Rembrandt Brown: Rebel with a Cause

Date: 02/05/2000
From: Executive

The 5th season/series finale "The Seer" has a few similarities to the 4th season finale "Revelations".

REVELATIONS and THE SEER: Much of both stories take a non-violent approach...until all hell breaks loose near the end.

REVELATIONS: The sliders encounter an old man (Issac Clark) who wrote a novel on a group of sliders, who claims to have the coordinates to the Mallory homeworld.

THE SEER: The sliders meet and old man (Mark LeBeau) who claims to have forseen (from other dimensions), the deaths of Arturo and Wade which is compelling enough for them to believe that they really have landed on Remmy's home Earth.
The only thing is that LeBeau's visions that we see are of events that are taking place as they are happening, and not in the future -- or maybe they were from the very recent future. This point was rather vaguely presented.

REVELATIONS: After having a gun pulled on them by the parents of Quinn and Colin, our heroes realize that they are doubles, and that they have not slid to the Mallory homeworld. The anti-Kromagg superweapon was also not found there (although it later was in next season's poorly-written and acted "Strangers and Comrades").

THE SEER: Aside from LeBeau's visions, it's only fitting that Quinn Mallory's adoptive mother (once again played by Linda Henning) appear again. The sliders are even worshipped by fans from his daughter Claire's newly-formed Cult of Slideology! Plus the adventures of their doubles have been merchandised into games and toys, and played by some of their alternates (and an unconvincing Arturo double) in a TV show called SLIDERS!! Two other fun in-jokes are the name Peckinpah on a piece of paper and a couple named "Dial" (Bill Dial was Executive Producer).

Even if the people of that world really did once take up arms to defeat the Kromaggs, Remmy still felt obligated to keep sliding to defeat the Kromaggs. He even took a sample of blood from one SLIDERS trivia game-playing man and later injected it into him bloodstream. After overcoming Claire and her men in the end, he unselfishly slides alone to the next world, instructing the others to later join him (after Diana repairs the Kromagg sliding equipment). Claire's father was only human, yet unlike Nostradamus (as regularly suggested in FIRST WAVE) his visions don't come true as often. Fortunately, the future can still be changed by our actions in the present!

The idea of an anti-Kromagg virus was best explored in the superb 4th season story "Mother and Child", in which the group were only able to obtain the antidote for Christina's dying Humagg baby, and not the well-guarded sample of the virus itself. Even if they could, I believe the original plan would have been to contain the vial in a cooler so it wouldn't degrade between worlds. Of course, these people don't like to carry much with them when sliding! Plus Rembrandt and his friends didn't have time for that in "The Seer", so if and when the others are able to re-use the Kromagg sliding machine to travel to his coordinates.... Well, unless a TV movie sequel is written and produced we may never know. Keith Damron stated in his journels that the crew had a feeling the fifth season would be their last early on, but the writers didn't know for sure that SLIDERS would be cancelled. That's why we got stuck with a cliffhanger ending. Overall it was one of the better episodes this year, although it was just too contrived to be completely believeable.

The one thing that really didn't work was Remmy wanting to continue to slide on his own. Sure he had once been imprisoned, tortured, and even brainwashed during those grueling 3 months between seasons in 1997, but if we believe that they were really HOME once again (that is, Remmy's home) why not just stay there? Since that world seems to know everything there is to know about sliding and has conquered the Kromaggs, surely they can deploy troops from all branches of the military to other Earths in a quest to free those worlds of Kromagg tyranny! That was a very important element missing from the script.

If this had been done as a series finale instead of a season finale, they would all stay behind, rebuild their lives, and enjoy their superstar status and the wealth and admiration that comes with it. After all, until his double upstaged him, The Crying Man himself didn't seem to mind the attention he was getting as a singing star in "The King is Back"!

 

THE EXECUTIVE

That wasn't home.

Date: 02/05/2000
From: JorgeCis

The Sliders did not land on Earth Prime. The last scene had Remmy sliding to his home earth.

Jorge

Well, Jorge

Date: 02/05/2000
From: Executive

That last scene didn't have had Remmy going to his home Earth -- in fact they didn't know where they were sending him with the Kromagg sliding equipment!

As to whether they landed on Remmy's Earth in The Seer, however, I'm inclined to agree with you but only because I once proposed a much darker and more exciting scenario/outline as to how I would end the series which I later updated to include Diana and Mallory. They would slide back to Remmy's Earth along with thousands of human troops from other worlds, along with a double of Arturo who is an Air Force General and scientist (played again by John Rhys-Davies) to wage a REAL war against the Maggs on Earth Prime. It was a multi-part story that would focus on the war in much of 2 episodes and the sliders rebuilding their lives in part 3. This Arturo would retire from the military and open a sliding research institute on his home Earth, and would take members of his team to continue sliding as interdimensional explorers!

But first in Part 1, Diana and Mallory would slide back to their worlds early on, soon after Diana managed to finally seperate the two Quinns. Quinn and Maggie would get married and he would discover a way to bypass the electronic cloak surrounding the Mallory homeworld. They would return to Quinn's Earth and help the others return to Earth Prime. After 3 months of fighting (and no anti-Kromagg virus) the humans beat the Kromaggs and win the war!

As far as I'm concerned, Colin would remain unstuck. After "Requiem" there is no way they could ever meet up with Wade again unless she is a double of the one Quinn, Maggie, and Remmy knew.

Unfortunately, The Dominion frequently erases large quantities of old posts to make room on their database, so my original June 1999 series finale proposal is no longer there. Not that it matters, because the staff writers came up with something completely different!

 

THE EXECUTIVE

Remmy slide to Earth Prime...

Date: 02/05/2000
From: crylikeaman

Diana put the data in to the sliding machine before Remmy slide. She says something to this effect as she is activating the machine. They got the info the week before from Gieger on the computer chip. The chip was not destroyed when the timer was smashed.

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