Rewatch Podcast (Page 2 of 6)

Tom, it would be DIVINE if you rounded up your actor friends and did a radiodrama with Ib's Sliders revival.  And Corey does GREAT imitations. You guys would seriously do it justice.

For what it's worth, your writing style perfectly captures the "voice" of the sliders characters imo. I'm not so particular about whether anyone is dead on... I think I would just get lost in the drama. But that's just me.

Hmm. I've thought about it some more.

I would be okay with Tom and company performing these four pages. Maybe not even all four pages -- just the last two. No more than that, though. :-) I can get a friend to provide dialogue for the female voice.

I will finish catching up on responding to all the podcasts tomorrow. :-)

So, "State of the ART." Like Cory and Tom, I don't mind this episode too much, although Arturo's aptitude with physics and mathematics seems to have gotten an absurd upgrade to the point where he's repairing robots! The purple sky is intriguing. Visually, this episode is kind of cramped and dull with its bland sets and soundstages and the editing is a little flat. But I didn't mind it too much. Not exactly thought provoking, however. I enjoyed Cory and Tom talking about whether or not they'd submit to being transplanted into robot bodies. Tom's thoughts on artificial intelligence were intriguing as he argued that Derec's 'emotions,' such as they are, don't represent any internal state. They're just programming instructing a machine to show specific symbols on its display, using a human face as its screen and human expressions as its graphic user interface.

At the same time, is the human brain or body anything more than a machine in itself, albeit one of biological components as opposed to mechanical parts? I dunno! Interestingly, Bob Weiss, co-creator of SLIDERS, is also an expert in robotics and is the CEO of a company working on robots that can perform surgery. (I don't think he's currently working on artificial intelligence.)

Then we come to "Season's Greedings," which is again a combination of the Season 1/2 alt-histories with the Season 3 approach of aiming for light entertainment. Unlike "Double Cross," the emphasis is less on action but ultimately about good triumphing over evil. Unlike "The Prince of Slides," this episode has something truly meaningful and important to say about the futility and pointlessness of consumer purchasing and consumer credit. And I like it a lot. It's heartfelt. It's sweet.

It's got an absurd and ridiculous climax where the sliders delete debt records to free everyone in the mall from their servitude -- I find it *very* difficult to believe there wouldn't be extensive backups of this stuff. I get the impression this script was written well before computers were as common as they are now and in our pockets. I enjoyed Cory and Tom noting how the friendly, cheerful setting of the mall is essentially a polite face on slavery, however, and I suppose that's part of why I don't quibble too much with how the story is resolved.

But certain things trouble me.

Quinn Mallory. Something has gone wrong with Jerry's performance and the scripting of the character. The physicality and the expression of the character have gotten confused. The scene that strikes me as most wrong is when Quinn and Kelly go to dinner. Quinn talks about his family's traditions. Jerry is completely out of character in this scene. He acts like he's accustomed to attention from women and enjoys it greatly.

I think a Season 1/2 Quinn would perform exactly the same dialogue, but with Quinn's usual reserve and slight social awkwardness, making it less of a performance and more of an awkward sharing between himself and a new friend. Jerry, however, plays this scene as completely flirtatious and intensely sexual and it's deeply uncharacteristic for Quinn; why would Quinn be flirting with Wade's sister at a time when Wade is hurting for family? Had Jerry modulated his performance correctly, it would have come off as Quinn trying to better understand Wade through understanding Kelly.

Instead, Jerry plays it like he's on a date. Tom and Cory highlight deleted scenes where Quinn was written to have had a crush on Kelly since their first meeting at Wade's house over dinner. That also doesn't sync with Jerry's performance. Would this confident, flirtatious, girl-chasing Jerry O'Connell have been at a loss for words when first meeting Kelly? Would he have been "unable to take his eyes off her," as Wade says in the script? No -- this version of the character would have asked Kelly out.

The other scene that really rubs me the wrong way with Quinn is Quinn pouncing on the mall manager at the end and punching him out with enraged satisfaction. I don't see why Quinn would do this; the man's business has been shattered, he's wanted by the law, his assets have been destroyed and his face is known to all. What was the point? Quinn knows when a guy is beaten; he doesn't enjoy inflicting physical pain. Something has gone really wrong here.

The ending. Oh, the ending. Yes, it's nice to see a happy ending. But I remember this article where Tracy Torme remarked that he felt Season 3 of SLIDERS (at the halfway mark) was doing empty, feel-good television. Everything is wrapped up happily at the end. All is well. The sliders open the vortex off camera to save money. And they leave. No twists, no thought-provoking endings. Just acceptable mediocrity.

Film director James Gray once remarked, there are two words in the English language -- "good" and "enough" -- that, when combined, are a recipe for low standards. "State of the ART" and "Season's Greedings" are certainly good enough -- but SLIDERS is no longer receiving the detailed care and love to characterization and viewer enjoyment that often made it great.

Next: The terrible truth of Season 3.

ireactions: Wow. Jesus. I had no idea. That... makes so much sense out of everything.

I used to hate the guy. Now I mostly just feel sorry for him.

Still sorry that he wrecked the show, and made working conditions intolerable for so many of the people who made Sliders great. But ouch.

Dude, where do you get all this info? This is pretty detailed stuff. I'm also super curious how Lloyd and Rhys-Davies reacted to the whole "filming while drunk" thing. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing they would have stood for at all.

"Slide Like an Egyptian." I honestly don't know what to make of this episode and my reaction mirrors Tom and Cory almost exactly. The episode is very strangely edited with scene to scene progression lost as character motives fade in and out of the story. Quinn's death is a moment in a muddled, confused, disorienting episode and leaves me completely cold. The sliders stumbling across a replacement timer that works pretty much the same way the old one did is just baffling to me. It knocked me out of the story completely. The scarab special effect is appalling. Why are the creators of Season 3 so utterly convinced that special effects will attract an audience when the special effects are so terrible?

I really can't figure out what the point of this episode was beyond David Peckinpah's wish to have the Torme timer destroyed and replaced with one he can call his own. As Cory and Tom note, Michael Mallory's advice to Quinn is meaningless nonsense. There's no real exploration of the Egyptian alt-history. This episode is a boring mess and it's hard to tell what they were going for.

With "Paradise Lost," we come to one of the most loathed episodes of SLIDERS ever made. Tom and Cory note all the obvious, glaring errors throughout the story from misdelivered dialogue to silly chronological errors and baffling contradictions in how this town keeps its secrets or discovered the immortality-granting substances.

"Paradise Lost" features two of the worst guest-characters on SLIDERS. Trudy is appalling, claiming to be trying to save innocent people while only ever providing vague, unspecific warnings that have never saved a single person. Laurie is a non-entity paraded in front of the camera as a Baywatch babe, so dull that Tom and Cory have trouble remembering her scenes. And there's an alarming lack of oversight such as Quinn addressing the Professor as "Max" or actors confusing the words "do" and "don't."

