Tracy Torme's Unproduced Projects

In Cult Times #31, April 1998, contributor David Bassom interviewed Torme. Torme said he was developing a sci-fi series called HIGHER POWER, a horror show called THE SHADOWMAN and also referred to KUNG POW (not sure if KUNG PAO was the actual title or a working title): https://earthprime.com/articles/slide-away/

There is one SLIDERS fan fiction and a hypothetical episode of SLIDERS that Torme wanted to do but didn't.

In 2009, Torme was in touch with EP.COM's webmaster via Facebook. Torme expressed astonishment that someone would build a and maintain fan site after "the V8 they made of my tomato". An interview came out of these Facebook conversations.

And in addition to the interview, the "Heat of the Moment" outline, and sharing what Bill Dial had told him about plans for Season 5 when Jerry was expected for 4 - 6 episodes, Torme also wanted to write fanfic which he planned to send to EP.COM and Dimensions of Continuity. Torme's wish was to write a SLIDERS story set shortly after "The Guardian" which would ignore every episode afterwards, and present a series finale story for SLIDERS. "The officially unofficial series finale." He imagined that the PDF could be included on a future DVD release.

It was called "The Long Slide Home". He only provided maybe 1/5 of the storyline to EP.COM: the timer is starting to malfunction. Slide windows are getting shorter and shorter and the vortex duration is shortening as well, meaning at some point, the sliders will have to stop sliding because the vortex won't cohere. The sliders encounter a woman named Stephanie, a double of a woman Quinn knew back on his home Earth (his neighbour on whom he had a crush). They sit down to a meal with Stephanie and her husband. This was the prelude to a story that Torme said would ask: what if the sliders found the way home -- but one of them didn't make it, and the sliders had to decide whether they would stay home or give it up to retrieve the friend they'd lost?

Then Torme fell out of touch with EP.COM and never wrote back or finished the story. I think he had some health issues and just had to step back.

However, this story reminded me of what Torme had told me in an AOL Instant Messenger chat in 2000. He told me that he had very deliberately kept his mind open to plenty of possibilities for a SLIDERS series finale, but one option that he had in mind: the sliders' timer would start to fail, meaning the end of their journey was at hand, likely to leave them stranded on a parallel Earth. Quinn and Arturo would attempt a desperate gambit: they would rig the timer to send them backwards on their path through the interdimension.

They would revisit every previous Earth they'd seen, hoping to reach home at the end of it. They would encounter the outcome and results of every world in which they'd gotten involved; sometimes, things were better and sometimes, things were much worse. The story would allow Torme to address every open storyline he wanted to deal with whether in-depth or in passing. The ending would have Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo make it home -- but Quinn would be stranded somewhere. The homecoming sliders would ultimately choose to retrieve Quinn, but in doing so would lose the way home and be lost in the multiverse again, albeit with a working timer. Torme wanted the sliders to declare, upon losing their way back, that they belonged with each other, and so long as they were together, they were home.

Torme left it open as to whether or not another way home would present itself or if they would indeed remain lost; he said there were some decisions that should be made in the course of writing the full story and not when imagining the general plot idea. Torme didn't provide me with a title for this story idea.

I asked him: if he had one more episode of the sliders, would this "long slide home", as it were, be the story he would tell? He said he would probably prefer to do a different story, one he'd come up with as a Season 4 premiere: Quinn wakes up to discover it's 1994. Home is exactly as it was: sliding doesn't exist, Wade is at Doppler Computers, Rembrandt is working on his musical comeback, the Professor is teaching -- and Quinn is the only one who remembers sliding. Quinn tries to prove that sliding is real to his friends, and his search for answers reveals to them all: the entire scenario is a Kromagg simulation. The sliders escape and slide off to new adventures.

Torme didn't give me a title for this one either (or an explanation for why the Kromaggs would make the sliders think they were home, which is fine; that really wasn't the point). In the 2009 messages with EP.COM, Torme also presented this Season 4 premiere idea in the course of his interview, and the potential titles were "Temporary Slide Effects" or simply "Slide Effects".

Of course, you might consider both "The Long Slide Home" and "Slide Effects" to be on the same level Torme wishing he could do an episode where racial bias favours black people over white people or an episode about Arturo's son -- hypothetical imaginings and not actual projects. :-)

This material was from Transmodiar at EarthPrime.com.

