Same Planet, Different Dimensions: Sliding through the Many Worlds of Earth

One of the popular ideas in science fiction of the last 20 or so years is the Many Worlds theory, or the idea that each decision point leads to a split generating a different parallel universe for each outcome. I first encountered this idea in the mid 1980s in the brilliant book The Proteus Operation by James P. Hogan, then a promising new writer who has unfortunately since turned into a crackpot of the highest order. I have since encountered a plethora of variations on the idea, some brilliant, some awful, and some mind-numbingly boring. It's been done and redone and overdone until sometimes the thought of reading another one makes me want to tear my hair out. I still read them though, especially the variants that fall under the aegis of alternate history. I'm a sucker for alternate history.

About a decade after the Many Worlds theory started invading written science fiction, it hit the small screen in the form of the show Sliders. Sliders features four people stuck out there on a seemingly infinite series of alternate Earths, moving randomly from one to the next at the whim of an often broken timer in search of their home reality. As they move from one alternate universe to the next, they often either involve themselves in the problems of the locals, get in trouble because they don't understand the local laws and customs, or both.

Home base is San Francisco and each slide brings them to a different version of the city. A few are fairly similar to the city we know and love, but many are very different. These episodes feature a San Francisco that's part of the Republic of Texas and governed by the code of the Old West, a San Francisco that's a dinosaur preserve, a San Francisco about to be obliterated by an asteroid impact, a San Francisco that's a maximum security prison, and many others.

The four sliders are really the only constant from episode to episode. Quinn Mallory (Jerry O'Connell), physics and engineering wunderkind, invented the sliding device. His coworker, friend, and wannabe girlfriend Wade Wells (Sabrina Lloyd) adds some tension and a hot chick for the guys to drool over. Quinn's physics professor Maximillian Arturo (John Rhys-Davies) fills the crotchety old man role to perfection. The final slider, Rembrandt Brown (Cleavant Derricks, is the odd man out. A midline 60s R&B performer, he's pulled into the initial slide by accident and doesn't know anyone else in the group. Together they bicker, argue,fight, solve problems, figure out the rules on each world, and basically become a family.

The first two seasons of Sliders consists of 23 hour long episodes originally aired in 1995 and 1996. I saw most but not all of these episodes when they first aired but not since then. I really enjoyed them at the time and was looking forward to reacquainting myself with the show. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy them as much as expected.

The problem is that watching the show in a continuous streak really makes the inconsistencies jump out at you. It's a lot easier to spot contradictions when they're viewed 5 hours apart as opposed to two months apart. I'm sure it's no surprise that the major contradictions and inconsistencies revolve around the rules and mechanisms of sliding. The initial setup makes it clear that there's only one window to slide from each world, but later episodes mention waiting for later windows if it looks like the crew might miss the first. At first, the specific location of the slide is fixed to a single spot, but later the slide can be initiated from wherever the sliders are when it's time to slide. Many of the episodes rely on running into our characters' doubles on the alternate worlds or on our characters pretending to be their doubles to pull off some scam or other task necessary to complete whatever they're trying to get done on a particular world before sliding, but then suddenly they slide into the bodies of their doubles without any explanation for the change or how it was accomplished. By the middle of the second season nearly every slide had some anomaly that was distracting enough to pull me out of the story.

Another irritation is the lack of connectivity between successive episodes. Most episodes end with a slide and a glimpse of the new world, setting us up for a story set in that world. However, we don't get to see that story. The next episode is set on a completely different world. Some of these end of episode worlds are really interesting, often more interesting than the worlds we actually spend time exploring. Every once in a while there's a brief reference to one of these world, but for the most part they're teasers without any payoff.

Perhaps the worst problem, though, is just how incredibly stupid our sliders can be at times. They never seem to learn from their mistakes. They take the same actions leading them into the same dangers and problems over and over and over again. They never take the time to slowly figure out how a new world works, but plunge right in even when faced with circumstances and activities that most three year olds would recognize as dangerous or stupid.

They also never seem to catch on to what's happening around them even when it's immediately obvious. While some of these worlds are different enough from our reality to be confusing, some are very simply designed. It took me less than two minutes to figure out what was going to happen in the final episode of the first season, "Luck of the Draw", yet our hapless crew never quite managed to draw the proper conclusion and only realized they were in danger when a local protester handed Quinn a pamphlet outlining the ways of that world.

Sliders doesn't quite live up to my memories of it, mostly because the inconsistencies are more obvious when you watch episode after episode in one sitting, but it's still a very good show. It works extremely well when being clever, but not so well when it forgets that intelligence is the key to its success. Episodes are often filled with marvelous little throwaway bits that add a great deal of atmosphere. Some of the worlds are a bit far-fetched, but many have an obvious and interesting break point from our own reality. For the most part the worlds are self-consistent and make sense within the context of their setup. If you like alternate history or Many Worlds stories, you'll probably enjoy Sliders, but you should also probably watch it one or two episodes at a time so the inconsistencies don't jump out to ruin the experience.