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Sliders and The Long Earth, etc
Sep. 28th, 2025 04:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fayanoraBeen thinking about the 90's scifi TV show "Sliders" lately, because it was most likely what first introduced me to the idea of the multiverse, and traveling it. First two seasons were pretty good, and then the quality took a sharp nose dive. Three of the main cast eventually left, the guy who invented the sliding technology got merged with someone else to explain why he was recast. Oh, and the final season ended on a cliffhanger.
I don't recall what channel it was on that I was able to watch it, but I must have stopped watching it somewhere in seasons 1 or 2, because there are some things that happened that I don't remember seeing, like when they introduced a recurring villain species of alternate humans, the kromaggs. Everything I've heard and read and seen about the kromaggs makes me think they were a good idea, even if a lot of people were upset by it. But yeah, you can only do "new world of the week" format for so long before it gets stale. Introducing a species of highly technologically advanced alternate humans that are going around to other Earths and conquering, destroying, or raiding them for supplies is a great way to add stakes. And the kromaggs looked pretty interesting, very visually distinct. I feel bad I never got to see that arc when the series was airing.
This made me think of a few things. First, I think I might have enough material about my Ravenstone series' multiverse to make a show with a similar premise, especially with a bit of writing help. Especially since that multiverse contains entities that control the fates of trillions of universes, entities like the deadly Nightmare, or like The Director, who doesn't destroy; they take people's free will from them and turns them into Heroes or Villains for their melodramatic stories, the kind of story changing over the centuries. Their current obsession is "steampunk in outer space." And then there are weird and creepy locations like Twilight or Stillness. There's universes where the form of Christianity that swept the world was very different from Catholicism. Worlds where Christianity / monotheism never arose. Worlds with entirely different magic systems from the main Neighborhood of universes the series takes place in (like the area of The Director, for one example). And because of "trailing universes" and "timeskip universes," a series set in that multiverse can even do something resembling time travel, without the same consequences. If you go to a world where it's still 1950 and you kill your parents before they can meet, that doesn't affect you at all because those aren't your parents, those are multiverse doubles of your parents. Most you can do is make a new universe where you don't exist.
Then, too, another thing I thought of is someone could adapt the "Long Earth" series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter into a TV series. It would be great, as it has a multiverse to explore, but the twist is that the multiverse is mostly empty of sapient life, apart from a few "joker" worlds like our earth, and some species from the homo genus that started Stepping long ago and evolved to adapt to wandering the long Earth.
The best part about adapting "The Long Earth" to TV would be that the book series is complete, you don't need to worry about coming up with new stories, just adapt the books' stories to television. You might have to do a little padding here and there to stretch it out, but there's obvious angles to do that from, including history and current politics. I'm thinking one book per season, so we mainly focus in season one on switching between the arcs of the settlers' journeys, and Lobsang and his friends exploring the high megas. Maybe throw in a few small foreshadowing bits for future arcs like the Next. Then book two becomes season two, and so on.
I guess the main issue would be getting the rights to do that. But I think it would be a great series. There's only so many books, so it's not like the series could easily overstay its welcome, as long as you actually stop the series at the last book and don't go trying to pull a "Supernatural" or "The Simpsons" by letting it live beyond the time it should have died.
I don't recall what channel it was on that I was able to watch it, but I must have stopped watching it somewhere in seasons 1 or 2, because there are some things that happened that I don't remember seeing, like when they introduced a recurring villain species of alternate humans, the kromaggs. Everything I've heard and read and seen about the kromaggs makes me think they were a good idea, even if a lot of people were upset by it. But yeah, you can only do "new world of the week" format for so long before it gets stale. Introducing a species of highly technologically advanced alternate humans that are going around to other Earths and conquering, destroying, or raiding them for supplies is a great way to add stakes. And the kromaggs looked pretty interesting, very visually distinct. I feel bad I never got to see that arc when the series was airing.
This made me think of a few things. First, I think I might have enough material about my Ravenstone series' multiverse to make a show with a similar premise, especially with a bit of writing help. Especially since that multiverse contains entities that control the fates of trillions of universes, entities like the deadly Nightmare, or like The Director, who doesn't destroy; they take people's free will from them and turns them into Heroes or Villains for their melodramatic stories, the kind of story changing over the centuries. Their current obsession is "steampunk in outer space." And then there are weird and creepy locations like Twilight or Stillness. There's universes where the form of Christianity that swept the world was very different from Catholicism. Worlds where Christianity / monotheism never arose. Worlds with entirely different magic systems from the main Neighborhood of universes the series takes place in (like the area of The Director, for one example). And because of "trailing universes" and "timeskip universes," a series set in that multiverse can even do something resembling time travel, without the same consequences. If you go to a world where it's still 1950 and you kill your parents before they can meet, that doesn't affect you at all because those aren't your parents, those are multiverse doubles of your parents. Most you can do is make a new universe where you don't exist.
Then, too, another thing I thought of is someone could adapt the "Long Earth" series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter into a TV series. It would be great, as it has a multiverse to explore, but the twist is that the multiverse is mostly empty of sapient life, apart from a few "joker" worlds like our earth, and some species from the homo genus that started Stepping long ago and evolved to adapt to wandering the long Earth.
The best part about adapting "The Long Earth" to TV would be that the book series is complete, you don't need to worry about coming up with new stories, just adapt the books' stories to television. You might have to do a little padding here and there to stretch it out, but there's obvious angles to do that from, including history and current politics. I'm thinking one book per season, so we mainly focus in season one on switching between the arcs of the settlers' journeys, and Lobsang and his friends exploring the high megas. Maybe throw in a few small foreshadowing bits for future arcs like the Next. Then book two becomes season two, and so on.
I guess the main issue would be getting the rights to do that. But I think it would be a great series. There's only so many books, so it's not like the series could easily overstay its welcome, as long as you actually stop the series at the last book and don't go trying to pull a "Supernatural" or "The Simpsons" by letting it live beyond the time it should have died.
