Reboots: The Return of Sliders (?), Quantum Leap, and Other Properties (Page 11 of 12)

This is excellent news. I totally missed watching Quantum Leap and didn't know it was back finally. Haven't seen many ads for it.

Yeah, I don't watch network TV anymore. I've completely transitioned to the cord cutter life since 2018-ish.

They don't advertise on:

Hulu
Disney+
Peacock
Paramount+
YouTube
Amazon Prime
or Max.

All of my apps of choice.

Me too!!!

This is so good. QL season 2 is even better than season 1 so far. And from what I see: is that Melissa Roxburgh from Manifest as the captain of the mission?

Loved the season premiere, haven't gotten to the rest of the episodes yet. I'm betting it's awesome, though.

I've been enjoying the multiple revivals of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, all set after the original TV show, all focusing on characters who aren't Buffy, all set in alternate continuities to each other. There's novel series SLAYER and CHOSEN by Kiersten White and the novel series IN EVERY GENERATION and ONE GIRL IN ALL THE WORLD by Kendare Blake as well as the Amazon Audible drama SLAYERS: A BUFFYVERSE STORY written by Amber Benson (!) with Christopher Golden and featuring James Marsters as Spike, Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia (!), Amber Benson as Tara, and Emma Caulfield as Anya (!). All three are separate stories that don't tie into each other. And while the Kiersten White series ties into the Dark Horse SEASON 8 comic books, the others choose their own path.

I'm especially astonished by the Audile because I honestly thought Amber Benson, Charisma Carpenter and Emma Caulfield were absolutely fed up with BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Also, their characters are all dead. But it turns out they're only fed up with it if Joss Whedon is involved, and they are happy to return if Amber Benson writes a story to bring them back.

I'll have more to say on all this later, but to bring BUFFY back as as spin-off media that focuses on new characters or supporting characters, and to give each product its own continuity.. well, that's intriguing.

Kimon, who is basically THE X-FILES equivalent of Temporal Flux, was discussing Amazon Audible with me. I was bemused that FOX licensed THE X-FILES to Audible, and Audible's approach was very different from what it did with BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER.

With THE X-FILES, the creative approach was the decision that Audible wouldn't bother to write anything new and specific to the audio format. Instead, they printed off Joe Harris' first 25 comic book scripts for the IDW comic book series, had someone replace all the visual description with new dialogue, booked David and Gillian to record a first reading with no rehearsal, called this alternate continuity a prequel to the televised Season 10, and then told the suckers -- I mean, the fans -- to shell out their hard earned money for this microwaved regurgitation.

In contrast, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER saw BUFFY actress (and novelist, director and screenwriter) Amber Benson write an original script and the production involved rehearsals. Why did BUFFY get the royal treatment while THE X-FILES got rehashes comic book scripts -- comic book scripts in an audio medium!

Kimon pointed out: SLAYERS: A BUFFYVERSE STORY did not actually feature Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy or David Boreanaz as Angel. SLAYERS is about the supporting cast characters: Spike, Cordelia, Tara, Anya -- actors who don't cost as much as A-list stars. In contrast, THE X-FILES had David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson.

Kimon theorized that hiring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson to read for Audible with no rehearsals over the course of two half-days probably cost 80 - 90 percent of the budget of the average Audible project. This could be why Audible didn't write anything new for their audio drama and instead used pre-existing scripts even when those scripts were for comic books, a visual medium totally opposed to audio drama.

In contrast, James Marsters, Charisma Carpenter, Amber Benson and Emma Caulfield Ford could be hired for less and with rehearsals included. They don't command the same price for their time.

The danger is that when a brand is associated with a poor product, the audience catches on eventually and knows to stay away. At this point, Audible doesn't even have THE X-FILES: COLD CASES and STOLEN LIVES available for purchase because COLD CASES sold so poorly. The first-reading & recording production of COLD CASES was so poor and unprofessional that it repelled the audience from any future TXF Audible projects.

If Audible wanted to do something with the license and couldn't commission new scripts, the solution would have been to choose 10 short stories from the three Titan Books published THE X-FILES anthologies for Duchovny and Anderson to read out loud.

The anthologies, TRUST NO ONE, THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE and SECRET AGENDAS were a mixed bag. Titan Books clearly took first drafts from any mid-list fantasy author and did little copy-editing or revision. The stories are filled with typos and peculiarities like mid-90s stories with smartphones or Mulder and Scully working for the FBI in 2004 (when they would have been in hiding). But across three volumes, there were certainly 10 stories worth recording. (Probably not more than 10.)

**

I've just finished SLAYERS: A BUFFYVERSE STORY and it's good with some flashes of greatness.

