emerging from the vortex of "The Seer" and collapsing in an alley due to the injection. He briefly regains consciousness to find Quinn, Wade and Arturo with him, miraculously, impossibly restored to life and to Rembrandt's side. The plan was for this novella, "Reminiscence," to explain how this came to be. The original novella had Quinn being erased from reality, struggling to anchor himself by telling his story to a woman who doesn't know him, the entire story of sliding and how he, Wade and Arturo came back to life, found Rembrandt and restored Earth Prime. At the end, the woman is revealed to be his mother who remembers him and her remembrance bonds Quinn back into the multiverse.

You can read the original draft here -- https://freepdfhosting.com/221bcaa5ee.pdf -- and Transmodiar thought it was ghastly, pointing out that the dense continuity was alienating even to him, a man who had watched SLIDERS far more than is medically safe. He said that the plot hinged on Quinn telling a CRAZY story to a woman who doesn't know him and nobody would tolerate this extremely long, convoluted tale of lunacy from someone who was clearly insane.

I proceeded to rewrite the entire thing in its present form where Quinn is in a mental ward telling his crazy story to a psychiatrist (supposedly the one from "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome"). I put the text of Transmodiar's emails questioning the plot into the psychiatrist's dialogue -- verbatim -- so that Quinn could answer his questions and explain the issues.

I'm not sure "Additional Plotting" is entirely the correct credit for Transmodiar's contributions except to say that it would not have been written without him and this is my favourite installment of SLIDERS REBORN and possibly the most-enjoyed chapter of the series -- I still get emails about it now and then.

People really liked this one and all the strengths they point to -- the format, the structure of Quinn explaining his ludicrous life to a doubtful doctor in a mental asylum -- they originate from Transmodiar even though he didn't suggest them.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't know how true that is. It's true to a degree in that before writing the first page of SLIDERS REBORN, I read literally *every* Season 6 fan fiction ever written including Slider_Quinn21's and Brand_S's parody and Chaser9's stuff and Temporal Flux even tracked down a few on Internet Archive for me. They were all deeply flawed, not because the creators weren't talented, but because they had an IMPOSSIBLE task before them: they had to resurrect Wade and Arturo, split the Quinns, recover Colin, reveal the Quinn-from-Kromagg-Prime story to be a lie, liberate Earth Prime, and have all these unrelated plot points happen within a single story arc and seem plausible and like a sensible shift from the monster movies of Season 3 and the Chandler-bound stories of Seasons 4 - 5.

It's too much and even a resurrected Ernest Hemingway would look at this assignment and kill himself again. That's why most fans have never been able to finish reading or even finish writing these stories; the story is too scattered and unfocused. I think Slider_Quinn21 is the only one who finished his. SLIDERS REBORN, set 15 years after "The Seer," however, had a massive time gap of a decade and a half and the narrative uses that advantage to focus on what Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are up to in 2015. It's not about how they came back to life in 2000. It isn't the sixth season of SLIDERS. It's Season 20 of SLIDERS with the characters having been restored in the offscreen Season 6 and rebuilt new lives during Seasons 7 - 19.

As for canonicity -- SLIDERS REBORN was written because it was inspired by the X-FILES comic books being written for an audience of 50,000 diehards. When THE X-FILES came back as a TV show, the comics ended their original continuity and declared itself a parallel universe with Mulder looking through a dimensional window and seeing the televised Season 10. However, SLIDERS REBORN is very carefully designed as fan fiction.

The fourth installment of REBORN, "Reminiscence," is a transcript of Quinn in a mental asylum being evaluated by a psychiatrist. Quinn tells his story, the story of sliding. He describes four years of amazing adventures with Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo, then says that the Geiger experiment in Season 5 ripped him and all his doubles out of reality. The result was an alternate timeline where Quinn was now trapped in the body of Mallory. Quinn then describes the events of "Applied Physics" where Maggie unlocked memories of the past using the holographic apparatus -- and Quinn says that the memories he saw were incorrect.

