How Did You Get Into Sliders?

Cyrokin, are you that person from deviantART I've been chatting with lately? You sound a bit the same. If so, hi!

As for my Sliders story - I was a wee bairn of... I guess 11?... when I saw it on broadcast TV in the UK, where I grew up. I don't remember much about what I thought back then, but I was instantly entranced.

I watched the whole first season and taped a bunch of it, but then vaguely recall that it went off air for a while, or I lost track of it or something. When I came back, there was this awful Maggie person in place of Wade, and the Professor was gone and everything was awful. So I quit watching.

Flash forward to a couple of years ago, when my wife was looking for stories that explored the topic of death in an unconventional way. I was like, "hey, I remember this lottery episode of this show called Sliders from years back". Looked it up, and I fell in love all over again.

And then had my heart broken all over again by the season 4/5 shenanigans.

March 1995- my sister had seen a commercial for it and suggested that it looked like something I'd like (I was and still is very much into Back To the Future). Watched the first episode and enjoyed it from the very beginning! When it left Fox and switched to Sci-Fi, we actually got cable just for Sliders (well, it was the turning point anyway!).

I happened to catch the premiere when it aired on BBC Two ... and was instantly hooked. Since then, Sliders held a special place in my heart - and still does.

I was a huge fan of MY SECRET IDENTITY, featuring Jerry O'Connell as a superpowered teenager. And when I saw the Pilot commercials with Jerry saying, "Same planet -- different dimension," I was very keen to see more. I found the Pilot rather alienating and ugly as a child and "Fever" was extremely disturbing, but I felt utterly compelled by the characters and their situation. I wasn't too keen on the show until "Prince of Wails" -- Rembrandt's grumbling monologue about wishing he'd taken the freeway instead of the shortcut past Quinn's house made me laugh uncontrollably. Quinn inspiring the rebels, Wade inspiring the Prince and the Prince's entire arc through the episode delighted me. And at that point, I just loved SLIDERS so much, although I preferred the light comedy to the darker episodes. The Professor was the father figure I'd always wanted; wise but flaws, and when he gets angry, it's not terrifying, it's hilarious.

I really love the comic side of SLIDERS, which you can probably tell from the more recent screenplays I've written. Abed Nadir on COMMUNITY, as scripted by Dan Harmon and Chris McKenna, says the following of TV:

"There is skill to it. It has to be joyful. Effortless. Fun. TV defeats its own purpose when it's pushing an agenda. Or trying to defeat other TV. Or being proud or ashamed of itself for existing. It's TV! It's comfort. It's a friend you've known so well and for so long. You just let it be with you. And it needs to be okay for it to have a bad day. Or phone in a day. And it needs to be okay for it to get on a boat with Levar Burton and never come back. Because eventually, it all will."

The sliders were my friends. That is the saddest, most pathetic thing I have ever said about myself. But anyone who has ever read my writing or seen my posts on this Bboard already knew that to be true.

I would say that a huge part of what's kept SLIDERS in my life is the (online) friendships I've made. Because there was a time when I fled SLIDERS. The horror show of Seasons 3 - 5 reminded me a bit of how bleak and miserable Russian World and Fever World were and I stepped away from SLIDERS when the Professor died. It was too bleak. Too horrifying. When it started airing weekly on the SPACE channel in Canada, I rediscovered it and loved it and despised it in equal measure. And then Temporal Flux and I would instant message a lot over AIM and I asked him so many questions and pleaded with him to help me understand how SLIDERS could have become such a mutilated monstrosity. TF was so patient. So kind. So reassuring. And there was that time I accidentally uploaded porn onto the Sci-Fi Channel server and he came to my aid.

If you must know: I was working on some manipulated images for the Infinite Slides fanfic project and they needed a decent photo of Season 3 Maggie where she wasn't glaring or scowling or sexually aroused. I searched the web and was also combing through the Sci-Fi Channel's FTP server. I found a neat photo (not on Sci-Fi's site) where Kari had an unusually neutral expression and Season 3-esque hair, but she was also naked. I was also dragging Season 4 photos off the Sci-Fi Channel site, thinking I might be able to mix and match faces and hair. At the time, my computer was really slow and prone to freezing up and I managed to drag the nude photo of Kari onto the Sci-Fi Channel server and replace one of the publicity photos with the nude image.

I was so sure Sci-Fi was going to track me down and sue me for this. I was also afraid that my mother would find out I had a nude image of Kari Wuhrer on the computer. I was 13-years-old. I swear to God I only had the nude photo for artistic purposes, but I didn't think that would fly with her.

TF talked me off the ledge and helped me sort it out, finding me the contact info for Sci-Fi's web design firm and they amended the situation. I also hear he saved Christmas for someone awhile ago.

I've also become really close with Transmodiar over the last few years, although I probably won't share too much of the nonsense we've been engaging with until I finish the twentieth anniversary special. Unless I change my mind.

BBC2 was having it's golden era.
ST: TNG, ST: DS9, ST: VOY, Sliders, Space Above and Beyond, The Outer Limits, Red Dwarf, Farscape, Buffy the Vampire Slayer etc.

I fell in love with sliders right away and saved everything to VHS.

Channel 5 had not long been on air and had Deep Water Black and Lexx to compete at opposite timeslots Morning for DWB and Night for Lexx.

