Why is SLIDERS not the show SYFY is relaunching?

[Lighthammer]

Let's face it, there's a perpetual legion of shows that could benefit from a reboot.

All and all, we shouldn't loose sight that the whole reason Sci-Fi is becoming Syfy is an effort to become more main stream to garner interest from a wider audience.

Relaunching with reboots of shows had the flame carried by devoted fans isn't the best way relaunch.

Even though I admit many series could be really neat to see remakes, there's a few things you might want to keep in mind:

#1.) First and foremost has the series been off the air and out of the public eye long enough to sculpt the first impressions of a viewer base as if they have never been exposed to the series before. Alien Nation is an example of a series thats been off the air for almost 20 years.

#2.) Does the series have strong potential to be rewritten in such a way that will be popular?

#3.) Is the series truly a series you'd desire to be made into a more mainstream series or would you prefer for it to remain in it's 'pure form'?

Lets face it, if they were to remake Quatum Leap, Sliders, EFC or other popular series, are you truly willing to accept a new production team putting their interuptations to an old product?

We just went through a Knight Rider remake that was turned into a new main stream series that failed horribly. For every good remake like Star Trek, there are probably at least 10 bad remakes like Knight Rider (and it's not like this is the first restart attempt for Knight Rider).

Keep in mind, remakes are dangerous territory. Its very easy for them to fail the fans expectations.

 

[Jack Bauer]

With Sliders, you have something that the networks have unfortunately never figured out how to market, and that's generally what keeps them away from it. .

Along similar lines, Quantum Leap Don Bellisario said at the recent convention that Universal does not think the title "Quantum Leap" is marketable. Which is one reasons sighted to him in the past why they have never revived the show. Can't help but think they have similar "reasoning" with Sliders.

Yeah, people might confuse it with El Pollo Loco's new chicken sandwiches.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I would love to see Sliders return to the small screen in any form, but like as many have stated already i doubt that would happen any time soon. It had a niche audience which is one of the reasons it didn't do so well, along with a lot of rotating cast members, the loss of it's star, etc. Alien Nation was a great show when it was on, loved it. Also about the poster who posted about Quantum Leap...wasn't NBC going to do a Quantum Leap TV movie back in 2001 with Scott Bakula but then scrapped the project when Scott was quickly signed by UPN to do Enterprise? I seem to remember reading quite a bit about that and was looking forward to seeing it.

 

[ChristopherPike]

I'd prefer to see a continuation of Enterprise, since they endlessly rerun the first four seasons.

Yes... yes... I know. Junked sets. Cast not interested. Old "has been" universe. Paramount sucking up to JJ. CBS not interested in Trek, other than for revenue purposes. I have all the excuses memorized and yet, I still don't care to think its impossible.

 

[Morfius]

I loved the first two seasons of Sliders and wondered why they never explored the two most obvious alternates: where the Civil War or WW2 ended different?

 

[shivkala]

A couple of thoughts, first it might benefit a network to have less recognition of their product for a reboot. How many people out there are going to protest Alien Nation? I don't know if there are too many people who will complain that they are not being true to the original source material. I don't know if that will make an impact or not, but it's a thought.

Secondly, this thread seems to be presupposing the fact that SyFy could only relaunch one show at a time. As far as I know, they are not relaunching Sliders over Alien Nation. Assuming I'm correct, it could be an issue of the rights being available, a producer and writers being available, etc.

 

[bigdaddy]

If they redid Sliders everyone here would go "We want a continuation!", which will NEVER happen.

If you want to get pissed off at someone, make it SG-1, Stargate was picked over another season of Sliders.

 

[DWF]

If they redid Sliders everyone here would go "We want a continuation!", which will NEVER happen.

If you want to get pissed off at someone, make it SG-1, Stargate was picked over another season of Sliders.

Sliders ended two full years before SG1 came to Sci-Fi, so I don't see the connection.

 

[Christopher]

I loved the first two seasons of Sliders and wondered why they never explored the two most obvious alternates: where the Civil War or WW2 ended different?

I think that question answers itself. The fact that those are so obvious is the best possible argument against doing them. Both alternate histories have already been exhaustively explored in fiction to the point of cliche.

A couple of thoughts, first it might benefit a network to have less recognition of their product for a reboot. How many people out there are going to protest Alien Nation? I don't know if there are too many people who will complain that they are not being true to the original source material. I don't know if that will make an impact or not, but it's a thought.

