Re: Rewatch Podcast

intangirble wrote:

Now that I've watched it, I see what you mean. It's actually cute, but darkly prophetic.

I always thought/hoped that Cleavant just really loved Sliders that much and didn't want to be the last original cast member to jump ship, but I guess the alternative is more realistic.

I know he does really love his fans, though. I'd love to see him at a convention someday.

I see no reason why Cleavant didn't stay with SLIDERS for both financial and emotional reasons. There was a repulsive poster on the previous version of this Bboard who referred to Cleavant as "the racial hire" and declared Cleavant had no right to get top billing in Season 5 as he was the black guy.

When I rebuilt this Bboard, I sent E-mails to every single poster to welcome them back here -- except that particular poster. This is a SLIDERS message board, for God's sake.

And yet -- there is a kernel of truth there in that Hollywood's products are marketed largely to white males. Cleavant is an excellent actor. In Season 1, I adore his comic routine. And when Rembrandt is given a darker side in Season 2, Cleavant integrates it seamlessly into the character. In Season 4, Cleavant really sells Rembrandt's trauma and shell shock. I'm not really into music, but Cleavant is clearly a magnificent musician and singer. And he bought Matt Hutaff a sandwich. Chicken salad. Heavy on the mayo.

But I must grimly accept that Cleavant's offers were sparser than his castmates' -- probably lots of guest-star roles and stage roles, probably few, if any, offers for leading roles. So of course he stayed on SLIDERS. It was business.

It's really unfair, because any Caucasian actor with 1/3 of Cleavant's talents would have three times the career.

That said, I don't doubt that Cleavant also stayed for the fans. It is impossible that he only stayed for the fans, but he did love SLIDERS. SLIDERS showcased his musical, comedic and dramatic talents with more range than any role before or after -- mainly because he got to play doubles. The business and the emotional reasons are not mutually exclusive.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

I don't really worry about staying on topic for this Bboard, but having gone off on tangents distant from the Rewatch Podcast, I feel I should announce the latest podcast, reviewing "Common Ground" and "Virtual Slide."

http://rewatchpodcast.podomatic.com/ent … 6_20-08_00

Cory E-mails me whenever a new podcast is up. I'll be editing the thread title to reflect the latest podcast when he does this, unless Tom beats me to it!

123 (edited by NDJ 2015-11-03 15:43:16)

Re: Rewatch Podcast

I am still behind on the Rewatch Podcast so here are my thoughts on season three.

“Double Cross”- It seems highly unlikely that Quinn hooked up with Logan. Although they were in sync he specifically said things were moving too fast and he also felt like something was off. It’s like Back to the Future when Lorraine tells Marty, who she’s been chasing the whole movie, that kissing him is like kissing her brother. It’s not like “Love Gods” where it DEFINITELY happened.

Also, Logan kind of had to be Quinn’s double. It opens up another set of possibilities (even if they are not explored) and reminds Quinn, once again, that he doesn’t know everything. It also allows everybody to have a double on this world.

“The Dream Masters”- Dumbest episode ever. Aside from the fact that someone (an angry relative) would have shot up the Dream Master den long ago, how the hell do they get the drugs into their hand without it leaching into their own systems? This the FIRST problem.

“The Prince of Slides”- Women can’t ascend to the throne? Also, if professor is a guru for all knowledge that falls under the umbrella of science, then he really is under appreciated on his home world and has every right to a pompous ass!

“Paradise Lost”- People drink urine to lose weight, smear bird poop on their face to get rid of wrinkles and were reported to lick toads to get high. In light of this, is worm turd eating for youth really THAT outrageous?

Also, why is Quinn mad at Wade when they are in the cave? She didn't say anything about not wanting to carrying the dynamite, yet he gives her attitude about being uncomfortable carrying it. I guess he could be jealous because she was getting close to Parker? He has been jealous before, but at this point that seems like an incredible stretch. It just seems like a moment of unnecessary meanness.

"The Last of Eden"- So Wade never knew the professor was sick, but the other two did. No wonder she was more upset than Rembrandt and Quinn; she had no opportunity to prepare for a time when he wouldn't be there.

“The Other Slide of Darkness”- Rickman’s face changing is not that stupid. On his home world, Rickman was very selective about who he stole brain fluid from. On his slides he wasn’t always able to be. Because it was less pure, he needed more, more often and this was the cause for the change. Of course this doesn’t hold up by “This Slide of Paradise” when they should have gotten a third actor to make this explanation work.

“Dinoslide”- If you return to a world where you’ve already been, shouldn’t you be stuck there? The dimensional window for that world already came and you took it. You can return, but you should be there for 29.7 years minus the time you were gone.

“Slither”- I didn’t really think of it as Quinn leaving the group for Kira so much as leaving sliding- she was an excuse. Also, we (me included) assume that Wade and Maggie spent their “vacation” together. They could have spent their time alone and met up at the airport to wait for the guys. As for them splitting up: I understand their need for space, but nothing about this planet said it was safe enough for them to even go down the street without staying together, much less put a plane’s worth of distance between them.

I don’t understand why the idea of putting Quinn and Maggie together seemed like a good idea. Aside from the backstory they created for Maggie making her completely unsuited to Quinn, I thought Fox “broke up” Quinn and Wade so that they could have random hook ups with guest stars. But now, instead of the slow, sweet buildup of friendship turning into something more, we get virtual strangers supposedly lusting after each other.

124

Re: Rewatch Podcast

ireactions wrote:

Anyone can relate to feeling homesick. There is absolutely nobody who can relate to being the chosen one in an interdimensional war that has turned your adopted Earth into an alien battleground and sent you searching for a mysterious superweapon that might liberate your world. That's just nonsense.

I see elements of both The Terminator and The Matrix in your statement and everybody LOVED those! Of course they too were turned "into something *incredibly* convoluted. "

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Hmm. Apples and oranges?

I honestly can't figure the Quinn/Maggie thing out. Jerry O'Connell, in his youth, was a girl-crazy, skirt-chasing, ridiculously horny young man with a long, long, long, long, long list of sexual conquests. He was constantly bragging about his hookups to reporters. From an armchair psychology standpoint, it's clear he was compensating for his youth where he was overweight and unattractive. In Season 3, Jerry played Quinn as ridiculously flirtatious.

But for whatever reason, Jerry seems totally incapable of conveying interest in Kari Wuhrer. Which is very odd, considering she's just his type -- although a bit older. Jerry would have been 22 - 23 while Kari was 29 - 30 -- is it that Kari was (theoretically) an adult while Jerry was, mentally, about 16? Is it that Jerry was attracted to girls as opposed to women? And he saw Kari as an adult as opposed to someone at his level?

Not sure. It's just very, very strange. You'd think sexual attraction would be pretty easy for Jerry to play or fake, but he can't seem to do it in late Season 3. There is no heat or tension between Jerry and Kari; Jerry can't even pretend to be attracted to her.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

"Common Ground" isn't bad. Chris Black writes a decent script. I liked how Cory observed that Kromanus dies to save the sliders, but it's unclear if he was trying to keep them alive out of gratitude or because he was loyal to the Dynasty. It's pretty solid although the direction is poorly considered.

"Virtual Slide" is perfectly fun. I agree with Cory and Tom that Maggie providing information about the sliding machine is nonsensical and there's no way the script justifies anything she gave up as useful.

But I will argue that the idea of stealing slide-tech info from Maggie *was* perfectly workable -- in that Maggie may have been in the room when Dr. Jensen was working on the concept and may have subconsciously remembered details of his work that the VR could bring to the surface. "Virtual Slide" is a fun, enjoyable sci-fi hour. I liked it. Keith Damron was a promising writer.

Yeah. They're fine. Decent hours of TV. Oh my GOD this show has gone to crap. Uh, but first, I think I should answer Tom and Cory's question.

How the Sliding Machine and Timer Work
Tom and Cory got confused by a plot point in "Virtual Slide": why is it that the sliders, upon missing the slide window, are stranded by 29.7 years? If Quinn can just build a new sliding machine and timer to bypass the 29.7 limit, why can't the existing timer be reconfigured to do the same? Is the timer connected to the sliding machine?

They say it makes no sense. I would say that the onscreen evidence is confusing. Here's how I see it:

Think of parasailing. You've got a parachute helping you float in the sky while tethered to a boat that's tugging you forward, cutting a path through the water and giving you forward motion in a straight line. The boat is moving you forward.

The boat, in this metaphor, is the sliding machine. Then your connection to the boat is cut. You're still in the air, you still have some momentum, but you now you've lost direction.

For whatever reason, you have some cylinders of compressed air. You can keep moving. But you can't create the same thrust that the boat gave you and your direction is now subject to wind and gravity and is now oriented in towards the path of least resistance. The timer is the cylinders propelling you, but due to the loss of the boat, your direction will be random.

I don't think the timer can be connected to the sliding machine back home simply because of story reasons. If there's some sort of interdimensional transmission, that means that any interruption or interference or alteration to the machine back home prevents the timer from working. That's too big a hole to fill, so it's best if the timer works independently.

Okay, maybe that wasn't such a great metaphor; let's try another one. The sliding machine is a sledgehammer that smashed through the walls of the interdimension, allowing you to slide at will; the timer is a tiny scalpel that lets you cut through weak points of occasional convergence between dimensional walls, with the entry vortex creating another weakness that the timer can track, letting the sliders know when that weak point will be fit to create an exit to the next world.

If that point is missed, the timer's processor will need 29.7 years to calculate and create another weak point. Dear God, this is terrible. Somebody help me out here. Temporal Flux! This is your moment! This is your moment!

Is Season 4 A New Show?
Tom and Cory's main defence of Season 4 is that this is a new show and shouldn't be compared to anything in Seasons 1 - 3.

I would not be averse to a new version of SLIDERS, but I strongly disagree that this is in any way a new show. This is, instead, a clumsy, crippled, mutilated version of the old show. It's Season 1 - 2 but without imagination, skill, research or inventiveness. It's using Season 1 - 2 ideas but with the glaring impression that the Season 4 showrunners don't actually understand the ideas they're using.

"Genesis," Prophets and Loss" and "Common Ground" all use Seasons 1 - 2 as a template, but mishandle everything from Seasons 1 - 2.

It's a popular (and accurate) criticism of SLIDERS that most episodes copy the second half of the Pilot; the sliders encounter a dystopian regime, fall in with the resistance, achieve victory, depart.

Formulaic? Yes. But it works -- until now. "Genesis" has no victory -- which means that when the sliders triumph in "Prophets and Loss" and "Common Ground," you wonder why they don't liberate their home Earth as well. As repetitive and contrived as the formula may be, it was uplifting and inspiring -- but now it's just hypocritical and incoherent.

The sliders meeting the resistance is a simple, easy, in some ways lazy plot, used heavily in Seasons 1 - 2 -- and Season 4 depends on it just as much. But "Genesis" destroyed their ability to execute it properly.

The show is also using a Season 2 concept -- the Kromaggs -- and the Season 4 team doesn't understand how to use the Kromaggs.

The first problem is the makeup. It's terrible. The Kromaggs don't look menacing; they look like actors in clumsy prosthetics and the actors use very forced and overly mannered line deliveries to convey their alien natures. It's just awkward to look at.