This episode is a clear reflection of how the Season 3 production is unprofessional. They commission scripts for SLIDERS even when the pitches clearly lack parallel universe story elements, which reflects the showrunner's indifference to the series. They permit scripts to be filmed without any concern for introducing guest-characters or scene-to-scene progression or reviewing dialogue, indicating that the script editor is not on the job. They permit actors to mis-read dialogue and do not do reshoots, suggesting the script supervisor is either incompetent or being ignored. All this leads to a nonsensical final product.

I think, earlier in the season, some of the Season 1/2 writers (Tony Blake, Paul Jackson, Nan Hagan) were still writing for the show they knew in Season 2, so you'd get episodes like "Double Cross" and "Dead Man Sliding" which merge the Season 3 spectacle/action approach with Season 1/2 storytelling elements. You had writers like Eleah Horwitz writing perfectly decent stories like "The Prince of Slides" and "Season's Greedings," aiming for the same. These were writers who, I think, were willing to do their own quality control on their material. David Peckinpah did the same for himself on "Murder Most Foul."

But then there are the scripts where the writers were either not reviewing their own material or there were changes being made to film material more cheaply and more quickly but without any concern for coherence or watchability.

In Season 1, Tracy Torme, Robert K. Weiss and Jon Povill were often rewriting scripts. "Last Days" and "Eggheads" were heavily redone. "As Time Goes By" had multiple writers working on the individual threads. "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome" was heavily workshopped. With Season 3, little to no effort in this area is present. "Paradise Lost" is a marker -- the Season 3 episodes that follow are mostly from scripts that have not been reviewed for basic professional standards (introductions, exposition, in-character dialogue, basic scene-to-scene progression) or have been rewritten in ways that aren't concerned with those standards.

"The Last of Eden" also reflects all the problems that result when scripts aren't being reviewed with these concerns in mind. Cory and Tom explore how the underground society makes no sense and are wildly inconsistent in the threat they pose and the timeline presented by the episode makes no sense whatsoever. The script raises questions about the Gineers that aren't explored in the slighest. The script plunges the sliders into a plot that makes no effort to explore the surroundings or the civilization in any meaningful or informative way, treating every guest-character in this episode as a threat or a mechanism to move the plot to its tedious conclusion.

Episodes like "Double Cross" and "Dead Man Sliding" showed that SLIDERS could give FOX the light entertainment and action-spectacle they wanted while still telling stories with alternate histories and strangers in strange lands. But in the end, the problem isn't even that Season 3 reducing alt-history for doing monsters and horror and fantasy. Any story is conceivably a SLIDERS story; even a story without a strong alternate history is potentially a SLIDERS story. The problem is that Season 3 is doing *bad* monster movies and horror movies and fantasy movies. This regime has no concern for quality or viewer enjoyment and "Paradise Lost" is the point at which this is consistently indicated in nearly every episode that follows.

Behind the scenes information courtesy of Temporal Flux.

Love that your doing these essays, adding your own review/recap to following the rewatch one.

I'm glad Tom and Cory enjoyed "The Exodus," because I never want anyone to have a bad time. That said, this two-parter BLOWS. Oh my God, if it weren't for "This Slide of Paradise," it would be one of the worst TV productions ever made. Chilling in its incompetence, its existence opening a gateway to a world of anti-talent and anti-creativity.

Of all the ways to explore the end of the world, a base of faceless and anonymous soldiers is probably the *worst* choice. I mean, the idea in "Exodus" is so simple: if you could save *some* parts of a dying world, what would you save?  The sliders never grapple with the question. It's irrelevant as far as the story's concerned.

Then there's the need to inject slasher-horror characters where they don't belong. The Rickman character is pathetic on every level. There is simply no deeper dimension to this character; he is a cowardly killer who exists to antagonize and attack. His desperate need to survive is played as empty-villainy with absolutely no sense of pathos or tragedy. There's nothing below the surface of this cartoon.

The Professor's death is humiliating and a complete dis-service to a fine actor and excellent character. First, he's deprived of speech and intelligence, then he's killed in an instant. It's boring.

"The Exodus" is full of ugly, callous characters who are somehow masquerading as our sliders. Quinn is indifferent to the death around him and there's some nonsensical conflict where he refuses to let the sliders go home Because. Arturo is shockingly insensitive to the mass casualties. Wade and Rembrandt are hungover during Arturo's eulogy scene.

The Maggie Beckett character is a disaster. Antagonistic and abrasive, inexplicably paired with Quinn romantically, indifferent to her husband's efforts to save people's lives, and in no way convincing as a soldier or a spy. Kari Wuhrer's performance is witless and without detail or charisma. Awful.

This simply isn't the show we started watching in Season 1. Season 3 started so well, adding more action to the SLIDERS format, but "The Exodus" has lost *any* sense of what the show is. Is it about special effects? The effects are terrible. Is it about action? The episodes are just people wandering around a military base. Is it about the characters? They're unbearable. Is it about adventure? If there's one adventure I don't want to ever go on, it's the latter Season 3 episodes. For TV to even work as mindless entertainment, it first has to qualify as entertainment and I can't work out how any audience could find anything to enjoy here.

Matt Hutaff once wrote a review of "Strangers and Comrades" where he talked about how the dialogue and direction gave a sense of depth and importance, but the content was ultimately hollow and empty. "The Exodus" may be an 'important' SLIDERS story and it may be full of significance, but I think it's just badly made and yet, it looks like a masterpiece compared to what's coming next.

Hey Sliders Fans! Our new ep is up now. Tom and Cory discuss "Sole Survivors" and "The Other Slide of Darkness."

http://rewatchpodcast.podomatic.com/ent … 8_10-07_00

Well you are a great podcaster as well. You sounded like a highly professional NPR cultural critic during your sliderscast 14.5 episode.

Cool!

Ib pointed me in the direction of the "Exodus" podcast that references "Exodus Excised." Just want to thank everyone who said such kind words about my fanedit; one of these days I hope to follow it up with my "Genesis" edit, too. (Certainly won't happen before the podcast is produced, though!)

"Sole Survivors." I thought it was funny how Tom and Cory started noting when the show would bother to provide names for its guest-stars and laughed uncontrollably when Cory said he couldn't even make out Erica's name in the dialogue.

Oddly, for a late Season 3 episode  -- I don't hate "Sole Survivors." The original script, which can be found on Earth Prime, was better. The rewrite is a fairly functional, capable, competent hour of TV and Tom and Cory seemed mostly okay with it.

It's a zombie story; it's SLIDERS doing monster movies -- and as I've said before, any story is conceivably a SLIDERS story. And as zombie stories go, "Sole Survivors" has some strong character moments and a good sense of action and pacing. I can even bring myself to accept zombies in the SLIDERS mythology since there's an effort at a rational explanation.

There's some seriously impressive work at depicting Quinn's brainpower in this episode. It's been sorely lacking as of late, but I was really impressed with how this episode showcased his mental agility while fighting the infection. He gathers the equipment and ingredients to cure himself, he gets Debra's generator back online, he saves the day.

But, as Tom and Cory note, there are lots of flaws, too. Quinn pranking his friends with pretending to electrocuted  -- I'd say it's out of character, but the truth is that I barely recognize this flirtatious, smug, skirt-chasing action hero as the Season 1/2 character. It's strange how this bizarre note, however, is in a fairly strong episode for Quinn.

