Fanfic / Sliders Reborn

They're back...

The original Sliders in 2015

Sliders Reborn is a six-part fan continuation of the 1990s Sci-Fi TV series, Sliders, presented in the form of PDF screenplays posted on the Earth Prime website. You can read them here.

The first 4-page script picks up on the cliffhanger of "The Seer" with Rembrandt coming out of the vortex to find Quinn, Wade and Arturo waiting on the other side. The second is a 95 page script and set in 2015: the Sliders have been home for 14 years and the Kromagg invasion has been erased. All have retired from sliding and resumed normal lives except for Quinn. However, when reality starts breaking down, Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo must reunite and begin a new journey through the interdimension.

The third script has the Sliders exploring three parallel worlds searching for answers. The fourth installment is a short novella that provides a full explanation for how Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo were restored after the events of the 2000 finale. The fifth script is 46 pages and features Quinn and the character of Mallory from Season 5. The sixth and final 144 page screenplay acts as a finale to this series and the original TV show and was posted on December 27, 2016.

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• Alternate Timeline: Sliders Reborn declares there were two timelines: There was the original timeline where the original Sliders had four years of wonderful adventures and the timeline after "The Unstuck Man" corrupted reality and history. The corrupted timeline is the version that aired on FOX and the Sci-Fi Channel.
• And the Adventure Continues: After finally saving the multiverse and everyone earning their happy ending, the Sliders set off on another adventure, with infinity of worlds to explore and full ability to go wherever they want.
• Apocalypse Anarchy: Played straight in the "Teslanium poisoned" Earth in which the government has mostly collapsed and crime lords like Jameson Hall control San Francisco.
  • Subverted in the "Doomsday clock cult" Earth, in which the government is mostly intact but nobody seems to care about anything but living it up to the fullest, people throw huge parties, shops and corporations practically give their services and products for free.
  • Averted in the "Polluted industrial" Earth, apathy has made it impossible any sort of anarchy to happen because the world went to hell so gradually and people are dependent on authority to stay alive by providing them with food and water.
• Apocalypse How: The Sliders attempt to prevent a Class X-5.
  • As it turns out Alt-Quinn is attempting to collapse the already unstable multiverse into a singularity which in turn will spawn a new multiverse, in the process preventing a Class Z.
• Back from the Dead: It's a 2015 revival of Sliders featuring Quinn (who was merged with Mallory and lost), Wade (sent to a rape camp, turned into a computer, killed, possibly survived, declared to be dead for sure), Professor Arturo (shot and blown up after getting his brain sucked out) and Rembrandt (fate unknown). Their presence in 2015 is initially played as an Unexplained Recovery resulting from mysterious events during the 15-year time gap between the 2000 finale and this series. However, an explanation comes eventually.
• Big Bad: Jameson Hall. He is responsible for the dystopian parallel worlds the Sliders visit in part 3, however it turns out that it was never his intent to screw up the worlds as badly as he did.
  • He's also better known as the Alternate-Quinn Mallory from the Pilot.
• Broad Strokes: While every season of Sliders is acknowledged as canon, Sliders Reborn takes the view that events may have unfolded differently in the original timeline before reality was altered into the televised version. Rembrandt remembers the TV version of Sliders, but Wade has no recollection of "Rules of the Game," "Paradise Lost" or "Stoker," yet Quinn refers to a version of "Paradise Lost" in the novella (in that he visited a world where humans had achieved immortality).

Quinn in his 40s.

