New Sliders Fan Question

I am going to try to answer this question Seriously when I haven't in the past and instead posted a list of fanfics.

Assumes serious face.

Fair Warning: For new fans, I don't recommend watching anything outside of Season 1, Season 2 and from Season 3: "Double Cross," "The Guardian," "Dead Man Sliding" and that's pretty much it. According to SLIDERS expert Temporal Flux, co-creator Tracy Torme gave up on the show in Season 3 and stopped going to the set after "Dead Man Sliding." The other co-creator, Robert K. Weiss, had left after Season 1.

I'd suggest reading Wikipedia entries to finish out Seasons 3 - 5.

Gems Throughout: Season 4 has some great episodes. "Prophets and Loss" is a throwback to 80s style television formula but done with incredible craft and passion: there's one scene where the sliders are interrogated and it seems to happen in real-time. "Virtual Slide" has some neat perceptual tricks and deft twists of plot. "World Killer" is a minor masterpiece of SLIDERS.

"The Alternateville Horror" has some brilliant touches of humour and cinematography and staging. "Slidecage" has some spectacular hard sci-fi concepts and one of the finest visual realizations of the series. "Slide By Wire" is an impressive, well-paced tech thriller. "Way Out West" is a very amusing Western spoof.

Seven standouts in a season of 22 isn't great.

Diminishing Returns: In Season 5, "The Unstuck Man" is a clumsy, witless, joyless hour, but there's something impressive in writing Jerry O'Connell out of the show with a note-perfect impersonator. "Applied Physics" is a brilliant exploration of the new situation and a moral crucible for the new slider, Dr. Diana Davis, but the threads it sets up are unfortunately discarded in the rest of the season.

"New Gods For Old" is a magnificent exploration of free will, individuality, collectivism and community but sadly destroys what "Applied Physics" set up. "A Current Affair" is really lighthearted and funny. "The Return of Maggie Beckett" is one of the best scripts ever written for the show. And that's it. Four standouts and one interesting failure is pretty sad for a season of 18 episodes.

Setbound and Bottled: The show changes in ways that aren't to its benefit. Season 3 moved production to Los Angeles and proceeded to set the show there and make no effort to use night filming, stock footage, lighting and colour processing to maintain the San Francisco setting, declaring that the sliders would now slide to LA from now on (aside from two episodes in Season 3 and one in Season 4 that insisted on San Francisco). The show's use of backlots and outdoor studio sets eviscerated the indie film look achieved in Seasons 1 - 2 with location filming.

Should've Travelled Light: According to Temporal Flux, the Season 1 - 2 team had very bare, empty soundstages that could be reconfigured into any interior. If they needed Quinn's basement, they wheeled in the blackboard, the sliding coils, the worktable and the furniture into any soundstage and that would be the basement. If they needed a courtroom, they rented a judge's bench, a jury box, the tables and some chairs. For a hotel room, they'd put up false walls and windows, bring in some beds and put a TV on a dresser. Then they'd pack all that away and bring out what they needed for the next set.

Police Stations: In contrast, the Season 3 team built an expensive cave set that ate up their money with rental costs and maintenance and forced them to include it in episode after episode whether the story called for a cave or not. In Season 4, the production built a vast hotel set, the Chandler, with its lavishly decorated halls and bedrooms consuming the money in rental fees and upkeep and forcing nearly every episode to be set in the hotel whether the plot needed the hotel or not. And they kept it for Season 5. The Season 3 - 5 producers were veterans of cop shows which maintain a police station set; they were indifferent to how SLIDERS needed a different approach.

Beige Curtains: Visually, the show takes a nosedive. Season 3's standing sets are livened up by high contrast and high saturation and a good amount of location filming in LA despite the cave set. Season 4, however, is largely studio-bound and it's a bleak, dim, gray, dull looking show. Season 5 maintains the same look and starts filming in the Hill Valley Square from BACK TO THE FUTURE and it looks ridiculous.

No Review: There's also the sense that the script editors and producers are not performing quality control. Starting in Season 3, characters are often not introduced by names and reviewers have had to check credits and scripts to know how to refer to the guest-characters. Exposition is given in the most artless fashion through a guest-character, Diggs, dumping the information onto the sliders through inane dialogue. Actors misdeliver lines and see those takes aired. Characters also behave in shockingly sociopathic ways and the writers and at times actors are totally indifferent to how bad it makes them look.

