Reds! Official Fanfiction Thread (Part Two)
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I've never seen This is Us.
But TTL, the dynamics of network television are going to be very, very different because the environments, social relationships, and values of network TV are completely different from our own.
Polyamory is an acceptable school choice, and censors are not nearly as finicky as they would be about things like swearing.
Diary of a Southern Town (PT.IV)
Mama struck on Easter Sunday. Easter is an interesting celebration combining the resurrection of Christ, the defeat of Death and was originally a celebration of Eostre, goddess of Spring, otherwise known as Ostara, Austra, and Eastre. This was one of the few days the restaurant was closed all day and that mama and I went to Church. This time however, we dressed in our finest clothes and travelled to where Jake and Elwood were holding a Spring Picnic. I do not know where they obtained the tent and the chairs, most likely donated, but already you could hear the music. It was a choir and full band and it seemed like everyone in the town had come to see the spectacle. Picnic tables were already set up and covered in a variety of food from salads and desserts to main courses, refreshments were already being served and there were several women discouraging the kids and adults from trying to steal a cookie or a sweet. We found ourselves sitting in the second row when Jake welcomed the crowd. You could see he was in his natural element, he was warm and funny and we started with some hymms like 'With Bravest Fire'. It is true that your could take someone out of the church but you could not take the church out of someone. I think everyone in the crowd knew one of two hymns. Then Jake introduced Elwood who would lead the discussion.
At first he thanked everyone for coming and for bringing the food. He asked everyone to greet one another and their neighbors and then he began. He talked about Jesus, how he was a working man with some education since he was a carpenter and that in three years of his life he changed the world with empty hands. How he healed the sick and lame for no charge and disobeyed the rules, which angered the religious authorities. How he threw out the moneychangers in the temple and that his followers were fishermen, tax collectors and marginal people. How he never stayed in the houses of the wealthy or important people and even until his death was a humble servant. Even when he knew his death was imminent and had prayed to his father he was peaceful and sacrificed himself to save others. Yet he did this, facing the various authorities and even the most powerful Empire the world had known with no weapons or armies. Had suffered, so no was else had suffered and gone home. At the end of the discussion all you could hear was people breathing and the occasional cry. He then asked people to remember the man who died not for glory or empire or wealth but to serve others. Then he turned the service back to Jake who led the final hymn. I could see now why people came, Jake and Elwood talked to you as a friend or neighbor face to face and not from on high. They told stories and the music was uplifting and full of life.
After the service ended we all went to have lunch. While there were lines they moved quickly and the 'church ladies' kept the crowd orderly. I sat with Mama and found the seat across from her occupied by Elwood. Later on I learned that she had 'requested' that he sit with us. You did not turn down her requests if you knew what was good for you. We had fried chicken, potato salad and cole slaw but I do not think Elwood or I ate much. Tamar came and visited with us and Mama said hello to many people. The younger kids played and the adults sat and visited. By two in the afternoon everything was put away and only a few people were left. Elwood and Mama were having a good talk with Elwood talking about the places he had been and growing up in Chicago. That was when Mama said we should go home to rest and would Elwood like to come by at 6 for some coffee and pie. Before Elwood could object Mama said it was regarding Adwoa and him and that it was important. All he said was Yes Ma'am and that he would be honored. Walking home I was nervous as I could be, I had never thought of inviting Elwood to our house and wondered what mama was going to say. Did she hear some rumors, was she going to forbid us from seeing each other. Mama did not show any hints at all.
We came home, I tried to take nap and mama started making a pie at 4:30. By the time Elwood knocked at 6 the coffee was ready and I had put on my best dress. Elwood looked like he had not rested either, he had a newer pressed suit and shined shoes and had shaved. Mama invited him in and had him sit down next to me. 'Now before we have some pie I wish to discuss some matters with you and Adwoa. Now when I was a young girl there was a preacher that would travel throughout the South with his son. Both of them were handsome, had wavy hair, dressed well and could charm the birds out of the trees. I think every woman and girl for miles around went to their services, maybe even a few men to see them. When I was older I found out several women got into trouble because of them and had to leave town. I do not know what happened to them, I hoped they reformed themselves, they may have gotten killed."
