Sliders BBoard

ireactions · 2011-12-23 3:49 pm

I was reading this article on Cracked.com which I can't link to because the Slidersweb server got hacked and it's impossible to load these pages without your browser going nuts about viruses and malware. But anyway. The Cracked article noted how unbelievably stupid it was to have Arturo, Wade and Quinn exit the show the way they did. Paraphrasing it: "The sliders slide to a new world every week! Why not just have the exiting characters find a world that they decide is too perfect for them to slide away from and leave that character in a happy place? Jesus!"

Soooooo... how would you have written Arturo, Wade and Quinn out?

I like the idea of Arturo deciding to quit sliding after discovering a double of his dead wife who recently lost her husband. That'd work. I sort of imagine Wade shacking up with the Sorcerer after running into him again on a later slide. Wade would like a homebody version of Quinn, I think.

And Quinn -- I always liked Temporal Flux's Season 4 idea -- in that if SLIDERS stayed in Vancouver, Jerry probably would have left the show in Season 3 to move to Los Angeles with his brother and his movie 'career' (snicker/laugh/gasp for breath/laugh some more/repeat). Which would mean Arturo would become the lead character and Jerry would only appear occasionally as a Quinn-double, with the original Quinn having made it back home but somehow having failed to take his friends with him. (As I've said, I think Quinn is a character whom you can get away with regularly traumatizing. Wade Welles, rape victim, isn't really worth doing, but Quinn Mallory, failed anti-gravity inventor who got all his friends lost and then failed to stay with them -- that'd be a neat arc.)

As for Rembrandt -- I think he might have liked to stay on a world where SLIDERS is a hit TV show and he and Cleavant Derricks would have a neat double-act. :-)

Nigel Mitchell · 2012-01-03 5:53 pm

Good question. It seems like Rembrandt going to a world where he was successful again would have been too much for him to resist. Wade, have her fall in love with someone. She always seemed like a romantic. She falls in love and decides to stay behind. Want controversy? Have her fall in love with an alternate Quinn who (in his reality) was in love with her, but rejected by hits version of Wade.

ireactions · 2012-01-05 1:43 am

Y'know -- kinda always wondered -- did the Sorcerer Quinn *know* Wade? Or a double of Wade? He was most definitely smitten with her...

Informant · 2012-01-05 8:28 am

I think it's hard to say. It would depend on where they were in the series and other factors. It's just hard to choose a way of writing them out, unless you write them out at the point where they actually left... at which point, the show was pretty much gone anyway, so you might as well have Arturo's illness play out and let him die that way (it could have been emotional and gripping. Y'know, if they didn't cure him, suck his brains out, shoot him and then blow him up)

Wade, yeah, I would just have her get sick of it. In "Season's Greedings" she pretty much says that she's given up hope of ever getting home. So maybe she finds a world that she likes and stays there. By that point, Quinn was a d-bag, chasing after Maggie. Arturo was gone. Remmy was the only thing keeping her there.

Quinn... illness, cure, brain suck, shoot, blow up.

Remmy finds a double of himself who is super successful and they go on tour together.

ireactions · 2012-01-10 3:11 am

Informant wrote:
I think it's hard to say. It would depend on where they were in the series and other factors. It's just hard to choose a way of writing them out, unless you write them out at the point where they actually left... at which point, the show was pretty much gone anyway, so you might as well have Arturo's illness play out and let him die that way (it could have been emotional and gripping. Y'know, if they didn't cure him, suck his brains out, shoot him and then blow him up)

That's a fair point, but it also speaks to the low level of professionalism. I struggle to think of any shows that failed as consistently as SLIDERS in writing exit stories for the characters. The reason it was always done badly on SLIDERS was because of the behind the scenes conflicts where the people making the show didn't care that their petty bickering was resulting in a bad product. Had things been handled in a more business-appropriate manner, I can't see why proper exit stories couldn't have been done. Torme always said that he would have either sent Arturo home or revealed that the current Arturo was an impersonator.

Arturo's exit did not have to be the end for the show -- it's just that John was the glue that held the cast together and his replacement was chosen with no thought given to how to address the imbalance. None of the latter-era actors were chosen with any thought given to making a good ensemble cast.

Informant wrote:
Wade, yeah, I would just have her get sick of it. In "Season's Greedings" she pretty much says that she's given up hope of ever getting home. So maybe she finds a world that she likes and stays there. Quinn was a d-bag, chasing after Maggie. Arturo was gone. Remmy was the only thing keeping her there.

Quinn... illness, cure, brain suck, shoot, blow up.

Quinn's appalling behaviour is really baffling and so out of character that I find myself not hating him as much as I hate the writers. "Greatfellas" has Quinn being kissed by Leah. And Quinn reacts to the kiss with a stunned, thrilled, delighted expression -- he's amazed that a woman would be attracted to him, he's astonished. But when he realizes Leah is a manipulator and a conwoman, his attraction to her evapourates, even though he does try to be kind. Same with the Wade-double in "The Young and Relentless": Quinn is clearly attracted to her and I think he's absolutely aroused when she kisses him. But once he realizes she's cruel, conniving, dishonest and greedy, he feels nothing but contemptuous revulsion for her and he doesn't even consider her a version of Wade, just a horrible person he intends to trounce.

Would this character really have any interest in Maggie? Or Kyra, who was so obviously trying to manipulate Quinn in "Slither"? Would this character flirt with Kelly Welles in "Season's Greedings" with absolute confidence that she'll find him physically attractive?

