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Sliders (1995 - 2000)
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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 13, 2018 9:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I was reading on a Sliders site that everyone hated the original Kromaggs! I thought they were great and couldn't understand why they never came back during the third season even if it was for one episode? The Kromaggs that returned in season four were pretty weird and their makeup wasn't very believable in comparison! The fourth season gave a new twist to Quinn Mallory being from another earth at the top of the tree rather than just a science nerd with a lucky break!
JB
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 13, 2018 11:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I'm not that really very familiar with Sliders, so I don't know the difference between the early version of the Kromaggs and the later version, but hopefully I managed to find one of each and put them together in the jpeg below.

There is a noticeable difference in the foreheads, and the one on the left has an odd ear. I'm sure it's a real one, but it looks glued on! Shocked




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~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sat Apr 18, 2020 1:53 pm; edited 2 times in total
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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 13, 2018 3:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

HaHaHaHa I'm afraid they are both from the fourth season where they are identified as anthropoid Nazi's while in the earlier shows they were more apelike and scary! They seemed more vicious looking and devious in Invasion but the suits didn't like them so they didn't return in season three!
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Pow
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 18, 2020 12:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"Sliders" co-creator, Tracy Torme, said in an interview that the FOX network never "got" the show.

Torme said that "his roots had been in comedy with Saturday Night Live & SCTV."

Satire and dark humor was what he was aiming for with "Sliders." And FOX wasn't having any of that with the series.

"I thought Sliders should be this boundless show that should be able to do almost anything, and all of a sudden we had these mandates: No politics, nothing too dark, nothing too this, nothing too that, not too science~fictiony!"...Tracy Torme.

Torme like other talented creators before him such as Rod Serling, Leslie Stevens & Joe Stefano, Gene Roddenberry would engage in battles with their respective TV networks over the content of their series.

FOX wanted an action-adventure show plain and simple with "Sliders"and nothing cerebral.

I was a huge fan of "Sliders" and was excited that each week we saw the wonderful cast members arrive on another unknown Earth.

What would await them on this alternate world made for compelling television, since each Earth could be vastly different from the previous ones.

Truly there were no limitations for each week's new story.
Nothing formulaic or by-the-numbers as so many TV shows do.

You name the topic & they could address it on "Sliders."

However, as the seasons went on I could see that FOX was attempting to make this inventive show fit into a box and restrict its potential in story telling.

I kept returning each week hoping the show would once again shine and find its magic.

Tracy Torme & co~creator Robert K.Weiss would eventually both walk away from the amazing show they had created.

FOX won and we fans lost.
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Krel
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 18, 2020 3:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In the early 70s, I read a novel like sliders. I think it may have been by Murray Leinster, but I'm not sure.

A college student has an inventor father, his big invention was tires that don't wear out. His father has disappeared, but has left his new invention, a box with dials on it. With the help of a college Professor, they determine that the box is a device for inter-dimensional travel. Together they use the device, and set out to find his father.

David.
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 20, 2020 12:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

SLIDERS is being shown on COMET TV!
Currently there is a Sunday night marathon going on, so anyone interested should check out their listings and take a look!

The complete series is available from Amazon for $19.95.
I ordered it tonight.

Both Jerry O'Connell and John Rhys-Davies have spoken of a potential revival of the series as recently as 2019.

According to Rhys-Davies, O'Connell had been in private talks with him over a possible revival, which Rhys-Davies said he would do if the series stayed focused on the thought-provoking aspects of the alternate worlds.

The two have spoken to NBC about this, as the rights to distribute Sliders are believed to be held by NBCUniversal.

O'Connell has also said that Torme is interested in a revival as well

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Eadie
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 20, 2020 1:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Krel wrote:
In the early 70s, I read a novel like sliders. I think it may have been by Murray Leinster, but I'm not sure.

A college student has an inventor father, his big invention was tires that don't wear out. His father has disappeared, but has left his new invention, a box with dials on it. With the help of a college Professor, they determine that the box is a device for inter-dimensional travel. Together they use the device, and set out to find his father.

David.