"Mama, you mean those women were pregnant?"
Mama looked exasperated. "Why does every generation think they are the first ones to discover sex? Yes my dear, some of those women ended up dead, sterile or damaged because some back room butcher tried to get rid of the baby. Others were married off or sent to live with relatives until the baby was born. So, Brother Elwood, you can see my concern about Preachers near my young and pretty daughter. So I ask you, what are your intentions?"
"My intentions are honorable Ma- I mean Sister- I mean Mother. I knew many people hold you and Adwoa with a lot of respect so I did not know how to approach this. I did not know how to approach this and I did not want to start rumors. Plus, well, I did not do much dating in my life and Adwoa was different than women I knew."
" Rumors are like weeds Elwood, they start on their own where there is good soil and are hard to remove once they start. Now both you have good reputations, if Jake was after Adwoa I would not let in ten feet near her or my door. Not even if he was the President himself. So if you two are going to date we are all going to sit like civilized people and negotiate some terms. Does that agree with you both?" We both agreed and mama brought out the pie, Apple which was Elwood favorite and we began the treaty negotiations.
Adwoa "Mama" Grayson, Diary of a Southern Town, 1988.
At first he thanked everyone for coming and for bringing the food. He asked everyone to greet one another and their neighbors and then he began. He talked about Jesus, how he was a working man with some education since he was a carpenter and that in three years of his life he changed the world with empty hands. How he healed the sick and lame for no charge and disobeyed the rules, which angered the religious authorities. How he threw out the moneychangers in the temple and that his followers were fishermen, tax collectors and marginal people. How he never stayed in the houses of the wealthy or important people and even until his death was a humble servant. Even when he knew his death was imminent and had prayed to his father he was peaceful and sacrificed himself to save others. Yet he did this, facing the various authorities and even the most powerful Empire the world had known with no weapons or armies. Had suffered, so no was else had suffered and gone home. At the end of the discussion all you could hear was people breathing and the occasional cry. He then asked people to remember the man who died not for glory or empire or wealth but to serve others. Then he turned the service back to Jake who led the final hymn. I could see now why people came, Jake and Elwood talked to you as a friend or neighbor face to face and not from on high. They told stories and the music was uplifting and full of life.
After the service ended we all went to have lunch. While there were lines they moved quickly and the 'church ladies' kept the crowd orderly. I sat with Mama and found the seat across from her occupied by Elwood. Later on I learned that she had 'requested' that he sit with us. You did not turn down her requests if you knew what was good for you. We had fried chicken, potato salad and cole slaw but I do not think Elwood or I ate much. Tamar came and visited with us and Mama said hello to many people. The younger kids played and the adults sat and visited. By two in the afternoon everything was put away and only a few people were left. Elwood and Mama were having a good talk with Elwood talking about the places he had been and growing up in Chicago. That was when Mama said we should go home to rest and would Elwood like to come by at 6 for some coffee and pie. Before Elwood could object Mama said it was regarding Adwoa and him and that it was important. All he said was Yes Ma'am and that he would be honored. Walking home I was nervous as I could be, I had never thought of inviting Elwood to our house and wondered what mama was going to say. Did she hear some rumors, was she going to forbid us from seeing each other. Mama did not show any hints at all.
We came home, I tried to take nap and mama started making a pie at 4:30. By the time Elwood knocked at 6 the coffee was ready and I had put on my best dress. Elwood looked like he had not rested either, he had a newer pressed suit and shined shoes and had shaved. Mama invited him in and had him sit down next to me. 'Now before we have some pie I wish to discuss some matters with you and Adwoa. Now when I was a young girl there was a preacher that would travel throughout the South with his son. Both of them were handsome, had wavy hair, dressed well and could charm the birds out of the trees. I think every woman and girl for miles around went to their services, maybe even a few men to see them. When I was older I found out several women got into trouble because of them and had to leave town. I do not know what happened to them, I hoped they reformed themselves, they may have gotten killed."
