Jonathan Rhys Davies

‘Sliders’ may have been cancelled over a decade ago, but it is still on the mind of Jonathan Rhys Davies. At his panel at the Denver Comic Con, he was asked what his favorite world to travel to was. Instead of a simple response, he launched into an eloquent speech about worlds he wished they tried to explore, the issues with the behind-the-scenes of the show, and how it could have been the next ‘Star Trek’ of long running sci-fi series.

Here’s what he said:

The worlds that we didn’t travel to would have been my favorite.

It’s pathetic when people bitch and moan and complain, and I rather despise myself for bitching and moaning and complaining about ‘Sliders’.

But ‘Sliders’, it seems to me, was the most missed opportunity in science fiction entertainment that I’ve ever known of.  That show had such potential. We could go anywhere in space, we could go anywhere in time. You pick a theme and we could have done it. A world where Saladin won the crusades. We could have picked a world where instead of the Romans conquering the world and imposing Roman rule, the Greeks had done it instead. We could do anything. Any imaginative future world, we could create.

And we ended up copying, you know. We did twister. Except that we– You understand that a twister is smaller at the bottom, and big at the top. Well ours were different. Ours were big at the bottom, and small at the top. It makes such a difference, doesn’t it [audience laughs]? We did the ‘Tremors’ story. We did ‘The Night of the Living Dead’. We did the ‘Island of Dr. Moreau’ actually using the same masks that we use in the film of ‘Dr. Moreau’.

It just went on like that. What an opportunity missed.

[…]

So treat me with contempt for being a miserable old bitch [audience laughs]. But the truth of the matter is that it was such a waste. That show would have still been on the air. That show could have been […] the Fox network’s ‘Star Trek’.

Wonderful cast. Great crew of course. Great directors, and things like that.

But you know, [it was] just such derivative work. The thing that used to annoy me was some bright young lad from NYU, or USC would send in a script to me, and I would read it, and it would be perfect. And I would say to the production manager, “Have a look at that.” And he would come back and say “Not a word needs to be changed. This is an original, fresh idea. We do not actually have a script for the next episode yet, but the writers will certainly not allow anyone else to come in on this.”

And one day I hope that I can initiate a television series, and one of the functions will be to bring in new writers. [audience applauds].

But [‘Sliders’] always makes me sad.