Topic: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

A thread for random thoughts about mini-hamburgers and SLIDERS that don't need their own thread! I like White Castle.

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This is a thread for random SLIDERS-related thoughts (as opposed to random thoughts on other shows or personal status updates).

I was reviewing my upscale of "The Guardian," specifically the scenes where Quinn tells Quinn-2 to make his punches out and not to swing wildly. I found myself wondering: what did Michael Mallory lie to Quinn about exactly?

Also, when did Quinn learn to box? Did he always know how to fight? Or did he learn in the course of his sliding adventures?

Certainly, he was a sportsman as evidenced by the athletic gear in his bedroom, but in the first season of SLIDERS, his action moments have a flailing uncertainty and awkwardness. Is it that he boxed athletically but had never used it in an actual fight? In Season 2's "El Sid," Quinn demonstrates further physical awkwardness, bested by Sid at every turn -- but by "Greatfellas" and "As Time Goes By," Quinn has a firm, resolute confidence.

And young Quinn's dialogue in "The Guardian": he says that he asked his father to help him with his bullies at school. "He wouldn't help me! I asked him to come to school with me and get them off my back! He wouldn't! He said I had to deal with it. He said he'd help me. He didn't. He lied! I screamed at him! My dad died thinking I hated him."

Wait, what? Quinn told his father that the older boys at school were bullying him -- and his father refused go to school with him and told him to handle it, that he'd help him -- and then didn't.

This suggests that Michael Mallory promised to help and ignored him, except young Quinn's words are incoherent, first saying Michael refused to help, then saying Michael agreed to help but didn't follow up. I mean, Michael either said he'd help or didn't say he'd help, and if he didn't help, why did he lie about it?

Since the adult Quinn doesn't seem too bitter over his father, the only rationalization that comes to mind is that whatever help Michael provided was, in young Quinn's view, insufficient.

The confusion might be that there's an implication that young Quinn's been attacked before, but the actual scenes show that the physical assaults were after Michael's death, not before, so Michael wasn't abandoning his son to being punched in the face as much as allowing his son to be insulted and mocked.

There is a point you hit when you become an adult where you ideally become immune to such remarks. When I turned 28, it dawned on me finally that the only opinions I need to worry about are the opinions held by people who have control over or impact on my employment and income (and I always encourage everyone to be so great at their jobs that they are unfirable and impossible to lay off).

I've pointed this out to my niece whenever she worries about what people think when those people don't evaluate her job or academic performance and don't control her residence or finances. The lesson has not been absorbed, it has not taken hold, it may not take hold until between the ages of 27 - 34 if at all. Is that what the help Michael offered? Did Quinn find that help inadequate? Is that why he called Michael a liar who didn't help him?

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

You stop worrying what other people think about you when you realize how seldom they actually do.

My impression is that Michael Mallory said he would help, then died before he could.  Young Quinn feels abandoned by his suddenly missing father.  The bullies sense his weakness and scale up the abuse accordingly, as the Code of TV Bullies requires.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Quinn says he yelled at his father for not helping him and it was the last thing he ever said to his dad. Whatever Michael Mallory did or didn’t do that made Quinn angry was before his death.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

He's a kid.  Kids yell at their parents over nonsense all the time.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

On SLIDERS and masculinity:

When I decided to start my upscaling endeavour for SLIDERS, I started with "As Time Goes By." It's my favourite episode. It's highly imperfect (but what TV isn't?). Wade gets nothing to do and Daelin is a cipher on paper. But I watched this episode at age 11 and I saw in Quinn Mallory everything that a man could be and should be.

The fight with Dennis-2 stands out most: Quinn pretends to be retreating from a physical confrontation, then punches him in the face. Most Hollywood action heroes would find this cowardly, but Quinn will use whatever measures he has to protect the vulnerable and he doesn't care if that makes him look like less of a man which paradoxically is exactly what a man should be.

Then there's Quinn's tenderness with Daelin-1 earlier. Quinn has feelings for her. She is engaged to be married. But Quinn still wants to help her and sees that he needs her help to save Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. Professor Arturo remarks at one point of a missing Quinn, "The boy is as slippery as an eel. He is undoubtedly in the lap of luxury as we speak," and at 11, I longed for my mother and father to think as well of me.

Quinn's regard for women is also educational. He regards Daelin with gentleness, not demanding anything of her and not threatened by her obligations to her fiance and later Daelin-2's daughter. He accepts both with grace and doesn't let that stop him from being a friend and an ally; he cares about her. Most interestingly, Daelin is Quinn's dream girl. What does Quinn Mallory want from a potential romantic partner?

Daelin is not a scientist or a genius like Logan; she is not a glamourous figure like June from "Greatfellas" or Kyra in "Slither," she is not a male gaze designed figure like Maggie. She's not even a good dresser, wearing the same flannel and jeans as Quinn and it looks like that's actually Jerry O'Connell's costume.

Daelin is a working class, blue collar labourer who has a tendency to "bring home strays" whether it's animals or injured men. She is a grounded, normal person who works hard to support her family. Quinn's ideal partner is just a nice, normal person defined by Brooke Langton infusing the character with an open gentleness and a quiet resolve to do her jobs and choke down grief and resentment to earn a living.

But more importantly for "As Time Goes By," Quinn is flawed. Quinn's fixation on Daelin causes him to tamper with cause and effect recklessly and desperately. Quinn almost dooms an entire dimension. Quinn's massive intellect means his solutions are brilliant, but his mistakes are corrrespondingly larger as well. A man should be capable. A man should be smart. And a man should be able to make mistakes, to acknowledge them, to face them and then learn from them.

It disappoints me to watch this episode and know that I have failed to live up to what this hour of TV presented to me when I was 11. In college, I wouldn't admit to mistakes and was needy and insecure with women. In grad school, I wouldn't learn from my errors. It took some serious blows to my ego after my graduate degree to finally take me back to where "As Time Goes By" had brought me in the first place.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Rewatching "The King is Back" and... it's so odd that Clinton Derricks Carroll is obviously not identical to Cleavant. Some fans have noted that there was no strict rule that doubles were all identical and surely genetic variations and fitness and health would alter appearances. But this explanation doesn't hold true in the episode: Sabrina Lloyd has clearly been directed to play Wade as though she's astonished by how Rembrandt-2 looks just like Rembrandt; she stares at his face searching for differences -- almost as though she expected Clinton's position in the shot to be obscured by inserts of Cleavant in editing and performed accordingly.

The script is written to present both Rembrandts as identical and indistinguishable. I can only think that Torme either wasn't on set when his script was filmed and that by the time production had filmed the scenes with Clinton playing Rembrandt-2 without filming Cleavant playing the same scenes, it was too late to fix it.

In Season 2's "Greatfellas," all of Rembrandt-2's scenes are filmed twice, once with Clinton and once with Cleavant, both alternating the roles, both standing at careful angles so that their physical discrepancies don't stand out, and with the shots intermixed with Cleavant always playing Rembrandt or Rembrandt-2 when in full profile.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

SLIDERS had so much to teach. Why didn't I learn it?

There's a moment in "The King is Back" where Rembrandt is upset that Rembrandt-2 upstaged him. Arturo points out that Rembrandt-2 "did all the work" to earn his fame and fortune which is his by right. There's also the fact that Rembrandt is shown to be a skillful but solemn stage performer. In contrast, Rembrandt-2 is joyful, hyperenthused and has the energy to win over a crowd that our Rembrandt has either lost or never had because he never put in "the work." SLIDERS is so full of positive life lessons.

And yet, despite having viewed them and appreciated them as a young boy from age 10 onwards, it is clear to me that my life until age 29 did not reflect these lessons. I have had to ask myself why.

In my teens and twenties, when facing upset people, I would escalate instead of de-escalating -- despite the fact that "The Guardian" offers a clear instruction manual of how to do the latter.

QUINN-2: "He wouldn't help me! I asked him to come to school with me and get them off my back! He wouldn't! He said I had to deal with it. He said he'd help me. He didn't. He lied!"

The boy collapses to the floor in grief. The adult Quinn kneels to face his younger double, a kind hand held out but stopped at a distance from young Quinn, giving him space and control.

QUINN-2: "I screamed at him! I told him I hated him. My dad died thinking I hated him."

QUINN: "No. He knew how much you loved him.”

Quinn puts his hand on the boy's shoulder. His voice is calm and resolute. His presence is an anchor of stability and certainty.

QUINN: "And he loved you with all his heart. Now, what happened to your father was an accident. It wasn't your mother's fault. And it wasn't yours. Deep down, you might even blame him for leaving you. And that's what hurts most of all -- so you've got to fight those feelings."

My conclusion is that the direction of SLIDERS after "The Guardian" spiraled so badly that it obliterated what the series had to offer me in my formative years. Instead of appreciating Wade's practicality in "The Weaker Sex" when she thinks to buy groceries for her friends after getting hired, I thought of her severed head in a fishtank.

Instead of noting Arturo's respect for Rembrandt-2's hard work in "The King is Back," I recalled Arturo's mumbled final words. Instead of thinking of Quinn's decency and calm, I remembered Jerry O'Connell's sneering, smirking half-assery throughout Seasons 3 - 4.

And instead of learning from Rembrandt's warmth and charm, I thought of how horrific it must have been to be kidnapped into the interdimension and to lose everyone and everything.

The values SLIDERS originally offered -- of literacy, knowledge, teamwork, friendship, humour and inventive improvisation to triumph over all odds -- that wasn't how I remembered SLIDERS. Instead, the way I remembered the show is, oddly, captured in Annie Fish's review of "The Dying Fields" as they wrote their summary of Quinn's reaction to his new Humagg friend being knifed to death.

