#sliders meta

So I’m re-watching this. And it’s cheese sci-fi and 90s and oh so charming and yet I wouldn’t rec it but can’t stop thinking about it or enjoying it so I’m so confused. 

This show has a hook. A real potential. It just was written and produced to the ground. A reboot would probably be interesting. Note reboot, not revival. But is the concept enough or was it a mish mash that worked and then failed because it only worked in a small way?

Like I love the OG cast. Not that I remember hating Colin. Yes, I remember the ends. Which is already hurting the show. They have a natural affinity. 

The plots are vague enough alt worlds to be entertaining and thoughtful, but I don’t feel it’s really deep or saying something. There is depth inside, but the sliders don’t seem to dwell in the right spots. Emotionally in how they react to each other and their circumstances as they travel, long-term relations, introspection and change or character growth don’t happen, or to the crux of difference the alt worlds purpose or they encounter. The idea is there and cool, but the impact it has on them or the sci-fi point is still veiled you know.

But there is a lightness and fun to not taking the premise that seriously. In not dwelling like a Dark Mirror ep. Not just the 90s camp or episodic flare, the in-jokes and smart callbacks or science or pop culture references which make it’s humor genuine and fun to sit with. I don’t need doom and gloom travel, the light-heart works this way. There is adventure. 

This show actually reminds me a lot of TOS. Stakes in the moments, pathos in the character and thought in the moments, depth in the concept, but just a continuing group on a wild spaceship ride of who knows what encounter that fans loved and patched into one big thing but was really all over the place in terms of quality even at it’s best. How it went from great Kirk speeches on the concept of man to wild laughter at episodes end over the stupidest comments.  

So I’ve been watching Sliders and Luck of the Draw is a good but frustrating episode especially in the Hollywood ethics and America’s take of eugenics in it does the same shitty morality of consider the positives of human culling. The characters run from it for themselves when Wade wins the lotto, plays the game without reading or knowing the fine print, and they arbor or want to rescue the other winners only by reason of emotional attachment.

The intellectual and hypocritical privilege of waltzing in to a world and declaring it potential utopia after less than three days because less people means more personal wealth for you is wildly unexamined. Yeah, it’s because the poor all won the lotto last month guys! That’s why people pick up your dropped wallet and kindly return it and the fruit-stands has low prices. 

But it’s so darn creepy what the episode and therefore the characters are not focusing on but actually hinting at. At Ryan who wanted to die as a conclusion to well I paid to do everything else interesting, like climbing Everest, what else is there? The nihilism in that. Or Julianne, which is much more tragic and layered than given Rembrandt’s reaction. Her giddy-ness in thinking he wants to die with her and what that says about the value or sell of death. The way her wishes and medically assisted death as she forces Rembrandt to participate by seeing and being with her is framed as peaceful and comforting instead of a choice of person, and the question of why, and horrific for Rembrandt’s lack as a bystander. Her lack of family or resource hinted at why she’s a lotto contestant in the first place is eerie. Her fear of pain, and the fact that painful death is the punishment of this world rings all the alarms. 

Yeah a world that encourages death for money and if you don’t follow or abide that structure pain. I’m arguing the results don’t justify the means Prof.

What in the world is it that every time sci-fi wants to argue pop control or the question of humanity’s numbers against it’s use of resources it likes to edge into death is better and hey it’s only a concern for death if it’s a loss of resource or person that impacts you? So icky.