Jerry O'Connel plays Quinn Malory, scientific genius who figured out how to travel or slide through parallel universes where Earth is different from the planet we know. Different alternate histories are shown in the pilot episode. He opens a sliding vortex in his scientific laboratory using a 'timer', which looks to us like a remote-control. They cross to a different world with killer wasps, however they manage to get away. There are four 'sliders' - Quinn, Professor Maximus Arturo (played by John Rhys Davies - seen recently in Voyager playing Leonardo da Vinci), Wells (played by Sabrina Lloyd - an actress with an elfin charm) and Rembrandt "Crying Man" Brown (played by Cleavant Derricks) - a member of the classic R&B group "The Spinning Tops". Rembrandt is caught up reluctantly in the whole thing. He ends up visiting his own funeral in a parallel world but that's not all!

If the Sliders ever miss a slide, they remain stuck on whatever parallel dimension they are in for 29 years until the next sliding window opens up. This information was to be presented in this episode but was editted out for time. It was mentioned again in the third season premiere episode Rules of the Game.

Thus they end up in a fountain (British Earth)! All wet, wearing clothes more suitable in the reality before the last, people start to look at them strangely. It's Professor Arturo Maximus, actually, who people think they 'know'. Everyone does. He gets a free suite at a hotel. Eventually the sliders find out his double in this reality is the Sheriff of the USA. And this USA is a British Colony called the British States of America. There was an Excalibur comic book with a similar subject once. Taxation has been reduced (?) to 70%, the Sheriff proclaims on tv. Nobody knows what democracy means, there has been no constitution, no founding fathers etc. No revolutions in Russia etc. Monarchs rule this world, but the Sheriff wants to kill Prince Harold, heir to the British throne. Our friends the sliders end up giving a lesson in democracy and rights to this world. This part is the best part of the episode. I think Wells should have convinced Prince Harold to join the Sliders, however. It would have been interesting.