The Sliders

Home Episode Guide Season One [1995]
Season Two [1996]
Season Three [1996-1997]
Season Four [1998-1999]
Season Five [1999-2000]
Episode Reviews
Year Five Journal
Ultimate Sliders Companion
CyberCon 1998
Exclusives From Tracy Tormé
Script Archive
Sliders Interviews
Press Kits
Critical Essays
In Print Article Archive
Sliders Comics by Acclaim
Publicity Photos
Sliders Inkworks Artwork
Earth 210
"Opportunity Cost"
Print Advertisements
Video Season 4 Deleted Scenes
Season 3 Gag Reel
The Audition Process
"Cry Like a Man" video
"The Exodus," Excised
Television Advertisements
Episode Credits
Wormhole Footage
Audio The Music of Anthony Marinelli
Compleat Rembrandt
Vocal Performances
Musical Scores
On DVD Dual Dimension Edition:
Seasons 1&2
The Third Season
Season 3 Promotional Disc
The Fourth Season
Travelogue Forum

Next episode:
Summer of Love
The Sliders find themselves in a present-day San Francisco where the "Summer of Love" never ended – and Wade and Rembrandt are mistaken for extraterrestrial prophets.

Previous episode:
The Seer
The Sliders discover they are the subjects of a fanatical religion known as Slidology, founded by a man with psychic powers who has been able to follow them on their interdimensional adventures in his mind.

Return to the Season 1 Guide


Read Matt Hutaff's review of Sliders in our Review Archive.
()



Earth Prime has a collection of scripts for Sliders in our Script Archive. To check out these scripts, click here.
Broadcast History
Original Airdate
March 22, 1995

Production Code
83535

Network Code
SL-101 & SL-102

Ratings
Viewers: 14.1
Rating: 9.5
Share: 15
Rank: 51/99

Rerun Ratings
Viewers: 5.1 | 4.1
Rating: 3.3 | 2.8
Share: 7 | 7
Rank: 89/96 | 91/101
Logline
While researching anti-gravity, brilliant grad student Quinn Mallory accidentally opens an inter-dimensional portal which sends him and three companions on a cosmic roller-coaster ride to parallel Earths.

Written by: Tracy Tormé & Robert K Weiss
Directed by: Andy Tennant
Edited by: Ron Spang
Music by: Dennis McCarthy
Synopsis
Quinn Mallory, a physics student at the University of California, accidentally discovers a means to form a portal to access, or "slide" to, other dimensions. To control this portal, he perfects a timer which allows him to return safely after each slide. Together with his good friend Wade Welles and his professor Maximillian Arturo, he intends to use this new invention to do a bit of exploring. A power overload inadvertently sucks washed-up singer Rembrandt Brown into the vortex as he drives by Quinn's house, and all four are deposited into an icy San Francisco. Quinn believes they should wait the five hours he'd preset the timer for initially, but an ice tornado forces their hand. What they believe to be home is really another parallel dimension, this one dominated by the Soviet Union.

Rembrandt is arrested for using rebel currency and Wade is found out to be an alternate of an America rebel leader who is being held prisoner. A plan is hatched to rescue both Rembrandt and alt-Wade by having Arturo pose as the warden of the penitentiary. The raid is successful, though not without casualties. Quinn repairs the timer and the four slide again, only to find that they've become untethered in the multiverse.




Earth Prime: Basically, this is our world. Everything that we know of life on Earth also exists on this world — its history, pop culture and laws are all the same. Some fans argue that this really isn't our world, in that on our world Quinn Mallory, Prof. Maximillian P. Arturo, Wade Kathleen Welles and Rembrandt Lee Brown would be actors on a television show, but for the sake of clarity, let's assume that we're watching a show about true events.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Elvis World: Very similar to Earth Prime, except for the global cooling, the ten-term President John F. Kennedy, Americans flocking to Mexico for jobs and some red light/green light confusion. Oh yeah, and compact discs lost out to vinyl. Still sound similar to you?

