Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

My revival idea:

Cold open. Wade sitting in a Kromag prison cell. She's been here for 20 years. A vortex opens and Rembrant falls in. He's finally found her after all this time.

A second vortex opens, and Arturo appears. He explains that he's been trying to get everyone back together since the episode "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome." It turns out it was actually his evil doppelgänger that left with the group, and was later killed. He rebuilt the sliding machine, made it better, and has been chasing Rembrant for 20 years, trying to find him. He explains that he knows what happened to Quinn, and he's found a way to bring him back. They slide out of the prison cell and in to Arturo's lab.

After a montage of science stuff he pulls Quinn out of the ether. The series continues in the vein of seasons 1-2.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

Disclaimer: I mean no malice or harm by this. Please feel free to critique my stuff in precisely the same manner.

So, here I am, watching TV with my 17-year-old niece, Laurie. Laurie and I watch the new SLIDERS premiere episode.

shook wrote:

Cold open. Wade sitting in a Kromag prison cell. She's been here for 20 years.

ME: "Wade! She's alive! Awesome! Kinda sucks that she's been in a cell for 20 years."
LAURIE: "Who is this chick? Why is she in jail? Is she a criminal? What'd she do? Must've been bad if she's been in jail for two decades. Where the hell is this jail? What's a Kromagg? Why are we watching this?"

shook wrote:

A vortex opens and Rembrant falls in. He's finally found her after all this time.

ME: "Rembrandt and Wade! Together! After 20 years! But man -- he spent 20 years looking for her? He's been sliding for 20 years? That must've taken a toll or he's found help and he has allies and some kind of support staff now -- but man. 20 years? What has that done to Rembrandt! This story is really going to need to deal with that."
LAURIE: "Huh?! What was that giant hole in the area? Who's the black guy? Oh, he knows the girl? Okay. 20 years? He's been sliding for 20 years? He's been going up and down playground slides for 20 years? What the hell is going on? Why is he breaking this girl out of prison?"

shook wrote:

A second vortex opens, and Arturo appears. He explains that he's been trying to get everyone back together since the episode "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome."

ME: "Yes! He's alive! Yes! I knew it! Hahah! We win! We win!"
LAURIE: "What? Who the fuck are these people? What the hell's an Azure Gate Bridge?"

shook wrote:

It turns out it was actually his evil doppelgänger that left with the group, and was later killed. He rebuilt the sliding machine, made it better, and has been chasing Rembrant for 20 years, trying to find him.

ME: "Of course! The wrong Professor slid!"
LAURIE: "He's a professor? He rebuilt a what? He's been chasing them why? Do these people know each other? How did they meet? How'd they get separated? What do they do together? What's with the holes in the air? What is this show about again? What's it got to do with slides? Is this a PowerPoint commercial? What's this jail about again?"

shook wrote:

He explains that he knows what happened to Quinn, and he's found a way to bring him back.

ME: "Quinn! Yes!"
LAURIE: "Who's Quinn?"
ME: "They're bringing him back!"
LAURIE: "Back from where? What's going on here?!"

shook wrote:

They slide out of the prison cell and in to Arturo's lab.

ME: "Oooh, a lab!"
LAURIE: "So, what's that hole in the air exactly? Where's it taking them? Why to this lab? Where is this lab? Who are these people? Where was that jail? Are they still in the jail? Where have we gone? How did we get here? What is going on?"

shook wrote:

After a montage of science stuff he pulls Quinn out of the ether.

ME: "Quinn!"
LAURIE: "Who's that guy? Where was he? Why'd these other people bring him back? Do these people know each other?"

shook wrote:

The series continues in the vein of seasons 1-2.

ME: "Yay!"
LAURIE: "What?! What the fuck is going on?"

... do you see what I'm saying?

63 (edited by intangirble 2015-12-05 18:51:45)

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

To be fair, I used to hate stories that jumped in with no explanation and left you to figure them out for yourself. Now I've come to appreciate them.

I mean, none of us liked the Exposition Guys in Sliders, right? There's something to be said for discovering why you should care about these people along the way, and letting the backstory get filled in later.

Of course, you do have to fill it in, or else people will just be confused. But I think this plot could work for new fans as well as old, if it was done right. Set it up like a mystery - who is this woman? How do these people know each other? Then let the details come together slowly. That's a pretty cool story.

...that said, I completely agree that you'd have to deal with Wade and Remmy's PTSD. After 20 years in a Kromagg camp Wade would be barely fit to socialise, let alone slide. You'd essentially be hauling around an older River Tam. Rembrandt would likely have hardened a lot, becoming single-minded and almost neurotic in his search for Wade and desire for revenge - he'd finally be the military man that season 3 clumsily tried to make him. Finding Wade again would reawaken his compassion, but that would come with a lot of pain and dissonance. When you've been searching for someone for 20 years, how do you deal with finally finding them again? Especially when they're not the same as before? And how do you relearn how to care when all you've done for 20 years is hunt and kill?

That would make a great story, and I'd love to see it. But it'd be a very different cast from the one we started with.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

Also to be considered, the professor would be in his 70's.  Rembrandt would be in his 60's.  Are they really going to be willing and able to participate in interdimensional adventure?  Any live action reboot will have to have some new characters.


Use Rembrandt as the wise old Slider telling the professor's granddaughter Max not to continue her experiments with recreating the technology.  She doesn't listen because she's heard (or read) his stories and is convinced her grandfather is still alive on Azure Gate Bridge world and she wants to bring him home.  Of course something goes wrong, causing Max and her friends to go sliding randomly through the multiverse...

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

And now, ireactions as everyone has heard him before...

Shook's idea is essentially a long-delayed Season 6 premiere. From a marketing standpoint, doing Season 6, Episode 1 is ill-advised.

Yes, there is an audience wanting to see Rembrandt find Wade, locate the original Professor, stick Colin, split the Quinns, defeat the Kromaggs, reveal Earth Prime is safe, confront Logan St. Clair, reverse the Kromagg Prime backstory -- but that audience consists of 15 - 20 people on the Internet. Nobody should ever spend 2 million dollars per episode on a TV show that only appeals to 15 - 20 people on the Internet. If you start SLIDERS in the way you propose, you get Laurie's reaction.

"Who the hell are these people? What the hell is going on? What are they referring to? Am I supposed to be excited that this Quinn person came back from wherever the hell he was? I don't even know who he is. Is it a big deal that these four people are reuniting? I didn't know they were ever together or that they were ever apart. Huh? What? I'm lost. I'm going to watch something that doesn't make me feel like I missed the first half of the movie."

If your story is offputting, alienating and unwelcoming to an audience, then your story shouldn't be on television or in film. (Sorry.) It's called *broad*casting for a reason.

From a personal standpoint -- and now this is just opinion -- I can't think of anything worse than Wade Welles having been imprisoned for 20 years, the Professor and Rembrandt having been searching for their friends for 20 years, Quinn having been in quantum limbo for 20 years. You haven't saved Quinn, Wade and Arturo; you've simply presented three traumatized messes with the same names. The only character I would ever traumatize so severely is Rembrandt and only because Cleavant Derricks has a gift for taking trauma and making it funny. And after 20 years of being lost in the multiverse, held prisoner and in limbo, they go sliding again like it's no big deal? Absurd.

I'm also against presenting the characters as a mystery; I think that's a fundamental misuse of the SLIDERS characters. Each character in SLIDERS was designed to be easy to relate to and understand in simple, immediate terms. The boy-genius adventurer, the moral firebrand, the out-of-date showbiz icon who is hopelessly out of place in an action-adventure story and a wise Professor. They were designed as characters who could be thrown into bizarre, disorienting situations and the viewers could feel like they were with the characters, one of the characters, experiencing this lunatic journey as though you yourself were a slider too. If these characters are now being presented as distant mysteries, then they're the wrong characters for exploring the multiverse and it'd be better to find some other characters more suited to being sliders.

The Season 6 plots that hit the undo button on the original characters are as incoherent now as they were in all those 2000 fanfics trying to do the same thing. If you try to resurrect all the dead characters and resolve the unfinished plots in a short series of events, it means cramming absurd coincidences into a very short amount of space and it's not remotely believable for Wade to be resurrected and the Professor to find Rembrandt and for Quinn to be split and the Kromaggs to be defeated in rapid succession. If you try to do it long-form, the story is, by necessity, extremely long and tiresome. And even if you succeed, you don't save the sliders. You're still stuck with a Quinn whose mind and identity are a mess, Wade the rape victim, and a Rembrandt and Professor who are equally traumatized. What's the point of going to all this trouble just to present mutilated versions of the original sliders?

And these Season 6 stories also completely miss the point of SLIDERS. SLIDERS was not about resolving 15-year-old cliffhangers. SLIDERS was not about finding ways to resurrect dead characters. It was about exploring at least one parallel universe per week and all this nonsense does absolutely nothing to serve SLIDERS' purpose; in fact, it actively prevents it and impedes it, turning the attention to the myth-arc and the character trauma rather than the multiverse. If your vision of SLIDERS doesn't lend itself to exploring at least one parallel Earth per episode, your vision of SLIDERS is wrong. (Sorry.)

