The Crapparatus

The Seer [early draft script]

Written by Keith Damron

MSTed by SL4ever

Script courtesy of DMD


 The Seer - Part III

ThomasMalthus and EustiSlider enter the theater. A cheer builds up.

"Slider fans! Slider fans!" HTWD and TBH are holding up signs that say "Welcome Sliders Fans." They are wearing concert-style T-shirts, one with TM's picture on it, the other with ES's picture on it, as well as buttons, hats and all manner of paraphernalia.

TIP: <from doorway> : Hee hee. He said paraphernalia.

TM and ES exchange a look.

IHK: Remember, you can get 6 sneers or 4 smiles for one coquettish moue.

TM: Um, this has to be the most retarded host segment EVER.

ES: How can two people be a crowd?

HTWD: <dropping his sign and reaching for a Bud Light> : Fine. Pee on our picnic. >:-# See if I laugh at any of your riffs.

ES: Aw, man, I'm sorry. Let's do this again. We'll walk through again and this time I'll say with a knowing smirk, "did you call ahead?"

TBH: NO!!! We'll do anything to avoid THAT! Projectionist! Roll 'em!

Projectionist: Sure, order me around like a common serf. >:-#

THE SEER: Perhaps I should take it from here, daughter.

TBH: Because he always goes around calling her "daughter." It's not to define their relationship for the audience or anything. What do you think about that, best friend?

HTWD: I think it's lazy and weak, best friend. What about you, fellow Sliders fan?

ES: I think this could get tedious really quickly, fellow Sliders fan.

THE SEER: My friends, I have been observing your exploits for some time.

HTWD: So did you start watching from the first season or are you one of those inexplicable people who saw season 3 or 4 first and actually got addicted to the show from THOSE horrid eps?

MALLORY (sotto, to the others)

ES: HE'S GOING SOTTO!!!! WATCH OUT!!

MALLORY: Someone forgot to give grandpa his medicine again.

TM: >:-# I was eating popcorn so I couldn't get my hands over my ears in time. Hmmmm, Mallory also likes to make fun of old people. Remind you of anyone?

But he heard.

TBH: <mimicking The Seer> : Could you "joke" in a lower voice, please? I just had lunch.

THE SEER: Ironically, there is a bit of truth to that, Mr. Mallory.

HTWD: Does anyone know what the word "irony" even MEANS anymore? There is NOTHING ironic about Mallory's verbal diarrhea.

TM: Maybe he's getting to the ironic part.

THE SEER: Several years ago I had a massive heart attack.

HTWD: I'm not seeing the irony.

THE SEER: Almost didn't survive. Once I finally recovered I found that, along with a much weakened heart,

HTWD: Still not seeing it.

TM: I concede your point.

THE SEER: I also had a strange new ability.

ES: He sees dead careers. He's looking at Robert Floyd's right now.

MAGGIE: New ability?

TM: He can tell which music is garbage just by holding the CD. He put your CD back down in a record 1/16th of a second.

THE SEER: I began seeing visions.

Pauly Shore: <from doorway, holding a bong> : What's new about that ability?

THE SEER: Images of all of you

TBH: Neekid. :-P~~~~~~~~~~

THE SEER: and-your previous companions. After awhile I came to realize that these were not hallucinations.

HTWD: Which implies that before you that, you figured you were nuttier than Al Franken.

THE SEER: I was seeing genuine events in space and time.

ES: Was this scriptwriter being paid by the word? All genuine events are in space and time. Duh!

DIANA: The term is remote viewing. Watching something in your mind from a remote location.

TM: So how many fields does this make her an expert in? This is the paranormal. We also have physics, biomechanics, astronomy, paleontology, hmmm, you folks at home help me out.

THE SEER: Call it what you will.

TBH: Okay, I'll call it "Drug Induced Lunatic Fantasies."

THE SEER: I eventually learned that I could see out into interdimensional space. Somehow my consciousness locked onto your little group.

TBH: <mimicking Freud> : So your consciousness hates you?

REMBRANDT: And you painted pictures of what you saw.

HTWD: I'm calling a stop to the Remmy Mr. Obvious jokes for this ep. He's making it far too easy!

He nods.

CLAIRE: We began to share what we knew of you with our world, through the paintings and the writings of my father. It didn't take long for stories of your travels to become popular lore.

ES: Okay, so let's break this down. "Several years ago" Nutboy here has a heart attack and begins getting the visions. Recovery takes a couple months usually. Then "after awhile" The Seer realizes that these are real visions. So put that at Heart Attack plus four months. So he starts painting pictures of these and writing books about his visions. Two months for The Seer to write the first book, and that is being generous. Two months waiting for the publisher to read the manuscript even if the very first publisher magically loves it and accepts it. Then its a YEAR from publisher acceptance to the time the book hits the stores. That's 18 months, and that's being very generous. Meanwhile people are for some reason going to art galleries and digging these pictures. So someone decides to make a series based on these books and paintings. Six months preproduction and filming of the first season, then 6 months for the first season to air. Even the X-Files, one of the quickest nothing to massive fan base success stories of all time didn't really take off until the middle of the second season. To get the kind of popularity we're hearing from these people, you need 2 or 3 full seasons. For everything he just described to have happened you'd have to realistically have 4 or 5 years elapse. Especially if you have the popularity starting to fade to such an extent that they need the real Sliders to stay around.

Mallory picks up a novel off a large stack of hardback books and looks at it - "VIRTUAL SLIDE, BY THE SEER."

TM: I'm with you, Eust, he's had time to write a large stack of books????????

TBH: As if "Virtual Slide" couldn't be novelized by a second-grader over recess.

