Turning once again to our Throwback Thursday series, here’s the second of three articles about television’s Sliders. If you are not familiar with the series, a quick intro is provided in Sliding Through Time Part 1.
The second episode in the series that relates to time travel is the fifth episode of the third season entitled “The Guardian”. In the beginning of this episode, Professor is getting some sort of body scan done. Soon after, Quinn finds him, only to have it revealed that Professor is slowly dying from some illness that is untreatable and incurable, and that he has less than a year to live.
Feeling that he may hold the others back, Professor decides to live out the rest of his days on the world they are on currently. Hesitant to let him go, Quinn pleads for him to keep sliding as sliding is the best way to live out your last days. Professor then reconsiders and makes a pact with Quinn to not tell Wade or Rembrandt about his illness or that he was even thinking of quitting to slide
As the four enter the next world, they feel an extreme gravitational pull. Walking down the street, all they see are fads from the ‘80s and eventually end up at a funeral. In the pilot episode, it is revealed that Quinn’s father was killed in a car accident. At the funeral, Quinn sees a boy who turns around and looks at him. The boy is none other than a younger version of Quinn, twelve years younger to be exact, and the Sliders are watching Quinn’s father’s funeral. As the funeral ends, his old teacher, Ms. Hanley, introduces herself to older Quinn.
When they settle into the hotel, Rembrandt asked Quinn and Professor how they are back in time. Professor quickly explains that an astrophysicist, Dr. Herbert Van Meer, who doesn’t exist on our world, had a theory called Straight Relativistic Time Dilation that states that there could be a parallel universe where the Earth revolves around the Sun in the same amount of time, but rotates a bit faster. In essence, why from their perspective, it looks like they are in 1984.
Later on, Quinn explains to the others that it was really rough on him after his father died because he then felt he had to be the man of the house and he blamed his mother for everything that went wrong from then on. Quinn then concludes that him sliding in at this particular time was not a coincidence, but a chance for him to make things better for younger Quinn.
He starts out by returning a dog Bopper to his house, which was revealed in the pilot episode, ran away. It was also revealed shortly before Quinn returned him that it was Quinn’s mother who left the gate open, enabling the dog to run away. Not wanting to reveal his true identity, Quinn tells his mother his name is Jim and that he used to play chess with her husband.
The day after, he stops a group of bullies from beating up younger Quinn by revealing secrets about them. Shocked, younger Quinn follows older Quinn to the hotel, but older Quinn quickly takes him home, only to find Ms. Hanley talking to Quinn’s mother about the fight. The next day, Quinn waits outside the school to stop another fight he knows will happen, but Professor shows up, advising him not to intervene as without these experiences, younger Quinn may never grow up to be the man older Quinn is.
As the fight starts, Quinn attempts to move, but Professor holds him back, consoling Quinn and asking how it happened for him. The two struggle through the entire fight and Quinn narrates every move, as the viewers see it through younger Quinn’s eyes. Professor then walks away, leaving Quinn upset and feeling helpless. At this point, Quinn knows there will be one more fight that he always wished he could change the outcome.
Feeling obligated, older Quinn prepares younger Quinn to fight back using his hands. At first, Quinn’s mother was hesitant, but she feels there’s some connection between Jim and Quinn, and allows it. While younger Quinn is using all his might to punch a punching bag, he breaks down crying, telling older Quinn that the last thing he told his father was that he hated him; that his father died thinking he hated him. Older Quinn consoles him and tells him it was neither his nor his mother’s fault that his father died.
While older Quinn has been teaching younger Quinn to fight, he has been spending a lot of time with Ms. Hanley and tells her he used to have a huge crush on a teacher when he was younger Quinn’s age, but he knew it would never work. He also asks her to watch over younger Quinn. When asked why so much interest in younger Quinn, he simply responds that he can relate. The two share a kiss the night before the final fight.
That morning, Professor asks Quinn if this is something he should really be doing. Quinn responds by saying that he’s not going to change his mind. Professor comes to the conclusion that he is only doing this because he lost his father as a boy and now, he will lose him too; that he will be alone. The Sliders reconvene to watch the fight.
As the bullies come up to younger Quinn, Wade notices older Quinn gave him a baseball bat. When the bullies begin to torment younger Quinn, he drops the bat and punches a few of them out while the others run away in fear. Older Quinn then reveals that on their world, he did hit the bully with the bat, breaking his knee, leaving him to limp for the rest of his life. Quinn hoped that by teaching younger Quinn to fight with his hands, he wouldn’t feel the need to use the bat. Professor grins and congratulates him.
Soon after, older Quinn says goodbye to younger Quinn and his mother, telling them unfortunately, he won’t be back. He then tells Ms. Hanley the same thing, who was hoping for a romantic relationship. Quinn just states that he can’t explain and goes around the corner to enter the portal. Hearing the noise from the portal, she rushes around the corner and calls out to Jim. Before he jumps into the portal, Quinn turns around to tell her “My name isn’t Jim. It’s Quinn.”
This is an excellent episode and the closest thing to time travel in the entire series. I not only love it for the time travel aspect, but also for the close bond between Quinn and Professor and between the two Quinns.
There is no real Dr. Herbert Van Meer, but the theory of Straight Relativistic Time Dilation does exist, proposed by Dr. Hermann Minkowski, and is a very valid theory. I do have to question how it is used in the episode though. I will agree that there would be an extreme difference in gravitational pull on this Earth; however the timing is questionable. How can it be twelve years? According to how Professor explains it, a year would be a year, but since the Earth rotates faster, wouldn’t there be more days in a year?
Furthermore, wouldn’t the days and nights be shorter? This was not seen or mentioned. On top of that, wouldn’t the countdown on the timer be off, as in a second on our Earth does not equal a second on this Earth? Again, everything seems to be from 1984. When did time start? Are we counting only the time when the Earth began revolving around the Sun or from the Big Bang? Either way, it’s on such a cosmological scale that the year should be way before 1984, not even in AD; more like BC.
Expanding on this, since the Earth rotates faster, how can the Sliders still end up in San Francisco? Just by coincidence for the plot of the episode? The Sliders do slide onto another world where this happens again when dinosaurs roamed the Earth later in the season in episodes “The Exodus” and “Dinoslide”, but the plots do not revolve around the concept as this one does, including a possibility of an Earth rotating slower at the very end of the episode “This Slide of Paradise”.
As I watched this episode for the first time, I found two oversights, referring to a photograph featured in the pilot episode. This photo was of Quinn, his mother, his father, and their dog Bopper. First, Quinn looked around the same age he was in the pilot episode, leaving me to believe that his father died shortly before then. In this episode, he is a boy when his father dies. Second, Bopper looked like a black lab and again, in the photo. In this episode, he is a golden lab and ran away when Quinn was a boy.
I love how the episode ends, having Ms. Hanley believe the portal she saw was just a time travel portal and Quinn was from the future. Perfect! I definitely recommend this episode to all time travel fans.
I’ll be back next month to discuss the third Sliders time travel episode – see you then!
RJ Onyx Moonshadow
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