This week we take a break from the Red Dwarf retrospective to talk about Sliders. No wait, don’t leave! Sliders is a good show! Humph. Whatever, if you’re still here, let’s talk Sliders. Sliders was a show from the 90’s where Quinn Mallory (Jerry O’Connell), Wade Wells (Sabrina Lloyd), Rembrandt Brown (Cleavant Derricks) and Professor Maximillion Arturo (John Rhys-Davies) travel from dimension to dimension hoping the next leap will be the leap home… er… next slide will be the slide home. And there was one episode in particular that leads to an interesting discussion.
In “Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome” they land on a world that seems like their Earth in every way, except for small details that only Quinn notices. Arturo and Quinn plan to keep the sliding on the downlow until they perfect it, however the others wants to do differently. Rembrandt ends up getting his career back and Wade is serializing her diaries of the slides. Arturo then in a strange out of character moment takes all the credit for sliding. He even gets a museum exhibit dedicated to him. They try to get Quinn to take credit away from Arturo, but Quinn isn’t convinced that they’re home. Eventually they see the “AzureGateBridge” and Rembrandt and Wade finally believe Quinn. They then try to get the timer from the Professor, because it was stolen from Quinn a few days earlier. They break into the museum to steal it. However, it’s a duplicate that doesn’t work. They go to his house to steal it back and they find another Arturo in the basement. This Arturo claims to be their Arturo, and that this universe’s Arturo hadn’t slid with them. I will now refer to this universe’s Arturo as Arturo2. Arturo2 tied him up the day they got there. Arturo2 shows up, and they lose track of which Arturo is which. They escape to Quinn’s house and open the portal, but then the Arturos get into a fight and one jumps through the portal, stranding one Arturo in this universe, while the other continues to slide. Rembrandt is in a psychiatrist’s office, telling the story and says that they still don’t know which Arturo they have. Then the episode ends.
The discussion starts on the question of which Arturo they had. I subscribe to the theory that they have the correct Arturo. I believe it to correct because for one thing, the Arturo that goes through with them knows all their adventures, because they mention them in later episodes. Another factor is the fact that if the one that claimed sliding was the one that went with them, what’s stopping him from stealing the timer, getting Quinn and the others arrested and claiming sliding for his own again. He has ample opportunities to do so. Also, it just doesn’t make sense that the correct Arturo wouldn’t just use the stuff in Quinn2’s lab to make a working sliding machine, go home and warn everyone.
In conclusion, I believe that the Sliders took the correct Arturo with them. Next week I will hopefully get back to the Red Dwarf stuff. Until then, I’m Michael and this has been my random thoughts.
RT Gomer Productions 