SLAYERS definitely is not series creator Joss Whedon's BUFFY. Instead, it's distinctly AMBER BENSON'S SLAYERVERSE. Writer-actress Amber Benson has created an alternate universe parallel to the original BUFFY timeline where the supporting and second-tier characters get to shine. SLAYERS focuses on alternate universe versions of Cordelia, Anya and Tara (since the original timeline versions are dead) and uses the original Spike to introduce these doubles and eventually cede the center stage to Cordelia, Anya and Tara.

Benson noticeably makes no attempt to pastiche Whedon's writing style. Where Whedon's scripts were snappy, sardonic, filled with references to 1980 - 2000 era fantasy films, TV, and comic books, Benson and co-writer Christopher Golden choose a more thoughtful pace of gentle interaction and a strong emphasis on female friendship and female intimacy. Some fans and reviewers have complained that BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER stories should mimic Whedon's approach, but this is distinctly not a BUFFY story, and eventually reveals itself to be Cordelia's story.

The writing certainly has a few weak points where characters at times exposit characterization for no apparent reason. The new Slayer, Indira, inexplicably analyzes stuffy librarian Giles' past as a punk rebel in a massive information dump that is more like a fan essay than a conversation and Indira and Giles have almost no interaction afterwards. Cordelia tells Indira not to ask Cordelia about Cordy's dead sister; then Cordelia proceeds to describe what happened to her sister immediately afterwards. (This at least turns out to be relevant.)

The plot certainly gets a little laboured, trying to re-establish the original BUFFY timeline and build a baseline of reality because shifting into a parallel reality for contrast, trying to do world-building across two timelines. Benson does not have Whedon's wit or Tracy Torme's cleverness in establishing original-universe story elements to later parallel and invert and an alternate universe. There is a workmanlike lack of artistry that is below the level of, say, the SLIDERS pilot. However, Benson's characterization and pairings and amusing humour are enjoyable and the new Cordelia, Anya and Tara are compelling, and in the end, the appeal of the characters and conversations alleviate the strained storyline.

The story is incredibly satisfying and yet ends on a soft cliffhanger where, as far as SLAYERS and potential SLAYERS sequels are concerned, their main priority is this timeline, the Cordyverse, where Cordelia Chase is the Vampire Slayer and the star. The character of Spike from the original timeline remains in this parallel universe, but his presence is indicated as temporary. This is clearly Amber Benson's vision of what the Slayerverse (as opposed to the Buffyverse) can be. The emphasis is on the women who are and can be Slayers rather than on a specific Slayer from one specific writer.

It's very fitting, given how poorly treated Cordelia and actress Charisma Carpenter were on the original shows, that Cordelia and Carpenter now have a new series that positions them as the lead in a separate timeline that will give Benson the freedom to do as she pleases with these alternate-universe versions of Cordelia, Anya and Tara. I hope there are sequels, and yet, I don't feel this story would be marred if there weren't any, because it leaves Cordelia, Anya and Tara back in action at frontline of their own stories again.

It's one thing if someone's personal tastes don't turn towards audio. Some people may not like the medium. Some may have hearing disabilities that make audio inaccessible. But:

These two sentences are so foundationally and factually flawed that I feel compelled to go through each level individually.

It's regarding one of my very favourite subjects, so this is actually terrific (for me).

This statement is factually unreasonable in terms of licensing rights. The license to create audioplays based on an intellectual property does not extend to creating animation; that is an entirely separate licensing agreement that would go to an actual animation studio as opposed to an audio drama company like Audible.

This statement is declaring that audio drama is a low budget substitute for television, a form of TV without pictures. That is and completely false. Audio drama predates television and film; it's a medium that's existed since the 1920s.

Audio drama is not an attempt to do TV without pictures. Audio drama is a medium of its own, existing in the realm of sound to illicit emotion, environment, and imagination.

Radio drama was a means of broadcasting live and recorded stageplay content into homes on a national and eventually international scale. Original radio drama that was written specifically for the audio medium began by 1923. Radio drama evolved into audio drama sold on CD in the 1980s. Radio and audio drama have now developed into modern day podcast fiction and non-fiction with drama, dramatizations, documentaries and news. The only difference between modern podcast drama and modern audio drama: podcast tends to refer to ongoing serieses on a regular schedule. Audio drama implies an individual release.

Seminal works of audio drama include Douglas Adams' genre-defining THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY and Orson Welles' adaptation of WAR OF THE WORLDS. Modern podcast dramas and audio dramas of tremendous success include WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE, DIRTY JOHN, THE SANDMAN, LIMETOWN, THE LOVECRAFT INVESTIGATIONS and others. Audio drama is an important and successful medium in which new work and advancement continues to this very day.