He saw Seasons 1 - 2 with some strange anomalies: episodes were in the wrong order; extra sliders like Ryan and Henry and Michelle and David and Diana suddenly vanished. He saw slides he didn't remember: the monsters of Season 3, the Kromagg invasion of Season 4. He saw the Professor murdered, Maggie and Colin, none of which matched his actual memories. And through Mallory, Quinn observes Season 5 and notices that most of Rembrandt's adventures are stuck in the Chandler Hotel. Eventually, it's explained: ripping Quinn and his doubles out of reality has caused it to corrupt and collapse; that's why this alternate timeline has so many anomalies and why the multiverse is literally shrinking as it implodes upon itself. Eventually, Quinn and his friends are able to rebuild reality as recounted in the novella.

This isn't just to reconcile and explain continuity errors: the point was to declare that SLIDERS has two competing versions. The version that Tracy Torme wanted to create and somewhat managed for 22 episodes. And the version that actually aired on TV. What the show could have been. And what it actually was. SLIDERS REBORN declares that both visions of SLIDERS are genuine and true and valid. And the finale has a merged San Francisco over over a thousand overlapping parallel versions of the city co-existing. Quinn declares that everyone in the city is a slider. And later, Quinn is facing down Smarter Quinn who shrieks at Quinn:

"When will you get it?! This world; this reality; your family; your friends -- none of this is real! The multiverse is dying and all this is just the patient's last gasp. The last spasm before rigor mortis. The last flare of neural activity before brain death. Show's over, Quinn -- and everything around you is just mediocre fanfic that doesn't matter and doesn't count."

But Quinn replies, "You're wrong. We're all sliders. These people matter." The argument is that whether SLIDERS REBORN is fanfic or not, SLIDERS' multiverse is intrinsically open to declaring all variations and derivative works as part of its tapestry whether it's the TV show as aired, the TV show as imagined by Tracy Torme, the comic books where Rembrandt faces 2D beings, the florid novelization of the Pilot by Brad Linaweaver, the fan novels written by Nigel Mitchell or me.

That's why, despite my distaste for the Season 3 monsters, the finale features the rock star vampires and the radioactive worm and the scarabs and the monsters and the super-intelligent snakes and the breeder parasites and the underground predators and the laser shooting remote controlled cars -- because every story is a SLIDERS story and every story counts.

I think SLIDERS REBORN says this extremely well because it is fan fiction. I don't think it could say this as effectively if it were canonical.

And regardless, SLIDERS REBORN was the twentieth anniversary celebration. I don't think it can (or should) be the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration.

Finished the mobile conversion for Part 5 of SLIDERS REBORN, a script called "Revolution."

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nYv … sp=sharing

This script... I don't feel it works. I felt that SLIDERS REBORN needed an installment where Jerry O'Connell's Quinn and Robert Floyd's Mallory would share scenes.  I decided to make Mallory a hallucination after Quinn is exposed to hallucinogenic gas through a series of events so convoluted that it required a psychic character from "Obsession" to rationalize it and I think it's just too confusing.

Slider_Quinn21, however, really likes "Revolution" and feels that it worked to dimensionalize Mallory and get into Quinn's head, and I suppose that there are times when the author needs to remember that his perception of his work is not the reader's perception.

Still, I feel Tom and Cory best summarized my feelings on "Revolution" in their REWATCH PODCAST segment.

CORY: "Okay. Part 5 of Sliders Reborn: it's a 46-page script called 'Revolution,' written by ireactions and published on June 6, 2016."

TOM: "June! So, it was eight months between 'Reminiscence' and 'Revolution'?"

CORY: "I guess life happened or something?"

TOM: (laughing) "Eight months to write... this."

CORY: "This one -- can we actually try to get through a summary?

TOM: "You can try. Uh, maybe we should play the usual music."

The plot summary background music begins.

CORY: (chuckling) "Okay -- so the script is mostly a dream sequence where Quinn is trapped in this mansion that's on fire and Quinn's in a room filling with toxic gas, and he hallucinates Mallory."

