Sliders: Difference between revisions
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The surprisingly competent final episode ended with a [[Cliff Hanger]] meant to try and push [[Sci Fi]] into giving them a 6th season: it had been clear from the start of production on S5 that [[Sci Fi]] intended to cancel it, having picked it up to get its viewers to watch their new shows. (Which failed. Season 5's ratings actually were good enough to normally get it renewed, but [[Sci Fi]] had committed to other shows already.)
Over the years,
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=== Trope-based episodes: ===
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* [[Agent Scully]]: Arturo
* [[Alien Non-Interference Clause]]: Largely averted. Occasionally Arturo reminds the others that things would at least be simpler for ''them'' if they didn't try to save the world every week.
** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in "Lipchitz Live" after [[John Kassir|a supposed interdimensional traveler]] lambasts Quinn for averting this trope.
{{quote|'''Quinn:''' There's no prime directive!}}
* [[Alien Sky]]
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** Arturo seemed to run on this trope. Being a college professor, he was always intent on suggesting a simple, logical explanation to strange incidents.
** Played with in "The Other Slide of Darkness," where both Rembrandt and Maggie express disbelief in the superstitious beliefs expressed by the locals. Rembrandt's disbelief stems from a personal tragedy. Maggie's, however, is played straight - which gets her snapped at by the more experienced Wade.
** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by Rembrandt in Season 5's "Please Press One":
{{quote|"Sliders Rule #11: Never rule out the obvious no matter how weird."}}
* [[
* [[
** [[Fridge Brilliance|Its implied a few times that the Timer is purposely directing them to realities that are ''close'' to its home dimension, possibly explaining why apart from huge historical changes, the world remains fairly similar to Earth-Prime. The implications of the Multiverse mean that these sorts of eventualities ''would'' exist.]]▼
** The above and this cross over in the episode (or was there more than one?) where it's stated that Dinosaurs never died off. Not only did dinosaurs remain recognizable in their original species and forms over the ensuing millions of years, and not only did humans still evolve just as normal, but human ''society'' proceeded exactly like ours did to the point of dinosaurs being put on the endangered species list. Yes, that's right, in a world where we developed alongside giant, carnivorous, almost impossible to contain and almost certainly impossible to domesticate creatures, humanity would still view wiping them out as a ''bad'' thing.▼
*** If dinosaurs had only survived in the Americas, human society could develop in Eurasia similarly to how it developed in OTL.▼
* [[Baby Factory]]: On some worlds women (or men) are forced into this trope due to population problems.
* [[Better Than Sex]]: In the first episode, Wade claimed that sliding is better than sex.
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* [[Captain's Log]]: Wade's diary, Quinn's videotapes.
* [[Celebrity Paradox]]: On the episode "Data World", Rembrandt has said "What is this, Scream 3?" and guess which one of his co-stars got killed (in character) in Scream 2?
* [[Changeling Fantasy]]: [[Retcon|RetConned]] into the fourth season. See [[
* [[Channel Hop]]: Fox to Sci-Fi.
* [[Character Development]]: Rembrandt. He goes from a [[Dirty Coward]] concerned only with himself to an everyman who cares for his surrogate family to team leader over the course of five seasons.
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* [[The Drifter]]
* [[Dropped a Bridge on Him]]: Almost everybody, eventually. See also [[Put on a Bus]].
* [[Dropped a Bridget On Him]]: Happens in {{spoiler|"To Catch a Slider," where Mallory expresses interest in an actress that turns out to be a man. It's somewhat subverted in that this was public knowledge. It's just that none of the Sliders could've possibly known because they had just recently arrived.}}▼
* [[Dystopia]]
* [[Electric Torture]]
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* [[For Want of a Nail]]
* [[Four-Temperament Ensemble]]
* [[
* [[Gave Up Too Soon]]: In the episode "Into the Mystic", the characters only have a few seconds to decide whether or not to stay on the latest parallel Earth they've landed on. To see if it's their home or not, Quinn tries a fence, knowing it is always squeaky ([[Call Back|something he does in the pilot]]), and it doesn't squeak. After they leave, a gardener with an oil can comes into view.
** In their defense, didn't they also see a Newspaper headline about a Sports Team winning a championship; a team which in reality had moved to a new city since the start of the series or was that a different episode.
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* [[Government Drug Enforcement]]: In one of the [[Planet of Hats]] worlds they visit, because Einstein had been a neuro-chemist instead of a physicist, the government mandates psychotropic drug use by everyone, and the alternate Quinn is a leader of an [[La Résistance|anti-drug resistance]].
** Mention is also made in the episode that Sigmund Freud discovered lithium while working on psychotherapy, and quickly ditched the latter in favor of the former.