Sociopaths: We have Quinn falling in love with an unconscious woman in "Dragonslide," Quinn flirting with Wade's sister when Wade is despondent in "Season's Greedings," Quinn flirting with a married woman in "The Exodus Part I," Quinn refusing to let his friends go back to their home Earth for no clear reason in "The Exodus Part II," Quinn tricking his terrified friends into thinking he's being electrocuted in "Sole Survivors," Quinn abandoning the sliders in "Slither," Quinn having no interest in saving Wade from a rape camp in "Mother and Child," Quinn having no interest in saving his mother in "Revelations" -- some of which is poor writing and some of which is the actor mis-performing the scripted dialogue or adding his own subtext to scenes -- and these incorrect takes being aired anyway.

Disavowed: We have a series-ending cliffhanger despite the show's producers knowing full well that there wouldn't be a sixth season.

SLIDERS was, after Season 2, abandoned by its original creators, denigrated by its gradually departing cast and disavowed by those involved. Seasons 3 - 5 are, on the whole, not an enjoyable, professional product. Whatever fanbase the show has is entirely due to the first 22 episodes and a few scattered throughout the last three seasons. In the years to come, the lead producer for Seasons 3 - 5, David Peckinpah, died and there was much rejoicing in this community. His family posted on the now defunct Sci-Fi Channel forum and defended their family patriarch, protesting the way SLIDERS fans reveled in their loss.

Binge: On the IMDB boards (also defunct), one of Peckinpah's sons explained: Peckinpah had been a good father, a devoted family man and a recovered drug addict who had been sober for 20 years in order to focus on his wife and children. In 1994, Peckinpah's 16 year old son, Garrett, died suddenly from bacterial meningitis. Peckinpah fell apart and fell back into heroin and cocaine.

Peckinpah had a development deal with Universal and was assigned to SLIDERS in Season 3. Peckinpah's grief and addiction made it impossible for him to properly oversee commissioning stories and reviewing scripts or ensure actors performed their lines. "The Exodus" two parter of Season 3 was commissioned not because it was a good story, but because it allowed Peckinpah to hire musician Roger Daltrey for a guest-role and devote two weeks to an on-set rock concert with Roger Daltrey's band. Filming the episode was something to do between performances and binge drinking sessions.

Addict: Peckinpah was bitter and angry towards anyone who questioned or protested his attitude, firing John Rhys-Davies off the show and driving Sabrina Lloyd to quit as well. He had no concern for the content he was producing and it showed. After SLIDERS, he moved from LA to Vancouver, presumably to develop new projects but really to indulge his addiction. Without his family and friends to watch him, Peckinpah overdosed and died, so Seasons 3 - 5 are simply a symptom of a deeply troubled human being and his gradual self-destruction. Season 3 is cocaine, a superficially thrilling but emotionally dead experience. Season 4 - 5 are heroin, a sedating, lifeless endeavour.

Fans view Peckinpah as a demonic monstrosity. He was just a man. Broken and lost. Peckinpah killed himself and in the long process to do so, he took SLIDERS down with him. He died longing for his son, he died in infamy, and he died alone.

Restoration: Anyway. If you do watch the show past Season 2 and somehow get to the end of Season 5, consider reading the "Slide Effects" screenplay which was what Tracy Torme would have liked to happen next in SLIDERS. https://earthprime.com/etcetera/slide-effects-2

very cool! is your professor a fan?

If you're going to watch Transmodiar's list of Season 3 episodes, you should make sure to watch "The Other Slide of Darkness" before you watch "This Slide of Paradise." Otherwise, you will be very confused by why a certain character in "The Exodus" looks different in "Paradise." (Then again, you'll be confused regardless, but yes.)

According to Temporal Flux, the de facto authority figure on the series, Sabrina Lloyd left because Kari Wuhrer was harassing her on set. Wuhrer made multiple remarks about how Sabrina, engaged at the time to a crew member, was dating the help. She verbally abused Sabrina to the point where Sabrina would flee the set and lock herself in her trailer and cry.

Cleavant Derricks said in an interview with EarthPrime.com webmaster Transmodiar: Lloyd loved John Rhys-Davies dearly and considered him the father figure of the set. When John was fired off the show, an invitation that TF recovered shows that Sabrina hosted John's farewell party at her own apartment. Cleavant said that Sabrina was miserable after John left and Wuhrer's harassment didn't help.

In an interview, Sabrina said that she felt SLIDERS was no longer challenging her acting abilities which is certainly true given that the production no longer required actors to learn their lines or deliver them correctly.

TF's account: when SLIDERS was renewed for a fourth season, Sabrina said that she didn't want to return to the show if Wuhrer remained aboard. Showrunner David Peckinpah informed Sabrina that he would prefer to retain Wuhrer and Sabrina asked to be released from her contract.

She promptly found another role on an Aaron Sorkin show, SPORTS NIGHT, a major network series with a devoted creator and clearly what Sabrina preferred to be working on instead.