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Tundra World: Nuclear winter or a shifting of the earth's axis? You be the judge, but the result is the same — frigid, uninhabitable wasteland.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Soviet World: The Domino Theory isn't just pizza in under 30 minutes — The Russians, and communism, have swept the globe after an American loss in the Korean war.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Public Transit World: Virtually identical to Earth Prime on the surface except for one small thing — Quinn's father is alive and well.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Sitting Moose World: The Sliders, plus Ryan and Henry the dog, escape to this world from Paradise, but Quinn collapses in a heap after being shot in the back by a pursuant Lottery police officer.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Mystic World: The population here is deeply embedded in the occult and relies heavily on a mystical "Sorcerer" for commercial products. Quinn's double was initially a visitor here who went on to take up permanent residence.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Hoover Prime: How can four people stay on a world with zero civil liberties and not know it? Well, on this world women growing facial hair might serve as a distraction.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Hoover Double Prime: No Constitutional freedoms, out of control police oppression and J. Edgar Hoover in a skirt. Wait, am I talking about Earth Prime?

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Battlefield Earth: The first, but certainly not the last. A world devastated by war, and the survivors are still taking it pretty personally.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Prison World: Seismic instability and a burgeoning prison population made the decision to convert downtown San Francisco into a massive federal penitentiary an easy decision.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Breedin' World: A biological weapon unleashed during the Gulf War has killed more than 90% of this earth's men.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Dust World: Little is known of this world except for Arturo's quip that they've come "from a world of dust to a world of dung" as he lands on the ground next to a horse stable.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Lone Star World: The state of Texas quietly took over the western portion of what is to us the United States while the North fought the South in the Civil War.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Nueva España: Or more specifically, San Francisco Republica de Nueva España (Republic of New Spain).

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Lions World: San Francisco Lions Football rules! Quinn's family moved to Seattle in the 10th grade when his father got a job in aerospace. Now alt-Quinn is a graduate at the University of Washington.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Reverse World: Because time can just as easily move backwards.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Phone Booth World: A world layered with such subtlety and impact it is unlike anything seen before or since. A scene in which Quinn battles his inner demons... against the eerie backdrop of a Pacific Bell phone booth.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Noah's World: A place where severe thunderstorms are the norm. The Sliders trudge through a heavy forest to rendezvous at the gate location and their apparel, high quality rain gear, indicates that there is civilization in this area.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Fifties World: The nuclear holocaust at Hiroshima and Nagasaki plunged this world into a technophobic state. Technology here is feared and kept under tight control. The Quinn of this world died of polio.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Nude World: Sure, you may freeze your ass off, but at least you're naked.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

India World: Cows, over-indulgent concierges, early morning vendors — it's all part of a San Francisco where India sailed east and colonized North America.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Psychic World: This America's Abraham Lincoln was warned of his assassination by a psychic; Lincoln's gratitude was to elevate the man to a post higher than the Presidency. What a guy!

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Executive World: Whatever the world is like, Derek Bond doesn't like it.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Rollerblade World: The only information known about his world is that Rembrandt bought safety equipment — a helmet, knee and elbow pads — there for protection against the bumps and bruises incurred by sliding. He is wearing them when he enters the next world. This world also likely has legalized gambling in San Francisco, because Arturo asks Rembrandt to pay for something with winnings from the last casino.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Kromagg Outpost 66: On this world, the population has been either eradicated or imprisoned by the invading Kromagg Dynasty though the mentally ill have been left to roam free, possibly because they weren't deemed 'good stock' by the Kromaggs.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Nouvelle Versailles: North America, France-style. Vive la difference!

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Kromagg Outpost 113: A barren prison planet. Aside from Kromagg terraforming, no significant life developed on this Earth.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Earth Double Prime: It'd be home if only the Golden Gate Bridge wasn't such an eye-pleasing blue...

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Shrink World: The stress of the last slide forces Rembrandt to seek psychiatric evaluation.

Read more about this world in the Travelogue

Timer Status
As a result of its corruption on Tundra World, the timer's preset controls are shorted out, the Sliders' home coordinates erased and the drop off location control has been compromised. Arturo and Quinn fix the timer near the end of the episode and Arturo voices his belief that they will increase their chances of getting home by sliding out in the same location where they slid in — Golden Gate Park.