TOM: "This would be the character played by Robert Floyd in Season 5 -- the lab assistant that got merged with Quinn. So -- the whole script here -- it's mostly Quinn and Mallory talking."

CORY: "Yeah, Mallory asks Quinn how he ended up in this room filling with poisoned gas, and Quinn runs through his day: this lady in the merged San Francisco was buying tech from parallel Earths, building a virtual reality machine and bankrupting her company and putting all her employees out of work to build it. Quinn went to confront her and got really upset. He went to her house to sabotage her machine only to accidentally set off the hallucinogenic gas that the machine uses -- "

TOM: (verge of laughing) "Because the VR machine uses hallucinogenic gas. Because -- what?!"

CORY: "I don't know."

TOM: "Hahahahahah!"

CORY: "Let's try to get through this. The gas is not only a hallucinogen but highly flammable, Quinn's now overcome by the fumes, he's trapped in the house, he's hallucinating Mallory, and Mallory is trying to talk to him and figure out why Quinn was so fixated on this woman. Tom -- you finish the rest of this summary. I just -- I can't do it."

TOM: "Hahaha! Oh-kay... "

Tom takes a deep breath.

TOM: "Okay -- so it turns out, this lady -- she's Melanie Wallace -- a character who appeared for like one minute in the Season 2 episode with the psychics. She's a psychic. Quinn wanted her help to fix this broken multiverse, but Melanie's seen the future and there's just no hope, and she built this VR machine to... to give herself a perfect afterlife? I mean, I don't even... I don't even -- ughhhh."

CORY: "Keep going, you're almost there."

TOM: "Okay, so, Quinn accidentally detonated the gas. Melanie's dead. Quinn's dying. Quinn has lost hope for saving reality, Mallory gives him a pep talk, and this dream sequence helps Quinn find a way out of the burning house and survive and feel hope for the future? Okay?"

CORY: "Okay."

TOM: "Okay."

The background music ends.

TOM: "I don't even -- I don't think we exactly summarized this story.

CORY: "I think these 46-pages defy a synopsis."

TOM: "Well. You were right before -- all of ireactions' plots are sort of flimsy excuses to get the characters he wants together in the same room -- and for this story, he wanted to get Jerry O'Connell's Quinn and Robert Floyd's Quinn together in the same room.

CORY: (horrified whisper) " ... why... ?"

TOM: "Well, ireactions interviewed Rob Floyd, remember? So, as of this script, Maggie and Diana had joined the cast. And he said in his notes that he didn't feel comfortable leaving Mallory out because it'd be insulting to Rob Floyd -- I mean, they're not like best friends or anything, but they're friends. So he wrote this dream sequence script, y'know?"

CORY: (exasperated) "Jesus."

TOM: "Hahahahah! He said -- he says in his notes -- he sent the script to Rob Floyd, and Rob thanked him, but Rob never got back to him with what he thought, probably because Rob hasn't seen that many episodes of SLIDERS and didn't understand it."

CORY: "Well, I've seen every episode of SLIDERS and I barely understand what's going on."

TOM: (snickering) "Yeah."

CORY: "You've got a psychic creating a VR machine that uses hallucinogenic gas that explodes, a video game company, a terminal illness, Quinn being obsessed with the VR machine, and the VR machine creating a digital afterlife because... ?"

TOM: "Because it creates a situation where Quinn's trapped in a burning building and hallucinating and the hallucination of Mallory gives him information that helps Quinn escape."

CORY: "I think -- I've generally liked Parts 1 to 4 of SLIDERS REBORN. There's some issues in ireactions' approach -- he has a lot of tricks where he obviously works out the scenes he wants before he works out the plot, and he dresses it up with humour and jokes and it's all good."

TOM: "But this time -- it's not."

CORY: "This is where his tricks don't work. The story's a mess."

TOM: "Yeah. The main appeal of ireactions' writing is that he captures the voices of the actors which you said before. But I don't think he pulls it off for Robert Floyd's Mallory -- mostly because Mallory never had a strong voice on the show, so really, ireactions doesn't have anything to work with."