I had to think about this stuff a lot for my SLIDERS series -- which is a sequel to "The Seer" -- and I found neat ways to cheat throughout. Resurrecting the original sliders? They're all back by Page 3 of SLIDERS REBORN. All the plot gymnastics to restore them? I skipped over that by immediately jumping 15 years ahead of the reunion with dialogue vaguely implying that there was some reasoning to how they all came back. But wasn't this just delaying the inevitable need to explain how all the characters came back to life? When the explanation did come, I presented it in the form of Quinn Mallory being held in a mental ward, trying to explain SLIDERS to a skeptical psychiatrist -- allowing me to keep the explanation short and summarize the material. And even then -- none of it was suitable for broadcast television. It would only work for the fans.

If SLIDERS ever came back as a new TV show, I'm sure there'd be some web comic tie-ins. An anthology series, SLIDERS OTHERWORLDS, could contain alternate visions of the Season 6 style stories. Maybe a SLIDERS-CLASSIC series could feature SLIDERS REBORN. But the new TV show itself? I cannot stress enough in the name of all that is holy that SLIDERS must be simple, accessible and welcoming in reaching out to a new audience -- or there is no point in making the series. It can't be SLIDERS for me or you. It has to be a SLIDERS that Laurie would enjoy. The audience is Laurie. There's billions of Lauries, there's only 15 to 20 of you and me.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

ireactions wrote:

If SLIDERS ever came back as a new TV show, I'm sure there'd be some web comic tie-ins. An anthology series, SLIDERS OTHERWORLDS, could contain alternate visions of the Season 6 style stories. Maybe a SLIDERS-CLASSIC series could feature SLIDERS REBORN. But the new TV show itself? I cannot stress enough in the name of all that is holy that SLIDERS must be simple, accessible and welcoming in reaching out to a new audience -- or there is no point in making the series. It can't be SLIDERS for me or you. It has to be a SLIDERS that Laurie would enjoy. The audience is Laurie. There's billions of Lauries, there's only 15 to 20 of you and me.

This just bares repeating dozens of times over. SLIDERS could only work commercially now as a day-one reboot. Any form of continuation or spin-off is just impossible.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

Slide Override wrote:
ireactions wrote:

If SLIDERS ever came back as a new TV show, I'm sure there'd be some web comic tie-ins. An anthology series, SLIDERS OTHERWORLDS, could contain alternate visions of the Season 6 style stories. Maybe a SLIDERS-CLASSIC series could feature SLIDERS REBORN. But the new TV show itself? I cannot stress enough in the name of all that is holy that SLIDERS must be simple, accessible and welcoming in reaching out to a new audience -- or there is no point in making the series. It can't be SLIDERS for me or you. It has to be a SLIDERS that Laurie would enjoy. The audience is Laurie. There's billions of Lauries, there's only 15 to 20 of you and me.

This just bares repeating dozens of times over. SLIDERS could only work commercially now as a day-one reboot. Any form of continuation or spin-off is just impossible.

It would have to be about a new cast.  No way could any of the old Sliders be central figures in a new series.

That having been said, I don't think it is required to completely break from the old series.  Given the premise, everything is potentially within its continuity.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

I disagree. I think mixing old and new characters could be a good compromise.

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

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

For me, it's really the TV show COMMUNITY that has resparked my fondness for SLIDERS. COMMUNITY showed that you could create a vivid, dynamic comedy series through sharply realized characters where it's a pleasure simply to lock them in a room and watch them argue. The Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo dynamic is what makes SLIDERS special, and I think the best thing to do would be to find a new and current format. I think that format should be the situation comedy. I think the best thing to do with SLIDERS is to reboot the series with the original actors playing current-age doubles, and those doubles should all be employed at a hamburger restaurant called SLIDERS, and we would transition from science fiction drama into a workplace sitcom series.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

I think what would work best from a creative perspective would be a tv movie or three-episode miniseries with the old cast or a 18-22 episode per season series mostly filled by new, younger characters.  But I would be happy with anything.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

They should just do a fresh reboot - keeping that fantastic character chemistry at it's core and giving us some well developed alternate dimensions - but keep the old continuity as an 'other worlds / alternate' thing and have some Doctor Who style audio dramas with the old cast.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

Warning: this message board post contains RAGE because slider5125 has been sending me spam and this pissed me off.

Not a single person in this thread -- not one -- has presented a workable route that incorporates new characters with the previous generation of SLIDERS. All of them are completely unacceptable for broadcast television. If you're doing SLIDERS comic books and novels, then you can certainly open with Rembrandt being miraculously reunited with the Professor, Wade and Quinn. If you're doing a TV show introducing SLIDERS to a new audience -- well, every single one of these NEXT GENERATION concepts has been totally incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't know the show already. If your 2015 TV show pilot is incomprehensible to someone who didn't watch a 1995 version of the series, then your 2015 TV show pilot really sucks.

I know I'm really negative here -- but I genuinely think that good writing and good storytelling is clear, specific, understandable and instantly comprehensible. If I have to watch 88 episodes in order to understand your one episode, your one episode is not worth my time as a general audience viewer.

There's also the fact that even as a SLIDERS obsessive, all these Season 6 ideas are terrible. None of them get to the heart of the characters at all. Rembrandt's been trying to save Wade for TWENTY YEARS?! What the hell took him so long? The Professor does some random stuff and instantly, Quinn is restored? Lifeless and boring. The gang resume random sliding despite the fact that the Professor is in his 70s, Rembrandt's in his 60s, Wade is in her 40s and spent 20 years in captivity -- and given that Quinn wouldn't have aged in quantum limbo, how do you expect Jerry O'Connell to pass for 25-years-old? This is so god-damn stupid it's funny except it's not.

Then there's the god-awful storytelling. The new slider is the son of Arturo and he meets Rembrandt who provides a Wiki-style summary of how he wrapped up all the plots of Seasons 3 - 5. So, the high point of this new SLIDERS is Cleavant Derricks monologuing for 20 minutes about offscreen events. And then there's the painful lack of imagination made manifest by declaring that the new series should focus on revisiting all the Earths from the 1995 series -- so, SLIDERS, a platform for limitless imagination, should do a new show that consists entirely of doing Part 2 of the previous show's episodes. The idea that Rembrandt should talk about how awful and horrible sliding will be -- I find that just appalling, that a new audience's first exposure to sliding would be a classic series character talking about how much it sucks -- which is essentially telling the audience that this new show isn't worth their time and that's if they can even understand what's going on.

But I understood that -- the desire to know that our old friends are alive and well. And Matt Hutaff and Temporal Flux suggested a very clever, subtle, unintrusive way to achieve that: Quinn Mallory, in his 40s, discovers sliding for the first time and accidentally takes a modern-age Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. However, the presence of video diaries from 1995 made by a double offer a nod to the past, as well as a subtle revelation that these aren't older doubles; these are the original sliders after history was altered to remove sliding from existence.

Naturally, a fan immediately followed up by declaring that this subtle, unintrusive measure should be made crashingly obvious and intrusive by making it so that Rembrandt and the Professor are sabotaging Quinn's sliding experiments and every story should be Part 2 of a classic series episode. Because the idea of an entry-level SLIDERS that works for both old fans and new is somehow unacceptable, all SLIDERS products should be as confusing, alienating, convoluted and unreadable as humanly possible.

Is this really how so many see SLIDERS? As densely incomprehensible mythology accessible only to the chosen few?

Anecdotally, it would seem there are 15 - 20 people who remember SLIDERS and care about it. In which case, we 15 - 20 or so were given an incredible gift that few others received. We were given an incredible storytelling engine composed of both concept and characters which would allow for any kind of story. War adventures. Thrillers. Horror. Political theatre. Espionage drama. Romantic comedy. Any new SLIDERS should share this gift to a wider audience rather than say that SLIDERS is all about doing sequels to stories the general population has never experienced.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

given that Quinn wouldn't have aged in quantum limbo

We don't know that.  He's been combined with Mallory, who would be aging during that time, so he could well come out as a 40-something if he gets separated.

The new slider is the son of Arturo and he meets Rembrandt who provides a Wiki-style summary of how he wrapped up all the plots of Seasons 3 - 5

Grandson/granddaughter would be more appropriate.  I would envision Rembrandt appearing as not much more than a cameo, throwing a bone to the fans of the old series.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

Sliders has been off the air for nearly 16 years.

I don't care how many shows are being brought back from cancellation, you can not bring Sliders back in a format that wants to pick up from the end of season 5.  You can't.  It would last 3 episodes and quietly disappear because the only people who would be watching it would be the fans of the old show and there weren't enough of us to convince anyone to continue with a season six back in 2000, so why does anyone honestly believe that there would be enough of us to support a 'continuation' almost 16 years later?

I just shake my head.

Would I love to see Sliders back on tv?  Yes.  Do I want to see a resolution to "The Seer' and the mess that was Seasons 4 and 5?  No.  I've had 16 years to decide that, however it happened, everyone is fine and made it back home.

With that being said, could Sliders be brought back as a reboot/re-imagining?  Yes. 

Could the original cast be involved?  Yes, but I don't think you can make them the focus.

I've been tossing around an idea that would put Quinn Mallory in the role of the Professor.  He never discovered sliding, but became a college Physics Professor.