Asked about SLIDERS, Sabrina said that she had seen the episode that wrote her out and that she would never return to the series and was happy on SPORTS NIGHT. She did a voiceover for one episode in Season 5, "Requiem," and Cleavant Derricks revealed that he had to ask her to do that as a personal favour. Otherwise, an impersonator would have recorded the lines.

Actually, if you're going to follow Transmodiar's list, make sure to watch "Requiem" before "Eye of the Storm" or a line in the series finale, "The Seer," will throw you off. This is the first time I have ever encouraged ANYBODY to watch "Requiem." God help us all.

Just... make sure to read "Slide Effects" after you watch the series finale. So many people went on with "The Seer" as the last word on SLIDERS for so long and no one should have to live like that. Not when the creator of the show himself has offered a coda to the show. (Admittedly, a coda that wasn't much more than a post-it in its original form, but a coda nonetheless.) https://earthprime.com/etcetera/slide-effects-2

I don't really feel like "Slide Effects" is my product anymore. I feel like "Slide Effects" was a piece of undelivered mail from Tracy Torme that the fans should have received in 2000, but I was 11 years late bringing it up. That's on me. I was slow to jump on the screenwriting bandwagon.

Shameless product placement would be plugging a six part epic that would be a bit too much to drop on a new fan who hasn't even finished the show yet.

Further ruminations in Random Thoughts here: http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=8984#p8984

I'd say that 10 episodes of Season 4's 22 have scripts that could be considered strong. "Genesis" is efficient (if offensive), "Prophets and Loss" is effective, "Common Ground" is well-written but badly filmed, "Virtual Slide," "World Killer," "The Alternateville Horror," "Slidecage," "Asylum," "Slide By Wire" and "Way Out West" are all enjoyable and professional. However, the internal logic of the other 12 episodes is clumsy and at times witless. There's "O Brother Where Art Thou" where a cop excuses the sliders' total ignorance of the world and says their being from Canada explains everything (!?!?). There's the clumsiness and ineptitude of "Mother and Child" where a discussion of rape is followed up with a scene of cracking wise, there's "Net Worth" having the sliders survive a collapsing roof for no stated reason whatsoever, there's "Revelations" stretching out a teaser and a first act to fill an entire one hour timeslot.

Season 5 is even worse. With the exception of "Applied Physics," "Strangers and Comrades," "New Gods for Old," "A Current Affair" and "The Return of Maggie Beckett," every episode is stretched out with scenes of characters reiterating plot information they already possessed in order to pad out the running length to fill an hour. There is nothing 'strong' about scripts where there is so little event or incident that characters are reduced to repeating what's already been established in order to fill the page length of the teleplay. Thirteen episodes of Season 5's 18 feature this absurd, lazy writing style.

There are ways to evaluate whether or not a script is good. A good script has an effective plot with either development or insight in each scene, efficient exposition, a clear sense of cause and effect, problems that are addressed by characters using solutions that make sense and show agency and demonstrate personality, and a conclusion that is inevitable based on the previous events but unexpected for the viewer.

With Season 4 and Season 5, we have only 15 scripts of the 40 that meet this standard, meaning only 37.5 per cent of the last 40 episodes of the show rise to any professional, acceptable metric of screenwriting. It is shameful and it's terrifying that Season 5 story editor Keith Damron now teaches screenwriting. I hope to God his students are slow learners.

You're already applying more continuity and logic to the show than the writers. When it's first mentioned in "Rules of the Game," even Rembrandt says his participation was USO-related, but that's quickly dropped the further into season three you go. You can safely ignore the Navy stuff as it plays absolutely no part in the rest of the series beyond a B-plot in "The Other Slide of Darkness." As an added bonus, there are multiple scene where the Sliders are swimming in the ocean coming your way, so Rembrandt clearly took a few lessons when we weren't paying attention.

And you won't - the only official callback to Arturo's son is in an interview I had with co-creator Tracy Torme ten years (!) ago: https://earthprime.com/interviews/tracy-torme-2009

25 years ago, we were lucky to get a payoff to the first season cliffhanger. "Into the Mystic" almost ran mid-season. There was no ability to follow up on loose threads due to the nature of television (and FOX programming).

I think that was the point the fortune teller was trying to make - that he formed a closer bond with Quinn because of their shared interests than his own kid, who probably isn't a hardcore physicist - but we have no additional information to pull from. All we can infer is that Arturo's kid was born out of wedlock, since his own wife died early into their marriage. So it's entirely possible that his son could live far, far away, or have a strained relationship because his parents aren't together.

Nope, you've got a pretty good bead on things. Torme was fond of throwing a bunch of ideas out there despite not having the clout with the network to pay them off down the road. Arturo's kid, the FBI, Bennish, Arturo's illness, the right Arturo, blibbity blibbity blah...