Sliders Reboot? We Could Sure As Hell Use One Right About Now

Posted in: TV, TV | Tagged: opinion, Sliders

Sliders Reboot? We Could Sure As Hell Use One Right About Now

Society usually does well when there's a sci-fi property around holding a mirror up to it, which is why we could really use a Sliders reboot.

Published Sun, 05 Jul 2026 15:37:09 -0500
by Gavin Sheehan
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Article Summary

• A Sliders reboot could revive smart sci-fi TV by using parallel worlds to reflect today’s fears, failures, and choices.
• The original Sliders turned alternate Earths into cautionary tales, asking how history might change with one twist.
• From Soviet-ruled America to a world without penicillin, Sliders made big social ideas accessible and entertaining.
• With TV crowded by cop, legal, and reality shows, Sliders could bring timely allegory and bold perspective back.

In the era of pop culture, society in general tends to function slightly better, at least in our eyes, when someone is holding a mirror up to it. Forcing it to reflect on past mistakes or to look ahead at what might be, in the worst terms possible. TV, specifically sci-fi, does a great job of this when they get it right. The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, The Outer Limits, and even Black Mirror, when it's not aiming for the most extreme thing possible. But we don't really have that right now. Sure, we have Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on Paramount+, which we adore, but it's doing more fan service than writing allegory plots at this point. What we need is a show giving us a look at what could have been or might still be, and I believe I know the perfect catalyst for this: A reboot of Sliders.

What If You Could Travel To Parallel Worlds…

For those who don't know, Sliders was a syndicated sci-fi series that aired from 1995 to 2000. Created by Robert K. Weiss and Tracy Tormé, it starred Jerry O'Connell as a budding scientist named Quinn who developed the technology to "slide" between parallel worlds. "The same year, the same Earth, only different dimensions." After making a mistake during a test run with his mentor Arturo (John Rhys-Davies) and his friend Wade (Sabrina Lloyd), along with a singer named Rembrant (Clevant Derricks), the four find themselves stranded away from their original Earth, constantly having to slide between worlds to try and find their way back home.

The premise of the show was that every Earth was different. Some are small, in ways that don't mean much to us, like seeing the Golden Gate Bridge painted blue, while others are jarring, such as the United States being under Soviet rule. Many of the episodes served as lessons in what could have happened to society if just one thing were out of place, didn't happen, or happened differently. Such as the Allied Forces not having the nuclear bomb, or what if penicillin hadn't been invented? (There's some other nonsense about dinosaurs, as well as an alien race stealing resources from other Earths. But hey, it's '90s sci-fi, they can't all be winners!)

Using "Sliders" To Send a Message

Many of the episodes were used as a vehicle to get a specific point across, as all good sci-fi does on occasion, by giving you an outlook or a lesson in the middle of an intriguing story. Like putting a kid's medicine in their ice cream. This seems to be a fitting analogy, as we could really use a show at this point to put many of the horrors and injustices plaguing our world into perspective. The show's IP is currently owned by NBCUniversal (which also happens to have the complete series available on Peacock), so you already have Universal as a production company and NBC/Peacock as distribution if they wanted to make it. It would just be a matter of finding the right people to write, run, and star in it.

When you look at the landscape of television right now in 2026, what do you see? Cop shows, lawyer shows, and endless dramas. Praising law enforcement and government at a time when trust in both is at an all-time low. You got some sitcoms in there, and a few celebrity game shows, but the vast majority of TV viewing is sadness and legal issues night after night, with a side order of "reality" programming. We need a sci-fi show. We need a show to give us a perspective of what could be, for better and worse. If anything, to guide us into a better tomorrow at any level possible.

We need Sliders. Now, more than ever.

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