Audio drama is a vibrant medium with a long history and a future that will continue no matter how many streaming services rise and fall for one very simple reason: compared to TV and film, audio drama is inexpensive and doesn't take a lot of time to produce.

This statement conveys, hopefully unintentionally, a marked prejudice and bias against any medium that lacks visual motion, saying that the written and spoken word is not only outside their personal preference, but outside this person's capacity to respect as avenues of fiction. This would dismiss not only audio drama, but prose novels, poetry, comic books, picturebooks, boardgames, and, for that matter, internet message boards.

In actuality, motion is not a requirement for a storytelling format, nor is audio drama deficient or disabled by its lack of moving pictures.

Audio drama uses peformance and sound design to create scale, imagery, emotion, action and interaction. Audio drama is a complex, challenging, compelling, vivid medium with its own strengths, weaknesses, merits, flaws, all of which have to be navigated with skill, talent, knowledge, experience and a passion for storytelling.

Modern day audio drama boasts a cutting edge level of storytelling, creativity and diversity because audio faces significantly fewer barriers to creativity and requires far fewer resources than TV and film while demanding a tremendous level of storytelling skill in using only sound to create characters and situations.

This statement dismisses the artistic merit of the audio medium. They would be saying audio drama cannot possibly present strong storytelling with skill, craft, or artistic value of any kind. That would be a deeply uninformed statement that would show a high level of literary ignorance.

Audio drama has a long and prestigious history which includes numerous giants of literature from the twentieth century straight through to today: Rod Serling, Dylan Thomas, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Robert Bolt, Agatha Christie, Isaac Asimov, JRR Tolkien, Neil Gaiman, Seth MacFarlane, Felicia Day and more. Performers include Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Leonard Nimoy and other thespian masters.

Most modern franchises including STAR WARS, Superman, Batman, DOCTOR WHO, Sherlock Holmes and more have extensive history in audio drama with audio drama being what kept DOCTOR WHO as a going concern during the lengthy hiatus when the TV show was off the air.

I find it puzzling that anyone would disdain work from Rod Serling, Samuel Beckett, Orson Welles, JRR Tolkien, Douglas Adams, Laurence Olivier, Leonard Nimoy, Neil Gaiman, Seth MacFarlane and Felicia Day on the grounds that it didn't have moving pictures.

This statement is complaining that an audio drama company (Audible) did not produce an animated feature. They would be saying that an audio project and an animation project require the same time, financial backing and resources. That would be confessing to a severe ignorance of how animation production compares to audio production.

Animation requires enormous levels of personnel for character designs and storyboarding with entire companies outside the US devoted to producing the actual animation, anywhere from 5 to 500 times the budget of an audio drama production. Audio drama requires a recording studio and performers. Anyone who seriously claims that audio drama and animation are on the same production scale is betraying how they are utterly clueless about audio drama and animation.

This statement is declaring that an audio drama company should be expected to create animation. That would be demonstrating a stunning level of overgeneralization in assuming that one form of media production is the same as any other form of media production.

Anyone who said that might as well complain that the mechanic has a lousy vegetable selection or that shoe retailers are incompetent for not selling ovens.

Please accept my profuse gratitude for these two sentences as they gave me an excuse to talk about audioplays which are one of my favourite subjects.

I can respect that. There are certain properties I feel should only be produced by their original creators or not at all. I have zero interest in a SCOTT PILGRIM project that isn't led by Bryan Lee O'Malley. I'm not going to watch the Netflix adaptation of AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER because creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko aren't involved. I would never want more CALVIN AND HOBBES without Bill Watterson.

However, I would simply note that BUFFY was a set of feminist themes written within a house style and many, many, many writers adopted this house style and made it their own. David Fury had a more fast-paced approach than Whedon, Ben Edlund was more horrific, Jane Espenson was more comedic, Marti Noxon was more melodramatic and Jeffrey Bell was more earnest, and a lot of writers could do a great job with the BUFFY property and not abuse or harrass anyone while doing it. But regardless, there is nothing wrong with not being interested in a BUFFY project that isn't coming from BUFFY's creator.

However however... a thread about reboots is probably going to feature properties that are being shepherded by people who didn't originally create said properties.

That's fair, Marti and David wrote most of the scripts anyway on Buffy & Angel.  Either way, I find audio dramas boring.  Granted some animation is terrible, like that awful anime Supernatural season from Japan!

I'm still worried about this.

Peacock has had a number of SLIDERS articles in recent months as they are clearly trying to support the team at Peacock  and drive interest.  It has been great to see.
https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-time … nt-know-it

Torme, for whatever reason, has a history of opening communication with fans and then ghosting them. He may have valid and reasonable reasons for doing so.

