Sliders/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Arturo: Nasty French planet - filled with shifty, back-stabbing, croissant-sniffing nitwits!

    • In Season 4, this was a Running Gag for why the Sliders weren't aware of the norms of a given world:

"We're from Canada."

Arturo: I am not Mr. Pavarotti! Mr. Pavarotti is an Italian! He speak-a like-a this! Do I speak-a like-a this?! No! Why?! BECAUSE I AM AN ENGLISHMAN, YOU BLISTERING IDIOT!!

  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Logan St. Clair, a once-off villain who was meant to be a recurrer but never re-appeared due to Executive Meddling, but whose wild popularity with the fans led to her being included in seemingly half of the Sliders Fan Fics ever written.
    • Evil Female Brunette (who's hot). Of course she's uber-popular.
    • Conrad Bennish, Jr. is amazingly popular with the fanbase. He only appeared in four episodes thanks to Executive Meddling, but he was an instant fan favorite. He probably appears in more fanfics than even Logan.
  • Ethnic Scrappy: Rembrandt veered dangerously close to this at first; he eventually got better.
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Reviewers at IMDB are unanimous. Watch the first two seasons and then quit while you're ahead. You have been warned.
  • Franchise Original Sin: The season 2 episode "Invasion", which introduced the Kromaggs. Most agree the episode wasn't that bad in and of itself, and was actually an interesting concept, until the Kromaggs became the sole focus of the series half-way through season 3, after an absence.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: The episode "Season's Greedings" had lots of Christmas ads that were very commercialized. Nowadays they seem normal.
    • Hell, even at the time, fans made jokes about how the Sliders must be home if they'd landed on a world where Christmas was overly commercialized.
  • Jump the Shark: The Kromaggs conquer "Earth Prime". And then Quinn's mother tells him he's an alien changeling and gives him a recorded brain-message from his "real parents" back in their alternate utopia by digging it out of her arm? Really? And we're supposed to take anything else seriously after that?
    • None of which was meant to stick originally. But thanks to budget cuts and Executive Meddling, the plans to show how the those entire plot lines were falsely created by the Kromaggs were dropped at the last minute.
    • Or maybe much earlier, the You Can't Go Home Again entry.
    • Arguably, when they unceremoniously kicked Torme out and put Peckinpah in charge. Because episodes involving tornadoes (Twister), the end of the world (Armaggedon), and Dinosaurs (The Lost World: Jurassic Park) weren't in any way because of any movies out at the time...
  • Large Ham: Arturo, Rickman
  • Replacement Scrappy: Pretty much every new character added to the regular cast.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Maggie became really likeable in the fourth season premiere and stayed that way until the series finale.
  • Retroactive Recognition: Before becoming Trip Tucker, Connor Trinneer played Samson in "Prophets and Loss."
    • Before breaking out on Mad TV, Will Sasso played recurring hotel clerk Gomez Calhoun in the first two seasons.
  • Seasonal Rot: Season 3 onwards.
    • The entirely of Season Five was a pain to watch. Especially getting rid of Jerry O'Connell in one of the lamest excuses for a recast, and de facto killing one of the most beloved characters of the show. All within one Slide. It goes downhill from there.
  • Tear Jerker: In "Applied Physics," Mallory struggles with Quinn's memories and 'remembers' Arturo:

"I don't know who he was, but he meant so much to me I can't stop hurting."

    • The end of "Gillian of the Spirits," when it looks like the others will have to leave Quinn behind.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: "The Exodus" two-parter. Consider: a doomed world, the Sliders racing to save everyone they can, finding Earth Prime, the death of Arturo, the addition of a new Slider (one who's not shy about causing inter-group conflict) and the emergence of a new Big Bad. On paper, these sound like some pretty interesting (if not epic) ideas that would provide a wealth of storytelling potential. But the execution? Well, Tracy Tormé and many others consider them some of the worst episodes the series ever produced - if not the definitive examples.
  • The Woobie: Quinn Mallory