SLIDING THROUGH
When Jerry O'Connell started out on Sliders, he was just an actor. But as of season four- the first for Sliders on the Sci-Fi Channel beginning this month (June 1998)-he's acting, producing and directing. And one need only look at his tired eyes and listen to his rambling, caffeine-piqued speech to know that O'Connell is finding the going tougher than he expected. more...


LIFE AFTER DEATH
On a dark, industrial stage lit only by a cold strobe cycling in through a fan, a character known as Rembrandt (Cleavant Derricks) climbs onto a parapet to help his friend and compatriot Quinn Mallory (Jerry O'Connell) operate a device that could save dozens of lives. But instead of helping, Rembrandt pulls out a knife. Quinn turns just in time to see it plunge... and both actors bust up laughing. It's just another day on the set of the cult hit Sliders. more...


SLIDING BACK
When Sliders reached its concluding episode--just eight short weeks after its debut on the Fox network--a lot of questions remained unanswered. A fifth "slider" had abandoned his own world to join the group; and Quinn Mallory, the show's central character, had taken a bullet. On Delphi, the Fox TV's official online service, and in the unofficial Usenet newsgroup "alt.tv.sliders" on the Internet, questions flew: Was Jerry O'Connell's Quinn character out of the series? Was the interloper from another world about to become the focal point? Would Quinn recover? Or would another Quinn from a parallel world, be recruited to lead the sliders? more...


JERRY JUMPS IN
SOME STARS JUST CAN'T GET ENOUGH attention. It's well past midnight--3 A.M. to be exact-and Jerry O'Connell is still front and center, entertaining everyone within earshot. But the actor, whose rapidly growing résumé includes a starring role on the science fiction show Sliders and a stint as the quarterback who betrayed Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire, isn't on a soundstage filming his next movie. He's at an L.A. karaoke bar belting out Frank Sinatra ballads. more...


SLIDING AWAY
As unexpected occurrences go, John Rhys-Davies' departure from Sliders during the long-struggling series' third season ranks right up there with the Sun's rising every day. Rhys-Davies had frequently and very publicly expressed his disdain for the show's scripts and the way in which series creator/writer Tracy Tormé utilized Rhys-Davies' popular character, the prickly Professor Maximilian Arturo. However, the actor turning up as Leonardo da Vinci in the "Scorpion, Part I" episode of Star Trek: Voyager just a few months after his final slide-now, that was a surprise. more...


SLIDERS PLUNGES INTO ALIEN TERRITORY IN BID FOR RENEWAL
Will Sliders be able to slide on to a fourth season?

That's the question producers and fans are wondering these days as the veteran series about four people who "slide" into alternate worlds is again awaiting word from Fox. (The show was canceled after its first year, then revived as a midseason replacement.) more...


SLIDING TO STARDOM
Jerry O'connell is enjoying success as he hops into parallel universes every week on Sliders. This month, he also hits the big screen as a jock in the comedy Jerry Maguire. TV HITS chats to the man! more...


TRACY TORME
According to Star Trek, "in every revolution, there's one man with a vision"--and, in the case of the Fox Network, they would prefer that he work somewhere else. more...


SLIDING HOME
"WHAT IF YOU FOUND A portal to a parallel universe?" asks Jerry O’Connell each week as over-eager inventor Quinn Mallory while the opening theme music plays for Universal Television's successful SF action-adventure series Sliders. "What if you could slide into thousands of different worlds, where it is the same year and you are the same person but everything else is different? And what if you can't find your way home?' These thought-provoking questions merge into a melting montage of visual fascinations that introduce us to the wild and wooly, multidimensional worlds that have forged stars O'Connell, John Rhys-Davies, Cleavant Derricks, and Sabrina Lloyd into a quartet of crusading voyagers in search of home. more...


ALTERNATE FX
If you have been checking out Sliders this season, you will immediately note that Executive Producer Alan Barnette's vision of inserting more complex special effects into the show has been realized. Our involuntary wanderers have faced robotic spiders, giant dragons, an intelligent flame, dream-invading nerds, tornado-infested deserts, automatons that render humans obsolete, and a giant scarab beetle. The man responsible for creating the third season's mind-numbing visuals is the show's visual effects supervisor, Ken Stranahan. Stranahan's history includes credits on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Space:Above and Beyond and Nash Bridges. more...