In 2009, he reached out to EarthPrime.com and did an interview and turned over an outline of "Heat of the Moment" and stated that he would write SLIDERS fanfic for EarthPrime. He submitted about 1/6 of a story outline for a project called "The Long Slide Home" which was set after "The Guardian" and ignored all subsequent episodes. It was to be his 'officially unofficial series finale'. But he went silent, stopped responding to messages, and even direct communication with his agent led to no response. Torme has done this on multiple occasions: phone calls with fans, podcast appearances, establishing regular contact, and then he vanishes. I have three theories on this.

My first theory is that Torme has some health issues, and due to his need to take care of himself, he is unable to put in the energy he promised into unpaid, zero-profit work whether it's writing or speaking or staying in touch. He could probably handle it more gracefully (and for all I know, he has with these podcasters), but if he's not well, then he needs to focus on health and not on interacting with fans.

My second theory is that when Torme has made himself available to fans, he has been harassed in some way. I only have one concrete example of this of which I am aware: a fan got a hold of Torme's number and called him and urged Torme to write, fund and film a replacement Season 4 of SLIDERS, describing how Torme should reshoot "Genesis" with Jerry O'Connell, Cleavant Derrics and Kari Wuhrer, and then bring in Sabrina Lloyd as a Kromagg villain to resolve the Kromagg Invasion of Earth and have the final conflict on Kromagg Prime with Quinn and his real parents.

Torme apparently tolerated this call for 30 minutes (which is 25 minutes longer than I would have made it) and politely told the fan that he would need an agent to subject Torme any more story pitches. Torme ended the call. Then he changed his number. Can't imagine why.

My third theory is that it's some combination of the first two theories.

And I do think there are diplomatic ways to let someone know you won't be available as much for awhile or indefinitely. My favourite actress lets me know when I shouldn't expect to hear from awhile on account of a film shoot / vacation / retreat / commercial / stageplay / nervous breakdown / prison sentence. But I'm sure Torme has his reasons and upon reviewing the relevant case law of the United States, it would seem that Torme has the right to stop talking to anybody for any reason or for no reason.

I hope that he's okay.

Wow. What the heck? I was watching Gil for a bit. I had drifted off and was always intending to come back to his podcast for more Tracy Torme interviews. Thank you for the update, Grizzlor.

There hasn't been much talk on Quantum Leap season 2 but apparently it's been airing new episodes in Q4 of last year and now apparently Season 3 is coming soon.

Has anyone kept up with s2?  I hope that the ratings are good enough in S3 for it to continue.  Whatever little hope sliders has may be somewhat tied to that.  If they get 4 seasons out of quantum leap, they may be willing to move onto sliders (probably rebooting but you never know if they do a next-gen approach) once leap concludes its run.

It's a cousin so to speak.

We have to remember the majority rights holder is the same across both properties and they decide whether or not to use the IP they own and they will probably look at it as a proxy.  Also, I would imagine they decided to move first with QL because frankly, QL's brand hadn't been sullied by lower budget seasons etc but I am sure they considered using them both.  So if they don't like the business outcome with QL then they will probably be less interested in using the SLIDERS title gain and more focus on new properties.

QL's success can only help sliders and a lack of success will only hurt it.  Will it ending at 3 seasons be considered a success by universal?  I don't know because it's live viewing on NBC has been I think just  OK and it's mostly been renewed because it was doing relatively well in streaming delayed viewing among the younger demo but at the same time, they've lost a lot of money on streaming and just because it has attracted some viewership, I am sure it's made back the budget and more yet.    I'm also a bit worried if viewers are losing interest over time, as their seemed to be less chatter late with s2 but I guess we will see.

I also want QL to succeed just because there's not a lot on tv I feel is worthy of bothering with anymore.  I felt like the same with NBC"s Timeless as I do now with QL.

QUANTUM LEAP in Season 2 has been very well-made. It's extremely upsetting and disturbing and has stepped away from being entirely feel-good storytelling, but it's also confronting harsh situations in a highly meaningful way. QUANTUM LEAP's second season opens with Project Quantum Leap having flat out failed in all their goals: they failed to retrieve Ben and his bid to accelerate himself back to the present failed. They failed to keep track of Ben's time travel. They failed to keep Project Quantum Leap going. Addison failed to keep her hope for Ben going. The worst has happened, and while Project Quantum Leap has restarted, the goal of the series in Season 1, for Ben to reunite with Addison, has failed.

This is something you don't always see in television. Generally, in TV, the worst doesn't happen. The Flash always manages to save Central City and Barry and Iris always find their way back to each other. The Enterprise is always saved; even if it's destroyed, time is rewound to restore it or there's an Enterprise-A or E to be rolled out. The worst doesn't happen because there has to be another episode and the basic goals and parameters of a show need to stay reasonably intact.