"Mama, you mean those women were pregnant?"
Mama looked exasperated. "Why does every generation think they are the first ones to discover sex? Yes my dear, some of those women ended up dead, sterile or damaged because some back room butcher tried to get rid of the baby. Others were married off or sent to live with relatives until the baby was born. So, Brother Elwood, you can see my concern about Preachers near my young and pretty daughter. So I ask you, what are your intentions?"
"My intentions are honorable Ma- I mean Sister- I mean Mother. I knew many people hold you and Adwoa with a lot of respect so I did not know how to approach this. I did not know how to approach this and I did not want to start rumors. Plus, well, I did not do much dating in my life and Adwoa was different than women I knew."
" Rumors are like weeds Elwood, they start on their own where there is good soil and are hard to remove once they start. Now both you have good reputations, if Jake was after Adwoa I would not let in ten feet near her or my door. Not even if he was the President himself. So if you two are going to date we are all going to sit like civilized people and negotiate some terms. Does that agree with you both?" We both agreed and mama brought out the pie, Apple which was Elwood favorite and we began the treaty negotiations.
Adwoa "Mama" Grayson, Diary of a Southern Town, 1988.
Gabriel Over the White House, The Last Film of White America (By Crunch Buttsteak)
Gabriel Over the White House, The Last Film of White America
1932’s Gabriel Over The White House is a bizarre anomaly of the final days of the Second Republic. The film starred Walter Huston as General-turned-President Buzz Windrip—a role that Huston regrets to this day.
The plot of the movie is that newly-elected President Judd Hammond is seriously injured in an automobile accident shortly after being sworn in as President. With Hammond debilitated and unable to perform his duties, Windrip receives a vision from the Archangel Gabriel and ghost of Abraham Lincoln telling him he must save the country or it will fall to darkness.
Windrip takes over the government, acting in Hammond’s name, and begins to take radical steps in office. His first order is to clear the “bums” out of the National Mall (drafts of the screenplay called for the use of newsreel footage of the bonus army, the script called for a scene showing the eviction of the bonus army, but it was believed to have never been filmed). When members of Congress object, he locks them out and orders the legislative body dissolved.
The film ends with President Hammond waking up from his illness and meeting with Windrip. Windrip says that he did what was needed to save the Republic, comparing himself to previous Roman Dictators who would take command in times of crisis. Windrip agrees to resign, Hammond gives him some sage wisdom about the necessity of hard men to make difficult decisions.
The film was made in 1932 and was largely funded by William Randolph Hearst. The film was planned for a release in December of 1932, predicated on the idea of Hoover winning re-election in November.
Pamphlets circulated in 1932 by the WFPL encouraged people to boycott theaters showing the film.
It ultimately had a brief theatrical run that was sparsely attended. Following the events of Red May and the subsequent civil war, copies of the movie were destroyed by red forces.
Today, the film is considered “lost” with no remaining complete copies. A print of the first reel was discovered in a raid on a Sons of Liberty compound in 1937. It is commonly believed that Hearst smuggled out a complete print of the movie, but if so it has never been exhibited publicly.
Anti-Reaction Movie Night has posted a standing bounty for a complete copy of the film, as it was considered prescient for the later MacArthur putsch.
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Sliders (By the Jovian)
Wade Welles: We have a duty, Logan. We can't just abandon other worlds' proletariat to their fate, not when we have the means to make it better.
Logan Mallory: Wade, listen to yourself. We don't have the time, the energy or the means to help an infinity of worlds where capitalism rules America, it's not possible.
Wade Welles: We don't need to help every world, just this one, and then the next one. One world at a time is all we need to do.