There's also the fact that "Invasion" wisely kept the Kromaggs at a distance, the Kromaggs barely speaking, only glimpsed in brief scenes, using pawns to communicate with the sliders. "Genesis" and "Common Ground" parade the Kromaggs in front of us as mouthy, chatty, ranting thugs. This is a huge mistake.

That said -- the Season 4 team (probably) understood what the Kromaggs really are underneath the guile and mystique. The Kromaggs are just thugs and monsters. That's all there is to them in "Invasion," too -- but "Invasion" handles it correctly.

The sliders only encounter the military aspects of the culture and are completely in the Kromaggs' power the entire time. The emphasis is on the Kromaggs as manipulators who play sadistic mind games with cruel and twisted lies.

I can't say that "Genesis" and "Common Ground"'s Kromaggs are wrong. Backstabbing, violent, warlike, savage, cruel creatures -- that's what they were in "Invasion," but now there is no distance. No mystique. The sliders are beating Kromaggs up, having conversations with them, tricking Kromaggs into using their death machines on themselves -- and the result is that the Kromaggs are so overt, so up-close, so in focus that their one-dimensional silliness is glaring.

Every Kromagg in Season 4 talks the same way, has the same obsessive fixation on racial superiority -- and I don't buy it. I don't buy that every Kromagg behaves in the same manner, but I especially don't believe in these cartoonish behaviours and more problematically, I can tell that the actors also don't believe in what they're doing.

Not a single Season 4 Kromagg actor has any conviction or ease in their performance; every movement, line and expression is practised and stilted. These poor actors are in an impossible situation due to the scripts, costumes and makeup.

"Invasion" doesn't declare that all Kromaggs are warlike, savage monsters -- which would be as ridiculous as declaring that all women are obsessed with shoes. We only see a Kromagg military operation. For all we know, there are Kromagg poets. Kromagg objectors to the war effort. Kromaggs seeking to stop the conquest. We don't know, but it's possible -- until Season 4 declares that all Kromaggs are the same. Season 4 uses a Season 2 concept and totally mishandles it.

I have only written one Kromagg story -- and I'm not even a very good writer of fiction. Did you read those awful metaphors up there? But one thing I very quickly decided was that the Kromagg in my story would not speak. In my story, the Kromagg menaces Quinn, but always morphs into different human personas in order to deliver dialogue, and deliberately chooses forms to intimidate Quinn. I don't entirely know why I did this, but it was most definitely a reaction against the Season 4 Kromaggs.

The weird, weird, weird thing -- is that Season 4 could easily have been a whole new show. This is SLIDERS, for god's sake. It would not have been difficult to cut ties with the past, most of which had been severed anyway with Arturo's death and Wade and Rembrandt sent home. But this so-called new show seems more interested in destroying the old one instead of creating something new.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Hear Hear!

On the Timer, Home World Machine and Window/Portals.....

I have some theories.

Earth 00: The original Quartets Home.
Tech is Early 90's.
Power Generation and Storage is not very developed.
Computation Power was improving but nothing like what we have now.

I think the Original Machine not only brute forced a connection to tbe place between Realities allowing Portal Creation, Mathematical models to calculate patterns in flux and also Power Aqcuisition/Leeching/Recharging.

The Timer has a Capacitor which needs something BIG like his Basement Device but once that first Tear/Portal is made the Capacitor can Tap into that Layer of Reality/Multi-Reality/Inter-Reality?

Something analogous to Tesla Wireless Power Transfer or on the Fictional Side maybe akin to Babylon 5's Hyperspace Energy Taps like the Vorlons and Shadows used?

I feel this theory is a little like a Syphon. You apply force/Power initially to kickstart the process of drawing water but once started Gravity and Inertia do the rest for you. Theoretical Fusion Power is based on gaining a similar Stability and Positive Equation that generates more Power than invested into it's ignition.

I think the Invasion version of a Manta supports this theory.
The Timer and the Manta draw on the same Multiversal Energy to Tap and so can interfere with eachother.
The Manta itself suggests Quinn's Father's theories of Anti Grav based on similar theories and applications of Physics are correct also.
And Anti Grav if possible would be very power hungry as would be those Invasion Episode Energy Weapons.
These Technologies are all tied together in a Sliding related Tech Tree.

And what do we see in Invasion? Bio-Mechanical Craft. Living Technology with Multiversal Transition capability, Energy Weaponry, Anti Gravity Lift and Inertialess Drive Systems that are potentially applicable foe Extra Planetary operation and again I point out Bio-Technology in Material Science for Strength, Self Repair/Healing, Adaptation potentially but crucially and lastly the biggie....

Bio-Computing..... BIO-COMPUTING!!

I cannot stress that enough. If Quinn can calculate a natural Weakness in the Multiversal Barrier with Early 90's Tech... Imagine what could be done with a Modern OTL Touch Pad.... Or.... A Bio Computer?

29 Years? More like 15? Or 10? Or 5? Or....... 1!?

Scary thoughts huh?

Now this is obviously speculation based on what is seen on the shiw but I believe it is likely.

Also this theory promptly Debunks Smarter Quinn's claims in "Other Slide of Darkness" as the Invasion Manta is the Product of a Mature Technology and Society which has pushed it's applications and implementations very far.

If he did provide the Sliding Equations to a Kromagg Earth it was NOT Season 2's Kromagg Homeworld.

Season 2's Kromaggs will always be a very different Group, Society and maybe even Species to the Abominations and Parodies of later Seasons.

"It's only a matter of time. Were I in your shoes, I would spend my last earthly hours enjoying the world. Of course, if you wish, you can spend them fighting for a lost cause.... But you know that you've lost." -Kane-

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Not that I put much stock in trying to iron out the contradictions of SLIDERS' latter years -- but Smarter-Quinn in "The Other Slide of Darkness" was clearly insane and nothing he said could be trusted or taken seriously.

And as obsessive as I am about SLIDERS, I can't offer any real explanation of how it works beyond (laboured) metaphors. Ireactions science is the worst manner of lie in fiction today, created through skimming Wikipedia and randomly choosing words and phrases, seeking to produce technobabble that is an impenetrable fog in the hope that nobody will even try to understand it.

129 (edited by NDJ 2015-11-05 19:22:40)

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Season three post Arturo Quinn and episodes.

I don’t think Quinn's characterization was too awful. It was after “The Guardian” that we really start seeing the shift. Real world answer is less Torme more Peckinpah. In universe answer is this is how Quinn deals with the impending death of Arturo- the knowledge of which he had to carry alone for quite some time.

This group has been through everything: Quinn’s been shot, sentence to death three times (including being strapped into the electric chair), almost had his psyche transferred to a robot body, as well as being killed and revived; Wade has survived the Q, been put on a death list, almost overdosed, and nearly drowned; Rembrandt’s been sentenced to death twice, tortured by a psycho, and almost suffocated while carrying another man’s child; and the professor has survived the Q, a political assassination attempt, Logan's faulty wormhole calculations, and uranium enhanced worm cacooning. Not to mention that they were all doomed to die in a world ending event.  Somehow, they all made it through.

The truth is Quinn loved sliding and had everything he could want (except his mom) right there with him: A dad/mentor/intellectual equal; a buddy/potential girlfriend/socio-political equal; and a friend/brother/masculine equal. But when Arturo died, the party was over.

The death of a person you depend on has got to take its toll. Regardless of the Earths they visit or who is along for the ride, the rest of season three would have to be a downer. Although Quinn got the credit, Arturo accomplished the big saves: Arturo created penicillin, Arturo created the atom bomb, Arturo even suggested the Helix Spiral that ultimately allowed the sliders to keep going. Woe be to them without the professor and woe be to us. Not only that, they must all be carrying a lot of survivor’s guilt.

The sort of aimlessness and lack of care that went into the scripts could be interpreted as the grief of the characters- viewers don’t get strong back stories and alt-history because the sliders don’t really care to discover it. They just lost their anchor, their rock. Yeah, they want to get home but while the happy homecoming envisioned at the end of the pilot and the beginning of PTSS was never reality, now it’s not even a dream.

Don't get me wrong, Quinn's change was too far, too fast and more effort could have gone into alt-history especially when an effort was made. How hard would it have been to give the vampires of “Stoker” a real life illness like Xeroderma Pigmentosum (ultra-sensitivity to light) or one of a host of blood diseases that require constant transfusions and create a scenario around that? Dracula could have still been worked in.

Finally, I know that Rembrandt was suppose be the comic relief, but the professor was the one with the funniest lines! Another reason post Professor episodes are no fun.

130

Re: Rewatch Podcast

omnimercurial wrote:

I think the Original Machine not only brute forced a connection to tbe place between Realities allowing Portal Creation, Mathematical models to calculate patterns in flux and also Power Aqcuisition/Leeching/Recharging.

If the events of "Genesis" are to be taken seriously, then didn't Quinn's birth parents already create a wormhole to his adopted Earth when they dropped him off and left?

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Incoming not outgoing.

Brute Force to allow Timer to link through Portal.

Also I pretty much ignore all that poor script/story.

"It's only a matter of time. Were I in your shoes, I would spend my last earthly hours enjoying the world. Of course, if you wish, you can spend them fighting for a lost cause.... But you know that you've lost." -Kane-

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Tom and Cory remarked that there was nothing to Penny in "Common Ground." No characterization.

Ian McDuffie offered an intriguing thought in his review -- Penny is Wade. Or rather, Rembrandt looks at Penny and all he can see is what happened to Wade and is being done to Wade.

"Rembrandt's blind because he sees Wade in every face he sees. He’s looking for reasons to hate the ‘Maggs when he stalks those corridors, but he’s also looking for Wade. So when he meets Penny, a test subject with pep and strength and youth and a great haircut, all he sees is Wade. So he fights hard to save her, threatening himself, threatening the group, and sure, kind of threatening Penny, too. He’s doing it out of revenge, but also out of shame. He left Wade behind, he says, and there is honest pain in his eyes. But that pain is guiding his mission so fiercely that he can’t see the consequences of his actions. He accuses Quinn of wanting to abandon Rembrandt’s Earth (to which Quinn beautifully replies “it was my Home, too”), and goes on rage-benders trying to avenge every person ever who ever lived.

"Of course, it’s hard to actually see that without looking very, very hard. There’s subtlety in the script, but once it leaves the page it’s lost in an ugly miasma of overscored and overdirected nonsense. Every shot seems to last too long, like it’s waiting for a voiceover that will never come."

http://www.earthprime.com/roulette/we-c … mon-ground

Re: Rewatch Podcast

NDJ wrote:

I don’t think Quinn's characterization was too awful. It was after “The Guardian” that we really start seeing the shift. Real world answer is less Torme more Peckinpah. In universe answer is this is how Quinn deals with the impending death of Arturo- the knowledge of which he had to carry alone for quite some time. The death of a person you depend on has got to take its toll. Don't get me wrong, Quinn's change was too far, too fast

While many, many fans have tried to wrangle Jerry's performances and the clumsy characterization into some kind of logical arc, it's never made sense to me in an in-universe perspective. I don't think it ever will.

We've seen what Quinn Mallory is like when he's depressed and... well, it's not like late Season 3 or Season 4. I think Quinn, when depressed, actually hides it with efforts to ride the momentum of desperation. The Torme/Weiss Quinn faces the horror of discovering the Professor will die by trying to mentor his younger self. The Torme/Weiss Quinn reacts to Wade's apparent death by grimly accepting he'll have to carry on without her. And while losing Arturo would have been tough -- we *already* had an example of how Quinn reacted to losing his (real) father and it wasn't like "Slither." Which is not to in any way diminish how awful Quinn can and will feel -- I'm just saying that depression and grief are a little more subtle if this character is written correctly.