Annie Fish wrote:

The sliders do, in fact, succeed. They open Kyra’s eyes and show her that it’s more important and worthwhile to pay attention to her Human side. Which is when Kryoptus stabs Kyra in the gut, killing her almost instantly. Quinn watches, emotionless, as all they tried to do slips away with her lifeblood. Then he slides. The show doesn’t even hang on the moment.

You can see the finality on Quinn’s face— change is worthless. It doesn’t exist. Life is cruel, and unusual, and completely unfair. So why bother? Why bother feeling? Why bother trying— why bother with anything?

You shouldn’t. And this is what SLIDERS is really about. It’s the personification of cynicism. Of nihilism. Of existential horror taken to such a complete extreme as to become completely meaningless.

Or, it’s nothing more than yet another inane episode of a shitty television show no one watches anymore.
https://earthprime.com/roulette/i-feel- … ing-fields

And that's what I took out of the show with each cast member leaving, with each asinine turn of plot, with each running arc abandoned. I think that's how I went into the world and even though I didn't truly subscribe to that, I carried it with me until about 2015.

When writing SLIDERS REBORN in 2015, poor Transmodiar had to go through my outlines and asked me with some bleakness why my supposedly 'back to basics' approach was cluttered with facing down Season 3 - 5 story elements, why it was so important for the sliders to use MACGYVER style tactics to fight Season 3 monsters. "What are you trying to accomplish?" he asked me, and I eventually settled on SLIDERS REBORN as the equivalent of a fan-oriented media tie (like the X-FILES comics of 2013 and the William Shatner STAR TREK novels).

Slider_Quinn21, in reviewing the material, seized upon another questionable area: SLIDERS REBORN declares that in 2001, Quinn reset reality to remove the Kromaggs and sliding from history, recreating an unharmed home Earth to which he could return Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. However, this damaged the multiverse, limiting all branching points to the first day of sliding in 1994/1995, which means every Earth in this curtailed multiverse has the same environmental damage and will soon be unable to support human life.

Transmodiar and Slider_Quinn21 both did not buy this, saying that the Earth wasn't doomed in 1994 - 1995. I don't... entirely buy it myself. Yet, I insisted on it, and I think I now see why: me saying that the multiverse is innately and fundamentally damaged by the events of Seasons 3 - 5 and the offscreen Season 6 -- that  is actually me saying that I have been innately and fundamentally damaged by those same events.

The multiverse of SLIDERS REBORN -- like my mind -- has been traumatized by the death of Professor Arturo, the sexual assault of Wade Welles, the disappearance of Quinn Mallory, and the unbearable burdens left for Rembrandt Brown to shoulder.

Interestingly, the cancellation of SLIDERS is not presented in SLIDERS REBORN as another mentally/cosmically cataclysmic event, but as a moment of freedom and opportunity for Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo to regain control of the narrative and start repairing the damage.

Transmodiar described me as having "mainlined the insanity of Seasons 3 - 5" and says that I "went into a fugue writing state of epic proportions and committed to the insanity" and he couldn't understand why. "What are you trying to accomplish?"

To offer a long-delayed but finally accurate answer: it's become clear that SLIDERS REBORN is unknowingly but ultimately a story about confronting trauma, first by restoring the original sliders and their core values, then having them face down each specific instance of trauma on my behalf.

I don't believe you can erase trauma; you learn to live with it and transmute it. This is probably why, after re-establishing Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo as THE sliders, Maggie Beckett rejoins the team. It's why Mallory is presented in Quinn's dreamscape as a friend. It's why Diana Davis is hired by Sliders Incorporated. And it's why they ultimately have to fight the Season 3 monsters whose reappearances terrify Rembrandt into a frightened paralysis until Arturo slaps him and Rembrandt snaps out of it.

It's also why the sliders don't kill any of the Season 3 monsters and simply immobilize them.

And this is probably why it was only in 2015 when SLIDERS REBORN went live on EarthPrime.com that I finally started functioning the way a young man should after absorbing Seasons 1 - 2 of SLIDERS.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

"Obsession" offers a pretty clear guide for men on consent and respect for boundaries with women. Derek Bond claims to love Wade, but his approach is to invade her privacy without asking first. He isolates her from her friends. "She had to kill herself to get away from you," Quinn snarls at Derek as he cradles Wade's supposedly-dead but sedated body, "and you call that love!?"

And yet, I somehow lost this lesson and only got it back at the end of my twenties. I didn't understand how that happened, but now, I know why: it's because SLIDERS undermined its own respect for women by introducing Kari Wuhrer as Maggie Beckett, an actress shaped by men for the male gaze playing a character designed for the edification of men. Maggie is designed as something that a man would like to own rather than a person in her own right. SLIDERS further presents women as objects to be used and mutilated through Wade being sent to an offscreen rape camp and then being mutilated into a severed head in a computer.

As a result, I forgot about "Obsession," I forgot what it had to offer in how to respect the privacy and boundaries of women. I didn't believe in what the latter episodes professed, but I also had trouble rejecting what they had to say as untrue or wrong because those were the terms on which the show continued and concluded.

I got it back, mostly by giving a 42 year old Quinn in SLIDERS REBORN a teenaged daughter and forcing myself to study Wade Welles until I finally understood her as a figure of spiritual beliefs but also relentless practicality. And I know I got it back because most of my friendships today are platonic friendships with women. But it really speaks to how I felt for a very long time that SLIDERS was something that was ripped out of my life and left a hole in me where there should have been morality and consideration for the autonomy of others.

I sometimes think I would be such a different person if Torme had stayed on SLIDERS, if it had stayed in Vancouver -- but the truth is I'd probably be who I am now, I'd have just gotten here earlier.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

I believe in SLIDERS. I believe in the values that Seasons 1 - 2 espouse and uphold -- and interestingly, some of what's professed in the Pilot and "Prince of Wails" are hurriedly questioned later in the season. The Pilot and "Prince of Wails" both imply that 1994 America is a utopia and any alternate path of history is a deviation to be corrected, something "The Weaker Sex," "Eggheads" and "Luck of the Draw" are quick to counter. However, stepping back from the social commentary, the Pilot has some very meaningful things to say about fear and failure. Rembrandt is terrified. By any conventional standard, Rembrandt Brown is in a horror movie: he is kidnapped and seemingly abandoned in a fascist dystopia. He's terrified and alone. Helpless and afraid.

Cleavant Derricks plays it all for laughs. There's something truly brilliant about how Derricks takes what is traumatic and transmutes it into comedy, shrieking at Quinn that Quinn will have to explain to the insurance company why Rembrandt's car is in snowbank in a parallel Earth. "They're never going to buy that when I put in my claim!" Derricks exclaims with grief and outrage that never fails to make me smile. When the horrific is made humourous, it can be confronted, addressed and resolved. And Cleavant quickly adds depth to the character, gently singing Amazing Grace over the bodies of those who gave their lives to save him and so many others, putting love and respect and gratitude into every note, setting aside the egotism and insecurity he had to honour others.

There's also something special about how Commander Wade Welles dies -- a loss that the Revolution declared would mean the end of their movement -- only for the sliders to discover that the Revolution is willing to carry on. Annie Fish snarked about this mercilessly, declaring that the rebels didn't learn anything from this episode aside from the certainty that they could probably blow up a guard tower now and then; Fish joked that the rebels probably all died within a week of the sliders' departure. Fish has been marred and damaged by the later seasons presenting SLIDERS as the "personification of cynicism. Of nihilism. Of existential horror taken to such a complete extreme as to become completely meaningless."

Fish is mistaken. In the original draft of the Pilot, Commander Wade Welles lived. But in her death, we see that a revolution is not a single person. A revolution is an idea, a belief that things can be different if people put in the work and strain and strive to make it happen, a vision that the sliders in their visit made plausible and real. The rebels failed to save their Wade, but failure is something every single person and movement will experience. Every person alive has felt as scared as Rembrandt over something and has lost as badly as the rebels -- it's in these moments that SLIDERS suggests we can find our most resolute and gracious selves.

This belief is undermined in "Genesis" when the sliders abandon their home Earth to an invasion -- yet, even this "cynicism" and "nihilism" that Fish observes is actually undermined immediately and instantly in the following episode when the sliders easily topple the fascist dictatorship of "Prophets and Loss" within 44 minutes of screentime, a spark of the original SLIDERS showing through the wreckage.

I lost this part of SLIDERS for a long time during that period where I felt severed from the show and unable to replace it and haunted by the fallout of "Genesis." When I failed to get a job offer, I would feel depressed and stop applying. When I got stuck writing a story, I would stop writing. When a friendship failed, I would stop trying to find new ones. I lost the ability to move forward from failure even though the Pilot offered a clear and simple example of how to do exactly that. I lost my way.

And I think this is why, in SLIDERS REBORN, Quinn in 2015 reveals that the multiverse is damaged, has been for 14 years, and Quinn hasn't been able to fix it. Like me, Quinn was hurt and damaged by his defeats and deeply depressed over everything from 2000 - 2015. Unlike me, Quinn Mallory doesn't quit. He keeps trying, he keeps failing, he fails repeatedly until he finally stumbles across something that works. This is the path of any revolution that succeeds.

There's a scene in the last REBORN script where the Season 3 monsters descend upon San Francisco. Rembrandt emits a high pitched squeal of fright and points a shaking finger at the zombie hordes and freezes. The Professor slaps him. Rembrandt snaps out of it and gets to work saving people. Slider_Quinn21 worked with me on this scene, elaborating on how to describe Cleavant's comical facial expressions from Season 1, the "Rembrandt face," as Slider_Quinn21 put it.

Rembrandt panicked and paralyzed at the sight of otherworldy monsters only to shift into his seen-it-all persona from Season 5 is, I hope, Rembrandt's arc in a nutshell -- and an effort to recover what was lost.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Should anyone ever depend on an American television show for moral instruction? I don't know. It could be argued that I should have found something else. Every lesson learned from SLIDERS up to age 11 was a lesson lost by age 14 with Seasons 3 - 5.

