Rebooting Sliders

No one has really tried a reboot to our knowledge.  Weiss tried to do a movie, Tracy has tried, even Jerry was seriously talking to people following the Funny or Die spoof he did.  It's a terrific concept, no question, and still bizarre that Universal hasn't redone it.  That being said, Universal doesn't have a good track record.

I once asked Temporal Flux how a new SLIDERS could start over again without all the baggage of the past. Could we reboot without losing what makes SLIDERS special? TF replied that he would love to see a reboot with the original cast, and he gave me his idea, which I updated for today with some ideas from Transmodiar:

• In 2019, Wade Welles is a fortysomething tech journalist who failed to build a life beyond reviewing smartphones and laptops.

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

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

• Quinn Mallory is a fortysomething tax accountant who lost his passion for science after failing to create anti-gravity -- but 25 years after giving up, he realizes that he discovered something else instead.

• Quinn has not spoken to Wade Welles or the Professor since a strange day in 1994 when they accused him of strange behaviour he didn't recall and ended their respective associations with him.

• Quinn has never been able to explain why the Professor recalls him being rude and abusive in class or why Wade remembers Quinn kissing her.

• In fact, those hours of his memory are missing, which he attributes to sleep deprivation over his failed science project.

• When Amanda Mallory dies, Quinn goes back to his old house to clear it out and sell it. He uncovers his old anti-gravity machine and his video cassettes. Watching one of them, one he doesn't remember making, he is struck by inspiration.

• He restarts the machine with some adjustments and opens a new vortex.

• After an initial slide, he eagerly invites the Professor and Wade, finally realizing what happened in 1994.

• They open a gateway to explore once again, accidentally drawing in a passing Rembrandt -- and the adventure begins again.

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

Here's how I think the plot could unfold:

• Opening scene: same footage from the Pilot where Quinn knocked out the power in 1994.

• Cut to 2019.

• Quinn, a tax accountant, has been assigned to income tax duty.

• Wade and Arturo are sent to his desk, where, as he does their taxes, they rant at him for various sins (giving up on science, ridiculing Arturo in his class, abandoning his life's passion, kissing Wade and pretending it never happened).

• Quinn tells them he has no idea what the hell they're talking about and he's done fine for himself. He failed in his ambitions for science -- he moved on. Wade leaves in disgust. Arturo tells Quinn he should be ashamed of himself.

• ARTURO: "You abandoned your gift! You could have changed the world with your intellect and body of knowledge, but what have you done with it instead? Learned how to fill out forms and reduced yourself to a calculator on legs!"

• The phone rings. Quinn picks it up. Then he hangs up. He looks blank and lost.

• ARTURO: "What the devil is wrong with you now?"

• QUINN: "My mom had a heart attack. She's dead."

• ARTURO: " ........................... but on balance, Mr. Mallory, perhaps you shouldn't be too hard on yourself."

• A blur of funeral arrangements, farewells, followed by Quinn going to his old house.

• He explores his basement, which he has not visited in years.

• He finds a video cassette on the floor, one of several. Pops one of these into a VHS player and TV.

• He sees his younger self (Jerry in young-age makeup, obscured by low VHS quality video) talking about adjustments to make to the anti-gravity machine.

• Quinn can't remember making this video or these adjustments -- but now he makes them. He triggers the machine. It doesn't work. But these adjustments inspire him to try a subsequent configuration. He triggers it again.

• A vortex opens and sucks Quinn in.

• He ends up in a parallel universe, explores it, and then the sliding machine back home re-opens a tunnel to bring him home.

• (Some explanation about how Quinn set up a double-entry gateway, purely by accident.)

• Quinn returns to his basement, excited. Starts playing more of the VHS cassettes -- and urgently calls the Professor and Wade to his house.

• He plays them the videos, saying that his alternate universe double must have left him these tapes all those years ago -- probably as an apology for screwing up his life.

• They review the footage, although some is missing due to some tapes having been broken over the years. They construct a timer while various segments of VHS-Quinn play.

• VHS-Quinn speaks in reverent, eager tones about what must be out there in the multiverse, how excited he is to explore.

• (Presumably, Quinn recorded these entries in 1994 between speaking to Smarter-Quinn and welcoming Wade and Arturo into the basement.)

