1997 Tracy Torme DragonCon Panel on DVD

Are you saying he is the one that converted your VHS to DVD and is now selling it, or that he did the transfer when you requested he make the panel available on DVD?

So was this convention done in the brief time where Torme thought he was going to come back and the time it was determined that Peckinpah's contract was still in effect?  Torme sounds so confident in his comments - it's almost bizarre that he's talking like this about something that never happened.

I know I should know all this stuff, but this era is a bit confusing to me.

Here's an online chat he also did at DragonCon that year.

http://www.earth62.net/transcripts/torme28jun97.htm

I was wrong on this.  Apparently this "Hour with Tracy Torme" event took place the day after the Sliders panel. So this is different.

We now have video evidence the wrong professor slid.

Oh, don't knock his enthusiasm. Yes, we've already had plenty of confirmation from Torme that the wrong Arturo slid, but come on. Let RussianCabbieLotteryFan enjoy his DVD.

Matt is pointing out that we have had Tracy Torme's confirmation that the wrong Arturo slid since 2009.

... ??

Torme messaged Matt from his Facebook account, saying, "For what it’s worth, I believe the wrong Arturo slid. And he was the one with the implant." I hardly think one needs to rank video evidence and a personal communication from Torme in competition; they are both perfectly equal and valid.

I think the DVD (which I will order soon) is (in theory, as I have not seen it) a lovely artifact for SLIDERS fans and a chance to spend some time with one of the genius intellects and masterful screenwriters behind the show and it is of course valuable, but it's unreasonable to claim its importance is based in shocking revelations of things we already knew a long time ago.

I wasn't referring to my interview. If the video is from 1997, we've had that confirmation for twenty years. We just didn't know it.

Thats what the ep interview essentially indicates when you look at all of his statements on it..  which is why  it doesnt settle the question for everyone.

However in an old online chat he said he definitely knew which arturo slid - he wouldnt say - and that there are clues in subsequent episodes if you look closely.

In the dragoncon video he says it was designed to have the wrong arturo sliding.

As far as i'm concerned, our professor without a doubt isnt the one who died on the show.

I think that's one of Tracy's flaws.  In execution, the S4 Kromaggs, Mallory, and Maggie are all concepts that were flawed.  On paper, I think they're ideas with a great deal of merit. 

- Just like there are many varieties of human, there'd almost certainly be many varieties of Kromagg.  Some might be cold and calculated like the ones in Invasion, and some would almost certainly be aggressive and want to establish a multidimensional empire.  After all, sliding technology and Kromagg military tech would allow many worlds to be taken over relatively easily.  I imagine if the show had continued, there would've certainly been a human equivalent to the Kromagg Dynasty - it makes logical sense that a militaristic society with access to sliding would use it to enslave lesser worlds.

- Maggie is another character that works on paper.  Imagine if, say, Zoe McLellan were hired as Maggie.  She's a tough captain from a dying world.  She'd bring fascinating perspective to the group, having grown up on a parallel Earth, and she'd provide skills and knowledge that the Sliders didn't otherwise have.  The character works on paper.  And, for at least some of her time on the show, the character worked on screen.

- Mallory is another example, and I almost think it's the type of character that Tracy himself would've come up with if he had to replace Quinn at any point.  Fraternal double make too much sense to never have appeared on Sliders.  And to be able to just keep Quinn going with a different actor is basically a writer's best case scenario, right?

Tracy didn't like anything that didn't fit in with his vision for the show, but I think his vision for the show could be rather myopic.  Which is fine....most fanfic writers fall into the same creative hole and end up with the four original sliders in a story.

No, I get that.  But stuff happens in TV.  One of the regulars could've died.  I'm sure the writers of 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter didn't expect John Ritter to die, but he did.  And they had to adjust.  And maybe John had to be fired to leave, but what if they'd run into a situation like ST:TNG faced with Denise Crosby?  I'm sure they had great plans for Tasha Yar, but they had to adjust.

(I know none of the actors are dead, even now, but it was possible).

Not to mention the fact that the show's longevity could've changed things.  Jared and Jensen on Supernatural, staying for over a decade, is the exception...not the rule.  Mulder and Scully both left X-Files.  Everyone but Tom Welling left Smallville. 