CORY: "You're exactly right. I can excuse pretty much all the problems with Parts 1 to 4 because they get characters I really like back, but Mallory isn't one of those characters."

TOM: "Also -- in Parts 1 to 4, all the references to the past were really effective. But here -- Mallory tells Quinn he's beaten all these bad guys in the past, the CDC, the Prime Oracle, the Zercurvians -- and there's all these descriptions of people Quinn's helped -- but I couldn't remember who any of these people were."

CORY: "I did know who all these people were -- Gillian, Holly the hotel manager and her son, uh, the kid from the Western episode -- but it felt like this joyless shopping list."

TOM: "Well, yeah, especially the kid from the Western episode that you love so much. 'Come back, Quinn! Come back!'"

CORY: "Gnnrrrghhhhh!"

TOM: "Throughout that, I felt ireactions was really trying. He comes up with an arc for Quinn. He finds a way to show that Quinn's scientifically talented, but Mallory knows people. But the plot's too scattered. It's just too convoluted to work Mallory into the story and give him something, like, substantial to do."

CORY: "It just shows that ireactions' strengths are in writing Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo -- and if those four characters aren't on the page in some form, his style just falls apart."

Oh...  I stand corrected!

I would love if him and/or john and/or tracy were able to get in some recording studio and just record them saying somethings scripted in character that's like a post-mortem after the main characters got home.  it could be 5-10 minutes.  not use character names, or the title (due to rights issues), but we will recognize their voices.  Something that at the last can find it's way around the web for true fans.  To put to rest any question about whether the characters made it home.    It could almost be like an easter egg on the web.  Or released through unofficial means or just on social.

There'd be very little cost to doing something like that and if they are willing to take the (small) risk regarding rights issue, then it'd be cool.

It's pretty shi*ty that what we were left w. ended at that.  I don't see a lot of good reason for that.  I don't think anyone will come after them if it is kept low key enough.

Really miss this show. I think it's time for a rewatch.

Very close...

Wow. If he comes here, I'm going to have to watch what I say about him. Haha!

**

I have been hit with internet outages and other projects and have not completed adapting the final SLIDERS REBORN script to mobile format and haven't gotten anywhere with the website. I've had other websites to build professionally. However, I did (mostly) complete adapting "Slide Effects" (my script of Tracy Torme's plot to revive all the sliders after "The Seer" in 46 pages), so I'll post that for the anniversary.

Thanks for repping for forum Griz!

Well, hello!
It's been a long time since I've posted here (I did "Think of a Roulette Wheel," lol).
Anyways, it's the Big Anniversary tomorrow, and I wanted to at least mark the occasion with something, anything.
I had been working, sort of, very slowly, working on making Think of a Roulette Wheel into a book, with updated essays and fresh takes on some old faves. I technically am still working on it, but who knows when of if I'll actually finish it. I'm feeling a little exhausted on the topic of our old friend Sliders, a little bit like I've said all I need to.

But! I wanted to at least put up a lil' something for the event, for all y'all keeping the flame ALIVE!

So here's the New & Improved, Revised Season One of Think of a Roulette Wheel, Better, Longer, Stronger—

http://violetmice.com/ThinkofaRouletteWheelS1.pdf

Enjoy! Love on ya! See you in five for the big 3-0!

—Annie

Well, this is a nice revisitation of Annie's sterling work on Think of a Roulette Wheel. There was the longest time when I dreaded Annie's review of "The Seer" being the last item on EP.COM and the next thing I knew, I had rented a hotel room a day before March 22, 2015 to urgently complete the first script for SLIDERS REBORN.

Looking at this now, there are certain insights Annie made that I have internalized as part of my personal SLIDERS dogma.

This is, to me, precisely the heart of SLIDERS and I would complete Annie's thought: SLIDERS has the backdrop of a science fiction show like STAR TREK, and the stories are deliberately arranged as a potentially deadly dramedy like THE TWILIGHT ZONE and THE OUTER LIMITS -- but SLIDERS is really a situation comedy like THE ADDAMS FAMILY and SEINFELD which is why I wrote SLIDERS REBORN as a sci-fi sitcom.