In real-life, Jerry O'Connell is super-charming and winning and endearing. In SLIDERS, the Jerry O'Connell megawatt smile is a falsehood. Jerry O'Connell is simply what Quinn allows you to see of him. I guess what I'm trying to say is that even a depressed Quinn puts on a pretty good show. The abrasive loon of late Season 3 and the emotionless weirdo of Season 4 aren't Quinn at all -- just the actor playing a different role that happens to have the same name.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

I agree with ireactions about Quinn's depression, to a point. There are some very good points there, and I definitely thought he was out of character in late S3 and what I've seen of S4. That said, there's a difference, too, between how a person would face horror the first few times and how they face it after they've been traumatised over, and over, and over again.

As Wade puts it so aptly in The Breeder (one of the reasons I can't bring myself to hate that episode),

When I first started sliding, all I saw was adventure. Now all I seem to see is death.

After a certain point, you can't keep reacting the same way to the trauma being piled on top of you. I think the main thing Quinn lost in late S3 was a sense of purpose, a reason to keep caring. In The Exodus Part 2, he says to Arturo, coldly, brutally, "You're assuming that I care."

That was... quite out of character for the Quinn we know, but it also makes sense for someone who's been pushed and pushed and pushed until they just shut down. With Arturo terminally ill, he's being pushed even further into the leadership role, and it's too much responsibility. Remmy blames him and won't let up about how much. Wade is distant. Quinn's failing. This isn't fun any more.

And I think it reflects, rather brutally but poetically, the state of the show at that point. The cast weren't having fun either. In the beginning this was an adventure; now they just see loss and the death of a show they once loved. They're going through the motions. The atmosphere is grim. A person can only take so much.

I hate that that happened to the show, I really do. But in a purely poetic, literary sense, I like that art reflected life. Wade got off some brutally honest comments about the whole thing before she had to go, and they speak far too well to what was happening at the time. Quinn doesn't care because he doesn't care. Remmy, dear Remmy, sucks it up and soldiers on, determined to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear; his courage is beautiful. Rarely are shows so raw and so true to life.

Yeah, late S3 and early S4 were a mess. But life sometimes is. They were a mess made out of something real, and I kind of admire them for that.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Hunnh. I found that outline that a poster, KerrAvon (not sliders5125) wrote as a follow-up to Season 3's cliffhanger where Arturo stars in a sequel to "This Slide of Paradise"! But first:

There was one poster on this Bboard, awhile back -- his posts have most definitely been deleted from existence. Let's call him Jensen. Jensen declared that he was going to save SLIDERS because he had the magic words -- more specifically, Jensen had the magic numbers. Numbers that, in a specific sequence, formed Tracy Torme's phone number. He proclaimed that he would be contacting Torme to do something about a SLIDERS revival.

He followed up by posting his shocking, heartbreaking, tragic discovery that phoning Tracy Torme and telling him to revive SLIDERS wouldn't actually bring about that happy outcome as Torme doesn't control the rights to SLIDERS. (I think, as creator, he shares about 10 per cent with Robert K. Weiss.) Jensen, in the course of this phone call, attempted to pitch his ideas to Torme. Jensen told Torme that the best way to revive SLIDERS would be:

  • To do a new version of Season 4 set in 1998

  • To follow up on the Season 3 cliffhanger with a remake of the Kromagg Invasion of Earth and the sliders' search for a superweapon

  • Also explain why the Season 4 Kromaggs looked different from "Invasion" by saying the Season 4 Kromaggs were the foot soldiers

  • To have Wade return to Season 4 a quarter of the way in as a brainwashed villain for the rest of the season

  • To then reveal that the Earth in "Genesis" wasn't the Earth in the Pilot

  • To have a huge Kromagg War blowout to end the series.

Try to imagine Tracy sitting through this phone call.

Jensen proceeded to lament that Tracy seemed resistant to hearing anymore of these ideas and that it was a real shame and did anyone on this message board have an agent so they could properly pitch these ideas? Torme, said Jensen, declined to hear more without an agent involved. Jensen then declared that clearly, SLIDERS was on its way back and Torme was clearly keen to do some SLIDERS stories if only someone would please get Jensen an agent.

Message board posters had many questions for Jensen. Why did he want to have a 2014 revival of SLIDERS set in 1998? Why did he wish to explain plot holes in Season 4 if his story was designed to replace Season 4 with his own version? Why did he want to revive a series loved for its characters and make one of them an evil villain? How did he expect the 2014-era actors to play their 1998 characters? Why was his pitch for SLIDERS devoid of any ideas for parallel Earths? Why did he want Tracy Torme to write this story when Torme has not even seen Season 4 and couldn't write a Season 4 Kromagg war epic even if he were forced to? If he didn't have any interest in the characters or parallel Earths, why was he trying to revive SLIDERS?

At this point, the web host crashed and the conversation ended. Let's move on.

KerrAvon wrote:

some fanfic of my own as to how Seasson 4 should have been done:

Say they shitcan  the mysoginist, woman hating, pig Peckingpah and renew the contracts of JRD, Lloyd and Wuhrer...
Wade and Rembrandt land but they are not home: turns out that the world visited by Quinn and Maggie in EXODUS pt 1 was not the homeworld but Azure gate Bridge world (Hell, Quinn can't recognize the homeworld anyway, several times he's been mistaken)

They are debating whether to return to THIS SLIDE OF PARADISE world when they meet up with Autoro. Turns out that the one who slid in PTSS was indeed his evil double and it is he who is killed on Maggie's homeworld by Rickman.  Auturo has spent the last few months perfecting sliding and has constructed his own timer complete with wormhold tracking device. Quinn had put the Rickman timer in Rembrandt's pocket prior to shoving him and Wade into the Vortex and armed with the data they decide to return to vargas' compound. Auturo wants to check and double check before sliding and this takes a few weeks...

Finally, they are ready and they slide to the THIS SLIDE OF PARADISE hellhole world.  They reach Vargas' compund and find it in ruins.  The hybrids are all dead. they were killed off by simple diseases that they had no natural immunity for after all the exposure to Rickman and the other sliders.  Using the tracking device the sliders set out in search of Quinn  and Msggie.

The last three weeks Quinn and Maggie has been having some adventures of their own. They finally land on a world where Dr. Jensen is alive and well. Seems that on this world it is Maggie who was injured in the skiing accident and she is paralyzed. depressed she convinces our Maggie to help her end her life.  Maggie realizes her love for Stephen and decide to remain with him. Quinn begs her to stay with him but she refuses.

Heartbroken, Quinn prepares to slide but a vortex opens and the other three emerge. they have a tearful reunion. After much debate they have to make a decision: should they return to Azure Gate Bride World or continue searching for the homeworld?  They decide to continue the search....

This could have been handled in a 5-8 episode arc. Some episodes would be dedicated to Quinn and Maggie's adventures while some episode would be about the other three. Anyway just some thoughts, of what could have been...

Okay. I remember it being a lot longer -- but maybe what I mis-remembered (besides the poster) was the idea that this... outline... be executed over the course of eight episodes. I also mis-remembered the content; I thought there were scenes of Arturo fighting animal human hybrids. There aren't. I feel like this outline really tries to convert hammering the CTRL+Z on the keyboard into a logical sequence of events. It's trying to play fair.

It is also weirdly obsessed with continuity. I think there are three ways to use continuity. One is to seek to use continuity to try to make multiple stories feel like one big story by highlighting their connections and telling sequels. Another way is to feel the need to address previously established plot points individually in an effort to follow-up or reverse them. And then there's using continuity in an effort to create a sense of shared experience for both characters and the audience.

There is something completely derivative and unimaginative and crushingly dull about doing a sequel to "This Slide of Paradise" -- but that's not what this author is trying to do here, not really. This writer is, instead, seeking to confront the horror of that episode and expel it, leaving the sliders purified and renewed at the end of this exercise. And I kind of admire that. There's genuine interest and respect for the characters in this outline. There's a real desire to put the characters in difficult situations -- like being forced to wander through "This Slide of Paradise."

Anyway. Arturo is totally going to fight animal human hybrids in SLIDERS REBORN. I know it's crazy. I've been warned that this is not going to turn out well. But -- I really think I can pull this off AND make it feel like a Season 1/2 episode. And if I can't -- Tom and Cory will give a detailed account how it all went so horribly wrong in their podcast! :-D

Re: Rewatch Podcast

intangirble wrote:

I agree with ireactions about Quinn's depression, to a point. There are some very good points there, and I definitely thought he was out of character in late S3 and what I've seen of S4. That said, there's a difference, too, between how a person would face horror the first few times and how they face it after they've been traumatised over, and over, and over again.

The main problem is that all the points in the latter seasons where Quinn's behaviour is beneath contempt and hateful and repulsive are also points where the character work and story make no sense.

"The Exodus": Why exactly does Quinn refuse to let his friends go home? The script provides no explanation whatsoever -- and also offers no reasoning to establish that home is really home after the experience of "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome."

"Slither": Why exactly does Quinn want to abandon sliding for Kyra when a) he is in pursuit of the Professor's killer and b) that killer has his home coordinates?

"Genesis": Why does Quinn have no interest in tracking down Wade, after three/four years of regularly getting separated from his friends and rescuing them from their captors? The same question must be asked of Rembrandt.

"O Brother Where Art Thou": Why is Quinn so insistent that Colin abandon his whole life to go sliding? The timer can store coordinates and open gateways to previously visited Earths; why does Quinn tear this person away from his life?

"Mother and Child": See "Genesis." Also: if there's a virus that can stop Kromaggs, why doesn't Quinn try to bring it to Earth Prime? Why doesn't Rembrandt?

"Revelation": Quinn has the means of bypassing the Slidecage. So why doesn't he open a gateway to his homeworld? Quinn asks his parents for the superweapon -- but he declares that Rembrandt will be returning to his home Earth without Quinn? Why doesn't Quinn care to accompany Rembrandt for this weapon Quinn wanted to look for in "Genesis"? Why is Rembrandt unaffected by this? Why does Rembrandt approach Isaac Clarke for the weapon instead of the Mallorys who built it? And even if this isn't Kromagg Prime, why aren't Quinn and Rembrandt interested in bringing this Earth's anti-Kromagg weapon to Earth Prime?

So, in every single case where Quinn's characterization takes a downward turn, the story around him is also incoherently nonsensical and illogical with glaring errors that make it impossible to work out what's supposed to be going on.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

This Slide of Paradise was a bad episode but the real shame is that if you break it up into parts there are interesting premises for Alternate Earths that could have been good.... Just not in this Episode.

Western US Coast a series of Archipeligo's and Island Chains.
That could be interesting. From our worlds Galapagos Islands we know such places can be great sources of Species Diversifivation and Specialisation.
Also Travel if you want to get around is less running around per usual Sliders schtick but instead swimming, boats and aircraft.

Ethics
1: Slavery, Caste Systems, Dehumanisation.
2: Transgenic Research with No Limits.
3: Engineered Sapient Life Creation and it's impacts.

These could have been far better explored.