Maybe Jerry's movie career (which started/continued while he was still doing Sliders) could've taken off earlier.  Maybe Mission to Mars could've been a bigger success, and he'd want to get out of his contract then.  Maybe Sabrina still could've wanted to leave Sliders to go get a job working with Aaron Sorkin.  Maybe nostalgia could've forced JRD to leave and create a number of Sallah-based Indiana Jones spinoff movies.

If he hates the characters because they weren't his vision, that's fine.  But if he was in the same situation, for whatever reason, he would've had to have adjusted accordingly.  If it were me, I'd be more upset at what they did with *his* characters than what they did with creations of their own.

But that's just me.

In the case of SMALLVILLE, the entire Season 1 cast signed seven year contracts, but Eric Johnson, Sam Jones III, John Schneider and Annette O'Toole were released from their obligations at the production's behest. As for Kristin Kreuk and Michael Rosenbaum, they completed their seven year contracts.

Allison Mack signed a two year contract for Seasons 8 - 9 and once it was done, she decided to renew only for a limited number of episodes. But make no mistake: if the Season 1 - 7 team wanted to keep the entire cast, the actors would have been obligated to stay.

David Duchovny wanted to leave THE X-FILES by Season 5, but he signed a seven year contract and he was required to fulfill that seven year contract. Jerry O'Connell could have become Laurence Olivier and John could have booked any number of INDIANA JONES films and they'd still be obligated to show up on SLIDERS unless the production did not want them there. That's simply the nature of these contracts.

The fact that Seasons 3 - 5 had their lead characters locked into long-term contracts and still lost 3/4 should not be seen to indicate that you can't always count on having the actors available. The point of these multi-year contracts is to have hired them for their availability and to lose that availability would require producers determinedly trying to get rid of the actors.

And it wouldn't have happened under Torme; Torme was prepared to assuage Jerry's wishes for a movie career by writing him out of an episode now and then and John had given Torme plenty of ammunition to fire him over Seasons 1 - 2, but Torme would never do that. Torme loved Professor Arturo. Torme loved Quinn, Wade and Rembrandt. He would do whatever it took to keep them and when you have contracts in place, all that remains is maintaining good relationships.

I don't know if they would be happy about it. But they signed contracts. I don't know how long the contracts were for. Seven years is the standard, but it's not absolute; the cast of COMMUNITY signed for six years.

When the actors signed those papers, they were accepting the possibility that they might spend 5 - 10 years playing those roles, living in those filming locations, and missing out on other opportunities because this is the series to which they tethered their lives.

So, contractually, the only reason we didn't get five seasons of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo is because the producers who took over in Season 3 did not appreciate the value of the cast -- or even the show. On one level, whether all four actors would be happy or not is immaterial -- it's what they agreed to.

Now, realistically -- most actors don't imagine that their show is going to last that long. THE X-FILES was expected to be cancelled within 6 - 13 episodes; Chris Carter, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were astonished to get a second season and flabbergasted to be filming a feature film.

COMMUNITY lost Chevy Chase in the middle of Season 4 because their relationship with him became unworkable, Donald Glover asked to be released because he was having mental health problems, Yvette Nicole Brown asked to be released because her father was ill. So yes, stuff happens, actors get bored -- but actors coming and going with no stability to the cast and no clarity as to who's available for what -- that's something American TV shows deliberately set out to avoid with long-term contracts.

Nevertheless, Chase, Glover and Brown had an obligation to devote six years of their lives to COMMUNITY as contracted -- but they were released because forcing them to adhere to their contract wouldn't have served the show: all the actors hated Chase, Glover was not well, Brown couldn't be away from her father and you can't get decent performances or a good work ethic out of actors if their issues make them incapable of performing well.

Chris Carter's plan -- as much as he ever had one -- was that there would be five seasons of THE X-FILES and then a resolution to the alien myth-arc in the feature film. Future X-FILES installments would be in film. However, as Season 4 began filming, FOX declared that (a) Carter was to film the movie after Season 4 (b) Season 5 would then lead up to whatever was in the movie, which would have already been filmed and (c) the movie would be followed by Season 6.

As a result, Carter couldn't do a movie that resolved the series and then shift into feature films. Carter most definitely did not have a clear plan as to how the movie would have resolved the alien invasion arc, and now he'd never come up with any resolution at all. FOX saw that THE X-FILES was a ratings hit, and was determined to get as much out of the show as possible in the realm of television.