The guest-characters are pretty incapable and hopeless. Dr. Tassler and Debra seem to go out of their way to be threatened by the zombies. The zombies inexplicably start capturing people at the end. But these aren't aggressively annoying.

I just really, really, really hate this episode. Or rather, I hate this body of episodes. "Paradise Lost," "The Last of Eden," "The Exodus" and now "Sole Survivors" have turned SLIDERS into one of the most depressing shows of the 1990s. And it was airing alongside THE X-FILES. Sliding is no longer a fun adventure that the viewers would want to join. Sliding is, instead, an endless journey through despair and hopelessness and death and zombies represent that wholly and totally.

I think if you had one or two episodes like "Sole Survivors" -- horror and misery and agony and terror -- that'd be fine. But when it's *every* single episode *every* single week  -- well, there's a reason for that.

"The Other Slide of Darkness" is another grim march through misery and depression. This is now the sixth episode in a row that is utterly miserable on every level with unhappy, troubled, angry, abrasive characters.

Rickman is truly bizarre. Tom and Cory note how the explanation for his altered appearance doesn't match "The Exodus" and also note error upon error upon error in the story. Very simply: Quinn-2's character is completely incoherent. He recognizes Quinn on sight as the same Quinn he met in the Pilot. How?

He claims to have given the Kromaggs sliding. But the Kromaggs had been sliding for decades if not centuries, given that adult Mary was raised by Kromaggs as an infant to be their Speaker. How could the Kromaggs have raised Mary from infancy to adulthood in the two years between the Pilot and Invasion?

And once Quinn-2's motivations fail to withstand scrutiny, his helping Rickman and wanting Quinn to kill him becomes impossible to analyze or understand.

Tom and Cory also note how absurd it is that Quinn-2's followers are intimidated by a floating head and how the ending is unintelligible and cuts off practically in mid-scene. "The Other Slide of Darkness" bears all the marks of Season 3's unprofessionalism: unreviewed scripts, unconsidered story elements, and absolutely no concern for viewer enjoyment. Aiming for depth through diving into darkness.

But here's the thing: misery and despair are easy. Depression and anger require absolutely no artistry, no craft, no skill, no talent. What did SLIDERS have at the start? A sense of wonder. Delight. Joy. Look at the impish glint in Quinn's eyes at the end of the Pilot when he asks his friends where they'll slide to next. What does it have now? A disengaged cast, writers who are grimly waiting out their contracts, an executive producer who is incapable of doing his job and the original creators have fled the set.

Many posters have talked about how Sabrina Lloyd does such a great job of showing Wade's trauma and grief and degenerating mental state  -- and sure, it's an impressive performance, but artistically, is that really an achievement? Anger and fear are easy. Wonder and joy are hard and impossible to achieve by a regime that's pretty much given up.

I always wondered about Sole Survivors.

The Episode came way before the Movie 28 Days Later which is kind of funny.

It is the only Season 3 Ep that inspired a Movie Homage/Copy as opposed to most Season 3 Eps being Copies of Movies.

I agree with ireactions on a lot of points made here. The Zombies did have something of a Scientific origin/plausable explanation and the Episode as a one off despite it's flaws is not that bad.

But when taken as one of many GRIM Eps in Season 3? Yes.... Very Tiresome and dispiriting.

I have issues with nBSG 2003 and Stargate: Universe for the same reasons.
Some Grim... Fine, ok but all the damn time? NO!

Life is Grim Enough thank you.

Give me Wonder, Adventure, Comradery and Humour!

Rant over.... Sorry heh.

As to Stoker.... Ugh! A mess. 

Sliders dabbling in the Supernatural and Magical is Fine if Done well via followinf
g the old adage of any sufficiently understood Magic is Science.

Sole Survivor Zombies: Biotech gone Wrong.
Telepaths in that Ep about the Oracle: A different branch of Scientific Study and possibly Alternate Biology or Evolution.
Into the Mystic Magic and Sourcery: Technology like Holograms etc.

Stoker Vampires though.... No. Just NO!

Is is a very special episode by the way... Featuring a very special "extra". I hope you enjoy! And enjoy the adjusted lyrics:

         D           Bm
I've got tears in my fro
        G                A             D 
Cuz I'm standin' on my head, over you
Bm   
And I,
G             A         D     Bm
I've got a long way to go
G                    A
Will this crying stop?
            D        Bm
I wish I knew.
   E                                       A  Bb  A  A  A  A  G  G  G  G
I'm only half the man I used to be --
                   

           D
Well I got tears in my fro
          G                       D
Cuz I'm standin' on my head over you...
           G
Well I got tears in my fro
                                 D
Cuz I'm Losing you to someone new
E                                   A
When will this crying stop, I really wish I knew

            D 
I've got tears in my fro
           G                        D
Cuz my world is upside down over you hoo hoo
             G       
I should comb 'em out I know but that's the
                                   D
Saddest thing I'll ever have to do...
      E                           
these tears they won't stop falling hard
    A
I'm crying here for you

    G                           
At first I thought our love was never-ending
D
You and I until eternity,
       G                   
But now I realize I'm just pretending
       E                        A          G        ... to solos, then back to previous verse to end
I'm only half the man that I used to be

Awesome to see the podcast integrated in EarthPrime!

Tom, nice job on ToMF!

It was almost as if Marty McFly was singing it!

"Slither" is terrible. One of the worst episodes of SLIDERS ever made. Tom and Cory highlighted a lot of the moronic points: Rembrandt's discarded shirt is later referred to as Quinn's shirt. The sliders foolishly take separate vacations with massive distances between them. Maggie and Wade would never agree to be alone together for extended periods.

The one point that didn't seem to offend Tom and Cory too much, however -- was Quinn declaring his intention to abandon the sliders, abandon the chase for Rickman and abandon his pursuit of the timer holding his home coordinates. All to be with Kyra. Tom and Cory found it to be one odd note among many odd notes for Season 3 Quinn.

I found it to be utterly devastating to the Quinn character. As Mike Truman noted in his review, Kyra is an obvious sociopath and manipulator. And for the first time in the series, Quinn has a real chance of making it home (or at least, he thinks he does).

Quinn Mallory has indeed changed since Season 2. He's become oddly caustic and callous, strangely flirtatious, unusually aggressive and much less intelligent. But even this altered version of Quinn has no logical or emotional reason to abandon an opportunity to make it home in favour of being with a woman who will obviously betray him at the first opportunity!

"Slither" is full of incoherent logic, poorly considered storytelling and nonsensical developments and this is before we even get to the super-intelligent snakes that can knock out electricity to buildings and down a plane. And it completely destroys Quinn Mallory's character. There is nothing admirable, understandable or workable with this character anymore. This is Quinn's worst depiction to date in the series.

(Season 4 will be even worse in this area.)

"Dinoslide." It's not bad! Cory and Tom raised issues with the military personnel being suspicious of Maggie and the sliders, saying this doesn't match "The Exodus." I actually thought it quite reasonable that some people didn't trust Maggie due to her association with Rickman even if Maggie was the one to expose Rickman as a murderer.

