episode #01 & #2 - Pilot

Episode #1 - #2 (Pilot) air date: 3/22/95 written by Tracy Torme Directed by Andy Tennant

The double-length pilot episode introduced us first to Quinn Mallory (Jerry O’Connell), a college-age whiz kid working in his basement in San Francisco on some invention involving anti-gravity. He lives with his mother, works at a local "computer hell" store and attends the local college, where he breezes through his science courses because he's, well, a genius. He accidentally creates a vortex, a tunnel-like portal which leads elsewhere - exactly where he’s not really sure. Quinn uses what he calls a timer, a device resembling a mobile phone of the nineties (which it was), which he points and presses to create the swirling vortex.
Quinn can’t resist leaping into the unknown, to see what’s on the other side. He’s dismayed to see that he’s apparently landed right back where he started - in his own basement. However, just a few minutes of driving his car reveals striking differences to the world he thought he knew: red light means go on this Earth and Elvis is still alive! Much of such reveals and hints are via the radio broadcaster, who mentions, for example, that CDs are defunct. More disturbing is a reveal of a personal nature, concerning Quinn's mom. Quinn is sucked back to his proper Earth after 15 minutes due to how he set the timer; now he makes plans for a more organized, more lengthy trip. First, though, he meets himself.

Quinn is visited by another Quinn (also O’Connell), an even more assured, more mature Quinn who had begun “sliding” from his own Earth weeks earlier. This other Quinn explains the basics of traveling Earth to Earth - “sliding” is the term he coined for it - and departs through his own vortex minutes later, though he yells some warning too late; his words are drowned out by the noise of the vortex. Joining our Quinn on his own trip is his buddy/co-worker/almost-girlfriend Wade Welles (Sabrina Lloyd), his college professor Maximilian Arturo (John Rhys-Davies), and, by accident, singer Rembrandt Brown (Cleavant Derricks), who happened to be passing by Quinn’s house when Quinn inadvisedly increased the power of the vortex.
They end up on an Earth afflicted by an ice age - the city is frozen and very cold - and are forced to flee a tornado, leaving this world hours earlier than what Quinn had set the timer for. This sets up the entire dilemma and conflict of the series: their early departure corrupts the data in the timer and their own Earth’s coordinates are lost. From now on, every slide is one into the unknown and for a random period of time - it could be for a few minutes or several days. Their first stop is on an Earth where the U.S. had been taken over by the Soviets decades before; the Sliders don’t even realize that they’re not back on their Earth until they see a statue of Lenin. On this Earth, Wade's double is a leader of the revolutionary forces, while Arturo's double is a commandant of a prison.

This adventure sets up the even more wild epilogue:

Spoiler:

This pilot episode began the continuing sexual tension between Quinn and Wade, accentuated by such scenes as when Wade meets her double's lover on the Soviet America Earth; unfortunately, it never went anywhere for the entire time that Wade was part of the series.

This initial episode and pilot was superior to most of the remaining episodes simply for the great variety of alternate Earths presented here; the story also throws in some intriguing extras: on the frozen Earth, Quinn notes that his double had a sister and a dog, via an old photo which he finds. The episode slows down a bit when the Sliders are stuck on the Soviet-controlled Earth, but is otherwise a very exciting, entertaining episode. For comedy relief, there's a cameo by Judge Wapner, who was famous as a TV judge on The People's Court back in the nineties; he portrays a totalitarian version of himself. A couple of other minor characters who would pop up in a few episodes as alternate versions are Conrad Bennish (Jason Gaffney), a long-haired flaky science classmate of Quinn's, and Hurley (Gary Jones), Quinn's & Wade's jerky boss at the computer store. BoG's Score: 8 out of 10


Earths Depicted: Earth #1 - Earth Prime, Quinn's origin point
----------------- Earth #2 - Elvis is alive, Jack Kennedy & Marilyn Monroe alive, CDs are dead, red & green traffic lights reversed
----------------- Earth #3 - Frozen Earth; Earth gripped in severe ice age, San Francisco in frozen state
----------------- Earth #4 - Soviet America; the USA had been taken over by Soviets after losing the Korean War
----------------- Earth #5 - very similar to Earth #1 but at least one of Quinn's dead Earth #1 relatives is alive