• Character Aged with the Actor: The Sliders are all written as being at the actors' ages in 2015. The website uses 2015 photos of the actors. One banner image features a publicity photo of Jerry O'Connell holding the timer from 1994, but the 1994 face has been replaced with a 2015 image of Jerry's face.
• Continuity Nod: There are lavish references to every season of Sliders from returning guest-characters in minor roles to the overt with the display room full of props from previous episodes. Characters frequently recount some of the more absurd episodes.
• Disaster Scavengers: The "Teslanium poisoned" Earth has many of them, and some of them report to Jameson Hall.
• The Dragon: Razor serves as one to Hall in the "Teslanium poisoned" Earth. Except that he doesn't really take orders of Hall directly.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Laurel's Establishing Character Moment is getting drunk because she's constantly shifting between different worlds and as such her perception of what's real and what's not goes completely out of whack. And later she says that it's not the first time she resorted to alcohol to make herself feel better.
• Easily Forgiven: Zig-zagged: When faced with the prospect of returning to the sliding life in "Reunion", when Quinn, Wade and Arturo show up at his doorstep, Rembrandt slams the door shut and reads Quinn the riot act, furious that he lost six years of his life and outright states nothing Quinn can do will make up for it. And then Arturo reveals Quinn got him "a fully refurbished 1971 Cadillac de Ville", complete with "a car radio with Bluetooth and speakerphone". Rembrandt appeared to have been easily swayed, but once Quinn brought up sliding again, he went back inside.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Towards the end of "Regenesis", as a giant vortex is beginning to swallow San Francisco, Quinn and Quinn-2 try and figure out a new core decision point in order to properly recreate the multiverse, but no matter what date Quinn-2 provides, Quinn isn't satisfied as it doesn't mean they would be able to save everyone. But once Quinn-2 laments that they have "any point in reality, any point in history" to choose from, both Quinns come to realize what point they can use. Specifically, that current point.
  Quinn: We picked right there and then. We picked the very moment when we were trying to choose a moment.
  Arturo: invoked (eyes widening in realization) You chose a moment of infinite outcomes, one that represents every choice you might have made. But that means-
  Quinn: Let's find out what it means.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: The Millennial Tower, a jet black skyscraper and Jameson Hall's HQ in the "Doomsday clock cult" Earth and the "Polluted industrial" Earth.
• Fix Fic: The story offers a blanket explanation for the inconsistencies and bad writing the show accumulated over its five-year run. Part 4 in particular explains how the Reset Button was pressed that enabled the original Sliders and Earth-Prime to be restored. It also explains that Oberon Geiger's experiments corrupted reality, resulting in the out of order airing of the season 1 and 2 episodes, the fantastical "sci-fi movie" plots that were so predominant in season 3, the reuse of sets in Seasons 4 - 5 (reality was collapsing) and the absence of Quinn-doubles in Season 5 (Quinn was erased from reality).
• Gaia's Lament: Both the "Teslanium poisoned" Earth and the "Polluted industrial" Earth are very harsh examples.
  • In the former Elon Musk created a device that generated free energy and used it to create artificial farming islands, solving the world's hunger issues. However the element that powers the islands, Teslanium, was discovered way too late to become toxic when exposed to water. Resulting in every ocean and most sources of drinkable water being contaminated.
  • In the latter, attempts to boost the world economy with increased industrialization resulted in the world's atmosphere being so polluted that the sun was completely eclipsed by smog. The result was the extinction of nearly all forms of life on Earth.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Rembrandt refers to some of the worst episodes of Sliders (and also one of the worst comic books) as the reasons for why he doesn't want to get involved in the story.
  • The Sliders Reborn scripts were first posted on March 22, 2015, twenty years to the day the Pilot aired. This leads to Quinn, at the end of "Reunion," looking around an empty room and saying "Happy twentieth anniversary" to nobody / the fans.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Quinn is Laurel's father.
• Mood Whiplash: During "Revelation", when Quinn and Laurel are exploring a watchmaker's shop, Laurel slips on some paper and falls, only for Quinn to catch her. Here is verbatim how the story describes what follows.
  Quinn catches her by the shoulder. She spins around, facing him, still falling downward. Quinn grabs her by the waist just in time.