My parents and I were not on civil speaking terms in my childhood, I had to work with what I had at age 10 and what I had to hand was SLIDERS.

In "Gillian of the Spirits," a double of Quinn Mallory's revered and beloved father, Michael, is revealed to be something else. He is an antagonist, a man who has been forced to act on behalf of greedy, manipulative figures who have armed him with a gun and directed him against innocent people, fueling him with desperation and self-preservation.

In the face of Michael's betrayal, Professor Arturo triggers the vortex and invites Michael to join the sliders. "A man shouldn't live unappreciated in his world," says the Professor, himself an unappreciated genius. The Professor empathizes with the man holding a gun to his chest, offering him a chance.

Quinn appears and appeals to his father's decency and better nature, urging him to lower his weapon. And before leaving, Quinn forgives his father, telling Gillian to pass on the message that Michael Mallory's son will always love him.

SLIDERS declares that it is a capital mistake to put anyone on a pedestal, an error to think that Michael Mallory in this world or any other would be a perfect and flawless specimen of humanity. Quinn himself notes in "Luck of the Draw": "You don't get something for NOTHING." That's not cynicism; that's understanding that people act in their own best interests for their own gains -- and to think otherwise is foolish.

"Gillian of the Spirits" doesn't declare that everyone is innately self-serving or inherently kind. It simply states that people have the capacity for good or evil. Malevolence is never beyond anyone; the Bayside Power bureaucrats are evil and manipulative. But redemption is never unattainable; it is within reach in every moment of choice such as when Michael is moved by the sight of his dead son and lowering his weapon. In addition, rather than try to have Michael act against his own goals, Arturo suggests that they can have mutual goals if Michael joins the sliders.

I understood this after watching "Gillian of the Spirits" at age 11 -- but then my grasp of human nature got shakier and shakier with each episode of Seasons 3 - 5. Season 4 declared Quinn was a hero even as he became callous and indifferent to the suffering of others, abandoned Wade in "Mother and Child," and then abandoned his home Earth and Rembrandt in "Revelations." Villains were villainous for the sake of being so. The rock star vampires in "Stoker," the Season 4 Kromaggs, the evil doctor in "Map of the Mind" -- they were antagonists and therefore evil despite lacking motives or meaningful gains.

I tried to distance myself from the show as this happened, but it's clear that it affected me. In my late teens and twenties, I lost my confidence in human nature; I became convinced that anyone and everyone would always exploit any vulnerability or opportunity to harm others.

Every person who hurt my feelings through any slights large or small was David Peckinpah -- a deranged, malevolent force turning my life into a horror movie for reasons unknowable and unfathomable. They were Colonel Rickman, a diseased slasher killer wandering into my life. They were the Season 4 Kromagg space Nazis, incompetent fascist poseurs. They were the arcade manager from "A Thousand Deaths."

This is undoubtedly the cause of my numerous social difficulties in my twenties.

When David Peckinpah overdosed and his heart gave out from drug abuse, SLIDERS fans rejoiced. I was largely silent, but one of Peckinpah's sons posted on the IMDB forums, describing his father's two decades of sobriety -- until 1994 when Peckinpah's 16 year old son Garrett died suddenly from meningitis. In his grief, Peckinpah fell back into his addiction, lost the ability to run a TV show, and it killed him in the end.

It was strange: Temporal Flux had told me about this painful chapter in Peckinpah's history, but it never truly registered until years later, when I was rewatching "Murder Most Foul," a splendid episode that demonstrates Peckinpah's clear talent as a writer and producer as well as his joyful obsession with historical re-enactment -- gifts that he unfortunately didn't bring to any episode of SLIDERS that he didn't write himself.

At the end of "Murder Most Foul," Quinn invites a little boy, Trevor, to join the sliders, but cautions that there is no way to bring Trevor home. Trevor declines, deciding to enjoy his childhood fully, but promises to someday build his own sliding machine and find the sliders.

An autobiography can lie. But fiction can't; what a writer creates reveals himself fully whether he wants it to or not. Trevor was named after one of Peckinpah's children, and it's obvious that Trevor's promise to find the sliders again someday voices Peckinpah's own longing to be reunited with the son he lost.

Transmodiar could not understand why SLIDERS REBORN insisted on bringing in the Season 3 monsters for the final script when I have never expressed anything but disdain for the Season 3 monsters. When I told him that "Regenesis" would be "warmly dedicated to David Ernest Peckinpah, screenwriter, director, producer and loving father, husband and family man," Transmodiar crowed, "As well it should! Because it celebrates all the wrong he brought to the show!"

But... I felt that Slider_Quinn21 understood it. Or at least acted like he did out of empathy and gentleness. Slider_Quinn21 worked with me so that the sequences of Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo fighting the dragon with aspirin and the dinosaur with hash butter and the underground predators with UV lights and the vampires with garlic puree were funny.

Slider_Quinn21 refined some of Rembrandt's quips and made sure that the sliders paid for all the items they took from the Doppler Superstore. Slider_Quinn21 also observed that the monster fighting sequences were far more interesting than Quinn and Quinn-2 firing sand and water through vortexes at each other, and he was very supportive of the conclusion of "Regenesis" where Quinn and Quinn-2 set aside their differences and work together.

At the time, I wanted the visual of the Season 1 - 2 team facing the Season 3 horrors with humour and levity -- but I see now that it was an effort to go back to "Gillian of the Spirits." People aren't against you; they are for themselves, but tragedy can sometimes make them think that poisoning themselves to numb their pain is their best route when it's not.

As Slider_Quinn21 would have to remind me in the course of my writing: people are not simply good or evil; they are capable of either and their ideas in themselves -- like doing horror movies with SLIDERS -- are not inherently good or bad until put into practice either with wit, charm, love and passion or grief, misery, indifference and contempt.

It's interesting that after "Murder Most Foul," David Peckinpah withdraws into monster movies rather than engaging in his gift for writing stories about older people interacting with younger people like Quinn and Trevor -- which is a talent Peckinpah shared with Tracy Torme given the excellence of "The Guardian." The age difference with Quinn and Wade being younger than Rembrandt and Arturo would have been perfect for Peckinpah's talents.

But never again would Peckinpah put his feelings about his children and his son into his writing; "Murder Most Foul" clearly struck too close to home; I wouldn't be surprised if "Trevor" had originally been "Garrett" only for Peckinpah to pull back. He didn't want to reveal his agony further; he withdrew from it; he tried to cauterize it with amphetamines and opiates. He fell into what a life of Annie Fish calls "cynicism. Of nihilism. Of existential horror taken to such a complete extreme as to become completely meaningless."

And I think that's why I unconsciously wrote SLIDERS REBORN's final script the way I did; to finish what Peckinpah started in "Murder Most Foul" but chose not to finish. "Regenesis" reveals that Dennis MacMillan didn't "drop out of graduate school to join a band"; he was caught stealing from a pharmacy which he did to try to settle his father's gambling debts, he failed and his father was killed.

"Regenesis" reunites Dennis with his restored father in the rebuilt multiverse and Quinn makes it happen, Quinn himself longing to be reunited with Michael Mallory. This is clearly an unintended yet obvious echo of "Murder Most Foul." At one point, Quinn asks his 15 year old daughter Laurel to trust him and Laurel snaps, "Trust you? I barely know you!" pointing out that they only learned of each other's existence 18 months previous and that they won't know if Quinn has what it takes to be a dad until Laurel is in her 30s -- another obvious reference to Peckinpah's misery over losing the time he should have had with Garrett.

These are the stories that Peckinpah should have written for SLIDERS. Not monster movies, not space invasions -- he should have written stories about sliding providing the opportunity to revisit tragedy and loss, not necessarily to erase them, but to address and recover from them. I see now that I wished to write the stories he should have for himself.

Because if you can forgive David Peckinpah for SLIDERS, you might be able to forgive anyone for anything and you might even be able to forgive yourself.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Temporal Flux shared a guide to writing SLIDERS stories awhile ago.
http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=10285#p10285

I've engaged with it and studied it and thought hard on it -- and I've come to the conclusion that I can't do it. It's just not how I think. I don't think of ideas the way Temporal Flux does. When I think of SLIDERS, I think of *the* sliders. Recently, someone asked me for help with some SLIDERS writing and my main advice was: have something to say about the sliders or SLIDERS that has never been said before. Don't just reiterate what we already know. Reveal something about SLIDERS. I don't mean reveal that Professor Arturo killed Michael Mallory in a hit and run. I mean reveal an insight or an idea about SLIDERS.

I think that Professor Arturo was well on his way to becoming a villain; that he was jealous, bitter, angry and dis-spirited and was probably going to steal his students' research to present it as his own or go work for a foreign power to build nuclear weapons or do something horrific to satisfy his own ego or he was going to start coming into work drunk and get in a car accident while under the influence -- but sliding saved him. It forced him to be the leader and father figure to a wayward adult man and two college kids, it demanded that he get his act together and drew out the best in him.

I think Rembrandt is suffering from severe trauma, anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder -- none of which manifests outwardly because he is so ridiculously fond of Quinn, Wade and Arturo that all these psychological issues just get frozen in his psyche -- but all of which will emerge and manifest when Quinn, Wade and Arturo aren't around. I have no idea how it didn't happen in Seasons 3 - 5, and I cannot explain it except to say I consider Seasons 3 - 5 a corrupted timeline.