The Details
Quinn's sweatshirt in the video diary shot has the San Jose Sharks logo on it.
A bumper sticker on Quinn's telescope reads: "I break for asteroids."
Quinn's alarm wakes him up at 6:59 am.
Sign at the entrance reads "Keep Golden Gate Park Clean."
Arturo's class is in Lecture Hall A.
Quinn drives across Pacific with the 1400 addresses to his right.
The billboard of Elvis advertises that he's now appearing live at the Mirage in Las Vegas.
Attorney Ross J. Kelley's phone number is 1-800-555-1948.
The answer to Quinn's black board equation is Xr12 Å over *. Arturo calls it "proof of a unified field theory. The Holy Grail of theoretical physics."
Pavel Kurlienko's Golden Bay Cab Company driver's number is 20394M3, issued by the police department's board of taxicab companies. His cab's license plate number is 3D866U4 and the cab number is 43.
The statue on Soviet World is of Lenin.
While Quinn and Wade are walking down a burned-out city street, a campaign poster in the background reads: "Let A Winner Lead The Way."
Rembrandt is being kept in cell #10.
Quinn's Video Diary
Wednesday, Sept. 13, 1994: Quinn accidentally invents the timer prototype which first opens the vortex.
Thursday, Sept. 21, 1994: After days of study, Quinn concludes that the mouth of the vortex is some sort of portal to "another existence."
Sunday, Sept. 24, 1994: Not on the video though Quinn says that he perfected the timer on this night.
Monday, Sept. 25, 1994: Quinn has spent the last three days sending objects into the vortex including a paper airplane, a Rubik's Cube, a model of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a basketball.
Tuesday, Sept. 26, 1994: Quinn announces that he himself will try entering the gate.
Wednesday, Sept. 27, 1994: Quinn and his companions take the quantum leap into the vortex. (Though this is a Wednesday in real life, FBI Agent Harold Yenn in Summer of Love says that the four have been missing since Tuesday. Also, in Prince of Wails, Wade says that her job gives her Mondays and Wednesdays off, however she must have been covering a shift for someone because she's working on the Wednesday that Quinn tries out the vortex.)
Character Information
Items in Quinn's bedroom include a San Jose hockey jersey, a basketball net, a telescope (later established in The Guardian as being given to Quinn by his father), a surfboard (Jerry O'Connell is a surfing enthusiast in real life), model dinosaurs (Quinn later says in Last Days" that paleontology is a hobby of his), a San Francisco 49ers hat, an Oakland A's hat, Quinn's cat Schrödinger, a hardcover copy of Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension by theoretical physics professor Michio Kaku, and a poster of Albert Einstein.
Quinn's father died when he was hit by a car while on his way to work.
Quinn has two semesters of school left before he graduates.
Quinn began working on the mathematical sliding equation sometime in July of 1994.
The license plate of Quinn's blue BMW 2002 is 3PCE295.
Quinn is right-handed, as is Arturo.
Professor Arturo has authored a thesis on "Chiral Field Anomalies" and a paper concerning "Coset Wormholes and Keller Orbifolds."
At the Doppler Computer Superstore, Quinn works as a technician while Wade works in sales.
Wade has at least one ex-boyfriend.
Rembrandt recorded "Cry Like a Man" with his group The Spinning Topps and left them to go solo shortly thereafter. While Rembrandt's career has floundered, the Topps went on to chart 13 No. 1 hits.
Rembrandt's first solo album, "Toppless," reached sales of 100,000 copies in September of 1973. Rembrandt himself has appeared on at least two magazine covers.
The license plate on Rembrandt's red Cadillac convertible reads "CRYN MAN."
Quinn had a black lab named Bopper that ran away as a puppy.
Arturo enjoys sake.
Arturo and Quinn both enjoy watching Jeopardy, particularly the Tournament of Champions week.
Quinn's front gate has been squeaking since he was 12 years old.
In the early 1970s, Rembrandt tried singing gospel music. (Which he demonstrates later in this episode with "Amazing Grace" and in The Exodus, part II with "Way Down Yonder."
Alt-Arturo is Citizen General of the Western Sector of the People's Army.
Alt-Rembrandt was killed in the Detroit Uprising of 1982.
Notable Quotes
"Hey, don't get smart with me. This computer store pays your rent, mister. If it weren't for my mistakes you'd be out of a job." — Arrogant boss Michael Hurley demonstrating that it is usually better to think about what you're going to say before you say it.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I think I've just seen God and I could've sworn he was driving a Cadillac." — Arturo, referring to Rembrandt's unexpected drive through the vortex.
"Well I wouldn't go that far." — Arturo, to Wade, who announces that sliding is better than sex.
"Wait a minute, that don't sound right. Must be playin' a Canadian team." — Rembrandt's response to Russian national anthem.
"Don't you mean fifteen dollars?" — Rembrandt to Judge Wapner in response to the sentence of 15 years in an Alaskan gulag.
Arturoisms
"My stomach has no political preferences." — Before buying a kielbasa.
"You blithering Idiot." — to Wilkins.