* [[Half
* [[Heroic Sacrifice]]: {{spoiler|Arturo in "The Exodus, Part 2" (a very debatable one given the circumstances), Wade in "Requiem."}}
* [[Hey, It's That Guy!]]: Julie Benz of ''[[Dexter]]'', ''[[Angel]]'' and ''[[No Ordinary Family]]'' appeared in "Electric Twister Acid Test."
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* [[In Spite of a Nail]]
* [[Interdimensional Travel Device]]: The "Timer", several of which were actually used by the main characters (the original, the one from Egyptian World, and Colonel Rickman's Timer). The Timer's job was to open wormholes between universes, and also to [[Phlebotinum Breakdown|malfunction]] [[MacGuffin|or get stolen]], [[Plot Device|providing half the series' plots]].
▲* [[It Got Worse]]: You may think Kari Wuhrer was just hired as eye candy, but her contributions are positively Shakespearean compared to those of any of the zombie-like regulars who came on later.
* [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]]: Arturo, though most of his counterparts were just plain [[Jerkass|jerkasses]].
* [[Kick the Dog]]: If you think John Rhys-Davies being fired for criticizing Season 3's writers (basically saying what all the fans were thinking) and the way Arturo's death was handled were bad, read [https://web.archive.org/web/20120324154130/http://earthprime.com/interviews/cleavant-derricks.html this interview with Cleavant Derricks]. Turns out that after "Paradise Lost" wrapped filming, a producer told Rhys-Davies that he was fired... casually... ''in public''... '''in front of the rest of the cast and crew.'''
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* [[Kirk's Rock]]: Featured in the episode "Electric Twister Acid Test"
* [[La Résistance]]: Whenever they're on a [[Planet of Hats]], there's usually a heroic [[La Résistance]] that's opposed to wearing the hat.
** This is [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in an early Season 4 episode, as characters ask and acknowledge that "there's always a resistance."
* [[Lead In]]
* [[Left Hanging]]
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* [[Old Shame]]: Writer Paul Jackson has very little positive to say about his last episode, "Slither."
* [[Omnidisciplinary Scientist]]
* [[Once
* [[Opening Narration]]: The network agreed that explaining the [[Mind Screw|weird concept]] of [[Alternate Universe|Alternate Universes]] to new viewers at the beginning of each show was pretty important.
* [[Our Wormholes Are Different]]: In order to generate a wormhole, you would have to convert the entire mass of the planet Jupiter into energy. I don't think you can do that with a TV remote<ref>Egyptian timer</ref>, a cell phone <ref>original timer</ref>, or a [[Sega Genesis]] controller<ref>Rickman's Timer</ref>.
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* [[The Smart Guy]]: Arturo. Also Quinn to a lesser degree.
* [[Smart People Know Latin]]: In one episode, the protagonists end up in a world where being smart and well-educated is cool (they pass a punk on the street with a boombox blasting classical music). The episode's [[Big Bad]] is a mobster who constantly likes to quote phrases in Latin and gets annoyed when the others have no idea what he said. At the end of the episode, right before sliding, Quinn turns around and spouts a phrase in Latin, which turns out to be an insult.
* [[Somewhere a
* [[
* [[So What Do We Do Now?]]: {{spoiler|The last line of the series.}}
* [[Spiritual Successor]]: Sliders is a Spiritual Successor to Quantum Leap. The shows share a similar episode forumula, Sliders was advertised at least once as "Quantum Leap with an edge," and dialogue in a later episode implies that Maggie Beckett may be Sam Beckett's niece.
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* [[Stargate City]]: Seasons 1 and 2 are filmed in Vancouver, standing in for [[San Francisco]].
* [[Teen Genius]]: Quinn
* [[
* [[This Was His True Form]]
* [[Tim Taylor Technology]]: "MORE POWER, MR. MALLORY!"
* [[Troubled Production]]: The production of this show has quite a story. The first two seasons had many episodes broadcast [[Out of Order]], along with the show being "cancelled" at the end of both seasons before fan petitions kept [[
▲* [[Time Paradox]]: In one universe, time flows backwards. The Sliders still go forwards in time, however, and Quinn ends up stopping something that put him in jail, after he started out there. The result is.. [[Nightmare Fuel|Not pretty.]]