Just some random ideas.

One of his students would discover sliding.  Make it a female student.  Her best friend who has been in love with her since they were kids and some "everyman" character who gets dragged along.

Quinn would be the older voice of reason, but the focus would be on the ensemble and more so on the younger characters.

Quinn's wife/ex-wife could be Wade, so you could have a Wade cameo here and there.

Maybe the hotel they stay at has a lounge singer at the bar on every world named Rembrandt Brown.  Who would serve a role like Gomez Calhoun and Diggs did.

And maybe Quinn's mentor was Arturo, if you ever wanted to have an Arturo guest appearance.

All of these things would be bonuses for fans of the original show.  "Easter eggs", but not the focus of the show.

I don't want a show about a bunch of people who have been traumatized by sliding for 20 years.  I want a show about a group of people exploring the multi-verse, becoming a family and trying to find their way home.

Going back to lurking . . .

--Chaser9

75 (edited by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan 2015-12-21 09:25:55)

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

I've been thinking recently, if Sliders were to continue, I'd love for Brad Meltzer to be involved (along with Torme and Weiss of course). Not that it would happen.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

Why Brad Meltzer?

Temporal Flux once told me that while he favoured Mike Judge, he felt anyone could do at least one great SLIDERS story because the concept allowed any story to be a SLIDERS story and the characters were such idiosyncratic archetypes that any writer could do their own interpretation of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. If the story didn't work or messed with the characters too much, it could be an alternate group of sliders.

To that end, I would like a lot of writers to do SLIDERS stories: Grant Morrison (crazy science fiction ideas), Warren Ellis (crazy technology ideas), David Shore (science detective stories), Steven Moffat (fairy tale adventure), Dan Harmon (comedy), Richard Curtis (romantic comedy), David Lynch (surrealism), Jonathan Nolan (espionage) and Greg Berlanti (superhero). I'd also like Temporal Flux (alternate history comedy), Nigel Mitchell (absurdist science fiction), Matt Hutaff (thriller) and Mike Truman (alternate history sci-fi).

**

Chaser9 and I have both written version upon version upon version of the post-"Seer" adventures, both of us have made our bids at canonicity. I think both Chaser9 and I love what we did and enjoy(ed) doing it -- but we produced material akin to STAR WARS novels, STAR TREK comic books and DOCTOR WHO audioplays. We were and are making stuff for the people who would read a SLIDERS message board.

But for TV and film, a revival must be -- must be -- entry level. The great appeal of SLIDERS, to me, is that it was fundamentally welcoming; this is the world they're exploring this week, next week, it's a new one. All this stuff about defeating the Kromaggs and splitting the Quinns doesn't speak to SLIDERS' appeal at all. It totally misses the point of the series and that's me speaking as someone who thinks Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are what make it special. There are better ways to get those four back onscreen than some absurd Season 6 premiere that would only confuse and alienate.

**

There was a guy on the old version of this forum awhile back -- his posts are no longer available and I've no wish to embarrass him, so I'll simply refer to him as Jensen. Jensen somehow got Tracy Torme's phone number. He posted on this board, declaring that he would call Tracy and bring about a SLIDERS revival.

He then posted again to say he'd talked to Tracy and urged Tracy to do a remake of Season 4 where the Kromaggs have invaded Earth Prime and the sliders set off to find a superweapon and Wade has been kidnapped by the Kromaggs and then she joins the Kromaggs and becomes the villain of Season 4 and then it's revealed that the Kromagg invasion was a fake and also, the Kromaggs in Season 4 look different from the ones in Invasion because oh God kill me now.

Tracy Torme hasn't even seen Season 4, so this insane pitch must have been absolutely nonsensical to him. Tracy eventually cut off what must have been a terrifying conversation by informing Jensen that he'd need to go through an agent to pitch story ideas.

I felt really bad for Tracy that he had to put up with this sort of nonsense on his own time and to do a Season 6 premiere of SLIDERS in 2015 is to create the TV equivalent of this deranged phone call.

**

Honestly, this whole thread makes me feel so awful for destroying the previous SLIDERS 2.0 thread with trying to turn it into a writers' room. The discussions were so interesting. What is Arturo's new backstory for the twenty-first century version of his character? What music would Rembrandt perform in this reboot? Does Quinn still work at Best Buy or do we change that to avoid mimicking CHUCK? How much of a hacker is the new Wade? How do we avoid the Season 1 formula of the sliders having celebrity doubles?

It's my fault. I ripped all the fun out of that thread and now we sit around pondering how to stick Colin and defeat the Kromaggs.

*sigh* I blame myself.

77 (edited by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan 2015-12-21 21:45:06)

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

ireactions wrote:

Why Brad Meltzer?

Temporal Flux once told me that while he favoured Mike Judge, he felt anyone could do at least one great SLIDERS story because the concept allowed any story to be a SLIDERS story and the characters were such idiosyncratic archetypes that any writer could do their own interpretation of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. If the story didn't work or messed with the characters too much, it could be an alternate group of sliders.

To that end, I would like a lot of writers to do SLIDERS stories: Grant Morrison (crazy science fiction ideas), Warren Ellis (crazy technology ideas), David Shore (science detective stories), Steven Moffat (fairy tale adventure), Dan Harmon (comedy), Richard Curtis (romantic comedy), David Lynch (surrealism), Jonathan Nolan (espionage) and Greg Berlanti (superhero). I'd also like Temporal Flux (alternate history comedy), Nigel Mitchell (absurdist science fiction), Matt Hutaff (thriller) and Mike Truman (alternate history sci-fi).

**

Chaser9 and I have both written version upon version upon version of the post-"Seer" adventures, both of us have made our bids at canonicity. I think both Chaser9 and I love what we did and enjoy(ed) doing it -- but we produced material akin to STAR WARS novels, STAR TREK comic books and DOCTOR WHO audioplays. We were and are making stuff for the people who would read a SLIDERS message board.

But for TV and film, a revival must be -- must be -- entry level. The great appeal of SLIDERS, to me, is that it was fundamentally welcoming; this is the world they're exploring this week, next week, it's a new one. All this stuff about defeating the Kromaggs and splitting the Quinns doesn't speak to SLIDERS' appeal at all. It totally misses the point of the series and that's me speaking as someone who thinks Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are what make it special. There are better ways to get those four back onscreen than some absurd Season 6 premiere that would only confuse and alienate.

**

There was a guy on the old version of this forum awhile back -- his posts are no longer available and I've no wish to embarrass him, so I'll simply refer to him as Jensen. Jensen somehow got Tracy Torme's phone number. He posted on this board, declaring that he would call Tracy and bring about a SLIDERS revival.

He then posted again to say he'd talked to Tracy and urged Tracy to do a remake of Season 4 where the Kromaggs have invaded Earth Prime and the sliders set off to find a superweapon and Wade has been kidnapped by the Kromaggs and then she joins the Kromaggs and becomes the villain of Season 4 and then it's revealed that the Kromagg invasion was a fake and also, the Kromaggs in Season 4 look different from the ones in Invasion because oh God kill me now.

Tracy Torme hasn't even seen Season 4, so this insane pitch must have been absolutely nonsensical to him. Tracy eventually cut off what must have been a terrifying conversation by informing Jensen that he'd need to go through an agent to pitch story ideas.

I felt really bad for Tracy that he had to put up with this sort of nonsense on his own time and to do a Season 6 premiere of SLIDERS in 2015 is to create the TV equivalent of this deranged phone call.

**

Honestly, this whole thread makes me feel so awful for destroying the previous SLIDERS 2.0 thread with trying to turn it into a writers' room. The discussions were so interesting. What is Arturo's new backstory for the twenty-first century version of his character? What music would Rembrandt perform in this reboot? Does Quinn still work at Best Buy or do we change that to avoid mimicking CHUCK? How much of a hacker is the new Wade? How do we avoid the Season 1 formula of the sliders having celebrity doubles?

It's my fault. I ripped all the fun out of that thread and now we sit around pondering how to stick Colin and defeat the Kromaggs.

*sigh* I blame myself.

Brad Meltzer has a great grasp on history, as well as adventure and entertainment.  I think he'd help make the show more intellectual while not destroying it in the process.  He actually had a drama on tv called Jack and Bobby, which I think you may have mentioned you've seen.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0410997/

I've only seen a little on youtube myself, the audio-visual quality was terrible, so I couldn't really watch it.

Having a lot of great writers do sliders stories would be cool; but of course it'd have to be a desirable enough franchise to attract them.

In terms of tying up loose ends, and carrying over stories from the last couple of seasons, I can't imagine any sort of tv network willing to program anything geared toward spending all that much time worrying about that sort of stuff. They know there bread and butter is in an audience that is only familiar with the basics of Sliders.  The audience it had on sci-fi network was more of a niche one.  And its been 16 years since then.  But, some small narrative to explain away what happened in the latter seasons as no longer something to be concerned with is fine by me.  Personally, I think the Kromagg stuff played a large part in ruining the show - not that I couldn't still derive enjoyment from it but it got completely away from what made Sliders special.