HTWD: As if there was THAT much time between lines for you to deliver that ra--

THE SEER: Especially after the Kromaggs came. You inspired many of us to fight them.

ES: Oooooo, almost forgot, they had time for a Kromagg invasion and fighting them off as well! Add two more years to that estimate!

DIANA: Kromaggs were here?

TBH: Of course! We're going to cram as much stuff into this 45 minute ep as we can! Is there time to mention the cannibals?

CLAIRE: Until we defeated them with a synthetic virus engineered by our scientists.

HTWD: You're fans of the wrong SF show. That was inspired by "V."

The Sliders react.

EustiSlider reacts.

THE SEER: I believe the phrase is, we sent them packing.

TM: Actually, the phrase is "violently ill" which is what I'm going to be if you keep trying to be cute.

CLAIRE: Your fellowship and philosophy of life fueled a following that to this day is tens of thousands strong.

TBH: That's all? At its height, 26-30 million people watched X-Files each week. If they had started a religion, Mulderology let's say, they could get at least one million losers from that number to join, couldn't they?

MAGGIE: You see, Rem, you can never give up hope.

HTWD: HA HA HA HA HA!!! This is the same person who said "Here's the timer, I QUIT" at the end of Requiem before Remmy rejoined them.

REMBRANDT (kidding) : Who me? I never gave up hope, I thought that was you.

ES: Woo hoo! That's killer material, Remmy! You should take your stand up act on the road!

MALLORY: So this means we can kick the 'maggs off Remmy's world?

TM: This is a mixed blessing. He's stating the obvious for the members of the viewing audience who are too mentally impaired to figure it out themselves, but at least he's not quipping. :-P

DIANA: Sure looks that way. If we can get there.

The Seer and Claire don't seem to share their enthusiasm.

TBH: <holding one big hand up to his ear> : Is that the sound of the other shoe dropping?

THE SEER: I wish that were the case.

HTWD: But I can't let you leave until you dance! DANCE, damn you! DANCE!!

MAGGIE: There's always a 'but' isn't there?

ES: If we're talking about your music video or movie appearances, then yes. And they are usually neekid.

THE SEER: For some reason I have also been able, occasionally, to see through the fabric of inter-dimensional time.

TM: Which is different than regular time.

THE SEER: I have seen your future and I know the next slide you take will be your last. The moment you emerge from the other side of the wormhole you will all instantly die.

TBH: Why is it that psychics are such party poopers? They never predict things like, "on the next world you arrive at, two things are always free. Blowjobs and shrimp scampi."

HTWD: WOO HOO!!!! I would smash my timer under the nearest rock as soon as I got there!

That puts a damper on things, then...

ES: The Seer told them that it would be 65 years before the Braves would make it back to the World Series and they felt a little better.

MAGGIE: How?

TM: All I'm seeing is something about Gazpacho soup.

THE SEER: That is not clear to me.

TBH: <mimicking The Seer> : What is clear to me is that Remmy dies with his arms wrapped around a large pig. Very disturbing.

THE SEER: But, know that I felt the death of your friends, the professor and Ms. Welles.

HTWD: So the producers go to great lengths to make sure that think that Wade is alive at the end of Requiem and then now they just have The Seer unceremoniously declare her dead.

TBH: To say nothing about the fact that the Professor died at least three years ago, maybe longer because time passing on the show gets fuzzy in a couple places.

THE SEER: I have never been wrong. You must never leave this world.

Off their reactions we...

ES: Wonder why none of that reaction has to do with the sudden news that Wade is definitely dead.

CUT TO:
10 EXT. BROWNSTONE STREET - EXTREME WIDE ANGLE - DAY 10

(Note: This sequence will be constructed from previously shot footage, intercut with the Sliders' side of the action.)

TM: We noted a lot time ago that you all are cheap reusing footage bastards. But thanks again for the heads up.

On Rembrandt, Maggie and Diana. They are armed, running for their lives from a pack of Kromaggs in Hummers. They duck behind a nearby car, pop up and return a hail of GUNFIRE.

TBH: I know that people driving Hummers in LA are hideously annoying, but shooting at them is a little extreme.

One of the Kromaggs produces a LAWS rocket. He FIRES. BLAMMO, the car EXPLODES, barely grazing the Sliders as they retreat.

HTWD: LAWS rockets go "blammo" ?

Our heroes congregate behind the cover of a building. They join up with Mallory and PROFESSOR ARTURO?

ES: Hey, you tell us. We're just enduring this horrid ep, you're the one writing it!

Or rather, a heavy-set man with messy hair and a beard who is supposed to look like Arturo.

TM: John Candy looked more like Arturo than this moron did. He looks at least a foot shorter than JRD!

As a matter of fact, the only Slider who is, in fact, a real Slider is Diana! (Actually, her duplicate, DIANA #2. However, unlike our own mega-talented Tembi,

TBH: Our derisive laughter at this HIDEOUS suckup comment is not going to be adequate. We want all of you reading this to laugh with us.

ALL: HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

this Diana could use a Stanislavsky refresher.)

HTWD: You can't recover from that abject self humiliation with an obtuse reference.

DIANA #2: Professor Arturo, thank God you're here!

ES: This is odd. When Tembi tries to act like she can't act, she acts very well. Hmmm.

He produces a rather bulky timer knock-off and keys it. A cheesy, poorly rendered VORTEX with bad matte lines APPEARS. The Sliders slide O.S. The image FADES OUT.

TM: So the message is that if Sliders had been more cheesy and poorly produced, it would have more fans on our world! Are they really telling us that this show has the production values of a local fishing show but yet it's insanely popular?

HTWD: <while fitting Madonna bullet bra on his MSR action figure> : I guess the moral is that Cheese is King. Sliders should have been cheesier! >:-#