Through the Looking Glass

Quinn returns from his mission to correct time to discover he no longer exists - and the Slide Masters want him executed for crimes against the multiverse.

• Quinn has averted a multiversal crisis by preventing his past self from changing the history of Time's Arrow Earth in As Time Goes By. Depressed, Quinn returns to Slide Ruler Earth from the past to find that his friends are gone and the Slide Rulers have no clue who he is or what he's talking about. The timer malfunctions as well, leaving Quinn trapped and under arrest for violating the sliding protocol of that earth. Quinn concludes that his excursion into the past has altered time and in the altered timeline, he and the others never encountered the Slide Rulers. Imprisoned as a rogue slider and slated for execution, Quinn is able to obtain help from a double of Bennish. The two use contraband technology to locate Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo and Quinn slides to their location. Upon tracking them to the Dominion Hotel, Quinn is shocked to discover that in the new, true timeline he died on Outpost 113 ("Invasion") and his friends welcomed another Slider into their ranks. "Quinn's anomalous now," said Tracy Tormé. "He died, and yet he's alive now, kind of outside space-time. But I understand how the audience would be confused."

Shattered Mirror

Quinn's reunion with his friends is problematic when they not only insist he was murdered by the Kromaggs years ago, they introduce new Slider Jeff... who just happens to be Wade's husband.

• A stunned Wade Welles opens the door to the hotel room she, Maximillian Arturo, Rembrandt "Cryin' Man Brown" and Jeff Stevenson share to find a confused, rain-soaked Quinn Mallory standing before her. With eight hours before the slide, Quinn recounts his stories to his friends, who insist their Quinn Mallory never escaped Kromagg internment. Jeff introduces himself as a journeyman who, while intellectual, opted for an adventurous life rather than a studious one. Captured by the Kromaggs and liberated by the Sliders from Earth 113, Jeff has become an integral part of the team. Even more amazingly, in the three years Jeff has slid with the group, Wade has fallen in love with and married him. Now the group is faced with conflicting emotions, especially Wade's. Rembrandt and Arturo are overjoyed to know their friend is still alive, but with two completely different sets of experiences, will Quinn and the Sliders be able to come together as a group again?

Cabin Fever

A slide into a world long devastated by nuclear war forces Arturo to re-acquaint himself with Quinn as the two work feverishly to repair the timer before radiation or the next bomb devastates their chances of surviving.

Redux

Quinn is baffled when the Sliders land in the same situation seen in "Double Cross" — only this time, Logan's perfected her ability to raze parallel worlds of their resources.

• "We wanted to revisit some worlds that we'd done but with a different twist," said Tormé. "With Quinn having changed history, half of the series' worlds were open to new interpretation, and we thought the perfect example would be: what if Logan's plans had succeeded? And we set her character in motion again by making her less of an antagonist and more of a helper that the Sliders sabotage and strand on a parallel world when she shows her true colors." What happens to Logan? "We'll see her again," Tormé added with a smirk.

One Small Favor

At the behest of a double of Rembrandt, Quinn and Arturo work together to undo a sliding experiment that resulted in the merging of two fraternal Quinn doubles and left their brother phased between worlds.

• "When Earth Prime made contact with our offices three years ago and proposed a tape swap, we took a look at what was produced and adapted some of the elements for our own series," said Tracy Tormé. "From our viewer's standpoint, it's inconceivable the only remaining original member is Cleavant [Derricks]. So I wrote an episode where the fans from our world meet the Sliders from yours. The episode finds the Sliders landing in San Francisco after their second run-in with Logan St. Clair, and while looking for a place to stay, encounters Alt-Rembrandt." Tormé goes on to describe that the Sliders from our Earth aren't quite so benevolent anymore. "Your Sliders have definitely succumbed to the despair of losing so many friends and have given up on trying to make the multiverse a better place. Our Sliders find out that some of the difficulties they've had on previous worlds were a direct result of these doubles. It's up to our gang of heroes to set things on the proper path again." In a nice touch, Quinn and Arturo successfully stick Colin and separate the Quinns before departing. "I cleaned up the mess that the writers of the show on your Earth created. Someone had to. God, what an embarrassment."

Horizons

When the Sliders find themselves in a Renaissance Europe perched on the edge of exploring the New World, they try to stop an age of destruction and pillaging while trying to figure out how the timer left them so far outside their sliding radius.