This to me is what Sliders was all about: http://www.earthprime.com/etcetera/heat-of-the-moment

It's too bad FOX didn't let Torme and Weiss do whatever they wanted.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

I have to admit the constant defeatism of"only 20 old fans still watch Sliders!" is irritating and innacurate.

Yes there might only be 20 of us more die hard Fans on this Forum but there are many People who are more casual fans but still Fans none the less.

Sliders does not get regular reruns like Star Trek's many offerrings or Stargate etc so it's last impact for those who watched is back in the 90's or Sci Fi Channel Watchers from the Noughties.

Sure it is Net Viewable now but that is either a casual stumbling upon the show or a reccomendation from other sci fi fans.

It does not get advertised heavily and sadly the later Seasons outnumber the earlier quality ones which influences how a watcher describes the show and whether they like it or not.

Lots of people want More Sliders but they do not go into minutae like us.

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

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

You want another take on how a new series could be a semi-continuation of the old one?

A girl, about five years old, is playing in her back yard.  Suddenly a vortex opens.  Frightened, she hides in the bushes as four people come flying out.  She can't see their faces but she hears them talking about sliding and interdimensional travel.  Fans of the old show recognize the voices as Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt, and the professor.  A moment later, one of them activates the timer and they slide out.

The girl comes out of the bushes and looks around, but sees nothing.  She has an intense look on her face, as if she's found her life's passion despite her young age.

...

20 years later the girl is now a woman working in a basement lab much like Quinn's from the pilot.  A man about her age enters the lab.

"What's so urgent, Quinn?"

"Wade!  I've got it this time."  She's standing in front of a white board with an equation indecipherable to 99% of the world.  The equation is not complete.

"You've been saying that since we were in middle school."

"This time the equation is right."  She adds the final term and punctuates it with a heart shaped smiley face.

The man spends a long time looking at the equation as she keeps talking.

"It's really simple, Wade, and it takes very little power.  I can create an Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky bridge with a slightly modified cell phone."  She holds up her phone, which has two small metal spikes sticking out of the top

The mention of a phone jolts Wade into action.  "Other people need to see this.  It has to be verified by someone smarter than me."  He pulls out his phone and takes a picture of the equation.  "I'm putting this on Facebook and Instagram."

She's miffed at his lack of faith in her.  "It's right.  Watch."  She activates the app on her phone and a vortex appears in the middle of the room.  "That's what I saw when I was five.  That's the doorway to another world."

Wade is even more dumbfounded by this than he was by the equation.  He starts to take a picture of this as well but Quinn stops him.  "I'm not ready to share this yet.  We have to test it first."


The episode proceeds with the new Quinn and Wade going to a world very much like Elvis World in the old pilot, except it's Michael Jackson in concert instead of Elvis and the radio guy talks about how "This country will never have a black president".  When they come back the professor is at Quinn's door wanting to talk about the equation, having seen it in Wade's picture.  Quinn shows off her discovery, they slide but Quinn adds too much power to accommodate the extra person and a fourth, who was just passing by, is caught in the vortex as well.

Where do they end up?  Dunno, it could be anywhere...

80 (edited by Slide Override 2015-12-22 14:54:35)

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

@Chaser: The issue I have with this is that, ignoring for a moment my attempts to try and perceive Quinn within a mentoring role, and ignoring him trying to take a back seat within the show, you are denying the audience that incredible character dynamic which really endeared me to Sliders. And we've seen what happens when you take out even one of those from the equations. For me personally, it's Quinn-Wade-Arturo-Remmy or bust.

@pilight: It's not really a semi-continuation if the new gang all have the same names (and personalities) as the old ones, only with just a gender swapped Quinn and Wade. That's just a reboot with the oldies featuring in a quick voiced cameo. I have no issue itself though with another group of sliders giving our initial group the inspiration or urge to develop the technology to slide.


And on the subject, did I miss something? What's with the sudden influx of Quinn 2.0 must be a girl in a reboot? (Not that I'm against that, I'm just curious where it's come from).

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

They don't have to have the same personalities.  I'm not even locked into the names.  I saw New!Wade as a video game nerd with very limited social skills.  I envisioned someone like Alfre Woodard as New!Professor, bringing a different tenor to the abrasiveness.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

omnimercurial wrote:

I have to admit the constant defeatism of"only 20 old fans still watch Sliders!" is irritating and innacurate. Yes there might only be 20 of us more die hard Fans on this Forum but there are many People who are more casual fans but still Fans none the less. Lots of people want More Sliders but they do not go into minutae like us.

What Chaser9 and I said is that only 20 people are so well-acquainted with the the minutae of the series, as you put it, that only 20 people or so could possibly want to see:

  • Rembrandt emerging from the vortex in "The Seer"

  • A reunion with the Professor who was left behind on the Azure Gate Bridge World

  • A return to the world of "The Seer"

  • The splitting the Quinns

  • The sticking of Colin

  • Discovering Colin is a Kromagg-clone and sleeper agent

  • The liberation of Earth Prime from the Kromaggs

  • The explanation that the Kromaggs of "Invasion" were Asian Kromaggs and the Kromaggs of Season 4 were European Kromaggs

  • The revelation that the Earth of "Genesis" isn't the Earth in the Pilot

  • The revelation that the Wade in "Requiem" was a clone

  • The revelation that Wade escaped the Kromaggs as early as "Genesis"

  • The final confrontation between the sliders and Logan St. Clair

  • A closing exit story for Mallory, Maggie and Diana

  • The culmination of the plot in which the FBI was attempting to find the sliders

  • The explanation of what happened to Michael, Diana, Michelle and Henry the Dog

  • The secret of why Quinn stopped wearing glasses after the Pilot

I've seen the series enough for most people and I wouldn't want to see any of these bullet points. They would be a convoluted, confusing story even for people who remember all this stuff.

What makes SLIDERS special is this: the sliders are lost in the multiverse, exploring parallel worlds, trying to find a way back home. Simple. Effective. Beautiful. The above bullet points do not speak to that unique, powerful, mythic appeal.

None of the Season 6 ideas are in any way about four people lost in the multiverse, exploring parallel Earths, trying to find a way back home.  They're all, instead, about how muddled a TV show becomes when actor-producer-network conflicts control every creative decision.

Which leaves me to ask you and the other Season 6 supporters: what is so wrong with simplicity? Why is it a problem for a new SLIDERS to be straightforward, entry-level, ground-floor material? What is so wrong with the Temporal Flux + Matt Hutaff solution that even that had to be dressed up with some bizarre conspiracy theory where Rembrandt is sabotaging sliding?

The (updated for 2015) Temporal Flux vision of a reboot:

  • Wade Welles is a tech journalist who failed to build a life beyond reviewing smartphones and laptops.

  • Rembrandt Brown is a coffee bar owner who failed to hang onto his 15 minutes of fame.

  • Professor Arturo is a genius who failed to find a career outside of writing high school study guides for science students.

  • Quinn Mallory is a tax accountant who lost his passion for science after failing to create anti-gravity -- but twenty years after giving up, he realizes that he discovered something else instead.

  • SLIDERS: A journey through what could be and might have been. Sometimes, getting lost is the best way to be found.

Is your alternative route for introducing SLIDERS to a new audience better than that? Is it simpler? Is it more enticing? Is it more entry-level? Or is it just a convoluted journey into confusion?

Matt came up with a simple way to bring this reboot method into continuity:

  • Quinn in 2015 will find video diaries from the Quinn of the 1995 series.

  • The video journals will explain the sliding concept to the 2015 Quinn.

  • The journals will later have the 1995 Quinn reveal that due to an interdimensional war, he has found a way to alter history to remove sliding from reality.

  • This brief journal will reveal to the fans that the older doubles are the original sliders, just living in an altered timeline where sliding's discovery is delayed to the present. New viewers will not realize this, nor do they need to.

Is your alternative route less complicated? More effective? More welcoming to new viewers? Or are you just writing Part 2 of "The Seer"?

What is so wrong with this simple, effective reboot idea? What is so deficient and unacceptable about this simple, welcoming pitch that it has to have Kromaggs and unstuck men and Wrong Professors making things right? What is so horrible about this beautiful storytelling platform that every new version of it must be a Season 6 premiere that's 15 years too late?