"It's only a matter of time. Were I in your shoes, I would spend my last earthly hours enjoying the world. Of course, if you wish, you can spend them fighting for a lost cause.... But you know that you've lost." -Kane-

138 (edited by NDJ 2015-11-07 20:50:16)

Re: Rewatch Podcast

I didn’t want to get ahead of the podcast, so I originally only addressed season three episodes. But here goes:

ireactions wrote:

"The Exodus": Why exactly does Quinn refuse to let his friends go home? The script provides no explanation whatsoever -- and also offers no reasoning to establish that home is really home after the experience of "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome."

You’re right. There is no reason, if Quinn truly believes that he just visited Earth Prime (which is part of the premise for the rest of the show), that Wade and Rembrandt can’t go home now. Quinn is being horribly selfish-but this is not out of character. Any time he has advanced warning of losing someone, this is what he does. He didn’t want a repeat of what happened in PTSS where everybody started doing their own thing and getting back to their own lives. Quinn is friendly and personable, but he is basically an introvert. What is he going to do without these people in his life day in and day out? And if Wade and Rembrandt go home with a few days head start- he’s pretty much lost them.

ireactions wrote:

"Slither": Why exactly does Quinn want to abandon sliding for Kyra when a) he is in pursuit of the Professor's killer and b) that killer has his home coordinates?

Quinn was never in a real hurry to get home. And as Wade said, what are they going to do with Rickman when they find him- hold him down and kill him? They also couldn’t just strand him on a random Earth leaving him to kill at will. We all lament the mess that is “This Slide of Paradise” but it did give them a way to get rid of Rickman without killing him and there is no guilt about leaving him behind. It was just a bonus that he ended up killing himself!

ireactions wrote:

"Genesis": Why does Quinn have no interest in tracking down Wade, after three/four years of regularly getting separated from his friends and rescuing them from their captors? The same question must be asked of Rembrandt.

I wouldn’t say Quinn has no interest in tracking down Wade- getting Wade and Rembrandt back was the first part of the episode! And during his interrogation, Wade was the only thing Quinn reacted to. But let’s face it, Wade is lost in the multiverse. It took Quinn three months to find the Earth he sent Wade and Rembrandt to and he had the information to track them. So at this point, what can he do about Wade? He couldn't even save his mother and she was right in front of him.

ireactions wrote:

"O Brother Where Art Thou": Why is Quinn so insistent that Colin abandon his whole life to go sliding? The timer can store coordinates and open gateways to previously visited Earths; why does Quinn tear this person away from his life?

First, Quinn is selfish. Second, he did think he was doing the right thing. Colin was not supposed to grow up there and Colin’s life was somewhat lonely and sad. The girl he was in love with was going to marry someone else and the town’s people wanted to kill him- and not for the first time. He’s unappreciated and unloved and Quinn was giving him an out. If you consider what happened to Colin along the way (events that Quinn had little control over), then Quinn seems like the ultimately douche for taking his brother away from paradise. But if you look at just the episode, then Quinn was taking his brother home to their parents.

ireactions wrote:

"Mother and Child": See "Genesis." Also: if there's a virus that can stop Kromaggs, why doesn't Quinn try to bring it to Earth Prime? Why doesn't Rembrandt?

First, looking for the planet where the Kromaggs sent Wade almost got them caught. If they weren’t looking in the computer, they would not have aroused suspicion. That’s hardly forgetting about her.

Second, Quinn and Rembrandt DID ask Christina’s father for the weapon and he said no. Colin and Rembrandt started doing research to find out about the weapon but before they could find out anything or formulate a plan to break into the facility (as if they’d know what to look for), the Kromagg commander showed up. Since the commander used his mind tricks on everybody at the facility, it’s not that big a stretch to think he used it on the sliders to make them forget about getting it for themselves (especially since he used mind control to hide a weapon during Quinn’s pat down). 

ireactions wrote:

"Revelation": Quinn has the means of bypassing the Slidecage. So why doesn't he open a gateway to his homeworld? Quinn asks his parents for the superweapon -- but he declares that Rembrandt will be returning to his home Earth without Quinn? Why doesn't Quinn care to accompany Rembrandt for this weapon Quinn wanted to look for in "Genesis"? Why is Rembrandt unaffected by this? Why does Rembrandt approach Isaac Clarke for the weapon instead of the Mallorys who built it? And even if this isn't Kromagg Prime, why aren't Quinn and Rembrandt interested in bringing this Earth's anti-Kromagg weapon to Earth Prime?

Quinn THINKS he has the means to bypass the Slidecage, but clearly, he does not. This is not addressed in script but is clearly the only explanation. I can forgive them not trying sooner because maybe he just figured it out during that month long wait.  Also, Rembrandt and Quinn ARE interested in using that anti-Kromagg weapon on Earth Prime but they don’t know what it is, the only people they know won’t give it to them, they are being hunted by the police, and they only have a limited amount of time before they slide.

As for the rest, you got me. In “Genesis,” Quinn says “I’ll find her or die trying” when talking about his mother and “We’ll be back. You can count on it.” Yet as soon as he walks into the home of these people- who are strangers- he forgets about everyone and everything he ever knew! I don’t know why:

-Rembrandt goes to ask Clark for something the Mallorys should have.
-Quinn won’t get off his ass and ensure Rembrandt has the weapon before he leaves.
-Rembrandt doesn’t punch Quinn when Quinn declares his journey is over.

There are instances in other episodes that show Quinn is tired of sliding but so is Rembrandt and Rembrandt’s not bailing! I agree, Quinn's characterization here is irretrievably bad. He is punished in the next episode.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Regarding "Genesis" and "Mother and Child" -- I think Quinn and Rembrandt would have relentlessly hammered the Kromagg facilities with attacks on their computer systems until they had a trail on Wade. They would not have stopped until they died. As for the Kromaggs wiping the sliders' memories of the virus or the Slidecage equations not working -- I honestly think that once you're left with making up unwritten and unaired scenes to justify the story, it's pretty clear that the story is broken. As for Quinn being selfish, not in a hurry to go home or to catch his mentor's killer, being a bad person -- dear God.

WARNING: The following post contains ANGER because I am absolutely furious. However. Please be aware that my fury is directed towards someone's opinions and thoughts as opposed to the someone who is opining and thinking them. I mean, you can be pissed off with a person's opinion while still liking the person, right?

I get very upset -- I get incredibly angry -- when fans portray Quinn as a sociopathic monster. I'm not sure which one makes me angrier; the show doing this or the fans doing it afterwards -- Ian's blog of "Revelations" where he describes Quinn as a bad person who isn't worth your time infuriated me almost as much as the episode.

I'm also torqued about this because I asked a fellow fan, recently, if he had any opinion on whether Quinn and Wade might be a couple in 2015 and he responded with a response similar to what's above: declaring that Quinn Mallory is a piece of trash and of course Wade wouldn't want him. It pissed me off. I think what he really meant was that Wade wouldn't want to marry Jerry O'Connell.

The reason I get so upset: Quinn is an icon of genre fiction, an analytical science hero who can stand next to Mr. Spock, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. House, Spider-Man, Indiana Jones, Batman and the Fourth Doctor. He is one of the greatest fictional characters created in the twentieth century. Quinn Mallory is a superhero -- his superpower is his superbrain, his ability to improvise absurd and efficient solutions on-the-spot in moments of crisis. A character who is driven by tragedy and loss but emerges from his trials not only intact but renewed and inspired and possesses a revolutionary spirit and a sense of wanderlust and is guided by an impeccable sense of morality and compassion.

And he created sliding. You can do anything with this character, put him in any kind of story in any kind of role. He can be a bystander or a hero, a catalyst or a leading figure, a background element or an icon who inspires.

These efforts to declare that the Season 3 - 4 character is the same as the Season 1 - 2 character simply emphasize his character flaws -- his myopia, his impulsive nature, his recklessness -- but declare them to be the whole of his character, seeking to rationalize periods where the character was being written badly as explorations of his darker side, ultimately ending with the conclusion that Quinn is a selfish, hateful, uncaring villain.

This strikes me as astonishingly pointless in the extreme: attempting to rationalize poorly-considered screenwriting for a superb figure of science fiction by saying he was never a hero at all. You've justified Quinn's incoherent trajectory by replacing him with a completely different character.

If Quinn Mallory is so unworthy of our respect, if he is not a force for good, then SLIDERS is and always has been a pointless waste of time and so is this Bboard, the websites, the fanfics, the screenplays, the essays, the blogs and the reviews. Yet, many fans -- in fact, I would say most fans -- take this view of Quinn because it lets them maintain the in-universe perspective. NDJ. Ian McDuffie. Slider_Quinn21. Informant. I list their names not to demonize them, but to observe that I am in a minority (probably of one) when I express my distaste for their rationalizations.

From the in-character perspective, these rationalizations don't build Quinn up as a multifaceted character; they just take away what make him unique and powerful and immortal. In trying to insist that the post-Torme Quinn is the same character that Torme and Weiss created, all you end up doing is destroying what Torme and Weiss created.

And it just infuriates me. Because Quinn is one of the greatest science heroes of television. You can do anything with this character. He does not need to be a refugee from an advanced parallel Earth and a pivotal figure of an interdimensional war. He does not need to be a vengeful hunter pursuing a fugitive, he does not need to be a gunslinging warrior, he does not need to be a callous cowboy, he does not need to be paired up with a Baywatch babe, he does not need a convoluted origin story.

And he most definitely does not need to be a man who refuses to let his friends go home and isn't interested in bringing his mentor's killer to justice and is indifferent to his friend being raped and is unconcerned about everyone he knew back home being enslaved and murdered. None of that deepens the Quinn Mallory character at all. None of that touches upon what makes him special. That's just drug addiction, alcoholism, family tragedy and depression talking, most of it David Peckinpah's.

In fact, it's not even deliberate. All of that is entirely *accidental*, filmed and aired because the actor was hungover that day. Because the scripts weren't properly reviewed. Because rehearsals were slapdash. Because the writers saw screenwriting as something to do between Solitaire binges. (That's not an exaggeration.)

Quinn is a very simple character to use. All Quinn needs is to be put in crazy, bizarre, ludicrous situations of intense risk and danger to life and sanity and to come up with clever, on-the-spot solutions to save the day. That's it. That's all you have to do. If you are having trouble coming up with plausible ways for the characters to advance the plot, use Quinn's genius to fast-forward the process. That's what this character was built to do. He cuts through narrative like a knife cuts through butter.

There's also the fact that all of these efforts to demonize Quinn both onscreen and after the fact make no sense whatsoever. Because if Quinn were really selfish and lazy and uncaring, he would not be a slider. He would find some paradise world and retire. That's what Jerry O'Connell would do with sliding, and the constant inability of fans to distinguish between actor and character is absolutely maddening and infuriating for me. That's what I see here, in these rationalizations. In these attempts to explain the inexplicable. A conflation of actor and character.

In ireactions-world -- which you need not take seriously and where absolutely nobody but me lives -- there is Quinn Mallory as created by Torme and Weiss. And then there is a second role with the same name and actor but written with little thought and care by David Peckinpah, Bill Dial, Keith Damron, Steven Stoliar.

One is an icon of genre fiction, an analytical science hero. And the other is a character also played by Jerry O'Connell, an actor who has played many roles, including Woody Hoyt, Andrew Clemens, Charlie Corbone and Phil Ohlmyer.

