When physics genius Quinn Mallory (Jerry O'Connell), Wade Welles (Sabrina Lloyd), Professor Maximillian Arturo (John Rhys-Davies), and unwitting passer-by Rembrant Brown (Cleavant Derricks) travel to a parallel world via a device created by Quinn, they expect to return in five hours. With their lives in danger, they are forced to cut their journey to this alternate Earth short. They use the device to "slide" home early...only to find themselves in an alternate dimension that is clearly not their own.
Mostly using a world-of-the-week formula, the sliders travelled to many different dimensions; from a water-covered Earth where they desperately clung to the top of the tallest buildings, to an dimension devoid of all life except one lone survivor, to a world decimated by acid rain. Sliders was an ambitious sci-fi show that continually pushed the boundaries of 'what if?' as the group kept searching for their home dimension - Earth Prime - through five seasons, eighty-seven episodes, numerous cast changes and hundreds of parallel worlds. Here are nine of the most memorable.
Luck of the Draw (Season 1, Episode 10)
What appears to be a utopian world without war, crime, poverty, or overpopulation soon divulges its dark reality when Wade ends up a winner of the public lottery, which is actually a form of population control. When the sliders arrive in this world, they believe it to be a paradise. Anyone can go to any ATM and withdraw as much as they want from a communal bank account. Prices are low, food is plentiful, pollution is scarce, and through aggressive birth control this world has managed to keep the population to around 500 million people. Once the group discover that the control of the population extends to state-sanctioned murder, they decide to take their chances in the next world. This episode is a great example of what Sliders set out to be - thought-provoking, morally grey, emotionally resonant TV.
Sole Survivors (Season 3, Episode 18)
A man desperately attempts to fix his generator when the lights go out on his caravan at night. The urgency seems unnecessary, until we hear a thud on his roof and see what appears to be humans with glowing green eyes descend upon the hapless man, and make a feast of him. This world is a cautionary tale about the dangers of new medicines that haven't been through rigorous testing, as a diet drug has turned the population into starving Zombie-like creatures who crave fat cells. There were many night-lights and wide eyes in the dark after this episode aired.
Seasons Greedings (Season 3, Episode 12)
Christmas spreads debt and indentured servitude rather than joy in this world where giant malls make debt slaves of their employees. A lot of the points this episode makes about rampant commercialism, subliminal advertising, earning a living wage, the ease of racking up debt with credit - and the difficulty of paying it back, as well as the ethics of the marketing world have all aged incredibly well into the modern era - even if the fashions haven't. The modern-day mall is our internet history, where trackable cookies, constant monitoring, and incredibly specific ad promotion have made many of these conversations eternally relevant.
The Fire Within (Season 3, Episode 8)
After sliding onto a world that the characters believe may have inspired popular depictions of hell, due to the unending fires burning there, they inadvertently bring sentient fire to the next world - which is overflowing with oil. While the plot of the episode is a little thin on the ground, the idea of fire being something that can think, act purposefully, and even communicate, was one worth remembering.
Rules of the Game (Season 3, Episode 1)
The four slide into a deadly sporting contest where teams compete in a lethal obstacle course for the chance to win 5 million dollars. This world was on the brink of civil war when the government banned sporting events. After that proved unsuccessful at controlling the population, they instead created The Games - a gladiatorial type televised competition where there is only one rule: Stay Alive! The games are like a video-game version of The Hunger Games - there are multiple levels and areas the teams must progress through, while also surviving the other teams, booby traps, and androids set to kill. It's hard to shake the image of Rembrant being trapped on a giant mechanical web while robot spiders creep towards him.
Love Gods (Season 2, Episode 2)
In the wake of Me too and Time's Up (and life in general) there are might be some women who want to slide to this world. After a biological weapon reduces the male population to critically low numbers, men are imprisoned in special facilities and used as breeders. This is a world where women can walk the streets at night without fear in their hearts, Australia is a superpower, and there is no war. The downside for women is that given the limited supply of Y chromosome only the youngest, smartest, and prettiest females get chosen to bring new life into the world.
This was different from an episode like 'The Weaker Sex', where the gender roles of our world were reversed, Hillary Clinton is president, women hold all the power and men have only a few options, like to be a secretary or a caregiver. Love Gods examines the power dynamic if there were no men at all in society, whereas The Weaker Sex plays out essentially as our world does, just with the roles reversed. This dimension really stands out amongst popular culture, which often wonders about the loss of female fertility but rarely the loss of male fertility, which would not result in the death of humanity, but would see it radically changed - Sliders thinks possibly for the better.
Fever (Season 1, Episode 3)
On a world which is yet to discover penicillin, a virus known as ‘The Q’ plagues the citizens of San Francisco, where the poor are left to die while the rich can afford sanitised protection. This stark vision of a world terrorised by a virus no one has worked out how to cure prompted discussions of how a plague would affect the socio-economic groups with extreme contrast - something that played out with chilling accuracy in recent years. Rarely could you say that Sliders was prophetic, but in this case they did stumble upon a world that eventually resembled our own.
In Dino Veritas (Season 2, Episode 7)
The Yucatan peninsula was never hit by an asteroid, and so the sliders enter a world where San Francisco is a national park containing dinosaurs that never died out. Mammals and dinosaurs have evolved side-by-side, but humans have taken over the planet and penned the remaining dinosaurs into nature reserves run by holographic rangers. Dinosaurs have always held a fascination amongst audiences, and it's interesting to explore a world where we see the creatures in their natural habitats rather than a Jurassic Park style world where we see genetically modified versions. Bonus points for the truth collars the team are forced to wear throughout the episode!
Prince of Wails (Season 1, Episode 5)
The question of what would happen if the British won the American Revolutionary War is one that plagued Sliders creator Tracey Torme long enough that it became the genesis of the show. In this dimension George Washington was executed in 1779 as a war criminal, resulting in the British winning the war. Anti-monarchical sentiment worldwide was quashed, and this dimension's Earth is ruled mostly by Kings and Queens. The British monarchy own the territory now known as The British States of America, where everyone uses the metric system, drives on the left, loves soccer, and eats bad food. Oh, and there is a pesky war going on with the French for what we know as Canada.
This is one of many alternate history stories that Sliders pondered. There was a world where America has become part of the Greater Soviet Union, due to the removal of troops in the Korean War. Another world saw Australia split between a Communist North and an American South after the Americans lost the battle of the Coral Sea and Japan invaded. There are dimensions where the US is discovered and colonised by India, France, Spain, cannibal tribes from New Guinea, and more. Sliders was truly at its best when it was pushing the question of What if? to its limits, and to use that to discuss the successes and failures of the world in which we live. Let's hope a rumoured revival returns the show to its roots and begins asking more tough questions.