SLIDERS. The sliders are lost in the multiverse, exploring parallel worlds, trying to find a way back home. That's something special. All this:

  • Rembrandt emerging from the vortex in "The Seer"

  • A reunion with the Professor who was left behind on the Azure Gate Bridge World

  • A return to the world of "The Seer"

  • The splitting the Quinns

  • The sticking of Colin

  • Discovering Colin is a Kromagg-clone and sleeper agent

  • The liberation of Earth Prime from the Kromaggs

  • The explanation that the Kromaggs of "Invasion" were Asian Kromaggs and the Kromaggs of Season 4 were European Kromaggs

  • The revelation that the Earth of "Genesis" isn't the Earth in the Pilot

  • The revelation that the Wade in "Requiem" was a clone

  • The revelation that Wade escaped the Kromaggs as early as "Genesis"

  • The final confrontation between the sliders and Logan St. Clair

  • A closing exit story for Mallory, Maggie and Diana

  • The culmination of the plot in which the FBI was attempting to find the sliders

  • The explanation of what happened to Michael, Diana, Michelle and Henry the Dog

  • The secret of why Quinn stopped wearing glasses after the Pilot

That's just nonsense. It shows how anyone can make something more complicated; the actual challenge is making things simple.

pilight wrote:

You want another take on how a new series could be a semi-continuation of the old one? A girl, about five years old, is playing in her back yard.  Suddenly a vortex opens.  Frightened, she hides in the bushes as four people come flying out.  She can't see their faces but she hears them talking about sliding and interdimensional travel.  Fans of the old show recognize the voices as Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt, and the professor.  A moment later, one of them activates the timer and they slide out. The girl comes out of the bushes and looks around, but sees nothing.  She has an intense look on her face, as if she's found her life's passion despite her young age. 20 years later the girl is now a woman working in a basement lab much like Quinn's from the pilot.  A man about her age enters the lab. "What's so urgent, Quinn?" [...] The episode proceeds with the new Quinn and Wade going to a world very much like Elvis World in the old pilot, except it's Michael Jackson in concert instead of Elvis and the radio guy talks about how "This country will never have a black president".  When they come back the professor is at Quinn's door wanting to talk about the equation, having seen it in Wade's picture.  Quinn shows off her discovery, they slide but Quinn adds too much power to accommodate the extra person and a fourth, who was just passing by, is caught in the vortex as well. Where do they end up?  Dunno, it could be anywhere...

I had to read this five times before I understood that it was a gender swap. This is actually a very clever way of bypassing the original actors having aged out of their roles. (I suggested the gender swap in an earlier post.)

The overall plot you suggest, however, is a convoluted and incoherent mess. Very simply -- your material would be stronger if you just had these gender-swapped, twentysomething versions of Wade and Quinn discovering sliding and going on an adventure with only subtle efforts to tie into the classic series. Your efforts to do so overtly result in confusion, alienation and the inability to appeal to those new viewers I was talking about.

The other thing I'd advise against is the two additional sliders being from a world that isn't 'our world.' The storytelling engine of SLIDERS was very carefully designed: the sliders' home Earth was ours aside from very subtle, minor differences. As a result, the sliders would encounter alternate histories with nearly the same frame of reference as the viewer, spotting the same differences, reacting together.

This got hopelessly muddled after Maggie Beckett joined the team; suddenly, we have a slider who doesn't know who Thomas Jefferson is and comes from a world where World War II had the Japanese conquering Los Angeles and San Diego and the US Army dropping hydrogen bombs on both cities and then a Cold War that lasted into the 90s. Viewers can't put themselves into Maggie's perspective because her perspective is either alien or unknown.

If your sliders are not from 'our' world, they are poor choices for exploring the multiverse because their reactions to alternate history will not be close to the audience. The great brilliance of SLIDERS was that its original four characters all had a multitude of reactions while still having the same body of history. You had youthful curiosity from Quinn, compassion and social crusadership from Wade, a fascination with popular culture from Rembrandt, and a more conservative and cautious attitude from Arturo. Young and old, cynical and idealistic -- and all from a world we could think of as our own.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

Ha Ha Ha Ha......... NO.

The only thing from that list I like is a Return of Logan St Clair. Even then a Final Showdown would be a waste of a good/interesting Character. I would prefer her as a recurring Character myself. Maybe not every Ep but Regular Appearances anyway.

The Gang Reunited of course I want to happen but I would be happy for an off screen reunion that leaves everything a mystery.

More Conrad Bennish.... Yes please.

The FBI.... If they were real Feds then I doubt it would stay in their purview long. Probably end up kicked to NSA or an Off the Books Organisation.
That plotline can be revisited any time or created fresh as and when wanted.

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

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

Soft Reboot is fine for me but even a Hard Reboot could feature our. Core Four.

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

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

Gotta agree with pretty much everything ireactions has mentioned, especially the echos of my own thoughts about what makes Sliders so great. I have no issues with most of these - just as long as it is contained within the realms of fanfiction. For a reboot, I want that essence of Sliders back please.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

omnimercurial wrote:

I have to admit the constant defeatism of"only 20 old fans still watch Sliders!" is irritating and innacurate. Yes there might only be 20 of us more die hard Fans on this Forum but there are many People who are more casual fans but still Fans none the less. Lots of people want More Sliders but they do not go into minutae like us.

Why is it defeatism to acknowledge the challenge of continuity and find a way around it? Why is it defeatism to try to cut through confusion and find a way back to what made SLIDERS unique, special, heartfelt, exciting, brilliant, clever and suited to the weekly TV format?

Why is it defeatism to find a cheeky, amusing, daring way to restart the series while incorporating nods to the past that don't confuse a new audience?

It seems to me that the actual defeatism would be for a fan to look at SLIDERS' tangled narrative and declare it must be addressed point by point no matter how incomprehensible and baffling such a story would be, no matter how many nails this would hammer into SLIDERS' coffin. The real defeatism is to say that SLIDERS is unfit for a general audience and has no choice but to remain obscure and irrelevant because directly resolving "The Seer" 15 years after it aired is the only meaningful priority. That, to me, is the thinking of a fan who has completely given up on SLIDERS.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

It's the way it came across.... Your earloer post that is.

It made it seem like "oh ! Nobody watches or cares but us!" even if that is not what you meant.

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

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

I think that, when telling a story, you can't take it for granted that people care. You have to earn that. And with SLIDERS, I think you would have to earn it from the ground up. The Season 6 stories in this thread assume that the viewer cares; they take no effort to create a relationship, acting instead like it already exists. It's the equivalent of a stranger suddenly showing up in your living room and making themselves comfortable instead of meeting you in an appropriate setting and developing a mutual association.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

ireactions wrote:

Warning: this message board post contains RAGE because slider5125 has been sending me spam and this pissed me off.


I don't know what the heck your talking about, haven't been here in a long time.

I thought when asking for ideas that this was an open form not an attack spot for any ideas that you did not see worthy to follow up a show from 20 years ago.

Being that you have no more clout with NBC/Universal/Comcast then I.

I have no idea why you have decided to go on the attack.

Oh well, nothing more to say

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

Very simply -- your material would be stronger if you just had these gender-swapped, twentysomething versions of Wade and Quinn discovering sliding and going on an adventure with only subtle efforts to tie into the classic series. Your efforts to do so overtly result in confusion, alienation and the inability to appeal to those new viewers I was talking about.

I was thinking about this.  It would work better if New!Quinn seeing the old sliders was a mid episode flashback rather than a teaser.  We'd have to make a bigger deal of her seeing it when she was five in the early episode dialogue, with the flashback coming when she tells the whole story to New!Professor and/or New!Rembrandt.  Plus, using the old gang in a teaser will make people think we're going to see them again (or even possibly that the show is about them).

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

I like pilight's idea for a gender-swapped Wade and Quinn and my advice was to make it more entry-level, pointing out that it's very good until attempting to tie it into the classic series. I thought it brilliant to set the series in the original continuity and side-step the age of the actors by featuring a female-Quinn who's the same age as the 1995-Quinn. Very clever.

I like pilight's idea of having the gender-swapped sliders meet the original sliders later on in the series instead of the first episode. That's probably a good way to handle it. This would be tender and touching for the old fans, but putting if farther into the run of the series would prevent it from being confusing for the new ones.

sliders5125 wrote:

I thought when asking for ideas that this was an open form not an attack spot for any ideas that you did not see worthy to follow up a show from 20 years ago. Being that you have no more clout with NBC/Universal/Comcast then I. I have no idea why you have decided to go on the attack. Oh well, nothing more to say

My criticisms are that few if any of the ideas here are entry-level introductions to SLIDERS. That anyone not familiar with SLIDERS would be confused by these stories. That is a perfectly reasonable and legitimate issue to raise.

As for you, you pissed me off.

I presented a simple, effective, straightforward story for a SLIDERS reboot.

ireactions wrote:

The (updated for 2015) Temporal Flux vision of a reboot:

  • Wade Welles is a tech journalist who failed to build a life beyond reviewing smartphones and laptops.

  • Rembrandt Brown is a coffee bar owner who failed to hang onto his 15 minutes of fame.

  • Professor Arturo is a genius who failed to find a career outside of writing high school study guides for science students.

  • Quinn Mallory is a tax accountant who lost his passion for science after failing to create anti-gravity -- but twenty years after giving up, he realizes that he discovered something else instead.

  • SLIDERS: A journey through what could be and might have been. Sometimes, getting lost is the best way to be found.

I provided Matt's concept for how to make this rebooted SLIDERS a subtle sequel to the original series:

ireactions wrote:
  • Quinn in 2015 will find video diaries from the Quinn of the 1995 series.

  • The video journals will explain the sliding concept to the 2015 Quinn.

  • The journals will later have the 1995 Quinn reveal that due to an interdimensional war, he has found a way to alter history to remove sliding from reality.

  • This brief journal will reveal to the fans that the older doubles are the original sliders.

  • They are living in an altered timeline where sliding's discovery is delayed to the present.

  • New viewers will not realize this, nor do they need to.

