Sliders

Introduction

"What if you found a portal to a parallel universe? What if you could slide into a thousand different worlds — where it's the same year, and you're the same person, but everything else is different? And what if you can't find your way home?"

- Quinn Mallory

The Sliders consisted of four different individuals who find themselves traveling through parallel universes. Quinn Mallory, a physics major and the tech genius invented a timer which allows instant travel and access to various different versions of Earths. However, the other sliders were caught in Quinn's grand quest on a journey to countless Earths. Wade Wells, Professor Arturo, and Rembrandt Brown joined in the ride and gets stuck in their parallel journeys. While they were travelling to each Earth, they were hoping to get back to their home world dubbed Earth Prime. In Season One of the television series, the four sliders have had their strange encounters throughout each world and face common enemies. In Season Three, they meet up with Maggie Beckett who later became the slider after her Earth was destroyed by pulsars. Due to Arturo's death, the rest of the sliders continued on their journey to find Earth Prime. In Season Four, they finally reached Earth Prime but found that the evolved human race called the Kromaggs overtook it and kidnapped Wade Wells while Rembrandt Brown was also caught in the jail cell. Once Quinn learns of his birth parents and his long-lost brother, Quinn, Maggie, and Rembrandt escaped from Earth Prime and searches for Colin Mallory. Later, the sliders found Colin on a world where technology was forbidden. They convinced Colin that he was abandoned by his birth parents from a parallel Earth which was invaded by the Kromaggs a while back. Colin decides to leave his adopted world and joins with the sliders. In Season Five and the last season of the series, Quinn and Colin gets trapped in between the universes. As a result, Quinn gets trapped within his fraternal double's body. A physicist named Diana joins the sliders in order to separate the two Quinns and save Colin hopping from dimensions to dimensions. In the end of the series, the sliders were left stranded on the world where they were celebrities except for Rembrandt Brown who slid through Kromagg Prime to defeat the Kromaggs with the virus.

Sliding

Interdimensional travel, or sliding is done via the creation of a stable Einstein-Rosen gateway. These gateways, also known in the scientific community as wormholes, puncture a small hole in the dimensional barrier. Scientific theories have speculated that there are several hundred parallel worlds, and physicists or scientists agree that because of the waveform nature of quantum physics, there are in fact an infinite number of universes. The first trans-dimensional gateway was created in 1995 by a young college genius named Quinn Mallory who used a electromagnetic curvature of time and space. The resultant vortex allowed him to "slide" briefly to a parallel universe only to return after his timing device signaled an end to the journey. A timer they carry tells them how long they must remain on each world before the next slide; if they miss an opportunity to slide, the next wormhole will not open to that world for 29 years.

Parallel Universes

A parallel universe can be referred to as a universe which is similar to our own. However, this universe can be seen different according to its different history. A parallel universe can occur by the use of time travel. But time travel wasn't involved too much in creating alternate universes. Since time travel can create alternate timelines or universes, a parallel universe can exist from within our own universe. Quinn Mallory created a timer so that he could travel to another universe. Quinn and his team of sliders journeyed through countless Earths with different histories. The sliders also encounter their own doubles whose life took different changes compared to theirs. These doubles may look similar as the original sliders but they do have different personalities.

Examples of Alternate Worlds

Prince of Wails

A world where Great Britain rules the Americas.

The Prince of Slides

United States became a monarchy instead of Britain.

The Good, The Bad, and The Wealthy

A world where corporate lawyers are literally hired guns.

Eggheads

A world where geniuses, not athletes, became top celebrities.

In Dinos Veritas/Dinoslide

These two episodes are set in two worlds where dinosaurs never became extinct.

Earth Prime

Earth Prime is the true home of the sliders but one of the sliders, Quinn Mallory wasn't born there. Instead, he was raised by his adoptive parallel doubles of his actual parents. In Season Four of the series, Quinn's mother revealed to his son that she and her husband took him away and hid him from his actual parents. In reality, Quinn's parents were on the verge of a war against the Kromaggs on their homeworld. The real parents left Quinn in the care of their doubles for safety. However, when the real parents came back, their doubles wanted Quinn as their own son. Earth Prime was also been taken over by the Kromaggs when the sliders came back to their Earth.