JERRY'S WILD SLIDE
As genius physics student Quinn Mallory on Fox's sci-fi adventure series Sliders, Jerry O'Connell slips into a new parallel universe each week. So you'd think he'd be able to take the surreal in stride. But the veteran Slider admits he was occasionally thrown for a loop last summer while making the film comedy "Jerry Maguire." Trading lines with Tom Cruise can do that to a guy. more...


STILL SLIDING, DESPITE A BUMPY RIDE
"Sliders is the Little Engine That Could," says Sabrina Lloyd, who plays computer whiz Wade Wells. "You know, 'I think I can, I think I can.' We keep going up that hill, and I think we're at the top now." more...


ALTERED SLIDES
A world where magic is commonplace. An Earth where time runs backwards. A reality in which dinosaurs managed to survive-albeit in well-protected wildlife sanctuaries. Those are only a few of the alternate realities postulated in the quirky SF series Sliders which follows a quartet of dimension-hopping adventurers traveling from one alternate Earth to another in an attempt to return home. more...


LOST IN PLACE
Back in the prime-time line-up after a lengthy hiatus, Sliders stands alone in the TV universe. There are no ranks, salutes, sleek ships or snappy dress uniforms. Sliding isn't a government secret, and no elite, specially trained task force carries out orders and fights crime. No treaties, directives or code of ethics guide their way. Basically, a random group of people fell into a hole. It's Alice through the looking glass, a doorway discovered at the back of the wardrobe. It's the coolest science project since Anthony Michael Hall put a bra on his head and brought a Barbie doll to life. more...

OTHERWORLD REMBRANDT
It's ironic that Cleavant Derricks plays a character named "The Crying Man" (a.k.a. Rembrandt Brown) on Fox's SF-adventure series Sliders. This is a man who seems to have a smile and a kind word for almost everyone who crosses his path. Sliders co-creator/executive producer Tracy Tormé appears to be speaking for the entire cast and crew when he says, "Cleavant is a happy guy who brings an incredibly positive energy to the set. In the course of a long season, it's great to have a guy like that around." more...


THE GIRL WITH SOMETHING EXTRA
"I'm the perfect example of girl-from-small-town, has-big-dreams, really-fights-hard-for-them-and-succeeds," says Sabrina Lloyd with contagious enthusiasm. In fact, the female co-star of Fox TV's Sliders is so upbeat and perky that one is tempted to suspect her of being in "interview mode"--the manner so many young actresses adopt to win over visiting journalists. more...


WONDER OF WORLDS
It has been one of those days for dimension traveler Quinn Mallory (Jerry O'Connell). Not only did he injure his head while falling into a new dimension, but because he doesn't have the money to settle his bill, his attending physician--a man obviously one sandwich short of a picnic-- has demanded that the whiz kid inventor give him something else as payment: his brain. more...


SLIDING IN & OUT
In assessing the strengths and weaknesses of Sliders' debut season, co-creator Tracy Tormé is of the mind that his writers just "scratched the surface" of the series' potential. But he doesn't feel that the show's first year was aimed at a younger demographic. "The show works on two levels, sort of like The Simpsons. Kids watch it in a wide-eyed way, and a lot of our dark humor and satire goes over their heads, but they don't really realize that they're missing anything. Adults that like it realize that we do a lot of allegory and satire. We're aiming to please both audiences this year. Sliders works best when it works on those dual levels.more...


PARALLEL EXCITEMENT
Quinn Mallory is sliding through parallel worlds, and Jerry O'Connell is happy to be going along for the ride. O'Connell is starring in Fox-TV's Sliders, a new science-fiction action-adventure series that follows a young genius and his three companions as they "slide" from one alternate version of Earth to another, looking for their home. Some of the Earths they land on may have been overrun by Nazis, or are enveloped in a new Ice Age, while others are remarkably similar to our own (in one of them, Elvis still lives! And he's still playing Vegas!). more...


SLIDERS
"The one duty we owe to history," said Oscar Wilde, "is to rewrite it." Last year, producer Tracy Tormé enthusiastically embraced that credo, following up a project on the American Revolutionary War with the creation of alternate timelines for what became Fox Broadcasting's dimension-hopping Sliders. more...