Hello and Welcome to Mike’s Random Thoughts. Sliders… I’ve mentioned it before, and I figure I can talk about how to fix it. And it’s a daunting concept. It was such a promising show, and that was ruined by a producer kicking the creator out. So, where to start? Let’s start with the good aspects.
Sliders was a show made in 1995 by Tracy Torme, that was about science whiz Quinn Mallory (Jerry O’Connell) who creates a device that can transport himself to a number of parallel universes. He drags along his main love interest, Wade Welles (Sabrina Lloyd), his physics professor, Professor Maximillion Arturo (John Rhys-Davies) and a washed up singer who got dragged in accidentally, Rembrandt Brown (Cleavant Derricks). They travel to countless worlds, and pick up a few people on the way, including pilot Maggie Beckett (Kari Wuhrer) and Quinn’s brother from another world, Colin Mallory (Charlie O’Connell). The first three seasons aired on Fox and the last two were on the Sci-Fi channel, much like MST3K.
I adore this show, but boy did they screw it up. How did they screw it up? Well… Season Three happened. In Season 3, production was in turmoil as the family-like atmosphere was destroyed by David Peckinpah. That led to John Rhys-Davies leaving, and the show’s tone changing. I frankly hated it. Without the Professor, it lost something. Maggie is okay, but I frankly hate her character. Then in Season 4, Sabrina Lloyd left, leaving us with only Quinn and Rembrandt as the original two sliders. But that was shortlived as after Season 4, both O’Connells left and we got “Mallory” an amalgam of Quinn and an alternate version of himself. But I haven’t watched Season 5, I’ve been avoiding it, so I can’t talk about it much.
Now, to fixing it. First of all, stop letting Fox meddle with the show. Fox strangles sci-fi in the cradle, remember Terra Nova and Firefly? Yeah, so Fox doesn’t know what the viewers want. We don’t want another McFarlane show, we want good speculative fiction! And of course, they never should have killed off Arturo, because he was really the heart of the show. I like Quinn, but Arturo was my favorite before he left the show. And the universes they went to in Season 3, kinda sucked. I mean, some were good, like “Double Cross” and “The Guardian”, and “The Prince of Slides” wasn’t so bad. But the rest were seriously lacking in the aspects of a good Sliders episode.
And also, the Quinn/Maggie relationship was the most contrived relationship I had ever seen! Quinn and Wade, it works! They had a history, their feelings for each other had been known since Season 1 for Christ’s sake, and they never went forward with that! But no, Quinn and Maggie totally had chemistry, oh wait no they didn’t! So take that out, and it’d be fixed.
And that’s pretty much it, you wanna fix Sliders, do what I said and maybe, just maybe it wouldn’t have sucked so much! I’m Michael and those were my random thoughts.
RT Gomer Productions 