- Sliders, Season 1, Episode 12, "Here We Go Again"
Sliders Retrospective (Season 1) - (1995-1996)
Main Cast:
- Zoe McLellan as Logan Mallory - A university student of Cosmology and Ontology that accidentally invents a method of interdimensional travel called "sliding" and de facto leader of the Sliders, trying her best to bring the Sliders home after becoming lost in the multiverse.
- Wil Wheaton as Wade Welles - Logan's on-and-off boyfriend and computer science student, a radical anarcho-communist, he's the first one to try and change things for the better whenever the Sliders emerge in a dystopian universe.
- Dianna Ross as Ramona Brown - A retired 70s R&B singer turned music teacher that got dragged along on the Sliders adventure after accidentally driving her car through the Sliders' unstable vortex.
- Eduardo Huizar Olmos as Professor Maximilian Arturo - Logan's Professor of Cosmology and Ontology. He becomes a father figure to Logan and Wade over the course of their odyssey through the multiverse.
Recurring Cast:
- Jason Gaffney as Conrad Bennish Jr. - Logan's classmate, parallel universe counterparts of him appear in multiple episodes.
- Jerry O'Connell as Quinn St. Claire - Logan's male, villainous parallel universe counterpart from a universe where America remained capitalist into the present day and is trying to perfect sliding technology on his world in order to use it to plunder other worlds of their natural resources.
- Michelle Hurd as Patricia Simms - A winner of a deadly lottery from a capitalist world that embraced Malthusian population control, she temporarily joins the Sliders to escape certain death on her world and develops feelings for Logan before settling down on a world where John Brown instigated a successful socialist slave revolt in the 1850s Southern US.
- Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Sid Harper - A petty criminal from a capitalist police state universe he joins the Sliders in an attempt to redeem himself for his checkered past after they save his life from corrupt police officers.
Episodes:
1. Think of a Roulette Wheel:
Directed by: Andy Tennant
Story by: Tracy Tormé and Robert K. Weiss
Teleplay by: Tracy Torme
Synopsis:
San Francisco university student Logan Mallory accidentally discovers a method of interdimensional travel that she dubs "sliding" after an encounter with a double of herself that inspires the name. Attempting to slide to an alternate universe with her boyfriend Wade Welles and Professor of Cosmology and Ontology, Maximilian Arturo, she accidentally brings along a former R&B singer Ramona Brown when the sliding vortex goes out of control ans swallows her Cadillac sending the four of them into an apocalyptic universe where the world is in the middle of an ice age.
2. Dark Reflections:
Directed by: Andy Tennant
Story by: Tracy Tormé, Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Teleplay by: Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Synopsis:
After barely escaping the blizzard on the ice age world by activating the sliding timer before the countdown is over, the Sliders find themselves not on their world but on a different one where Douglas MacArthur defeated the Red May Revolution, resulting in America remaining capitalist to date. The Sliders are press ganged into helping local scientist Quinn St. Claire into perfecting their own sliding device with the promise of aiding them return home. Logan however goes back on the deal when she and the Sliders learn that Quinn killed Arturo's counterpart in this world for protesting Quinn's plan to use Sliding technology to plunder other worlds for their natural resources, sabotaging the Sliders project (at the cost of losing the co-ordinates to their home universe). The four escape from the parallel world by reactivating the timer to another socialist world (one where Upton Sinclair and Norman Thomas traded places in history), trapping Quinn in the same predicament as them when they sabotage his timer, leaving him adrift in the multiverse, unable to return home.
3. Permanent Revolution:
Directed by: Jack Bender
Written by: Tracy Tormé
Synopsis:
The Sliders explore the socialist world they arrived in at the end of "Dark Reflections", and discover that its a world where the Second Cultural Revolution of the 1950s is still ongoing as a result of a decades-long backlash to Norman Thomas' cultural conservative social policies in the first period of UASR politics. This has led to the WCPA and DFLP form a permanent coalition and have taken the UASR in a decidedly more vanguardist authoritarian direction reminiscent of the early USSR. After accidentally encouraging the cultural revolutionaries to organize a "Revolt of the Cadres"-style situation after being accused of being counter-revolutionaries, the Sliders slide to a world where San Francisco is about to be destroyed by a tidal wave.
