Sliders - first & second season overview

What if? What if? This was the question asked each week on Sliders, showing us alternate versions of Earth - alternate due to some difference in their past histories. 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 gravity.
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 (also known as a wormhole, a term well-used in Sci-Fi circles).


Joining  Quinn on his first trip to another Earth is his buddy/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 are forced to flee their first other Earth 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.
The show never really lived up to its full potential - we never saw repercussions in the next episode, for example, over events at the end of the previous one and many of the early episodes presented silly versions of our Earth (a perennial 1960's flower children Earth and an ‘Old West’ Earth where lawyers resolved differences with guns). But several episodes were clever commentary on social issues, as in an Earth dominated by females, with men as 2nd-class citizens.
The Sliders would also, invariably, run into doubles of themselves on other Earths, such tales offering glimpses of the characters in slightly twisted form. The actor, Derricks, had a real-life twin brother who was used in a couple of episodes later. There were also, especially in the early episodes, brief sly mentions about some variation to the latest Earth, such as an actor who had an insignificant career on Earth-Prime here being a superstar.

The four Sliders formed a pleasant, unofficial nuclear family as the episodes went on: Arturo was the father figure, blustering and impatient (Rhys-Davies was easily the premiere actor among the quartet); Quinn was the genius young son, at times naive; Wade, the spunky sister, whose impulsive nature sometimes got the group into trouble; and Rembrandt, also known as the Cryin’ Man, was the comic relief cousin, usually whining about how unfair this turn in destiny had been on him. The first season was very brief - just 9 episodes (10 if you count the pilot as 2) - and ended with a tense episode of Wade condemned to death by a weird lottery used for population control, as well as Quinn getting shot.  
The 2nd season was only slightly longer at 13 episodes. The first episode of this season resolved the crisis of Quinn getting shot. The 2nd season had its share of intriguing premises, including a world of women (most men had been wiped away by a virus) but there was also an increasing tendency to copy the ideas of the more popular movies of the time. In one episode, Quinn became a Ghost due to lightning striking as a slide began, putting him out of phase.  Then there was the prison-city episode (Escape From New York, er, San Francisco); then a park for dinosaurs (Jurassic Park - light); and “Greatfellas” - you guessed it, a version of GoodFellas.

Perhaps the best was “Post-Traumatic Slide Syndrome,” in which the quartet appear to have made it home. And, it ended on a question mark that remained for the rest of the series: is the Arturo who slides with the others at the end the same Arturo who began sliding with them in the 1st episode? We can’t be sure. But the scariest episode of the season (and maybe of the series) was “Invasion” - introducing the menacing Kromaggs, an alternate form of semi-humans, evolved from a killer ape. The Kromaggs became the recurring threat on the series, always seemingly hovering ominously in the background somewhere even when not showing up in person.