Sliders

Sliders. Fox TV 1995-2000. Premiered 22 March 1995, in a 2-hour special. Jerry O'Connell, Sabrina Lloyd, Cleavant Derricks, John Rhys-Davies, featured. Tracy Tormé and Robert K. Weiss, creators. Tracy Tormé, teleplay for premiere. Tracy Tormé and Robert K. Weiss, story for premiere: concept. Andy Tennant, dir. for premiere.

Young male genius (J. O'Connell) working on antigravity invents instead a "gateway" into other dimensions. Basically a rather mindless, arguably racist, possibly politically confused opening show, of interest for the imagery of the gateway. The portal to alternative San Franciscos (Earths, universes) is created by machinery, computer(s), and what looks like a TV remote and is imaged as a vertical watery vortex, the tunnel of which looks somewhat esophageal. The shows heroes jump in and/or are sucked into the vortex and are spit out after a trip down a high-tech generated graphics tube, for a suggestion of a combination of the cybernetic, hydrological or meteorological, and the organic.