4. Fever:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Written by: Ann Powell & Rose Schacht
Synopsis:
Following on from last episode's cliffhanger, the Sliders climb to the top of a skyscraper to stay alive before sliding to another capitalist world, one where Alexander Fleming never discovered penicillin and as such antibiotics never came to be. Resulting in an America ravaged by bacterial epidemics and infections where the working classes take disproportionate amount of deaths compared to the insulated bourgeoisie. After Wade gets sick, it's up to Logan and Arturo to make some penicillin to treat him before he dies from the disease.
5. Last Days:
Directed by: Michael Keusch
Written by: Dan Lane
Synopsis:
As Wade still recovers from his illness the Sliders arrive on a socialist world about to be destroyed by an incoming asteroid when it collides with the Earth in three days, long before their Slide window. Arturo joins a gathering of Comintern scientists where he discovers that the Atom bomb was never invented when Einstein and Oppenheimer sabotaged the original Trinity test bomb and faked research "proving" that nuclear fission simply isn't feasible, forcing him to team up with this universe's Conrad Bennish Jr. to rebuild the original Fat Man atomic warhead in a last ditch effort to destroy the asteroid. Meanwhile Ramona experiences a crisis of faith as she comes face to face with certain death and Logan and Wade confront their feelings for each other. Eventually Arturo and Bennish's gambit is successful and the atomic bomb destroys the asteroid, saving this Earth, but giving it access to atomic weaponry despite Arturo's efforts to keep the atomic bomb knowledge from this world.
6. Eggheads:
Directed by: Timothy Bond
Story by: Jacob Epstein and Scott Smith Miller
Teleplay by: Scott Smith Miller
Synopsis:
Following their brush with death, the Sliders arrive in a capitalist world where as a result of a cultural shift during the early-20th century, capitalism has opted to glorify intelligence and academic skills rather than athletics, resulting in a world of intellectual refinement but all the other hallmarks of capitalism (poverty, unemployment, exploitation, crime, etc) as Logan and Arturo experience firsthand, as in this timeline Logan is the star player in San Francisco's Mindgame team (a game that combines elements of basketball, trivia and reversi) but is also hunted by the mafia for owning them money, while Arturo is a wealthy, successful scientist whose marriage to his wife is falling apart as a result of his counterpart's infidelity. The episode ends with the Sliders despondently leaving this world, with Arturo remarking that "as long as capitalism exists, it will corrupt everything mankind tries to create."
7. Anarchy in America:
Directed by: Vern Gillum
Story by: Wil Wheaton
Teleplay by: Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive in a world where the Franco-British Labour Party remained in power after WWII, resulting in the FBU experiencing a socialist revolution of its own in the 1950s, and a global socialist revolution occurring by the 1980s. Most of the episode concerns the Sliders' exploration of this world's more higher-stage communist society and Wade is tempted to remain in this world as it is much closer to an anarchist, classless, stateless and moneyless society than Earth Prime's lower-stage communist society. Ultimately he chooses to continue traveling with the rest of the Sliders, albeit very reluctantly. The big plot development this episode being that Logan tracks down her counterpart, who proceeds to aid her in figuring out the means to return home, but the process would take a dozen or so slides before the timer can lock back onto Earth Prime.
8. The Chairwoman has Returned:
Directed by: Vern Gillum
Written by: Tracy Tormé
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive on another socialist world, one in which Ramona Brown is one of the most famous R&B musicians of all time (the titular Chairwoman of R&B) but in which she died in a tragic accident in the late-70s, her appearance here prompting a new wave of "Ramona faked her death" conspiracies. Like with Wade last episode, Ramona is tempted to remain in this world and assume her dead counterpart's more successful life but in the end she realizes that it's not fair to do so and that it feels hollow to just assume someone else's success instead of working to achieve it herself, passing herself off as an impersonator and leaving with the rest of the Sliders.
