Otherworld

Although the characters and the plot was different, the premise is very similar: a group of people (a family this time) are on a parallel world trying to get back to their own. Instead of sliding from one universe to the next, they travel extensively on the world they originally entered. Each "province" they travel to is as different as the worlds that the Sliders visited.

I loved this show. I was in high school at the time, and I can't believe I actually remember that Tony O'Dell was the actor who played the boy. Everytime I see the actor that played Kroll, I remember him with the scar and how evil he was.

I remember the Rock and Roll episode, and my dad complained that they went from playing the Beatles to modern rock way to quickly and they should have had the music evolve more slowly and naturally.

I remember the dad selling something like Tupperware called like, Burpoware or something like that. It was the episode that auctioned off the son, and the women were the 1950's type men.

There was an episode where everyone wore white, but I don't remember much about it (they were maybe in a spa of some sort?)

I was so sad when it never returned to the air.

While the show is now only a fuzzy memory to me, I can vividly remember loving it. It had an interesting concept. It is unfortunate it was not given time to make at least some type of a mark in TV history.

We should start a letter writing campaign to CBS to get the show back on the air. If we succeed, I am sure we can make also make it into the Guiness Book Of World records.

This show tried to take a different road from most. A story of a family who fell through a "hole" into an alternate reality, it took that premise in directions that most have never tried. It contained some of the most sophisticated writing that science fiction television had seen up to that time, with a deceptive subtlety couched in satire. Part allegory, part drama, part family, with frequent "winks" to the audience (characters spouting lines that seem to convey that they know more than they are supposed to, but the lines that follow add a more consistent context). CBS never knew how to promote it. "Rock and Roll Suicide" (in which the kids -- stuck in a place where the entertainment is REALLY boring -- invent rock and roll) is a sociological commentary on non-conformance with several stabs at dogmatic religion (the Church of Artificial Intelligence to be precise). "Mansion of the Beast" is essentially a retelling of that fairy tale. The show is not completely successful. Series television is inevitably a crap shoot. You try your best. But its fresh outlook, intelligent scripting, and tongue-in-cheek humor put it a cut above most. It deserved more of a chance. Also, although the episodes as they ran on the Sci-Fi channel were deftly cut, some of the humor was lost. Pity. I recently learned that there are 5 episodes that never aired. Let's bring this one out on DVD with the missing episodes included.

I remember one episode where the older brother and sister became pop-super-stars after performing a cover of the Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your hand" to All the teenagers in one of the zones where the TV programs and music totally sucked. They became bigger and bigger covering music from our dimension and passing it off as their own. I vaguely remember one scene where, with their new-found riches, they go on a shopping spree and end up finding side-by-side barbie-and-ken-like dolls of themselves. Of course, when their pursuers catch up to them, they have to leave the fame and glory and high-tale it to the next zone, but not after they start a "rock-n-roll revolution". This show was consistently the weirdest thing I remember watching on television. I was about eight and I remember watching this on USA-cable network. The only other episodes I have vague recollections of were the first one with the androids and the last one with the hack- beauty and the beast story (with the mother as "Beauty"!)