Sliders: Way of the Gun

Date: 06/01/2003
From: Recall317

When you write fanfic, you try not to do what's been done for...or carefully disguise it. I'm not a huge fan of gunplay so I try to limit its use (says the guy who wrote "Nobody Move.") When I think of Sliders and guns, I think 4th season. Lots of Kromaggs, lots of wartorn worlds, there are plenty of weapons in the 4th season. However, if you guessed the 4th season has the highest percentage of eps with guns, you'd be wrong. Stunningly enough (at least to me), the 2nd season was the most trigger happy season with a full 100% featuring a weapon drawn on a Slider. If you count the Pilot as one episode, then the first season also hits 100%. Guns, guns, guns, everywhere you turn. Next to the timer, it must be the most frequent prop of the show.

Want to get the full effect? Put on a weapon-happy song in your MP3 player (I found the Transplants' "Diamonds and Guns" to be quite appropriate; Moby's "That's When I Reach for My Revolver" could be amusing too.) and then just sit back and do a mental fast forward of the show starting with the Pilot, each scene featuring someone pulling out a gun or threatening someone with one. I didn't make it to the 5th season before the song ended.

It's a fun video montage project if someone has the equipment and the episodes for it. If I were art director, I'd throw in a few "sanity be damned" shots of Quinn, you know the ones where his face gets all scrunched up as he flies into a rage. (See late third season, e.g. "Slither.")

Sliders, for all its creative leaps, ends up completely reliant on the gun. The first episode to break away is "The Guardian", which relies on good old fashioned fisticuffs. Third season episodes that didn't use guns usually resorted to swords, knives, and other miscellaneous weapons. The total number of Sliders eps where one of the Sliders is in mortal peril is probably around 85% an unscientific estimate, but think about it, how many eps you can name where no one was in any danger of being killed? Once you have that list, remove the eps where they were captured or threatened with bodily harm. What do you have left?

Even stories with much bigger threats, "Last Days" (asteroid) still prominently features a revolver. Why is this? Is it simply not possible to do a Sliders script if no one is in danger of being killed? Are the alt-world adventures not enough? Apparently not. Maybe that 1st season Exec Producer was refering to lack of plot devices when he whined that it's so hard coming up with new ideas.

Re-examining my own fanfiction, I found I'm on the right side of violence. In the 15 'major' works I've completed (2 as yet unaired), I turn to the gun six times. Sometimes I didn't even remember writing the weapons in; it just becomes ingrained. I do know that taking away the mortal peril of the slide makes it 3X as difficult to write something with enough action as the original series.

It must be extremely draining on the characters to repeatedly be faced with death every other day. No wonder Quinn became so hard as the series wore on. It has to desensitize you. We look on in indignation when he says something heartless like "Been there, done that, got the T-shirt" when he's talking about war and murder, but it's true. Every week he's nearly killed. He's been sentenced to death a half dozen times; he's died twice. Every original Slider but Rembrandt is killed at least once in the third season (only Arturo didn't come out of it.)

Anyway, just a little treatise. I leave you know with images from the 2nd season:

A bounty hunter pulls a gun on Quinn in Into the Mystic. Rembrandt blows a snake's head off. Quinn is thrown back into a hotel room with guns at his back in Time Again and World. Weapons are drawn and shots are fired at the Top Hat. L.J. fires his automatic weapon into the sky. Sid holds a gun to a man's head at an ATM. Weapons are drawn in a subway. Shots ring out everywhere. Michelle guns Sid down. Weapons are flashed as a house is searched. Quinn and Arturo are shot with tranquilizer darts trying to escape the Australians. Quinn apparently kills a man in a duel. Guns are fired on a pistol range...some extremely wide. A man is shot down in a bar. A child attempts to shoot a CEO. Quinn throws his guns down. Immigration raid a corner. Kit Richards is shot in the chest. Dennis wildly waves around his rifle due to bad acting. Daelin is shot by a crooked cop; she returns fire and kills him. The Bureau of Anti-Tech raid Mike Mallory's home at gunpoint. Mike Mallory holds aim on the Sliders as Quinn tries to talk sense into him. Weapons are drawn as Wade tries to escape the clutches of Derek Bond. Kromaggs fire phasers at the escaping Sliders. Arturo pulls a gun on the others in his basement. A poacher fires at a dinosaur and keeps his firearm trained on the Sliders. Guns appear everywhere when Rembrandt crashes a wedding and they pretty much remain out in the open the rest of the episode. Kenny and Gillette hold Quinn and Wade at gunpoint and later Wade's double tries to kill them, shooting Gillette instead. And so the season ends with sirens in the distance...