▲* [[Troubled Production]]: The production of this show has quite a story. The first two seasons had many episodes broadcast [[Out of Order]], along with the show being "cancelled" at the end of both seasons before fan petitions kept [[Uncancelled|bringing it back]]. Then came the third season, with an [[Out of Order]] pilot, the head producer(Tracy Tormé) leaving and getting replaced, and the show taking a new direction into more action-oriented episodes. Then, in the middle of the season, John Rhys-Davis was fired and his character was replaced with a [[Ms. Fanservice]] [[Action Girl]]. The show got cancelled yet again, and stayed off the air for a year before its [[Channel Hop]] to the [[Sci Fi]] Channel. During this time, Sabrina Lloyd quit (rumors say she had a feud with Kari Wuhrer, but nobody know for sure why). The [[Sci Fi]] channel executives wanted more of a focus on the Kromaggs, leading the show even further from its original premise. Then came the aforementioned "Hire My Brother" decision, with Jerry O'Connell also taking over more of the writing and changing his character to more of an [[Action Hero]]. However, the [[Sci Fi]] executives eventually started letting the show get back to its original premise, and it was becoming decent in the late fourth season. Then, the O'Connell brothers quit for the fifth season. This, combined with the budget going down to almost [[No Budget]], doomed the show to cancellation after less than a month from the fifth season premiere.
* [[Unlimited Wardrobe]]
* [[Unpredictable Results]]: Their own "sliding" device, about the only thing consistent is that it drops them in a location somewhere close to the entrance point between the two dimensions they travel between. Later seasons gave them the ability to at least control when they are going to travel and which dimension they are going to. But since they don't know their home destination they still have to travel to different dimensions sequentially to find it.
* [[Unresolved Sexual Tension]]
▲* [[
* [[Unwanted Revival]]: No, not Season 4.
* [[Utopia]]
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** There was a proposed episode that would have shown what happened to Wade after she was taken to a Kromagg breeding camp without Sabrina Lloyd having to return to the show, via the gang coming upon a device that made them experience past events from the perspective of other people. Maggie would have been Wade, Diana would have been Mrs. Mallory, Mallory would have been a Humagg soldier in love with Wade, and Rembrandt would have been a sympathetic Kromagg scientist.
** Fox wanted to renew the series for a fourth season but it would just feature Quinn and Maggie alone. This is why season three ended on the cliffhanger where Rembrandt and Wade slide back home with Quinn and Maggie following but ending up in a different dimension. This plan ended when [[Sci Fi]] decided to pick up the show.
* [[What If...?]]
* [[White Dwarf Starlet]]: Rembrandt
* [[Word of God]] / [[What Could Have Been]]: The creator has gone on record stating that the world mentioned in [[You Can't Go Home Again]] was actually the group's homeworld. He has also stated that the plot from Season 4 with Quin being from an alternate Earth was up until the season finale going to turn out to be a hoax by the Kromaggs. This concept was abandoned when the budget dried up and the intended master reveal of Colin turning on the group due to his status as a sleeper-agent-modified-clone-of-Quinn and wormholes opening with dozens of Kromagg ships pouring onto Earth Prime due to Quinn opening the Slidecage was no longer feasible to film. Several fanfics have taken this original plot and run with it.
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* [[Your Mind Makes It Real]]
* [[Your Universe or Mine?]]
▲* [[You Fail Biology Forever]]: Every monster in Season Three.
▲* [[You Fail History Forever]]: Most of the early episodes deal with an alternate Earth where one or two things are different but human civilization is otherwise identical to our late 20th century. Many of these differences are rather drastic (the atomic bomb was never invented; the Soviet Union conquered the USA; penicillin was never discovered; the American Revolution failed; etc.) and would have had profound effects on later events. Most of these can probably be excused by [[Bellisario's Maxim]], though.
▲** [[Fridge Brilliance|Its implied a few times that the Timer is purposely directing them to realities that are ''close'' to its home dimension, possibly explaining why apart from huge historical changes, the world remains fairly similar to Earth-Prime. The implications of the Multiverse mean that these sorts of eventualities ''would'' exist.]]
▲** The above and this cross over in the episode (or was there more than one?) where it's stated that Dinosaurs never died off. Not only did dinosaurs remain recognizable in their original species and forms over the ensuing millions of years, and not only did humans still evolve just as normal, but human ''society'' proceeded exactly like ours did to the point of dinosaurs being put on the endangered species list. Yes, that's right, in a world where we developed alongside giant, carnivorous, almost impossible to contain and almost certainly impossible to domesticate creatures, humanity would still view wiping them out as a ''bad'' thing.
▲*** If dinosaurs had only survived in the Americas, human society could develop in Eurasia similarly to how it developed in OTL.
▲* [[You Fail Economics Forever]]: This show is full of [[Alternate History|Alternate Histories]] written by people who usually write, y'know, [[Did Not Do the Research|sitcoms and stuff]].
{{reflist}}
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