"Murray Leinster" was the pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins — an author whose career spanned the first six decades of the 20th Century. From mystery and adventure stories in the earliest years to science fiction in his later years, he worked steadily and at a highly professional level of craftsmanship longer than most writers of his generation. He won a Hugo Award in 1956 for his novelet Exploration Team, and in 1995 the Sidewise Award for Alternate History took its name from his classic story, Sidewise in Time, serialized in Astounding, June 1934 published in novel form in 1967.

Sideways In Time one of the great seminal stories of modern science fiction. It introduced the theme of parallel worlds and the mixing of past, present, and future.



He was also an inventor under his real name of William F. Jenkins, best known for the front projection process used in special effects and an early developer of RADAR in WWII.

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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 20, 2020 2:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

While the concepts of "parallel worlds" seems to be a valid one, the exact nature of those worlds is totally conjecture.

These worlds seem to exist as "bubble" universes existing beside our "universe" with areas of co-joining at the edges.

The "Worlds" seem to exist as variations of the laws of physics. One world may have very different Newtonian or Einstienian physical laws where gravity did not exist or was a stronger or lesser force than in our reality and planetary construction could never occur. The same concept with Newtonian physics creating a totally incompatable reality to our own.

Or the primary atomic forces did not exist therefore the formation of atoms would never happen. Shifting to any of these parallel dimensions would be instantly fatal to any outsiders.

Still....It makes for great fiction!

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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 20, 2020 12:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gord Green wrote:
SLIDERS is being shown on COMET TV!

Thanks, I'll set my DVR!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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Bogmeister
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PostPosted: Mon May 24, 2021 11:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote




The double-length pilot episode introduced us first to Quinn Mallory (Jerry O’Connell), a college-age whiz kid working in his basement in San Francisco on some invention involving anti-gravity.

He lives with his mother, works at a local "computer hell" store, and attends the local college where he breezes through his science courses because he's — well, a genius.

He accidentally creates a vortex, a tunnel-like portal which leads elsewhere — exactly where he’s not really sure. Quinn uses what he calls a timer, a device resembling a mobile phone of the nineties (which it was), that he points and presses to create the swirling vortex.



Quinn can’t resist leaping into the unknown, to see what’s on the other side. He’s dismayed to see that he’s apparently landed right back where he started — in his own basement.

However, just a few minutes of driving his car reveals striking differences to the world he thought he knew. Red light means go on this Earth, and Elvis is still alive!

Many of these hints are revealed via the radio broadcaster, who mentions, for example, that CDs are defunct. More disturbing is a reveal of a personal nature, concerning Quinn's mom. Quinn is sucked back to his proper Earth after 15 minutes due to how he set the timer. Then he makes plans for a more organized, more lengthy trip.

First, though, he meets himself. Confused

Quinn is visited by another Quinn (also O’Connell), an even more assured, more mature Quinn who had begun “sliding” from his own Earth weeks earlier. This other Quinn explains the basics of traveling from Earth to Earth — “sliding” is the term he coined for it.

Then he departs through his own vortex minutes later, though he yells some warning too late; his words are drowned out by the noise of the vortex.

Joining our Quinn on his own trip is his buddy/co-worker/almost-girlfriend Wade Welles (Sabrina Lloyd), his college professor Maximilian Arturo (John Rhys-Davies) — and purely by accident, singer Rembrandt Brown (Cleavant Derricks), who happened to be passing by Quinn’s house when Quinn unwisely increased the power of the vortex.



They end up on an Earth afflicted by an ice age — the city is frozen and very cold — and they are forced to flee a tornado, leaving this world hours earlier than what Quinn had set the timer for.

This sets up the entire dilemma and conflict of the series.

Their early departure corrupts the data in the timer, and their own Earth’s coordinates are lost. From now on, every slide is one into the unknown and for a random period of time — it could be for a few minutes or several days.

Their first stop is on an Earth where the U.S. had been taken over by the Soviets decades before. The Sliders don’t even realize that they’re not back on their Earth until they see a statue of Lenin. On this Earth, Wade's double is a leader of the revolutionary forces, while Arturo's double is a commandant of a prison.

This adventure sets up the even more wild epilogue,
sliding into what they feel must be their own Earth — Earth Prime as they would later refer to it. They settle down for dinner with Quinn’s mother, content with being at home. Quinn’s father arrives, home from work . . . and that’s a problem.