Jerry O'Connell is not Quinn Mallory. Jerry is just the mask that Quinn wears.

In my mind, to argue that the Season 3 - 4 character is the same as Season 1 - 2 is the equivalent of claiming that Jerry's CROSSING JORDAN and CAMP WILDER characters are the same person as well, except this is far more destructive. And if these analyses serve only to tear Quinn down, then they're pointless and useless. Admittedly, I say this as someone trying to write Quinn and therefore have a vested interest in seeing the character as a going concern. Which, as a goal in itself, is completely insane, so feel free not to take any of this into account.

I have really, really, really tried -- on two separate occasions -- to rationalize S1-2 Quinn with S3  - 4 Quinn. When writing Quinn Mallory in stories, I have always left myself open to the possibility that the post-Torme characterization can be rationalized. When writing "Slide Effects," I wrote that Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo would witness the moment in "Mother and Child" where Rembrandt says they have to go find Wade and Jerry delivers, "I don't know if we have enough time" with absolutely no emotion.

I wrote in _______________ in the outline for Quinn's reaction. I decided: when actually scripting that scene, Quinn would say whatever came naturally. He could explain himself. He could justify himself. I left it up to the character. And when I got to that page of the script, Quinn's explanation was that the scenario was part of a Kromagg mental simulation and he was subconsciously aware that the events he was experiencing weren't real and that was the point where he no longer believed in the situations he was living. I didn't plan that. I put Quinn in that scene, and that was what he had to say for himself. When writing REBORN, I again put Quinn in the same situation and got largely the same answer; he didn't recognize what he was seeing. Wasn't him.

Again. This is just my personal opinion and you will, of course, note that this entire post is almost like I'm trying to defend Quinn as though he's a personal acquaintance. As though he's my loved and treasured friend. From reading this post, you might think that I have a relationship with Quinn in the way some people have relationships with Jesus. You'd be right.

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Re: Rewatch Podcast

NDJ wrote:

Since the commander used his mind tricks on everybody at the facility, it’s not that big a stretch to think he used it on the sliders to make them forget about getting it for themselves (especially since he used mind control to hide a weapon during Quinn’s pat down).

ireactions wrote:

Regarding "Genesis" and "Mother and Child" -- I think Quinn and Rembrandt would have relentlessly hammered the Kromagg facilities with attacks on their computer systems until they had a trail on Wade. They would not have stopped until they died. As for the Kromaggs wiping the sliders' memories of the virus or the Slidecage equations not working -- I honestly think that once you're left with making up unwritten and unaired scenes to justify the story, it's pretty clear that the story is broken. As for Quinn being selfish, not in a hurry to go home or to catch his mentor's killer, being a bad person -- dear God.

First- I never said the Kromaggs wiped people's memory- I said they messed with people's minds. This is an established fact in the series-starting in season 2. What kind of show has to outline every little detail, every single time as if the viewer has no common sense?

Second- I have never and would never say Quinn was a bad person. I don't think being selfish (wanting to keep the people you love in your life), not wanting to go home (having the adventure end and having nothing to do but deal with your loss) and not wanting to catch his mentor's killer (not wanting to kill someone) makes him a bad person. I think he's made some serious mistakes- this makes him a human being.

I love Quinn no matter how you slice him: Seasons 1-2 Quinn, seasons 3-4 Quinn, or seasons 1-4 Quinn. Please don’t twist my words to suit your mood.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

NDJ wrote:

I have never and would never say Quinn was a bad person. I don't think being selfish (wanting to keep the people you love in your life), not wanting to go home (having the adventure end and having nothing to do but deal with your loss) and not wanting to catch his mentor's killer (not wanting to kill someone) makes him a bad person.

OF COURSE NOT WANTING TO KILL RICKMAN WOULD MAKE QUINN A BAD PERSON.

Rickman is a serial killer. He's travelling to worlds where no one knows of him and no one can be prepared for him. Every moment the sliders don't take him down is a moment where he's going to kill someone. So, yes -- the sliders not pursuing him or even considering giving up on tracking him down is indeed a moral crisis point -- Rickman's an interdimensional serial killer and they're the only ones who can follow him. If Quinn considers abandoning the pursuit for Rickman, then he is responsible for Rickman's subsequent victims -- every single one -- because he decided to quit trying to take this lunatic down. There is absolutely no moral quandary about killing Rickman -- he's an unrepentant murderer. That and having an English accent are his only character traits.

If you know that someone is a murderer and you decide it's not your problem and let them go off to kill more people, then yes, you are a bad person. The legalities are fuzzy; failure to report a crime is a misdemeanor in some states while a felony in states with mandatory reporting laws. But do the vagaries of the law absolve anyone from an incredibly obvious moral responsibility? Is this seriously up for debate? Is this even a question?

Failing to report a murder is wrong. Knowing in advance that someone will be murdered and declining to make efforts to prevent it is wrong. This is something I never thought I'd have to say on a SLIDERS message board.

And if Quinn knows that someone is going to be murdered and decides it's not his problem because he could hang out with Kyra, then YES, he is a bad person and I have been wasting my time with him.

My friend Val, when she was 12, discovered that this college guy she was friends with had been raping girls. Not her, of course -- she was a little too old for his tastes. Val proceeded to beat the rapist senseless with a toaster, locked him in a bathroom and fled for a police station. I have never been prouder of her. If she had shrugged it off and gone home to watch MY LITTLE PONY, she would have been responsible for every victim that man went on to rape.

Holy shit. I really never thought I'd have to have this discussion with anyone, anywhere, ever. Well. Thanks for that.

"The Exodus" makes no sense whatsoever no matter how you twist Quinn's character into knots. Let's say that Quinn has, for reasons that are incomprehensible, decided he's not going to let Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo get home. Arturo would have knocked Quinn unconscious or sat on him while Wade and Rembrandt tied him up, then they'd roll him into the vortex home. Furthermore, Rickman is, throughout the story, hostile and paranoid about the sliders because they threaten his command and his control of the situation; the story provides no motive for Rickman to want to keep the sliders around after they've found a suitable Earth as a settlement. Quinn's behaviour warps the entire story for no reason other than to have the other sliders get angry at him for contrived reasons.

NDJ wrote:
NDJ wrote:

Since the commander used his mind tricks on everybody at the facility, it’s not that big a stretch to think he used it on the sliders to make them forget about getting it for themselves (especially since he used mind control to hide a weapon during Quinn’s pat down).

First- I never said the Kromaggs wiped people's memory- I said they messed with people's minds. This is an established fact in the series-starting in season 2. What kind of show has to outline every little detail, every single time as if the viewer has no common sense?

"Wiping memories" / "messed with people's minds" -- hair-splitting. You declare that Kromagg telepathy must be why the sliders didn't try to secure the anti-Kromagg virus in "Mother and Child" -- there is absolutely nothing onscreen to support that assertion. It's not a piece of information subtly communicated; it's not hinted at -- it's not there. At all. The sliders are searching for a weapon to free their home Earth of Kromaggs. They found one in "Mother and Child." And then they leave it. The failure to address this in any fashion is not subtle storytelling that feels little details can be filled in by the viewer's common sense; this is a massive gaping hole in the story that renders the rest of the season incoherent.

There is no reason for the sliders to keep searching for the Kromagg Prime superweapon when a perfectly serviceable countermeasure exists on an Earth that's stored in the timer's coordinates. If the Kromagg erased the sliders' memories/messed with their minds, this absolutely has to be present onscreen or it leaves a glaringly unanswered question that undermines every story that follows.

Oh, and not to go off on a tangent, but if anyone reading this knows of any murderers out there or murders about to take place, CALL THE POLICE. If you don't, you are a horrible person and I will not want to write fanfics about you. Jesus.

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Re: Rewatch Podcast

I'm sorry that you think the guy you liken to Batman and Superman would kill someone- because I can't remember a time a superhero ever did that.

I'm also sorry that you think it makes someone a bad person for not wanting to kill someone or would hesitate- even if the person deserves to die. Perhaps you forgot that I did mention that they did need to stop him.

I know what I wrote, I know I meant; and I was not splitting hairs. If you want everything spelled out onscreen for you before you believe it, please remember that 29.7 years wasn't mentioned on screen until season 3.

Clearly you want a fight and I am done giving you one.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

NDJ wrote:

I'm sorry that you think the guy you liken to Batman and Superman would kill someone- because I can't remember a time a superhero ever did that. I'm also sorry that you think it makes someone a bad person for not wanting to kill someone or would hesitate- even if the person deserves to die. Perhaps you forgot that I did mention that they did need to stop him. I know what I wrote, I know I meant; and I was not splitting hairs. If you want everything spelled out onscreen for you before you believe it, please remember that 29.7 years wasn't mentioned on screen until season 3. Clearly you want a fight and I am done giving you one.

You're sorry? You are indeed sorry. I am not sorry.

I am not sorry to tell you that there is NO SCENE in "Mother and Child" where the Kromagg telepathically removes knowledge of the anti-Kromagg virus. It is not in the script. First, you raised the telepathy as a possibility; now you declare it is a certainty. It is not. You just made that up.

I am not sorry to refuse to follow you in your tortured logic where I am somehow at fault for declining to take into account a scene that does not exist outside your imagination. Perhaps you have your own version of "Mother and Child" in your head; I am not obligated to review it, only the version that aired. At least 29.7 had a deleted script page; what have you got? Nothing whatsoever.

I am also extremely not sorry to declare that it is a moral tipping point for Quinn to be blissfully unconcerned with ALL THE PEOPLE Rickman will kill.

I'm not sorry to point out that you defending Quinn for refusing to let his friends go home in "The Exodus" is you declaring that  kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment is okay by you!

I never likened Quinn to Superman. As for Batman, he never needs to kill as demonstrated in an issue of DETECTIVE COMICS Batman put R'as Al Ghul in a mental hospital with faked paperwork to keep the man in a permanent coma.

Superman has superstrength/heat vision/invulnerability/flight/a fortress in the Arctic. Batman has infinite money and over 20 sidekicks and a limitless utility belt of plot convenient gadgets. Quinn had a god-damn TV remote. Of course Rickman should have been killed. If they didn't have the stomach to do it personally, they could have sent him to Earth Prime (where he'd suffocate) or send him back to the military settlement (where his own people would have executed him) or they could have stranded him on some wasteland world where the lack of fresh brain fluid would have seen him die.

Once again -- I am astonished that stopping murderers is any sort of moral conundrum for anyone with even a splinter of conscience, responsibility or concern for their fellow human being.

I congratulate you -- you've achieved three firsts in the SLIDERS community. Lots of posters have said that Quinn's arc across four seasons make sense because he's a bad person -- but you're the first to do that while expressing that you're totally cool with Quinn holding innocent people prisoner and letting murderers run free, and that your dream-journal version of "Mother and Child" is canon.

There are, sadly, people in this world who think it's okay to strip others of their freedom and self-determination. People who see injustice done and choose to turn a blind eye. And people who would rather fabricate scenes in TV episodes rather than admit their argument has some gaping holes. It's a defect of humanity to be concerned with only one's self and to be indifferent to the suffering of others. And to rationalize it, saying we'd all be twisted and mutilated by bad experiences and so too would Quinn.

We shouldn't do that to Quinn. We should not make the sliders more like us. We should be more like them. We should regard the unknown with curiosity and wonder and confront problems with knowledge, strategy and confidence in the power of ideas.