During the Mill Creek DVD release announcement, Transmodiar kindly gave me his EP.COM interview notes from the 2009 interview, as Torme had promised a new script for a future DVD release. I called and emailed Torme's agent in an admittedly perfunctory attempt to pursue "The Long Slide Home" and sent them the interview notes to prove that EP.COM had genuinely had been in contact with Torme and we were following up as opposed to reaching out unsolicited. We never got a response, and it was around this time that Torme had cancer, so it was likely a bad period for him.

Looking at those 2009 notes now, there are some references to some other unproduced projects: A Barney and Betty Hill abduction film, and a series about some kids who find a crashed UFO that had various potential titles (THE TIME TRIAL OF HORROR, TIME TRIAL or ORB). Torme said he was also working on an AVATAR TV show, presumably a tie-in to the James Cameron feature film.

Torme was interacting with Transmodiar over Facebook. They started talking in June 2009, and Transmodiar posted the interview in July 2009. Torme was keen to work with EP.COM on a SLIDERS fanfic project after the interview, talking about a promotional push as Tracy worked on the fanfic... but then Torme abruptly stopped responding from the end of July to September 2009. He wrote back once in October 2009 and once more in April 2010, each time explaining that he had been unable to spend more time on Facebook. He may have had some health issues that he wasn't divulging, but he was also definitely busy with paid work that he had to prioritize over fan fiction.

Anyway, the unproduced non-SLIDERS projects. (Note: I've added punctuation and capitalization to these quotes for readability.)

And on SLIDERS:

On DVDs:

On "The Long Slide Home":

Setting aside "The Long Slide Home":

There was another message in April 2010 where Torme said he had again been way too busy for Facebook. It would appear that Torme deleted his Facebook account some time after that.

On reading the messages: Torme seemed to really enjoy interacting with Transmodiar. Transmodiar treated Torme with great respect and appreciation and was the perfect representation of how a fan should treat a creator: Transmodiar's messages conveyed interest in Torme's current work as well as past projects. When Torme raised a boundary (such as declining to provide the "Heat of the Moment" screenplay for reasons unstated and offering only a summary), Transmodiar did not press him for it or ask for an explanation. When Torme became less responsive, Transmodiar handled it appropriately, sending Torme seasonal greetings and never pressuring Torme. So why did Torme cut things off?

I have to think that Torme wasn't well and needed to take a step back, not only from fan interaction, but social media. And I guess he didn't want to tell fans that he was sick, and had been chronically ill for awhile.

I would also speculate: Torme had offered EP.COM something that he later realized he couldn't give. He was in poor health. What energy he had ultimately had to go to paid scripts, not fanfic. He couldn't deliver on "The Long Slide Home". He may have retreated to avoid making another promise that he could not keep.

I'm sad that Torme and Transmodiar didn't keep interacting. They had a great rapport and Torme's PDF screenplay would have been wonderful. I'm sad it didn't work out. But it's still amazing that Transmodiar got so much out terrific insight and perspective to share with the fans out of a month's worth of Facebook messages.

Upon reviewing the notes, I guess it also reveals:

We now know: if someone really wants Season 5 which was released in an extremely low production run and is difficult to find, Tracy Torme had a copy of the box set lodged under a sofa leg.

I would imagine that the weight of the sofa would have cracked the plastic and scuffed at least one of the disks, but a shorter episode count for Season 5 would actually make it less exasperating.

There would also be a Season 4 box set on the other end of that sofa, also under the sofa leg, and likely, one of the discs is also damaged by the weight of the sofa leg. This means that either "Genesis", "Prophets and Loss", "Common Ground" and "Virtual Slide" (Disc 1) or "My Brother's Keeper", "The Chasm", "Roads Taken:" and "Revelations" (Disc 5) are damaged. Meanwhile, "World Killer" is safe on Disc 2. However, Season 4 is much easier to come by on DVD.

Tracy definitely had a Barney and Betty Hill project going at one point, I think even before Sliders, as ireactions mentioned.  Technically he produced an I Am Legend script 10 years before the Smith film, but he angrily tossed it in the trash! 