On their own Earth, Quinn’s father died years earlier! Shocked

This pilot episode began the continuing sexual tension between Quinn and Wade, accentuated by such scenes as when Wade meets her double's lover on the Soviet America Earth. Unfortunately it never went anywhere for the entire time that Wade was part of the series.

This initial episode and pilot was superior to most of the remaining episodes simply because of the great variety of alternate Earths presented here.

The story also throws in some intriguing extras; on the frozen Earth, Quinn notes that his double had a sister and a dog, via an old photo which he finds. The episode slows down a bit when the Sliders are stuck on the Soviet-controlled Earth, but otherwise it's a very exciting, entertaining episode.

For comedy relief, there's a cameo by Judge Wapner, who was famous as a TV judge on The People's Court back in the nineties. He portrays a totalitarian version of himself. A couple of other minor characters who would pop up in a few episodes as alternate versions are Conrad Bennish (Jason Gaffney), a long-haired flaky science classmate of Quinn's, and Hurley (Gary Jones), Quinn's & Wade's jerky boss at the computer store.

BoG's Score: 8 out of 10
_______________________________________________

Earths Depicted:

~ Earth #1 - Earth Prime, Quinn's origin point

~ Earth #2 - Elvis is alive, Jack Kennedy & Marilyn Monroe alive, CDs are dead, red & green traffic lights reversed

~ Earth #3 - Frozen Earth; Earth gripped in severe ice age, San Francisco in frozen state

~ Earth #4 - Soviet America; the USA had been taken over by Soviets after losing the Korean War

~ Earth #5 - very similar to Earth #1 but at least one of Quinn's dead Earth #1 relatives is alive



BoG
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Bogmeister
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PostPosted: Mon May 24, 2021 12:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

episode #04 - The Prince of Wails

This one begins in a flooded San Francisco — actually, most of this Earth is probably flooded, judging by the water depth of several hundred feet and Rembrandt remarking that the ice caps must have melted.

The Sliders are hanging on to the top of the Pyramid building in S.F.; only the top edge of the skyscraper is poking up above the water level and we can see the upper spires of the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance.

Despite Rembrandt's comment, I'm going out on a limb to suggest that this is the same Earth we see at the end of the previous episode, in which a tidal wave is bearing down on the city. But, how the 4 Sliders managed to make it up this building to escape the wave is another matter.

__________

Anyway, once a shark-like fish is spotted, the Sliders take the vortex out and land in an America ruled by a monarchy.

On this one, the 18th century colonists in America lost the Revolutionary War in 1776 which would have created the USA, and George Washington was hung as a traitor, barely mentioned in the history books.

Arturo's double here is the Sheriff, recently promoted to oversee all the west coast. The Sliders also find out via the local newspaper that the King is missing on the battlefields of France somewhere, so Prince Harold will probably be crowned soon.

The Sheriff, however, is plotting against the prince (shades of Robin Hood) and there are pesky revolutionaries - the Oakland Raiders — skulking about.

This was all a lame retread of the pilot's Soviet America and revolutionaries story.

There is an amusing sequence in the first act when the Sliders decide to take advantage of all the subjects mistaking Arturo for the royal sheriff, but it all goes nowhere from there.

The name of the revolutionary group is more stupid and unlikely, rather than funny. Since this is not an oppressive regime on the same level as the Soviet one, the revolutionaries come across as less sympathetic, even cruel to some extent, like true terrorists — the way they threaten the Sliders and the silly prince. Why is he wandering around on the west coast of the U.S. rather than being in Britain?

It's all a weak parable of the poor vs. the rich. Morever, it's a clumsy excuse to attack the conservative right — the villain Sheriff makes most of his speeches from a TV studio patterned on Rush Limbaugh's, who had such a TV show briefly in the mid-nineties. So, Limbaugh is like a corrupt British overseer, according to this episode. Laughing

On a more serious note, this was the earliest episode to tackle the question of non-interference, similar to the prime directive dilemma on the Star Trek TV series. Quinn's hand may have been forced in this episode (much like Capt. Kirk's in a few TOS episodes) when the revolutionaries were about to shoot a couple of the Sliders.