The episode is very well-filmed with stunning cinematography and location work. The action is compelling. I'm not in favour of SLIDERS stories that use force and violence, but as action hours go, Peckinpah's scripting is capable and filled with strong exchanges. There's a grim sense of humour in the T-Rex being used for food. Malcolm's gift to Rembrandt is touching. It's a fun action episode.

Where the story really falls apart is Rickman. He's not threatening. He's just ridiculous. As I said in my post on "The Exodus," there's really nothing human in this character. He's just a bunch of cartoonishly villainous traits. He's also a coward. He doesn't want to achieve anything other than eke out his days on stolen brain fluid; he doesn't care about the sliders beyond wanting to escape them. He isn't actually dangerous to the sliders outside of them pursuing him.

It's weird how Peckinpah is a decent writer whose script is impaired by the need to involve the Rickman character, yet Peckinpah's the reason Rickman's even in the show! Rickman's in the show because the producers wanted Roger Daltrey and his band to perform for the cast and crew and spend two weeks partying and filming an episode between binge drinking sessions.

Cory's right to say "Dinoslide" should have been the Season 3 finale. It's not a transcendental life experience, but it has the sliders revisiting the "Exodus" colony and it looks beautiful.

It's certainly better than the chaotic mess of "This Slide of Paradise." This is the worst hour of television ever made. Completely unwatchable. The guest-characters are just a mess of exaggerated 'animalistic' behaviours. Dr. Vargas is an unrelatable, inhuman lunatic. There is absolutely nothing onscreen that appeals or entertains.

The animal human hybrids are not remotely interesting or believable and they fill the screentime to the point where it's unbearable.

And then the ending. It's nice that Wade and Rembrandt are mercifully sent home and are freed from this trainwreck of a series. But the Quinn/Maggie romance is just nonsensical.

The two characters have no common ground, no mutual respect, no partnership -- the show has never bothered to explore any aspect of their friendship aside from a contrived sexual attraction. Jerry, despite his flirty performances, seems incapable of performing any actual interest in Kari Wuhrer.

Kari, despite her skill at conveying sensuality, seems unable to indicate that she's sexually interested in Jerry. Even after months of filming together, Jerry and Kari have the onscreen rapport of two strangers who vaguely recall walking past each other at a gas station.

And then Quinn says they slid into the future. Tom says he can hear the voices of a thousand SLIDERS fans screaming out in rage. Cory suggests the line may have been meant sardonically. Oh, Cory. You dear, delightful man.

And Tom. Oh, Tom. Tom performs "Tears in my Fro" for us. It is a wonderful performance. I really liked how Tom chose an upbeat, joyful, energetic approach to the song.

It actually reminded me of something Sliderscast noted in their "King is Back" podcast. Jim Ford observed that our Rembrandt sang "Tears in my Fro" as a melancholy love song while Rembrandt-2 sang the same song in a fast, high-energy fashion that showed why Rembrandt-2 was a star and our Rembrandt wasn't.

"The King is Back" feels so far away. With "This Slide of Paradise," we have a smart, satirical show having collapsed into doing bad monster movies. "The King is Back" is so flawed, so clumsy. A Rembrandt double who doesn't look like a Rembrandt double. Quinn and Wade rushing to rescue Rembrandt -- but making a stop at the concert venue first to check out some Rembrandt-impersonators.

But then there's the scene where Rembrandt and Rembrandt-2's performances are compared to each other. It's so insightful. So thoughtful. It shows such love and care for its characters.

Whereas "This Slide of Paradise" has the sliders blissfully unconcerned when Rembrandt runs off to fight with animal-human hybrids all by himself.

Season 3 is a terrible show. And Season 4 is actually worse in many ways The really sad thing is that SLIDERS was so close -- so very, very close -- to turning itself around. The Sci-Fi Channel renewal caught everyone by surprise.

Tracy Torme was prepared to return to the series. John Rhys-Davies was prepared to return to the series. Sabrina was contracted for Season 4, as were Jerry and Cleavant (and Kari).

But, as is frequent in the history of this series, Universal and the Sci-Fi Channel didn't understand what they'd bought. Sci-Fi's bizarre opinion was that SLIDERS worked best with three men and one woman -- and that it didn't matter which woman was retained.

Who could watch Season 1 and declare the show worked better because it was three men and one woman? Could it be, instead, that one of those men was a Shakespearean actor with an intensely commanding screen presence? And that the one woman was a capable actress who had chemistry with all her castmates? Kari Wuhrer, in Season 3, seems to be acting in a completely different production from the other actors.

Temporal Flux has noted that the regime that bought SLIDERS for Sci-Fi left the Channel shortly before the development process for Season 4. Others less enamoured of the series, less interested in it, took over that process.

The studio, Universal, didn't seem to be concerned with content, either. They wanted more episodes of SLIDERS, but were largely unconcerned with what would be in those episodes.

It's like the people and entities in charge of SLIDERS' future only viewed it in the context of a balance sheet. Episode numbers. Syndication potential. Deficit-financing. Return on investment. Contracts. Show business with no concern for the show, only the business, and they didn't even handle the business that well.

The Season 3 budget was badly mismananged, which is why so many back-9 episodes look cheap and ugly. A man had died during production due to negligence. And yet, David Peckinpah, the ringleader of this decaying circus, was retained. He should have been fired.

Even if you set aside his hostility towards Rhys-Davies and Lloyd and the quality of his work, he presided over a severe misallocation of funds and he wasted Universal's money. And he certainly had nothing to do with getting SLIDERS renewed for a fourth season; it happened in spite of him.

Tracy Torme made a bid to regain control of his series for Season 4. Tom says that Tracy hoped to bring John back as an alternate Arturo. This is inaccurate.

Tracy's Season 4 premiere would have been "Slide Effects." Quinn wakes up to discover it's 1995. Arturo is alive. Rembrandt and Wade have no memory of sliding. The scenario is revealed to be a Kromagg mental simulation along with all the episodes Torme didn't like or watch. The sliders escape and slide off to new adventures. Kari would have been released from her contract; she would never have appeared on SLIDERS again.

But David Peckinpah had signed a multi-year contract with Universal. If Torme returned to the show, Peckinpah would be dismissed -- but Universal would have still been obligated to pay Peckinpah.

Universal decided to go with Peckinpah for Season 4 rather than pay both him and Torme. SLIDERS had escaped the FOX Network, but they had inflicted a lazy, indifferent and unprofessional manager onto the series and that manager never left.

There is a terrible irony to the fact that fan support is technically what kept making SLIDERS worse -- that the continued renewals meant more and more episodes in which Peckinpah and his hires could find new and terrible ways to mutilate the series into a twisted parody of what it once was. The fans saved the show in the sense that they prolonged its diseased and withered state.

The sad truth is that sometimes, things don't get better. Sometimes, we find ourselves in the deepest of holes with no means of escape and then someone will hand us a shovel.

