The one that started it all. What if FOX had instilled some faith in Sliders from day one and nursed it into a cult phenomenon akin to The X-Files? Earth 210 chronicles the show as it should have been — a successful cornerstone of the FOX network. Read all six seasons here.
“We set out to create a show that would intrigue people and create an open dialogue of some of the issues we have in our own society, and we have succeeded. When I look back at the past six seasons of Sliders, I can honestly say that it’s a show that I’m very proud of.”
“However, Bob [Weiss] and I believe that the show has explored as many avenues of parallel culture as we feel necessary, and despite fan protests, have decided to end production of Sliders at the end of the sixth season.”
So spoke Tracy Tormé in a press conference February 9, 2000 on Earth 210, a world where Sliders was an unqualified hit.
Internet buzz was swift and fierce, with the fan base petitioning the FOX network to renew the show and finish after seven seasons, as is the convention for most science fiction shows.
“We are sad to see Sliders go,” said E210 FOX president Les Moonves in a press release. “It’s been an integral part of our rise to prominence as one of the three big networks, but the cast and crew are adamant that the quality of the show has reached its peak and feel the concept would be more successful on the silver screen.”
Sliders will end its run with a three-part mini-series that crosses over with other popular FOX mainstay The X-Files.
“The fans won’t be disappointed,” Tormé-210 said. “We wrap everything up but leave the door open for feature films.”
But what of the fifth season finale, which left Quinn with the painful decision between saving the life of an old flame or watching the multiverse disappear?
“We wrote ourselves into a corner with that one,” co-creator Robert K. Weiss admits. “I’d always tried to stay away from the time travel concept, but fan demand for it was so overwhelming that we broke our own rules, so to speak.
“One of the driving forces of the final season is that Quinn’s changed the past, and what does that do to the present? The Sliders never slid to some worlds, and now have experiences that we’ve never seen as a result.
“And there’s a new Slider.”
Tormé-210, hopeful that his vision can live on in another universe, has provided Earth Prime with tapes of episodes which have never aired in this dimension. Check out what Sliders would have been like… in season 6.
Deviation occurred from Earth Standard on approximately March 22, 1995, when FOX’s drama “Party of Five” was not pre-empted to premiere Sliders. Instead, FOX aired the two-hour pilot on Friday, March 24, pre-empting the popular “X-Files” and later airing directly afterwards.
FOX also marketed the interdimensional television show towards an adult, intellectual market, and the crowd that made the X-Files a cult hit soon migrated to Sliders as well.
While researching anti-gravity, brilliant grad student Quinn Mallory accidentally opens an inter-dimensional portal which sends him and three companions on a cosmic roller-coaster ride to parallel Earths.
The Sliders find themselves in a present-day San Francisco where the “Summer of Love” never ended — and Wade and Rembrandt are mistaken for extraterrestrial prophets.
In a world where England won the Revolutionary War, the Sliders are embroiled in an assassination plot involving the heir to the throne and an evil Sheriff of San Francisco.
When Wade is infected with a deadly virus on an Earth wracked by an epidemic, Rembrandt and Arturo race to find a cure and free Quinn from a Gestapo-like health agency.
The salvation of a world facing destruction by an asteroid rests in the hands of Arturo and an overzealous young scientist. Meanwhile, Quinn and Wade confront their feelings for each other.
The Sliders must play a deadly game of cat and mouse against government agents who have followed them from Earth Prime, but could Quinn’s faith in his friend Bennish lead them home?
Arturo finds himself in a potentially deadly mayoral race in a world where men are treated as “the weaker sex” and women hold the positions of power and influence.
While Quinn struggles with fame in a world where intellect is prized, Arturo tries for a reconciliation with a long-lost love.
Quinn is separated from the Sliders on a world where the New World beat the Old World back… and the Aztec emperor in charge is looking to use the timer to conquer parallel earths.
It looks like the King is back when Rembrandt is mistaken for a long-deceased rock legend, but an old enemy would like to see the Crying Man disappear again — permanently.
Wade finds that she has money to burn when she wins the lottery in a seemingly utopian world, but she soon discovers that her silver cloud has a very dark lining.
As the Sliders race to save Quinn’s life, they must dodge religious authorities on a world where the Spanish Inquisition is in high gear – and spiritual purity can determine whether a patient lives or dies.
The intrepid quintet lands in a world mired in mysticism and superstition, all ruled by a mysterious sliding entity known as the Sorcerer.
