Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century (Page 1 of 2)

SLIDERS (2013): http://freepdfhosting.com/ab3f9e4b78.pdf -- It was an interesting enterprise. Writing a reboot script for SLIDERS with all the advantages that shows like FRINGE, CHUCK and COMMUNITY enjoyed. It didn't work out for a variety of reasons. The main reason is that I think it was asking way, way, way too much of the message board posters to work together on the story.

Posters gradually stopped contributing; I posted the script and received pretty much no feedback for almost half a year from the very people who'd written the outline. Why? Because I had turned a fun discussion into Labour and Effort and it wasn't a good time for them anymore. They didn't want to form a writer's room; they wanted to banter about an imaginary reboot. My fault, everyone. I seek to atone with this thread.

At the time, this zero-budget, PDF screenplay format seemed to be the future of SLIDERS, but the project quietly faded away like a lavishly planned date that we suddenly found we couldn't afford. Except that really *did* turn out to be the future -- in format if not in content.

Uh. Read "Revelation" and "Reminiscence" before you commit to that opinion. :-)

It's odd. Reboot used to mean restarting continuity. Now it means bringing back any series that's been away for awhile. SLIDERS REBORN is not a realistic revival. It only appeals to 15 - 20 people on the Internet. I don't think of SLIDERS REBORN as the 2015 live-action revival anyway, I think of it as the 2015 comic book. REBORN is not something that can introduce SLIDERS to a new generation of fans.

I've always liked Temporal Flux's idea for a reboot. In 2000, he told me his idea for a SLIDERS movie. It would be a new Pilot. In 2001, Quinn Mallory and his friends find the gateway to parallel worlds, but on their first adventure, they lose their way back home. These would be doubles of the original sliders on an Earth where Quinn was older when he discovered sliding. Quinn would be studying for his doctorate, Wade would be designing promotions for Doppler Computers, Rembrandt would be a music teacher and the Professor would be the same. The 1995 - 2000 sliders would be set aside.

As the years passed, I have mentally updated the characters for this reboot. So, in my 2015 approach to TF's idea: Quinn would be a tax accountant who lost his passion for science after failing to create anti-gravity in 1994. Wade would be a tech journalist who has become utterly fed up with doing laptop and smartphone reviews. Rembrandt is running a coffee bar and moderately successful, but he only truly comes alive on open mic nights when he sings for an audience. The Professor is in disgrace after proposing some theory the scientific community was not prepared to accept and is now writing scientific study guides for desperate high school students. They are all failures in some way, some more than others.

Quinn and Wade have not been friends since that strange day in 1994 when Quinn kissed her and then denied it ever happened. The Professor and Quinn lost their relationship in 1994 as well, when Quinn mocked and insulted the Professor in full view of his class. Quinn has no memory of these events and never been able to explain himself.

When Amanda Mallory dies, Quinn goes to the house to clear out his things before selling the property. He visits his old basement for the first time in years, examining his abandoned anti-gravity project. And then he accidentally triggers the vortex. After visiting a parallel Earth and returning, Quinn finally realizes what happened in 1994; he opened a gateway to parallel worlds that must have attracted a sliding double who kissed Wade and insulted the Professor. He calls Wade and the Professor and pleads for them to visit; he explains what happened and shows them the vortex. Wade is eager to explore, the Professor reluctantly agrees, and when they step into the void, they accidentally draw in a passing Rembrandt as well and the adventure begins again.

Interestingly, when Matt Hutaff and I were discussing REBORN, Matt preferred the 'older doubles discover sliding for the first time' angle to a post-"Seer" approach. But Matt had a brilliant idea to make it so that these older doubles actually *are* the 1995 characters and just don't know it. It was a very clever idea that I shall decline to share here, but it might come to something. Someday.

I was *extremely* tempted by the reboot option, especially with Matt's little twist. But I ultimately decided against it.

Part of this was because I did not want to write Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo meeting for the first time. That struck me as the wrong note for an anniversary special. It seemed more appropriate to write a Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo who'd known each other for 20 years. And there was also one other reason that I need to withhold for a little while longer. ;-)

TLDR: The REBORN project is not a realistic revival; think of it as the comic book. There are ways to 'reboot' with the original cast.

I'm actually in the middle of writing about that for my blog. I'm not writing necessarily about the fine details of how the story should go, but what I'd like to see in a reboot. As intangirble said Sliders really is the original actors.

