Doctor Who: Regeneration and Mallory

I was watching the DOCTOR WHO premiere again in which the Doctor discovers that she is now a woman. And then it occurred to me (probably not for the first time) that rather than staggering drunkenly behind DOCTOR WHO, SLIDERS should really have taken this chance to be ahead of the curve. "The Unstuck Man" should have opened with Rembrandt and Maggie coming out of the vortex with Quinn missing -- and then they'd come across a dark-haired woman whom Rembrandt would only vaguely remember. "Who are you?" she asks.

"Who are we?" Rembrandt says. "Who the hell're you?"

"I'm Quinn!" says the woman. "Quinn Mallory." Rembrandt and Maggie are disbelieving, but then the woman displays a flash of memory regarding "Roads Taken" and Rembrandt suddenly recalls having briefly seen this woman once -- a female alternate of Quinn. Season 5 should have been Quinn merged with his female alternate as played by Zoe McLellan. The dual identity would be less of an issue; this female double was a braindead coma patient used in an experiment. And I think ideally, Quinn should have protested any effort to change back into a male body; s/he'd find being a woman so fascinating and such a new perspective that s/he'd be thrilled to go with it. That way, we wouldn't be perpetually waiting for Jerry O'Connell to come back.

SLIDERS could have leapt ahead of DOCTOR WHO instead of lagging behind it.

Damron said that the merging of Quinn and Mallory was inspired by DOCTOR WHO's regeneration concept.

To compare Sliders to Nu Who is a little ridiculous. Yes the amalgam Quinn was based on Doctor who, but classic who. Back in the day it was simply "here's the new doctor".

I really believe that if talks with Jerry would have gone better, it would have been a tad bit more interesting. Still I think of all the actors who left Sliders, Mallory was the most tactful resolution the ever had.

Yeah, that's a really low bar to clear.

Back when Matt Hutaff and I were working on SLIDERS REBORN, he'd howl, "That's ridiculous!" to me 8-10 times per script page. I feel like people who reject the ridiculous don't really 'get' SLIDERS (which is not a crime).

That said, I think Matt would argue that I don't 'get' SLIDERS and that what I consider SLIDERS is actually a hybrid of DOCTOR WHO, superheroes, Temporal Flux and Hong Kong slapstick comedy movies.

SLIDERS is noticeably, at nearly every point of its run, completely out of sync with 90s storytelling sensibilities.

Seasons 1 - 2 feature untrained civilian adventurers in stark contrast to most action-adventure shows focusing on protagonists with military or law enforcement backgrounds. Season 3 and Season 4 shift towards a more militaristic cast (Rembrandt in the Navy, Captain Maggie Beckett the former intelligence officer/fighter pilot/soldier, Quinn as a mythic chosen one and a refugee soldier), but the massive cast changes are most unlike the average 90s show that largely hung onto all their central players.

The bizarre shifts in tone and format are also unlike SLIDERS' contemporaries: across the first nine seasons of THE X-FILES is a basic adherence to formula that is absent with SLIDERS going from alt-history celebrity stories to action-adventure to monster movies to the Sci-Fi Channel years.

And in terms of recasting/regenerating, SLIDERS is noticeably (if accidentally) ahead of the curve. SLIDERS introduced Quinn's female double in Season 3, inadvertently laying ground to presenting a different performer as Quinn should the need arise. DOCTOR WHO did something similar (and deliberately): after decades of the Doctor identifying as a man, the show brought back the character of the Master, a fellow Time Lord like the Doctor -- but who had regenerated into a woman but retained largely the same personality. The show later had a recurring character, also a Time Lord, regenerate into a woman and declare that her previous male incarnation had been the only time she'd ever been a man. The Doctor would later declare (somewhat facetiously) that Time Lords were (ideally) above gender roles.

But SLIDERS achieved the same thing so offhandedly and effortlessly, by establishing Quinn's female double with the character receiving near-universal acclaim and appreciation from the fans. Fans had *already* accepted Zoe as Quinn Mallory and would have welcomed her happily as Jerry O'Connell's successor for Season 5. It's a tragically missed opportunity among SLIDERS' many squandered chances.

Did you have some kind of run-in with Zoe McLellan?

Theoretically, I'm not surprised McLellan is fed up with SLIDERS which she probably remembers as 4- 6 days of filming for a couple months of rent money and a hope of returning that never came to pass. Since then, she's been through a ton of insanity. She had a son followed by a nasty divorce in which she was (falsely) accused of child abduction (acquitted, received a character testimony from Scott Bakula). She got fired off NCIS: NEW ORLEANS by notorious sexual harasser Brad Kern. She periodically stepped back from acting and started a motivational speaking program, worked as a life coach, and is currently working on DESSIGNATED SURVIVOR.

I could understand if, with all of this, she barely remembers anything about SLIDERS. That doesn't make it any less fascinating a subject for us, of course. :-)