Even Channel 4 tried to compete with Babylon 5 but made everybody furious with constantly changing Timeslots and Episodes out of order.
It was only with SG1 that Channel 4 competed with BBC2 which then withered before Ch4 stopped caring and screwed Stargate fans like with B5 and then did the same to Angel and Smallville Fans.

Eventually Channel 5 got SG: Atlantis but then that moved to Sky so lost track.

Today though... Sliders is the only VHS I never taped over, binned or Wiped.

Now you'll think this is hilarious, but it's true.  So I'll admit to watching 90210 from time to time back then, not much though.  Beginning in 94-95 they replaced Shannen Doherty with Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, who I was greatly infatuated with!  So I would watch every week just about.  Well that year FOX produced the Spelling-spinoff Models, Inc., which had started in summer '94 and continued through March '95.  The chicks on that show were all pretty hot, so I tuned in from time to time at 9PM following Beverly. 

Anyway, we started getting promos for this new show which was set to debut following 90210.  I knew Jerry and Cleavant from past work, but the big draw for me was John Rhys-Davies of Indiana Jones fame.  So following an hour of staring at Tiffani, I kept it on FOX for "Sliders."  I thought it was cool and funny, and enjoyed it.  I missed a few of the episodes though, and spent some of the others doing homework or showering, so I didn't consider myself more than a "casual" viewer.  I don't recall them rerunning the show that summer either. 

I pretty much forgot about it the next season, as I was watching Star Trek, Space Above and Beyond, Seaquest, and of course The X-Files.  I did watch the lead-in to X-Files quite a bit, Strange Luck.  I thought it was a quirky but cool show.  Eventually that show ran its course, and the following spring Sliders was back, this time on Friday nights before The X-Files.  Again I watched when I could, Friday's as a high school senior I was rarely home, and setting the VCR was a pain in the neck.  If you asked me to recite a plot point I'd be hardpressed, again I was a casual viewer.

By fall '96 I was a college freshman, and Friday nights were a bit busier than ever!  I always tried to catch Sliders and Millennium on Fox.  Sort of like before, Sliders often was sacrificed so I had time to watch the lead-in or out show (Beverly, X-Files, Millennium).  I've said this before, but the killing of Prof. Arturo really angered me, to the point that when I learned the show as cancelled from FOX, I was happy.  One of my friends at school was bummed out, but I was like, this show stinks without him.  Fox replaced it in fall '97 with The Visitor, which was absolutely terrible.

Whenever it was over winter '97, the Sci-Fi channel got the rights to the FOX episodes, and began airing them in repeated marathons.  For whatever the reason, frankly I don't know why, but I started watching them.  I was so enthralled with the early FOX stuff, that I started recorded all the episodes and watching them again on my own.  Eventually when Season 4 premiered I was really psyched.  Re-run hell certainly tempered by enthusiasm, to the point where I started poking around the old Dominion bboard to find out when the hell the season was going to be aired to completion? 

Sadly I found out the show was again, kind of cancelled, then saved, but the O'Connell's were gone.  The show had so many great off the wall stories, characters, guest actors, that's what made it so cool.

I remember seeing very early advertisements for Sliders before it first premiered. Several things hit me right away.

1. I was already a fan of Jerry O'Connell from "Stand by Me," "My Secret Identity" and the lesser known "A Christmas Story" tie-in "Ollie Hopnoodles Haven of Bliss," in which Jerry plays Ralphie.

2. I was instantly turned on to the early music, which I instantly recognized from Explorers. Another film I loved while growing up. The music is on youtube and the DOC has edited a version that presents it as it was in every early advertisement for Sliders.

3. I was already a huge fan of the Indiana Jones franchise and recognized JRD as Sallah. Always loved hi

4. I was also a Doctor Who fan since the age of 3 or 4 in the very early 80's. I was an instant fan. As I grew, I tend to find that I was naturally drawn to stories that relied on what I have coined as "Junk-Sci-Fi." I don't mean that the story is junk but that the device to get them there is home-made, should not exist, should certainly not work, and might not get you home. While I can appreciate Star Trek, it was occasionally too streamline to me,…..to…..Supposed to Be. I find myself more in the Sliders, Doctor Who, Back to the Future family….and regardless of the TARDIS being mass produced and supposed to be,….the Doctor's is the last TARDIS in the universe,….he's re-built it to the point where it's his own,….and he keeps a rubber mallet near by in case it acts up,…..so it works with my feelings

5. I actually had a crush on Wade instantly. When she dyed her hair red,…I loved her even more. I think it suited the character a lot. Humorously enough, when I watched the pilot, I was disappointed during the scene where Quinn, Wing and Nan are talking while leaving their class at the college.

Nan: "If you ask me, Professor Arturo is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is."

Quinn: "Oh, come on! The man should be a Nobel Laureate for his theory on Coset Wormholes in Keller Oribifolds and I just read his thesis on Chiral Field Anomalies, t's killer."

I saw Nan and and got confused regarding the Wade character, thinking wait….what? Who's that?? That's not the girl in the commercial, is it?…….IS IT???? She looked so much cuter than that!!

AAAAAAAND Then we saw Wade,…PHEW!!

Anyway,…I've been there since before the beginning! I remember calling my best friend during the very first commercial break and telling him about how the show is amazing, it's my favorite, etc.