• Quinn, Wade and Arturo slide out, accidentally ensnaring a passing Rembrandt as they do, who happens to be driving past the Mallory house for reasons too terrible and complex to explain here (read: I haven't thought of any yet).

• They have another adventure, but triggering the timer early causes them to be lost in the multiverse.

• All the video journals are left behind on Earth Prime except for fragments here and there that Wade finished converting to keep on her smartphone (as a convenient aid for future episodes if the writer gets stuck for a plot device).

And then, on the website! We have some exclusive web content. We have:

• Clips of VHS-Quinn talking. It's established that he's recording these segments in 2001. We have him recap individual episodes of the 1995 series from his perspective along with worlds we never saw.

• We have clips of Quinn explaining the function and properties of sliding.

• We have clips of Quinn talking about his childhood, which is precisely the same as "The Guardian."

• And then a final clip.

• It's Quinn in 2001, saying that terrible things have happened.

• His friends are all dead.

• His world is gone.

• The only reason he's alive now is because a fellow slider sacrificed himself to bring Quinn back from quantum limbo.

• Quinn has been forced to make a terrible choice.

• He has commandeered a Kromagg weapon.

• It is a reality warping weapon. He has modified it. He has reprogrammed it.

• He can alter reality. He can change the past. He can make it so that no one has ever created sliding, not himself, not his doubles, not the Kromaggs.

• Everyone will live the lives they'd have had if sliding had never been created.

• But this is only a delay; he knows his amnesiac self will reconstruct some variant on the technology eventually. So he's left him these tapes to guide him.

• He hopes his amnesiac self has the wisdom and perspective in the future that Quinn lacked in 1994 and wishes his future self luck in his adventures, speaking of the infinity and wonder of the multiverse and everything that awaits him once again.

Certainly possible, although the trend is to take successful older movies (with much more name recognition), and reboot those.  As for linking in the old cast, should they go down that route, it's absurdly easy!  I mean, you could go the Pilot route where Quinn shows up to school/brag to his double, or basically have the new group "stumble" on a world with one or more of the original characters.  Since there's barely any reason to adhere to previous "continuity," their back story could be mentioned just in general terms.  It's incredibly easy and fitting.  One possibility would be to use the old 29.7 year trapped on a world concern!  Granted we're not at that point yet, but for these characters, it's really been almost 20 since we've seen them, so it would make sense. 

A reboot I think would work.  Alternate histories, it's just rarely done.  Star Trek, Counterpart, Man in the High Castle, Fringe, The Leftovers, heck even Xena did it.  But they rarely went beyond 2 worlds.  Sliders involved well over 100, with a few dozen that were quite memorable.  The concept remains unique.

I agree that Sliders probably makes more sense as a fully recasted reboot than a sequel.  Sliders doesn't have name value, and it's hard to get buzz going about the Sliders name.  And while it's true that I don't like rebooting a series and overwriting all it's previous history, I don't think that's the primary reason why I like my idea....it's that it'd take someone like Jerry to get it off the table.  And in that case, I think Jerry would rather play Quinn again than be recast as someone like Arturo (although that would be interesting).

It'd be fun to see the gang back together again, but I'm cool bringing the show back while touching upon its history.  Maybe I went a bit too far in my mind experiment, but I figure that if Quinn ever got home, the FBI would constantly be on him from the moment he got back.  I think, sadly enough, the government would do whatever it takes to unlock the secret, and they'd need a "Smarter Quinn" like Quinn had.

So maybe he made it home, and Quinn's living under an assumed name.  Rembrandt and Wade could probably have gotten away with going back to their own lives since they don't have the tech knowledge to help the FBI.  I could see Arturo disappearing into retirement never to be seen again.  So maybe in the Pilot, Quinn isn't down on his luck....maybe he goes to them.  Or maybe he finally gets caught.

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Unfortunately, I think, at the end of the day, rebooting Sliders in any form doesn't really make sense.  The brand is old and not that beloved.  Outside of a "hey don't you remember that show?!?" references on the occasional genre production, the brand itself doesn't have a ton of value.  If you're going to do a show going from parallel universe to parallel universe, there's no need for the name because it doesn't add much.  Especially since the name costs money and just calling it "Vortexers" (titles are hard) is free.

