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"Electric Twister Acid Test" - Series 3 - 4th October 1996

Regular Cast:

Rembrant Brown - Clevant Derriks

Wade Welles - Sabrina Lloyd

Quinn Mallory - Jerry O'Connell

Maximillian Aturo - John Rhys-Davis

Guest Cast:

Reed Michener - Corey Feldman

Jenny Michener - Julie Benz

Jacob - Tim Griffen

Martin - Joshua Cox

Caleb - Jordan Blake Warkol

Franklin Michener - Bill Bolender

Production Information

Sliders - a sci-fi adventure series that chronicles the progress of 4 travellers, who journey between alternative realities in search of the world they left, has enjoyed a rather convoluted production history. The programme was originally devised by Tracey Torme, and Robert K Weiss, and first aired on the US Fox Network in March 1995. It was subsequently broadcast on the UK satellite channel Sky 1 in September of the following year, and later on the British terrestrial channel BBC2.

For those of you unfamiliar with the programme, the basic if wildly improbable premise is as follows: An implausibly brilliant physics undergraduate - Quinn Mallory (played by Jerry O'Connell,) stumbles across a formula for creating inter-dimensional gateways while attempting to create an anti-gravity device in his basement laboratory in San Francisco. The instrument he was building - which would later become known as the "Timer," not only opens a conduit between realities, but regulates the amount of time a traveller spends in a parallel dimension, before being returned to their native world. Quinn's highly orthodox and irascible university professor - Maximillian Arturo (John Rhys-Davis), and his best friend - computer aficionado Wade Welles (portrayed by Sabrina Lloyd,) agree to participate in a demonstration of the device, which will involve a 5 hour exploration of an alternative Earth. An ageing R&B singer - Rembrant "Crying Man" Brown (Clevant Derricks,) is inadvertently caught up in the traveller's first slide, and deposited along with the others in an alternative version of San Francisco, on a world experiencing a renewed Ice Age. Trapped on this world by an ice storm, and with little hope of surviving the 5-hour interval before returning to their home dimension, the 4 decide to activate the Timer ahead of schedule, and move to yet another version of Earth. In so doing they have effectively abandoned their chances of ever relocating their world of origin.

Under the creative control of it's instigators - Torme and Weiss, Sliders initially hinged on alternative history, with its protagonists travelling through worlds where the US had fallen under Soviet control, where Britain had triumphed in the American War of Independence, or where the discovery of antibiotics had never taken place. Despite its reputation for originality, however, the show was plagued by what Fox considered to be consistently poor ratings, and at the conclusion of the second series, responsibility for creative development was handed to the show's executive producer David Peckinpah. The resultant shift in emphasis towards a more populist "monster of the week" format, often involving what many regarded to be "blatant movie rip offs," provoked a storm of outrage from the show's comparatively small, but passionately devoted audience. Their displeasure was further compounded by the abandonment of Professor Arturo in favour of the deeply unpopular Maggie Beckett (played by Kari Wuhrer), which most fans felt to be an obvious attempt to pander to the lowest common denominator of the over-sexed young male market. After 3 series, 48 episodes and two prior cancellations, Sliders was axed by Fox.

Following a vigorous campaign conducted by its fans, Sliders was sold by Universal - the company responsible for its production, to the Sci-Fi channel, who commissioned a further 22 episodes, commencing in June 1998. While series 4 was regarded as an improvement, the programme suffered another blow with the departure of Sabrina Lloyd, necessitating the introduction of yet another new character. Colin Mallory - Quinn's brother, coincidentally depicted by Jerry O'Connell's brother Charlie, never inspired the same degree of revulsion as Maggie Beckett, but seemed to add nothing substantial to the show's development, and the new cast were never held in the same affection as the original quartet. Further complaints from fans arose, as back-plots, continuity and even characterisation were radically altered in an attempt to undo the damage wrought by series 3. There was no return to the favoured device of alternative history, and seasoned fans became increasingly disillusioned, as the show appeared to have lost its "intellectual" edge.

Series 5 created fresh obstacles for the show. The services of both Jerry and Charlie O'Connell were lost in a contractual dispute, leaving only one member of the original cast (Clevant Derricks) in place. The Byzantine plot shifts required to compensate for their absence intrigued many newer devotees, but alienated the existing fan-base yet further. Towards the end of July 1999, the announcement came that Sliders would not be returning for a 6th series. While the ratings for August demonstrated an encouraging improvement, the Sci-Fi Channel had already designated their budget for the forthcoming year, imagining that without it's principal actor, Sliders had little hope of surviving. With the cast, writers and producers reluctant to remain bound to a network that effectively couldn't pay them, Sliders came to an end in February 2000.

Electric Twister Acid Test

w - Scott Smith Miller

d - Oscar L Soslo

m - Stephen Graziano

The Sliders materialize on a world plagued by electrically charged tornadoes, where the only remaining pocket of human civilization is found in a valley surrounded by a protective lodestone escarpment. The inhabitants - practitioners of a punative fundamentalist religion, are presided over by a man who is intent on not only perpetuating his own authority, but on violently suppressing any form of technological development.

Comments

I'll admit that I was never an enormous devotee of Sliders, but when the first series aired on BBC2 in 1997, I considered it to be an engaging and pleasant programme, well suited to vegetating in front of after a hard day's study. I was therefore quite pleased to learn that Josh had landed himself an albeit fleeting role in an episode. Unfortunately, "Electric Twister Acid Test" is part of the show's much maligned third series, when most of the original content and focus on alternative history had been sacrificed to the obsessive pursuit of ratings. It's not the worst example of a sci-fi show I've ever seen, but if this is typical of what series 3 has to offer, then I can fully understand the fans' dismay. The threadbare plot involves an anti-technological religious community, struggling to survive on an inhospitable world, which is periodically ravaged by electrical tornadoes. Their leader enforces their primitive lifestyle with a ruthless hand, restricting his subject's access to knowledge, not simply because electrical equipment serves to attract tornadoes on this world, but because....shock above shock...he was part of the scientific research team responsible for creating the twisters to begin with. Oooh - the irony! There's a little token feminism, a little stilted drama, a lot of remarkably lifeless dialogue, and certainly none of the charm, humour and originality witnessed in earlier series.

This was the show that first alerted many B5 fans in Britain to the fact that Josh Coxx is not merely an extremely handsome addition to the guest cast of any programme, but that he is also exceedingly good at what he does. His performance as Martin - Frankin Mitchener's (the religious dictator's) aggressively loyal enforcer, is brief but characteristically proficient. His dialogue is restricted to a single line, but he does create a very convincing aura of latent violence, and beats the proverbial seven shades out of Jerry O'Connell with a great deal of finnesse. He appears as a menacing background figure in one or two other scenes, before attempting to stab O'Connell with a pitchfork, and having his own head swiftly kicked in in return. Whatever the brevity of the role, it must be admitted that Josh looks distractingly good in his "Deliverance" clothing - good enough in fact to make you temporarily forget that the programme you're watching is complete and utter nonsense.

It may interest you to know that "Electric Twister Acid Test" was not broadcast in it's intended form. The original script called for Arturo to be hung from a tree, and whipped, not beaten. Furthermore, the scene in which Martin attempts to impale Mallory on a pitchfork, would have taken place between Rembrandt and Martin, who would then have had his retreating backside whacked with a solid lump of 2x4. In many respects the amendments are something of a relief, as I'm not sure my already overburdened endochrine system could have coped with a bare chested Josh and that amount of gratuitous flagellation.

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