The Premise for the people who haven’t yet seen Sliders at all:

Sliders is about a group of travelers (Sliders) who discover a way to “slide” between parallel versions of Earth. Brilliant physics student Quinn Mallory invents a device that opens portals to alternate dimensions. During an experimental journey, Quinn, his professor Maximillian Arturo, his friend Wade Welles, and singer Rembrandt “Crying Man” Brown are accidentally stranded away from their own Earth. Unable to control exactly where each portal will take them, or risk missing their only chance to slide onward, the group travels from one alternate Earth to another, encountering worlds where history, politics, technology, and human evolution have taken sometimes very different paths. Their continuing goal is simple but increasingly difficult: find their way back home.

So yes, the premise certainly sounds exciting, and I do remember (yes really) that it is going to get exciting, more exciting than the short first season ever got. The season one finale was the best yet, where Wade wins the lottery but, on that earth, it means a sentence to death after a glorious day. Season one was a good opportunity to get to know the characters, a chance for the characters to develop, also for the actors to get comfortable with their characters. The only story-arc there is till now, is that our four characters are lost, that they don’t know how to get back to our earth. Unfortunately, we will also see many cast changes; almost the whole original cast is gone in the final season; only Rembrandt (Derricks, Cleavant) will be there in all five seasons.

The Characters:

The original regular cast is only four characters, Quinn Malory (Jerry O’Connell), is the brilliant physics student, but he is not the one who actually figured out how the sliding worked, it was a Quinn Mallory from another dimension, from another world, he visited prime Quinn and showed him the final equation how to travel to different earths. Wade Wells, played by Sabrina Lloyd is Quinn’s boss at his temporary job. She had a crush on him like forever, but Quinn didn’t even notice, he was a real nerd. “Was” is the operative word, because becomes a real James Kirk! Professor Maximillian Arturo, played by John Rhys-Davies was Regent's professor of cosmology and ontology at California University, and a teacher of Quinn Mallory. To me, he was the most interesting character. Lastly, singer Rembrandt “Crying Man” Brown, played by Cleavant Derricks, he is sucked in accidentally while he was driving by in his car, he did not even know the other three. With this rewatch I had most of my laughs till now because of his character.

SD on Blu-ray:

If you perhaps have interest in purchasing this complete series, I recommend the German release of Sliders, SD on Blu-ray. So, DVD quality on Blu-ray, a big plus is that it has all seasons on no more than four discs and the price on Amazon.DE is very decent for five seasons. Plus it is a real nice package, it has English audio, no subtitles unfortunately and according to Blu-ray.com it is region free! Check out my unboxing blog of this set. I would not mind if this was done more often with multiple season TV shows, saves a lot of shelf space.

Final Word:

For me Sliders is not in the same league as shows like Star Trek, Babylon 5 or Stargate from that same time period, but you’ve got to admit it certainly as its charm. It also has a very loyal following, perhaps not as big, otherwise perhaps we would have seen it get a Blu-ray release. On the other hand, it most likely has some of the same issues as Star Trek: DS9 and Voyager has, being shot on video, but Sliders has a lot less SFX, so I figure it would be less costly to give it a proper HD transfer! Well, perhaps someday, with AI, because I believe the negatives are gone. For now, looking forward to season two on my SD on Blu-ray set.