Ryan, Wade and Quinn must stumble through a shattered timeline to rescue the Professor and Rembrandt when they land on a world where Quinn’s sliding experiments have had grave consequences on space/time.
When the Sliders land in the midst of an America under martial law, one of them will die to protect the others from a government desperate to keep the Constitution under wraps.
Downtime turns emotional when Wade’s grief over Ryan’s death leads to serious conflict between her and Quinn.
When Quinn rescues a beautiful young woman in distress on a world ruled by violence, her homicidal boyfriend, swearing vengeance for an imagined slight, follows the Sliders through the vortex.
In a world where germ warfare has exterminated most of the male population, Quinn, Rembrandt, and Arturo discover that they’ve been pegged as runaway “breeders,” leaving Michelle and Wade to rescue them before the timer runs out.
In a world where Texas rules most of North America, Quinn finds himself at the center of some highly unorthodox corporate raiding when a gunfight earns him a reputation for being quick on the draw.
The Sliders find themselves in a perplexing situation: each time they slide into a new world, they encounter the same people as in the previous world. One of the people is Quinn’s long-lost love Daelin, who seems to be heading for a fate that only Quinn can prevent.
When a bizarre accident separates Quinn from the rest of the Sliders, the only hope for the remaining trio is to put their faith in a troubled young girl with a history of hearing voices — and an ability to communicate with spirits.
A slide to a world under Nazi rule forces Quinn and Arturo to prevent their development of sliding while protecting Rembrandt from the Final Solution.
When the Sliders land in a world dominated by psychics, Wade encounters the man of her dreams, a powerful seer who may have loved Wade in a different life.
Rembrandt’s faith is put on the line when he slides into a world where his double made his name as a powerful evangelist who preached civil rights before his assassination.
The Sliders encounter a vicious race of technologically advanced aliens who hold a nasty surprise for the quartet — they can slide at will, and intend to conquer every Earth in the dimensional spectrum.
The rapture has come. Thousands are disappearing. But is it divine intervention or a religious conspiracy?
It’s hell on earth for the Sliders as the group travels to a satanic parallel earth to repair the dimensional barrier caused by Quinn’s zealous double.
The Sliders finally land in the one place that none of them wants to leave — home — but Quinn is the only one that has doubts about their good fortune.
The Sliders (and Geraldo Rivera) find themselves face-to-jaw with an extremely large (and angry) beast when they lose Quinn and the timer in a San Francisco that’s been developed as a game preserve — for dinosaurs.
In a U.S. where Prohibition was never repealed, the Sliders find themselves embroiled in a vicious struggle among warring organized-crime families, corrupt government officials, and dedicated G-men — one of whom looks exactly like Rembrandt.
On a world where San Francisco is the property of Mexico, Quinn must help his rebellious double and their political father reconcile – while using the wormhole as an Underground Railroad for desperate Americans trapped on the wrong side of the border.
The Sliders are arrested by a parallel earth dedicated to policing sliding technology, and must team of with dozens of other exiles to escape their prison – a toxic earth slowly drifting out of orbit.
Quinn and Wade run afoul of their married doubles, who work together as cutthroat software executives on a world where youth rules.
On a world that redefines urban sprawl, the Sliders befriend a beautiful woman who has the technology to send them home… for a price.
Arturo is seriously injured when the Sliders become unwitting participants in a bloody game in which there is only one rule: stay alive.
Quinn is mistaken for his thieving double on a world where criminal acts are decided in front of a live studio audience and courtroom drama is popular television.
When a timer malfunction sends the Sliders into an advanced space station orbiting the earth, they must race to get back to Earth to make sure the next slide doesn’t leave them stranded in a deadly vacuum.
When the timer’s connection to a series of mysterious tornados sends the Sliders to a rural community, they discover the town’s leader might hold the key to sliding out, if they can survive his despotic rule.
Quinn is forced to relive painful childhood memories when a slide to 1980s San Francisco brings him face to face with a younger self still grappling with the recent death of his father.
On a world fueled by forty-five years of McCarythism, Quinn, Arturo and Rembrandt seek to redeem the lives of their doubles, all of whom have been exiled for supposed anti-American sentiments.
When the Sliders find themselves on a world where their exploits are a popular television show, the culture of celebrity begins to erode their friendships and the desire to leave.