I suspect the reason most fans see no issue with tearing Quinn down is because few, if any, have ever regarded him an iconic superhero; they don't see the precious creation that is being destroyed. And that's fine. That's just a difference of opinion -- but this is the first time I've ever seen anyone declare that kidnapping and enabling of a serial killer is in any way sympathetic or morally defensible.

That's delusional, deranged and diseased -- and you demonstrate precisely why I object so strongly to rationalizing Quinn's Season 3 - 4 behaviour as in-character.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

The producers obviously went too far in losing the original Quinn, and Tom talked about this on a recent cast. But I have to say, I do thing some of the more bolder, action hero Quinn was in order. You can imagine how much a person might change in going through what they went through as Sliders. I would imagine it would cause someone like Quinn to become bolder.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Personally, I think Quinn had gotten as action-oriented as he needed to in "As Time Goes By" and "Double Cross" in his multiple fight scenes and physical confrontations. But I don't really think that the willingness to fight or engage in hand to hand combat or gun battles is a sign of progression; the more meaningful growth would be to see Quinn use his intelligence to bypass the need to threaten or attack others. I think Quinn's maturity as the seasons passed should have been shown in higher levels of responsibility and ability -- not in fighting, but rather with sliding technology.

How would he use his knowledge and scientific skills to better the multiverse? To create interdimensional relationships between worlds? To take on larger-scale problems? I think, had Tracy Torme stayed on the show and brought in Marc Scott Zicree, there would have been more variants on the sliding technology: the slidewave, the slidecage, maybe the Combine and other aspects. "Into the Mystic" touched upon interdimensional economics; Zicree approached interdimensional politics.

I also think that part of Quinn's maturity would have been mentoring new characters; as the show progressed, I think new sliders should have been introduced with the originals serving as teachers to the next wave of sliders.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

ireactions wrote:

Personally, I think Quinn had gotten as action-oriented as he needed to in "As Time Goes By" and "Double Cross" in his multiple fight scenes and physical confrontations. But I don't really think that the willingness to fight or engage in hand to hand combat or gun battles is a sign of progression; the more meaningful growth would be to see Quinn use his intelligence to bypass the need to threaten or attack others. I think Quinn's maturity as the seasons passed should have been shown in higher levels of responsibility and ability -- not in fighting, but rather with sliding technology.

How would he use his knowledge and scientific skills to better the multiverse? To create interdimensional relationships between worlds? To take on larger-scale problems? I think, had Tracy Torme stayed on the show and brought in Marc Scott Zicree, there would have been more variants on the sliding technology: the slidewave, the slidecage, maybe the Combine and other aspects. "Into the Mystic" touched upon interdimensional economics; Zicree approached interdimensional politics.

I also think that part of Quinn's maturity would have been mentoring new characters; as the show progressed, I think new sliders should have been introduced with the originals serving as teachers to the next wave of sliders.

But, there's no question he would have gotten bolder from his initial character.  You're struggling to survive, he was athletic to begin with, and certainly would have become more of a leader and gained confidence with each "win" he garnered. So I'm simply saying the idea of becoming a bit more action heroish in and of itself isn't necessarily problematic. Just as I would have expected Rembrant to change is well.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

I don't disagree, of course. Two of my favourite moments for Rembrandt: his shotgun slinging in "Into the Mystic" and his intimidating the secretary in "Murder Most Foul."

I just think that there is more to being a hero than beating people up. Force and violence are easy. Fists and guns, knives and bombs -- I imagine that there are plenty of potential SLIDERS stories where Quinn would have to use such things. But I would never want to be the default-setting for Quinn. I would never measure a person's worth or competence by how many people he can hurt.

There are times in the series when Quinn's physical inabilities have been nonsensical, most notably in "El Sid" and "The Young and the Relentless." I get that Sid is tough, but it's ludicrous that Quinn is completely unable to defend himself. And Kyle Beck intimidating Quinn and withholding the timer when Quinn is muscled and toned and towers over Kyle -- absurd. I just don't think fighting is particularly interesting as a solution or resolution. Any TV hero can shoot a gun or punch a villain; it's a science hero who can think his way to victory and that's what makes Quinn great.

I'm not saying you can't have Quinn punch and kick and shoot his way out; I'm just saying it doesn't really speak to Quinn Mallory. It's generic. And I don't know how much more you can really showcase Quinn's physicality beyond "As Time Goes By" and "Double Cross."

I found myself thinking about this quite heavily when writing SLIDERS REBORN. Jerry is like Tom Cruise in the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movies. Tom Cruise is jumping onto planes that are taking off, leaping off rooftops, diving out of skyscrapers, and I imagine Quinn being as superhuman if not moreso. But I found it more important, in the fight scenes here and there, to emphasize how Quinn is skillful rather than how Quinn is strong. When captured by two police officers, he slips out of his handcuffs, handcuffs one to a bikerack and knocks the other one unconscious and proceeds to steal their car -- but it's the police radio that's really useful because it helps him dodge the manhunt. That's how I see it -- the physicality is a component, but it's not the defining trait.

Note: Please don't feel obligated to consider REBORN as supporting evidence in our discussions.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

ireactions wrote:

I don't disagree, of course. Two of my favourite moments for Rembrandt: his shotgun slinging in "Into the Mystic" and his intimidating the secretary in "Murder Most Foul."

I just think that there is more to being a hero than beating people up. Force and violence are easy. Fists and guns, knives and bombs -- I imagine that there are plenty of potential SLIDERS stories where Quinn would have to use such things. But I would never want to be the default-setting for Quinn. I would never measure a person's worth or competence by how many people he can hurt.

There are times in the series when Quinn's physical inabilities have been nonsensical, most notably in "El Sid" and "The Young and the Relentless." I get that Sid is tough, but it's ludicrous that Quinn is completely unable to defend himself. And Kyle Beck intimidating Quinn and withholding the timer when Quinn is muscled and toned and towers over Kyle -- absurd. I just don't think fighting is particularly interesting as a solution or resolution. Any TV hero can shoot a gun or punch a villain; it's a science hero who can think his way to victory and that's what makes Quinn great.

I'm not saying you can't have Quinn punch and kick and shoot his way out; I'm just saying it doesn't really speak to Quinn Mallory. It's generic. And I don't know how much more you can really showcase Quinn's physicality beyond "As Time Goes By" and "Double Cross."

I found myself thinking about this quite heavily when writing SLIDERS REBORN. Jerry is like Tom Cruise in the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movies. Tom Cruise is jumping onto planes that are taking off, leaping off rooftops, diving out of skyscrapers, and I imagine Quinn being as superhuman if not moreso. But I found it more important, in the fight scenes here and there, to emphasize how Quinn is skillful rather than how Quinn is strong. When captured by two police officers, he slips out of his handcuffs, handcuffs one to a bikerack and knocks the other one unconscious and proceeds to steal their car -- but it's the police radio that's really useful because it helps him dodge the manhunt. That's how I see it -- the physicality is a component, but it's not the defining trait.

Note: Please don't feel obligated to consider REBORN as supporting evidence in our discussions.

I agree with what you are saying is the essence of the character - and how is something special that can really bring in fans.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

How would Quinn have time to develop and nurture sliding technology when they were constantly on the run? With the exception of The Weaker Sex, the timer gave them at most a week before moving on to the next port of call.

Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Transmodiar wrote:

How would Quinn have time to develop and nurture sliding technology when they were constantly on the run? With the exception of The Weaker Sex, the timer gave them at most a week before moving on to the next port of call.

In my mind -- I think Season 3 should have started with "Double Cross" -- and with a different ending. An ending where the Professor assumes his dead double's identity and the sliders take over Prototronics and start using it as a home base.

They'd still be doing random sliding every week, but with the knowledge that the exit slide would take them back to Prototronics.

I feel like this would have been a nice way to keep the premise of the show -- but add a little incremental progress in the sliding technology so that it doesn't feel like Quinn, the 'genius,' accomplished nothing in two years.

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I was just thinking of “Seasons Greedings” and “the Last of Eden” and it struck me: Where are the fathers?  We can logically assume the “The Last of Eden” guy fell during an earthquake some months ago (we’ve seen how these people just shrug their shoulders and walk away), but where is the other guy? I mean this woman was putting her baby in the hands of strangers (in a scene reminiscent of Three Men and A Baby).  There’s no deadly situation for viewers to assume the husband/boyfriend fell prey to and the world itself is not dangerous.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

http://rewatchpodcast.podomatic.com/

New episode! "World Killer" and "O Brother Where Art Thou"!

Re: Rewatch Podcast

To be fair NDJ agreed Rickman needed to be stopped.
The thing is though.... Violence is not Quinn's go to option unless pushed into it.
You point this out yourself in your newer posts quite succinctly when discussing his Mind and Problem solving being a core quality and more impressive asset than brawling alone.
I believe Quinn would aim to immobilise and capture Rickman if given a choice.
Rickmans medical condition is likely to kill him without additional victims anyway so Death is likely, but an execution? No.

"It's only a matter of time. Were I in your shoes, I would spend my last earthly hours enjoying the world. Of course, if you wish, you can spend them fighting for a lost cause.... But you know that you've lost." -Kane-

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Hey guys, new episode up now. "Just Say Yes" and "The Alternateville Horror"

Re: Rewatch Podcast

omnimercurial wrote:

To be fair NDJ agreed Rickman needed to be stopped. The thing is though.... Violence is not Quinn's go to option unless pushed into it. You point this out yourself in your newer posts quite succinctly when discussing his Mind and Problem solving being a core quality and more impressive asset than brawling alone. I believe Quinn would aim to immobilise and capture Rickman if given a choice. Rickmans medical condition is likely to kill him without additional victims anyway so Death is likely, but an execution? No.

I do not believe Quinn would have ever stopped pursuing Rickman. But I also don't believe Quinn would have killed Rickman, at least not if he were written correctly.

I think Quinn would have found some way to strand Rickman in a state of quantum suspension, imprisoned and 'frozen' inside the interdimensional tunnel -- with the intention to one day find a cure for Rickman's condition, release him from limbo and repair his damaged body and mind.

Anyway. I thought NDJ raised an interesting approach to Season 4. "Mother and Child" has a plothole: why don't Quinn and Rembrandt try to use the anti-Kromagg virus on their home Earth? NDJ suggested a missing scene / plot where their memories were erased.

NDJ wrote:

Since the commander used his mind tricks on everybody at the facility, it’s not that big a stretch to think he used it on the sliders to make them forget about getting it for themselves (especially since he used mind control to hide a weapon during Quinn’s pat down).

It makes me think: Season 4 is filled with awkward beats and characterization that were could have been made reasonable with some added scenes.

What if "Mother and Child" in addition to the Kromagg mindwipe, there was also another scene? A scene where Quinn abruptly separates himself from Colin, Maggie and Rembrandt -- making some flimsy excuse that doesn't fool Rembrandt. Rembrandt finds Quinn  Quinn is crying. The failure to find Wade again has hit him hard, and Quinn rages over how they've broken into 15 Kromagg bases trying to find Wade and "we never have time." He wonders if this is pointless, if they should give up. Maggie calls for Quinn and Quinn suddenly pulls himself together, his face resuming the cold stoicism he had before.

