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Sliders
Sliders intertitle
Format	Science fiction
Created by	Tracy TorméRobert K. Weiss
Starring	Jerry O'ConnellCleavant DerricksSabrina LloydJohn Rhys-DaviesKari WührerCharlie O'ConnellRobert FloydTembi Locke
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	88 (List of episodes)
Production
Executiveproducer(s)	Tracy TorméRobert K. WeissJohn LandisLeslie BelzbergAlan BarnetteDavid Peckinpah
Running time	approx. 44 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	FOX (USA; season 1–3)Sci Fi Channel (USA)Sky One (UK)
Original run	March 22, 1995 – December 29, 1999
External links
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Sliders is an American science fiction television series created by Tracy Tormé and Robert K. Weiss that ran for five seasons from 1995 to 2000. The series focuses on a group of travelers who "slide" between parallel worlds by use of an interdimensional wormhole referred to as an "Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky bridge."

The first three seasons of Sliders were shown by the FOX Network. It was originally put on hiatus after the first season, which was broadcast from March 22, 1995 to May 17, 1995, but was brought back for a second season after much fan protest, from March 1, 1996 to July 12, 1996. A third season was broadcast from September 20, 1996 to May 16, 1997. The Sci Fi Channel produced the fourth season (June 8, 1998—April 23, 1999) and fifth season (from June 11, 1999—February 4, 2000), but announced in July 1999 that Sliders had been cancelled, and that there would not be a sixth season. The last new episode first aired on December 29, 1999 in the United Kingdom and finally aired on the Sci-Fi Channel on February 4, 2000.

The show was produced by Tormé, Robert K. Weiss, and David Peckinpah.

The series was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in its first two seasons. The filming of the show relocated to Los Angeles, California for the last three seasons.

In 2025, the original cast members reunited for the first time since season three.

Contents

• 1 Changing themes
• 2 Plot
  • 2.1 Season one
  • 2.2 Season two
  • 2.3 Season three
  • 2.4 Season four
  • 2.5 Season five
• 3 Cast
  • 3.1 Main cast
  • 3.2 Supporting cast
  • 3.3 Recurring guest stars
  • 3.4 Changing cast
  • 3.5 Changing staff
• 4 Show concepts
  • 4.1 Timer
  • 4.2 Doubles
  • 4.3 Vortex
  • 4.4 Hotel
• 5 Intro
• 6 Connection to other works
• 7 DVD releases
  • 7.1 Streaming
• 8 Sliders in other media
• 9 References
• 10 External links

Changing themes[]

The nature of the show changed throughout the seasons. The first two seasons focused on alternate histories and social norms, with the consensus amongst the creative team maintaining these two seasons to be largely superior to what would come later on during the series' third season.[1][2] These stories explored what would have happened, for example, if America was conquered by the Soviet Union, if Britain had won the American War of Independence, if penicillin had not been invented, or if men were subservient to women.

The third season introduced the first significant changes to the premise of Sliders. As a result of increased FOX Network oversight (and forced reduction of day-to-day creative control by creator Tormé, episodes became far more action-oriented, even going so far as to devolve into riffs on major genre feature-films (including Species, Twister, and Anaconda). To the series' creators, this was the beginning of a downward creative trend, culminating with the firing of John Rhys-Davies by the network,[3] and Tracy Tormé deciding not to contractually continue with the series he himself created, in light of the massive creative interference he was receiving from the network executives.[1]

The fourth and fifth seasons saw the series moved to the Sci-Fi Channel, and a restoration of the series creators' original "alternate history" premise; the other major storyline (begun at the end of the second season, but de-emphasized during Season Three) involved the growing war against the Kromaggs.

Plot[]

Main article: List of Sliders episodes

Season one[]

Episodes 1 - 10

Please see Season 1.

Season two[]

Episodes 11 – 23

Please see Season 2.

Season three[]

Episodes 24 – 48

Please see Season 3.

Season four[]

Episodes 49 – 70

Please see Season 4.

Season five[]

Episodes 71 – 88

Please see Season 5.

Cast[]

Main article: List of actors

Main cast[]

• Quinn Mallory (seasons 1-4), played by Jerry O'Connell
• Wade Kathleen Welles (seasons 1-3, voice of Wade in "Requiem", S5e11), played by Sabrina Lloyd
• Rembrandt Lee "Crying Man" Brown (seasons 1-5), played by Cleavant Derricks
• Professor Maximillian P. Arturo (seasons 1-3), played by John Rhys-Davies
• Maggie Beckett (seasons 3-5), played by Kari Wührer

Supporting cast[]

• Colin Mallory (season 4), played by Charlie O'Connell
• Quinn Mallory (2) a.k.a. Mallory (season 5), played by Robert Floyd
• Diana Davis (season 5), played by Tembi Locke

Recurring guest stars[]

