Repeat offense

Got (among other things) seasons 1 & 2 of Sliders on DVD for Christmas. For those not familiar, it was a TV show aired in the mid- to late-90's about a group of 4 people who "slid" between alternate Earths, trying to find their way back home. The first 2 seasons were terrific. Early in the 3rd season, Professor Arturo (John Rhys-Davies) was killed off and replaced w/Maggie Beckett (Kari Wuhrer) to up the "sex appeal". The show started going down hill from there, and when the cute-as-a-button Sabrina Lloyd (as Wade Wells) left at the end of season 3 (when the show switched from Fox to Sci-Fi) things got even worse. I refuse to even acknowledge season 5 as being part of the same show, it was that lame.

Anyway, I happened to notice something about seasons 1 & 2 that I hadn't picked up on during the original airing. Watching the shows back-to-back as they were originally broadcast, I realized they weren't aired in chronological order. Apparently, even back then, Fox couldn't keep their meddling little hands out of the creators' and writers' way. The biggest example of this was the episode "Invasion", which ended as a cliffhanger and was supposed to finish of season 2. But it was aired several episodes before the end of the season, so after the cliffhanger there are several new episodes which had nothing to do with the Kromaggs. Rather confusing. So, they dink with Sliders, dump the show because the ratings aren't where they want them and tick off millions of fans. More recently, they did the same thing with Firefly (covered in a previous rant). And they screwed up Wonderfalls (again, as ranted about here), though at least they changed their M.O. on that one. I have no doubt they've done it other times as well, though can't recall what right now.

You'd think they'd learn by now. I mean, they took at least 3 fantabulous shows, screwed up the advertising, overruled the creators & writers, thoroughly screwed them up, then wondered why the ratings weren't where they wanted. Putzes.