The result is that instead of wanting to have Quinn shot and blown up, I would rather reveal he was replaced by a double at some point. Or by a robot in "State of the ART." :-P

Tygerprince · 2012-07-04 6:31 pm

Sliders was an incredible show ahead of the times! The actors were incredible and gave it their all and made their characters believable. First, as for which Arturo slid, it was obvious the wrong one did because of what the Arturo said in the last moments...something like...Oh no.....as for how would the other sliders react to finding the wrong one slid...again obvious....they were suffering Sliders guilt and remained silent because each one felt guilty as to not questioning or not knowing which one was which. As to how I would have written the characters out? I like the idea of her falling in love with the alternate Quinn and remaining with him and his mother, I felt her being turned into a monster was a disservice to her character even though she did save their lives. Rembrandt should have stayed with that young man he promised he would find again when all this was through and start a family....yes, he is attracted to fame but after going through so much sliding, he comes to realize what is truly important...perhaps Arturo exit would have been best handled had he found a world where there was no Quinn Mallory and Arturo's genius could shine and be appreciated in say perhaps...Academia world......Now I have an idea they should have done but very controversial, Gay world:-) .......They would have either been gay or even better straight but mistreated by the gays. Some would call them breeders, point and stare or perhaps burn Macys bags on their lawn....it would have been hilarious as well as congratulated for taking on a serious subject with laughs......let me know what you think:-)

Grizzlor · 2012-07-05 1:45 pm

The problem was the writers were forced into the middle of behind the scenes politics. Also, Pukingpah led the group during the writing out of all 4 major cast members who left. So it's no surprise they all were given very humiliating and vindictive exits.

I would have just let Arturo be found out as an imposter, then sacrifice himself. Wade, if they had to go the Kromagg route, would have just said he joined some kind of underground and left it at that. Quinn and Colin, I would never have gone the ridiculous Unstuck route, I would have gone a similar direction where they were lost point in fact. Not disfigured, just lost. Perhaps it keeps things more open ended, but at least it wouldn't have pissed off so many fans.

ireactions · 2012-07-05 3:06 pm

I don't think Season 5 could have done a proper exit for Quinn and Colin without the actors. In that situation, the only route would have been to do a soft-reboot. Set Season 5 several years after Season 4. Have a new cast of characters discover sliding and have them go on adventures, accidentally dragging along Rembrandt, who is now the most experienced slider on the show. As intriguing as the unstuck/merged concepts were, they were basically writing the characters out by creating a plotline that could only be resolved if the actors returned to the show, and everyone knew that wasn't going to happen well before a single page of Season 5 had been written. That was just stupid.

What it comes down to is that Jerry's departure from the show wasn't an isolated, individual incident. It was the end result of Tracy leaving the show, John getting fired, Sabrina being driven off the show, Jerry manipulating the show to put his talentless brother in a regular role -- and after awhile the unprofessional behaviour accumulated enough damage to the series that it was beyond repair, having alienated the original creators and actors. The show probably would have had to carry on without Jerry at some point. Jerry, by Season 4, likely would have quit his regular role to leave Vancouver and move to Los Angeles, but that could've been handled by having Quinn make it home but failing to bring the other three sliders with him.

Last edited by ireactions (2012-07-05 3:07 pm)

Grizzlor · 2012-07-05 6:20 pm

There are too many possible routes they could have gone on a show with infinite possibilities, to have chosen what they did. It always struck me as vengeance by the producers. Quinn and Colin could easily have been separated, or captured by the Kromaggs, without being turned into swiss cheese. What's worse was that the Mallory character was so stupid and pointless, that they gave up on any reference to Quinn almost immediately.

sliders5125 · 2012-07-09 5:41 am

Funny I was watching "My Brothers Keeper" and the sliders where appalled that the clone was refereed to as Mallory...which is funny because Quinn#2 just went with it, of course Quinn#2 and Dianna hanging with them after "New Gods for Old" never made much since, we never got to see the discussion that they would be sliding from world to dangerous world to help 2 people that hey barely knew with a device that constantly brings you in contact with dangerous situations, I wonder what the death tally would be when you consider how many people lost their lives helping the Sliders or being a Slider

Sliders BBoard

#1 2011-12-23 3:49 pm

How would YOU have written Arturo, Wade and Quinn out?

#2 2012-01-03 5:53 pm

Re: How would YOU have written Arturo, Wade and Quinn out?

#3 2012-01-05 1:43 am

Re: How would YOU have written Arturo, Wade and Quinn out?

#4 2012-01-05 8:28 am

Re: How would YOU have written Arturo, Wade and Quinn out?

#5 2012-01-10 3:11 am

Re: How would YOU have written Arturo, Wade and Quinn out?

Informant wrote:

Informant wrote:

#6 2012-07-04 6:31 pm

Re: How would YOU have written Arturo, Wade and Quinn out?

#7 2012-07-05 1:45 pm

Re: How would YOU have written Arturo, Wade and Quinn out?

#8 2012-07-05 3:06 pm

Re: How would YOU have written Arturo, Wade and Quinn out?

#9 2012-07-05 6:20 pm

Re: How would YOU have written Arturo, Wade and Quinn out?

#10 2012-07-09 5:41 am

Re: How would YOU have written Arturo, Wade and Quinn out?

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