I think that Quinn knew all along that Wade was crushing on him and for Reasons (repression, self-loathing, wanting to keep his sliding research secret, a sense of being unable to relate to people after Daelin) -- Quinn pretended to be unaware. I think that without sliding, Wade would have come to view as Quinn being cruelly indifferent to her feelings and would have come to despise him -- and that without sliding, Quinn and Wade wouldn't even be friends anymore. I also think that "Last Days" making Wade realize Quinn was aware of her crush all along had an effect -- one where she was so troubled by his avoidance and withdrawal that she herself took a step back to figure out who this athletic nerd really is.

I think that Wade is bisexual and that Diana Davis is gay. There is no onscreen evidence for the former, some indication for the latter.

I think that Kromaggs are not actually individuals. I believe that Kromaggs are actually a single hive mind spread out across multiple clone bodies and that the entire Dynasty is just one individual mapped to multiple forms. I also believe that the Season 4 Kromaggs are an alternate version from a corrupted timeline or a corrupted memory experienced by Quinn in a dream state.

I think that Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo have been alive and well since 2000 and made it home by 2001 after erasing the Kromaggs from existence.

I think that in 2015, Quinn Mallory met Peter Parker from the 616 Marvel Comics Universe and that they have a monthly podcast where they discuss dealing with all the weird things they've both encountered (clones, dragons, alien invasions, dinosaur attacks, breeder parasites, killer robots, giant slugs, becoming unstuck in time, becoming merged with another person as a secondary consciousness, getting married in a parallel timeline that was erased, fighting giant beetles, fighting twisters, befriending living intelligent flames, becoming a zombie... )

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

I was eating dinner with my favourite actress over Zoom and I shared with her my theory of why my moral compass crumbled in my youth and wasn't re-assembled until later. "A TV show might explain SOME of that," she told me, "but there was probably a lot of other stuff going on as well."

Nonsense! Also, as we were talking, it occurred to me why, even today, I find the Quinn Mallory character as fascinating as I did in 1995. I was watching the upscale in progress of "The Young and the Relentless" which has a ridiculous scene where Kyle Beck holds the timer hostage from Quinn and Quinn, despite being Jerry O'Connell, doesn't throw Kyle through a wall and take the timer back. The character is occasionally mismatched to the actor and it's interesting because Quinn Mallory is an introvert -- a person consumed with the interiority of his world, with his internal thoughts and calculations -- but he is played by Jerry O'Connell and Jerry O'Connell is an extrovert, a person mostly consumed with exterior action and behaviours.

One of my backburner projects has been to build a website for some of my fanfic and -- part of the problem has been graphics. I occasionally take a break from real work to look for photos of a present day Jerry O'Connell to try to capture who Quinn would be at age 47 -- and it's not easy.

Jerry and Quinn have the same face. But Jerry's in-character expressions, mannerisms, body language and overall demeanor are totally different from his real life persona. When Jerry smiles, he shows all his teeth. His body language is wide, his posture is open.

It is shockingly difficult to find a photo of Jerry O'Connell smiling like Quinn Mallory.

Quinn Mallory's smile is subtle and reserved. He smiles because he's amused by some point he's observed in a highly internal fashion. His posture is guarded and withdrawn, he is quiet and secretive.

And onscreen, there's an interesting effect with an extroverted actor playing an introverted character. When performed correctly, Quinn is low-key and cautious, but there are flashes of Jerry's real world personality. It plays as though Quinn is fundamentally an introvert -- but he has the capacity for abrupt and sudden physical action or external behaviours -- only after internally calculating and considering it.

O'Connell, when in character as Quinn, restrains his physicality until specific moments where he unlocks it -- such as in "Prince of Wails" when he abruptly declares that Arturo is the sliders' prisoner or in "As Time Goes By" when he pretends to cower before Dennis but then swings hard. O'Connell being at odds with his character and controlling his true self except when it's opportune not to -- it actually emphasizes how Quinn is a thinker.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

There was always a SLIDERS REBORN story that I wanted to do involving the Season 4 Kromaggs that I never got around to doing. REBORN is set in 2015 and indicates that during the 15 year time gap, Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo were restored along with Earth Prime and the Kromaggs were erased from existence. Part 1 picks up from "The Seer" which has Rembrandt emerging from his vortex to find Quinn, Wade and Arturo waiting for him, miraculously restored on the fourth and final page of this script. Part 2 is set 15 years later, and presents itself as Season 20 of SLIDERS with Seasons 6 - 19 having happened 'offscreen.'

I worked out a rough outline for what happened in 2000 - 2001 that allowed the sliders to restore their home Earth -- and one of those stories was where the restored original sliders land on an Earth that seems to be some sort of Season 4 Kromagg temple. Quinn and Wade don't understand why the Kromaggs look different; Rembrandt can't explain. They are further shocked to see the Kromaggs at an eye eating ceremony where the 'eyes' turn out to be candy and the Kromaggs remove their prosthetics and wipe off the makeup and reveal themselves to be humans with their leader being Logan St. Clair.

Rembrandt realizes: the Kromaggs he met in Season 4 were all humans from Logan's company, Prototronics, continuing their mission to stripmine other parallel Earths for natural resources and adopting what they thought was an urban legend of Kromaggs, using holograms and light shows and illusions and hypnosis to trick populations into thinking themselves invaded and making them surrender. The entire Quinn from Kromagg Prime backstory and the "Genesis" invasion and the Colin clone is revealed to be a mindgame from Logan to torment her old enemies; she actually has an entire warehouse full of Colin clones, all with sleeper programming.

When Rembrandt notes that some of the Kromaggs he'd met like Kolitar and Kromanus seemed committed to the roles, Logan admits that some of her employees went "full method" and she also didn't love the Nazi costuming, but they'd just raided a Nazi world and there were a lot of readily available uniforms in all sizes.

The sliders, in attempting to escape the Prototronics headquarters, accidentally trigger a beacon that summons the real Kromaggs to this world and the Dynasty is none too pleased that Prototronics tried to steal their brand and misrepresent them in such a human way. They attack just as the sliders slide out.

I always thought I'd write this, but I ultimately didn't -- partially because I wasn't sure I could convince even the most credulous reader with the massive retcon that the S4 Kromaggs were human impostors -- but also because I wasn't that interested in writing Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo in 2000. I wanted to write them in 2015 at the actors' 2015 ages. But I've given this idea over to some present-day SLIDERS story writers who want to do their own Season 6 as a rite of passage and encouraged them to use it if they want any of it.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

More essays from Annie Fish, who is writing a SLIDERS book!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/58482053

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Trigger Warning: The following story / essay content addresses the subject of sexual assault and Wade in Seasons 4 - 5.







This is a story outline for fully addressing Wade's captivity and sexual assault in Season 4 in a fanfic. I unfortunately don't have time to write a full script. I also don't want to write stories about sexual assault, but this isn't my story. It's David Peckinpah's story. He wrote a story where Wade Welles is raped. He made no effort to address the violation and trauma and recovery of this attack on this character.

It's up to us -- the fans -- to shepherd this story to a place of peace and restoration.

SLIDERS REBORN was a six part series of screenplays written from 2015 - 2016 featuring Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo, taking place 15 years after the events of "The Seer." While those 15 years were largely 'off camera,' the story would reveal in Part 4 that Quinn, Wade and Arturo had been resurrected  during the middle of Season 5 around "Requiem" and had been searching for Rembrandt after that, and finally caught up with him minutes after the final scene of "The Seer." It's also revealed that the multiverse was 'reset' after that, erasing the Kromaggs from having ever existed, and the sliders returned to a 'normal' version of Earth Prime by 2001 and resumed their lives, allowing the story to pick up with all of them alive and well in 2015.

The resurrections were mostly simple: REBORN explains in passing: the Arturo of the story is the original left behind in "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome." That Quinn was actually separated from Mallory by "Requiem" (without Mallory's knowledge); the shock of Wade's fate caused Quinn to become completely untethered, but the Professor was able to restore him using a reversed version of Dr. Geiger's Combine technology.

Wade's restoration is more complicated. REBORN explains: there were actually two timelines for SLIDERS. In the original, Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo had four years of wonderful adventures until the fifth year when Dr. Geiger's Combine experiment ripped all Quinns out of all realities. This altered both past and present, as Quinn and his doubles were so entangled in the history of worlds that erasing them was like tearing a bone out of the body of reality. The previous four seasons still existed in history, but in a warped and damaged state, like a fraying bandage over a massive wound. This altered timeline contained the first two years' adventures but in the wrong order, both kept but abruptly truncated the timelines of the extra sliders who joined the team (Ryan, Henry, Michelle, the "Love Gods" refugees), and also produced monsters and magic and the death of Professor Arturo and the Kromagg arc of Season 4.

The Professor on the Azure Gate Bridge was able to find a disembodied Wade and 'reset' her to her original timeline, which was a way to not have to address Wade being captured by Kromaggs and imprisoned in a rape camp before she had her head cut off and stuffed into a computer. Wade in REBORN is simply alive, and when the subject of the Sci-Fi Channel episodes is raised, she says she doesn't remember anything about it. She only remembers four years of amazing adventures followed by reuniting with the Professor.

And that's what was right for SLIDERS REBORN -- but it has been six years since I posted the last REBORN script in 2016 and I have become greatly uncomfortable with the idea that the rape of Wade Welles is something to be erased and forgotten. Rape victims in real life don't have the option of erasing horrific physical assaults and violations. They have to be addressed with a lot of therapy and recovery and healing and they don't get cosmic resets.

At the same time, I don't know what the alternative was to this mistake because ultimately, SLIDERS REBORN was supposed to be a lighthearted, fun comedy with all the traumas of the TV show casually dismissed or referred to in a joking manner. However, while it was funny to have Rembrandt angst over having had to fight dinosaurs twice, rape is not something to joke about.

