Have you ever wondered what might have been if you made a different choice in your life? Or maybe you’ve wondered what the world might be like if, say, Russia won the Cold War? In the ‘90s, one TV show tried to explore those questions with very, uh, questionable results. That show was none other than Sliders, a show about a group of four people who travel to parallel worlds by “sliding” between them using wormhole technology. Sounds like a perfect idea for a television show, right? And it was (and is) a great idea, but as with many one-hour scifi shows that have aired on Fox, it never became what it could’ve been. Why is that? Well, lots of reasons! Read on, dear reader.
For those who aren’t Sliders nerds like me, the show was created by Tracy Torme and Robert K. Weiss, and debuted in 1995 on Fox. The show starred Jerry O’Connell as Quinn Mallory, a young genius who accidentally creates a machine that allows travel between parallel worlds. He, his physics professor Maximillian Arturo (John Rhys-Davis), his co-worker Wade Welles (Sabrina Lloyd), and a singer who randomly gets sucked in with them, Rembrandt Brown (Cleavant Derricks), slide to another world, but end up not being able to get back home. So, they basically spend their time going from world to world, hoping the next one might be their actual home world, or Earth Prime. The show starts off promisingly, with a two hour pilot that sets everything up pretty well, while also giving viewers a taste of what might come in future episodes. But the show was never able to overcome the promise with actual payoff.
So what happened? First and foremost, the network got way too involved. They did not care about continuity, and constantly aired episodes out of order thinking no one would care since the show was a mid-season replacement series in its first two seasons. That meant side plots continually got dropped, and the writers were basically forced to give up any ideas they had that would lead to serialized storytelling. For example, the sliders had an extra person go with them through the wormhole at the end of multiple episodes, only for those people to never be seen again. There was also a distinct shift between seasons two and three — previously, the show was allowed to be more cerebral in the worlds they explored, but come season three they were given a mandate to up the ante, action-wise.
John Rhys-Davies has been particularly vocal about his feelings toward the show. In multiple interviews throughout the years, he has stated that he thought the writing was sub-par, and that the writers just ripped off other popular works rather than coming up with their own ideas. Apparently, he wasn’t afraid to share these same feelings during production of the show, to the point where the Powers that Be decided to have him killed off — in an episode that had been his own idea, no less. The original creators were pretty pissed about this direction as well, and ended up leaving the show after season three too.
Things just started to go more downhill from there — to replace the professor, the new people in charge decided on the character of Maggie Beckett (Kari Wuhrer), a new, “sexier” female. Supposedly, the actresses who portrayed Wade and Maggie didn’t get along, and by the end of the third season, Sabrina Lloyd also opted not to return to the show. On top of all of that, the show also switched networks at this time, moving from Fox to the then-SciFi Channel, which also reduced the budget of the show.
It was also in season four that O’Connell finally got his wish to have his brother Charlie brought on as a full-time cast member, as Quinn’s long-lost brother Colin. The O’Connell brothers stuck around for that fourth season, but by the end of that season, now they were both out! You’d think with the departure of Quinn, the lead character of the show, that it would just end and that would be that. But no! There was a fifth season where Quinn was, like, put into another version of himself that looked completely different (even though that had never happened before in the series), and…. Look. The rest of the series is not worth discussing. It was pretty much unwatchable at this point.
With all of the behind the scenes drama, it was no wonder that the show never lived up to its potential. O’Connell has publicly stated that he would love to reboot the show, and has said he’s talked to other cast members about it, but it’s not clear if that will ever happen. With all of the remakes and reboots out there, it’s a bit surprising that no one has actually followed through yet given the promising premise. Speaking as a big fan of Sliders who may or may not have joined an AOL RPG chat room or two back in the day, there is definitely an audience in this dimension for it.
But what about you? Were you a Sliders fan? What was your favorite parallel world? Let us know in the comments!
- Cleavant Derricks, who played Rembrandt, is the only actor to appear in every episode of the series, for a total of 87 episodes.
- While filming the season three episode “Desert Storm,” one of the guest actors, Ken Steadman (he played the character Cutter) died while driving a dune buggy between sets — the dune buggy overturned and killed him instantly.
- Episodes were shown so out of order that during season three, Fox aired the episode “The Last of Eden,” which had Professor Arturo in it, a full month after he had died on the show. A new opening scene had to be filmed to frame the episode as a flashback.
- The original timer, the device used to activate the wormholes, was made from an old modified Motorola cellphone, the MicroTAC. However, the new timer found in season three is made from a NiteGlow Universal TV remote.
- Between seasons two and three, production of the show was moved from Vancouver, Canada to Los Angeles, California, apparently to save money (these days it would be the opposite!). Due to this move, many recurring characters were cut as the network did not want to fly them out to film new episodes.
- Cleavant Derricks, who played Rembrandt, is the only actor to appear in every episode of the series, for a total of 87 episodes.
- While filming the season three episode “Desert Storm,” one of the guest actors, Ken Steadman (he played the character Cutter) died while driving a dune buggy between sets — the dune buggy overturned and killed him instantly.
- Episodes were shown so out of order that during season three, Fox aired the episode “The Last of Eden,” which had Professor Arturo in it, a full month after he had died on the show. A new opening scene had to be filmed to frame the episode as a flashback.
- The original timer, the device used to activate the wormholes, was made from an old modified Motorola cellphone, the MicroTAC. However, the new timer found in season three is made from a NiteGlow Universal TV remote.
- Between seasons two and three, production of the show was moved from Vancouver, Canada to Los Angeles, California, apparently to save money (these days it would be the opposite!). Due to this move, many recurring characters were cut as the network did not want to fly them out to film new episodes.
2 thoughts on “Sliders: The ’90s SciFi Show with the Most Wasted Potential”
The other problem is that the premise of the show would have been better served by 6-8 episode seasons. Too much filler. Common to many serials at the time (looking at you Deep Space 9, holodeck episodes).
Reid: Wrong This show could easily have 20-25 episodes per Season, even with story arcs spanning several episodes. You could serve up a different world every episode or every three to five episodes and tie it together as a continuating journey.
This is what they had in mind and you can see it by watching season 1.