R317

Interesting

Date: 06/01/2003
From: TemporalFlux

Something I had never really thought about, but it is a clear theme. Looking at my public "work" (most of those are barely liberally defined outlines), I find that I pretty much follow suit on including guns. Save "Arturo and the Magic School Bus", I use the gun or graphic violence in some form each time.

Of course, looking at my "in production" Sliders series, I find it's different without me realizing I had shifted. Out of 13 stories only 4 feature the gun or graphic violence (and it's even questionable on 2 of those 4 - it hinges on how liberally a person defines "gun").

I don't think the producers were applying the obvious prolonged affect to characters in the later seasons, though. There's certainly no evidence of that kind of direction in the scripts...and I doubt several directors would follow that theme on their own - but anything's possible. Regardless, it's a very good patch for how it turned out - a way to understand why characters like Quinn became so flip and seemingly jaded. Good catch! :-D

Tf
temporalflux@hotmail.com
http://dimensionofcontinuity.com

Curious

Date: 06/02/2003
From: Slider_Sarah

Despite the fact that I often make comments like "Oh look, someone pulled a gun again," while watching Sliders, I never realised that it happened quite so often.

Thinking about my own fanfic, I know I'm not immune either. I started well with the first AE117, but the second has guns, and the third has another weapon. Two as yet unfinished later ones have guns and violence respectively.

My other fanfics again have either guns or violence. I can't really remember though.

I do have one in progress that doesn't have anything like that in, but chances are I woon't finish it for a very long time.

This is all quite odd, because I find much harder to write violent scenes and try to avoid or keep them as brief as possible. Yet they're still there.

Hmmm. not sure where I'm going with this now... agreeing with you I think :-)

Sarah.

Peck and Torme both reach for the gun...

Date: 06/02/2003
From: ThomasMalthus

...and BT is blown to bits!

...as a plot device, eh? Very interesting. I guess firearms are the bread and butter of "action" shows, and that's what Fox wanted it to be. It also is a good way to imply the possibility of violence without having to choreograph a fight scene. Not to mention that none of the original four were any good at fighting. (Except possibly Rembrandt. Not only could he sing with those pipes, he could swing one, too! Take that, Sid.)

Anyway, good observations. Thanks for the on-topic post, Recall. You da man!

ThomasMalthus

E2013. 7.4. Chapter 4.

Funny...

Date: 06/03/2003
From: BuckeyeSlider

I don't remember the Anti-Tech agents having any guns.

Maybe they didn't

Date: 06/03/2003
From: Recall317

I'm starting to insert guns where there aren't, although it stands to reason they did. Mike Mallory certainly had a gun on the Sliders at the end.

Another error was "PTSS". Alt-Arturo held them at timer-point, not gunpoint. Fortunately, Quinn and Wade had a half dozen guns pointed at them in the Science Museum when they were caught stealing the timer replica...

R317

To Thomas Malthus...

Date: 06/03/2003
From: BuckeyeSlider

So, aside from Rembrandt, none of the Sliders were any good at fighting huh? You seem to have forgotten about Quinn's display of swordsmanship in "The Prince Of Slides."

Buckeye:

Date: 06/03/2003
From: ThomasMalthus

BT is a PoS...and I'm not talking about Prince of Slides.

Sorry, I had S2 on my mind (after Fox retooled the show to be more action-y, but before Peck and the Gang took over) and I thought I made that clear in my post but now I see that I didn't. Bad on me. Quinn became Action Quinn when he learned to shoot and fence while on igloo world. This was also the Earth where Wade dyed her hair red and Remmy served in the navy. It's really an interesting story. Too bad it never got told.

Of course, both Quinn and Rembrandt were proficient with firearms once S3 started...but except for a very small collection of episodes, that wasn't the Torme era. With Peckinpah in charge, I wouldn't have been surprised to see Arturo with a Tommy gun. Or a guy named Tommy with an Arturo gun, for that matter.

ThomasMalthus

You're both forgetting...

Date: 06/06/2003
From: Real_Slider

Quinn's sweep kick in the Pilot.

The guy can fight - he's just... modest.

RS

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