Generally, I think that when a show premieres, the actors have about 10 years where they still look to be relatively the same age as when they started. Tracy Torme conceived a story, "Slide Effects," to undo the David Peckinpah era in a single episode and get back to basics with Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. The story rewinds time to the Pilot, then reveals the scenario (and all the episodes from "The Exodus" onward) to be a Kromagg simulation. This story, however, depends on the actors still looking to be close to their 1995 ages. You could sort of get away with a 31-year-old Jerry pretending to be 20 again -- lengthen the hair, watch the angles -- and then, when Quinn wakes up, you could have the lines and age in his face come off as the texture of reality versus the softened look of the simulation.

"Slide Effects" was a viable one-episode solution to getting SLIDERS back on track until about 2005. It's a shame the show wasn't brought back before that point for at least a short six episode run. That was the simplest, most effective, most immediate way of creating a bridge from Seasons 3 - 5 back to the simplicity of the original concept.

After 2005, the options became more complicated.

The only viable route I can see to reviving the show today and with the original cast is having older doubles discover sliding at a later point in their lives. Possibly with some gimcrackery to subtly hint that these are the same people we met in 1995 -- it's just that, for some reason, their memories were altered or history was changed.

Oh wow. That would have been a massive 'f - you' and had the potential to get the show back on track. A shame, though I kinda feel like the damage had been done. I wonder if it could have taken off?

I like the idea of a well-animated movie. Maybe because I'm an animator by hobby using Windows default programs, but an animation reintroduction sounds like fun from my standpoint. Age is no issue with animated characters--- you'd just have to get the actors to do their voices. I'm just not sure what sort of a story such a thing would take on. If I were a better animator (and could progress beyond toony-looking versions of the Sliders in my artwork) I might attempt a few animations myself. But I am hardly proficient at animating humans.

Someone recently commented that the only difference between SLIDERS REBORN and "Slide Effects" is that REBORN will likely end up about 460 pages in total while "Slide Effects" is 46 pages and pretty much the same story.

It was rather harsh and hurtful, but it had the one virtue of being arguably true. ;-)

**

I find myself pondering -- how about imagining SLIDERS for a different market and demographic? What if it were a 22-minute Disney Channel sitcom aimed at pre-teens or an edgier MTV 22-minute dramedy aimed at the teen and college-age viewing audience? Would Quinn be 13 - 15? Maybe Wade's his college-aged computer science tutor?

Or how about imagining SLIDERS as a BBC production? I guess it would resemble the original SLIDERS in that, as with most BBC shows, constant cast turnover would mean that almost none of the Season 1 characters would still be in the show by the final season.

I don't know enough about Red Dwarf to comment, but I will say that UK television operates on a much lower economic scale than American television. The reason American TV can have 22 - 25 episode seasons is because of the huge amount of money available to pay and maintain a large writing staff with the resources to produce and film material relentlessly. The reason American TV can keep actors for seven years is because of huge sums paid to the actors to make them contractually obligated to stay with the show for multiple seasons.

In the UK, actors are only contracted for one run of episodes at a time unless it's a huge-scale, globally popular project like DOCTOR WHO and even then, the contracts are short compared to US television. Shows like HEX, BEING HUMAN, MISFITS and others only have the budget to shoot a small number of episodes a year. The money is not enough for an actor to live off of for the year, so they have to find other jobs in the meantime. Sometimes, a new season of the show is commissioned -- but the actor is not available as they've taken another job or they have no wish to return or they've lost interest -- and so the faces change.

The TV series, MISFITS, had a carefully chosen cast with the perfect blend of actors -- and one by one, they fell through the cracks of single-season contracts. The final episode of MISFITS had absolutely nobody who'd been in the first episode and each departed character left MISFITS adrift, confused and indistinct as a show with no idea of what it was about. HEX tried to play losing its lead character as shocking, but it was just awkward. BEING HUMAN had a fairly reasonable way of removing its lead actor that worked -- but then the supporting actors decided to leave with the lead actor and it was just inane, with one character dying offscreen between seasons and the other being abruptly killed off.

The system just doesn't work. I have no idea how they can fix it.

That is definitely something I considered when I brought up the suggestion. If they wanted it to be authentic and really good storywise they should probably pull in some of the original writers from season 1 thereabouts. Then they'd have a chance of keeping an authentically Sliders story and have some great animations with it!