9. Dominion:
Directed by: Félix Alcalá
Written by: Lee Goldberg & William Rabkin
Synopsis:
The Sliders (after a rougher than usual vortex transit) arrive on a world where the Franco-British Union reigns supreme as a result of a failed American Revolution turning the United States into another dominion in the British Empire. They soon discover than they were forced into this world by Quinn St. Claire using a device to divert their sliding vortex to this world and to keep them here should they try to leave, forcing the Sliders to team up with a socialist guerrilla group to attack Quinn's base of operations and destroy the "vortex magnet" as Logan dubs it. The attack is successful but Quinn remarks that they won't like the next world they'll go to.
10. Luck of the Draw:
Directed by: Les Landau
Story by: Jon Povill and Tracy Tormé
Teleplay by: Jon Povill
Synopsis:
Following on from last episode, the Sliders arrive on another capitalist world, one which seems to place quite a bit of emphasis on population control, having embraced the ideas of economist Thomas Malthus. Needing money to stay alive till they slide in a week, Wade enters himself into a bizarre lottery where the more money you withdraw from an ATM-like machine, the higher the likelihood you win the lottery (which amounts to millions of dollars). When Wade does indeed win the lottery, the Sliders discover the horrific truth behind it, it is a form of population control, the lottery winners are euthanized and their families collect their winnings, most lottery winners of course being working class people fallen on hard times and having no choice but to participate in the lottery in order to make ends meet. The Sliders manage to save Wade and fellow lottery winner Patricia Simms and escape from the Malthusian world but not before Logan is shot in the back by a police officer.
11. Insurance Fraud:
Directed by: Les Landau
Story by: Jon Povill and Tracy Tormé
Teleplay by: Tracy Tormé and Scott Smith Miller
Synopsis:
After Logan is shot, the Sliders find themselves on yet another capitalist world, one where the nascent Franco-British Union was taken over by fascist politicians like Oswald Mosley and Marcel Déat resulting in it switching sides to the Axis powers, resulting in an eventual Franco-British invasion of the UASR resulting in restoration of capitalism under MacArthur's corporatist military government. This is a problem since Ramona, Patricia and Arturo are seen as undesirables in this world and Logan is detained at the hospital due to lacking health insurance. Like with "Dominion" the story becomes a "the Sliders help the communist rebels" plot as they rescue Logan from the hospital where he's being kept to be experimented on means to pay off her debt, the Sliders escape at the last second but Patricia is very much disturbed by this alternate universe's Fascist America.
12. Here We Go Again:
Directed by: Richard Compton
Written by: Jacob Epstein and Steve Brown
Synopsis:
Arriving on the latest capitalist world, the Sliders are immediately caught in the middle of a stand-off between the police and a socialist resistance group. With less than a minute before the slide, Wade gets involved and is given a CD by one of the resistance members before being gunned down by the police. Sliding to the next world, they realize that it's the same world as the one they just left, except that the shootout is about to happen, giving Wade the opportunity to change the outcome only to discover along with the rest of the sliders that they're seemingly trapped in a time loop as they keep sliding back to the same universe just before the shootout happens. Eventually they realize that this is another trap by Quinn St. Claire to force the Sliders to send him back home with the knowledge he needs to perfect sliding. His plan is foiled and Wade sees that the disk contains the collected works of many socialist and anarchist writers in file format before giving it back to the resistance members in an iteration of the loop where they emerge victorious in the shootout.