When the Sliders discover a replica of Quinn’s house in an undeveloped San Francisco, they’re shocked to find one version of Quinn who’s given up on life… and who may be responsible for countless Kromagg invasions.
On a world where the South won the Civil War, the Sliders try to avert the assassination of the President of the United States by a conniving and very southern double of Professor Arturo.
When Rembrandt is mistaken for his royal double and impregnated with the heir to the throne, the Sliders have to help him give birth while outwitting an assassin who’s cutting down the royal ranks one by one.
In a mystical world whose belief system consists of magic potions, dragons and illusions, a practitioner thinks Quinn comes from a powerful line of wizards — and must be eliminated.
All is not calm for the Sliders, whose Christmas is spent in a giant mall where customers run up outlandish bills, then become virtual prisoners while trying to pay them off.
Arturo is kidnapped and brainwashed into thinking he’s a great 19th-century detective investigating real murders in a world where assuming different identities is the norm.
Population control takes on a whole new meaning when the Sliders discover one of Quinn’s doubles slid his world’s population to another by accident.
The Sliders land in a world resembling ancient Egypt, where Quinn is used for a life-after-death experiment and the others are entombed inside a pyramid.
A world that seems to have stopped the aging process entices Arturo, who falls in love with a young woman intrigued by his and Rembrandt’s age.
A rogue pulsar threatens all life on Earth… unless Quinn and the Professor can adapt their knowledge of sliding to transport the population of an entire world to safety.
The Sliders enter a world where Rembrandt never joined the Spinning Topps and is distraught to learn that the Topps have made millions. Wondering what went wrong, Rembrandt goes in search of his double, and when he finds him, it’s not quite what he expected.
Quinn tries to caution his double on the perils of sliding when they find themselves on a world on the verge of developing trans-dimensional travel.
Wade, Rembrandt and the Professor are under the gun to develop a cure for a disease that strikes Quinn on a world where a fat substitute has turned the population into walking zombies.
After a bitter fight between Quinn and Wade, Quinn must put his feelings for her first when she becomes the prime hostage in a robbery gone awry.
When the Sliders land on an Earth whose orbit is slowly decaying, Arturo teams up with Conrad Bennish to keep the Earth from dying, Quinn and Wade get married and Rembrandt searches out his brother, Cezanne.
The Sliders must run from a vengeful Logan St. Claire, who has finally tracked them down for the ultimate confrontation.
Quinn’s exile by Logan turns to surprise when he determines she’s actually sent him home.
While Quinn, Conrad Bennish, Jr. and Trevor Wing rebuild Quinn’s sliding equipment in an attempt to find their friends, Logan strikes an uneasy alliance with the other Sliders after helping Wade to escape a fascist government.
Quinn, Bennish and Wing finally track Logan and the Sliders down – but will Logan’s duplicitious nature spell the end of sliding for all of them?
The Sliders shelter a double of Wade who’s slid alone for years after the death of her friends from a hunter who is willing to kill for her timer… and her ability to get him home.
The Sliders find themselves on a world where humans and Kromaggs live together in peace… a peace about to be shattered by Dynasty scouts eager to exploit new potential allies.
Wade takes up the cause of the First Amendment when she joins a rebel group of journalists trying to overthrow a draconian American regime bent on squashing the freedom of the press.
The Sliders awake to find their adventures were just a dream – or is it just a hoax by someone determined to crack the secrets of sliding?
The Professor’s emotions are torn when he is forced into a bittersweet reunion with the double of the son he neglected on Earth Prime.
In this much anticipated crossover between The X-Files and Sliders, agents Mulder and Scully pursue the Sliders when they’re assigned the task of tracking a mysterious foursome who broke out of a local shop… by way of a wormhole.
Wade and Arturo’s hot tempers lead to their indoctrination into a world of mandatory drug usage.
When the group arrives on an Earth decimated by acid rain, they escape the weather by checking into a version of the Dominion Hotel plagued by mysterious paranormal activity.
On a world transformed into a giant tropical paradise, a married couple also claiming to be Sliders introduces the possibility of going home… and also of being targeted.
Rembrandt struggles to maintain his sanity on a world where a dangerous pyschiatric protocol tries to condition him away from believing he is a Slider.
When the Sliders find themselves trapped in a pan-dimensional prison, it’s up to the Professor, Quinn and the brother he never had to devise a way out.
