Sliders.tv → Sliders Bboard → Rickman
In hindsight, I think the showrunners missed an opportunity to make this guy an epic villain.
With his whole face-shifting schtick, they could've had him as a recurring villain and played by a different actor each episode, like maybe having Michael York play Rickman instead of Dr. Vargas.
Or honestly, maybe it might've been possible to get Michael York to take on the role permanently?
Well, I guess no one agrees, LOL.
I think that certain fans' regard for Rickman is due to some wishing for a recurring villain and the sheer dearth of effective recurring villains in SLIDERS. When you're thirsty in the desert, every drop of water can seem like an ocean. Rickman is a weak villain: cowardly, unthreatening, devoid of any inner life or value system or psychology. There's nothing inherently interesting about him. Roger Dalfrey and Neil Dickson are two of the most charismatic actors who have ever lived, and I think that's really his only point of interest, and even then, Daltrey and Dickson were wasting their talents on such a shabby role.
Fair enough and the writing around this time was infamously terrible.
Having said that, I think Rickman as a fungus brain-infected recurring villain, played by different actors would still work or at least the premise would.
Did Sliders really need a recurring villain? Particularly if it wasn't going to be allowed to be serialized, what does it do for the show? It's a new world on every slide. Shouldn't there be enough to engage viewers by exploring these different realities and how our cast reacts to each one? Even if it were to become serialized (which didn't help S4 or S5 any), what carries over from episode to episode should be how each of the fab four grows personally and as a group, rather than who follows them around the multiverse. If any recurring villain was needed, maybe just have it be doubles of that villain each time he or she shows up, much like what was intended for Bennish. And, no, I'm not calling Bennish a villain.
I think I would have liked a recurring villain in the form of the sliders constantly encountering a double of someone (like Hurley, Pavel, Gomez, Bennish, Diggs) who is always antagonizing them with increasing levels of malevolence and threat. We didn't need a villainous, shapeshifting slider. Personally, I think Arturo's doubles played this role to a degree.
I think the idea of a recurring villain is interesting, but I'm not sure it's necessary. I probably would've rather had Logan be the "recurring sliding villain" since she's a flip side on our main character. I think there's also an argument to be made that maybe you replace the "which Arturo slid?" story with a Quinn double that can't complete sliding on his own and steals Quinn's place. Then you have a villain inside the group, and the person "chasing" them is our original Quinn.
This might be too mystical, but I'm thinking based on what ireactions and DMD said about a villain that can somehow "slide" their consciousness from place to place into a new double. Maybe they interact with a villainous Bennish on a world, and they leave him behind. But then in future episodes, they keep running into doubles of Bennish on each new world. And like ireactions said, each time they run into him, he seems more of a threat. And it turns out it was the villainous Bennish each time. Maybe each time he enters a double, he gets more control, and by the end of the arc/season, he can finally do whatever he wants. Or maybe he has full control each time but is playing the long game.
Sorta like Sliders meets Quantum Leap.
Sliders.tv → Sliders Bboard → Rickman
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