Sliders

Sliders is a science fiction television series that ran from 1995–2000, across five seasons. The series focuses on a group of travellers "sliding" between parallel worlds.

Plot

Season One

Episodes 1 - 10

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Young physicist Quinn Mallory created a device capable of opening vortices to alternate universes. With a little help from his double from another world, he developed the technology to the extent that not only could he send items through the gateway he created, but with the use of a timer, it would also be returned to its point of origin. He used himself as his first living guinea pig, and on his second journey, best friend Wade Welles and his professor Maximillian Arturo joined him.

Related Topics:
Quinn Mallory - Alternate universes

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The wormhole grew unstable and out of control. Singer Rembrandt "Cryin' Man" Brown, driving his car by Quinn's house, was accidentally sucked through with them. When the timer was activated ahead of time, over four hours before it was scheduled to, it lost its co-ordinates and the Sliders could not return home. This left them unable to control when the vortices would open or which world they would lead to. Thus, the Sliders continued their journey, trying to find their way back home.

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A common theme during this season was to explore political issues and to play around with recurring characters who had first appeared in the pilot, showing how their situations had changed on various worlds.

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Season Two

Episodes 11 ? 23

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Still no closer to returning home, the Sliders encounter the Kromaggs for the very first time in the episode Invasion. Their presence is short-lived, but they become the main plot for later seasons. After some close encounters, they make it a rule to no longer accept hitchhikers, an action that had previously saved people from plights in their own worlds, and agree to try to stop interfering wherever possible...

Related Topics:
Kromaggs - Invasion

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Season Three

Episodes 24 ? 48

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The third season takes a more bizarre twist, producing a series of one-off episodes, most of which are patterned on existing idea previously seen in films.

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During a slide to a world that is soon to be destroyed, the Sliders help the inhabitants develop sliding technology, with the intent to send their best and brightest to a new home. It is on this word that they encounter Captain Maggie Beckett and the murderous Colonel Rickman who kills both Maggie's husband and the Professor.

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The Sliders now have a new mission - revenge. They continue to chase Rickman until he meets his demise in the season finale. They find the correct coordinates that will take them home and episode ends when Quinn tells Wade and Rembrandt to slide home without him, while he stays behind for Maggie. Using the second timer gained from Rickman, he and Maggie end up on a different world.

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Season Four

Episodes 49 ? 70

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Quinn and Maggie finally find Rembrandt, as a prisoner of the Kromaggs. Earth had been attacked, and he and Wade were seperated. The three Sliders escape to find a weapon with which to liberate earth, but not after Quinn's imprisoned mother tells him that he is her adopted son and is actually from another, parallel world.

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They find Quinn's brother Colin on another world, their parents having sent them to different worlds for their protection after their home was attacked by Kromaggs and was no longer safe. Colin became the sixth Slider and they tried to track down their birth parents, hoping they have the answers they seek and the means to defeat the Kromaggs.

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The war with the Kromaggs is the primary theme throughout the season. The loss of Arturo and Wade (who left during the season 3/4 hiatus), and the increasingly bizarre plotlines, combined with fans' hatred toward Colin created a dip in ratings.

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Season Five

Episodes 71 ? 88

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With Jerry and Charlie O'Connell stricken from the cast list, the writers decided to simply lose Colin in the vortex, and fused Quinn with his counterpart on the new world, who is the only duplicate to not look anything like Quinn (other than one in a season three episode, Double Cross). Mallory has the combined personality of himself and the Slider Quinn. He stays with the group throughout the season.

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In the same episode ("The Unstuck Man") scientist Doctor Diana Davis becomes the final Slider, feeling responsible for what happened to Mallory. They discover that the resistance's weapon against the Kromaggs that they had been so desperately seeking is fatal to human beings. The series concludes when Rembrandt (the only surviving original Slider) slides alone with a virus in his blood to fight the Kromaggs on his world.

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