Rembrandt finds himself at the top of the hill and the others the bottom of the heap on a world where civil rights went in the opposite direction, leaving whites oppressed and downtrodden.
The gang is separated during a slide to a world where a perpetually airing tabloid-TV show offers their only hope of a reunion.
The Sliders arrive on an Earth divided between computer-hackers and computer-lackers, battling ruthless scavengers to unite a young couple who fell in love on-line.
A strange slide lands the group in a world still recovering from the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 – a calamity that was forewarned by another group of Sliders that left moments before they arrived.
The Sliders encounter an old foe on a frontier world and expose his murderous land-grabbing scheme.
The Sliders are shocked when another Arturo appears and claims he is their original sliding companion… and that the Arturo they’ve known for two years is an impostor.
The Sliders seek out Quinn’s reclusive double on a fantastic world where his experimentation led not to sliding, but anti-gravity.
It’s a battle of ideologies between Quinn and his father when Quinn is mistaken for an escaped clone of his double.
The Sliders discover the tracking device planted in the timer (“Strange Bedfellows”), but will they be able to escape their pursuers through a series of short slides?
The Sliders are incarcerated for interfering in the development of countless parallel worlds, but some help from an old friend will lead to a jailbreak – and the death of one of them.
On a world with the medical profession in chaos, Quinn’s determination to save Professor Arturo leads him to enlist the aid of his double in finding a parallel earth with the knowledge to resurrect the dead.
Quinn and Wade’s frantic search to save the Professor leads to the usage of a radical application of the physics of sliding – time travel.
While Arturo recovers from his near-death experience, the others take some time apart to reconcile themselves in the aftermath of so much danger.
It’s a hate-hate relationship between Conrad Bennish, Jr., Trevor Wing and Logan St. Claire, but one year later they’re still sliding together – the only question why?
It’s an episode inside an episode when the Sliders find themselves on a world where reality TV rules.
It’s a case of mistaken identity for Rembrandt when he’s dragged into his double’s world of international intrigue and espionage as Rembrandt Brown: International Man of Mystery!
Wade is accused of having a steamy affair with the President in order to distract the public from a war with Switzerland.
It’s a battle of wits between the Professor and the customer service center from hell when the timer fails and needs replacement parts. Meanwhile, Wade, Quinn and Rembrandt take in an amusement park billed as the “Greatest in the Multiverse” – a claim that isn’t false advertising by any stretch of the imagination.
Quinn is temporally replaced by Sam Beckett of Quantum Leap, only to find he may be stuck there if he can’t accomplish his mission before the timer hits zero.
Complications arise for Sam when his attempts to save the life of Dominion Hotel day man Gomez Calhoun are thwarted by the evil Leaper… who’s taken over the body of one of the other Sliders in an attempt to stop the change in history.
On a world reminiscent of 1920’s Chicago, the Sliders must embark on a career of jewel thievery to finance repairs to the timer.
On a world where California seceded from the union and where yellow journalism runs rampant, Quinn and Wade work as gossip columnists for rival papers.
The Sliders try to broker a way home when they become pawns in a brutal pan-dimensional war between the Slide Masters and the Kromaggs.
Quinn and Rembrandt work both sides against the middle in a desperate gambit to save Wade and Arturo from the Kromaggs while trying to find the coordinates to their home earth.
Wade’s wish to know how her life would have gone without sliding is made manifest when the next world they visit highlights what would’ve happened had she never met Quinn.
When the Sliders discover the latest world they’ve landed on is frantically trying to prepare from an alien attack, they pinpoint the source of the distressing news to a Slider that’s survived a Slide Master attack – and is spreading the word wherever he goes.
When a wild slide separates Arturo from the others, he romances a young woman with the power to save his friends from being burned at the stake… for witchcraft.
The Sliders are reunited with Quinn “Howlin’ Man” Mallory and his motley crew from “The Alternateville Horror” on a world where San Francisco is more Las Vegas than City by the Bay.
In Sliders’ 100th episode, the group lands on a world celebrating the 100th anniversary of the return of Christ. Beliefs are challenged as the Sliders befriend a woman who has proof the rapture was a fraud – and that everything since has been an attempt at social control.
In order to recover from his spiritual crisis (seen in “Centennial”), Rembrandt visits his double’s family hoping to restore his faith in God and mankind.
The Sliders become embroiled in a landmark legal case when Wade’s double is looking for an abortion on a world that voted no on a woman’s right to choose.