And you replied:

sliders5125 wrote:

Ireactions, the above works, but would work better if Rembrandt is the key to hiding everything and he purposely has found away to stay busy in Quinn s life so that every time Quinn is talking about antigravity machine etc. Rembrandt eyes lite up in terror and he suggests other scientific endeavors ....Rembrandt and the proffessor could be the key to distracting Quinn over the years up to the point where he does start sliding again ....instead of a 2001 Quinn hiding sliding it was a Rembrandt that somehow met up with the proffessor in 2001 after the kromagg cure of the finale and they had developed this magic machine to go back in time and stop Quinn from presuming sliding past the initial test the hid the tapes and all evidence leading to sliding from Quinn to keep our Earth from going through all of the awful events sliding had brought. Rembrandt would be a tortured soul and the guy with the experience knowing that he eliminated both the good and the bad that sliding had accomplished. ..telling himself more bad than good happened over the 5 year journey...and now that the team is forced to slide again hoping they don't make the same mistakes trying to find home...or a safe supstitite for home.

You arrogantly declared that a simple, effective, straightforward story should become a tangled and convoluted "The Seer Part 2" / "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome Part 2" -- and then you said that your lazy sequel was somehow "better" than what I presented.

You have never shared a single idea that wasn't Part 2 of a previous story. I am appalled that someone like you -- someone with no original ideas at all -- would tell me that the way to improve my material, TF's material and Matt's material is to turn their welcoming, approachable, entry-level story into an unfathomable mess of continuity references.

I find it outrageous, arrogant, offensive and insulting for you to declare that you can improve plots by removing any new ideas and replacing them with your overstretched threads from other people's stories.

I have also been getting a crazy amount of spam from your E-mail address. I'd reproduce them here, but the messages were sent to my junk mail and deleted.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

ireactions wrote:

I like pilight's idea of having the gender-swapped sliders meet the original sliders later on in the series instead of the first episode. That's probably a good way to handle it. This would be tender and touching for the old fans, but putting if farther into the run of the series would prevent it from being confusing for the new ones.

You wouldn't do them all at once.  Maybe one (or one group) per season.

Season one.  The New!Sliders arrive on a world with an Azure Gate Bridge.  They meet an aging professor who was accidentally left here years ago by another group of sliders.  He's done well for himself here, introducing velcro to a world that had not invented it made him quite wealthy, and considering his mid 70's age declines to slide out with the group.  This would have to be a part of some larger story set on this world.

Season two.  The New!Sliders meet a woman who can open vortexes with her mind.  She was a Kromagg captive but escaped and has been on the run from them for many years.  The new group help her escape a nefarious Kromagg trap.  They end up going their separate ways as the woman does not want to endanger any more people by having them travel with her.  It's possible they could cross paths with her again in a future episode.

Season three.  The New!Sliders appear in a park at the foot of a statue commemorating the savior of the world, Rembrandt Brown.  They find out he was also a slider and saved his world by returning with an anti-Kromagg virus in his blood.  Old!Rembrandt is dead, so New!Rembrandt is feted as his replacement and encouraged to stay.  Storywise it's kind of a cross between The Return of Maggie Beckett and The Seer.  The Guardian and Dust established that slight differences in the speed of the Earth's rotation can put the sliders in a world where their duplicates are a different age.  The New!Sliders learn that Old!Rembrandt came from Seer world as a setup for a later episode.

Season four.  The New!Sliders feel something odd in the transit to the world they land on, as if there was a fifth person in the wormhole.  Despite that, just the four arrive on this Amish world.  Once they start exploring they see visions of a man they don't know.  The locals see it also.  They know who it is and believe it to be the ghost of a man named Colin Mallory.  New!Quinn and New!Professor don't believe in ghosts.  They believe the man must have gotten unstuck somehow and work to restore him to this, his home world.  Of course they meet resistance from the locals, who see their technology as witchcraft.

Season five.  The New!Sliders come to a world where there is a philosophy known as Slidology, based on another group of sliders whose activities were envisioned by man known as the seer.  One of the four Old!Sliders left but the other three have been prevented from leaving by Slidology's leader, Claire LeBeau.  She's wealthy and influential and has access to a bunch of old Kromagg gear left behind when the people of this world drove them out with a virus, which is more than enough to keep the remaining Old!Sliders from leaving.  New!Quinn helps them build a more advanced timer, like the one the New!Sliders have, than can bypass the force field LeBeau uses to cap wormholes and let them escape.  Before the groups split, New!Rembrandt tells the Old!Sliders the fate of Old!Rembrandt from their season three adventure.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

ireactions wrote:

I like pilight's idea for a gender-swapped Wade and Quinn and my advice was to make it more entry-level, pointing out that it's very good until attempting to tie it into the classic series. I thought it brilliant to set the series in the original continuity and side-step the age of the actors by featuring a female-Quinn who's the same age as the 1995-Quinn. Very clever.

I like pilight's idea of having the gender-swapped sliders meet the original sliders later on in the series instead of the first episode. That's probably a good way to handle it. This would be tender and touching for the old fans, but putting if farther into the run of the series would prevent it from being confusing for the new ones.

sliders5125 wrote:

I thought when asking for ideas that this was an open form not an attack spot for any ideas that you did not see worthy to follow up a show from 20 years ago. Being that you have no more clout with NBC/Universal/Comcast then I. I have no idea why you have decided to go on the attack. Oh well, nothing more to say

My criticisms are that few if any of the ideas here are entry-level introductions to SLIDERS. That anyone not familiar with SLIDERS would be confused by these stories. That is a perfectly reasonable and legitimate issue to raise.

As for you, you pissed me off.

I presented a simple, effective, straightforward story for a SLIDERS reboot.

ireactions wrote:

The (updated for 2015) Temporal Flux vision of a reboot:

  • Wade Welles is a tech journalist who failed to build a life beyond reviewing smartphones and laptops.

  • Rembrandt Brown is a coffee bar owner who failed to hang onto his 15 minutes of fame.

  • Professor Arturo is a genius who failed to find a career outside of writing high school study guides for science students.

  • Quinn Mallory is a tax accountant who lost his passion for science after failing to create anti-gravity -- but twenty years after giving up, he realizes that he discovered something else instead.

  • SLIDERS: A journey through what could be and might have been. Sometimes, getting lost is the best way to be found.

I provided Matt's concept for how to make this rebooted SLIDERS a subtle sequel to the original series:

ireactions wrote:
  • Quinn in 2015 will find video diaries from the Quinn of the 1995 series.

  • The video journals will explain the sliding concept to the 2015 Quinn.

  • The journals will later have the 1995 Quinn reveal that due to an interdimensional war, he has found a way to alter history to remove sliding from reality.

  • This brief journal will reveal to the fans that the older doubles are the original sliders.

  • They are living in an altered timeline where sliding's discovery is delayed to the present.

  • New viewers will not realize this, nor do they need to.

And you replied:

sliders5125 wrote:

Ireactions, the above works, but would work better if Rembrandt is the key to hiding everything and he purposely has found away to stay busy in Quinn s life so that every time Quinn is talking about antigravity machine etc. Rembrandt eyes lite up in terror and he suggests other scientific endeavors ....Rembrandt and the proffessor could be the key to distracting Quinn over the years up to the point where he does start sliding again ....instead of a 2001 Quinn hiding sliding it was a Rembrandt that somehow met up with the proffessor in 2001 after the kromagg cure of the finale and they had developed this magic machine to go back in time and stop Quinn from presuming sliding past the initial test the hid the tapes and all evidence leading to sliding from Quinn to keep our Earth from going through all of the awful events sliding had brought. Rembrandt would be a tortured soul and the guy with the experience knowing that he eliminated both the good and the bad that sliding had accomplished. ..telling himself more bad than good happened over the 5 year journey...and now that the team is forced to slide again hoping they don't make the same mistakes trying to find home...or a safe supstitite for home.

You arrogantly declared that a simple, effective, straightforward story should become a tangled and convoluted "The Seer Part 2" / "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome Part 2" -- and then you said that your lazy sequel was somehow "better" than what I presented.

You have never shared a single idea that wasn't Part 2 of a previous story. I am appalled that someone like you -- someone with no original ideas at all -- would tell me that the way to improve my material, TF's material and Matt's material is to turn their welcoming, approachable, entry-level story into an unfathomable mess of continuity references.

I find it outrageous, arrogant, offensive and insulting for you to declare that you can improve plots by removing any new ideas and replacing them with your overstretched threads from other people's stories.

I have also been getting a crazy amount of spam from your E-mail address. I'd reproduce them here, but the messages were sent to my junk mail and deleted

By All means embrace SPAM fury ireactions.

Your tone regarding his ideas though is highly aggressive. I believe unecessarily.

I do not agree with even acknowledging the Post Series Two Cromaggs so I agree his Idea Pitch is not to my taste.

Still.... You do not need to take his differing view as a personal attack.

I respect you a lot based on what I know of you from past posts ireactions so please do not take my input here negatively when I note this issue above.


quote]

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

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

I would say that part of my anger towards sliders5125 is that I do indeed perceive his response to my work as a personal attack. "Your work would be better if there were no original ideas in it, only ideas lifted and photocopied from other people's work." But even in the abstract, I find that to be a repellent and disgusting attitude whether aimed at me or others. To me, centophobia -- a prejudice against new ideas -- is no less repulsive than homophobia or racism in its contempt for the different and unfamiliar. The idea that something is new and therefore must be bad or inferior is unacceptable and hateful.