I would have to double check whether he wrote anything for Picard.  He was mentioning to Cardinal Sin once about the producers considering a Dixon Hill episode, which was followed by Gil bashing the series for 10 minutes.  However, I kinda recall Tracy sounding like nothing ever came from the request. 

BTW, I also wonder how much the Canadian produced Doomsday Brothers animated series has to do with that Doomsday cartoon Tracy was considering?

I would like to write one complete post here on "The Long Slide Home" to which RussianCabbie can link.

"The Long Slide Home" is an unfinished story by Tracy Torme. The plot was presented to Transmodiar, webmaster of EarthPrime.com, in June 2009; Torme may have presented his story intentions to another fan at an earlier point in 2000. There is some certainty and some high levels of speculation in what follows.

As posted before, Torme wanted to write fanfic in 2009. https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 292#p15292

Torme sent the following to Transmodiar:

Torme sadly didn't send EP.COM the rest of the storyline; he briefly conveyed paid work had taken priority and "The Long Slide Home" fell by the wayside, and then Torme ended up leaving Facebook. Years later, EP.COM heard from a SLIDERS staff writer that Torme had cancer and was extremely ill, and reports that Torme had been ill for some time began to come up.

I don't think Torme meant to cut contact and abandon "The Long Slide Home"; I think his chronic illnesses caught up with him. I think he regretted promising something he couldn't deliver. That may or may not be why he was more guarded and cautious with fans afterwards.

But what happened next in the story? I believe that I can offer an answer, admittedly a potential and speculative answer and not a definitive answer.

In 2000, I wrote some fan mail to Tracy Torme at an AOL address. He appreciated my message and invited me to chat on AOL Instant Messenger. During our talk, I asked Torme what his plan for a SLIDERS series finale would have been.

He replied that his ideas were not fixed and static plans, but rather potential possibilities. He imagined a final SLIDERS episode where the timer is breaking down, wormholes are becoming unstable, the sliders' journey is, due to mechanical issues, nearing its end. This matches his teaser for "The Long Slide Home".

In this finale idea: Quinn and Arturo make a desperate, final bid to return home and rig the timer to send the sliders backwards on their path through the interdimension, revisiting worlds they previously encountered, seeing the outcome of their actions which are sometimes good and sometimes bad, and enabling the story to resolve any unfinished plots (Kromaggs, Logan, the wrong Arturo, the Professor's illness, etc.).

The climax would have Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo returning home but Quinn stranded. Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo would choose to give up home in order to find and save Quinn; they are lost in the multiverse once again (albeit with a working timer). The sliders would declare that their friendships are what matter most and so long as they have each other, they are home.

I asked Torme: would the sliders visit each previous world of every previous episode, or just a selection of them? Would there be an in-depth conclusion for the Kromagg tracking device arc and Arturo's illness and Logan the wrong Arturo? Or would it just be a passing resolution? Would the sliders really end the story lost again or would some other path home manifest?

Torme's answer: he would not have made those decisions until writing the full treatment, and might have reconsidered when scripting. Any arc he wanted to resolve in the finale might conceivably be resolved before the finale if a better story opportunity came up.

The question of which worlds the sliders visited again would be determined by which guest stars were available to reprise their roles for a finale, what sets could be built or rebuilt on a pre-production schedule, what locations would be available, and what would be achievable and feasible in the shooting days allotted.

This wasn't a master plan set in stone, but a framework to be versatile and flexible.

Would the series really end with the sliders lost again? Torme said he would have made that decision in the course of taking his story from an idea to a beat sheet to a first draft to a shooting script. The story's themes and character arcs would have evolved through this process, and he would choose whichever ending was best for the story as it took shape.

And of course, the ending would need to make use of guest-stars, sets, props, locations and plot points needed for the preceding scenes. Torme could imagine a bittersweet ending or an entirely happy one. Torme also specified: this plot was merely one of many possible ideas for a series finale.

The plot of the timer breaking down and making continued sliding untenable followed by travelling backwards through the interdimension is a "long slide home". It matches what Torme proposed to EP.COM as what he considered to be the natural conclusion of the show.