QUANTUM LEAP notes: Sam did not get home. So what if Ben doesn't get home either and everyone has to move on and Ben's quest -- Addison -- is now invalidated and no longer a possibility? What is the point of Ben continuing to complete individual leaps to make the next leap if he isn't going to be able to get home or get back to Addison? What is the point of Addison's presence if she is now seeing someone else? What is the point of Project Quantum Leap if Ben cannot be retrieved? Most TV shows would find a way to get the series back to its original goals by hurriedly restoring Ben and Addison's romance and the goal of Ben returning home.

But Season 2 has asked: if leaping becomes permanent for Ben, what could he appreciate and enjoy? If Ben and Addison aren't a couple, what would Addison's role become? Can Ben find joy in leaping? Can Addison be a guide to her ex and still be effective in her role? The answers are unsure and nuanced: Ben enjoys solving problems and helping people and he has been able to fall in love with a new person he keeps encountering in his leaps, the brilliant scientist Hannah Carson who is unappreciated for being a woman in the 1940s and 1950s. Addison is still a master spy whose skills are essential in a leap. But leaping is still an unsustainable life and Addison has had to be less present.

This dramatic weight of failure has made me avoid watching QUANTUM LEAP's Season 2 episodes until I'm in a good mindset to appreciate what it has to say about defeat and how life with sometimes knock you on your ass so hard that you give serious thought to staying down and out. That's why I haven't posted on it too much.

I don't know if QUANTUM LEAP will eventually restore the Season 1 situation and resume Ben and Addison pursuing their reunion and set aside the Hannah Carson character. I think it would be more challenging and meaningful if Ben and Addison had to live with the failure of Season 1 and move forward and accept that they had their chance and lost. TV tends to hesitate to do this, and QUANTUM LEAP may hesitate to do so as well.

The only thing I really dislike about Season 2: I think that QUANTUM LEAP should have made Ian the full-time hologram for Ben and just stuck with Ian. Like Al in the original, Ian is a person with an extreme loud dress sense and flamboyant mannerisms, an excellent contrast to Ben being more grounded in demeanor and temperament.

There's a real magic with Ian and Ben sharing scenes because they are so distinct and different, whereas all the other characters have a more guarded, thoughtful presence that is very close to Ben and doesn't create much differentiation. Ian is where the magic is, but I understand the importance of letting each cast member have their time in the spotlight. But Ian is the best hologram for Ben from a writing and performance standpoint.

Today was supposed to be the day Torme made a podcast appearance.

We were waiting for him to come back, to hear his perspective, his wisdom, his brilliance. Today we must resign to waiting until we join him in the next world. And yet, there's so much in his time and work and life from which we can learn and draw inspiration. And he really, really loved SLIDERS even when it often didn't love him back.

This is supposition, but I suspect that a SLIDERS reboot with new actors playing Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo would have had a much better chance of getting on NBC or Peacock than the revival that Torme pitched.

And I think if Torme had been in it just to get another payday, he probably would have just pitched a reboot. There would have been no shame in it. WALKER: TEXAS RANGER, KUNG FU, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, CHARMED, ROSWELL, etc., all made marketing sense as reboots and they each earned the original creators a satisfying payment regardless of the creative merits of any of it.

Ultimately, Torme did not seem to be in it for the money. He did have to pitch a revival that accepted that Sabrina might be hard to book and John might have limited availability whereas Jerry and Cleavant would be ready. But in the end, his loyalty was not to his wallet but to Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo, which is not something you should expect to see very often or ever again.

So I would love for a reboot/continuation to happen at some point.  Like I said, I think a lot of people liked Sliders when it aired (although a lot of people obviously didn't watch it), and I think in the overall cultural zeitgeist of a certain age (obviously a lot of people under 30 wouldn't have even heard of it) is positive.  Like Quantum Leap (but less so since Sliders hasn't done much in syndication), I think if it was done well, it could be successful.  And obviously the lower the stakes (Peacock original?  Lower budget?), the better the chance of it succeeding.

The problem with a continuation is the ages.  1) it would be harder for older castmembers to do the type of stuntwork that we'd want from a show similar to seasons 1-2.  Not impossible but harder.  2) It would be harder to market the show to younger audiences if the characters are all very old.  Like look at this:

Current ages of the original sliders:
Jerry O'Connell - 49
Cleavant Derricks - 70
Sabrina Lloyd - 53? (Her age isn't on wikipedia, but IMDB lists her birthday as 11/20/70)
John Rhys-Davies - 79
Average Age - 62.75

Ages of the Golden Girls cast at the time the show premiered:
Rue McClanahan - 51
Betty White - 63
Bea Arthur - 63
Estelle Getty - 62
Average age - 59.75

Golden Girls was a show about retired old people, and their cast was younger than the Sliders cast is right now.  I'm not saying they couldn't and I would love to see it, but it would be a much different show.  I assume much more cerebral and much less action.  Which could be great and help with the costs.