Tundra World is a frozen mess, the devastation fairly severe. The Golden Gate Bridge has been decimated, and San Francisco's skyline looks rotted and decrepit.

The Quinn Mallory of this world had a younger sister and never lost his dog Bopper, a black labrador retriever, before the cataclysm came. It's unknown if he and his family slid before the devastation, but the basement lab wasn't there, so it isn't likely.

· · ·

On Soviet World, America lost the Korean War in the 1950s, which opened the door for the Sino/Soviet Empire to make a bid for world domination. First, the empire conquered Indochina, then Europe and finally South America. Eventually, in what's called the Domino Theory, the United States became politically and economically cut off from the rest of the world. In the end, there weren't any allies for the Americans to call upon and Russia finally had its way with the U.S.A. As a result, many of the Soviet Union's societal traits came over to America.

In this America, there is only one communications company called the People's Telephone and Telegraph which branches off into two services, PT&T and PT&T 2. These government-controlled firms don't allow direct calls so callers must first identify themselves to the operator with a telephone permit number then the call will be made through that operator. Failure to provide the identification number violates section 33956 of the California Penal Code and prompts and investigation from a communication security team.

Anyone even suspected of being a fascist sympathizer is forced to stand trial in the "People's Court." On Earth Prime, the "People's Court" is a televised small claims court but on Russia World, it's a televised criminal court.

The Russian one dollar (or ruble) bill is similar to the American dollar except that the ink is red instead of green, the saying reads "in the state we trust" and the picture replacing George Washington is that of 1960s Russian Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev.

Political prisoners are sent to the NorCal Federal Penitentiary, which is run by Maximillian Arturo.

Song Lyrics
Rembrandt's manager Artie watches a tape of the seminal 70's hits "Cry Like a Man."
Rembrandt sings "The Star Spangled Banner" in preparation for his big comeback at the San Francisco Giants game at Candlestick Park and "Amazing Grace" while standing over the bodies of the dead revolutionaries.

Cry Like a Man | play song [full] | play song [abridged]
Written By: Tracy Tormé & Paul Kelly
Arranged By: Hummie Mann
Performed by Cleavant Derricks

Ohhhhhhhhhh...

My friends ask me why I cry (cry)
It's cause I feel like I wanna die (die)
These tears spring from my eye
Ever since you said goodbye (goodbye)

Chorus:
I'm gonna cry like a man (cry like a man)
Hard as I can (as I can)
And if you had a heart
Maybe you'd start
to understand

Oh, I know you understand me brothers

See me walking down the street (walkin' down the street)
And everybody that I meet (everybody that I meet)
They say hello, goodbye (goodbye)
And tears spring from my other eye (walk on by)

Chorus

Listen baby
The long and lonely nights go by (they go on by)
Alone and lonely, I sit and cry (I cry, I cry)
I cry! Oh! (All alone I sit and cry)
Moaning! Groaning! Dyin'! (cry like a man)
Cryin' like a man

Hard as I can (as I can)
If you had a heart
Maybe you'd start
to understand

You're breaking my heart here! (cry like a man)
I feel a tear comin' out of this eye! (cry like a man)
Oh! And a tear, fallin' from my other eye! (cry like a man)
Brothers! Somebody!
Somebody hand me a handkerchief!
Please! (cry like a man)

· · ·

The Comrade Rap | play song
By: Tracy Tormé

Comrade, comrade, get on down
Get that grain right into town
Serve the state and feed your people
'Cause the in-div-id-u-al is evil.

