Sliders - Season 1 & 2 ~ DVD

Sliders - Season 1 & 2 ~ DVD
$29.99
$29.99 about 6 years ago

While trying to develop an anti-gravity device, physics genius Quinn Mallory instead creates a device that opens portals to alternative realities. After an accident leaves them lost, Mallory and his companions: his physics professor, Professor Maximillian Arturo, his work colleague and potential love, Wade Wells, and a washed-up soul singer, Rembrandt Brown, “slide” from reality to reality in search of home. Nominated for Saturn Award 1996, Best Genre Television Series Sliders Review (for Season 1&2) "When “Sliders” first hit TV in the mid-nineties it never got a fair shake. It suffered from unfair comparisons to “Quantum Leap” even though the shows weren’t really similar. It was misunderstood by Fox, as the network insisted on playing episodes out of order (even when the storyline was linear) and mismanaging the show on every level. Every step of the way was a tremendous fight for series creator Robert K. Weiss as he waded through ridiculous corporate edicts which would have had him alienating fans and basically producing mindless, numbing tripe, akin to the lame Sci-Fi stuff we’re now accosted with in shows like “Mutant X.” Fox actively worked against him to keep him from making the episodes he wanted and ironically enough one of the episodes Fox worked hardest to keep him from making was the one for which “Sliders” received an Emmy nomination. By the end of Season 3 everyone was jumping ship, including Robert Weiss who after three seasons of battling moronic pencil pushers gave up the fight. From there it was a steady downhill slide into dismal plodding as the show continued on without the people who loved it, but for awhile, “Sliders” stacked up to the best Sci-Fi in the history of television…I had fond memories of the show, but for some reason I’d forgotten just how intelligent the series really was. The premise is complicated, but not overly so. A brilliant college physics student named Quinn Mallory (Jerry O’Connell) has a breakthrough in his basement and constructs what he calls a “sliding machine.” The machine enables him to travel not in time, but to different dimensions. Same year, different earth. As things often do, his experiments go awry, sucking himself, his professor Maximillion Arturo (John Rhys-Davies), his friend Wade Welles (Sabrina Lloyd), and a hapless passerby named Rembrant “Cryin Man” Brown (who drives his Caddy into the portal as it drifts out into the street) into his vortex without a way to get home. With them is Quinn’s “timer,” a remote device that lets him open a sliding portal, but due to malfunction doesn’t provide a way to find the right tunnel back to their particular earth. And so the four are trapped traveling from parallel world to parallel world, forming an impromptu family, and hoping against hope that their next slide will take them home. Unbelievably enough, the science isn’t all that shaky and they reference real theories put forth by scientists like Einstein and Hawking in setting “Sliders” up. But what makes the show work is the freedom they have to say something by putting our little family of Sliders into bizarre and sometimes all too similar worlds. One week they might be on a world where all the men have been killed by biological warfare; the next week on a world where San Francisco has been turned into a maximum security prison. Sometimes one episode builds directly into the next, sometimes the episodes work as independent snippets unto themselves. The real reason to love “Sliders” is the characters, brought to life by a brilliant ensemble cast that doesn’t follow the normal television rules of being young, hot, and sexy. The backbone of the show is really the gruff and often grumpy John Rhys-Davies as Maximillian Arturo. Arturo is Quinn’s teacher and is stuck grappling with the reality that he’s been completely surpassed by his student. Rhys-Davies brings a fun sense of anger and crankiness to the show, constantly shouting and bullying his way around. Arturo is often pigheaded and downright mean but he’s also brings in the right dynamic to pull this disparate group together… Even Jerry O’Connell is good, though his post-Sliders resume might not lead you to think that’s possible. He’s the show’s only hot looking youngster, but he never steals the limelight from the other cast members, content to fill his role as the earnest and well-intentioned young genius. Sabrina Lloyd has her own problems to deal with, as the show’s only female cast member; she’s left battling alone for the female prospective. Cleavant Derricks is hilarious as the washed up R&B star Rembrant Brown, his character arc is probably the most compelling as he transitions from a whiny has-been who got unjustly pulled into this thing by Quinn, to a rock within the group. “Sliders” is simply a great piece of Science Fiction. It capably tackles both serious and humorous topics with equal skill. This show knew how to be fun without being dumb, and that’s something you just don’t see anymore on television. The special effects looked cool at the time and still do, if a little dated. The show isn’t always totally consistent, a few of the first episodes of Season 2 are fairly mediocre, but the series rebounds by delivering plenty that are damn near perfect too. “Sliders” holds up well nearly ten years later, and if like me you watched it a decade ago and only remember sort of enjoying it, give the first couple of seasons another chance. It might surprise you." Cinema Blend