I still think the best avenue and most logical one is a show about Jerry O'Connell with a bunch of younger characters.  The way I've always envisioned it (and the way I started writing a Earth 214 sequel series*) was with Quinn as the mentor figure in the Arturo role.  Quinn could either be our original Quinn looking for the original Sliders or something else.  One idea I liked would be a Quinn who gave up on sliding (maybe a version of Smarter Quinn never helped him), settled down, maybe went into teaching, and then a brainy kid like him finally cracks the code.  Something like that could be a good way to involve the original cast without making it about them.  Arturo could be the dean of the college or someone still mentoring Quinn in retirement.  Wade could be his wife (or ex-wife) that Quinn has to leave behind when he goes sliding.  Rembrandt could be harder to rope in, but maybe he teaches music at the same college or something?  Could also just be a fun cameo (maybe he's performing at the school in some weird concert that the young kids don't get, or maybe it's some sort of nostalgia thing that Rembrandt is taking advantage of).

I think there's a lot of ways to do it.  Jerry's the youngest and most active and most well known of the cast, and he's basically the exact age that JRD was when the show started.  I think it makes the most sense.

* Not that anyone cares, but I still think this is a good idea and I'm never going to write this.  My E214 sequel would've had my Quinn-1 (the original Quinn that rescues the original Sliders) taking a group of young scientists around the multiverse.  The show would've started out fairly standard with standard adventures - the timer wouldn't be damaged, and they'd basically have full-time communication with their home base on their home Earth through some sort of "satellites in the vortex sci-fi nonsense."  The twist would've been that on one of their adventures, one of the scientists gets injured and ends up in a coma in a hospital.  With no other choice, they break into the hospital to rescue their friend and take him back to their home Earth.  I can't remember if I did a time skip or waited an episode or two, but eventually the scientists would wake up from his coma...and it's not him.  It's a double that happened to be in the same hospital with a similar injury.

So they try to take him back to his world, but his world is completely off the map.  It's gone.  Its either been destroyed, wiped out of existence somehow, or is being blocked by something.  They can't access it.  Not only that, but the double of their friend that they have is nonverbal (I'm sure I would've written him as nonverbal autistic at the time but I don't know if that would've been an insensitive move considering my education level on the subject)  *and* can create wormholes organically (this part is lifted from a TF story, I believe).  So instead of finding a way back home, the plot would essentially be about finding a lost person.  I thought it was a pretty fun spin on things.  If anyone writing a Peacock spinoff wants to use it

Yeah, I think the percentage of people that would've watched a continuation only if it had the original cast is so small at this point.  It might just be us.

Make it a rebootquel or whatever and tie it into the original continuity if you want, but younger people aren't going to watch a show about a bunch of people in their 60s.  And in regard to the original continuity, I think you need to essentially throw out Seasons 3-5.  I can't imagine a new audience wants to watch the show jump through hoops to get the original sliders back from where Season 5 left off.  And if you aren't using the original sliders, the point of using the original actors diminishes too.

I absolutely respect that too.  And, honestly, we probably need more shows willing to cast older actors and treat them like they treat younger actors.  And I think a cerebral Sliders sequel series that would accommodate older actors could be great.  Like Tracy said in the DragonCon panel about a possible Season 4 budget slash...it could make for a more interesting story if you're bound by something out of your control.

At the same time, I don't want a reality where the core four have been sliding for 30 years.  I don't want a nearly-80-year-old professor Arturo getting thrown out of a vortex.  It just feels sad.  That's why any story I consider these guys are home and happy and retired.  Leave the sliding to the kids.

It's easy to envision a number of ways to get the core four back together with or without continuity of the later seasons.  It's harder to justify the characters in-universe as still sliding after all these years.  At some point they would find a suitable world and stay there.  Or they'd be too traumatized for the typical TV handwaving to be believable.  Or they'd be so alien after decades of alternate worlds that they wouldn't recognize their home world and it wouldn't recognize them.  Or they would have just accepted sliding as a lifestyle and given up on having a permanent residence.  It's impossible to imagine them 30 years on thinking the next slide will be the one that gets them home.

I'm of the same mindset. When writing a fanfic set in 2015 featuring Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo, my view was that they were resurrected and made it home with the Kromagg invasion erased in 2000/2001, and their return to sliding in the 2015 - 2016 story was a last adventure and a finale, not a new beginning. It seemed too cruel to send them into another 5 - 7 years of random sliding.

