The
premise behind
Sliders started off quite well:
four people are transported and stranded in a
parallel dimension. Led by
Quinn Mallory, a
grad student who
accidentally creates the
gateway to a
parallel Earth while working on an
experiment in his
basement. The
gateway opens and sends him along with
Wade Wells, his
best friend &
computer techie,
Maximillian "The Professor" Arturo his
brilliant and
arrogant physics professor, and
Rembrandt "Crying Man" Brown, an
R&B singer who happened to be driving by, to a parallel dimension.
Throughout the first two
seasons and half of the third, we see the four sliders turn into a tightly
knit team of
friends who's purpose is to return
home safely. Along the way we travel to alternate Earths where history has turned out different;
British ruled
America, a world where
woman hold the positions
power, a world where
gangsters are in control, and so forth. The purpose is always
clear: they want to get
home, and we the
viewers want them to make it.
Midway through season 3, things began to change. In "
The Exodus", a
madman fires a gun at
Quinn but the
Professor takes the
bullet and concurrently
dies. His last words: "
Get them home! Sliders..." The
shock sinks in, one of the sliders will not make it home.
And so,
Maggie Beckett joins the team as her world is
destroyed. From that point onwards, the sliders have a less
happy-go-lucky feel to them. Maggie is too
disciplined and
hard (until she becomes
catty and
promiscuous) for the team's good. As the 3rd season comes to a close, the sliders finally find their home
dimension, but Maggie is unable to breathe the
air. Rembrandt and Wade stay but Quinn
slides again with Maggie to save her life. They made it
home, but something feels
wrong at this point. Quinn is
forced to stay away because of Maggie, and the
happy ending we'd hope for just isn't there.
Season 4 begins with Quinn and Maggie sliding back to Earth, but the
shocker is that Earth has been taken over by
alternatively evolved humans called
Kromaggs, from a
parallel Earth. By the end of the episode we learn that Wade has been taken to a
breeding camp and Quinn is not even from this Earth: his parents were sliders! By now, we realize that the first 2 seasons were in
vain, they've made it home for
nothing and two of their number are
gone. Yet the show carries on, Quinn finding out that he has a
brother and having him join the group. At this point, they're searching for Quinn's home dimension. It no longer feels the same, the
purpose; the
essence from the first seasons is gone. The Earth's they slide to stop being
innovative and
interesting, and simply become plot
catalysts.
Then, in the 5th
season, Quinn and his brother are
amalgamated into one being:
Mallory. At this point, only Rembrandt remains from the
original group and knowing that the Earth has been
lost, the purpose of the show has as well. The sliders will never make it home for
true and
good. In the finale, Rembrandt slides alone back to Earth,
infected with a disease that will kill the Kromaggs and free his
world.
Finally, after
everything they've been
through, none of the sliders make it home alive...