Pilot, part 1

Episode number: 1
First Aired: 03/22/95
Production number: SL-101
Previous Episode: none
Following Episode: Pilot, part 2

Summaries

The Sliders travel to an Earth where a natural disaster has turned San Francisco into an ice world. (Part 1 of 2) -Fox

A physics accident sends student Quinn Mallory and his trio of companions on an interdimensional roller-coaster ride to an apocalyptic San Francisco. Part 1 of two. -TV Guide

Alternate Earths

1. Earth Prime

The Sliders' Earth of origin.

This Earth was briefly visited by the four original Sliders in the episode Into The Mystic but they didn't recognize it as their home in large part because the gardener had just oiled a squeaky gate in the Mallory's front yard.

Quinn and Maggie also visited this earth while scouting for new worlds in the episode The Exodus - Part One. In the year since the gate was oiled, it had started squeaking again. Oddly enough, something in Earth Prime's atmosphere prevented Maggie from breathing; had she stayed more than a few minutes, she would have died.

2. Elvis' Earth

Elvis is alive, JFK is president and everthing you ever knew about traffic lights is wrong. Quinn's mom has married the gardener and is expecting a baby.

3. Winter Earth

Generally a bad place to be--watch out for ice tornadoes. Based on a photo found in the ruins of alternate Quinn's house, his family on this Earth includes a sister he never had and a dog that ran away when Quinn was young.

It's never established if this world's frigid climate is due to Nuclear Winter or to an Ice Age; since the Sliders never show symptoms of radiation poisoning and many buildings in San Francisco are still standing, I have to assume this is an Earth caught in the midst of an Ice Age. Cool.

Notes

• The SLIDERS pilot was originally aired as a single, two hour episode. This is how TV Guide described the original airing of the pilot:

  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 alternate Earths. In the opener, they find themselves in a Soviet-ruled U.S., where their only hope of escape is to free an imprisoned revolutionary. -TV Guide

• On Elvis' Earth, a red traffic light means "Go" and a green traffic light means "Stop." So why is it that cars have red brake lights on this world, shouldn't they be green?

• In the episode The Exodus - Part Two, Quinn refers to their home world as "Earth Prime" for the first time. To my knowledge, this web site was the first place which refered to their home world by that name.

Credits

Teleplay by:  Tracy Torme
Story by:     Tracy Torme and Robert K. Weiss
Directed by:  Andy Tennant
Music by:     Dennis McCarthy
               
Guest Starring:
  Linda Henning     as Mrs. Mallory
  Joseph A. Wapner  as Commissar Wapner
  Doug Llewelyn     as Comrade Llewelyn
  Garwin Sanford    as Doc
    
Featuring:
  Roger R. Cross    as Wilkins
  Yee Jee Tso       as Wing
  Frank C. Turner   as Crazy Kenny
  Gary Jones        as Michael Hurley
  John Novak        as Ross J. Kelley/Interrogator
  Don MacKay        as Artie Field
  Alex Bruhanski    as Pavel Kurlienko
  Jay Brazeau       as KGB Colonel
  Andrew Kavadas    as Vendor
  Sook Yin Lee      as Pal
  Wayne Cox         as PBS Spokesman
  Raoul Ganee       as Sentry
  Tom Butler        as Michael Mallory
  
"Cry Like a Man" by Tracy Torme and Paul Kelly.
Arranged by Hummie Mann.

Earth Prime -- The Fans' Guide to SLIDERS is maintained by Ed Hall (edhall@brillig.com).