SLIDERS could have changed everything. It could have galvanized our society into realizing the value and importance of choice. How a single choice can change everything and impact everyone. How even the refusal to make a choice is in itself a choice. How every possibility we face is critical and crucial, how our awareness of how our present choices affect our future situations. It could have united us as a planet and a people in confronting all our challenges with knowledge, imagination, curiosity and teamwork. SLIDERS could have saved us all.

David Peckinpah destroyed sliding. He destroyed the future. There is no hope. There is no tomorrow.

Behind the scenes information courtesy of Temporal Flux.

Ah, Peter. Shame on you. Say, how exactly do you get the Messages in Time? I know you mentioned how in a podcast, but I can't remember which one.

I just started listening to a 12 Monkeys podcast and was delighted to hear none other than Cory come on!

God damn it. I hate the whole world and everything in it -- but I only feel that way when I'm trying to get iTunes to work on my computer.

... but you guys plugged SLIDERS REBORN and I owe you. Fine. Fine fine fine fine fine. I will find some way to get iTunes going. Dagnabbit, it CRASHED AGAIN. Uh. I think my friend, Laurie, has a MacBook. I'll go see her tomorrow.

Tom and Cory enjoyed "Genesis" and "Prophets and Loss" plenty, and I could see why. They pointed out how both episodes, respectively written by executive producers David Peckinpah and Bill Dial, are extremely skillful pieces of television.

Cory points out how efficient the scripting is. "Genesis": the Season 3 cliffhanger, Maggie's breathing and the Kromagg invasion of Earth are established in a mere 10 - 15 minutes. The atmosphere of the invasion is horrific and compelling with background details and precise lines of dialogue indicating how the Kromaggs are merciless sadists.

Peckinpah remarked in an interview that he hesitated to make "Genesis" as dark as he did, but he committed to selling sheer helplessness of the human race and how the Kromaggs are totally implacable and unstoppable. It's a shocking turn of events; the sliders' homecoming is a nightmare. Once again, Peckinpah is a professional screenwriter and he does a professional's job in rendering the content. Cory and Tom noted how all these details created a compelling sense of loss and darkness.

The same can be said of "Prophets and Loss." Tom notes how well-structured the script is throughout. The Cadmus character witnesses the sliders' vortex and calls it in, yet this never comes up when the sliders are captured, an odd note that pays off at the end. When the sliders are brought in for questioning, the authorities are friendly, warm, charismatic and the sliders are awkward, nervous and led into giving themselves away.

Tom notes how intricate and subtle the scripting is, letting the conversation play out in almost real-time as an amiable chat becomes a forced detention. Cory and Tom were also impressed by the carefully crafted characterization where only Gareth is seen to operate the machine that incinerates people.

It's also a nicely shot episode. Location filming, great blocking, terrific guest-stars with David Birney as Cadmus and Connor Trineer as Samson. Well done, Mr. Peckinpah and Mr. Dial. I HATE THESE TWO EPISODES. They are two of the worst episodes of SLIDERS ever made. They completely DESTROY EVERYTHING in SLIDERS that matters to me and if I had the time and energy, I would personally round up every DVD set of Season 4 and return them to NBCUniversal through their front window with a complimentary brick attached to every box.

"Genesis" completely destroys the SLIDERS storytelling engine. Once you have the Kromaggs invade 'Earth Prime,' the sliders officially no longer come from our world and they have no connection to anything the audience considers home because there was no Kromagg invasion on our world the last time I checked. As a result, you can no longer use the sliders as audience surrogates and compare alternate realities to their own world with a contrast that is in any way meaningful to the viewer. The fundamentalist-ruled Earth of "Prophets and Loss" is a ****ing paradise compared to the Earth of "Genesis."

Anyone can relate to feeling homesick. There is absolutely nobody who can relate to being the chosen one in an interdimensional war that has turned your adopted Earth into an alien battleground and sent you searching for a mysterious superweapon that might liberate your world. That's just nonsense.

There's also the fact that "Genesis" warps SLIDERS into something *incredibly* convoluted. Quinn Mallory found the gateway to parallel dimensions. But on his first adventure, he lost the way back home. Simple Straightforward. Elegant. Beautiful.

Quinn Mallory found the gateway to parallel dimensions, but once he made it home, home was invaded by the Kromagg Dynasty, a race of interdimensional conquerers, and then Quinn's mother revealed to him that he was actually a refugee from a different dimension in which humans and the Kromaggs once lived in peace until a war between their races saw the Kromaggs driven off with an obscure superweapon that Quinn is now hoping to find in order to liberate his adopted home and oh my God this is terrible.

And Wade. Okay. This is just stupid. Setting aside David Peckinpah's obvious misogyny and unprofessionalism towards his employees present and former -- the script completely mishandles this because it sets up Wade's situation as one that needs to be resolved. This is just idiotic; if the actress has left, Wade's capture is a plotline that can only be resolved if Sabrina Lloyd returns, and after "Genesis," she sure as hell won't. Martin Izsak, a noted SLIDERS reviewer, observed that SLIDERS had created a "narrative debt" that it couldn't possibly pay off.

Mike Truman said, very simply, they should have killed Wade off. Let Quinn and Rembrandt mourn a corpse with the face off camera. And move on. That's one way. I wouldn't have done that.

I would have modified Starke's line to Quinn and have Starke say that Wade is about to be shipped off with numerous women to a rape camp. Then, when Marta, Rembrandt and Maggie rescue Quinn, Quinn insists they go to rescue the women as well. They storm the holding area -- only to find numerous Kromagg corpses and a hole in the wall. Wade is gone.

Resume the same plot as before with Quinn receiving the message from his birth parents, considering with Rembrandt and Maggie whether or not they'll stay and fight Kromaggs or search for the superweapon. And then, fiddling with a radio, they suddenly hear a broadcast. It's a speech being given by "Commander Wade Welles" of the human resistance, saying she's hacked the Kromagg frequencies. And she urges everyone -- soldier or prisoner, slave or civillian -- to keep fighting and not to give up. (Hire a soundalike?)

Quinn and Rembrandt realize that while Wade is fighting the war back home, they have to slide off and find weapons to aid her in the war. And we end on that. If Sabrina Lloyd returns to play Commander Welles, awesome. If not -- we know what she's doing and we're glad she's doing it.

It would certainly make "Prophets and Loss" more palatable, where Quinn and Rembrandt are upbeat and cheerful. Because as aired, "Prophets and Loss" makes no sense whatsoever for the characters. How can Quinn and Rembrandt be so lighthearted? So cheerful? So upbeat? So at ease? Quinn's mother is a Kromagg prisoner. Everyone Rembrandt has ever known or cared about is enslaved or dead. Bennish. Alesha. Danielle. Daelin. Wing. The Professor's son. Rembrandt's parents. Hurley. Wade.

And furthermore, how can the sliders be so utterly indifferent to the resistance back home? The timer lets them slide back to Earth Prime. How can they be joking around and hanging out? Why aren't they periodically sliding back to Earth Prime with supplies for the people fighting and dying for their world?

"Prophets and Loss" features Quinn and Rembrandt encountering a despotic regime and toppling it with absurd ease. If it's so easy, so simple, so straightforward, why did they ever leave Earth Prime under Kromagg rule?