I haven't had time lately to write full scripts, but I briefly outlined a Part 7 of REBORN at one point because I made a bet that if Trump won election, I would write a full script for it. The outline for Part 7, "Redemption," featured the character of Colonel Rickman and brought his storyline to a close.
https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 880#p10880

My outline for Part 8, "Reckoning" would open with Wade having a nightmare.

We start on a nightmare. Wade being held down by Kromagg hands. Wade's head is shaved; she's bald. A guttural snarl laughs, "Your lips say no, but your body says yes and it always does."

Wade wakes up in her bed, gasping. Hair cut short but in her eyes. It's the middle of the night. Her husband, Quinn, is sitting up next to her, already awake. He says this is the fifth time she's had this dream in the past week, and it extends by 30 seconds with each iteration. Wade whispers that she's been dreaming of being in a Kromagg rape camp. But how can she? Wade asks Quinn to tell her that it's just a nightmare based on imagining an alternate timeline, that isn't real, that it's just what she's afraid happened in a version of the multiverse that no longer exists and never did.

Quinn says that it happened to *a* Wade and that Wade has always felt so connected to her other selves. He won't ever tell her that it wasn't real. He says Wade should have Dr. Davis give her a physical, that Maggie has network of therapists for people with trauma from war. Wade says she needs to go for a run.

We cut to Wade in a hoodie, jogging down the streets at night. Coming to the Sliders Incorporated building. She walks up to the door and the entrance scans her quantum signature and biosign as Wade Welles and automatically opens for her. We got to Wade's office: the wall of screens is filled with drafts of displays for social worker resources for living in the merged San Francisco. There are photos of Quinn and Wade's wedding. Wade with her stepdaughter, Laurel. Wade with her mother-in-law, Amanda. Wade smashes the photos one by one and erases all the screens, then sinks to her knees, sobbing.

Cut to: Wade in the morning, walking down the street. Eyes red from sleeplessness. Hoodie gone, now in her purple knit sweater. She goes to a coffee stand; she's told that her standing order for cassis tea was erased the night before, not sure why. She tolerates earl grey, tries to pay with her credit card -- but that's been erased too. She raises her smartwatch to contact support, but her watch has been disconnected from the San Francisco network; she can't call anyone. In fact, all her contacts have been deleted as well.

Wade borrows the phone from the stand and calls Quinn, he doesn't recognize her voice. She says it's Wade; Quinn replies that he doesn't know anyone by that name. Wade says that's not funny; Quinn says he's busy and hangs up. Wade calls Rembrandt, the Professor, her parents, Maggie, Diana, her stepdaughter, even Hurley -- they all claim not to know her and hang up.

Wade goes to the Sliders Incorporated building; the entrance doesn't recognize her biosign. She goes back to the Mallory house (which, thanks to dimensional engineering, is bigger on the inside and is an apartment building where all the sliders live together with Quinn's mother). Everyone is out at work and the home is empty. Wade heads for the backdoor entrance to Sliders Incorporated, but Wade is disturbed to find that all her photos and belongings are gone.

Wade gets into the Sliders Incorporated office and bursts into her office. It is empty and unoccupied as though nobody works there. Wade steps out of her office and finds Quinn -- who walks right past her, as though unable to see her and subconsciously walking around her as though his perceptions simply shift her outside anything he can see. Wade follows Quinn, pleading for him to hear her as Quinn enters a lower level lab containing Dr. Geiger's Combine technology which has been held there in storage. Quinn begins working with the machine, deaf to Wade's pleas -- and then a voice tells Wade that Quinn won't hear her.

Wade spins around to find herself facing a Wade-double -- clad in a hoodie. Wade-2 pulls the hoodie off her head. Her head has been shaved bald. Her bearing is shaky and frail. Quinn can't seem to see or hear Wade-2 either.

Wade says this is impossible; Wade-2 isn't real. Wade-2 takes off the hoodie entirely; in her tank top, her bare arms are a battlefield of syringe marks and bruises. Wade-2 says they took turns holding her down and using her; they'd do it every other hour; they'd pump her full of stimulants to keep her awake for it simply to be cruel; that they would accelerate her pregnancies and repair her body, all within a day so that they could do it all over again.

Wade-2 shrieks, "Who are you to tell me I'm not real!? What gave you the right to forget me and erase me!?"

Wade realizes that the restoration of the multiverse in Part 6 of SLIDERS REBORN, while keeping the Kromaggs out of existence, has restored the Wade double from the corrupted version of reality, but just before her mutilation in "Requiem." Wade-2 says that she found this machine in the Sliders Inc. basement, read the files. The Sliders Incorporated system thinks she's Wade, gave her full access. Wade-2 tried to use it to bring the Kromaggs back -- just one, any one -- so she could kill it. But she can't, they have been erased beyond recovery.

Wade-2 then watched her double living her life, untouched, unmarred, having effectively replaced Wade-2 in existence without a single thought as to whatever became of Wade-2 after the Kromaggs. Wade-2 says Wade erased her and stole her life, so Wade-2 used the Combine machine to do the same -- but she didn't fully understand it and all it did was make Wade slightly out of sync with reality. There's a startup and machine core alignment process involved.

Wade-2 says that she faked a task in Quinn's digital to-do list, scheduled him to come down to the Combine storage space to run another check on the machine. He'll start it up, get it running fully -- and Wade-2 has reprogrammed it so that this time, the Combine machine will rip Wade out of reality and replace her with Wade-2. Wade calls to Quinn to stop, he can't hear her; Wade asks Wade-2 to stop, they can talk this through, just give her a chance. Wade-2 says that Wade never gave her a chance and that Wade can't stop the Combine.

Quinn informs Wade-2 that he has deleted her secondary programming from the Combine and merely had it reverse her alterations. Wade is astonished that Quinn can see her; Quinn says his brain, after a previous run-in with the Combine, is now sensitive to shifts in reality. He couldn't see Wade and didn't recognize her voice, but the phone call sparked something in him. He turned on the machine only to roll back anything it had done in the last six hours; it has written Wade back into the world.

Wade-2 sits on the floor, shattered.

Quinn says it might be best to put Wade-2 back in a state of non-existence with the Combine or suspend her in the interdimension without any sense of time passing, sleeping forever. But Wade says no. Wade-2 can stay. They can figure something out.

Wade-2 says she'd rather die than continue to live like this, perpetually reliving her trauma, her assault, endlessly and forever until it's the only memories that stay in her mind. Three years of savagery and violation in the captivity of the Season 4 Kromaggs. But Wade asks Wade-2; what if Wade could share her burden and shoulder it with her?

We cut to Wade and Wade-2 both within the Combine apparatus. Quinn says this could go very badly and that using the Combine with a double has never turned out well. Wade says Wade-2 deserves to have the good to counter all the bad -- and that Wade-2 isn't a double. Wade-2 is Wade.

Quinn activates the Combine and there is a flash. And when it fades, there is only one Wade Welles inside the Combine. She steps out.

Quinn asks Wade if she knows who he is. She says he works in tech support with her at Dopplers. He took her on a spin around the universe. They had so many adventures. The Professor died; the Professor never died. Maggie Beckett joined the team in the third year -- no, Maggie joined the sliders in 2015, 20 years after the first slide. The Kromaggs invaded Earth Prime; Earth Prime is fine and the Kromaggs don't exist. The Kromaggs took her and used her and assaulted her; the Kromaggs never got close enough to her to ever lay a hand on her again. The Kromaggs were going to use her in a biological computer; there is no biological computer. Wade remembers brutality and cruelty, but also tenderness and adventure. She remembers the rape camp; she also remembers never being in the camp at all.

Both seem true, yet the light of happy memories now holds the darker traumas back; Wade remembers them but is not overwhelmed by them.

QUINN: "Do you know who you are?"

WADE: "I'm Wade Welles-Mallory -- and you and me -- we have a daughter and you're my husband."

QUINN: "Wade -- who's doing the talking?"

WADE: "I am."

fin

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Do you guys think Maurice Fish got his name after Maurice Hurley, a TNG showrunner who tracy bumped heads with?

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

I think Torme definitely had certain people on his mind when writing SLIDERS and Maurice Hurley was someone he despised on STAR TREK, so it makes sense that he made an arrogant middle manager Michael Hurley and a malevolently psychotic little creep Maurice Fish.

Future Torme biographers would also find it a profitable line of inquiry to look into Stephanie, a character deleted from the Pilot. Stephanie was a classmate whom Quinn was hopelessly in love with despite Stephanie regularly rejecting Quinn in one way or another. This may have made more sense when Torme was writing the script and imagining Quinn as a Tobey Maguire type instead of a Tom Cruise type.

Temporal Flux says that Stephanie's scenes were filmed and cut, but I can't imagine Jerry O'Connell's version of Quinn Mallory being afraid to tell a woman that he likes her or obsessing over someone who isn't interested.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

ireactions wrote:

I think Torme definitely had certain people on his mind when writing SLIDERS and Maurice Hurley was someone he despised on STAR TREK, so it makes sense that he made an arrogant middle manager Michael Hurley and a malevolently psychotic little creep Maurice Fish.

Future Torme biographers would also find it a profitable line of inquiry to look into Stephanie, a character deleted from the Pilot. Stephanie was a classmate whom Quinn was hopelessly in love with despite Stephanie regularly rejecting Quinn in one way or another. This may have made more sense when Torme was writing the script and imagining Quinn as a Tobey Maguire type instead of a Tom Cruise type.

Temporal Flux says that Stephanie's scenes were filmed and cut, but I can't imagine Jerry O'Connell's version of Quinn Mallory being afraid to tell a woman that he likes her or obsessing over someone who isn't interested.

That's a great point about Hurley too.

Or who tracy' s Stephanie was. 

So now we know cleavant singing at candlestick park and Stephanie are two musts for a collector's edition.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

That's a great point about Hurley too.

Or who tracy' s Stephanie was. 