Personally I think a reboot with a little deference might work better.

I think that Quinn's son should be the one that creates sliding (with help from his father's notes), Wade could be Michael Mallory's (Quinn's son) widowed mother. That would allow for new characters with new relationships with a lot of references an homages to the original and plenty of cameos as well.

The original Sliders were tortured all the time in the original series.  My original intent, in my head, was for the FBI to try and get the information out of them, but they'd just laugh it off because they'd all been through Kromagg torture techniques.

Polite disagreement with both you and myself -- as much as recasting appeals, Slider_Quinn21 is right to point out that anyone wanting to do a parallel universe show could do one without using the SLIDERS title. So what makes SLIDERS worth resurrecting in the first place? If you recast, you're creating different characters who just happen to have the same names at which point you might as well have different names for both the people and the series.

So, what defines SLIDERS is, in the end, the four original characters as played by the four original actors.

Which is why, if we're being reductive, the only way a SLIDERS reboot could work is to have Jerry O'Connell, Sabrina Lloyd, Cleavant Derricks and John Rhys-Davies return as the leads of a new series. And the best route for that is to do a rebootquel. The original cast, at their current ages, discover sliding for the first time in a version of reality where Quinn makes the first slide in 2019 instead of 1994.

Whether this version of reality is (a) a parallel universe or (b) a new version of reality after the Kromagg-human war ripped sliding out of the multiverse is open to debate. You could do both, however, by presenting the TV show entirely as Option A and leave the Option B information offscreen in media tie-in novels, comics and webisodes.

The problem is that if you recast, why call it SLIDERS at all? Why pay royalties when a new title and characters with different names would see a new creator receive the full share of the money?

Well, the question is “Does Sliders have a brand?”   We often have a bit of tunnel vision as invested fans, but the facts are that a great many more people watched the good years of Sliders  than did the bad.  The pilot movie premiere had an estimated 14 million people watch it.

http://www.slidecage.com/wp-content/upl … atings.pdf

To put that in today’s perspective, the recent return of Roseanne initially had an estimated 18 million viewers and was considered a blockbuster smash by today’s terms.

In my experience in the greater world, Sliders is not something on people’s minds; but if I mention the name even now, I’ve been surprised how many say “Oh yeah!  Loved that show!”  That’s all it takes - mentioning the name.  That’s a brand, and I believe it has more value than you may expect.

I feel all that would have to happen is for anyone to remake "Doorways" and then Universal would go "Hey, we have a show like that!"

I believe the standard arrangement is that the creators would own 10 per cent of the franchise. Such as it is. Anyone developing TV would be better off calling their parallel show by a different title and they'd have more freedom, recognition, ownership and profit.

LOST IN SPACE is a known and recognizable brand for the general audience.

While Sliders’ hardcore fan base (us) is incredibly small compared to many other properties, Sliders has a lot more of a casual fan base than we give it credit for. Remember, Sliders season 1-3 has been for a while and currently is available on Hulu. The series has been available on iTunes for a long time. Sliders was on Netflix for a long time. Sliders has been available on dvd for a very long time, including several re-issues. Obviously, Sliders has a decent casual fan base and it would beneficial to use the Sliders name and character names in a reboot. I think more people would be interested than a lot of you think.

before the reboot of bsg, most didnt really think much of it.  It was a show that was a blaintent ripp off of star wars and lasted 1 season had a reboot that lasted a half season.  The only people that had any nastalgia for it where adults that were young kids that watched it in the early 80s.  it had a slight revivalin the late 90s after the scifi channle launched only because they had to use the universal catalog of shows and it buck rogers and lost in space were the only space themed shows they could get their hands on.

So popularity about the same, non fans remember it as jerry O'Connell's show where he time traveled with a remote control and wormholes, foxs ripp off of quantum leap.

rebooting old shows is more popular than it was during the bsg reboot.

If you could have jerry play Michael Mallory, its limited involvement.  If his brother wants to come back and play an uncle no biggie, if rest of cast wants to cameo at some point cool if not, no biggie.  Then just recast a 4 man crew using same charactoristics as original team.