Main article: Recurring characters of Sliders

• Colonel Angus Rickman, played by Roger Daltrey ("The Exodus" parts 1 and 2 (S3e16–17)) and Neil Dickson (episodes "The Other Slide of Darkness", "Dinoslide", "Stoker" and "This Slide of Paradise" (S3e21, S3e23–25))
• Elston Diggs, played by Lester Barrie (episodes "Double Cross", "The Dream Masters", "Desert Storm", "Dragonslide", "Murder Most Foul", and "The Breeder" (S3e2, S3e5–7, S3e13, S3e19))
• Dr. Oberon Geiger, played by Peter Jurasik (episodes "The Unstuck Man", "Applied Physics", and "Eye of the Storm" (S5e1–2, S5e17))

Changing cast[]

Cleavant Derricks (Rembrandt Brown) is the only cast member to stay with the series throughout its entire run, while Derricks and Linda Henning (Mrs. Mallory) are the only actors to appear in both the first and last episodes of the series. Many rumors persist on fan web pages about why some of these casting changes occurred.

Changing staff[]

The series co-creator, Tracy Tormé, has often been critical of the direction the series took in the third season.[4] David Peckinpah was brought onto the series in the third season (around the time when Tormé started to criticize the show). Peckinpah has been criticized by fans of the show, who argue that his involvement caused the show to "jump the shark." [5]

Seasons four and five have their fanbases; some even said season four improved on three (largely due to new executive producer Marc Scott Zicree's decision to restore Tracy Tormé's original "alternate history" premise for the series). [citation needed]

Show concepts[]

Timer[]

The Timer is a handheld device that resembles a mobile phone or remote control. The Sliders have a finite amount of time to stay in each world, a time which is beyond their control, and is revealed on the timer's display upon arriving on the parallel Earth. The only time they are able to leave a parallel Earth is when the timer hits "zero." If they do not slide at that time, they will not have another opportunity to slide for another 29.7 years. In the "Rules of the Game", it is first stated that the Sliders must wait 29 years for the next slide, if they miss it when the timer hits zero (though this was also stated in a deleted scene of "Summer of Love"). It is mentioned again in several more episodes. The timer has frequently been lost, stolen, or damaged during the slides. However, it is almost always recovered, repaired, or replaced before they are scheduled to slide.

Different timers have different countdown times — if you miss the window on one timer, you could still slide out with another.

In the first two seasons, the prop of the timer is a rebuilt Motorola cellular phone, however it changes in later seasons to a television remote.

Doubles[]

One of the concepts of the show is the concept of doubles. On many parallel Earths, there will be alternate versions of the same person. The Sliders frequently encounter alternate versions of themselves. Sometimes, the doubles of the Sliders had similar personality traits and interests (for example, many doubles of Quinn Mallory had invented sliding, or were in the process of inventing sliding). Sometimes, however, the personality traits of the Sliders are entirely different. Gender and appearance of doubles is also somewhat fluid, although this is only seen in a few cases.

Some of the doubles the Sliders encounter are doubles of people they know from Earth Prime, such as Quinn's classmate Conrad Bennish, Jr. In the episodes "Dragonslide" and "The Prince of Slides", Rembrandt meets doubles of girlfriends from Earth Prime, and in the episode "Eggheads", Arturo meets a double of his late wife. Sometimes doubles of the family members of the Sliders are found during sliding; Quinn often encounters doubles of his parents, and in the episode "Season's Greedings", Wade meets doubles of her father and sister.

On some of the alternate Earths that the Sliders visit, there are alternate versions of celebrities and politicians of Earth Prime. However, celebrities on these alternate Earths sometimes have different levels of fame than their Earth Prime counterparts. In addition, some of the alternate versions of Earth Prime politicians hold different offices. For example, the Sliders find alternate Earths where Oliver North, Hillary Clinton, Jocelyn Elders, and even B-movie filmmaker Ed Wood[6] were at one time in their respective worlds, president of the United States. In the pilot episode, the former cast of The People's Court guest starred as their own doubles in a Soviet-styled parody of the show.

Cleavant Derricks's identical twin brother, Clinton Derricks-Carroll, occasionally appeared on the show, in the episodes "The King Is Back", "Greatfellas", and "The Prince of Slides", when there was a need for Rembrandt and his double to interact.

Vortex[]

The vortex, a wormhole opened by the timer that the Sliders carry around, is the means by which the Sliders travel from one parallel universe to another. In the pilot and several other episodes, Quinn refers to the vortex as an "Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky bridge," a fictitious term that may have arisen out of a confusion between the actual term Einstein-Rosen bridge (a type of wormhole in physics) and the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox (a famous thought-experiment in quantum mechanics, which is unrelated to wormholes). The look of the vortex changes throughout the series. From the first to third season, the vortex is a bluish whirlpool, and is somewhat transparent. In the fourth and fifth seasons, the vortex appeared as a mostly-blue whirlpool with some blue-green, and is entirely opaque.