So now we know cleavant singing at candlestick park and Stephanie are two musts for a collector's edition.

Tracy's ire with Maurice Hurley is quite humorous. I doubt you'll find those scenes, not after all this time.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

ireactions wrote:

Temporal Flux says that Stephanie's scenes were filmed and cut, but I can't imagine Jerry O'Connell's version of Quinn Mallory being afraid to tell a woman that he likes her or obsessing over someone who isn't interested.

Stephanie went through several iterations in the pilot script’s development (starting as just a mean girl bully on campus - Stephanie Sweet), but the filmed scene had her as more of a Daelin prototype (including an abusive boyfriend).

For any who didn’t know, the actress for Stephanie was Melanie Pearson (now Bradshaw).  The second sample in the reel below was her role as Alison Oliver in The Byrds of Paradise.  It would have been filmed the same year as the Sliders pilot, so a gauge on what Stephanie would have looked like:

https://youtu.be/CbhakL4v6UA

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

I keep forgetting that Stephanie's characterization was revised significantly before it was filmed and cut. I couldn't really imagine Jerry performing the original draft scenes where Jerry keeps trying to ask Stephanie out and she keeps shooting him down. I can't really imagine Quinn coming up with excuses to get a boyfriended-Stephanie to talk to him in the draft that I assume was filmed, but I suppose the scene is playable for Jerry.

Torme certainly had an intriguing fixation on Stephanie. In his unfinished fanfic outline that he started writing in 2009 and ultimately abandoned, he had the sliders (post-"Guardian") encountering Stephanie and her husband and Stephanie extending her hospitality to the sliders as they try to recover from a series of exhausting slides and examine the malfunctioning timer, meaning that even 15 years after the Pilot, he still had Stephanie on his mind (as opposed to Daelin). Perhaps all heterosexual men have a Stephanie in their minds if not in their lives.

Personally, I like to think that Stephanie is a representation of Robin Torme, who is Tracy Torme's wife.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Speaking of Robin, did anybody know she was a champion surfer (I think in Hawaii)?

Obviously tracy grew up in California, but I wonder if she influenced the existence of the Remmy surfing scene.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Pavel is a fairly common Russian name but I wonder if Tracy named the cab driver in the pilot Pavel after  this guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Popovich

His wife has spoken about UFO -- a lifelong area of interest of tracy -- and she is also a screenwriter and author.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm … story.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Popovich

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Not sure if we have a sliders comic books thread but I got to admit the tone of them feels pretty different than the show at times to the point where I still haven't read them all despite owning them all.

Jerry's narcotica was pretty good though..

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Aside from NARCOTICA, I strongly dislike all the comics. But I don't blame the creators or the artists. Licensed comics were often rushed hackwork written by writers marathoning VHS cassette tapes and rushing out a script to meet a licensing deadline. Artists worked off publicity photos that could be incredibly limiting in likenesses. Even NARCOTICA is only half-good, specifically the half drawn by Dennis Calero after Jackson Guice had to drop out due to personal issues. Comics severely underpay its freelancers and I don't find fault with comic book writers and artists who sometimes could not get it together for certain projects.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

I'm looking for any/all sliders fans who would like to help develop and expand the following stories:
- Axis powers win WW 2 (how was the U.S. divided among the powers?)
- Faaaaaabulous world (16.8 percent of world pop. plays for the other team)
- Waterslide (sliders land in a gigantic sub and need to get to the surface)
- Slides of Sorrow: Prof. Arturo, Rembrandt and Quinn must carry an unconscious Wade through several worlds.
- Sliders origins: How did the sliders become who they are today?

27 (edited by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan 2022-05-20 07:48:06)

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Lego_Sliders wrote:

- Axis powers win WW 2 (how was the U.S. divided among the powers?)

would like to see california and new york owned by fierce competitors


Lego_Sliders wrote:

- Faaaaaabulous world (16.8 percent of world pop. plays for the other team)

how about the mixed sex couples are banned from having kids?

Lego_Sliders wrote:

- Waterslide (sliders land in a gigantic sub and need to get to the surface)


remy was in the navy!  supposedly, ha.  would like to see an unexpected hero solve the problem, not quinn.


Lego_Sliders wrote:

- Slides of Sorrow: Prof. Arturo, Rembrandt and Quinn must carry an unconscious Wade through several worlds.

in the end wade should actually be conciousness, the way you can sometimes hear stuff in a coma.  quinn tells her she loves her!  he is in for a surprise when she repeats his message after she wakes up.


Lego_Sliders wrote:

- Sliders origins: How did the sliders become who they are today?

today as in 2022?

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Lego_Sliders wrote:

- Axis powers win WW 2 (how was the U.S. divided among the powers?)

I did this in Earth 214, and I followed the same logic as the Man in the High Castle.  Germany got the East Coast and Japan got the West Coast. 

I think I also did something with the Zimmerman telegram so Mexico had control of something, but maybe that was another alt-world.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

how about the mixed sex couples are banned from having kids?

I think you're onto something here.  What if same-sex couples are the minority but the group in power?  And what if heterosexual couples have to give their children up for adoption upon request.  Essentially that the society views same-sex couples as being better parents/providers, and that hetero couples are some sort of genetic backdoor to keep the species alive?  Something biologically necessary but shameful and filthy?

You could also add a layer of socioeconomic metaphor and have hetero couples only be lower class people who are "forced" to be breeders to stay afloat? They get paid enough to survive (again, for the good of society), but it essentially marks them as untouchables in society.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

These are good, ideas,
1. Axis powers win: I had an idea where Japan took over the U.S., and it eventually developed into Axis powers world. I could actually see the Sliders in Japanifornia. New York and some northeast states would be Italian, and the southern states German. There is a focus on military science. All jails and camps moved to Australia, to keep the Fatherland 'pure'.
@Slider_Quinn21: I did not picture the entire west coast as Japan's but it's a good idea.
@RussianCabbie_Lotteryfans: The episode would be about infighting, how some of the axis powers believe that they should have gotten a better deal, and WW3 happens because of that.

2. Faaaaaabulous world: I wanted each letter of the LGBT to be their own tribe, with their own history/culture.
@Slider_Quinn21/RussianCabbie_Lotteryfans: The idea of who is a better parent would be explored through the various tribes. Some colors of the rainbow shine brighter than others!
I believe that the 'adoption upon request' idea has merit, and should be a separate world.

3. In my excitement, I may have bitten off more than I can chew. The most common places like Quinn's lab/Dominion hotel are being worked on, and I wanted to have a story or two finished by the time the park and other common areas were done. In the meantime, here is a picture of Faaaaaabulous world's version of our Sliders: https://i.ibb.co/j5b9zzv/sliders-photo.png

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

On the subject of the sliders 'origins,' I have never really given much thought to who Wade and the Professor were before the show started and Rembrandt is so full of past anecdotes that I don't need to think about it.

However, I have thought a lot about Quinn's boyhood and have been working on an essay called "The Sex Life of Quinn Mallory" which outlines every sexual encounter I think he has ever had in his life in my head-canon/fan theory space and as part of my own fanfic series, so it's not 'canon.'

I believe Quinn has had sex with Stephanie (but not Daelin), Nan (a classmate in his graduate class in the Pilot), Jane ("Love Gods"), Logan ("Double Cross"). I believe that every sexual experience in Quinn's life has been a horrific, traumatic, disturbing event culminating in Quinn horrified to discover that he had sex with a double of himself and that this double had been having sex with the Professor (shudder).

Then, stepping into my fanfic realm, I think Quinn has had sex with Wade (bubble universe in "Roads Taken"), Cadey (original character) and Wade (finally in real life).

(Yes, I am aware that Wade wasn't in "Roads Taken"; my fanfic posits that those stories really happened with Wade and what we saw onscreen was an altered reality. Sliders-fan Tucker actually wrote a version of "Roads Taken" with the original cast here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1icU … sp=sharing )

32 (edited by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan 2022-05-22 09:03:55)

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

ireactions wrote:

Sliders-fan Tucker actually wrote a version of "Roads Taken" with the original cast here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1icU … sp=sharing )

excellent, will have to check this out.

always thought roads taken was a nice departure from a lot of the far we got in later seasons.

33 (edited by Lego_Sliders 2022-05-22 09:48:06)

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

@ireactions: That would fit in with Faaaaaabulous world. Have EP Quinn and Faaaaaabulous Quinn talk about what it's like to have sex with 'normies'. If Faaaaaabulous Quinn is like EP Quinn, i'm sure he'd be a little curious. Also, EP Wade would have a field day making fun of EP Quinn and Prof. 'It was only a matter of time until you guys got together!'
________________

- Exterior for 1st fl. of Dominion hotel has been finished. I need to create/place the bar, stairs, and Gomez's desk.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

I don't really see Quinn as bisexual. Entirely too much of Quinn's character decisions are based on sympathy that is specifically for women and there's a glowing smile on his face in "Greatfellas" when the conwoman kisses him and there's at least five to seven years of longing for Daelin Richards and a crush on his grade school teacher -- I don't think Quinn is exactly Tim Drake when it comes to revealing a character to be bisexual. Wade, on the other hand...

I've spent a lot of time writing Quinn's life and thinking on his backstory and the reason I prefer to think that Quinn has had sex with a number of women: it's clear that he's a sexual being and I don't wish to condemn Quinn -- a friend -- to celibacy if that wouldn't make him happy. That said, Quinn in the Pilot is clearly a shut-in, averse to human contact, withdrawn and secretive, hiding his pursuits behind a wall of deflections and deliberately ignoring Wade's obvious crush. The number of sexual partners for Quinn is not high.

In my mind, the stories "Virtual Slide" and "Roads Taken" happened with Quinn and Wade. Quinn is shown to be intimate with simulations in "Virtual Slide" and lives out a marriage with children in "Roads Taken".