There's also a pretty cool method of 3D animation in which they use actors and some sort of technology to build the 3D models and do the animations on. They can then change whatever they like on an actor-based model, such as hair, eyes, costume, etc. (Not to mention the models are nearly real-life looking!) It's a bit hard to explain since I don't quite get it myself, but it would be a cool way to do an animated Sliders feature.

No. Not Being Human. HUMANS. It is about Artificial Intelligence not the Supernatural.

As to Ringer.... I'd never heard of it til recently and I think this is the first UK Broadcast of it too.

On the issue of Gender Flipping, it could be Fun but beyond a few quirks the same their differing Gender should have made them rather different People.
Biochemistry, Neurochemistry, Social Conditioning, Attraction etc would influence them. This may be fun to explore but a Whole Series in that theme would be a gamble and large commitment.

Not sure what amc is?
Production Company? Abbreviation or Acronym?

But yeah, nothing visionary. Enjoyed it though.
It was on Channel 4 here in the UK.

There was the British Actress with Red Hair who was in the I.T. Crowd and the British Actor who played the Assassin in Utopia... A few other familiar faces too.

Disney - Could work well, I think. The cast would definitely be young.  It would probably be more character-driven and deal with human story-lines rather than be driven by the environment.

MTV College - More like "The Almanac Project" meets the typical mtv teen/college soap opera.  Definitely more female geared than what it was on Sci-Fi channel.

sliders bbc - I'd be like a cross between Primeval: New World and Dr. Who

Another thought on the Sliders rebooting thing:

I've noticed that, in my generation, Sliders isn't a very well-known thing. Nobody at my school, as far as I know, even knows what Sliders is. I think a revival of any sort, be it a continuation or a full-on reboot with different cast and everything, if done correctly, would spark interest into teens like myself, especially creating interest in the original show again.

I mean, you look at a thing like Doctor Who: It ended in 1989 and was kind of forgotten (at least in America. I don't know about the UK). Then in 2005 it got rebooted--- new Doctor, new companion, all that. It not only succeeded in attracting a new audience to the reboot, it also revived interest in the classic series, even among teenagers. A reboot of any sort would doubtlessly get new fans onboard and interested in both versions of Sliders. And of course, fans of the original Doctor Who enjoy the rebooted series as well.

If they do revive Sliders any time soon, I hope it will be a win-win situation with both reboot fans and well... us. XD

But for now, I'll have to settle with dragging my classmates into Sliders so I'll at least have someone at school to talk to about it who will know what I'm talking about. XD

I like this- I like it a lot! Short of rewinding time, it is the best option for getting the people and characters back and making fans more receptive to a do over down the line. I read it about a week ago and I can see a whole (limited run) series of episodes. Best of all, it is totally doable!

I know I have incurred your ire, but, if I may, I'd like to offer the following suggestions:

-No tricks. These are NOT the original sliders, but a new set we have never seen before. Instead, these sliders can visit worlds their counterparts did 20 years ago (not exclusively- just one or two- the rest would be new adventures). This allows diehards to revisit worlds and see how things have changed since the original sliders intervened. For example, revisit “Feminist World” and see how Arturo’s win and subsequent disappearance may have affected gender relations. It also reestablishes the moral dilemma of interfering in a culture you don’t fully understand, then leaving someone else to have to deal with the consequences. Also, this new group could be used as a vehicle to find out what happened to the originals. Maybe they could run into a double that IS an original!

-Have the professor work at North Shore Community College. The professor’s loss of position is the result of an illness that sapped his bank account and strength (the same illness “The Guardian” professor was diagnosed with except on this Earth it was caught in time and treatable). He couldn’t work and had to resign. When he was well enough, the politics of academics had changed so much that he had to seek a position that he felt was below him. He is head of the department- so he has some standing- but he is nowhere near where he should be. This allows him to still be righteously pompous.

-Quinn works at the college too and has a strained relationship with Arturo because of an unexplained incident in 1994. His passion for science did wain when he could not make anti-grave work and he gave it up when his mother got sick (maybe that’s too convenient). He rushed through his studies so he could get a job that would provide him with a steady income and time to take care of his mother. She got better, but Quinn was relatively happy where he was and too discouraged to revisit his old work. Quinn worked at the college first and was eager to help his old prof get a position (which Arturo took out of desperation) and repair the rift he still doesn’t understand.