That said, one of the fun things about SLIDERS was that none of the characters were who you'd expect to be headlining a science fiction adventure series. They were all civilians instead of military personnel or the equivalent. The SLIDERSCAST podcast had a reviewer who was constantly complaining that SLIDERS wasn't structured like his favourite TV show, STARGATE, and didn't have the sliders being tactical or professional or capable like the US Army characters on STARGATE, which was the point.

On a creative level, Jerry O'Connell and Sabrina Lloyd being in their 50s and making his first slide with Cleavant Derricks and John Rhys-Davies being seniors would further underline the sense of how the sliders are not, at first glance, the best suited to nomadic adventure. Of course, given Sabrina's recalcitrance and John's limited interest in full time work, this is hardly practical from a real world standpoint.

While watching (for the umpteenth time) Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the re-introduction of Han Solo got me imagining a similar scene with an older Quinn Mallory:

[SCENE]

Having been sliding for many, many years, Quinn Mallory, now 49, is unceremoniously ejected from the wormhole for the millionth time. The wormhole closes. The wind stops. Quinn gets up slowly. Breathing heavily as he realizes his surroundings.

[CAMERA PANS AROUND QUINN'S SURROUNDINGS]

We see that he is in a familiar BASEMENT. With an EQUATION scribbled across the chalkboard with a familiar solution: Xr12A / Infinity.

[WE SEE] QUINN'S face: an older, 49 year old man. With graying hair. Disheveled disposition. As he realizes his location: a look of utter disbelief and shock. Could it be? Is he finally home after these many years? No, his mom would not be here.

[CAMERA SHOWS] the [TIMER], a nearly 30 year old device that has seen better years. But it still works thanks to QUINN'S repairs. The time reads: 24 hours, 4 minutes, and 1 second to the next window. [the in-show reference and honoring of Tracy's death date IRL].

[CAMERA CUTS TO] a shot of younger Schrodinger II, a replacement of his original cat Schrodinger, who eventually died at 17. This cat meows as the [CAMERA] focuses on him.

[CAMERA CUTS TO]

An older, more wiser Linda Henning as Quinn's mom. She is watching her afternoon show in the living room. The power goes out. [CAMERA SHOWS] her face, she knows what that means.

Quickly, she goes to the basement. And [YELLS] QUINN!!! Is that YOU??

[CAMERA CUTS TO] Quinn's face as he realizes who is calling. But he has been down this road millions of times before. His mom is too fast, however, as we realize she has already come down the stairs.

[CAMERA CUTS TO] Quinn dropping his arms dejectedly. He says, "Mom. I know. It can't be you. Surely you've seen me several times, right? You know."

QUINN'S MOM: "Yes. I saw your video tapes. I've kept them all."

QUINN'S MOM points to his familiar chair, and TV set, complete with all of the video tapes Quinn was recording more than 20 years earlier with his experiments.

QUINN: "You saw September 25, 1996.".

QUINN'S MOM: "YES. I did. Why did you do it, honey?"

QUINN: "You know me."

QUINN'S MOM: "Yes. I know."

QUINN: "But now I'm tired. I need to stop sliding. I don't know how many more worlds I can take where I find you, and you're not my mom."

QUINN'S MOM: "How about this?" [CAMERA PANS TO] QUINN'S MOM holding a pin that QUINN gave her shortly before he slid.

QUINN looks and stares at the PIN, mulling it over. Remembering details.

QUINN: "I can't believe it. I remember this. I gave you this before I left."

QUINN and his MOM embrace. Realizing that both of them are home at last. The MUSIC SWELLS.

[CUT TO]

OLD QUINN MALLORY's voice: "What if you could find brand-new worlds right here on earth? Same planet? Different dimension? I've found the gateway!"

=======================

If any writers writing the introduction to season 6, episode 1 in a Sliders revival are reading this, please feel free to use the above script treatment.

I've thought about what a Sliders reboot would look like or what is probably more likely given recent news (RIP Tracy).

Unless there are some fans in the TV business able to do some talking with NBC or people involved with the original project get together, it won't happen or at least won't happen the way we want it to.

If NBC were to reboot it, it would probably be about a whole new cast of characters and not the original four we all know and love. Admittiedly, if they set it up simular to the Quantum Leap reboot with a brand new cast of characters discovers or invents sliding for the purpose of finding the original four and as a result, they get trapped in the multiverse, not a bad idea.

Otherwise if it's not something like that or it doesn't deal with the original cast in some way, shape or form, I think they are best to scrap it and create a simular show about parallel worlds. As sad as that is.

