-S-L-I-D-E-R-S-

What if you found a portal to a parallel universe?
And what if you can't find your way home?

coming to FOX Thursdays in 2009
-S-L-I-D-E-R-S-
Madeline Blue as Logan St. Claire
Malcolm David Kelley as Wade Wells
Alfonso Ribeiro as Rembrandt Brown
Sabrina Lloyd as Dr. Maxine Arturo
George Newbern as Dr. Thomas Mason

As if Sabrina Lloyd would ever be associated with Sliders again. ASB!

VARIETY: August 20, 2009
FOX Slides Back into Sci-Fi With Tormé, Landis, Martin

Even for a successful Hollywood writer and director, sometimes the project of a lifetime seems to take a lifetime to arrive. "Tracy [Tormé] and George [R.R. Martin] worked on that Twilight Zone remake in 1985," director John Landis explains, "and since Tracy was a comedy writer, I poached him to help polish up Spies Like Us and Three Amigos. George wandered onto the set one day, and the three of us have been buddies ever since."

"I guess it was around 1991 that George and I were visiting my dad [singer Mel Tormé], and we were trying to out-do each other on movie concepts," Tracy Tormé recalls. "Who knows who started it, but we were stuck on the old sci-fi chestnut of parallel universes, which really hadn't been improved since Poul Anderson and Isaac Asimov. George says, 'and they can't find their way home.' And my dad, who thinks it's hilarious when we go off on these brainstorms, comes walking into the room crooning 'And what if you can't find your way home?' So yeah, we had the theme song before we even knew it was a TV show." The late Mel Tormé recorded the Sliders theme in 1993, when the first of many potential Sliders pilots fell through at the last minute.

"I hate the TV business, but I can't make myself leave," George R.R. Martin says with a hearty laugh. "It took us 16 years to get a network to bite on this thing. Everything that Tracy, John, or I did, all the success we've had, we'd keep coming back to this. We must have a 40-episode backlog by now, because every time we had a few spare hours, we'd start writing on it. In fact, 90% of the time, if you can remember a sequence from Dream On, or Tron:The Series, or Star Trek:Voyager that seems like it might be alternative history, that's because we were testing out Sliders ideas any way we could."

When FOX did green-light the show, they gave it their full weight. Sliders is getting a "killer slot" at 8pm Thursday, leading into Fringe. "It's the old Firefly slot, and we appreciate what that means to FOX," Landis says. The show also stars two of TV's most accomplished veterans: Alfonso Ribeiro, who acted in all 6 seasons of Fresh Prince and hosted the first 5 seasons of Dancing with the Stars; and Sabrina Lloyd, who spent all 5 seasons on Sports Night and just finished her 6-season run as the show-stealing Frankie on Ed. "The world knows and loves Alfonso and Sabrina. But I think we really scored some coups locking in George Newbern, who's a veteran on sci-fi sets, and Madeline [Blue] and Malcolm [David Kelley], who are more than just pretty faces -- they're some of the best young actors I've seen in years," Landis enthuses.

Amusing, but I found the "Onion" more amusing...

http://www.theonion.com/articles/sliders-ended-two-seasons-too-early-if-you-ask-me,17765/

Bruce

B_Munro said:

Amusing, but I found the "Onion" more amusing...

http://www.theonion.com/articles/sliders-ended-two-seasons-too-early-if-you-ask-me,17765/

Bruce

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That article was actually what got me started thinking about Sliders again. I wrote off Robert K. Weiss because from what I've seen he has much more talent for slapstick comedy than drama, and he was more vital to the show happening when it did than to the content of the show. If people take interest in TTL, the idea is to explore how patience can be a virtue in creative works, so delaying the show affects the content.

MNP said:

As if Sabrina Lloyd would ever be associated with Sliders again. ASB!

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From my 'teaser' first post alone, I understand the sentiment. In my second post (after you posted) I make it clear that in TTL our Sliders never happened. ITTL, Sabrina Lloyd is just a veteran TV actress that Tracy Torme and, let's be frank, I find charming and talented.

Ah, poor Sliders, the series that got me started on AH.
I will forever curse the name of the late David Peckinpah for ruining the series completely.

More power to you, Tom Veil. Much more.

Episode 1

Episode 1: She's Leaving Home (Part 1)
September 24, 2009
Viewers: 9.52 million
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Synopsis: Logan St. Claire, a brilliant physics student at UC-Presidio, has been trying to prove her Professor, Maxine Arturo, wrong about quantum entanglement. Her attempted proof causes a brownout, interrupting work all over campus (including Rembrandt Brown's performance at the "Campus Retro Party", where Brown had been hoping to launch a comeback). Embarrassed, Logan retreats to her home, followed by Wade Wells, a sophomore who has a crush on her and sees this as his big chance. Wade persuades Logan to test the entangler again, and they find themselves tangled up in far more than they ever bargained for: not just miles away from home, but countless universes away.
.
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"FOX really put their marketing might behind this one, so we knew we'd have to hook people with the pilot, and yet there was so much exposition we wanted to get in. In the end, the solution was to not have the timer break down until the second hour. We almost made this a single 2-hour episode, but the execs pointed out the brilliance of that mid-show literal cliff-hanger, and I think it was the right call." -- Director John Landis

I loved Sliders till then screwed it with the stupid Kromag stories

NoOneFamous said:

I loved Sliders till then screwed it with the stupid Kromag stories

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I concur...they went off the deep end there. Shame they didn't have some good AH writers working for them as it could have bee a great vehicle to explore the AH world with an interesting twist.