I've been critical of the writing in this thread, but my criticisms are very simply: few of these ideas would serve to revive SLIDERS in the twenty-first century. pilight and Chaser9 are two of the few who've suggested something that would work, and I think pilight's revised gender-swap idea is quite clever with one episode per season addressing one of the original cast members while treating that cast member as a guest-star whom the new viewers would see as an original character. I think that is brilliant.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

I agree that ireactions is unnecessarily harsh sometimes.


On further reflection re: once per season having old sliders as guest stars, it would probably be better not to have Diana, Maggie, and Mallory still on Seer World 20 years later.  Maybe have Diana and Mallory back on their home world, having given up sliding after splitting Quinn from Mallory, then in season six have Maggie and Quinn still sliding randomly happening to appear on the same world as the New!Sliders.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

On that note it must be pointed out that if you are not dead set on returning to your point of Origin then building new Sliding Apparatus is an option for any with the Technical Knowledge and available resources to make them.

As much as Quinn and Arturo are an amazing mix of Theoreticcal Physicist and Electrical/Mechanical Engineers able to Maintain, Repair and Upgrade there Equipment we must remember that People Use and Repair Technology in our Society often with little or no Knowledge of the underlying physics so with sufficient familiarity with the Tech it can propogate without the underlying Principles..... Albeit in a stunted manner.

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

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

On the subject of Revivals though I would like to share with you my fellow Sliders Fans a seperate Fan Work Continuation of another Franchise.

Sonic the Comic. The UK Version which was published by Fleetway/Egmont aka STC.

It is still being continued to this day as "Unofficially Official" and praised by Sega under the moniker STC-O or Sonic the Comic Online.

It is a radically different product to the American Sonic Comic by Archie Comics.

Check out the Sonic the Comic (STC) and Sonic the Comic Online Continuation (STC-O) Forums here: http://sonicthecomic.proboards.com/ 
 and also Archives and new issues here: http://www.stconline.co.uk/ 

I look to STC-O and I think about what we could do with Sliders. smile

So many possibilities!

As a Young Boy I played Sonic on my Sega and loved the Sci Fi of a Human Scientist on another Planet or Parallel Universe filled with Sapient Non Humans and Androids, Bio Energy Fuelled Cyborg-esque Badniks which used the Matrix Bio Battery Idea in a far more interesting way along with the Laputa like Floating Island and Knuckles the Echidna's Mysteries.

Sonic the Comic started a little Shaky and was always aimed at kids initially but it soon found it's feet and did not talk down to Children and introduced them/us to themes and ideas usually only Sci Fi aimed at adults would approach but in a accessable way. It ended up maintaining an audience way beyond it's aimed 8-12 age demographic and kept fans/market share all the way up to late teens, uni students and even parents who got into it with their kids.

The official comic eventually declined due to ill thought out ideas by management to start printing lots of repeated storylines and began to shed readers but even then many kept buying in the hope for new content and ongoing Development all the way up til the Publishers killed it off.

That fanbase did not go away though and STC-O is due to that.
Even now new Fans stumble across Scans online or fan art on deviant art etc and come to love the divergent continuity.

Here are a couple of you tube links.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWRr0KIM … ata_player

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VueRKZE … ata_player


This one is a nice treat though. It is a fan animation of a comic strip from STC.
Really nicely done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLJOzTiw … ata_player

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

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

Alright. This will be my last post in this thread.

I'm entitled to my opinion. And my opinion is that Fix Fics with no storytelling, characterization, world-building or ideas beyond hitting the Undo button on Sliders 3 - 5 are awful.

These Season 6 stories have no meaningful parallel Earths (because they're tied up in knots trying to resurrect the dead three times over), no relatable characters (because even if the original cast come back, they've been warped and twisted beyond recognition; a Wade who's been a prisoner for twenty years will be a mess), no meaningful themes to explore (because sticking Quinn, revealing the Wade in "Requiem" wasn't Wade, bringing back the original Professor, etc., are all separate stories awkwardly hammered into a single tale) and they have no new ideas.

These Season 6 plots are ostensibly setting forth to bring the sliders back. They don't even succeed at doing that; the sliders they recover are too traumatized and damaged to be sliders.

These stories just suck by any measurable standard: no characterization, convenient plot devices piled on top of each other in rapid succession to resurrect mutilated versions of the original cast with whom new viewers wouldn't be acquainted. Pointless. Which is why Matt was so very much against SLIDERS REBORN taking the route that it did.

SLIDERS REBORN is a Season 6 sort of story. That's not one of its strengths. The prequel, "Reprise," opens like every Season 6 story, has Rembrandt coming out of the vortex in "The Seer" to find the original sliders waiting for him. It's two pages, it sets up the expectation that the subsequent pages will be all about undoing the plot aspects of Seasons 3 - 5. There'll be a Kromagg war, explanations for how the sliders can be back, big revelations about Seasons 3 - 5 being some sort of conspiracy or setup. Season 6 is coming.

The second installment, however, immediately pivots away from any sort of Season 6 story. It's set in 2015. Fifteen years after "The Seer," with whatever Season 6 material that happened taking place in the time gap. The story doesn't focus on any of that, instead, focusing on what Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are doing in the present day. The audience was set up for a Season 6 story, instead, they're getting Season 20.

This is a Steven Moffat style technique that blogger Philip Sandifer calls "narrative substitution." The audience is made to think they are in one kind of story -- a Kromagg War epic -- only to find they are in a completely different story entirely. Rest asssured, I'm not in any way a writer on the level of Moffat or Sandifer; this was just me writing instinctively, often creating a messy narrative, and relying on Matt and Nigel Mitchell to help me trim and tidy it afterwards, so all this is after-the-fact analysis.

But this is the resulting approach of looking at Season 6 and noting: the actors are too old to pick up where they left off. Too much time has passed; if you have Rembrandt rescuing Wade in 2015 with the idea that she's been in a Kromagg cell for 17 years, you've delivered resolution that's so ridiculously late as to be totally useless. And what is the point of all these twisted, convoluted Season 6 plot gymnastics? Pilight says it's to bring "closure," but what closure is there from seeing a traumatized and battered Wade Welles in 2015? If the end goal is to have Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo back onscreen -- then just put them back onscreen immediately and let the convoluted stuff stay off camera.

So, by the end of "Reunion," we have a Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo who made it home in 2001 and have been living normal lives for 14 years. We have a Quinn who kept sliding during all that time. And then we go into "Revelations," which at first seems to be a Season 1 - 2 type of story -- the sliders wander into trouble on unknown worlds.

However, this turns out to be another narrative substitution -- because the climax reveals that the multiverse is broken and that while the sliders were given happy endings and homecomings, the end result was the same as most Season 6 stories. This is not a new adventure in a new series for the sliders. It turns out to be their final adventure. The series finale.

The result was what Philip Sandifer calls a "narrative collapse" -- a situation where it's no longer possible to continue using the series platform for continued installments because the story has come to an endpoint. And that's where all Season 6 stories -- including mine -- inevitably bring SLIDERS -- to a narrative collapse where the series is no longer suited to new adventures.

The tangled backstory of Seasons 3 - 5 warped the characters before dispatching them. The time gap of 2015 and the idea that the sliders, in their mutilated state, have somehow been alive the whole time, only makes their fates more grotesque and horrific. So, when you do Season 6 style stories, you not only produce incomprehensible material, you're presenting characters who are played out and no longer suited to being characters in SLIDERS.

SLIDERS requires that the regular cast be relatable people from 'our' world; a Quinn who's been in quantum limbo since 1999, a Wade who's spent over a decade in a Kromagg jail, an Arturo who's adopted the Azure Gate Bridge world as his own and a Season 5 Rembrandt -- these people aren't audience identification points anymore; they're aliens.

SLIDERS REBORN just barely dodges this bullet -- the characters are revived, but it's established that there was the 'original' timeline in which the sliders had Torme style adventures for four years, and then there's the 'altered' timeline which is the version that aired on TV.

But the end result is still suffering from the same problem as most Season 6s -- unrelatable characters. In this case, the characters would be difficult to relate to because after 20 years of sliding, Quinn's mastery of the technology should make him functionally invincible, far too powerful and no longer suited to being presented as a fallible and vulnerable hero.

In order to get one more story out of this setup, it then becomes necessary to come up with an explanation for why Quinn *doesn't* have total mastery of sliding -- but then it means that once Quinn does get control of sliding, the series is complete. So, SLIDERS REBORN, despite finding ways to side-step all the issues of Season 6, is nevertheless a story about concluding SLIDERS rather than reviving it for a new series and a new round of adventures.

Season 6 -- and SLIDERS REBORN -- are effectively a dead end for continuing development. There's no point in reviving SLIDERS for the twenty-first century just to end it -- that would not be a revival.

Alright. I've said enough.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

I just have one question.

Why would anyone want Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo to have been left in the states they were in at the end of Season 5 for 16 years?

That's depressing.

They made it home.  Okay?  It's over and done.  No need to resolve any of that mess, and as someone who worked on 4 season 6s and a post alt-S5 fanfic dealing with this mess, I get to say that.