But it's entirely possible that whatever story Torme intended for "The Long Slide Home" on EarthPrime.com was going to be one of the many other possibilities he had imagined for an ending or something new that he devised in 2009.

It's unfortunate that Torme couldn't complete the storyline. Looking back, I suspect the only way "The Long Slide Home" could have ever been completed: Torme would have had to turn his outline over to a fan to write the full screenplay which Torme could edit or revise. This is also how William Shatner produced 10 STAR TREK novels.

However, this creates two issues. The first is logistical and creative: Torme's outline would have needed a fan writer who could capture Torme's tone and voice. Torme had an extremely specific take on SLIDERS which was not about Kromagg wars or Slidewaves or Slidecages or Combines or Unstuck Men and other sci-fi voodoo.

Torme's take on SLIDERS was about social satire and social commentary via black comedy that inverted and casted a jokingly critical light on societal conventions: TV court, accident lawsuits, reverence for royalty, sportsmania, music and fame, glamourization of Mafia and other criminal enterprise, organized religion (parodied via Wiccanism), wildlife preserves and poaching, admiration for gunfights, envy in corporate greed, dehumanization in addressing illegal immigration, education, police and black people (parodied via ageism), and more.

It was and is a very specific satirical skill that the average writer lacks. Even among the average SLIDERS fanfic writer, it's hard to find, and I say that as the most average SLIDERS fanfic writer of all time.

The second challenge is legal and regulatory. As a Hollywood screenwriter represented by CAA and the Writers Guide of America, Torme would have been discouraged from reading fan fiction because it would open all sorts of liability issues with potential accusations of idea theft. Torme would have been unfamiliar with fanfic writers and reluctant to hand over his SLIDERS story idea to a stranger. And the Writers Guild of America would frown on Torme effectively hiring unpaid, non-union labour outside the WGA.

However, it's fun to think about a fan fiction writer taking on Torme's outline. To me, there is a very short list of people qualified to adapt an alt-world heavy story concept from Torme and write it out in full:

One contender who comes to mind is Mike Truman (Recall317) who wrote a very lighthearted and capable Torme-style novellas and scripts with absolutely delightful alt-world ideas rendered with laugh-out-loud joke upon laugh-out-loud joke.

Truman really captured the elusive, winsome tone of SLIDERS at its most appealing, friendly, cheerful, imaginative, dynamic and fun. Truman's grasp of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo is subtle yet dynamic and he captures their ease of friendship and individual voices. Truman would have done an amazing job of adding his own inventiveness and imagination and gleeful thrill to "The Long Slide Home", and Truman's version of Quinn is so brainy and clever, much like Truman himself, and his Rembrandt is so funny.

Another writer who comes to mind is Nigel G. Mitchell who created some of the best SLIDERS stories ever written with a strong sense of comedy but also a horror-oriented darkness that presented sliding as a bit of a nightmare journey. Mitchell would have been a superb choice for writing a slightly darker version of Torme's "The Long Slide Home" and his grasp of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo is also low key yet dynamic, with Mitchell excelling at balancing Arturo's heroism with his ego and insecurity and writing Wade with such emotionality and determination.

Mitchell and Truman are both equally imaginative, but Mitchell's writing is scarier while Truman's writing is friendlier. I would consider them both excellent choices, but the most phenomenal choice would obviously be Temporal Flux who seems to have the best grasp of the very specific tone of SLIDERS.

TF's "Sliders Declassified" doesn't even feature any of the original sliders and yet easily recreates the specific tone and tenor of Torme's humour: self-effacing glee in the face of amusing alt-world histories that manifest in conversations that are simultaneously bizarre and naturalistic, and the understanding that SLIDERS is a low key series about personal interactions in pecular sociological frameworks as opposed to science fiction situations.

A Tracy Torme story needs true talent for satirical humour and horror, and not with the crashingly unsubtlety of SOUTH PARK or the sermon-like moralizing of STAR TREK. "The Long Slide Home" requires more than a pastiche of the original actors; it needs deftness, charm, and a sense of politics where the writer must poke fun if not stab at the left and right from above and below (as opposed to the center).

I think Temporal Flux would have crafted the most incisive alt-world jokes, parodies, observations, conflicts and perils in his version of "The Long Slide Home"; Mitchell would have produced the most frightening and thrilling version of "The Long Slide Home" and Truman would have offered the most joyful and lively adaptation of "The Long Slide Home". I would imagine that Torme's version would have been closest to TF's.