-I don’t know about Rembrandt running a coffee bar- a night club maybe. Maybe he already knows Wade (as a regular to the bar/club) and she sings with him on occasion. They are casual friends. Of course a coffee bar is a WAY more authentic way for all four of them to meet than any other alternative (who doesn’t go to a coffee shop and Quinn and Arturo would not go to a night club).

-Your Wade is pitch perfect. Many English lit majors end up in jobs that have nothing to do with literature and this ties in perfectly with her affinity for computers. I would add that maybe she is divorced from Ryan. It’s not malicious, it’s just another layer to her distance from Quinn (who she nods at occasionally- but never speaks to- when they happen into the coffee shop at the same time) and her failure to be where she thought she’d be in life.

-When Quinn goes to the basement after his mother’s death, he sees a paper airplane, a Rubic’s cube, and a t-rex on the floor covered in dust. This means that our original Quinn was actually behind this Quinn, but this Quinn gave up and ours didn’t. Both of them were behind the smarter Quinn from the pilot who made a habit of messing with his double’s lives (this could be the world where the Cubs won three World Series). After he triggers the vortex and realizes what happened 20 years ago, he calls Wade and Arturo. They refuse to come over but agree to meet him at the coffee shop where he is forced to activate the vortex as proof and all four are sucked in. The coffee shop is empty somehow- insert contrivance here.

Little touches like Ryan, working at North Shore, references to the Cubs, and the three objects on the floor of the basement establishes continuity with the original story but allows for new stories. They won’t require new viewers to know the old story but will give old viewers a kick!

It would have to be a reboot.  Bring in Cleavant Derricks for the piilot.  Establish that Rembrandt brought the pathogen that drove the Kromaggs off the world decades ago, and have that story inspire professor Arturo's granddaughter Max to reinvent the technology.  By accident, she slides some other people with her and they're off exploring new worlds.

I like the idea of continuing the story right where “The Seer” left off and I’d love to see Cleavant Derricks again- it's a great way to link old and new. I do have a couple of issues though.

Arturo neglected his son- why would this son turn around and name his daughter after a neglectful father? Why would she go looking for a man her father no doubt bad mouthed (or probably never mentioned)?

Why would Rembrandt’s stories inspire anyone? In the original story, Quinn was encouraged by scientific curiosity and a promise of fun and adventure by someone (a version of himself) who said it was a joyride. It was all fresh and new and unexplored.

By comparison, Rembrandt’s stories are horrific. First, they got lost with little to no hope of returning home. Second, from his point of view, he has lost three friends (Quinn, Wade, and Colin) whose deaths were the direct result of sliding (Arturo’s death was the result of sliding but since he was terminal, he was going to die anyway). Rembrandt can tell people about the planet full of women or where he was a musical icon, but mostly he would have stories about how the Kromaggs rule over multiple Earths (a lesson they would know all too well); planets on the verge of destruction through resource mismanagement or through no fault of their own; and how not knowing the simplest thing like the correct currency can get you sent to jail.

I don’t really see anybody wanting to start up something like this if all they had to go on was Rembrandt’s experiences. The military might be interested but then it ends up being more like Stargate SG-1.

Having an Old Rembrandt preaching about the dangers of sliding to a young new crew of Sliders could work, telling them nothing good comes from that timer

Earlier, I said that in pre-REBORN discussions, Matt had come up with a way to do the "older doubles make their first slide" Pilot Redux -- but with a twist to indicate that these older doubles were in fact the original sliders we met in 1995.

Recent discussions have made it clear that the REBORN finale will be the end of the road for my SLIDERS writing -- so I think I feel okay with sharing the secret twist of how the 2015 Pilot characters would have been revealed to actually be the 1995 characters.

Matt was really not onboard with the in-continuity approach I proposed for REBORN. My first draft was poor and made a lousy case for treating SLIDERS as a unified supermyth.

In response, Matt offered a simpler story for a new Pilot -- set on Earth Prime where the Kromagg invasion never happened. At first, it seems like the Pilot Redux characters are older doubles of the originals discovering sliding for the first time.

However, the Pilot Redux ends with a revelation: these aren't older doubles at all. They are the original sliders -- they lost their memories of sliding because sliding was erased from history.

Matt left it up to me to sort out the execution of this twist. My thoughts on how to do this at one point went very surreal but have now become very grounded -- it's a new version of the Pilot, a new beginning for a new audience. I would use Temporal Flux's take, but updated for 2015.