Comrades, comrades, get on down
Get that grain right into town
I gotta serve the state and feed the people
'Cause the in-div-id-u-al is evil.

Comrade, comrade, get on down
Get that grain right into town
Serve your state and feed your people
'Cause the in-di-vid-u-al is evil.

· · ·

Amazing Grace | play song
By: Traditional
Performed by Clevant Derricks

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me....
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see.

T'was Grace that taught...
my heart to fear.
And Grace, my fears relieved.
How precious did that Grace appear...
the hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils and snares...
we have already come.
T'was Grace that brought us safe thus far...
and Grace will lead us home.

The Lord has promised good to me...
His word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be...
as long as life endures.

When we've been here a thousand years...
bright shining as the sun.
We've no less days to sing God's praise...
then when we've first begun.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me....
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see.

· · ·

The Star Spangled Banner | play song
By: Francis Scott Key
Performed by Clevant Derricks

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Nitpicks
Despite the frigidness of Tundra World, the Sliders' breath isn't visible.
Wade says she scored some hockey tickets for the weekend, presumably a Sharks game as they're featured prominently in Quinn's attire. Must have been an exhibition game as the Sharks season wasn't scheduled to open for another 2 weeks. However, 1994-95 was the year of the lockout and the first game didn't occur until February. Coincidentally, the pilot aired after the lockout had become historical fact.
Rewind That!
While fleeing down the alley, Arturo looks at his recently purchased kielbasa, groans and then throws it up into the air, angry that he won't get to eat it.
Watch the reactions of the Sliders when Mike Mallory walks into the Mallory household.
Money Matters
Many of the Sliders problems start when Arturo hands a vendor an American dollar bill and Rembrandt does the same to Pavel the cab driver.
At the end of the episode, Quinn unloads a big chunk of cash by quietly giving it to Crazy Kenny the homeless man. The money in that wad doesn't really resemble American money so it's possible that Quinn gave Kenny the last of the Soviet currency he had on Russia World.
On Public Transit World, Arturo casually requests that Rembrandt pay the cab driver, which he does.


"The inspiration for Sliders was twofold," says Tracy Tormé. "I was reading about George Washington nearly getting killed in the American Revolution, and I wondered, 'What might have happened had the bullet hit him just a few inches from where it did?' There would have been no United States, and I would never have been born."

· · ·

"It had been a concurrent thought in both my mind and in Tracy's," says Robert K. Weiss. "For years, I'd wanted to do a show about parallel worlds. I'd been a great Time Tunnel fan, and there had been a few Twilight Zone shows about alternate realities that stuck with me. Over the years, there have been a few series involving time travel, but nothing about parallel universes.


"The shorthand in my head for this was 'Time Tunnel sideways,' where it was the present year in each visited universe, but small or large details were different, with alternate histories and cultures producing variations on our own.

"Tracy, meanwhile, had read a story that, if I recall properly, concerned a world where George Washington had been killed in a Revolutionary War battle, and how things had turned out differently. Then he and I met, and right around that time, Discover magazine ran a story about parallel universes, and right on the cover was an illustration depicting parallel Earths, multiple images of the planet with each one colored a bit differently — in fact, you'll see some resonance with that image in our main title.

"So when the two of us began to talk about working together, and this particular topic came up, we wound up talking for hours. We made a list of the Earths we might like to visit, and that's what sparked it. We decided to work together on this as co-creators."

· · ·

"Parallel universes are not a wild theory, they're now accepted as fact," says Weiss. "Scientists can't explain quantum physics unless they assume that multiple worlds really exist."

"If alternate worlds do exist, someone will discover them by accident, a scenario which we mirror in our show," adds Tormé. "In Sliders, our lead character is not looking for parallel universes, but it happens when he's working on something else."

In science circles, there is some confusion as to the origin of Einstein-Rosen-Pudalski Bridge because the bridge is more commonly known as the Einstein-Rosen Bridge.