And maybe the final scene is Quinn staring blankly at wall in the Chandler and then Rembrandt drags him outside and down the street. Rembrandt points across the street. We see, at a distance, a slender redhead with an apron waiting on a table at an outdoor restaurant. Rembrandt says that on a lot of worlds, Kelly Welles and Wade opened a chain of Internet cafes; any time Rembrandt sees a Turing Treats in the phone book, he knows Wade's around.

Rembrandt tells Quinn: watch her. Go up to her and talk to her and take her to the movies, or walk by once and then walk away. He tells Quinn to do whatever he has to do, but he can't give up. They have to keep searching for the superweapon. They can't give up. And we'd end on Quinn alone, looking at the Wade-double. Does he approach? Does he leave? Fade out.

Another major sticking point is "Revelations" where Quinn is apparently not going to accompany Rembrandt back to Earth Prime to liberate it from the Kromaggs. I would probably imagine a missing scene where Colin confronts Quinn about this: and Quinn reveals that now that they have the weapon, they can free their home Earth, but Wade and Amanda Mallory are still out there. Rembrandt and Quinn had an agreement: Rembrandt would take the weapon home. Quinn would go search for Wade and his mom.

It would add weight to Jerry's half-hearted performance in the final scene when Maggie tells Quinn she hopes he gets home someday and Quinn says he does too -- but what he's really thinking about is how his search for Wade is once again on hold.

That said, I think the whole Kromagg Prime arc of Season 4 was awful awful awful no matter how many tweaks might have been made. But "Commander Wade Welles" and Quinn putting on a brave face for the others while crying over Wade when nobody's looking would have helped a little. (A little.)

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Hngh. ireactions hitting it out of the park again with some stellar ideas.

Little things like this would have been the difference between a show that so obviously Just Didn't Care and a show that rallied in the wake of production horrors and the loss of two of its stars. Fox be damned, continuity matters. It's what keeps people invested in the story, what makes it more than just "some people went places and things exploded". Even a viewer dipping into an episode in the middle of the series and seeing these characters cut up about someone they've never met... they're not going to recoil and change the channel. They're going to think, "oh, huh. Maybe I should go back and see the earlier episodes so I know why they care." A little harder in the days before DVDs, but yeah.

But that was all we needed. An emotional connection. To know that Quinn cared. So simple yet so powerful. I'm going to be headcanoning those scenes into my ideas of the episodes now.

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The Rickman Situation
I see Quinn as a man (a boy still in many ways) who is being crushed under the weight of responsibility, guilt, and grief. My interpretation of the Rickman scenario does not include him ever giving up- remember I don’t think that Quinn is in any rush to give up sliding. I think Quinn both understands and accepts his responsibility to stop Rickman (killing him if necessary but not wanting to)- but it is this same realization that is weighing him down. Add to that the immediate situation with Kyra (since when hasn’t a beautiful woman been Quinn’s weakness?) and Rembrandt, and the fact that Wade and Maggie aren’t there and you get a “f*** this- I quit” outburst. Do I think that if the timer ran down and Maggie and Wade were there, Quinn would have stayed with Kyra? No, not even you remove the whole Carlos situation.   

This is how I see “Mother and Child”
You are about to leave your house for work and your plan is to stop by the store to buy some bread. Your manipulative, horrible, dangerous neighbor, who you HATE, is also going to the store to get medicine for his kid. This is the type of guy that will rob the store but you know that his kid really is sick so you go to the store with him. He talks to you, none of which you want to hear (you just want to make sure he doesn’t do anything illegal), talks up the store clerk, and even talks the pharmacists into giving him the medicine for less than he should have paid. You get back to the house without incident and DAMN IT- you forgot the bread and now you have to go to work!

Did the neighbor wipe your memory or did he manipulate you into momentarily forgetting your own goals? I have nothing to base memory wipe on, but messing with your mind, making you focus on ‘A’ so that you forget you were after ‘B’- that is what Kromaggs do. Overly simplistic but I wanted to demonstrate that for me, “memory wipe” and “messing with your mind” are two different things.

Also, we all assume that the Kromagg virus is at the same facility as the human cure. It makes sense but we don’t know it for sure- The only information we ever get is that the anti-virus is at the military facility and that comes from the Kromagg who got that my reading Christina’s father’s mind. If the virus was there, he wasn’t telling!

I think this a middling episode for the season. I think they did miss an opportunity to really talk about Wade instead of just using her as a plot device. Either Rembrandt or Quinn could have talked about Wade to Colin and it would not have felt contrived. They could have even talked to each other about what Christina’s situation meant for Wade (if Christina could get away with a baby why didn’t Wade try to escape? Is she pregnant? Does she have a baby?) and larger issues in general (what would happen if they did get the Kromagg killing virus and women with Humagg children wanted to bring their babies home?). Of course this is a can of worms nobody really wanted to open.

I agree that the Kromagg arc was awful. I see where they were going and it did make sense that a few of the worlds would have differently evolved humans. After all, there was actually another humanoid species on this Earth that homo sapiens beat out for dominance. This means their existence is still in keeping with the spirit of the show, but I watch Star Trek for constant alien human/ interaction- Sliders was suppose to be something different.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Tom and Cory applauded me for noting that Penny is meant to represent Wade in "Common Ground." That wasn't me, that was Ian McDuffie. I even linked to his review.

-- ?!?!

**

Tom apparently has the NARCOTICA comic on which "Just Say Yes" was based. He dislikes Dennis Calero's art. I'll have to respectfully disagree; I thought Calero did a great job of using a more impressionistic approach to SLIDERS, focusing on mood and atmosphere as opposed to detail and photorealism. His approach to the characters allows the likenesses to be off because they're illustrative representations of the sliders rather than attempts to copy photos. I also thought NARCOTICA was well written because Jerry O'Connell's script isn't about how DRUGS ARE EVIL. Jerry's script is about how drugs are being used as a means of societal control on this alternate world, which shifts the situation into a more nuanced state of moral ambiguity.

I dunno how the Jerry who wrote this comic constantly comes off as a sub-literate moron when talking SLIDERS in interviews.

**

"Just Say Yes" is an inept effort to demonize drugs and dramatize addiction -- very odd, given that David Peckinpah and Bill Dial saw their TV producer jobs as ways to enable their addictions. Strange how "Just Say Yes" is the one story these people are qualified to tell and they couldn't do it.

**

Tom really highlighted my distaste for the Season 4 arc. Cory and Tom enjoy "Alternateville" as a fun, light episode. But, as Tom says, it feels totally out of place when Season 4 started with the invasion of Earth Prime and the enslavement of Wade and Amanda Mallory and the deaths of all the Pilot characters. Against this backdrop, it's just awkward to see stories like "Alternateville." They don't fit the dark situation the show has created.

Which is precisely my argument against the Kromagg Prime arc; it doesn't widen the stories SLIDERS can do; it narrows them until stories that aren't connected to the Kromaggs no longer suit the characters. Season 4 is actively trying to take away the stories SLIDERS can tell until using the full breadth of SLIDERS stories now feels wrong. And it seems to have left the fanbase permanently damaged.

There's over fifty Season 6 fanfics and the majority of them are Kromagg war epics. There's at least fifteen pitches for alternate visions of Season 4 that start with the Kromagg invasion of Earth. Towards the end, most of the fanfics were about the Kromagg myth-arc.

A fanfic writer from that era recently told me that he couldn't stand Season 4 and it made him stop writing SLIDERS fanfics. He didn't want to write for Quinn, Rembrandt, Colin and Maggie searching for a superweapon; he didn't relate to that team. He wanted to write Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo, but writing stories with the original quartet in a post-"Genesis" era made him feel like he was stuck in the past and out of date, that the only stories that belonged in SLIDERS were focused on fighting Kromaggs rather than exploring parallel worlds.

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ireactions wrote:

Tom and Cory applauded me for noting that Penny is meant to represent Wade in "Common Ground." That wasn't me, that was Ian McDuffie. I even linked to his review.

Yep we made a gaffe! We actually noticed it before this episode even went up and made the correction in the By The Way section which you'll hear in Monday's episode. Blame it on skimming and not reading fully!

Re: Rewatch Podcast

On a side note, how do you like our "Quick Impressions?" Just a bit of goofy fun!

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Tom and Cory, in the recent podcast, said that the SLIDERS comics aren't canon. The canonicity of the SLIDERS comics was an amusing debate in a Sliderscast:

Mr. Stargate: "The comics are not canon!"
The Savior: "They are canon."
Mr. Stargate: "How the fuck can they be canon?"
The Savior: "Tracy Torme said they're canon."
Mr. Stargate: "God damn it! Fuck! Fine! Whatever!"

That said, the comics became irreconcilable with the TV show; "Darkest Hour" has the sliders make it home and leave again and "Deadly Secrets" offers an account of Wade's parents contrary to "Season's Greedings" -- so I think the comics have to feature doubles of the sliders -- which means they are technically canon within the SLIDERS multiverse if not canon for the specific versions of the sliders we saw on television.

"But ireactions! If that's your opinion, why does one of your SLIDERS REBORN scripts have Rembrandt talking about how he once had to fight two-dimensional beings in ARMADA?!!"

..........

Whoops.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Hee Hee smile

"It's only a matter of time. Were I in your shoes, I would spend my last earthly hours enjoying the world. Of course, if you wish, you can spend them fighting for a lost cause.... But you know that you've lost." -Kane-

Re: Rewatch Podcast

New Rewatch Podcast ep is up. This week we discuss "Slidecage" and "Asylum" http://rewatchpodcast.podomatic.com/ent … 2_12-08_00

Re: Rewatch Podcast

RewatchPodcast wrote:

New Rewatch Podcast ep is up. This week we discuss "Slidecage" and "Asylum" http://rewatchpodcast.podomatic.com/ent … 2_12-08_00


cool, thanks!

Re: Rewatch Podcast

tom2point0 wrote:

On a side note, how do you like our "Quick Impressions?" Just a bit of goofy fun!

The impressions are indeed hilarious -- they're so random and bizarre -- taking the scripts and reading them in the voices of Sean Connery and Christopher Walken. I don't understand why you would do this -- I just know that it's absurd and memorable.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Holy S-Word -- as someone currently attempting to aid Sliders Rewatch with gathering behind the scenes information on Season 4 episodes, I sent the boys THREE long E-mails today dissecting "Mother and Child" from the behind the scenes perspective to the commissioning of the script to the script itself and the filming. These are REALLY long E-mails. Those poor, poor people. I even called in Temporal Flux for extra help on this one instead of taking my usual approach of depending on memories of conversations we'd had years ago.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Oh wow. ireactions, care to share that dissection with the rest of us at some point? I'd love to read it.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Originally, I was just going to send the boys this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/64bv60t89p1ld … d.mp3?dl=0

It's a voicemail, less than three minutes long, where I react to The Scene. But then, upon rewatching the episode for deleted scenes, I began to notice certain things and decided, instead, to send them something more analytical.

I'll see what Tom and Cory do with it -- for now, I'm leaving it for them as their exclusive. "Mother and Child" is one of the most despised episodes of SLIDERS ever made, but no one has ever looked at it with any degree of accuracy or clarity. The Scene -- the loathed, despised Scene -- no fan ever seems to be able to quote it correctly. It's as though their rage, while correct and appropriate, has warped their memory of it -- and I rewatched The Scene today repeatedly while reviewing the script, examining it frame by frame as though I were reviewing the Zapruder footage of John F. Kennedy getting shot. I think I know what happened. If there's stuff Tom and Cory decline to use, I'll share it here.