Rembrandt finds himself falling in love with a woman who may or may not have been a collaborator with the Kromagg force that decimated her world.
When the Slide Masters and Kromaggs enlist the aid of Quinn and Arturo to stop a strange disturbance that’s destroying entire universes, they – along with Bennish, Wing and Logan – must race to a solution before their home is annihilated.
Quinn volunteers for a risky time travel experiment to stop the paradox he created (“As Time Goes By”) from unraveling the very fabric of the multiverse.
Quinn returns from his mission to correct time to discover he no longer exists – and the Slide Masters want him executed for crimes against the multiverse.
Quinn has averted a multiversal crisis by preventing his past self from changing the history of Time’s Arrow Earth in As Time Goes By. Depressed, Quinn returns to Slide Ruler Earth from the past to find that his friends are gone and the Slide Rulers have no clue who he is or what he’s talking about. The timer malfunctions as well, leaving Quinn trapped and under arrest for violating the sliding protocol of that earth. Quinn concludes that his excursion into the past has altered time and in the altered timeline, he and the others never encountered the Slide Rulers. Imprisoned as a rogue slider and slated for execution, Quinn is able to obtain help from a double of Bennish. The two use contraband technology to locate Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo and Quinn slides to their location. Upon tracking them to the Dominion Hotel, Quinn is shocked to discover that in the new, true timeline he died on Outpost 113 (“Invasion”) and his friends welcomed another Slider into their ranks. “Quinn’s anomalous now,” said Tracy Tormé. “He died, and yet he’s alive now, kind of outside space-time. But I understand how the audience would be confused.”
Quinn’s reunion with his friends is problematic when they not only insist he was murdered by the Kromaggs years ago, they introduce new Slider Jeff… who just happens to be Wade’s husband.
A stunned Wade Welles opens the door to the hotel room she, Maximillian Arturo, Rembrandt “Cryin’ Man Brown” and Jeff Stevenson share to find a confused, rain-soaked Quinn Mallory standing before her. With eight hours before the slide, Quinn recounts his stories to his friends, who insist their Quinn Mallory never escaped Kromagg internment. Jeff introduces himself as a journeyman who, while intellectual, opted for an adventurous life rather than a studious one. Captured by the Kromaggs and liberated by the Sliders from Earth 113, Jeff has become an integral part of the team. Even more amazingly, in the three years Jeff has slid with the group, Wade has fallen in love with and married him. Now the group is faced with conflicting emotions, especially Wade’s. Rembrandt and Arturo are overjoyed to know their friend is still alive, but with two completely different sets of experiences, will Quinn and the Sliders be able to come together as a group again?
A slide into a world long devastated by nuclear war forces Arturo to re-acquaint himself with Quinn as the two work feverishly to repair the timer before radiation or the next bomb devastates their chances of surviving.
Quinn is baffled when the Sliders land in the same situation seen in “Double Cross” — only this time, Logan’s perfected her ability to raze parallel worlds of their resources.
“We wanted to revisit some worlds that we’d done but with a different twist,” said Tormé. “With Quinn having changed history, half of the series’ worlds were open to new interpretation, and we thought the perfect example would be: what if Logan’s plans had succeeded? And we set her character in motion again by making her less of an antagonist and more of a helper that the Sliders sabotage and strand on a parallel world when she shows her true colors.” What happens to Logan? “We’ll see her again,” Tormé added with a smirk.
At the behest of a double of Rembrandt, Quinn and Arturo work together to undo a sliding experiment that resulted in the merging of two fraternal Quinn doubles and left their brother phased between worlds.
“When Earth Prime made contact with our offices three years ago and proposed a tape swap, we took a look at what was produced and adapted some of the elements for our own series,” said Tracy Tormé. “From our viewer’s standpoint, it’s inconceivable the only remaining original member is Cleavant [Derricks]. So I wrote an episode where the fans from our world meet the Sliders from yours. The episode finds the Sliders landing in San Francisco after their second run-in with Logan St. Clair, and while looking for a place to stay, encounters Alt-Rembrandt.” Tormé goes on to describe that the Sliders from our Earth aren’t quite so benevolent anymore. “Your Sliders have definitely succumbed to the despair of losing so many friends and have given up on trying to make the multiverse a better place. Our Sliders find out that some of the difficulties they’ve had on previous worlds were a direct result of these doubles. It’s up to our gang of heroes to set things on the proper path again.” In a nice touch, Quinn and Arturo successfully stick Colin and separate the Quinns before departing. “I cleaned up the mess that the writers of the show on your Earth created. Someone had to. God, what an embarrassment.”