"[The Pudalski part] was something that Bob Weiss insisted on and we later found out that he was kind of confused," Tracy Tormé says with a chuckle. "There were actually some arguments at the time and the director [Andy Tennant] was convinced that it was Einstein-Rosen and Bob was convinced it was Einstein-Rosen-Pudalski and Bob, being the executive producer, won the argument.

"I think it was actually a mistake," Tormé admits, "and then we sort of stuck with it so it's almost like a running joke."

· · ·

Tormé says he came up with the idea of Quinn's video diary to serve as a kind of prologue to give the audience some insight as to what has been happening in the Mallory basement for the last few months.

"The video diary was really a device that I created to try to get the technical back story into the viewers' head as quickly, and hopefully, as visual as possible."

· · ·

According to the September video diary, Quinn created the bulky timer prototype on September 13 — which also happens to be the birthday of Tracy Tormé's father, singer Mel Tormé.

"I tend to do that in a lot of my scripts," Tormé admits. "I always put little things, names, characters, whatever, into them that have some meaning for me."

Other inside character names include Bennish, named after Tormé's friend since the second grade who has a lot of the same hippie-like characteristics.

"He's not a physicist, but he's a smart guy," he says. "And that was funny because his mother saw the show and called up and said 'Oh my God, my son's a drug addict!' and freaked out. It was great."

Reportedly, the character of Michael Hurley is based on former Star Trek: The Next Generation producer-writer Maurice Hurley whom Tormé worked with during ST:TNG's first and second seasons. When asked about the connection, Tormé chuckled and said only "you'll have to use your imagination with that one."

Also, the name [Ross J.] Kelley pays homage the popular Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly who helped Tormé write the song "Cry Like a Man," as well as Larry H. Parker, a popular shyster lawyer in Los Angeles with commercials similar to the one seen in the show.

· · ·

Tormé gives some insight into the genesis of the classic scene in which Rembrandt, getting ready for his big comeback, comes out of the bathroom sporting numerous 'cause' ribbons on his lapel.

"I saw the character ... as a guy who was really out of touch with the world," Tormé says. "He had been a big star [but] as soon as he left his group they had 13 number one singles and now he's like playing bar mitzvahs on the side and [the anthem] is going to be his big comeback, you know? So, originally, when he stepped around the corner and he was wearing a red ribbon ... and the deal was that he didn't know what the red ribbon meant. He had just seen all these people wearing at thought 'Oh, this is cool,' you know 'I'm back!' Well that, of course, caused a big problem [with the network]. That was one battle we could never win because they thought we were going to offend the gay audience or offend people who were into the AIDS issue and all that. So then we put eight ribbons on him. That was the solution to that."

· · ·

Rembrandt may not have made it to Candlestick in the final cut, but his version of the National Anthem was filmed.

"We did shoot [that scene]," Tormé says. "We went up to Candlestick Park in San Francisco, and in fact, the Atlanta Braves were playing here, and 40,000 people were attending and Cleavant went out to the pitcher's mound, we all stood out next to him. It was really exciting. He sang his version of the national anthem before the game and with the cameras on him and his version is hilarious, it's like an eight minute version. And the people in the stands had no idea what we were doing but they loved it. They just gave him a huge ovation afterwards. And we had planned to use that in a scene where he's in jail in communist America and he's daydreaming [about] singing the national anthem in Candlestick Park. And that was not in the [episode] because that was an editorial decision. That kind of slowed the story down a little bit at that point."

· · ·

Two classic out-takes that regularly makes an appearance in the office blooper tape have to do with John Rhys-Davies trying to perform his own stunt work.

"John decided in the Pilot that he was going to do his own stunts," Tormé says. "One [blooper occurred] when we were running, you know that shot that we use a lot where they're coming across the bridge and they're silhouette and we use it [in the opening credits] of the show and there's a lot of smoke and stuff. They ended up diving into the wormhole near the statue of Lincoln in the park and John just landed ... I mean, John dove into this flower bed [beside the statue] like an anvil ... and, uh, we were like 'Oh no!' and he dusted himself off. He was a total trooper.