I laughed out loud when Tom and Cory remarked in their podcast that they had no messages from Earth Prime. I probably won't be writing them too many post-podcast messages as I'm now sending them my retrospectives in advance of their recording.

169 (edited by intangirble 2015-11-25 03:29:52)

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...*actually laughed out loud*

I loved that voicemail. Nice little ending there.

Looking forward to what the three of you have/will come up with, in that case.

I'm glad I was prepared for The Scene when I saw it... very recently, in fact. By this time I've come to accept that anything past season 3, and large parts of season 3 itself, just isn't my show any more. It's a lot easier to look at it from that detached perspective than to actually try to reconcile a Quinn who would say that about one of his best friends.

I'm noticing a running theme with the female Kromagg Victims of the Week in these episodes. Namely: it's actually pretty rare to see a character on TV with a haircut like Wade's. Between "Mother and Child" and "Common Ground", we've had two plucky, tiny girls with pixie cuts in quick succession, like they're not even trying to be subtle. It's like they've realized what they've lost and are trying desperately to replace her. (And it's got to be killing Rembrandt.)

I notice this more generally throughout the rest of the series. As Tom and Cory mentioned, it's like the show is constantly trying to recreate the dynamic it previously had with the foursome. I've only seen one episode of season 5, but by the time we get to Requiem, we've got Diana as the Professor skeptic figure, Maggie as... Wade(!) with some of the leadership aspects of Quinn, Rembrandt as Rembrandt (thank God), and Mallory as, well, honestly I don't know what he's supposed to be, but I spent the entire episode hating him. Never have I seen anyone so completely constructed of cardboard and smarm.

But they were trying. And the fact that Maggie ends up in the nurturing Wade role of all places is some kind of mix of hilarious and sad... that they had to stretch her character this far to make her feasible, and to keep the show going.

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Mallory's a very interesting character played by a brilliant actor written by some awful writers. If you've never seen Seasons 4 - 5 in their entirety, I would watch them once but have one or both of my fanfics waiting nearby.

It's true about Maggie -- one Quinn/Wade shipper with the handle Slida was grousing throughout Season 4 that SLIDERS had gotten rid of Wade in favour of Maggie only for Maggie to essentially be Wade but played by a far less compelling actress.

I just sent my FOURTH E-mail to Tom and Cory about "Mother and Child" -- about the ending of the episode. Those poor men.

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I have sent Tom and Cory my fifth and final E-mail on "Mother and Child." I think I may have hit some record; surely nobody on the old Sci-Fi Bboard or the newsgroup ever wrote as much as this regarding the episode.

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I can't wait for the "Mother and Child" episode of the podcast... it's going to be something special.

And possibly hilarious.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

They really should break it down into a two-parter: one discussing the episode and one discussing Ib's descent into MADNESS over its execution. wink

Earth Prime | The Definitive Source for Sliders™

Re: Rewatch Podcast

"Mother and Child" should have been *Quinn's* descent into madness; it wasn't and now I'm experiencing what he didn't.

After sending the boys a sixth E-mail about "Mother and Child," I did a look ahead to see which episodes will likely have extensive, multi-part E-mails from me with Temporal Flux's behind the scenes info.

Those would be "Revelations," "The Unstuck Man," "The Great Work," "New Gods for Old," "Requiem," "Eye of the Storm" and "The Seer."

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...you're going to absolutely destroy "Requiem," aren't you.

Please say you're going to.

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The length doesn't necessarily have anything to do with quality or even my opinion.

It's more about extremely tangled and confusing behind the scenes situations. "Mother and Child" has one of the most convoluted behind the scenes situations in the history of the series and the onscreen result is at times in stark and glaring contrast to the actual screenplay as well as the Season 4 arc -- and it's due to the season-wide circumstances as well as the situation for this one episode.

The situation is the same for "Revelations," "The Unstuck Man," "Applied Physics," "Strangers and Comrades," "The Great Work," "New Gods for Old," "Requiem," "Eye of the Storm" and "The Seer" -- the original Season 4 finale, the intention to use that finale story for the Season 5 premiere, the original plan with Jerry O'Connell before he refused to return, the initial plans for Diana Davis, the original plan for the third episode of Season 5, the removal of the Kromaggs and the interdimensional library from "The Great Work," the original story pitch for "Requiem" (which had nothing to do with Wade) and the screenplay that followed (which was hacked up for the screen), the original Season 5 finale, the plans for Season 6, the plans for the SLIDERS feature film, the series finale that Tracy Torme intended to produce that would taken place after "The Guardian" and declared everything afterwards to be apocryphal -- there's a lot to unpack. I would say that the Season 4 finale, the Season 5 premiere, the delayed Season 4 'resolution' in Season 5, the Wade-episode of Season 5 and the Season 5 finale (as planned versus as filmed) will be the long E-mails filled with analysis, information and, well -- theory.

There's a lot of bits and pieces here that I've stitched into something resembling a coherent narrative while being careful to indicate where conjecture fills in some gaps, so it's also important to distinguish between known fact and supposition.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Hey Rewatchers!

New episode is up now! "California Reich" and "The Dying Fields.' http://rewatchpodcast.podomatic.com/ent … 6_13-08_00

Re: Rewatch Podcast

RewatchPodcast wrote:

Hey Rewatchers!

New episode is up now! "California Reich" and "The Dying Fields.' http://rewatchpodcast.podomatic.com/ent … 6_13-08_00


Great, thanks! Can't wait to listen!

179 (edited by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan 2015-12-02 19:23:27)

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Loved the Sean Connery / Christopher Walken "Instant Impressions" segment in a recent podcast. Very funny stuff!


The podcast is on fire.

Re: Rewatch Podcast

Hmm. So I actually have some things to say about the Sliders Rewatch as opposed to say to Sliders Rewatch. I really enjoyed their take on "California Reich." I thought it was neat how they rated it really highly until the ending whereas I rate "Reich" extremely low because of the ending. The episode is handled well up to a point. The intensity and cruelty of the Stompers is riveting; the episode really evokes the viewer's fury and outrage at racism and bigotry. There is a twisted and grim satisfaction to seeing Kirk discover he's a member of the people he persecutes and assaults on a daily basis.

There's something a bit disappointing about Jerry's performance, however, in the scene where he confronts Kirk with the horror of his deeds.

KIRK: "I'm not afraid of them! I know who I am -- I don't care what their tests say!!"
QUINN: "How many people have you rounded up who said the same thing? 'It's a lie, I'm not a mongrel' -- did you listen to them then?! Will they listen to you now?"

Jerry's delivery is fine. He plays Quinn with frank practicality and morality. But that's all it is. It's fine. There just aren't enough layers there; had John Rhys Davies been on set to serve as Jerry's acting coach, I could see Jerry doing a lot more with that scene. Contempt, loathing and disgust for Kirk would be his main emotions -- but there would be a small measure of pity and it would be this pity Quinn would try to show now, because he *needs* Kirk, Kirk can get him to Rembrandt.

The ending is also a massive letdown and a total disappointment; the 'migrants' of this world are so dehumanized and the general population so racist that it's unlikely the Schick-supporters would be in any way concerned. The script seriously needed to be reworked in this area; a better route would have been to better emphasize how Schick's economic recovery plan wouldn't actually help any of his supporters; their jobs would be taken by the Eddys, and he knows that full well.

It might have been even more effective to reveal that Schick isn't actually a racist, he doesn't hate the migrants at all -- but he finds it effective to manipulate and employ hatred and ignorance in getting his constituents to overlook his failings. Ultimately, Miller's script operates on the belief that Rembrandt talking about how everyone's human matched with some body horror will shock people out of their bigotry and that's nonsense.

A more nuanced, grounded approach might have been to reveal how bigotry ultimately leaves people incapable of solving problems with ideas, facts, knowledge and information because they're instead driven by groundless, irrational, unthinking hatred of the different.

But "Reich" takes the easy way out and declares all is made well with a speech, and Kirk never has to suffer any real consequences, as Cory points out. He gets a happy ending he didn't earn.

"California Reich" is a good first draft, desperately in need of refinement and care to shape it from a clumsy but powerful episode into something more meaningful.

**

"The Dying Fields" is a disaster, one of the worst episodes of television ever made -- the only reason that it isn't is because "This Slide of Paradise" got set too low a standard and nothing's ever sunk lower. I actually felt shocked when David Peckinpah's direction was mentioned in the podcast -- for all Peckinpah's faults, the episodes he works on personally tend to be good, but "The Dying Fields" is a disaster on every level. The guest stars are awful; all these helpless humans and William Bigelow's script can't create any empathy for them. They're simply action characters killed off without emotion.

Kyra and Kryoptus are awful characters. Bigelow's script gives them stilted, awkward dialogue that no actor could possibly deliver properly, from Kyra's inability to use contractions and the Humaggs using "human" as an insult. There is absolutely no reason given in the script or onscreen for why Kyra is won over by the sliders and no sense of why Kyra thought she could survive on this world even if she convinced Kryoptus to mend his ways.

Bigelow's Kromagg dialogue feels like an awkward photocopy of other Kromaggs' this season, but there's no characterization, just surface level formality and one-note anger. And then there's the silliness of every single Kromagg character's name beginning with a K -- why? It makes it so that the Kromaggs no longer seem like a race as much as one character played by multiple actors and the only actor in Season 4 who could play a Kromagg well was Reiner Schone in "Slidecage" because he played the Kromagg-style dialogue as a man speaking English as a second language. With Bigelow's approach, the Kromaggs, more than ever, come off as actors struggling to deliver lines they don't believe in. They're not scary at all.

And "The Dying Fields" is completely pointless. The sliders blunder into this horrific situation of humans being kidnapped by Kromaggs and made to fight. The sliders fail to save anyone. All the humans die. The sliders accomplished nothing. They might as well have never come into the episode. We gained no insights into the Kromaggs other than Bigelow not understanding how to write them even in terms of their Season 4 incarnation. Pointless, ugly and dull.

Cory and Tom highlighted a shocking moment of incompetence on David Peckinpah's part: at one point, Colin is held at gunpoint by Kyra. Quinn is in the shot, behind Kyra, unseen by Kyra -- and then he promptly flees and abandons his brother.

In the script, Colin was alone when Kyra captures him and Quinn, in hiding, only spots that Colin's been taken when Colin is hauled past him. For whatever reason, Colin's capture and Quinn in hiding were put in the same space, in the same shot -- and the result is that Quinn looks like a coward for not attacking Kyra from behind. It's impossible to take Quinn seriously as a hero after this.

It's funny how Cory and Tom say that they didn't believe Rembrandt would die, that SLIDERS wouldn't ever write a character exit without building up to it properly and making sure it had weight and impact.

...........

"The Dying Fields" has an awful script with direction that actively undermines what little integrity this script had in the first place -- it's really sad. It shows you how little the Season 4 production cared about a quality product and what's worse is that this was meant to be a hugely critical and important episode. Tom and Cory have, I believe, an exclusive on this information for "Mother and Child," courtesy of Temporal Flux. I'll leave it to them to tell you all about it soon, if they can. As I said, I sent them SIX E-MAILS about "Mother and Child," so we can hardly fault them if they feel it's too much to get into.