NBCUniversal has tolerated fanfic and scans of SLIDERS shooting scripts. They and the WGA probably would have tolerated a SLIDERS fan fiction from Torme the way the WGA ignored Robert Hewitt Wolfe releasing ANDROMEDA fanfic or David Gerrold working on STAR TREK fan films (although Paramount didn't ignore it).

However, I don't think Writers Guild would have tolerated Torme collaborating with a non-union, unpaid fan to write out Torme's story ideas. "The Long Slide Home" would only have been permitted to exist as Torme releasing a PDF that he wrote unpaid and alone, and with the customary disclaimer that this was unauthorized and unofficial.

I think Torme meant to write "The Long Slide Home", he sincerely intended to complete and deliver -- but then his health and body just could not match the passion in his mind. In the years that followed, Torme struggled through cancer, heart problems, diabetes, and while he had periods of stable health, he didn't get in touch with EP.COM to finish the project.

He may not have fully recovered; he may have felt the time for it had passed; he may have had second thoughts about writing fan fiction -- but I suspect that he also did not want to explain how very sick he had been, and how his health was still precarious and would likely remain so to his final days. It was private.

And then by the time he was ready to lift the veil on his health issues, he had (very modest) hopes for actually reviving SLIDERS as a TV show with some of the original cast, and his fanfic ideas were best saved for actual pitches.

That is my speculation, and it is highly speculative.

It's a fair question. I confirmed the details with Temporal Flux back in 2000, such as Torme receiving the scripts for Seasons 4 - 5 and putting the unopened envelopes in a box and refusing to open them, a detail Torme mentioned to me. Temporal Flux also confirmed that the email address I wrote to was genuine.

In addition, Torme shared with me a story idea about Quinn waking up to discover time has been rewound to the Pilot with all the other sliders alive and well and home, with the situation revealed to be a Kromagg trick from which the sliders escape, a story that Torme then shared with EP.COM in 2009.

Torme also voiced a fond adoration for Gene Roddenberry, a forceful loyalty to Brad Linaweaver, and a fondness for James Cameron and Harlan Ellison, amusing given how Ellison sued Cameron for Cameron stealing the plots of "Soldier" and "Demon With a Glass Hand" for THE TERMINATOR and how Torme was, presumably, working for Cameron on the AVATAR TV show that never went forward.

I've added a link to your post, Ib. 

Also added a link to another source on Heat of the Moment (which was the website done by the person who worked on Sliders 3 - maybe Damron?), and updated a bunch of other stuff.

When I read the Avatar thing, it surprised me quite a bit, because you would have though Jim Cameron would have been upset with Tracy.  But Tracy was working with Gale Anne Hurd years earlier and maybe it got smoothed over, idk.   Certainly, it's quite quite interesting, even if it's hard to fathom how they would do it unless it was done in a different animation style.  The Avatar game that came out though looked amazing so who knows.

I would personally consider the entire situation of Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo losing the way home just to save Quinn as a situation for the sliders to deal with in the hypothetical series finale rather than a conclusion.

To describe the plot of "Fever", one would mention that Quinn is a prisoner of the CHC; that doesn't mean Quinn stays a prisoner. The story for "Eggheads" involves Quinn joining a sports team; that doesn't mean the rest of the series is about his Mindgame career. And the plot for Torme's imagined series finale would have a climax where the sliders find their way home but lose it to save Quinn.

I don't think that is necessarily where the story ends. It's just the situation that the sliders have to confront. I would speculate that Torme was open to leaving the sliders lost as writing technique to allow genuine peril. I like to think that Torme would have ultimately had a final twist to reveal that another way back has presented itself.

There was a lot of talk about how Torme's proposed 2021 SLIDERS revival would have killed Wade Welles off camera because Sabrina Lloyd was unlikely to return. I prefer to think that Torme would have revealed the deceased Wade to be alive if Sabrina came back as a guest-star.

Of course, just because I prefer to think something does not mean that it is true. It's just what I choose to believe.