Quinn Mallory is a tax accountant who lost his passion for science after failing to create anti-gravity. Wade Welles is a tech journalist who has lost her enthusiasm for writing gadget reviews after failing to get her journalism startup to succeed. Rembrandt Brown is a coffee house owner whose only joy is singing for an audience on open mic nights (a reference to the Java Jive and, I think, more in tune with Rembrandt's jazz-and-soul background than a nightclub). And Professor Arturo is a writer of high school science study guides who failed to keep his tenure after a scientific theory for which the world was not prepared.

Quinn is estranged from Wade and the Professor after a strange incident in 1994 that he has never been able to explain. When Amanda Mallory dies, Quinn goes home to clean out his stuff and sell the house. He encounters his anti-gravity machine but also finds something that wasn't there before -- videotapes he doesn't recognize. A video journal he never made, featuring a 1994-Quinn who did discover sliding. Quinn follows what he sees in the video journal and opens a vortex for the first time.

In terms of the plot, the video diaries would serve the role that Smarter-Quinn played in the Pilot: explaining sliding to our Quinn.

Throughout the Pilot Redux, the 2015 Quinn would be watching these videos to try to benefit from his double's experience. In addition to the 1994 video diaries, there'd also be video diaries from 2001 where 2001 Quinn apologizes for his lengthy absence. Subsequent diaries would have 2001 Quinn describing a terrible cataclysm on the horizon; an interdimensional war on all fronts and how all his friends are dead.

The final entry would be 2001 Quinn addressing 2015 Quinn -- saying that he has been forced to take drastic measures. He's found a way to retroactively alter reality so sliding never existed -- meaning everyone will live the lives they would without sliding. The only remnant of a multiverse with sliding will be these videotapes.

2001 Quinn says that he will take measures to prevent his amnesiac self from ever reconstructing the technology. But, he confesses -- he doesn't believe he can stop his future self from creating sliding -- his best hope is to slow the process down so that when he does rediscover sliding, he'll be older, wiser and more prepared for the responsibility.

So, the 2015 Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo would be validated as the 1995 characters, but they wouldn't remember the 1995 TV series outside of the video journals. It would just be background; the fact that this has happened before would be a subtle, low-key note in an otherwise new beginning.

Good? Bad? Too subtle? Too much? I don't know. I really liked Matt's idea, I really liked Temporal Flux's reboot idea. I decided not to do it, but now it's here. Someone else can use it.

Ireactions, the above works, but would work better if Rembrandt is the key to hiding everything and he purposely has found away to stay busy in Quinn s life so that every time Quinn is talking about antigravity machine etc. Rembrandt eyes lite up in terror and he suggests other scientific endeavors ....Rembrandt and the proffessor could be the key to distracting Quinn over the years up to the point where he does start sliding again ....instead of a 2001 Quinn hiding sliding it was a Rembrandt that somehow met up with the proffessor in 2001 after the kromagg cure of the finale and they had developed this magic machine to go back in time and stop Quinn from presuming sliding past the initial test the hid the tapes and all evidence leading to sliding from Quinn to keep our Earth from going through all of the awful events sliding had brought.

Rembrandt would be a tortured soul and the guy with the experience knowing that he eliminated both the good and the bad that sliding had accomplished. ..telling himself more bad than good happened over the 5 year journey...and now that the team is forced to slide again hoping they don't make the same mistakes trying to find home...or a safe supstitite for home.

I have to say, I am a little sad by how this thread has turned out.

I don't understand the obsession with Kromaggs and the invasion of Earth and the cliffhanger of "The Seer." Why do you want to extend stories you clearly didn't like? Why would you want a SLIDERS reboot meant for a new audience to deal with episodes this new audience likely hasn't seen?

In my view, the main challenges of a SLIDERS revival are coming up with cool parallel Earth ideas, one per episode and creating a show that will never run out of ideas and also using the more serialized approach of modern TV. What would a SLIDERS with ongoing character development and running plots be like? What would a SLIDERS with detailed character backstories revealed over multiple seasons be like? What would parallel Earths be like with modern day filming and special effects where digital cameras, background composition and CG augmentation be like?

What would the timer look like?

Don't let me prevent you from enjoying the show however you like, of course. :-)

I have to side with ireactions.

I want that sense of wonder and spirit of adventure that was so integral to Season 1&2.

New Earths, New Geographies, New Paradigms, New Cultures etc etc.

The big Questions..... What If. How. Why.

I too would like to see different variations of Timers. Not just Quinn's but those made by other Sliders with different Tech Levels and Design Priorities/Aesthetic Values.

