In defense of "Time Again and World"...

Date: 05/25/2002
From: ThomasMalthus

On April 18th, Recall317 charged me to defend one of my top five favorite "Sliders" episodes, "Time Again and World", when I listed it as such . Since I missed his challenge to me over a month ago for whatever reason, possibly my own incompetence, but hey who's keeping track?, I must make a new post to answer his challenge, otherwise it will be completely buried. You should keep in mind that I haven't seen this episode in a while so every point I make comes from memory only.

First, let me state that the show had a LOT of alternate history, one of my favorite aspects of the show and one that was rarely dealt with in an in depth manner, particularly in later seasons. Though there was little explication behind it and most of it was thrown at you in bits and pieces I think this is realistic. Arturo can't always pick up a magazine or book and just automatically find the deviation between this world and theirs every time, although he does something similar in this ep, .

One of the most interesting things I thought about the alternate history was the assassination of President Kennedy. It's only mentioned as a throwaway comment, but put that together with the knowledge that the Rosenbergs (who were circus clowns here, a surreal but worthwhile detail) assassinated him and J. Edgar Hoover's term of office (don't remember exactly how long the ep said it was without going back to it, something like twenty years). Of course, the Rosenbergs could have been around until the 1960s (but then why not a Jack Ruby joke or something?) and it's somewhat conceivable that J. Edgar Hoover could live til the early 80s after serving as president twenty years. However, both those facts, (and the latter I find particularly hard to swallow, given Hoover's age and the physical toll that the presidency has taken on every person who's held it) lead me to believe that the assassination was likely in the mid-to late 1940s, the early 1950s at the latest and therefore this is not JFK we're dealing with, but his father, Joseph P. Kennedy.

Why is this relevant? Well, I similarly find it unlikely that Joseph P. Kennedy was elected on his own merits to the presidency in either 1944 or 1948. What I find to be the most plausible is that JPK was FDR's running mate in 1944, as he so desperately wanted to be. Hence instead of Truman, America ends World War II and starts off the Cold War with President Joe Kennedy.

Again, you might say 'so what?' Well, I say if a millionaire former bootlegger and Nazi sympathizer were president, it would make it all the easier for a thinly veiled fascist like J. Edgar Hoover to take over. Also, Hoover's rise to power would have been made easier because President Kennedy, between FDR's death and the election of 1948, would have had no Vice-President, thus making it easier to believe that there was a significant enough crisis for Hoover to gain absolute power (with the presidency going to the Secretary of State for the first time in history, Hoover could easily claim there were communists in the State department, as Joe McCarthy did so successfully, and drive him from office).

That you can conclude all of this from clues in the episode without it directly stating it to me makes it the best alternate history ep of all time.

Now if you made it through that, here are other things I like about the episode. I like that our heroes didn't know what was going on with the political situation for most of the episode. They reverse their position several times in the ep, and I think that's refreshing. Not knowing who to trust should be one of the biggest problems for interdimensional travelers.

We go back to joke presidents, with one of my all-time faves: Lyndon LaRouche. It says a lot about how paranoid this world's establishment must be. The fact that the plot of the episode hinges around the Constitution I also find very interesting. And the line "Don't even try to understand it, Professor, it'll just give you a headache" is so apropos and descriptive and there certainly are a limited number of episodes you could apply it to.

The only real huge problem I have with this episode is that they managed to get rid of every copy of the original Constitution. I find that highly unlikely. But like Recall317 once said, we should cut some slack for episodes that even attempted alternate history.

Anyway, that's all I'm going to post for now until I find out whether anybody even decided to read all the way through this rambling mess. I know I could have done a top ten list or something equally glib but I decided to go the old-fashioned route. Feel free to disagree with me at your leisure.

ThomasMalthus

A spirited defense

Date: 05/25/2002
From: Recall317

...but I'm still going to attack.

TM, your description of the alt-history of this world is extremely well thought out, well reasoned, and intriguing. Therefore I can say with 100% certainty that it is NOT what the writer intended. You give Jacob Epstein WAAAAAAY too much credit. Had the author been Tormé, Brown, or Miller, I might buy it. But this is Epstein, the guy who ran out of ideas nine eps into the series' run. If he even knows about Joe P. Kennedy's presidential aspirations, I'd be stunned.

(Caveat: I've never met the man. He may be a brilliant scholar of history. But if JRD thinks he's a blistering idiot, that's good enough for me.)

