Outer space and other dimensions

[locker_monster]

- newnumber6 mentioned he was going to re-watch Sliders and that got me wanting to re-watch, too, so I got my hands on the first season. I probably haven't seen any of these episodes since they aired 20 years ago, but I could remember bits and pieces. Some of the CGI is a bit dodgy, but the premise is still a great one. It's a shame that there aren't more TV shows dealing with alternative worlds. The story possibilities are endless. It'd also be cheaper than a time travel show, as travel is regulated to one time period. So you can have an unfamiliar setting, but you can still have familiar landmarks and technology.

If someone decided to reboot Sliders, I actually wouldn't mind, but it would have to be done right. These days, I think a writer/producer would be inclined to add an overall arc and a big mysterious backstory, which is what brought down the show back in the day. I don't care about aliens who can also slide and an Earth Prime and Quinn being from another Earth that wasn't ours and having a secret brother. Keep it simple. The only arc that should matter is whether the characters find their way back home.

- I finally finished book five of The Expanse series. As the the library didn't have the ebook version, I had to read a hard copy and I swear I read slower when the words are on a page rather than a screen. I guess my eyes are more used to reading off of my phone. Thing is, I prefer reading The Expanse books on my phone as the actual books are thick tomes that don't travel very well in a backpack or a purse. But anyway... I'm caught up! Book six lands in November. It's crazy how they can put out a book every year, but since James S.A. Corey is actually two guys, I can see how the work can go faster.

All of The Expanse books are good, but Nemesis Games was really good. For once, the four POVs weren't split between Holden and three new characters. Every member of the Rocinante crew got to tell their portion of the story and it made the plot more compelling since you know these characters and you really worry when any of them are in trouble. I don't know if book six will follow the same formula. It'd be nice if it did, but that means the crew has to be split up again, and I'm not fond of the idea.

The TV show needs to play catch-up, but if the producers don't want to make a book a season, then that's okay, too. It just means more of the plot will make it onto the screen. The series is chock full of things that shouldn't be overlooked.

- Looks like Space will be airing the new Star Trek series next year. Not to brag, but Canada will be the only place where it won't be behind a pay wall. Thank goodness for Canadian content. Now I won't have to watch the show through "alternative means".

- And Star Trek Beyond is out in theatres this weekend. I'm seeing mixed reviews, which is not great, but I'm still going to see it regardless. If I don't see it opening weekend, I'm totally going to get spoiled on the plot at the Star Trek convention in Las Vegas and I so don't want that to happen.

Comments

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

I would love to see a re-boot of Sliders, but I think they would have to find another reason for sliding other than trying to find their way home. That premise suffers from what I call "Gilligan's Island syndrome" -- i.e., you know that regardless of what happens in the episode, by the end, they're not getting off that island. Star Trek: Voyager had the same problem -- any episode that dealt with them possibly finding a way home to the Alpha Quadrant had no suspense, because there was no way they would make it home to the Alpha Quadrant. That show got a lot better once they settled down to exploring the Delta Quadrant instead of constantly trying to find ways to get home, and I think Sliders would also benefit from concentrating on exploration and characters instead of the quest to get back home.

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

I'm not opposed to it being "to get home", at first, although I'd hope it wouldn't stay that way. I personally thought a good idea to change things up would have been if the group found a world that was like Earth but not exactly, like maybe one of the differences was they didn't exist... but the place does have the tools required for Sliding technology, so they to have a "home base" from which to search for their real home and you can have interesting tensions with people building new lives on the new world.

If you were starting from scratch, I also could see it maybe working as a university project, maybe an accidental discovery in a physics lab and the Arturo type convinces them to keep it secret until they've got enough proof, and maybe something goes wrong that makes them keep it secret... maybe a very public disaster that looks just like a Slide-window (actually caused by another group of Sliders), that the world widely believes is terrorism-related, and that they're worried they'd be blamed for, or at the very least that the military will take over and cut them out of the project if they reveal they can do the same thing. Then they can focus on exploring different worlds, getting technologies from them, etc... if the setup of the tech is where they can't target where they go or how long they stay but they can reliably return home, then you could have, say, tension with certain characters maybe not making the slide (you could keep the actor employed by having them turn up as doubles and maybe find some way to bring them back).

But not making "to get home" as the focus risks them going in other directions that IMHO are just as bad if not worse... the "Kromaggs invaded Earth Prime" storyline, for example... great reason to keep Sliding, but horrible arc. Or you could have the "Doctor Who" model, where one character is just someone who is exploring wildly (or on a very personal mission), and other people get picked up along the way.

[locker-monster.livejournal.com]

You could always make the main Slider someone whose Earth was destroyed so they have no home to get back to. I know that makes it very Doctor Who-ish, but it does make it so that you have one character who is all about the exploring and not the getting home. Or the Slider is a fugitive, if you needed an ongoing arc.

Or you could go with the Quantum Leap model and not try to actively get home at all. I don't think Sam ever tried to manipulate a leap to get back.

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I too was thinking about the Quantum Leap model. In that show, Sam had a task to complete everywhere he leaped, while in Sliders it was often about killing time until they could leave. I think a more active model would be better -- i.e., they slide for a purpose. Either it's for exploration, or they are in search of something that may or may not be present in each world they slide into. Oooh, maybe they're after the Key to Time! Maybe that's what will eventually get them home! That would work.

I like the idea of an outsider with them, too. Maybe they're trying to help someone else get home. Or the someone else also has to get home. Anyway, different perspectives on the worlds they slide into could be interesting.

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it does make it somewhat DWish, which I'm not opposed to but plenty of people would call it a ripoff and so it might be less successful (I remember people already DID call it that when Sliders was on the air!).

>Or you could go with the Quantum Leap model and not try to actively get home at all. I don't think Sam ever tried to manipulate a leap to get back.

Well, they didn't try actively to get home because the whole premise was sort of built around the theory that they believed when they fixed what needed fixing, he'd go home. In fact, the first few episodes I believe the reason he interfered was specifically because they thought that would get home.

And there were a few early examples where he deliberately did things not to try and change history, but because they believed it would get him home. Most notably, there was the episode "Double Identity", in which Al said Ziggy had come up with a theory on how to get him back, which involved (among other things) plugging in a blow dryer at a specific place and time. It didn't work (and in fact caused a famous historical blackout, though it DID cause him to leap... to someone very nearby, so he could finish his real mission)

Ha-ha, finally, I can come up with the obscure off-the-top-of-my-head examples from canon!

After that they did sort of settle into just assuming God/Time/Fate/Whatever would send him back when it was good and ready.

[locker-monster.livejournal.com]

I wonder if that's part of the reason they introduced the Kromaggs, to give the characters something else to deal with besides trying to get home. I don't think I ever found the wandering tedious, but then again, being lost in parallels worlds was least of the show's problems once the execs started to meddle with the format. ;-)

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

I've wondered that, too. That was definitely the Jump the Shark moment for the show.