Give me a Diesel Punk or Atom Punk Timer chock full of Vacuum Tubes made by a Soviet Research Bureau or Scientist.

A Sleek Star Trek type Timer by a Priveledged Utopian Visionary.

A Clock Punk or Steam Punk Timer that is mostly Backpack and Wand or a Troey on Wheels a H.G. Wells figure has to wear or drag behind him.

A Organic Symbiotic Timer could be very interesting. Bio Punk! Oh Yes!

The fact that you are typing all your posts on a Galaxy Ace is AMAZING.

I guess I misunderstood what you were looking for.  I was thinking about what the pilot for a new series would look like.  The natural thing for fans of the show to want would be to have a reunion show of the original sliders.  I could see a that concept being used as a springboard for a new version with new characters.  Maybe keep one of the old characters if the actor is willing.  If Tembi Locke would rather play Diana than do more State Farm commercials and TV walkons I'm not going to tell her no.

Like I said, people want closure.  They want to finish one story before they start another.  Never mind that the series we're talking about was notorious for not doing that.  That's why people are focused on following up on the cliffhanger that ended The Seer.

I like the idea of a Multiversal Bonsai Concave Cutter like Trance uses in.Andromeda to trim away a multiple branching of possible worlds.

But like Quinn says.... It wouldnt be permanent. The multiverse would continue branching even if not on the removed branches.

New ones will always form.

Also, even if Quinn achieved his Trim Job.... The Multiversal Nature of Branching would mean a World Divergence point where he did not make the Cut would come to be.

Effectively this would mean Quinn has created a Cluster of Worlds more distant and hard to travel to from the Cluster where his clipping did not occur.

Isolation. Not perfect isolation but good for his purposes.

I kind of see these two branches of possibilities like Tree Limbs growing away from each other.

I always thought that the Reason the Sliders ended up on so many similar worlds that were predominantly Historical divergences was due to this issue I describe eg: Closer Worlds are easier to slide to than worlds where Pangea never broke into the continents we know today. The further back the divergence the harder it is to reach. You may still get there because of the random part of sliding but statistically the odds of getting there at all versus a closer more familiar/recent divergent Earth are low.... Very low.

If it was a Govt or Corporation in an open and public capacity then you are looking at Probes, Drones, Automated Sample Collection and Recon etc.

If it is a Secret off the Books Operation then we might see probes initially but then they will probably throw People in as it can be cheaper/increased options.

Imagining something like Apature Science or the Umbrella Corporation with a Sliding R&D and Implementation program as refined or more so than Quinns own level is a pretty terrifying thought really.

If you ask me, organizations like that are much too cliche in television, and pretty far removed from what Sliders is supposed to be. It would work well for another series about parallel universes, but it doesn't really suit Sliders. To me, Sliders is much more fun when it runs on the accidental rather than the intentional, and creating organized groups of sliders would almost take away the fun of it.

Basically, it would definitely work in an entirely new series about dimension travel, but it's not the best fit for Sliders.

I'm not saying Sliders should be remade with a more prepared or equipped group, just that it's worth discussing the possibility.

As for equipment, it never made any sense to me that the group kept sliding empty handed.  Any normal person, once they accepted they would be sliding into unknown worlds for indeterminate periods of time on a regular basis, would pretty quickly acquire a backpack and fill it with clothes, food and water, small tools, spare parts for the timer, and other handy items.

On the Leather issue....

For Fashion? No. Wade is Right. Our Quinn would not even think of it.... But.... As a Practical choice I can see it. Not so much the thin leather junk on screen but something more akun to Biker Leathers.

Tough, Weather Resistant/Proof, Warm, Lots of Pockets, maybe even padded or armoured either as a Safety Feature for Bikers in case of accident or even in a home made kit bash manner ala Mad Max etc with Chainmail or Kevlar Plates etc sewn in.

Sports Bike Leathers are usually the most padded over the counter for Trousers and Jackets/Body Suits etc but they are crap for pockets.

Traditional Biker Gear though is less supple, tougher, has more pockets and can look more casual to blend in where as Sports Bike Leathers can look out of place away from the Bike.

You can get Chain Mail for Scuba Diving which could be interesting or useful perhaps.

Admittedly though this sort of gear is what you pick up over time as a veteran Slider as you are forced to learn about preparedness without lookin too conspicuous.