**

It's strange: the account I've heard from most people is that Tracy Torme, visiting the set of TERMINATOR, heard James Cameron brag about how he stole the plot from "Soldier" and "Demon with a Glass Hand", two episodes of THE OUTER LIMITS by Harlan Ellison, that Torme let Ellison know and Ellison approached Orion and Cameron, threatening a lawsuit. Ellison won a settlement and acknowledgement.

I asked Torme about the Ellison/Cameron situation in 2000 and Torme denied involvement. He said that he had never told Ellison he'd been robbed or encouraged Ellison to sue. His view was that Cameron was inspired by a variety of science fiction stories and influenced by many science fiction writers. Torme expressed respect for Cameron, friendship for Ellison, and picked no sides, saying that Cameron had the right to be inspired by other creators and Ellison had the right to pursue what he felt he was owed.

Starlog Magazine apparently had Cameron on tape bragging, "Oh, I took a couple of OUTER LIMITS segments" to write THE TERMINATOR. That strikes me as a more concrete basis for a lawsuit than whatever Torme might or might not have said to Ellison.

I have two theories. My first is that Torme's denial to me was a polite lie; he didn't think it appropriate to talk about his friend Harlan Ellison's legal affairs or to confirm to a fan that he'd encouraged someone to sue James Cameron and a film studio; it might offend Ellison and it might make potential employers wary of hiring Torme.

My second theory is that Torme's denial is true, but he did visit the set of TERMINATOR due to his friendship with Gail Ann Hurd; he may have told Ellison that he thought THE TERMINATOR was inspired by Ellison's OUTER LIMITS episodes and thought Ellison would be flattered; but Ellison may have viewed inspiration as theft and called his lawyer whose research revealed that Cameron was recorded crowing about the theft.

My personal opinion: there is a distinction between inspiration and theft. Indiana Jones was inspired by James Bond, but George Lucas and Steven Spielberg put so many of their own interests into Indiana Jones (history, archeology, Saturday movie serials, World War II, Nazi villains, artifacts, teaching, universities); the final version of Indiana Jones doesn't resemble James Bond at all and feels totally original. The TV show PERSON OF INTEREST, about a mass surveillance supercomputer used to prevent murders, was inspired by the TV show THE PRISONER and its story of total surveillance within a holiday resort/prison for spies. But PERSON OF INTEREST creator Jonathan Nolan put so many of his personal interests into PERSON OF INTEREST (procedural crime solving, trauma from war, artificial intelligence, the morality of benign surveillance) that PERSON OF INTEREST's weekly procedural murder prevention stories have no resemblence to THE PRISONER's stories of a spy trying to escape a gated community prison.

There is a way to do what Cameron did appropriately and respectfully. The STAR TREK episode "Arena", scripted by Gene L. Coon in 1967, was discovered to be alarmingly similar to a 1945 story, "Arena", published in Astounding Science Fiction magazine, written by a contributor named Frederic Brown. Coon had accidentally copied Brown's story; Coon and Desilu Studios therefore contacted Brown and asked to purchase his story, and Brown agreed to sell it.

THE TERMINATOR was an act of theft by Cameron's own admission. It's always been peculiar to me that Cameron, despite having loudly claimed that he plagiarized Ellison, still called Ellison "a parasite" for getting paid, given that the incrimination came from Cameron's own words. And while Torme denies involvement, I can't help but wonder if it were a factor in his contempt for how the third season of SLIDERS became a series of movie ripoffs that didn't make any effort to at least explore the genre and conventions of their ripoffs. It may also be why he said, in a podcast appearance, he tried not to watch or read other people's fiction when working on his own projects.

Perhaps by 2009, Cameron may have accepted that he'd stolen from Harlan Ellison, paid his debt to Ellison, and the matter was settled and Torme was welcome to work on a potential AVATAR show... but given Cameron's legendary ego, maybe not. Maybe Torme really wasn't involved at all in Ellison going after Cameron at all and Cameron had no grudge against him. Or maybe Cameron, operating in the world of big budget feature films, was never aware of Torme's existence until Torme was brought in for an AVATAR television series.

Agreed. Ellison also said that if Cameron had contacted Ellison or his agent and asked for permission, Ellison would have granted it in exchange for credit without payment. I actually believe that.