The aspect of Tormé Sliders that really HAS to be there, or it's not valid, is the dark comedy.  Most of the shows given as examples here (I'd add Counterpart), largely feature some sinister plot or conspiracy going on.  What separated Sliders was that it also featured a "Land of the Lost" or "Wizard of Oz" aspect, where the group is truly "lost" and often finding themselves in bizarre realities.  I just don't know how many writers, producers, or networks have the backbone, or even the energy for that type of show. 

The greatest irony is that Tracy was chastised by Fox for interjecting limited continuity, when nowadays continuity is all you have on genre shows.

In terms of continuity... I can see FOX's point. I missed a lot of SLIDERS on original airing, I could not always be in the room with the TV on when it was airing. Robert Tapert (HERCULES and XENA) said that of the average 25 episode order of XENA or HERCULES, the self-proclaimed die-hard fans may have only been watching seven episodes a year. THE X-FILES is remembered for an ongoing storyline, but it didn't actually do running arcs: the alien mythology was confined to a limited number of episodes each season and not referenced outside of those episodes. The average viewer was not seeing most of the episodes and even the committed viewer was missing a lot.

In terms of the social satire and commentary... I'd agree that it is what makes SLIDERS such a distinct and memorable tone. But I have a question:

Is Tracy Torme's sense of social satire is extremely difficult for anyone besides Torme to write?

I'd observe: a good number of people have done it. Temporal Flux's DECLASSIFIED is a note-perfect extrapolation of the eccentric humour and world-building of the Pilot episode. Mike Truman excelled at charming and immediate alt-history world-building with hilarious topical references and a delightful sense of incisive observation, and Nigel Mitchell was a master of the form, especially in turning the satirical humour into outright terror. And certainly, Jon Povill was absolutely brilliant at social commentary, and Scott Smith Miller's world-building ideas were a superb platform for examining our own society.

However, I have to wonder if it's still a rare skill.

Social satire and commentary are highly present in today's media people often get news from The Onion and late night comedy shows and turn to SOUTH PARK for moral instruction. But as much as I love SOUTH PARK, it can be a bit artless and its jokes disguise how it's ultimately as lecturing as an episode of STAR TREK or some Season 4 episodes of SLIDERS.

Torme's writing was not a solemn sermon like "Prophets and Loss" or "Just Say Yes", but rather focused on inverting and skewing social conventions and expectations and imagining the world ahead of us.

"Summer of Love" is shockingly prescient, anticipating a level of paranoia and warmongering dressed up in jingoism that seemed far out in 90s but seems tame by, say, 2020. "Prince of Wails" questions celebrity culture and royalty before Diana's horrific death due to tabloid photographers harassing her.

"The Weaker Sex" skewers male chauvinism by having a female mayor make the sexism-dodging responses male politicians often make but with genders flipped and foretells the hypocritical girlboss trend; "Into the Mystic" is hilarious mockery of Christianity via Wiccanism as a substitute and yet anticipates non-Christian mysticism becoming more mainstream.

I wouldn't claim all these points originate from Torme alone, but he certain shepherded and encouraged them, and this quality mostly vanished from the show the moment he was gone.

Even when we got a brilliant writer like Marc Scott Zicree writing some episodes, Zicree ultimately couldn't write SLIDERS with Torme's perspective; Zicree was instead fascinated by the sliding technology and created the Slidewave and the Slidecage.

I'm not sure if Torme's style is difficult to match or just difficult for average writers (like me) to match. I'm prepared to say that it's just difficult for middling talents such as myself.

I may be overinflating Zicree as an example, but it gives me the sense that Torme's style was hard to match even as I note that Temporal Flux, Mike Truman, Nigel Mitchell and Jon Povill seemed to match it and build on it. Ultimately, social commentary in this day and age has none of Torme's subtlety and deftness; it's overt and forceful. SOUTH PARK tells you what it thinks instead of inviting you to think.

Personally, I think Seth MacFarlane and David Goodman have demonstrated from THE ORVILLE that they have the right skillset to write SLIDERS, but it seems -- to me -- harder than it looks.

Supernatural certainly excelled in dark comedy, I would say.  What's funny was that Dakota Johnson, who is the main star in the sure to bomb Madam Web Spider-Man-less Spidey universe film from Sony, just referred to the industry as "extremely beeping bleak."  Which again leads into my point that networks/streamers, as David Chase also lamented, have gone into this shell again.  While Sliders and The X-Files were a few of the exceptions that came to light during the prior "dark period" in television development, it might take a similar, massive leap of faith now. 

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie … 235818677/

Now, a good portion of the battles that Tormé had were either trivial (the episode to episode bumpers) or typical (character development), he was still able to get most of his more "cerebral" material past FOX.  Of course, the greater irony (that word again) was that had Tracy managed to stay on instead of Pukingpah, the production team quickly discovered that Sci-Fi Channel execs never read any of their scripts!