THE BUILDING (née PARALLELS)

I exchanged messages with the director on this recently. He seems pretty confident this is going to get made into a series.

I'll do what I can.  I'd also recommend you reach out to him over twitter.

Was Lost Room good? Seems the ratings are good for it but i'm guessing its not in the speculative scifi genre i'm mostly into.

I enjoyed Lost Room but felt it would have been better with more Episodes.
There was a lot crammed in to so few Eps.

I ... I hated it. Sorry.

Though Parallels borrows heavily from Sliders, it digs out all the cool stuff ... but then seemingly forgets to add in all the rather important and relevant angles like, oh, character interactions, development, motives, science, history, story tension - you know, all the 'boring' stuff.

It's like they amalgamated all 5 seasons of Sliders into this backdoor pilot. Unfortunately, they picked all the flashy and no substance parts...

WARNING! RAMBLE AHEAD!

So, we have a mysterious TARDIS like building that has punched through all known dimensions, and so, appears in every single alternate reality - which serves as the 'vehicle' for our dimension hoppers. Let's just ignore the improbability and the unbelievably massive scale of this for now. We also have an arbitrary countdown of 36 hours (why 36 hours? Don't know. Just something pulled out of someone's ass) before the building 'moves on' to the next world. (Well, not the actual building, but the people inside it when the countdown ends. Just ... just don't ask...) A number made even more confusing because we know from some throwaway lines that people have come in - and out - of the building every now and again, even though supposedly the building doesn't actually return to a world it has already been to.

The main - and severely bland - characters suddenly turn out to have parentage from the 'core' world - the people who created the technology. (Another pull from Sliders) and the mysterious Dad runs off in the end to continue his fight with some mysterious dudes and abandons his kids (again) to search for their Mum who - apparently - isn't really dead as they all believed. (And his Son had to face the trauma of for all these years).

Confused a little? Yeah.

We are only treated to 2 new dimensions, but like I mentioned before about leaving out all the important stuff from Sliders, we aren't really given any real background, history or discovery about these worlds - which is the most important thing you need in an alternate-dimension show. Just some throwaway pieces is all we really get. No real development or knowledge is explored.

No show is complete without a villain, and on post-apoc Earth we have a guy who has been 'watching' the building for some time now as the main character's Dad nuked their world. (Another WTF. Don't ask). He gets pulled along for the ride into High-Tech world and creates an interface which hacks into the building, which now allows the characters - if I have to call them that - to now choose their next destination. It's ok though, he built a miniature nuke on his own world, so he is quite intelligent to hack into the technology of people who can puncture a whole into every single known reality.

Ahem.

The only saving grace of the whole thing is Polly, our sassy dimension hopper who provides the outcasts with some knowledge about travelling between dimensions since she has done it for some time now. Though I spotted something weird early on, we find out in the end that she has 3 of her duplicates (i.e alternate selves gathered from other realities) hidden in the building, and they each take turns to go out with the others into a new reality.

Why? Well, we will never know because this backdoor pilot hasn't been picked up as of yet.

And let's hope it never will.

Sorry. This is what I fear the most about a Sliders reboot. Where's the substance? Where's the heart? Where's the actual science and history? Where's the characters to care about being suddenly sent adrift into the multiverse? Honestly, it was like a bad fanfic. I really don't want this from a reboot if it ever happened.

Well. Personal taste. I really enjoyed PARALLELS. With the lack of detailed alternate history -- I felt that it was part of the show's approach. PARALLELS focused on the confusion, the disorientation, the alien environment of a parallel universe. The characters don't stumble into infodumps via exposition, they encounter only bits and pieces of information and are ultimately encountering only fragments of larger realities. The only area in which I would dispute your criticisms  --

I don't understand the premise of your criticism. Science fiction is often driven by inexplicable constructs defy sense and reason and any restrictions of physical reality. The idea that the timer can split the skin of reality and send four people to another dimension based on equations and a laser light show is the worst manner of lie ever created.

The TARDIS of DOCTOR WHO and the starships of TREK operate on the idea that they can travel vast interstellar and/or temporal distances through highly advanced technology beyond human comprehension (magic). If the building is such a dealbreaker, I don't understand why you'd watch a science fiction show.

The mystery of the nuclear weapon -- given that it's presented as a mystery, I don't think it's fair to declare it to be poorly considered or illogical -- it's point-blank indicated that there's more to be revealed should and when PARALLELS returns.