I think there's a massive difference between how SLIDERS changed its cast and how THE X-FILES changed its cast. SLIDERS lost critical characters at abrupt times, suddenly and irrationally in terms of the story. In contrast, THE X-FILES gave its fans seven years of its lead characters with the Season 7 finale observing that Mulder and Scully had accomplished anything and everything they could have reasonably hoped to achieve. The conspiracy had been toppled (sort of, it was confusing), the alien invasion had been stalled (again, sort of), all questions had been addressed and answered (although they weren't necessarily great answers).

When Mulder left THE X-FILES, there was a massive outcry from the fans. But there was also the acknowledgement that the show had been doing the same thing for seven seasons and Mulder's absence was an opportunity to inject new life and new energy into the show. The Mulderless episodes in no way impeded enjoyment of the seven years we'd already had of Mulder and Scully.

So, if SLIDERS gave us seven seasons of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo, then I think Torme would be wise and willing to start making some changes afterwards. In my imagined version of SLIDERS:

• Seasons 1 - 2: Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are sliding randomly.

• Season 3: "Double Cross" has a different ending where Logan St. Clair is imprisoned and Arturo assumes his double's life, taking full control of Prototronics, giving the sliders a home base, an organization, and a chance to make sliding more stable and reliable with a headquarters. They rename Prototronics as Sliders Incorporated.

• Season 4: The sliders find that sliding and exploration are now secondary to a desperate war against the Kromagg Dynasty for the fate of all realities.

• Season 5: As the Kromagg war reaches fever pitch, the sliders lose Sliders Incorporated and their home base and become desperate to find some way to defeat the Kromaggs with what little technological advantages remain from Sliders Inc. We end on a massive cliffhanger where the sliders are thought dead.

• The Movie: In an epic, feature film finale storyline, the Kromaggs are defeated, but the sliders are reduced to wandering the interdimension with an unreliable timer in a random search for home. Once again.

• Season 6: Back to basics with Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo sliding randomly. The season ends with them getting home.

• Season 7: The sliders find that home is as much a parallel Earth to them as any other world and accept their lives are in the multiverse, using home as a base but now sliding, rebuilding Sliders Inc. and searching for a new generation of sliders.

• Season 8: The new generation of sliders take center stage and the original sliders only appear in half of the season's episodes as the administrative staff of Sliders Inc. The new sliders get lost in the multiverse at the end of Season 8.

• Season 9: The new generation of sliders explore the multiverse, searching for a way back home. In 6 - 8 episodes, they encounter doubles of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. The series finale involves all the sliders being captured by the Slide Rulers who put our heroes on trial for interfering in the affairs of parallel Earths, resulting in a lengthy courtroom session with narrated clipshows of previous episodes that ends with all the sliders going on the run from the Slide Rulers with their fate unknown.

• Movie Number Two: The FBI seek out Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo who are all living in peaceful retirement, needing their help with a series of murders with a psychic from "Obsession" at the center of it all.

• The Mini Series: Twenty years after the Pilot, the sliders reunite in order to investigate a series of peculiar reality shifts centered around a -- oh God, stop me now.

My question is does the fellow doing the transfers have the right to do so?  Furthermore, transferring VHS to DVD is not that hard or time consuming, unless you're also doing editing and/or re-mastering of some kind.

He could also just Handbrake the file and throw it up on YouTube. Although that sweet, sweet profit of $6 could buy one heck of a Subway 6" sub!

Based on a bit of research -- Eric L. Watts, who is selling the DVDs, was the unpaid, volunteer DragonCon organizer for all STAR TREK programming at the convention. All those events from 1993 - 2009, including the Torme event, took place under the TrekTrak banner which Watts appears to own.

I don't know if he personally filmed the event, but it would have been done on his say-so, and I think the footage is his to do with as he pleases. The TrekTrak programming was apparently so popular that there's sufficient demand for DVDs of the events. In 2010, DragonCon declined to ask him to volunteer again, and Watts started his own convention in Atlanta: www.treklanta.org

He talks a bit about DragonCon and why he left/wasn't rehired in this interview:
http://conventionfansblog.com/2010/06/2 … ta-part-1/ From what I can tell, DragonCon saw the opportunity to replace Watts with Garrett Wang (Harry Kim from VOYAGER) and decided a celebrity organizer would draw more attention.

Watts seems like a pretty decent fellow to me -- he could have easily been bitter and angry towards DragonCon, but he took the high road in his interview, saw it as an opportunity to do his volunteer organizing professionally and now his TrekLanta is about to have its sixth annual convention.

Is Garrett Wang really a celebrity?