I think the reason SLIDERS was so special to me in Seasons 1 - 2 and parts of 3 was because I would have loved to be a slider. Having amazing adventures with the best of friends. But the delight and joy was mixed with the tragic longing for home.

With Season 4, I don't want to be a slider and I can't relate to these people at all. The Kromagg Invasion has warped these characters into something unrecognizable, especially with their bizarre lack of reaction immediately afterwards. The Kromagg Invasion plot is not something SLIDERS can execute properly without a commitment to ongoing, episode-to-episode characterization.

And the Kromaggs. Okay, I'm out of energy. I'll deal with the Kromaggs when we get to "Common Ground."

It's really sad. Season 4 brought with it freedom from FOX, freedom from episodes being aired out of order, freedom from the numerous content restrictions that came with airing on a major network. Season 4 could have done absolutely anything. But instead, Season 4 dismantled the very concept of sliding by turning the sliders from relatable human beings into aliens.

ireactions - I would have loved Wade as the commander of the human resistance. It would have been a perfect throwback to the pilot and also just a much better way to resolve the issue of her character.

I want to read this story now.

ireactions, Commander Wade Welles is the BEST idea for handling Wade’s situation. Damn it! Where were you when they were planning this episode?

I think I was like 12. And oh dear God, I've created a monster.

The "Commander Wade Welles" concept makes "Genesis" a little less upsetting, but "Genesis" would remain shockingly destructive to SLIDERS concept. If the sliders are no longer from a world that's just like ours, there's no basis for contrast between alt-histories and our history. The show is broken.

The home invasion was just awful. Matt Hutaff and Temporal Flux have gone into what Marc Scott Zicree meant to achieve with the Kromagg Prime arc and I think it's just ghastly.

The original plan was to reveal at the end of Season 4 that the Earth in "Genesis" wasn't home at all and that Quinn's new backstory had been a trick. That still means that, for 21 episodes, Quinn and Rembrandt would still be refugees from a devastated Earth and soldiers in an interdimensional war as opposed to relatable nomads searching for home.

It is impossible to tell SLIDERS stories properly post-"Genesis" and 21 episodes of SLIDERS where it's not possible to do SLIDERS stories is way too many. This should have been, at most, a 6 episode arc. Maybe a three-episode season-ender where home is invaded and a two-episode season premiere where it's liberated.

(But ireactions! Haven't you also broken the SLIDERS concept with SLIDERS REBORN? Well, yes. But it's only a three-part story with a prelude and an interlude -- and it's obviously not a permanent situation.)

A Season 4 without John or Sabrina could have worked. But I would have gone for a simpler route.

Here's a Season 4 version of SLIDERS REBORN: two years after "This Slide of Paradise," a teenaged girl named Laurel on Earth Prime wanders into Quinn's basement and accidentally triggers the sliding machine. She ends up on an Earth where anyone under 25 is a slave who has to earn their freedom.

She is rescued by Quinn; he detected the sliding signature of his original hardware and thought it might be Wade or Rembrandt searching for him. Quinn tries to return Laurel home only to discover his sliding in to investigate also scattered the photon trail. He can't send her home.

He admits that he deleted his home coordinates two years ago and has been sliding alone for a long time.

What happened to Maggie? She encountered a double of Steven and chose to remarry and remain. Why didn't Quinn go home? Shortly after "This Slide of Paradise," Quinn suffered a head injury. He recovered, but a CAT scan revealed the Kromagg tracking device in his brain. Inoperable. Impossible to remove even with the most advanced surgical techniques. Powered by a zero-point energy process that draws fuel from Quinn's body. Programmed to send an alert should Quinn ever stop sliding.

Quinn dared not return home, not even for a moment -- because he feared he'd never be able to bring himself to leave again. He deleted the coordinates from his timer to avoid temptation.

Quinn Mallory is a genius. His timer can take him to any dimension. He's formed trade routes and relationships across a hundred worlds; he's built machines that can process and collate data from a thousand different histories. He has ended hundreds of wars, brokered peace between nations, ended water and energy crises, saved thousands of lives and seen more than anyone can imagine. Quinn Mallory can do anything. Except go home.

For two years, Quinn has rejected every offer of companionship in his endless journey, but Laurel offers him something no one else can -- she is a piece of the home he'll never see again. And SLIDERS begins once again: an experienced, capable, hardened slider and a young girl who will become Quinn's confidante and protege.

I would have released Cleavant and Kari from their contracts as well as Sabrina -- once Rickman died, the Maggie arc was over; once Rembrandt and Wade made it home, their stories were over too. But I would have asked them to guest-star as doubles throughout the season.

There. Season 4. How hard was that?

ireactions

First, I don’t think that killing Wade would have been a good idea- not right off the bat. The whole reason SyFy bought Sliders was for its fan base- some of which was based on the characters not just the concept. There was already so much change happening. I think it would have been too much all at once- better to ease the audience into her death. The problem is, they didn’t do this right either. 

I do agree with you, I signed up for adventure- not a search for a weapon of mass destruction. But I LOVED the group. If they had kept Sabrina Lloyd then they wouldn’t have had to resort to the obvious science fiction of aliens. It could have gone something like this: Remmy and Wade are on a non Kromagg infested Earth Prime. They were excited to be home, but their time away has changed them and they don’t feel comfortable on Earth anymore. Quinn shows up (after having dumped Maggie off with her people) and the FBI pounces. Bennish has pulled a “Last Days” Einstein and no one can get sliding to work. This, coupled with a host of adjustment issues, leads Quinn and friends to realize it’s not their time to be home and they voluntarily slide off together into the sunset. Quinn’s last line from Genesis “We’ll be back. You can count on it,” stays the same.

So now it’s not “will they ever find home”, its “will they ever be ready to return home”?

Maybe they take Bennish, maybe they don’t. Maybe they run into PTSS Professor maybe they don’t. Maybe they run into Colin (the brother of a dead Quinn) or Logan, maybe they don’t. The original mission, of wonder and exploration with all its possibilities, remains alive.

I disagree, though, that the culture of other worlds can’t be explored, appreciated, and compared just because their world isn’t our world (although the idea that it isn’t, stings). Theirs is a close enough copy that it still stands as a surrogate for ours. Revisionists note that from day one there have been clues throughout the series that their Earth was never our Earth. If this is true, we can hardly be sore now.

As you have stated several times, anything can be a Sliders episode (or am I giving you credit for someone else’s thoughts?). They were trying to go big because so much had changed. The search for home was always their main goal and with Sabrina Lloyd gone that was off the table. Lloyd may not have been integral to the show staying on the air, but she was integral to the old storyline. Without something catastrophic, there was no way to have Rembrandt back without Wade. So how do you bring back the search for home, realign the group, keep the old audience, AND entice new viewers? Use an unexplored but previously used villain to make the old home uninhabitable and make a ‘real’ home somewhere else!

In as far as the idea and goals of season 4 goes, I think they did a slightly below average job. Could they have done better? Hell yes. Could they have done worse? They did.