Time to go start the REBOOTING Sliders in the Twenty-First Century thread.

--Chaser9

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

You see I think there could be room for both a Revival ala ireactions and a Reboot.

Sliders in and of itself allows multiple Continuities.

For what it is worth ireactions I DO enjoy your ideas and contributions and appreciate the thought and graft you bring to bear for the Sliders Multiverse and it's Fans.

I really hope you have not become too disheartened or distressed.

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

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

Yes, people desire closure.  I don't think it's possible to get it in the way they want it.

A reboot with the open possibility of revisiting the old gang as guest stars is the only way Sliders will ever get back on the air.

102 (edited by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan 2016-01-03 13:14:58)

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

Let's say Sliders came back, and Torme was involved.  Given that he didnt even watch all of season 3 let alone 4 & 5, I can't see him worrying about the details of tying up loose ends... I think he'd have a mechanism that undid all the damage of later seasons.  It became a different franchise midway through the third season. What was broadcast from that point on would not be the type of show that would get revived.

I would like to see Jerry take the lead on pitching a revival but from Slidecage's interview with him, he seems to be deferring on the show's creator to bring it back or let it lie dormant.

In my opinion a good, realistic way to bring it back (short of the principals doing so) would be as a book series primarily utilizing some or all of the original characters, along with some scripts worthy of audio-dramas in which actors would imitate the original actor's voices.

With books, the biggest issue is the market. In that form, you'd have to create a new generation of sliders fans (e.g. young adults).

I would love, love, love to see a kickstarter around a producing a teleplay for a well-done script though. With a script in place, the production costs would be in the $3-10k range - a realistic campaign goal that could be achieved.

I would also LOVE for Sliders to get some books similar to these:

http://www.amazon.com/Future-Noir-Makin … 0061053147

http://www.hassleinbooks.com/pages/book … meline.php

http://www.hassleinbooks.com/pages/book_bttfLexicon.php

http://www.hassleinbooks.com/pages/book_lostWho.php

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/timelin … 0615253923

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/from-al … 1453838921


There's certainly been some very capable writers in the community who would do a great job at creating books in this vein (not to mention there's already great material websites have that would be great in book form).  The biggest issue would be there wouldn't be a lot of sales for books like these since Sliders doesn't have the following these other properties have.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

Audio dramas or missing story adventures featuring the old cast could definitely work as a sort of 'multiverse' or 'other slides' story concept. Heck, there's nothing stopping us fans from producing those now and 'reviving' the show in that way.

But if we're talking about reviving Sliders for modern day TV and audiences - then it would need to be a fresh reboot.

Re: Reviving Sliders in the Twenty-First Century

I have only been a member of this board for a short time, but I love reading the posts.  The posts and rewatch podcast have rekindled my love of the show.  The reboot discussions have certainly made me start thinking of how amazing it would be see a new Sliders series.

I started watching Sliders back in 1996 or so and stuck with it to the end.  I purchased the box set of all five seasons many years ago and for the last couple years regularly watched an episode or two (multiple times!).  Yes, the last 2 ½ years was not the best and we all know why, however, it is hard for me to see a reboot that simply wipes out that entire part of the show.
 
Rembrandt was probably my favorite character.  That might be because Cleavant was there for every episode and it allowed great character growth over the five years.  My thoughts for a genuine TV reboot always seem to come back to center around Rembrandt.  As much as we all would love to see the original cast reunite, that simply would never be feasible for a TV reboot.  Certainly, we can dream about that in fanfics and comics, but I have been thinking of how a TV reboot could happen that picks up after The Seer.  And I feel that is has to pick up here and not try to dismiss 2 ½ years of the show, even though it was a mess.  I accept the show for what it was during the entire five years.

My idea allows for the possibility of guest star appearances by the original cast, if that could be arranged.  Having Arturo or Quinn appear as “relevant to the story” doubles would give Slideheads that nostalgic feeling without the messiness of trying to deal with the characters as a long term series plot line.

I decided to summarize my reboot ideas in bullet points only.  The first several points are focused on backstory, filling in the days and years that leads up to where the reboot would start; in present day San Francisco.  I know there are glaring holes and some things just have not been thought out fully, but would love to see feedback.

•    Last we recall, Rembrandt jumped into the vortex with the Kromagg virus in his blood in hopes of returning to Earth Prime to liberate his world.

•    Rembrandt was successful.  He navigated the war torn world and befriended a group that helped him locate government leaders and scientists.  They used Rembrandt’s blood to synthesize a biological weapon to repel the Kromagg incursion.
•    Leaders deemed sliding technology a menace and confiscated Rembrandt’s timer.  They could not allow anyone to potentially risk the safety of their world again. Rembrandt is stranded and is unable to go back for his friends.

•    Rembrandt becomes depressed and a changed man knowing he would never be able to find his friends and finish what he had started.  Alesha Avo (from Dragonslide, Remmy mentioned his romantic connection to her), hears about his return and consoles him through his depression.    They rekindle their affection and fall in love again and marry (maybe within a couple years after The Seer).

•    Remmy and Alesha have a child (Even though Remmy is older that’s obviously not an issue from a man’s perspective, so I have to assume Alesha is still of child bearing age).  Remmy being an artist and in honor of his long lost friend, the Professor, names the boy, Artie.

•    This is where the two part pilot episode for the reboot would start.  The above could be told as a story at some point by Rembrandt (if Cleavant guest starred in the pilot!) or by Artie. 

•    Fast forward to present time and fudge the ages a bit.  Artie is an 18 year old freshman at a local college.  He endured years of pain watching his father deal with his sliding ordeal.  He has heard all the fantastical stories from his father.  Most make his father smile, but it always ends the same way; with sadness.  Artie feels compelled to somehow fix his father’s pain. 

•    Artie befriends a science major genius type at school who has dreamed of visiting alternative universes and since he knows that they do exist would love to explore that further. Problem is sliding is now illegal and closely monitored by world scientists and governments (Sort of like Logan St. Clair on her world having the ability to monitor wormholes.  This world has developed a network to detect them, not only to prevent incoming outsiders, but also to prevent any rogue scientists from discovering the technology and potentially endangering the earth by sliding out).

•    Artie also has a girlfriend that loves to explore and is curious by nature.  She would go to the end of the world for Artie.

•    This rebellious trio decides it’s time.  They must gain access to the sliding technology for two purposes.  One, the adventures of sliding would be so much more of an education than any school could provide (Quinn mentioned this in an episode as a response to Wade.  She asked him how many children he wanted and he said five, his own basketball squad.   She questioned how he could afford college.  Give them a timer and explore.).  And two, to try to find Maggie, Diana and Mallory.  One thing to note to keep you reading, I have a simple idea of how Quinn and Colin could be reset too so that would be another factor for the trio to slide out.

•    The trio befriends a woman at the installation where the timer is supposedly held. The woman maybe holds a grudge or whatever reason that makes sense.  She wants to assist in the recovery of the timer.  Now how the trio learns where the timer and how they find out this woman is willing to help is still not thought out.  Also, it is quite convenient the timer is housed locally in SF area, but reasons for that could be flushed out too.

•    If Cleavant is a guest star, there can be a scene where Artie tells him of the four’s plan and there is an emotional plea from Remmy to not go through with it.  He fears that they could be caught and arrested before even getting the timer.  They could succeed in obtaining the timer, but then get lost in the multiverse or even worse, have their adventures end the same as his had; in pain and never-ending sadness.  Artie overwhelms Remmy with reasons and basically forces his father to relent. They embrace and Remmy wishes his son good luck.  One of the reasons is that the ultra-genius has a theory that contradicts what happened to Quinn and Colin.  More on that below.

•    Now after the well-conceived heist, Artie, his girlfriend, the genius and the woman from the installation find themselves in possession of the timer.  How that all goes down is still up in the air, but I bet there could be some cool action scenes in there.

•    After some time they fire up the timer and look at each other and jump in the vortex.

•    Then there is a cut to the authorities at the installation.  Three or four high level individuals in a room. They decide that this attack and theft of the timer cannot go without a response.  Even though sliding technology had been made illegal, the installation continued researching and had developed a second timer.   A timer that would only be used to hunt down those who were detected by the worldwide vortex detection network.  They choose two (a man and a woman) in the room and hand them the timer.  The timer is much more simplistic and compact than the original shows version.  They demonstrate how the timer is also kind of stun gun that can be used to incapacitate.  They are instructed to track down the four sliders and return them to Earth Prime.

•    Pilot ends and the adventures begin end.

•    I think the tracking timer is not perfect and sometimes takes the sliding police off track.  This can be described in a scene at some point.  This allows for episodes devoted to only the 4 sliders.  Other episodes could involve the sliding police.

•    I think one way to clean up Colin and Quinn is that Geiger and Diana were wrong.  Quinn and Mallory never were physically combined.  Their minds may have merged (like a Vulcan mind meld) briefly during that fateful slide leaving Mallory with vivid Quinn memories.  Colin did not become “unstuck”.  Simply, Colin and Quinn were shunted through another wormhole and landed on a world.  Without a timer.  They are out there to be found.  This could be a nice guest star two partner if Jerry and Charlie could be brought in.

For those who read, thanks for taking the time!