Adam Nimoy

It's strange -- on a technical level, I like the Pilot a lot as a cinematic piece of filmmaking from director Andy Tennant. However, my favourite directors on the show are Adam Nimoy and Richard Compton ("Into the Mystic," "As Time Goes By," "Invasion" and more) -- because Nimoy and Compton took a totally different route than Tennant. Where Tennant's direction was very methodical and let you live and breathe in prolonged shots of Quinn's world and sliding, Nimoy and Compton aimed for immediacy and urgency and economy, sharing the most information in the least amount of time.

The Professor's fight with the Professor in "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome," Quinn racing into the Sorcerer's private chambers in "Mystic" -- it's all about keeping the shots as short as possible to convey urgency. Tennant's style does make a comeback in "Invasion" with the lengthy scenes of the sliders trapped in a Kromagg cell, when slowing the pacing now has meaning where the show was so relentlessly paced before. These days, modern TV is so fast with scenes often less than two pages of script, and Nimoy and Compton were well ahead of the curve in the 90s, speeding up the storytelling long before it was mainstream.

I remember once reading a summary on PTSS where the summarizer remarked, "Spock's son shoots the scene so confusingly I can't tell which Professor won the fight," and Temporal Flux later remarking that you can tell if you put your finger on the screen to identify which Professor came in the taxi and which Professor accompanied the sliders. Adam Nimoy is a great director.