I doubt that's a factor. The segment of any fanbase that would care that much about fidelity to the source material is a tiny fraction of the audience that a television show needs to draw to be successful. It may seem that there's a large, devoted fanbase clamoring on the Internet, but if you really add up the individual posters who are the most fundamentalist about loyalty to the source, it most likely comes out to dozens, maybe a few hundred at most. A TV series needs to get ratings in the millions. Even if thousands of loyalists refused to watch a show that wasn't slavish to the original, it would still make an insignificant dent in the ratings figures. If a TV show succeeds, it does so by drawing in the much larger base of more casual viewers.

And it's not like loyalist protests about Galactica prevented SciFi from producing a radical reinterpretation. And as old TV shows go, Galactica had a surprisingly devoted loyalist base.

I really don't think that SyFy executives are seeing this as a choice between Alien Nation and Sliders, as if those were the only two cancelled SF shows to choose from. As I said, they probably decided on an AN reboot because they want something that will let them ride on District 9's coattails if that film lives up to its advance buzz.


As for Sliders, personally I'd rather see a reboot than a continuation. Yes, it would be nice to revisit Rembrandt, Maggie, and the rest again and get some closure, but the show was so inconsistent, so heavily retooled, so full of dreadful baggage like the third season, that I'd be happier with a fresh beginning.

 

[bigdaddy]

I think SYFY also likes cop shows because everyone likes cop shows, Eureka, Warehouse 13, this redo.

Plus because it's been dead so long the rights are cheaper.

 

[Hober Mallow]

I much prefer Alien Nation to Sliders, but Sliders also holds a special place in my heart. When the pilot first aired on Fox, I was on the Prodigy network, and was contacted by one of Tracy Torme's production assistants and asked if I would gather every single comment made on the Prodigy bulletin boards so they could gauge audience reaction and get feedback.

I never became a regular viewer, but the People's Court scene from the pilot is classic. "Small claims my ass!"

 

[Caretaker]

Well, I would still love to see a miniseries (three or four hours) with all the original actors in order to bring a sense of closure to their stories and maybe even a bit of a happy ending.

And it wouldn't be a problem to recast the characters (technically, Mallory was a parallel dimension version of Quinn) - by it's nature, any reboot in a sense would be a continuation (per Weiss's idea of a Sliders movie, retell the story with the same characters, this time originating in another parallel universe).

 

[Christopher]

Well, I would still love to see a miniseries (three or four hours) with all the original actors in order to bring a sense of closure to their stories and maybe even a bit of a happy ending.

I was going to point out that most of the original characters died in one way or another, but then I remembered they all have fifty gazillion doubles out there, so it would be easy enough to construct a story reuniting the whole cast.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I loved the first two seasons of Sliders and wondered why they never explored the two most obvious alternates: where the Civil War or WW2 ended different?

I'm not a Sliders fan, but either scenario could be the focus of an entire series or at the very least, an entire season. I think that's what bothers me about the idea of Sliders - every episode is another alternative reality. You have a whole new reality, and only spend 40 minutes there?!? Argh!

But the same idea without the limiting episodic format could be really interesting. I also wouldn't limit stories to the present day. Why should all realities be at the same point in time when the sliders happen to show up?

Both alternate histories have already been exhaustively explored in fiction to the point of cliche.

People who aren't fans of the alternative history genre of novels aren't likely to know that - so for the vast majority of people, those are original ideas, or at least more original than Yet Another Cop Show With Sci Fi Window Dressing.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not a Sliders fan, but either scenario could be the focus of an entire series or at the very least, an entire season. I think that's what bothers me about the idea of Sliders - every episode is another alternative reality. You have a whole new reality, and only spend 40 minutes there?!? Argh!

Yeah... I seem to recall thinking it would be nice if they spent several episodes on a given world before moving on.

But the same idea without the limiting episodic format could be really interesting. I also wouldn't limit stories to the present day. Why should all realities be at the same point in time when the sliders happen to show up?

Well, that was one of the original ground rules for practical and budgetary reasons: it's more expensive to do a period piece, and one of the core conceits of the show was that of the characters meeting or being mistaken for their doubles, so they pretty much had to be the same age as their counterparts. (Budget comes into play there too, since if you do a "double" story, that's one less guest star to cast.) However, they did do a couple of worlds where time ran at a different rate. The first was in "The Guardian," one of the series' finest episodes, which basically gave Quinn Mallory a chance to revisit a pivotal moment in his youth and change its outcome. The second was in the fourth or fifth season, and it was just a lame excuse to do a Western episode (a concept they'd already handled much better with a present-day "Old West" in "The Good, the Bad, and the Wealthy").