When the Sliders find themselves in a Renaissance Europe perched on the edge of exploring the New World, they try to stop an age of destruction and pillaging while trying to figure out how the timer left them so far outside their sliding radius.
“Normally we’re adamant about keeping the Sliders in San Francisco,” said Tracy Tormé. “One day [author Jack Kimble] comes in to pitch and he’s got a globe with him. Naturally, Bob [Weiss] and I were a little intrigued. So Kimble sits the globe down and points at San Francisco and then spins the thing around about halfway and says, ‘a world that’s only 12 hours ahead on its axis puts the Sliders in Europe.’ And it made so much sense that we went with it.”
A routine slide turns life-shattering when a felonious Gomez Calhoun steals the group’s timer and slides, leaving the fivesome with no means of traveling to another world.
Despite Wade, Rembrandt’s and Jeff’s resignation of fate, a determined Quinn and Arturo build a new timer to hunt down Gomez Calhoun and get their technology back.
“One thing we’ve always tried to do with Sliders is create a careful blend of humor, social satire and character exposition,” said Executive Producer John Landis. “For [Minimal Deviation], we had the setup and some great characterization, particularly with Rembrandt’s return to music and Wade’s desire to live a normal life with her husband [Jeff]. Now, obviously we aren’t going to split the team up for good, but for the second part we went for a more comedic route. In the history of the show, there’s only been a buddy-comedy routine with Quinn and Arturo once, so we wanted to revisit that. The idea to make Gomez Calhoun the nemesis seems off-kilter yet right, because [Will Sasso’s] face is so familiar to the fans.”
The Sliders must adapt their way of life and their physical appearance to make it through a slide in a society where the concept of beauty is radically different than our own.
Held over since the second season, this episode examines a society where the concept of beauty is radically different than ours and the Sliders must adapt their way of life and their physical appearance to make it through the slide. “I worked on that one extensively a couple of years back,” said Tracy Tormé. “The Network didn’t like it at the time so we shelved it, but now, here it is.”
The Sliders land on a world where human civilization is long gone… all except for a living archive that is more than happy to tell them how they’re the cause for the holocaust that happened ages ago.
The Sliders pursue a darker version of their group when they find their timers are interconnected… and their evil doppelgangers have no compunction about spreading havoc and fear.
Rembrandt uncovers a scheme by his evil double to dupe Californians into thinking there’s another Gold Rush on.
The Sliders stumble upon a sliding “institute” populated entirely with doubles of the Sliders, but a rogue genius may spell its doom with a volatile experiment.
The Sliders land on a world entirely populated by… Sliders! The city of San Francisco is an ultra-futuristic mecca of technology and civility. Doubles from hundreds of parallel earths have not only traveled here, they’ve settled and continued their studies in transdimensional travel. The Institute, established by the first Quinn Mallory who landed on this world and realized its potential, is close to developing a fully functional sliding unit. People from the Institute search out people about to develop sliding on their earth and invite them to study here, like a Sliders University. Everyone meets their double, except for Jeff, something that causes him to feel a little left out. Arturo and Quinn study sliding at the Institute and add some functionality to the timer, including a power amplifier, tracking abilities and coordinate input. Also added is an Emergency Translocation Burst (ETB), which creates a wormhole but with unknown results. Rembrandt gets together with some of his doubles and has a jam session that has to be seen to be believed (“We stretched our FX budget to get 8 Rembrandts on screen at once,” said Tracy Tormé).
Having missed the window of opportunity, the Sliders gather together 30 years later to determine whether or not to slide again.
“You’ve been watching the wrong Sliders the whole time,” says Tormé. “But this allowed us to discuss what really happens when you miss the slide. You settle. You make the best of your life. And you live. The only thing we had to do was leave Jeff out, since his double wouldn’t join up with another group of Sliders, so we named Quinn and Wade’s kid Jeff and sent him to Los Angeles.”
Activating the timer’s failsafe, Quinn and the others are separated across time on a world wary of sliding technology.
“Wade’s exit is the most precarious,” says Tormé. “She lands in the bank vault we saw in ‘Dark Mirror’ except the building that occupies that space on this world is a detention center, so the Sliders do a really amazing break-in to get her out. The whole end sequence has this high-concept, big-bang feel to it that should leave the audience very satisfied.”