Unfortunately, this is the one script not at the DoC, so we can't go to the original blueprint and see if these details which aid your argument were cut. Second, it's too painful for me watch this ep again to try to contradict you. This remains the only Sliders ep that gets progressively worse with each viewing. Even "Slither" is now mildly entertaining when I watch it.

But in your defense, you haven't seen this ep in a long while so the positives all stand out. I still believe "The Guardian" to be a master work because it made a major impression on me when I first--and last--viewed it in 1996. There's a chance I could be wrong. Conversely, I remembered "Into the Mystic" as fairly good, but upon recent viewings, have moved it up into the top 5.

But this I know: "Time Again and World" is poorly produced, poorly edited, and barely plausible from a plot standpoint. And all of these things conspire to take the episode down. There are many S3 eps that take time to work out the alt-history (typically written by Miller) but the on screen action drowns the well-intended effort.

The credit I give to "Time Again and World" is its basic hook: two worlds seemingly identical but with very different actions occuring. I just wish it hadn't been wasted on the final product.

R317

PS. TM, it's fun debating with you. One day we'll do "Into the Mystic" with me on the defensive. Cause I LOOOOOOVE that ep. :)

Perception is reality.

Date: 05/26/2002
From: ThomasMalthus

BT unfortunately is reality as well.

I first watched this episode when I was sixteen. I was just getting heavily into alternate history and I had been on the whole unimpressed with season two so far (the first five eps were Into the Mystic, Love Gods, Gillian of the Spirits, The Good, the Bad and the Wealthy and El Sid for those of you who don't remember the messed up order that Fox originally aired it in). Then came "Time Again and World". An episode with what I considered to be an interesting plot and lots of alternate history tidbits that I was dying to connect somehow and when I did the episode became that much more interesting to me. I had no idea of the opinion of John Rhys-Davies towards the writer (I probably didn't even know who the writer was), I just thought it was a cool alternate history ep.

Because this is how I perceived it then, this is how I'll always perceive it. I know the same is probably true of Blinker and "El Sid" (sorry, old chum). I know some eps, including "El Sid" and "Into the Mystic", have been re-evaluated by me, for better ("Mystic") or worse {"Sid"). However, with "Time Again and World", no matter what I read about it I think my opinion will stay the same, because it made such a strong impression on me when it originally aired.

I don't think I really want to debate you on the merits of "Into the Mystic". I used to really hate it (at the time, I thought the Wizard of Oz thing was lame and there was too little alternate history), but now I'm pretty much OK with it, particularly given Peck's S3 rip-offs. But certainly if at some later date you feel the need to defend your love of "Into the Mystic" as I did mine of "Time Again and World", I would probably be willing to jump in with my comments. Then maybe Blinker and I could debate the merits of "Data World" and I could fish up my "Ten Things I Hate About Data World" post, including the deleted #11, "Despite the title, no Brent Spiner."

ThomasMalthus

Another perspective

Date: 05/26/2002
From: The_Seer

BT has lost all perspective.

*****

When it comes to "Time Again and World", I am pretty much on the fence. When I evaluate it on it's own merits (meaning no comparison to the brillant 1st season or some of the horrible 3rd season episodes or most of the 4th season Kromagg episodes), it's not that bad of an episode but it's that great either. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd probably give it a 6 (slightly above average).

One of the problems I've always had with this episode was in the beginning when the sliders witness the same scene twice (the accident and the guy getting shot), minutes apart on two different worlds. I know we later had "The Guardian", with the sliders landed on an Earth whose rotation was slower causing time to pass at a different rate, and I also realize that perhaps the traffic on the second world might have been heavier than on the first world. It still seemed a little far fetched that our Sliders just happened to be in the right place at the right time on both worlds. I also find it hard to believe that the assasination of JFK alone and the appointment of Hoover as President would be significant enought to lead to the suspension of all constitutional rights. Even 9/11, which is way more horrible than the assasination of a beloved President, has not led to the death of the constitution. Finally, I didn't like the fact that the only thing I could ever remember from this episode for the longest time was Rebecca Gayheart with facial hair (and you thought her acting in "Urban Legend" or the Sliders episode "Stoker" was scary in a non-scary way).

I realize I've dwelled on the negative here but there were still some positives. It was a good idea to try to do an alternate Earth story where the U.S. constitution had been suspended, even if the execution here was somewhat clumsy. It was nice to see the re-appearance of Hurley and Doppler computers. Finally, the acting was up to the usual high standards at the time.

Just goes to show you there can be a lot of different ways to look at the same thing.

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