People who aren't fans of the alternative history genre of novels aren't likely to know that - so for the vast majority of people, those are original ideas, or at least more original than Yet Another Cop Show With Sci Fi Window Dressing.

Oh, don't you dare say that about Alien Nation. It was one of the most brilliant and imaginative science fiction TV series ever made. Your description would fit the original movie, which totally squandered its premise, but the TV series really embraced the potential of the situation, exploring the consequences of having an alien race land in LA and become the latest population of immigrants, and using the human-alien interaction as a vehicle for allegorical examinations of the human condition -- which is what science fiction is supposed to do. The SF in the series was very, very far from being window dressing.

It remains to be seen whether the new series will handle the concept as effectively, but from what I've heard, I doubt they intend the issues of interspecies race relations to be mere window dressing.

 

[Checkmate]

Alien Nation will be cheaper to produce. It's just a cop show with well under half of the extras in premade molds and make-up. And, maybe, once in a blue moon a CGi spaceship or set. That's all going to be infinitely cheaper than a show with lots of wormhole and timer graphics, period set pieces, constant rotation of CGI monsters that will rarely if ever get reused, and unpredictable make-up requirements.

This is Sci-Fi you're talking about. It's all about the budget.

 

[TemporalFlux]

That's all going to be infinitely cheaper than a show with lots of wormhole and timer graphics, period set pieces, constant rotation of CGI monsters that will rarely if ever get reused, and unpredictable make-up requirements.

Wow. That's making Sliders much more complicated than it should be. Season one and two of the series (which most people consider the best) did not rely on elaborate set pieces, CGI monsters or heavy make up work; most of the work went into props (largely paper props at that). They also did some moderate work in redressing the existing scenery of Vancouver, but it was never elaborate. That was the beauty of always keeping it present day; they never had to change much to make it surreal.

Sliders doesn't have to be a budget buster; despite what the later producers thought, Sliders isn't Doctor Who.

 

[crouteru]

That's all going to be infinitely cheaper than a show with lots of wormhole and timer graphics, period set pieces, constant rotation of CGI monsters that will rarely if ever get reused, and unpredictable make-up requirements.

Wow. That's making Sliders much more complicated than it should be. Season one and two of the series (which most people consider the best) did not rely on elaborate set pieces, CGI monsters or heavy make up work; most of the work went into props (largely paper props at that). They also did some moderate work in redressing the existing scenery of Vancouver, but it was never elaborate. That was the beauty of always keeping it present day; they never had to change much to make it surreal.

Sliders doesn't have to be a budget buster; despite what the later producers thought, Sliders isn't Doctor Who.

Completely agree. Sliders' only sci-fi aspect was the wormhole effects, everything else was props. It was the later years that made the show more expensive/complicated than it needed to be. A reboot (which is what I'd prefer) only needs to use the early episodes as a template.

 

[Base_Delta_Zero]

I'd watch it. I was only a casual viewer when it first aired however many years ago, cause I liked the concept and the characters were fun, but a lot of the episodes were pretty weak. Executed with some sort of plan beyond endless bottle episodes, I think a reboot could be quite good.

I always liked the idea of antagonists who are trying to utilize the resources of many different alternate realities to curb stomp the good guys in other, carefully selected realities. Like a Kim Jong Il who gets the tech and starts infiltrating alternate Earths, killing off their Kims and taking their places, then consolidating the resources of many North Koreas in his reality in preparation for a massive surprise assault across the 38th parallel. Where'd he get the hundreds of nukes and ten million extra soldiers? Incorporating something like that as a hinted-at, ever-building, overarching threat, would be pretty sweet, I think.

 

[Sliding Dragon]

I just posted an interview on Earth Prime with Tracy Torme where he talks reboots, what he's up to now, and where he planned to take the show if he had control of the fourth season - check it out if you get a chance:

Tracy's interview

Tracy also wrote up a treatment for his lost episode "Heat of the Moment" for the site; if you're interested in what that would have been like, you can read it here:

"Heat of the Moment" synopsis

Spread the word if you like, because the more awareness the show generates, the greater the chances for reboot/relaunch...