But perhaps these elements are only acceptable if you're engaged with the characters and you most definitely weren't?

I don't understand. Why can't you do these things in a story? What tenets of storytelling does this violate? Why is this a problem for you? I would like to understand your thinking and learn from it.

I've waited a while to pin down my thoughts (and see if anyone else was going to chime in). I think, ultimately, it comes down to poor worldbuilding. Suspension of disbelief can be stretched, twisted, and warped any which way within a construct that has been created - but rules need to be set firmly in place before this can happen. I personally don't feel like Parallels succeeds in successfully presenting anything.

I usually find that most media can be deconstructed into a single core concept, the most engaging of which are the concepts which can resonate with me on a core fundamental (usually emotional) level, regardless of the actual construct of the story that can spiral out from this. For example Sliders  - four friends just trying to find their way home - is such a concept. Being lost sliding from one alternate dimension to another is a really cool tool used to facilitate this, just like with Quantum Leap and time travel, but that core concept of 'finding home' is the resonating factor here.

But this is right where my issues with Parallels begins.

We start with a familiar concept, but by the end of the very pilot, the worldbuilding involved around this has utterly distorted it, much like Season 4 of Sliders did. It is no longer about being lost, since they can now control their destination. It is no longer about finding home, since that was just the Earth they were born on and their parents are actually from the Core world. We could argue that it is still about the journey and that sense of adventure whilst trying to track down a family member, but do you not see the issue here? Within a single pilot the core concept has been allowed to take such a sudden, and ultimately jarring, turn, several times over.

You could argue why is this wrong? Why can't a core concept shift and change over time? Well we could easily argue until the cows come home about all the problems and perils of changing a show's core concept halfway through its run, but within its own pilot? Ultimately, the real question is, has the pilot built a strong enough foundation of its world building to either facilitate or ignore such a change?

My personal answer is a resounding no.

We hear of this Core world, with incredible technology beyond what we can imagine, which can punch a hole through to every known dimension in order to place a mysterious building within each world, serving as the gateway for our travellers. Yet, a hacker from a nuked Earth hacked into this building that has such advanced technology (with another world's advanced technology that he wasn't even knowledgeable with) in less than 36 hours? A number which, as I've mentioned before, so far has absolutely no meaning whatsoever and is immediately rendered obsolete by the end of the pilot.

We are told of trauma of this young man's life as he fled the family home after the tragic death of his mum due to a fault of his own, leading him to a life of fights before he found an outlet as a boxer. Yet, he doesn't bat an eye, doesn't show any emotion or impact at all when his deadbeat Dad tells him that she is alive? That the years of guilt, years of anger and sorrow that he or his sister felt, was meaningless? ... Nothing? No emotional at all? This fiery tempered boxing youth?

We see a world more advanced than ours with advanced tech, flashing billboards, and bio-prints which are used as everything from opening doors to paying for goods and services. Yet, we are to believe that a high ranking lawyer's laptop is encrypted with a simple password?

We see a world that has been nuked (by their Dad, or a double, who knows as it wasn't explained) and become a wasteland. Yet, some guy has not only replicated a suitcase nuke, but he has created his own gun that can adapt to ANY ammunition that he can scavenge?

What available worldbuilding or characterisation leads us to believe any of this? Do you not see my problem here?

So, if the worldbuilding is so fragile to start off with, I would argue that shifting its concept (or revealing its true concept from here on out) was a huge mistake. I don't get it. I don't buy into it. I'm not emotionally involved in the story, or the concept, or the characters, or the world building. So what else is there left for me?

For anyone interested, $5 deal for Christopher Leone's new book

https://www.inkshares.com/books/champio … ird-planet

Also, he gave an update on Parallels in a recent Reddit AMA.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ … rector_of/

The entire AMA is real interesting.

Yea, I'd be super excited if it got picked up.  I'm not sure if it will go in a direction where I start losing interest, but I really liked a lot of what they did with the original pilot and loved the alt-world execution, which I hope would keep up episode to episode.

Interesting to see this come to fruition. Christopher Leone gave an interview about it a couple of weeks ago and said some stuff on twitter, so I had expected this. Interesting FOX choose someone else to be the no. 1 guy but still cool Christopher was able to pull this off. It seemed like he worked hard for it.

Fantastic.  Wonder if it will be a continuation of the movie or start from scratch with new actors. I thought the crew from Parallels had pretty good chemistry.