"Then there was a scene where they're escaping the Soviet prison and John has to roll underneath a truck and come up on the other side. And I was watching on the monitor. This was like [at] three in the morning in Vancouver on like a freezing night and there's John, he's dressed as a KGB general, and he starts to roll under the truck and I hear this horrible clang. Then he comes up on the other side with a gash, and [he was] bleeding. He hit a pipe or something when he was rolling."

Tracy Tormé also made a brief appearance. Miss him? Don't worry, you're not alone.

"I had a cameo ... as one of the American underground revolutionaries but it ended up on the cutting room floor," he says.

· · ·

"The Communist world was fun to visit, and it was interesting to see what the world would be like if it as all governed by Communism, but I really wouldn't want to live there!" enthuses Jerry O'Connell. "I was happy when they yelled 'Wrap!' and I was able to go home to watch my choice of capitalist TV stations!"

For O'Connell, the most interesting shot was the group's arrival on Ice World. "We were supposed to have gone to an ice world," he says. "They put snow on an entire street — foam and snow on houses for an entire square block. I had never really seen anything like that before in my entire life — I thought it was pretty extravagant!"

· · ·

At a Fox press conference on Jan. 14, 1995, Robert K. Weiss told television reporters that he might like to bring Judge Wapner and Doug Llewellyn back for another cameo in the future. "I mean, we've even talked about situations where we might return to the "People's Court" and this time Rusty the bailiff is the judge and Judge Wapner is the interviewer outside and Doug Llewellyn is the bailiff," he said.

Tormé, however, adds that the network really didn't understand the subtle humor in the "People's Court" segment.

"... [It] really horrified them because they thought, you know, 'You're going to do this sort of comedy thing right in the middle of a sci-fi show. You're going to lose the audience, and everyone in Cincinnati is going to turn the set off the second this happens.' [But] I really fought them for this ... and just said 'It's gonna work, trust me.' So we got to shoot the Judge Wapner stuff with the attitude basically they had that they'll probably cut it out and it's probably not going to work, but they'll at least let us shoot it. And so we shot it and it was one of the most popular things that we did."

Additional Cast

Linda Henning1 Mrs. Mallory
Joseph A. Wapner Commissar Wapner
Doug Llewellyn Comrade Llewellyn
Garwin Sanford Doc

Featuring:

Roger R. Cross Wilkins
Yee Jee Tso2 Wing
Frank C. Turner Crazy Kenny
Gary Jones3 Michael Hurley
John Novak4 Ross J. Kelley
Don MacKay5 Artie Field
Alex Bruhanski6 Pavel Kurlienko
Jay Brazeau KGB Colonel
Andrew Kavadas Vendor
Sook Yin Lee Pat
Wayne Cox PBS Spokesman
Raoul Ganeev Lieutenant Karpov
Tom Butler7 Michael Mallory

Unaccredited:

Larry Musser Jake
Sara Walker Nan Zachery
Jim Byrnes Baseball Announcer
Harry Shearer Day Tripper
Jason Gaffney8 Conrad Bennish, Jr.
Rusty Burrell Bailiff

Also unaccredited are Montague, the two executives in the computer store, the dim-witted construction worker in the Ross J. Kelley commercial, the angry driver who chastises Quinn, Remmy's back-up singers on the music video, Rembrandt's prison guard and the man in the trenchcoat who demands to see the Sliders' papers.

Linda Henning reprises her role as Amanda Mallory in The Guardian, The Exodus, part I, Genesis and The Seer.
Yee Jee Tso later appears briefly in Fever.
Gary Jones appears as Michael Hurley in Prince of Wails and Time Again and World.
John Novak returns as Ross J. Kelley in Into the Mystic.
Don Mackay plays Artie Field again in Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome.
Alex Bruhanski stars as Pavel again in Fever and Into the Mystic.
Tom Butler plays Quinn's dad again in Gillian of the Spirits.
Jason Gaffney would return as Bennish in Summer of Love, Last Days and in Invasion. Gaffney is, surprisingly, not listed among the guest cast members but he is clearly seen, and mentioned by name, in Arturo's classroom.