For a sci-fi series frequently left out of '90s retrospectives, it may come as a surprise to find that Sliders was a long-running saga, eventually spanning five seasons and 88 episodes between 1995 and its cancellation in 2000. The show followed the lives of a group of teenage adventurers led by prodigal whiz kid Quinn Mallory, the inventor of a device that allows for travel between parallel universes, and the avuncular Professor Arturo.
Jerry O’Connell, who played Mallory, already had an impressive array of credits in children’s television and a lead role in Stand By Me opposite Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman, and River Phoenix. Meanwhile, the show represented the first throw of the dice for Sabrina Lloyd (Numb3rs). Professor Arturo, meanwhile, was played by Welsh actor John Rhys-Davies. His genre credentials had been burnished by recent appearances opposite Timothy Dalton in the James Bond film The Living Daylights (1987), as well as excellent turns as Indiana Jones's sidekick Sallah in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).
Now, it seems the show is going to make a comeback. Rumors of a reboot first emerged in 2019 when Rhys-Davies mentioned during a convention appearance that discussions were being held to determine who held the rights to the show. But in July last year, the show’s co-creator Tracy Tormé revealed that plans for a reboot were well advanced, with John Rhys-Davies, Jerry O’Connell, and the Tony Award-winning Cleavant Derricks (Rembrandt Brown) all in talks to return alongside new characters. Fans duly weighed in, signing a petition in their thousands, asking for a reboot to be formally announced in December.
So why is Sliders so ripe for a reboot? Here are just a few reasons.
Sliders Ended Not With a Bang, but With a Whimper
Like the near-contemporary show SeaQuest DSV before it, Sliders had a tortuous production history, beginning on Fox before switching to the Sci Fi Channel (now SyFy) for its final two seasons -- but the problems did not stop there. The network switch coincided with the departure of two principals, Rhys-Davies and Lloyd, from the show, and O’Connell followed after season four. The revolving door of new characters detracted from the cohesion of the show's final season, whose cliffhanger involved Rembrandt sliding to parts unknown, with the remaining sliders wondering what happened to him. This was hardly a satisfying conclusion to such a long-running and well-loved show.
A reboot would at least allow the makers to revisit the original premise and bring the entire show to some semblance of a conclusion. That is, if the intention is not to aim for an expanded Sliders-verse.
The Parallel Universe Concept Will Have Added Bite in Today's World
Let's be honest -- in the midst of the Covid-riddled, post-truth permacrisis that is life in 2022, it is tempting to spare a thought or two for what might have been. Sliders hit the heights of dramatic achievement when it ditched the sci-fi technobabble in favor of straight-up speculative fiction. Early episodes included compelling stories exploring what might have happened had Great Britain won the American Revolutionary War or the Soviet Union prevailed in the Cold War. On another occasion, Quinn and his fellow sliders arrived in a supposed utopia where everyone had access to a lottery in which they could have as much money as they wanted. The catch was that the more cash you take, the greater your likelihood of being summarily killed as a form of population control.
Such scenarios regularly plunged the quartet into the most profound moral dilemmas. And, as the runaway success of shows such as Amazon's The Man In The High Castle demonstrates, the public's appetite for counterfactual history drama is as high as it ever was. Expect more of the same from a Sliders reboot.
The Original Cast Is Still on Board
All too often with reboots, if the will even exists to retain the original characters, the actors themselves have moved on. However, although Sabrina Lloyd has now retired from acting, Jerry O'Connell, John Rhys-Davies, and Cleavant Derricks are all still very much going in the acting industry. O'Connell's most recent live-action starring role was in the Canadian crime comedy-drama Carter, the second season of which aired at the beginning of the pandemic. The actor more recently supplied the voice for Commander Jack Ransom in Star Trek: Lower Decks.
Though now in his late seventies, Rhys-Davies also shows no signs of slowing down, most recently starring in Canadian independent Moments in Spacetime (2020). Meanwhile, Derricks remains a presence on the stage, recently appearing as the Wonderful Wizard of Oz in the Broadway run of Wicked.