On a world similar to Jeff’s home, Jeff is confronted by a double of his late wife while Rembrandt fends off a copyright lawsuit — for being a clone of their Cryin’ Man!
“We needed to do something with Jeff,” says Tracy Tormé. “He hadn’t been terribly developed and we wanted to give him a good personal story. Being a refugee had to be a painful experience, but I’d say it’s about on par with running into your long-lost love who’s so overjoyed to see you safe that you forget you’re married.”As for Rembrandt, we had this idea floating around about cloning and thought it would make a good B-story as well as let us flesh out this particular parallel world a little better. However, the emphasis is on Jeff.”
It’s stock-market savvy time for the Sliders when a visit to an America under the control of Big Business swallows Quinn, Jeff and Wade into the religion of Capitalism.
“I remember reading a conspiracy book a couple years ago where a bunch of America’s wealthiest were looking to install a fascist government over Franklin Roosevelt’s and how close it came to happening,” describes Tracy Tormé. “So what if that happened? A government run by big business? We took it to the Nth degree and slapped the religion silliness in because it’s always fun to take a poke at organized religion. The best part is we got to pair off Arturo with Rembrandt again, which is always a winning combination.”
When Quinn is conscripted by the Slide Masters to hunt down a rogue Slider, he’s given the opportunity to return to the past and undo the time travel that made him an outside among his own friends.
A return to a world in chaos sets the stage for the final showdown between the Sliders and their dark dopplegangers.
Vowing to get to the bottom of all this, the Sliders stage a break-in to the UCAL campus but are captured and brought before the leaders of the violence. It turns out that the people behind all this are the evil Sliders from “Dark Mirror,” and they are none too pleased to find that their doubles have tracked them once again.”Basically, this group of Sliders gave up on ever trying to get home and have decided that interference of the worst kind is the only way they can come to grips with their situation,” says Tormé. “They’re exactly what you hope you don’t become – bitter, lonely, resentful.”
When a rough slide damages the timer, the Sliders find that the only place around to get parts is Doppler Electronics, now a monolithic affair run by a Bill Gates-esque Quinn Mallory.
“A light-hearted episode,” says Jerry O’Connell. “A lot of fun.”
The Sliders team up with Logan St. Claire to save a world with the sliding technology to get all of them home.
The Sliders find that their slide has been re-directed through the interdimension to the remnants of the city seen in “Flux.” Any and all Sliders are being brought here here in the vain attempt they might stabilize this reality. While Quinn and Arturo jump to the rescue and begin working with Chaplin, Wade, Jeff and Rembrandt find an old nemesis has also been brought here by accident — Logan St. Clair.”Logan really is a great character,” says Tracy Tormé. “She adds a whole new level to Quinn’s dynamic. She’s sexy, smart and manipulative. She’s the perfect antagonist.”
A mysterious libary that catalogues the histories of parallel worlds will lead the Sliders home… if they can defend it from a Kromagg armada bent on learning its secrets.
“We wanted to end the series with a bang,” said Tracy Tormé, “so we took some elements of a pitch we’d been handed last season and reworked it as the penultimate episode of Sliders. It addresses the Kromaggs, lets the Sliders get in some good fight scenes… I was completely satisfied. Of course the scene where the Sliders get some insight into some of the worlds they’ve encountered was one of the highlights of the show.”
The Sliders return to Earth Prime on the eve of a Kromagg invasion. Will they be able to keep their world safe?
“The Sliders finally make it back to Earth Prime,” says Tormé. “We wanted to wrap the show up. We had created some interesting character arcs during the season, but we’d pretty much shied away from the Kromaggs since they’d had some heavy play in the fourth season. We wanted the payoff of reaching home to also be exciting for the viewer, so it seemed logical to make it a fight for home.””We’d created Jeff at the beginning of the season to be a Kromagg plant, make no doubt. He been a prisoner on 113, and pretty much ingratiated himself into the Sliders’ lives. Aside from one double, he’s pretty much alone in the multiverse, and that’s exactly what we were shooting for. If you followed the little clues across the season, the revelation should come as no surprise to the viewer.”
While Quinn and Arturo scour the interdimension looking for the Archivist civilization, Wade tries to stop her traitorous husband from unleashing a Kromagg armada on Earth Prime.