But Quinn's solution is to string together a collection of famous quotations from history into one nonsensical speech. The terrorists fall for his blather, and from then on Quinn and his buddies are part of the revolution — steal from the rich and give to the poor, a liberal fantasy mantra

BoG's Score: 5 out of 10
_______________________________________________

Earths Depicted:

~ Earth #8 - San Francisco and Earth flooded - perhaps the ice caps melted

~ Earth #9 - British America; the Revolutionary War was won by Britain



BoG
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon May 24, 2021 1:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Good grief, the Sliders story writers certainly didn't do their homework if they think San Francisco could be that flooded by a rise in the sea level which almost reached the top of the Transamerica Pyramid! It's 853 feet high, and San Francisco's elevation is listed as 54 feet!

If the global sea level rose 900 feet, coastlines around the world would be drastically altered. I Googled the question, "How high would the sea level rise if all the ice on Earth melted?" and I got this answer.
________________________________

There is still some uncertainty about the full volume of glaciers and ice caps on Earth, but if all of them were to melt, global sea level would rise approximately 70 meters (approximately 230 feet, flooding every coastal city on the planet.
________________________________

If the water level in 'Friso was almost up to the top of the Transamerica Pyramid, it would be three times as high as the estimate above. Rolling Eyes

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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Bogmeister
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PostPosted: Mon May 24, 2021 1:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

episode #07 - The Weaker Sex

The Sliders arrive on an Earth where the gender roles are reversed. Women hold all the positions of corporate and political power, with men relegated to 2nd-class citizenship. There is a President Clinton — Hillary Clinton, that is (played briefly by an actress in a TV spot).

____________ Sliders - President Hillary Clinton


__________


The Sliders are out of money and need to get jobs, because they are stuck on this world for 6 weeks (the longest period of any episode).

Wade easily scores best in this endeavor, getting a high-paying job with the Mayor's office. Quinn can only get a menial job in the same office, due to Wade's help.

Rembrandt ends up in the street singing for change and gets picked up by a predatory female. And Arturo ends up running for Mayor in the current election (Election Day happens to be the same day that the Sliders are scheduled to leave). Rolling Eyes

Arturo is most vocal about the social inequities of this world order and catches the ear of some local male dissidents. Soon enough, surprisingly, Arturo's campaign begins to present a serious threat to the incumbent female Mayor.

Though much of this is silly, this episode does offer some genuinely entertaining and amusing moments throughout. This ends up being an Arturo episode as he becomes the mouthpiece for all outraged males, ostensibly revolving around equal rights, but perhaps also to showcase the natural belligerence of the male animal.

Most of the resident females, on the other hand, have at best a condescending attitude, feeding the trough, as it were.

Somehow, hundreds of years ago on this world, females got fed up with men and their wars, and took over. How was this done? I dunno — and maybe it doesn't matter in the context of this story.

It's a trip to see women behaving like boorish men — such role reversal always offers up some eyebrow-raising scenes. There's one clever recreation of the assassination attempt on President Reagan, made famous by existing video footage.

BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10



BoG
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon May 24, 2021 2:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Good lord, after reading these great reviews by my late friend and former co-site administrator of All Sci-Fi, I'm all jazzed up to "binge watch" this series ! Very Happy

I enjoyed the series occasionally back when it first aired, but it never became a regular thing for me — partly because that period in my life (1995 - 2000) was bit chaotic due to a crumbling 25-year marriage that ended in early 2001. Sad

Or maybe it was because the only TV I owned was an aging 25" CRT television which my wife and I bought shortly after we got married in 1976, and it was painfully obsolete! Sad

Ah, but happy days are here again! Now I have a 50" LG HD television and my own Townhome residence, plus a happy bachelor lifestyle! Cool










And just to add to my joy, Amazon offers the complete Sliders series for a mere $24.99 — as opposed to those assholes at Netflix who don't stream the series OR have the DVDs for rent! Shocked

I've order the box set, and it will arrive in about two weeks.

If anyone here at All Sci-Fi is a Sliders fan, maybe we can share episodes in All Sci-Fi's Chatzy Room (< — LINK) from time to time.

Several other members and I do this kind of thing twice a week, and we have a ball! Cool

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Mon May 24, 2021 3:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I received the box set a couple of months ag...Great bargin!
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