In the episode "Gillian of the Spirits", Arturo says the vortex will close itself automatically after being open for sixty seconds. However, in several episodes — including "Gillian of the Spirits" — the vortex is open well beyond sixty seconds.

Hotel[]

The Sliders will often stay at the same hotel on different worlds, and in a recurring plot device, would usually stay in the same room. In Season One, this is Room 12 at the Motel 12 in San Francisco. In Season Two, it is the Dominion Hotel in San Francisco (this may just have been a different name for the Motel 12, as they are often both managed by the same person, Gomez Calhoun). In Season Three, they stay at the Chancellor Hotel in Los Angeles; however, the real-life Chancellor Hotel in San Francisco objected to the use of the name, so in Seasons Four and Five, they stay at the Chandler Hotel in Los Angeles.

Intro[]

The beginning credits started by watching a spiral of earths and a monologue describing the premise of the show:

• Season 1: "What if you could find brand new worlds right here on Earth, where anything is possible: same planet, different dimension? I found the gateway!"
• Season 2: "What if you could travel to parallel worlds? The same year, the same Earth, only different dimensions? A world where the Russians ruled America? Or where your dreams of being a superstar came true? Or where San Francisco was a maximum security prison? My friends and I found the gateway. Now, the problem is: finding a way back home."
• Seasons 3, 4, and 5: "What if you found a portal to a parallel universe? What if you could slide into a thousand different worlds - where it's the same year, and you're the same person, but everything else is different? And what if you can't find your way home?"

In the first through fourth seasons, Quinn spoke the monologue. Rembrandt spoke the monologue in the fifth and final season, after Quinn had left the show. The monologue was followed by music, without lyrics. The first and second seasons had music that were unique to each season, and the third to fifth seasons had roughly the same music.

Connection to other works[]

Some people believe the series may have been inspired by the book The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Joness, in which a young boy from Earth "bounds" between parallel worlds, searching for his home. Others believe it to be inspired by Piers Anthony's "Mode" series of novels. However, a possible inspiration that seems very close may have been George R.R. Martin's 1992 ABC pilot Doorways, in which the main cast were fugitives fleeing through parallel worlds, while carrying a device that tells them where and when the next Doorway opens. Although ABC commissioned six additional scripts after the pilot film was completed, Doorways never went to series, as ABC decided to launch Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in the fall of 1993, instead. At the time of Sliders' launch, some TV critics noted the similarities to Doorways, and Martin claimed that Sliders creator Tracy Tormé applied for a writing position on the show, although Tormé later denied this.

DVD releases[]

DVD Name	Cover Art	Region 1	Region 2	Region 4	Special Features
Sliders - The First and Second Seasons		August 3, 2004	December 27, 2004	May 2, 2005	"Making Of" documentary, with interviews from Cleavant Derricks and Jerry O'Connell. Audio commentary on the pilot episode by series creators Robert K. Weiss and Tracy Tormé.
Sliders - The Third Season		July 19, 2005	October 31, 2005	February 8, 2006	Gag reel (Region 1 Only)
Sliders - The Fourth Season		March 25, 2008	May 19, 2008	June 4, 2008
Sliders - The Fifth and Final Season		January 17, 2012	January 17, 2012	January 17, 2012
Sliders - The Complete Series		January 1, 2019	January 1, 2019	January 1, 2019

Streaming[]

As of 2025, Sliders is available for streaming on Peacock. [7]

On August 23, 2007, Netflix Instant View provided all five seasons of Sliders available for computer streaming. Netflix is also allowing customers to reserve copies of a DVD release for Season Five of the series, but the DVD release date is listed as unknown.

On March 12, 2008, Universal Studios added Sliders season one to their free online viewing service, Hulu.

Sliders in other media[]

• The pilot episode of Sliders was novelized by science-fiction writer Brad Linaweaver, and was released in the spring of 1996, one year after the series originally premiered. Linaweaver's novelization incorporates several deleted scenes from the original pilot episode production script, along with Linaweaver's own additions to the plot.

• Linaweaver also later compiled an episodic guide to the show, Sliders: The Classic Episodes, which contained information only on Seasons One through Three.

• Dennis McCarthy produced a Sliders soundtrack with select orchestrated music from season one of the series.[8]

• Sliders has also been spun-off into a comic book series published by Acclaim Comics. This comics series had no direct input from series creators Tracy Tormé and Robert K. Weiss, but Tracy Tormé did pass along several notes detailing stories that went unproduced. Series star Jerry O'Connell also personally authored one special issue of this comic series. While advertised and solicited for advance order, the final Sliders comic, titled Get a Life, never made it to store shelves; but artist Rags Morales completed art for 14 pages of the comic before production was stopped.[9]

• After the changes of the DC Comics event mini-series Zero Hour, the artistic design of time travel was changed and first introduced in Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 3 number 74. During the issue, Superboy comments that this new artistic design of time travel is similar to the tunnel effect on Sliders.[10] This new artistic design for time travel has been used by DC Comics from the 1995 debut through to its last appearance in 2005 in the Teen Titans/Legion Special.

