Sliders: The Third Season

“Mastermind Quinn Mallory returns for more fantastical adventures as he continues traveling from universe to universe in the complete Third Season of SLIDERS. Along with comrade Wade, physics professor Arturo and Rembrandt “Crying Man” Brown, Quinn explores new and mysterious Earths and along the way encounters tornadoes, droughts, wizards, warlocks and even his own younger self. Featuring TV’s hottst guest stars, including Apollonia Kotero, Cory Feldman and Danny Masterson, Sliders will rock your world. All 25 thrilling episodes of season three are here in this 4 disc set and available for the first time on DVD! Will they ever make it home?”

On July 19, 2005, Universal Home Video released the Third Season DVD box set. In addition to the complete series, the set came with a few bonus features such as a truncated gag reel and episodes of other Universal series — “Earth 2” and “Cleopatra 2525.” As part of the launch, Universal also distributed a promotional DVD.

Specifications

Sliders: The Third Season comes on four DVDs. Each DVD is dual-sided and each side has three or four episodes on it, all presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 monaural audio. The DVDs present the show as it was broadcast; namely, a standard 4:3 (1.33:1) ratio.

Discography

The packaging a step up from the previous release, but it’s still a far way to go to make it user-friendly. Making each disc dual sided means extra attention must me paid when handling the set, but the layout of the discs makes scratching them an inevitability. When will Universal learn to package their box sets in slimpacks or something a little more intuitive (i.e. no foam or bizarre folded plastic sleeves)?

Here is the breakdown of what appears on each disc. Please note that — once again — episodes are presented in the order as they were originally aired, not how they were intended to air:

Menu System

The Region 1 menu system is more or less identical to the first box set — the first season music is still used and the background loop and key art is unchanged. The main menu’s animation is a montage of season 3 credit clips, so you’ll see shots from previous seasons in there as well. Aside from a change from blue to green in the sub-menu coloration scheme, expect what you saw before.

The Region 2 menu system is much different, however. While there’s some weirdness (Electric Twister Acid Test is just “Electric Twister”), the overall design is more focused on the third season — the third season wormhole surround the selections and there’s a montage of the episodes on the DVD when the menu starts up. Here are some samples of what the folks across the Pond are seeing when they pop in their disks:

Promotional Materials

Below you’ll find box art promotional information sent to retailers to hype the set’s release:

Rental Jewel Box Art

A number of people have expressed displeasure with the design of the box set. If you’re looking to get your DVDs out of the weird plastic book and into some standard DVD jewel cases, download the rental art that is only available here. These are high-resolution images are the ones you’ll find in the rental versions of the DVDs and are unique to each disc. Each image is huge so please save them to your disk before opening. NB: you’ll have to do some editing of the design to accommodate the discs you’ve purchased, as only 7 episodes appear on the back. Also, if you get an error that the file is corrupted, Save As will transfer the file to your system properly.