I like the original four as well and thought each brought something special to the table- none of whom could really be replaced but I don't like "it was all a dream" or "it was all mind control" as an excuse; it's lazy and disrespectful to the viewers who have invested their time and energy into believing what was shown to them. It can work for an episode but for half a season? I would have grudgingly taken it from Torme because of the behind the scenes drama. I understand the end of season 3 was a mess but clean it up, don't pretend it didn't exist. I like the idea of Arturo being left behind in PTSS being the real one and finding him. This could have resulted in some great character moments as they have to reconnect with a new/old version of someone that they not only saw die but had a relationship with and he has to deal with issues of abandonment.

Truthfully, I like the idea that "Genesis" Earth wasn't Earth Prime ("Exodus" did not sell me that it was) but it still leaves the Wade issue as well as another one: Did Quinn really leave his friends on a random Earth? That would create huge issues of trust and reliability. Also, how many times can you dangle "It's home! Wait- no it isn't" in front of the audience and the sliders? There's a fine line between sad but true and straight up cruel.

My understanding is that Lloyd would have worked with Peckinpah, she couldn't work with Wuhrer. So any idea that includes Wade but not Maggie was totally feasible. The problem was Peckinpah preferred Wuhrer. JRD wasn't coming back with Peckinpah there. That's why I left that as a possibility rather than a necessity.

As for Quinn leading the group- he can't stay the impetuous kid forever, he needs to grow up. By season 3 the professor was backing off a bit anyway. I think it might be a bit quick for him to be mentoring a kid when he's still working out how to be a grown up himself.

Oh, first and last are honored positions in the credits. People remember the first and last things they see more than anything in the middle. Also notice that his name is the only one accompanied by the role he plays.

I would choose Joanna Lumley.

Back on the old Bboard, slider1525 wrote a lengthy plot outline where the Professor, following the sliders, encounters the animal human hybrids of "This Slide of Paradise" and revisits Michael York's lab and gradually reunites with his friends one by one. It was very amusing and sincere, but also exhausting. I have read every Season 6 fanfic ever written with the point-by-point reversals of Seasons 3 - 5 and they, too, are utterly draining and a massive distraction. Television is best, in my view, when its aims and goals are simple and straightforward. The sliders are lost in the multiverse, trying to find their way back home. Simple. Elegant. Beautiful.

Yes, "Slide Effects" is a massive copout, but I'd argue that getting Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo back onscreen together immediately is far more important than anything else.

But then again, I honestly don't think "Slide Effects" was even meant as a way of deleting the Season 3 episodes. Torme presented it to me that way when we had an online chat as his solution to getting rid of the episodes he didn't like. But the 2009 interview on EP.COM revealed the story had been conceived in November 1996 before John had been fired. It was meant to be a Season 4 premiere and his sequel to "Invasion." In an interview, Torme said:

“I have a very trippy, surrealistic show in mind involving the Kromaggs. It wouldn’t be us landing in the middle of another invasion; it would start in a way that you wouldn’t know it was a Kromagg show.”

With that in mind, the story is clearly not about removing episodes from continuity. Instead, it's about the Kromaggs as manipulators offering the sliders the ultimate temptation. The Kromaggs prey upon the sliders' homesickness and despair, offering them a facsimile: a permanent and eternal illusion of home in exchange for information that will let the Kromaggs invade the actual home Earth. The Kromaggs point out that the sliders, with random sliding, have no chance of ever getting back to where they came from and even if they do, the Kromaggs will destroy it. Surely there's no shame in accepting this beautiful lie of living happy and content lives in a world where sliding doesn't exist and they never left their homes and loved ones?

But the sliders refuse. Sliding took them away from everything they knew, but it revealed their ingenuity, their strength of character, the power of ideas and the friendship between them. They wouldn't trade sliding for anything. They escape the Kromaggs and resume sliding. And so, Season 4 would begin with the sliders reaffirming their commitment to each other and to their adventure.

If mishandled, it could have been a copout; presented correctly, it's a life-affirming character study that communicates the joy of sliding and the wonder of the multiverse as well as the bonds between the quartet.

Also, with time rewound to the Pilot, it's a way of introducing the show to a new audience and offering some nostalgia for the fans.

It's not as simple as that. Sabrina was very upset when John was fired. She held his farewell party at her apartment. She was devastated by his absence. Kari's behaviour was indeed a deciding factor, but Kari or no Kari, Sabrina didn't want to do SLIDERS anymore. Her ultimatum was absurd; she knew full well that Peckinpah would choose Kari. If that hadn't gotten her fired, she would have used salary demands to get removed.

Only John's return would have convinced Sabrina to stay. And John would only have returned if Tracy Torme returned. Don't get me wrong, John and Tracy had tremendous animosity towards each other, same as John and Peckinpah -- but Tracy considered John's talent and character worth any aggravation.

Interestingly, in the Season 2 interviews, John was extremely critical and dismissive of Tracy Torme's writing. After Season 3, John suddenly revised his opinion and spoke extremely well of Tracy; clearly, after Peckinpah, John realized what Tracy had been fighting against.

Had Tracy returned, he would have asked John to re-sign for Season 4 and John would have said yes and Sabrina would also have remained as well.

I put in the two-year time gap so he could be a mentor to a new slider who wouldn't know which end of the vortex was which.

As for Quinn -- we now enter the arena of personal interpretation. Let us be clear: this is strictly *my* vision of Quinn Mallory and it is not Jerry's vision or even exactly Tracy's vision (although it's close).

Quinn Mallory isn't a leader. Good leaders need to be good with people and Quinn is one of the most withdrawn, isolated characters ever created. As scripted before casting, Quinn was a socially awkward geek. Then Jerry O'Connell was hired to play him and Jerry, for whatever reason, did not play Quinn as socially awkward at all. The Pilot script has Quinn too terrified to ask a girl out on a date and he's laughed at for his inability to receive any woman's undivided attention. The scenes were cut from the script and with good reason; can you imagine Jerry O'Connell having trouble approaching women?

And so, we have a charismatic, attractive, confident, athletic young man who avoids women and labours in secrecy and obscurity in a basement laboratory rather than a university lab. Wade is practically throwing herself at Quinn and if you watch Jerry's performance carefully, Jerry plays Quinn as being perfectly aware of Wade's infatuation but cautiously avoiding eye-contact and direct engagement.

The result of Jerry's performance of Torme's script: Quinn is alone because he chooses to be alone. Because he builds walls around himself to isolate himself from others. He is uncomfortable dealing with people; he doesn't even really have *friends* -- he banters with his classmates but is intimate with none of them. Wade has never even been invited to Quinn's house until Smarter-Quinn's behaviour forces Quinn to invite her over.

One of the most-cited plotholes in "The Guardian" is Quinn's refusal to reveal his secret to the other sliders -- that he permanently injured his school bully with a baseball bat. This isn't an error, in my view: Quinn is withdrawn. The backstory "The Guardian" gives us: Quinn skipped two grades, he was smaller than his peers, he was abused, he was later traumatized by his father's death. And while Quinn will function and improve, I think that Quinn's withdrawn, self-inflicted isolation is what makes the character complex and fascinating.