Oh and very interesting what you've got going here Tom, please continue.

Shadow Knight said:

I concur...they went off the deep end there. Shame they didn't have some good AH writers working for them as it could have bee a great vehicle to explore the AH world with an interesting twist.

Oh and very interesting what you've got going here Tom, please continue.

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Hey, the Kromaggs started out as kinda cool - it was later that they were overused and idiotified (sorta like the Borg, come to think of it). IMHO, the show never got over the loss of the original cast members, and all the bizzare SF-nal scenarios with no real AH content got simply tedious after a while.

Bruce

[RP]
Sounds like an interesting series. It's nice to see alternate history be the focus of a series for the first time since, what, Voyagers!? I mean, Fringe is a good show, but that single alternate universe isn't really its focus. As of the end of last season, it's more "a world where weird things are out of control" rather than "a world with a divergent history to explore".

That teaser image of the alternate Mt. Rushmore, though, is a warning of the kind of alternate history we're going to see in the series. It suggests a world with women the dominant sex, which is total ASB. And even if it happened, the idea of building a monument of carved heads in the hills of South Dakota would certainly be butterflied away. I'll have to judge the show as entertainment, not alternate history.

So, the question for everyone: will you be TiVoing this series?
[/RP]

Tom Veil said:

From my 'teaser' first post alone, I understand the sentiment. In my second post (after you posted) I make it clear that in TTL our Sliders never happened. ITTL, Sabrina Lloyd is just a veteran TV actress that Tracy Torme and, let's be frank, I find charming and talented.

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Yeah, thought this was going to be a remake. I guess I'd be more impressed if she'd been a regular in another TV show since Sports Night (in OTL). I also think Madeline Blue is the wrong choice for Logan. I would have gone with Lizzy Caplan actually. Anyhow, storywise I'm waiting to see if this is essentially Logan with a Quinn transplant (your post hints at that). I think it'd be more interesting if Logan had that ruthless streak that apparently is the result of her second X chromosome as opposed to anything else...

Ah well, remember not to make it too similar to Earth-Prime.

ED: Might want to include a good description of on-line viral tie in games...

MNP said:

Yeah, thought this was going to be a remake. I guess I'd be more impressed if she'd been a regular in another TV show since Sports Night (in OTL). I also think Madeline Blue is the wrong choice for Logan. I would have gone with Lizzy Caplan actually. Anyhow, storywise I'm waiting to see if this is essentially Logan with a Quinn transplant (your post hints at that). I think it'd be more interesting if Logan had that ruthless streak that apparently is the result of her second X chromosome as opposed to anything else...

Ah well, remember not to make it too similar to Earth-Prime.

ED: Might want to include a good description of on-line viral tie in games...

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I would be happy to work in Lizzy Caplan for a couple of episodes. This show will repeat the OTL theme/joke of having certain characters occasionally reappear in wildly different universes, and Lizzy Caplan would fit in nicely. Logan St. Claire can't be totally evil, since she's the main character. But I always liked the idea that a person cannot trust their doppelgangers, and that's where we'll see characters close to OTL Logan. I'll try to avoid just apeing Earth-Prime, but they are the masters when it comes to this show, so some overlap is inevitable. Heck, their Travelogue could be a good jumping-off point for an online tie-in game (which I totally wouldn't have thought of on my own; thanks!)

If I was to do a episode of this I probably would have ended up doing something along the lines of this.

Sliders could have been amazing. Those fucking Kromaggs and then the ever cruddier story lines and misconceived parallel universes.

I think sliding should have been more random in locations too.

Well for the record, Sliders went bad after Peckinpah took over because he was a flaming idiot. The Season 5 guys did fix some things but by then it was too late. Also the Kromaggs rocked, they were just over-used. The idea of a slide capable civilization conquering the others is a great one.
Heh, I once plotted out an unwritten sliders fanfic that would have ended with Logan sacrificing herself to defeat the Kromaggs while the high-tech multiverse civilizations banded together to stop them from conquering Multidim's great library....

Tom Veil said:

I would be happy to work in Lizzy Caplan for a couple of episodes. This show will repeat the OTL theme/joke of having certain characters occasionally reappear in wildly different universes, and Lizzy Caplan would fit in nicely. Logan St. Claire can't be totally evil, since she's the main character. But I always liked the idea that a person cannot trust their doppelgangers, and that's where we'll see characters close to OTL Logan. I'll try to avoid just apeing Earth-Prime, but they are the masters when it comes to this show, so some overlap is inevitable. Heck, their Travelogue could be a good jumping-off point for an online tie-in game (which I totally wouldn't have thought of on my own; thanks!)

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Mostly what I mean about Logan being evil is just that she get a few What the Hell, Hero moments. Where it wouldn't be surprising for a character to say to her, "Sometimes Logan, you scare me." Anyhow, I appreciate working her (Lizzy) in, sounds good!

In regards to the cosmology I've long favored the idea that if you have the Main Universe as universe X, then on either side of it are X-1 and X+1, X-2 and X+2 and so on, and each one is less like the Main Universe. But YMMV!

Update? filler

One question : Why the FOX network all over again ? Couldn't they try it somewhere else ? Or, if all else fails, make it a British co-production ?

For a sec there I thought this was telling that they were going to do a reboot. I hope they do someday. In the meantime, I'll read.