• "Normally we're adamant about keeping the Sliders in San Francisco," said Tracy Tormé. "One day [author Jack Kimble] comes in to pitch and he's got a globe with him. Naturally, Bob [Weiss] and I were a little intrigued. So Kimble sits the globe down and points at San Francisco and then spins the thing around about halfway and says, 'a world that's only 12 hours ahead on its axis puts the Sliders in Europe.' And it made so much sense that we went with it."

Minimal Deviation, part I

A routine slide turns life-shattering when a felonious Gomez Calhoun steals the group's timer and slides, leaving the fivesome with no means of traveling to another world.

Minimal Deviation, part II

Despite Wade, Rembrandt's and Jeff's resignation of fate, a determined Quinn and Arturo build a new timer to hunt down Gomez Calhoun and get their technology back.

• "One thing we've always tried to do with Sliders is create a careful blend of humor, social satire and character exposition," said Executive Producer John Landis. "For [Minimal Deviation], we had the setup and some great characterization, particularly with Rembrandt's return to music and Wade's desire to live a normal life with her husband [Jeff]. Now, obviously we aren't going to split the team up for good, but for the second part we went for a more comedic route. In the history of the show, there's only been a buddy-comedy routine with Quinn and Arturo once, so we wanted to revisit that. The idea to make Gomez Calhoun the nemesis seems off-kilter yet right, because [Will Sasso's] face is so familiar to the fans."

Beauty World

The Sliders must adapt their way of life and their physical appearance to make it through a slide in a society where the concept of beauty is radically different than our own.

• Held over since the second season, this episode examines a society where the concept of beauty is radically different than ours and the Sliders must adapt their way of life and their physical appearance to make it through the slide. "I worked on that one extensively a couple of years back," said Tracy Tormé. "The Network didn't like it at the time so we shelved it, but now, here it is."

Excavation

The Sliders land on a world where human civilization is long gone... all except for a living archive that is more than happy to tell them what happened.

Dark Mirror

The Sliders pursue a darker version of their group when they find their timers are interconnected... and their evil doppelgangers have no compunction about spreading havoc and fear.

Solid Gold

Rembrandt uncovers a scheme by his evil double to dupe Californians into thinking there's another Gold Rush on.

Flux

The Sliders stumble upon a sliding "institute" populated entirely with doubles of the Sliders, but a rogue genius may spell its doom with a volatile experiment.

• The Sliders land on a world entirely populated by... Sliders! The city of San Francisco is an ultra-futuristic mecca of technology and civility. Doubles from hundreds of parallel earths have not only traveled here, they've settled and continued their studies in transdimensional travel. The Institute, established by the first Quinn Mallory who landed on this world and realized its potential, is close to developing a fully functional sliding unit. People from the Institute search out people about to develop sliding on their earth and invite them to study here, like a Sliders University. Everyone meets their double, except for Jeff, something that causes him to feel a little left out. Arturo and Quinn study sliding at the Institute and add some functionality to the timer, including a power amplifier, tracking abilities and coordinate input. Also added is an Emergency Translocation Burst (ETB), which creates a wormhole but with unknown results. Rembrandt gets together with some of his doubles and has a jam session that has to be seen to be believed ("We stretched our FX budget to get 8 Rembrandts on screen at once," said Tracy Tormé).

29.7

Having missed the window of opportunity, the Sliders gather together 30 years later to determine whether or not to slide again.

• "You've been watching the wrong Sliders the whole time," says Tormé. "But this allowed us to discuss what really happens when you miss the slide. You settle. You make the best of your life. And you live. The only thing we had to do was leave Jeff out, since his double wouldn't join up with another group of Sliders, so we named Quinn and Wade's kid Jeff and sent him to Los Angeles."

Event Horizon

Activating the timer's failsafe, Quinn and the others are separated across time on a world wary of sliding technology.

• "Wade's exit is the most precarious," says Tormé. "She lands in the bank vault we saw in 'Dark Mirror' except the building that occupies that space on this world is a detention center, so the Sliders do a really amazing break-in to get her out. The whole end sequence has this high-concept, big-bang feel to it that should leave the audience very satisfied."