In my fanfic, SLIDERS REBORN, Quinn is restored with the original sliders in 2000, but after getting them all home in 2001 and undoing the Kromagg invasion, Quinn does not see them again until 2015 for various reasons. I imagined, in my head, that Quinn had at least one romance that didn't work out and I have, in my mind, imagined who this woman is before Quinn met Wade again in 2015 (again, this is fanfic). I concocted a whole character for her, but it never came up in the actual fanfics I wrote; I knew my audience wanted Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo, not Quinn and some nobody who didn't factor into the original sliders' lives. I just didn't want SLIDERS REBORN to inflict celibacy on Quinn for 14 years.

Quinn's life is defined by one fine mess after another and I like to think that his sex life has been as much a disaster as, well, sliding.

Strictly my head canon. For example, I've never spoken to *any* fans who believe Quinn and Logan had sex. And there is no onscreen certainty that they did; I just think it makes for a better story if Quinn had sex with Logan and then has to deal with the fact that he had sex with himself and that his double was having a sexual affair with the Professor. That's a very interesting character complication too worthwhile to throw away, at least for me.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

I will be shelving Faaaaaabulous world for now. I feel that it is a can of worms- the main goal was to show that there are people who are there for the movement and there are others who seek to create friction and using that friction to splinter the movement. The idea's the community had had would have been added to the story. I would have wanted to shown negative side of the movement. You can't have faaaaaabulous all the time, and once the cameras go off...
____________

I'm sure it would have pissed some people off, but you can't have good without bad. Most likely get a community strike for violating the rules too.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

There is no rule against slash fiction and homosexual or bisexual characters -- original or not, TV characters or not.

While I did ensure that every new registrant signed over to me their eternal souls and I intend to use that to the fullest extent of appropriate moderation (no homophobia / fat shaming / doxxing / misinformation / deepfake pornography / racism ), there is absolutely no rule against slash fiction nor will there ever be any rule against slash fiction. If you consider Quinn Mallory gay or bisexual, you go ahead and write that story. I myself seem to be watching a lot of short YouTube films about lesbians these days, I am not averse to LGBTQA content and SLIDERS fans who are -- well, you can find that one guy on Parler, I'm sure.

37 (edited by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan 2022-05-23 19:56:57)

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Great way to enjoy a lot of the Sliders writings we have:

I've been using this over the last few days as a text-to-speech reader on my phone.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta … &gl=US

It allows you to have it read any web page of your choice. On desktop, I use a couple of good browser extensions but chrome doesn't have extensions on its mobile browser so hadn't had anything on the phone until now.

It's great having it on my phone, I've used to for a bunch of fan fiction and Think of Roullete Wheel and some good commentary/essays on here. 

Definitely recommend it.  I bet nobody thought in 1996 that a SLIDERS fan fic they read would be getting read by an andoid off a computer the size of your hand.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

@ireactions: for me, Sliders has always been about exploration. I wanted Fab world to be like 'the weaker sex' where the shoe is on the other foot. I believe that the LGB's are being pushed out in favor of the T's. This would be a major conflict point of the episode.
If this were to become a lego adventure, I would make it easy to digest and accessable to as many people as possible, no kinky stuff.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

I love this show. 

I love its characters.

If Peacock were aggressive, they would do a one off 90 minute movie to wrap up the series and do an upres on the library.  But that would likely cost $3m or so. 

I wish we could crowd fund that similar to how Mystery Science Theater did a few years ago..

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

On love...

Why is the SLIDERS novelization of the Pilot so terrible? It always struck me as strange that Brad Linaweaver's novel wasn't at least mediocre; I mean, he already had the story and just needed to convert it to prose.

Thinking about it recently: my take is that Tracy Torme's Pilot script is a love story, but Brad Linaweaver wrote the novelization as a hate story.

Linaweaver's writing career was defined by writing novels that expressed his contempt and loathing for Nazism and Communism. His magnum opus was MOON OF ICE, a novel about an alternate history in which Nazi Germany developed the atomic bomb first. Linaweaver developed his writing skills by penning angry essays about the triumph of capitalism over communism, Libertarianism over National Socialism. He wrote from a place of anger and contempt against that which he (not necessarily wrongly) judged to be evil.

Then he was handed a SLIDERS script to turn into a novelization. One would think he'd be a great choice. Unfortunately, Linaweaver's novelization is a cruel, grotesque affair. The emphasis is on Soviet America's violent bloodshed; the novel opens with the sliders observing a crowd being gunned down by soldiers massacring civilians and children with Linaweaver delighting and relishing the corpses and splatter, all of it giving voice to his hatred for Russian communism.

Linaweaver seems to disdain America and Americans too, however, but it's self-superiority as opposed to hate. Linaweaver is mocking towards academia and Arturo, mocking towards Wade's feelings towards Quinn, mocking towards Quinn's class and wealth in the family being able to afford a gardener. Linaweaver writes from a default level of looking down on others when writing Earth Prime. His writing turns to loathing and contempt once the story moves to Soviet America, laying out everything in the most repulsive fashion: the streets, the smells, the food. Everything under Linaweaver's pen is dirty and unpleasant, moreso in the parallel world of the story.

This may be why Linaweaver also did such a terrible job on the SLIDERS episode guide. SLIDERS: THE CLASSIC EPISODES was over a year late and with all the episode entries based on the shooting scripts with Linaweaver never bothering to watch the episodes and creating errors in his already slapdash plot summaries. Why did he do such a lazy, indifferent job on this next SLIDERS book?

I suspect it's because hate is cunning and cruel and knows loyalty to nothing and no one, not even its most devout practitioners. I suspect that Brad Linaweaver liked SLIDERS' scripts, he liked Torme, and he therefore couldn't tap into the fuel that made him write with passion. As a result, Linaweaver was paralyzed: he couldn't write SLIDERS: THE CLASSIC EPISODES as the only content he ever wrote well or would ever want to write: he couldn't write a hate story.

In contrast, Tracy Torme's Pilot script is a love story. The Pilot is about how Tracy Torme is in love with the United States of America. Now, we can argue whether or not anyone should love a piece of land or a government. We can note that Torme grew up the son of a wealthy musician, that Torme was able to enter screenwriting and earn a great living, and that Torme's love for America is because Torme had the great fortune to be born into privilege and comfort and associates that fortune with the country. We can certainly be aware that America has treated its citizens abominably.

But regardless, Torme's love for America is heartfelt, sincere, loving, patient and kind. While Torme's love for his country is at times boastful, arrogant, rude and overly insistent on its own way, it isn't resentful nor does it rejoice in wrongness. Instead, Torme presents the contrast between the United States of America and the parallel Soviet America through a series of gentle jokes.

In the United States of America, the legal system allows an injured worker to profit from his own misfortune and an opportunistic lawyer to ensure a payoff for a percentage; what's more, the legal system is daily entertainment. America's entertainment is filled with opportunity: an over the hill entertainer like Rembrandt Brown believes he has a second chance, radio news is provocative yet relatively harmless.

The homeless man ranting about communism is a silly curiosity. Capitalism and the free market allow smart young women like Wade Welles to turn down thousands of dollars in sales today for tens of thousands in a month. Trickle down economics allow Quinn to find all the scrap parts he needs to build sliding.  The power of the US dollar is so prevalent and strong that everyone can have some.

In Soviet America, the legal system is a quagmire with TV court being for fascist show trials and entertainment is for suppressing free thought; the TV lawyer is a deadly interrogator, the homeless communist is a political leader, and holding the US dollar makes one a target of the communist regime. In Soviet America, everything that Torme loves about America has been twisted into something bizarre and uncanny, but Torme emphasizes the peculiarity and baffling humour of the situation and plays it all for laughs. Rembrandt's capture, interrogation, trial and sentence are played as comedy.

Torme doesn't play it for too much danger or fear; Torme clearly doesn't like communism yet, unlike Linaweaver, Torme doesn't use the Pilot to hate what he disdains. Instead, Torme uses Soviet America to create a sense of unfamiliarity, homesickness and longing for what he loves.

The characters are striving to return home; the skewed inversions of the United States in the Soviet America are all to emphasize everything that Torme loves by noting their absence in this world. Furthermore, ends the visit to Soviet America by offering the hope that even in this terrible place, what Torme loves might still be saved.

The Pilot novelization is a story of hate. But the Pilot script and the Pilot episode offer a story of love. A story of Tracy Torme's love for America.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Back then novelizations like that were just fluff pieces so that licensing could be cashed in on.  Linaweaver may have had to run his book past Torme/Weiss and neither gave it much thought.

42 (edited by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan 2022-06-21 08:54:21)

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

I haven't finished the Pilot novel but I will say I found it superior to the Back to the Future novelization (which I did like but didn't find it came close to the movie).

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

I haven't finished the Pilot novel but I will say I found it superior to the Back to the Future novelization (which I did like but didn't find it came close to the movie).

Okay now I'm curious.  Are you saying they made changes to the plot or just that the novelization doesn't capture the spirit of the movie?

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Sliders comics are discussed here:
https://www.justanotherfanboy.com/2022/ … andom.html

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:
RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

I haven't finished the Pilot novel but I will say I found it superior to the Back to the Future novelization (which I did like but didn't find it came close to the movie).

Okay now I'm curious.  Are you saying they made changes to the plot or just that the novelization doesn't capture the spirit of the movie?


the latter.  doesn't really capture the spirit.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

And now we go off topic. Remind me to file a report with the Sliders.tv administrator about this.

I read the BACK TO THE FUTURE novelization when I was in school and thought it was a bit bland, especially with Marty McFly, a character who was so endearing on the screen and so oddly charmless in the book. Looking at it now, though, I've come to realize: BACK TO THE FUTURE is a movie. The story is not well-suited to prose and Marty McFly is not an effective character in the medium of novels.

