Sliders Reviews
What is “Sliders”?
Quinn Mallory (Jerry O'Connell), a boy genius from San Francisco, has spent more time in his basement than is perhaps healthy. Working off the theories of his physics professor Maximillian Arturo (John Rhys-Davies), Quinn develops a portal to a parallel world -- the exact same place and time; just sideways in the causal web. Across that portal, somewhere in the past -- be it five minutes ago or five million years ago -- some butterfly flapped its wings two times instead of five or someone turned left instead of turning right, and the whole world is different as a result.
On Quinn's first journey, everything goes wrong. The portal misfires, dragging along not just Quinn and Professor Arturo but Quinn's sorta-girlfriend Wade Wells (Sabrina Lloyd) and a passing soul singer, Rembrandt Brown (Cleavant Derricks). Then Quinn's control device breaks, and he loses the coordinates to his own timeline.
The quartet has no choice but to continually slide from one parallel San Francisco to the next, on the off chance that they find their way back home again. To make matters worse, the device is on a glitched-out timer; unless they slide within a certain randomly specified window, they may never have another chance.
The show is a famous victim of network meddling, its later seasons barely resembling the original premise. After the second season, Rhys-Davies leaves the cast; after another season, Lloyd follows suit. With the end of season four, O'Connell moves on, making Derricks' character -- previously just the comic relief -- the only link to the show's origin. Fans vary on where they consider that the "real' show cuts off.
Last edited by fnoo. [Click here to edit.]