As for feeling tired of SLIDERS -- I think there comes a point when we all have said all that we have to say with SLIDERS and settle for revising our greatest hits and there's no shame in that; we had hits and they were great!

At this point, I think I've said that the parallel universe concept allows SLIDERS to resurrect all the characters whether it's in a simple one-episode story ("Slide Effects") or in a tie-in novella; that the characters would be just as fascinating at the actors' present-day ages as they were in 1995 and that SLIDERS can continue to reflect our culture and world and that the multi-genre platform of SLIDERS welcomes not only Torme's quirky comedy-dramedy but also Peckinpah's monster movies and Zicree's sci-fi focus and Bill Dial's cop shows (REBORN). And Annie finished their blogs shortly before the 20th anniversary and I debuted my scripts in time for the 20th and there's no law that says we have to keep doing something big every five years

That said, I'm sure Transmodiar has something cool in mind.

Will this work Tom?

https://twitter.com/slidersfanblog/stat … 2738472960

How about doing a read of the Sliders novel by Brad Linaweaver?

That would be incredible!

I beg you not to do that. Please do not do that. Linaweaver is the worst and his novelization was trash and his episode guide was a joke and there are such better options out there. The two greatest SLIDERS stories ever written are, of course, the ones by Nigel Mitchell with his gift for capturing the eerie and dangerous sci-fi tone of SLIDERS matched with the earnest charm and friendship of the sliders.

X Marks the Spot
http://freepdfhosting.com/2e80122e71.pdf
Agents Mulder and Scully visit San Francisco to investigate the murder of Dr. Quinn Mallory and find their investigation takes a turn for the strange when confronted with Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo.

Slide Rulers
http://web.archive.org/web/200710140744 … ulers.html
The sliders are captured by an organization that claims to police the interdimension and put the sliders on trial for interfering with the natural development of the worlds they have visited.

So if you're on Facebook the group is called "Slideheads" and I recommend a join.  I just did, seems like a lot of diehard fans.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1510571509203098/

Thank you, Russian Cabbie! That worked just fine.

And thanks for posting the link to the FB group, Grizzlor!

His novel was fine, the Episode guide is another story.  Apparently Brad died last year from cancer.

I remember being 11, I think, and loving the quirky comedy and fun and adventure of SLIDERS and reading the novelization in the school library -- and the opening has the sliders observing a mass shooting of victims and Quinn studying all the dead bodies and detaching, thinking of them as masses of flesh instead of people -- and it repulsed me.

SLIDERS would go on to traumatize me further with Arturo being shot and blown up after getting his brain sucked out and Wade being sent to a rape camp, but Linaweaver started this pattern of abuse.

I don't know why Linaweaver thought it was acceptable to produce a novelization of a charming, winsome dramedy and open it with a bloody mass shooting, a scene that is not in the Pilot, in none of the drafts I've read and completely out of step with the eccentric, satirical and eerie story crafted by Tracy Torme and Robert K. Weiss, who wanted Quinn's journey to begin with wonder, daring, adventure and curiosity. Linaweaver arrogantly decided to open with mass slaughter because he enjoys savagery and bloodshed whether the story calls for it or not and this story did not.

His novelization should be struck from the record; whatever deleted scenes are there, Temporal Flux has provided with his script outtakes and Linaweaver's episode guide is worthless when we have the one from The Expert who actually watched the episodes whereas Linaweaver merely read scripts.

**

I maintain that it is very hard to imagine Jerry O'Connell being too shy to ask Melanie Bradshaw out on a date and I wonder what he made out of those scenes, but however he played it, it wouldn't be as scripted.

So Jerry ended the Rewatch saying....

Is there no way to get a hold of this guy?

Another rewatch coming this Sunday night once more.....FEVER!!!  I believe Jerry O'Connell will live tweet this one too.

https://twitter.com/slidersfanblog/stat … 1410991104

Not "Summer of Love"?!!?! :-)