Double Helix

On a world similar to Jeff's home, Jeff is confronted by a double of his late wife while Rembrandt fends off a copyright lawsuit — for being a clone of their Cryin' Man!

• "We needed to do something with Jeff," says Tracy Tormé. "He hadn't been terribly developed and we wanted to give him a good personal story. Being a refugee had to be a painful experience, but I'd say it's about on par with running into your long-lost love who's so overjoyed to see you safe that you forget you're married.

  "As for Rembrandt, we had this idea floating around about cloning and thought it would make a good B-story as well as let us flesh out this particular parallel world a little better. However, the emphasis is on Jeff."

Bear Market

It's stock-market savvy time for the Sliders when a visit to an America under the control of Big Business swallows Quinn, Jeff and Wade into the religion of Capitalism.

• "I remember reading a conspiracy book a couple years ago where a bunch of America's wealthiest were looking to install a fascist government over Franklin Roosevelt's and how close it came to happening," describes Tracy Tormé. "So what if that happened? A government run by big business? We took it to the Nth degree and slapped the religion silliness in because it's always fun to take a poke at organized religion. The best part is we got to pair off Arturo with Rembrandt again, which is always a winning combination."

Incursion

When Quinn is conscripted by the Slide Masters to hunt down a rogue Slider, he's given the opportunity to return to the past and undo the time travel that made him an outside among his own friends.

Double Jeopardy

A return to a world in chaos sets the stage for the final showdown between the Sliders and their dark dopplegangers.

• Vowing to get to the bottom of all this, the Sliders stage a break-in to the UCAL campus but are captured and brought before the leaders of the violence. It turns out that the people behind all this are the evil Sliders from "Dark Mirror," and they are none too pleased to find that their doubles have tracked them once again.

  "Basically, this group of Sliders gave up on ever trying to get home and have decided that interference of the worst kind is the only way they can come to grips with their situation," says Tormé. "They're exactly what you hope you don't become - bitter, lonely, resentful."

Dopplerganger

When a rough slide damages the timer, the Sliders find that the only place around to get parts is Doppler Electronics, now a monolithic affair run by a Bill Gates-esque Quinn Mallory.

• "A light-hearted episode," says Jerry O'Connell. "A lot of fun."

Nexus

The Sliders team up with Logan St. Claire to save a world with the sliding technology to get all of them home.

• The Sliders find that their slide has been re-directed through the interdimension to the remnants of the city seen in "Flux." Any and all Sliders are being brought here here in the vain attempt they might stabilize this reality. While Quinn and Arturo jump to the rescue and begin working with Chaplin, Wade, Jeff and Rembrandt find an old nemesis has also been brought here by accident — Logan St. Clair.

  "Logan really is a great character," says Tracy Tormé. "She adds a whole new level to Quinn's dynamic. She's sexy, smart and manipulative. She's the perfect antagonist."

The Great Work

A mysterious libary that catalogues the histories of parallel worlds will lead the Sliders home... if they can defend it from a Kromagg armada bent on learning its secrets.

• "We wanted to end the series with a bang," said Tracy Tormé, "so we took some elements of a pitch we'd been handed last season and reworked it as the penultimate episode of Sliders. It addresses the Kromaggs, lets the Sliders get in some good fight scenes... I was completely satisfied. Of course the scene where the Sliders get some insight into some of the worlds they've encountered was one of the highlights of the show."

Denouement, part I

The Sliders return to Earth Prime on the eve of a Kromagg invasion. Will they be able to keep their world safe?

• "The Sliders finally make it back to Earth Prime," says Tormé. "We wanted to wrap the show up. We had created some interesting character arcs during the season, but we'd pretty much shied away from the Kromaggs since they'd had some heavy play in the fourth season. We wanted the payoff of reaching home to also be exciting for the viewer, so it seemed logical to make it a fight for home."

  "We'd created Jeff at the beginning of the season to be a Kromagg plant, make no doubt. He been a prisoner on 113, and pretty much ingratiated himself into the Sliders' lives. Aside from one double, he's pretty much alone in the multiverse, and that's exactly what we were shooting for. If you followed the little clues across the season, the revelation should come as no surprise to the viewer."

Denouement, part II

While Quinn and Arturo scour the interdimension looking for the Archivist civilization, Wade tries to stop her traitorous husband from unleashing a Kromagg armada on Earth Prime.