Sliders

[Sly]

Does anyone remember this sci-fi show? It was one of my favourites in the 90's.

The show revolved around a guy called Quinn Mallory, who had invented a machine for visiting parallel planet Earths. As I remember it he could jump back and forth between versions of Earth freely without any problem as long as he was back at the vortex that carried him to the place he was visiting. Except it wasn't as cut and dry as that, eventually the timer breaks or he makes a mistake and starts off on an adventure with his best friend Wade, his lecturer Professor Arturo and and the unfortunate Rembrandt 'Crying Man' Brown. The aim of the adventurers is to return home to the world they were originally from.

From what I remember the show concentrated on the many 'What if' situations featured from history. These varied quite more than you would expect, obviously they looked into stuff like flipping the outcomes of major wars and how that would effect how that would shape the world as we know it. They also looked into ethical stuff such as men being kept to fertilise women due to a man shortage, worlds where people had absolute power and places that still had slaves.

I think the most interesting thing about this show was that it used quite a lot of returning casts in each episode, but they would hold different places in society. Some would be vagrants in one episode, and then would be millionaires in the next. Of course there was the man that no matter how history had changed or bent still rode in his taxi. Because the Sliders had the ability to jump their standing within society changed too. Rembrandt for instance went from being a returning singer, returned from the dead into a megastar in one episode, and got taken into slavery in another.

I remember in one episode that they jumped and ended up in what appeared to be their home world. Quinn tried the gate of his house and found that it didn't have the characterising squeak that he was expecting it to. It was seconds after they had jumped that you learnt that the gate had just being oiled and that the people of their home world had been actively looking for Quinn and his friends. It was quite a sad moment.

Do you recall anything about this series?

[Gothic]

I started watching Sliders when they used to show it on BBC2 and thought it was quite good. I think I must have missed several episodes or possibly an entire series because next time I saw it, it was totally different with different characters and I didn't have a clue what was going on?

[Richard1978]

Didn't Sky show this at one time?

[DoctorQui]

I enjoyed the fiest series enormously then,like many US sci fi shows, it got lost (excuse pun) and overly complicated.

[Sly]

As I understand it the channel showing it wanted it to get more action orientated which took away from the more thoughtful ways it went about its story telling when it began airing.

[philipdalton]

I used to watch it. I remember the episode where Quinn tried his gate and found it didn't squeak-was that the very last episode or did they finally manage to get back to their own world & stay there in the end?

[RetroAEROSMITH]

It went all weird towards the end, main characters dying or written out...quinn meeting his half earth brother then being combined into one to cover the issue of jerry oconnel leaving..i think only the black guy made it to the final episode out of the original lot. So i doubt they got the ending they wanted. One of the episodes they got to the real earth but it had been taken over by the kromags and quinns mother reveals she wasnt his real mother hence the search for quinns brother....it went downhill fast then for the next 2 series.