It's also a neat subversion of a heroic type; it's like Torme wrote Q from the James Bond movies and then essentially hired Daniel Craig to play him while splitting the actual James Bond role between the Professor and Rembrandt and Wade.

So, my feeling is that if there's a need to write Quinn as a more conventional leading man type, it'd be best to write some other character who isn't Quinn Mallory. Quinn's just not a leader in the conventional sense; he's an anarchist who passes notes and information to the actual leader and acts independently to support the group. He doesn't command situations; he operates at the fringes. He occasionally *looks* like the leader ("Prince of Wails), but he's really the idea man. And that's totally fine; not everyone needs to be Sean Connery.

That's what makes SLIDERS so interesting to me; conventional roles are twisted and subverted. The leading man character is a troubled geek, the wise older man is an arrogant ass who is deeply insecure, the leading lady starlet is a mousy firebrand and the muscle is actually the comic relief in the form of a trauma victim played for laughs.

Behind the scenes information courtesy of Temporal Flux.

In the Cleavant Derricks interview on EP.COM -- at least in the original version -- Cleavant established that Sabrina was absolutely miserable after John was fired. Kari Wuhrer did upset Sabrina, but Sabrina was upset to begin with. After the original version was posted, Cleavant contacted the EP.COM webmaster and asked for his negative remarks about Kari Wuhrer and the Sci-Fi Channel to be removed and the webmaster, not wanting to do anything to harm Cleavant's professional relationships, agreed to perform a rewrite.

Sabrina and John were very close; you can see here Sabrina's memo inviting people to attend her farewell party for John.
http://dimensionofcontinuity.com/sabin.jpg

I feel like the Quinn/Wade/Rembrandt/Arturo quartet requires Arturo as an instigator with experience. His presence as a flawed father figure establishes the characters as a family. Arturo is an arrogant ass, but he's also someone who inspires people to follow him straight into hell.

It's also essential that he is Quinn's counterpart but as part of an older generation, the way Rembrandt is to Wade. It's weird, but once Arturo left the show, the onscreen dynamics lost the sense that Quinn and Wade are *extremely* young adults. Onscreen, youth needs age to contrast in order to come off as youthful.

I just don't think Quinn, Wade and Rembrandt function properly as characters without Arturo -- and, to be quite frank, I don't think the actors function particularly well in their roles without him, either. This is not their fault; they were cast as part of an ensemble, after all.

Jerry was, at the time, one of those actors who would only read his own dialogue and then play scenes as himself. If you watch KANGAROO JACK or CROSSING JORDAN or MISSION TO MARS, Jerry plays cops, astronauts and barbers in the same way: as a goofy playboy. He played Quinn the same way. Part of this was unavoidable; he was a football player type playing a geek, after all. But in Seasons 1 - 2, Jerry is incredibly convincing when portraying Quinn's intelligence, moral integrity and intense curiosity -- and I suspect this was largely John's influence on him.

The reason I suspect John elevates every other actor in his work: John is genuinely invested in the scripts. John reads all the scenes, not just his own. You can see John in a behind the scenes feature marvelling at the Kromagg organic metal. So he actually knows the whole story, not just his lines. And he is the sort of actor who constantly wants to discuss scenes with the other actors, work out pacing and rhythm, redistribute lines, etc.. The result is a very clear sense of the relationships between the characters and their roles in each scene. Take that out of the equation and leave Jerry, Sabrina and Cleavant to their own devices -- and then things start to shift.

Cleavant is a really good actor, but his clownish comic timing works better with Arturo's stately sarcasm and pronouncements to compare. Sabrina has a certain stagey quality to her line deliveries. She's more focused on hitting certain points of emotion instead of making her dialogue sound spontaneous and unrehearsed. Butwhen working with John, it becomes a rhythmic rapport. And Jerry -- Jerry in the 90s struck me as a genius-actor who was content to be a hack, but working with John made Jerry put a lot of himself into his work.

John is indispensable. Essential. At least to me.

As for whether Quinn is aware of Wade's attraction or not, we've hit an area of personal interpretation. In the scripts, Quinn was most definitely not aware of Wade's interest in him. Jerry's performance, in my opinion, introduces (unintentional?) ambiguity; other viewers don't see it that way.

The reason I started to think Quinn was perfectly aware of Wade's feelings for him the whole time; Wade indicates, in "Last Days," that there are some things Quinn doesn't know about her, presumably, her feelngs towards him. Quinn responds to that by trying to kiss her. But what about in the Pilot when Quinn asks Wade, "What's with the tears?" as though he doesn't realize she's in love with him. To me, that struck me as Quinn foolishly thinking himself invincible as youth often do.

But again. I'm not 'right' anymore than you are 'wrong' -- we're just looking at art with different views. In a recent chat with Matt Hutaff, I commented that I think "The Guardian" is a retcon that attempts to bridge the gap between the scripted Quinn and the onscreen Quinn by offering an explanation for how Jerry O'Connell could lack confidence with the skipped two grades backstory.

As supporting evidence, I cited how the Pilot indicates in a photo that Quinn was in his late-teens when his father died; Jerry plays young-Quinn in the photograph. "The Guardian" changes that to Quinn being played by an 11-year-old actor when his father died in order to make Michael Mallory's death more traumatic.

Matt disagreed. He doesn't think "The Guardian" was a retcon at all; his view is that if Jerry hadn't played Quinn in the photograph in the Pilot, the viewer would have been confused by who the boy in the photo was meant to be.

Another interesting instance: Temporal Flux once described his vision of Conrad Bennish Jr. to me. Bennish, to TF, is someone in a perpetual time warp, representing what was at the forefront of culture but from decades in the past. Bennish dressed and acted like a 60s hippie because hippies were the 'cool' thing when Tracy Torme was a child, but Bennish is only capable of representing the exterior details of the culture without any of the inherent values or deeper meaning behind the movement. That's how I see Bennish too; he's constantly behind. In SLIDERS REBORN, he's a relic of the dot-com boom and bust from the 90s.

Matt disagrees with this take on Bennish. To Matt, Bennish is simply the token pothead student to round out the class in the Pilot and seeing more than that is me adding things to the character as opposed to seeing what's already there. And that is the nature of art. We all look at the same thing and see something different.

Oddly, the skipped-two-grades backstory is in the original draft of "Gillian of the Spirits."

Behind the scenes information courtesy of Temporal Flux.

I feel like I've asked this before, but can we read a copy of this anywhere?

For that matter, the original interview with Cleavant Derricks, as well. And John's behind the scenes feature with the Kromagg metal. I feel like there's a lot of Sliders history that I missed out on, not being in the online fandom all this time. I'd like to catch up.

Thank you, ireactions, for what you could give us, even if it's not the full picture.

I need to watch the behind-the-scenes reel now. For a production that, at least in its first two seasons, was so lovely, it sure was plagued with an underlying negativity and fear.

When I watch a show, I want to think the actors I love are well cared for, respected for the amazing work they do and treated with kindness and dignity. It's painful every time I'm reminded that this wasn't the case at all for these people.