Well, at one point, me and Slider_Quinn21 and Informant and Chaser9 were going to do a reboot of SLIDERS. Not to be filmed; they were filling the former version of this thread with ideas and I offered to write scripts for them. I was thinking we could do 3 - 4 movie-length scripts per season and do 5 - 6 seasons of SLIDERS (2013). It never worked out. We only completed one script. but I really liked the approach -- basically, we looked at it like this: if Tracy Torme and Robert K. Weiss had all the advantages of modern showrunners and were making the show in 2015, what would it be like?

We didn't really change the show. SLIDERS (2013) was the same as the 1995 show in characters, concept, random sliding -- the only difference was the presentation. All four sliders now had detailed backstories and tangled relationships before they even started sliding, with these histories coming out in the course of their adventures. All the stories would have running plots that would carry from episode to episode with ongoing characterization.

I had a new backstory for Quinn: as an adolescent and a teenager, he was a bully. A lazy, selfish jerk, smart enough to get by without ever doing any work, cruel to a smart but socially awkward classmate named Brady Oaks, and Quinn thought Michael Mallory was a loser, slaving away in R&D engineering instead of making a killing and blackjack. Basically, Young!Quinn was an evil Jerry O'Connell. Then Michael died in a car accident.

At the funeral, Quinn was astonished to see collaborators and colleagues speak of how Michael inspired them, helped them, played critical roles in creating so many successful patents -- and later, it'd be revealed that Michael's slaving away at R&D had left Quinn and Amanda Mallory financially secure. In the weeks that followed, Quinn forgot about Brady, but Brady didn't forget him, and seeing Quinn weak, Brady attacked him in a stairwell one day. Quinn pushed away and Brady fell down a flight of stairs and was crippled for life.

By the end of it, Quinn's inheritance was lost to the lawsuits and medical bills and he and his mother barely kept the house. Quinn was ashamed; ashamed of how he'd misjudged his father, how his cruelty had destroyed what his father had left him and his mother -- and by age 20, Quinn was reformed but isolated and withdrawn, friendless and alone, disgusted by his past and no decent university would touch him. A genius enrolled at community college (with a few classes at Berkeley), Quinn desperately tried to create something to turn his life around and redeem himself.

So, the Quinn of this reboot is exactly like the 1995 Quinn in temperament and behaviour -- but I wanted to explain how someone as attractive as Jerry O'Connell could be so isolated. I had this idea that Young!Quinn wore leather jackets and hoodies and had styled short hair while Modern!Quinn would wear flannel and jeans -- his father's clothes -- and he'd neglect haircuts.

Slider_Quinn21 had this idea that Arturo was a widower who took on Wade as his assistant years ago, only for misplaced feelings to create an awkward situation with Wade fleeing the sciences for humanities. Wade would be Quinn's online friend, but they wouldn't meet in person until the Pilot. All this would create a lot of interpersonal confusion during sliding.

Chaser9 advised that Rembrandt in 2013 remain an R&B singer, but with the idea that one night before a performance, Rembrandt's girlfriend dumped him and he went onstage crying, creating an unforgettable performance that saw him dubbed the Crying Man. His attempt to shed this image destroyed his career.

I suggested that we copy the original SLIDERS' character progression but in reverse: Series 1 would have the sliders constantly arguing and sniping and fighting only to discover that they are all incredibly talented at sliding and enjoy each other's company, leading to a Series 2 where they are the best of friends. Informant suggested that Series 2 end with Rembrandt accidentally left behind while the sliders leave only to discover on the next world that Rembrandt didn't make it.

Series 3 would have the first movie about Quinn, Wade and Arturo shattered by Rembrandt's loss and choosing to stop sliding and focus on their dealing with a single parallel world over the course of a year. The second movie would be about Rembrandt doing the same -- and he would meet Maggie Beckett and Diana Davis, who would eventually help him reunite with his friends in the third movie of the series.

Series 4 would then have the sliders now equipped with a home base and a team and a larger organization, and having adventures in a more prepared and calculated form. Series 5 would feature an interdimensional war that would end with the sliders finally making it home only to find that home was as strange as any other parallel dimension, and the series would end with the sliders deciding that their home is now the multiverse.

Another approach I proposed was for each series to have a movie-length episode, then an episode composed entirely of mini-episode short films, then a movie-length episode to close things out.

It never happened for a variety of reasons I still don't fully understand but can guess at. It doesn't matter, though -- I'm pretty happy writing what I'm writing now.