The reason: Marty McFly in the BTTF script is a bland, reactive character. Marty has no character arc: he doesn't overcome any failing or flaw. Instead, the character arcs are entirely with George McFly: George overcomes his insecurity about his writing, George learns to assert himself, defend himself and stand up for himself. George learns to express his feelings in writing, in love and if need be, with his fists.

Marty is a helpful bystander, but Marty's problems -- not playing music at a school dance and not having a car to drive his girlfriend out to a camping trip -- are all solved by George and Lorraine's actions, not Marty's. The novel is unable to mine Marty for any characterization because, as far as the script goes, he doesn't have any.

Why does Marty McFly work in a movie? It's all Michael J. Fox. Fox gives the character a winning impishness as he skateboards to school and hangs onto a truck for added speed, in his defiance towards the principal mocking his father, in his donating a quarter to the Clock Tower fund. Fox conveys Marty's horror at his mother being sexually aggressive towards him. Fox sells Marty's astonishment when meeting a teen version of his father and trying to see his dad's older face in this younger man's visage. Fox infuses Marty with desperation, amusement, wonder, mischief, daring and fun -- almost none of which is in the original screenplay.

This is why the original actor for Marty, the very talented Eric Stoltz, was fired from the role. Stoltz is a great actor, but Stoltz could not make Marty work because there was nothing on the page for Stoltz to play and he didn't have Fox's gift for putting his own personality into otherwise characterless characters. And this is also why the novel doesn't work; the script was not designed to work in any medium other than the motion picture in which an actor -- as opposed to a novelist -- would bring Marty McFly to life. Marty McFly needs Michael J. Fox's empathic connection with the audience to truly come alive.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

It would have been interesting to see Ralph Macchio as Marty or today's Tom Holland.  I wonder if any of them in that role could have made it work in the way that Stolz couldn't.  Similarly, Jeff Goldblum as Doc.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

In this other post, I remarked that with "The Breeder", SLIDERS tried to make a sexy porn movie and through incompetence made a body horror movie that isn't sexy but in fact repulsive in every way.
https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 123#p13123

I wonder: if SLIDERS can do any sort of story in any genre, what are the pornographic, sexual stories of SLIDERS? Oddly, I don't think anyone needs to make them up; they have already been told but the sex was offscreen. By this, I mean that if SLIDERS were to do a sexually charged story that had sexual fantasies, the sex should be character and plot relevant. And SLIDERS has (mostly) written, filmed and aired these stories. However, there is not one SLIDERS sex story; there are four, one for each of the four original sliders.

I think Quinn's SLIDERS sex story was probably in "Love Gods" where he agrees to father Jane Hills' child. If there had been an actual sex scene, I think it would be about this older lady trying to make it as pleasant and romantic as possible for this reluctant but understanding college kid and also show that Quinn is someone who guards himself very much, holds himself apart -- and that he's giving Jane Hills a degree of intimacy that he doesn't usually grant anybody at all and trusting her to love and care for the daughter he'll never know. A sex scene would have added a lot of weight to Quinn bidding her farewell at the end of the episode.

I think Wade's SLIDERS sex story would probably be in "Obsession" where Wade has intense memories of having sex with Derek during their past life where their sex scene would be intensely trusting and warm and add to why Wade feels an instant connection and familiarity with Derek when she meets him again. This would make Wade feel more violated when Derek reads her mind without permission and add to the theme that consent is a conversation and Wade having consented to sex and intimacy and potential mindreading with Derek in the past does not mean that consent is eternal.

I think Rembrandt's SLIDERS sex story is probably in "The Weaker Sex" where Serena flatters, wines, dines, seduces and dumps him and a sex scene would be a parody of the male gaze where Rembrandt is the object of conquest which would make his lie about him dumping Serena when she dumped him funnier.

I think the Professor's SLIDERS sex story is probably in "Double Cross" where his double was cheating on his wife with Logan. I imagine that a sequel to "Double Cross" could reveal that the Professor found a disturbingly detailed diary from his double about having sex with Quinn's double. This leads to the Professor and Quinn have to deal with the painful awkwardness that their two doubles had a sexual relationship and think about how gender in some ways dictated their father-son bond. Meanwhile, Rembrandt finds it hilarious and Wade is mortified.

I think "Love Gods" might have benefitted from some more characterization via a Jane/Quinn sex scene, but "Obsession" and "Weaker Sex" would not have been deepened by additions; what's already onscreen is completely sufficient. And a Professor/Logan sex scene might have been interesting character work for a sequel to "Double Cross" where Quinn and Arturo are desperately trying to never ever ever discuss how how their doubles were having an affair, but it wouldn't be worthwhile for "Double Cross" itself.

If SLIDERS were to tell sexually-charged stories well, these stories would require the sexuality and fail to function if the sex were taken out. It wouldn't be like "The Breeder" where the sexuality is completely at odds with a non-humanoid biological form seeking to reproduce through infestation.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Been a long time since I’ve seen the 1987 live action Masters of the Universe film, but I’m stunned to see the Sliders vortex appear

https://youtu.be/CF20B8p4F08

Around the 24 second mark

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

A Sliders porn story would be them discovering someone using sliding technology for exploitation.  The pornographer finds a world where someone like Beyonce isn't famous, pays her double a relatively small amount to star in a porn film, then brings it back home and makes a mint.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

I can't tell you what a SLIDERS porn story would be in terms of actual pornography because I don't watch porn. I'm not against it, but they don't make it for me. An... acquaintance showed me a few clips once during a very awkward evening and what it comes down to: most porn available is, from what I've seen, all about women as objects to provide male pleasure. That simply isn't what I want to see of women in media.

My desires are very different. My favourite episodes of ARROW are when they introduced the character of Mia Smoak, a college-aged girl who is revealed to be the daughter of the Green Arrow. She is played by the extremely athletic Katherine MacNamara (SHADOWHUNTERS). And I would feel my heart soar every time I watched Mia run, jump, dive, roll, punch, kick, swing, pivot, ricochet, dodge, block, parry, grapple, or nock an arrow to her bow and fire.

All I can tell you is that if SLIDERS -- for whatever reason -- had to have sex scenes inserted into its stories, well, there are already SLIDERS stories that were broadcast where their plots and character arcs would have been deepened and enhanced and further explored by sex scenes which are already in the stories -- they were just offscreen.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Just to be clear, we are all aware a Sliders porn movie was actually made?

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0385226/

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

I was prepared to waive my usual disinterest in pornography to watch this SLIDERS porn parody until I saw that they cast a white man to play Rembrandt which makes me wonder if porn, in addition to not being made for me, is also extremely racist.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

ireactions wrote:

I was prepared to waive my usual disinterest in pornography to watch this SLIDERS porn parody until I saw that they cast a white man to play Rembrandt which makes me wonder if porn, in addition to not being made for me, is also extremely racist.

Definitely.

I sped through for the only parts I cared about - what did the timer and vortex look like?  (and that is a dude in the background, so no need to censor)

https://iili.io/Uwn7b1.md.png

https://iili.io/UwnXeI.md.png

https://iili.io/UwnkqG.md.png

https://iili.io/Uwnv1f.md.png

https://iili.io/UwnZ1j.md.png

https://iili.io/UwozhX.md.png

https://iili.io/UwoIQn.md.png

Production values were on par with season four, and it included a legally distinct version of the opening monologue of each episode.  They also did respect the worst parts of the formula (including turning back to talk before the exit slide).

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Remember Van Meer’s theory mentioned in “The Guardian”?

https://www.inverse.com/science/why-is- … faster/amp

There’s a possibility that the New Year’s countdown for 2030 will jump from 2 to Happy New Year.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

I will get to the other stuff later, but for now, I want to thank TF for his service to SLIDERS in watching the porn parody and encourage him to seek therapy and any other assistance needed in having seen even a few frames of what I am sure was a horrific and disturbing viewing experience.

I tend to highlight how Marc Scott Zicree risked life and sanity on that terrible day where he locked himself in an edit bay with all of Kari Wuhrer's direct to VHS movies to figure out how to write for Maggie in Season 4, but watching whatever the hell this thing was to make screencaps sounds much much worse.

Please have a hot beverage and think of better days.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

ireactions wrote:

I will get to the other stuff later, but for now, I want to thank TF for his service to SLIDERS in watching the porn parody and encourage him to seek therapy and any other assistance needed in having seen even a few frames of what I am sure was a horrific and disturbing viewing experience.

I tend to highlight how Marc Scott Zicree risked life and sanity on that terrible day where he locked himself in an edit bay with all of Kari Wuhrer's direct to VHS movies to figure out how to write for Maggie in Season 4, but watching whatever the hell this thing was to make screencaps sounds much much worse.

Please have a hot beverage and think of better days.

lol - thankfully, it wasn’t much.  I figured there would be an opening slide and did a scan until I saw the vortex appear.  Then I figured there would be an exit slide, so I just skipped directly to the end and there it was.

Also going back to your original observation, porn does seem to be incredibly racist.  I remember a random article years ago talking about the difficulty for black women in getting roles, and white women getting paid more for their first film with a black man.  So yeah, that appears to be a thing.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

I see that I misunderstood the question.  I tried to put the concept of porn into a Sliders context when you were looking for the reverse.

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Don’t remember seeing this before:

https://insidethemagic.net/2021/09/toy- … etion-ks1/

Made me think of Jeff Foxworthy in a Sliders context.  “If you’re seeing things in Toy Story 2 that you’ve never seen before, you might be in another reality!”

Re: Thoughts on Sliders in Random

Sliders made the list:

https://screenrant.com/most-underapprec … eddit/amp/

Jerry and his twin brother are sure to be proud