• In the December 19, 1996 FoxTrot strip by Bill Amend, Frosty the Snowman condemns Paige for watching Sliders instead of his own Christmas television special.[11]

• In 1997, the Desktop Images production company released a training video on the subject of Organic Modeling and Animation hosted by David Lombardi. This how-to video gave a special behind the scenes look at the special effects process used on the Sliders season three episodes Paradise Lost and Dinoslide.[12]

• Released in 1999, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel, The The Gatekeeper Vol 3: Sons of Entropy, featured characters Angel and Oz discussing Sliders in relation to their current situation.

• During the year 2000, Private Media Group produced pornography titled Sex Slider Shag-a-rama which was based on Sliders.

• Marvel's Exiles features several Marvel characters who have been pulled from their own realities to fix problems in alternate ones. Series creator Judd Winick has stated that Sliders was part of the inspiration for the series.[13]

• Starting October 15, 2002, the webcomic Real Life featured an epic interdimensional adventure based upon and referencing Sliders.[14]

• During the week of June 13, 2003, the Unshelved comics strip character Dewey recalls Sliders when he discovers the library has been re-modeled overnight.[15]

• In 2003, Vivendi Universal produced a Hulk game for Nintendo GameCube and Xbox which featured the Sliders season one theme song produced by Mark Mothersbaugh. The Mothersbaugh theme song is featured during the level of the game titled Reckoning 2 which is one of the final levels of the game.

• Released February, 2005, Marvel Knights 4 issue 15 features the Human Torch fondly remembering Sliders as the fantastic team prepares to embark on a time travel mission.[16]

• Damien Broderick's 2005 novel Godplayers mentions Sliders on page 47. The reference is in comparison to the novel's own dimension hopping heroes.

• Released December 20, 2005, the ADV Films dub of Ghost Stories features a Sliders reference in Episode 8 at time stamp 6:01. Satsuki says; "[Leo] hasn't been this disappointed since they canceled Sliders."

• The July 16, 2007 Small Market Sports comics strip uses the opening monologue of Sliders to demonstrate how David Beckham is creating a parallel world where soccer is popular in the United States.[17]

• Sliders has been the subject of several trivia questions on game shows such as Jeopardy!, The Weakest Link, Hollywood Showdown and Beat the Geeks.

• The September 14, 2007 issue of online comic VGCats (#239: Bizzaro!) features Leo mentioning Sliders, followed by a scene in a parallel universe into which the original line-up (Rembrandt, Arturo, Quinn and Wade) slide. The Timer states they are there for three years.

References[]

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Template:Cite magazine
2. ↑ Template:Cite magazine
3. ↑ Template:Cite magazine
4. ↑ http://www.earth62.net/transcripts/torme27jun97.htm Accessed: 18 October 2006
5. ↑ http://www.jumptheshark.com/topic/sliders-general-comments/1808
6. ↑ Oliver North is president in "Summer of Love"; Hillary Clinton is president in "The Weaker Sex"; Jocelyn Elders is president in "Luck of the Draw"; Edward D. Wood, Jr. was president in "Into the Mystic".
7. ↑ https://www.peacocktv.com/watch-online/tv/sliders/7377722038119254112
8. ↑ http://www.dennismccarthy.com/sliders.html Accessed: 19 August 2007
9. ↑ http://www.dimensionofcontinuity.com/getalife.htm Accessed: 03 March 2007
10. ↑ http://www.dimensionofcontinuity.com/sprby.htm Accessed: 03 March 2007
11. ↑ http://www.gocomics.com/foxtrotclassics/2007/12/20/ Accessed: 24 December 2007
12. ↑ http://slidersweb.net/blinker/hall/tid/wormvid.htm Accessed: 03 March 2007
13. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20010302175253/216.251.240.98/Comics/CB1116-WinickBlink.asp Accessed: 03 March 2007
14. ↑ http://www.reallifecomics.com/archive/021015.html Accessed: 03 March 2007
15. ↑ http://www.unshelved.com/archive.aspx?strip=20030614 Accessed: 20 July 2007
16. ↑ http://www.dimensionofcontinuity.com/4Sliders.jpg Accessed: 03 March 2007
17. ↑ http://www.smallmarketsports.com/?p=116 Accessed: 20 July 2007

External links[]

• Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to Sliders
• Sliders at the Open Directory Project
• Sliders at Hulu
• Slidecage
• Earth Prime

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Sliders. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Sliders Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.