  And then they remain in this position, Quinn holding Laurel by the waist. Man and girl. Closer than ever.
  Quinn stares at Laurel. His eyes searching hers as though she's the greatest mystery in all existence.
  Laurel: I'm gay.
• Mundane Utility: Quinn uses his vastly improved sliding technology for, among other things, getting works of fiction and ice cream flavors parallel worlds.
• Must Not Die a Virgin: A more figurative example occurs in the "Doomsday clock cult" Earth when the Sliders see a guy typing on his laptop trying to get his book finished before the world ends.
• Negative Space Wedgie: The reason why Rembrandt's home is destroyed towards the end of part 2 is because of an over-sized unstable vortex.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • A driving factor of the plot of this series concerns a fuck-up on Quinn's part. Both of them. Ho, boy, this might take some time to explain.
    • Quinn undoes the Kromagg invasion of Earth and saves the rest of the Sliders but in the process of hitting the Reset Button the resulting Cosmic Retcon not only RetGones the Kromaggs but also Alt-Quinn's homeworld, setting the events of the story in motion. To make matters worse, the new multiverse consists of Earths virtually identical to ours before March 22, 1995, resulting in parallel worlds whose history will eventually result in their destruction, and, as an added caveat, no new worlds splinter from the ones created by Quinn.Alt-Quinn chews him out over it.
    • Meanwhile, Alt-Quinn's attempts to save the worlds the Sliders' visited ultimately resulted in the dystopias they became by the time the Sliders' visited them.
• Pastiche: Factors heavily into the writing style: the writer is attempting to recreate the performances of the original actors in the screenplay format while also age them from 1995 to 2015. Efforts include reusing certain turns of phrase ("Mr. Mallory" / "Q-Ball" / "Four hours and change") and other methods of reproducing the characters' diction and the actors' line deliveries. Oddly, "blistering idiot" is never used.
• Played for Laughs: Sliders Reborn is driven mostly by jokes from the character interaction; nearly every character talks in wisecracks and absurd observations and almost every scene is played for ensemble comedy. Some readers have found Sliders Reborn excessively silly while others have found it recaptures the light comedy episodes of the first season.
• Plot Hole: Of all the abandoned houses and empty basements in San Francisco, why does Laurel happen to choose the basement once occupied by the father she never met? And how is it that Maggie in the poisoned-water Earth and the doomsday cult Earth kept randomly passing by the Sliders? And it's also incredibly convenient that the Sliders confront Quinn-2 just in time for the doomsday clock countdown to be nearing its end.
• Revisiting the Roots: Sliders Reborn mimics the Pilot with beginning in Quinn's basement lab. The characters have also been reset; Quinn in his 40s is the Guile Hero of Seasons 1 - 2 rather than the Action Hero of Season 3, Rembrandt is the Plucky Comic Relief.
• Series Continuity Error: Sliders Reborn gets the date of the first slide wrong, using the day the Pilot aired (March 22, 1995) instead of the date in the episode (September 27, 1994). This is somewhat rationalized in "Reminiscence" when Quinn says that the Geiger experiment altered history and in one difference was the season shifting from March to September, but it's clearly a mistake.
• Someday This Will Come in Handy: Quinn talks to Laurel about how circularly polarized light can demagnetize objects and the vortex can turn laser light into circularly polarized light, which turns out to be useful at the climax.
• Sunglasses at Night: They're actually night-vision goggles, and on this world it isn't even night, the sun's been blocked by a planet-wide smog cover.
• Teleporters and Transporters: Quinn's improvements in the sliding technology allows him to generate vortexes between any two places in a universe.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Alt-Quinn justifies his actions by saying that the multiverse is dying anyway and if his plan isn't put into effect it won't be restored afterwards.
• Wham Line:
  • Towards the end of "Reunion", when everyone else is preparing to go sliding again, Quinn takes a moment to help Laurel settle her fears over further inter-dimensional travel... and then Laurel blurts out a line that reveals there's more going on in this story than what was made clear:
    Laurel: Why are you lying to them?
• What the Hell, Hero?: In Part 2, Arturo accuses Quinn of using his vastly improved sliding technology for petty and selfish purposes instead of helping to fix the numerous problems the world has. Then Quinn retorts by saying that all of the problems he just cited would've been a lot worse without his intervention.
  • In Part 3, Jameson Hall gives Quinn a pretty long speech about how much his actions have screwed up the multiverse.