13. Vanguard:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Written by: Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Synopsis:
The Sliders, after a long streak of capitalist worlds, finally slide into a world where the Red May Revolution still happened but something has gone wrong, America is a police state in this world. Looking into it the Sliders learn that the Revolt of the Cadres occurred differently and was ultimately stamped out by William Z. Foster's politburo at the behest of Joseph Stalin, resulting in America becoming a one-party dictatorship similar to the Soviet Union's first period of politics before Molotov and later Frunze's reforms. As the Sliders try to keep their heads down and not draw attention to themselves, lest they be branded as counterrevolutionaries, they accidentally become embroiled in a left communist underground movement to end the vanguard's rule and restore democracy in America. The experience of this world gives Patricia a decidedly negative view of communism, straining her relationship with Logan and Wade.
14. El Sid:
Directed by: Félix Alcalá
Written by: Jon Povill
Synopsis:
Following their escape from the Vanguard world, the Sliders arrive on a world where San Francisco is one giant prison as a result of California being much more tectonically unstable, with the city potentially sinking into the ocean any day now. Meeting up with and saving the life of petty criminal Sid Harper, the Sliders attempt to lay low but are forced into participating in the gang politics of the city after a gang steals the timer. In the end Sid takes a bullet retrieving the timer and departs with the rest of the Sliders to a world that appears to be racist against non-whites.
15. Emancipation:
Directed by: Richard Compton
Story by: Alex Jeffries* and Jon Povill
Teleplay by: Alex Jeffries
Synopsis:
The Sliders, are forced to take Sid to a back alley doctor after being rejected from the hospital as they learn that in this universe John Brown led a successful slave revolt in the south in establishing the Socialist Republic of New Afrika, encompassing the American Southern states but as a consequence the rest of America became hardline reactionary on social issues and remains capitalist to date with ethnic minorities living in under a Rhodesian-esque apartheid system. In the end Patricia chooses to stay on this world after the Sliders rendezvous with a New Afrikan underground operation designed to smuggle minorities into New Afrika, seeing it as the best world they've been to thus far. Meanwhile Logan believes that after the next slide, the calculation for Earth Prime's co-ordinates would be complete and they'll be able to go home.
16. The Young and the Relentless:
Directed by: David Dobkin
Story by: Michael X. Fernaro, Edward Anthony and Von Whisenhan
Teleplay by: Edward Anthony and Von Whisenhan
Synopsis:
After arriving on a capitalist world, Logan and Wade end up embroiled in corporate intrigue when Wade's businessman counterpart is killed and Wade is forced to pose as him by Logan's counterpart, a shrewd and capricious businesswoman desiring profit above all else, taking the rest of the Sliders hostage to force Wade's compliance. After a failed attempt to rescue the rest of the Sliders, Wade is given no choice but to go along with alt-Logan's plan, only to discover that Quinn St. Claire is alt-Logan's new business partner.
17. Hostile Takeover:
Directed by: Timothy Bond
Story by: Tracy Tormé
Teleplay by: Tracy Tormé, Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Synopsis:
After last episode's cliffhanger, Quinn confronts the Sliders and forces them to give him the co-ordinates to his home universe. Arturo and Sid manage to escape while Logan and Wade are forced to do as Quinn asks or Ramona will be killed. Eventually Logan manages to trick Quinn into thinking he has the co-ordinates to his home but Quinn insists on taking Logan with him to be sure. The rest of the Sliders choose not to return to Earth Prime despite now having the co-ordinates, in favor of Arturo and Wade reprogramming the timer to follow Quinn into whatever universe Logan tricked him into.
18. Narcotica:
Directed by: Richard Compton
Story by: Jerry O'Connell
Teleplay by: Jerry O'Connell and Jacob Epstein
Synopsis:
Following Quinn and Logan, the Sliders arrive on a capitalist world where all drug use is not only legal but encouraged as a state-sponsored coping mechanism from the harsh reality of working under capitalism. Wade and Sid quickly become addicted to heroin after being press ganged into taking some while Ramona is forced to remember her early-20s and how she wound up trapped in an abusive relationship with a heroin addict in the 60s. Eventually the Sliders locate Logan, just in time to see her and Quinn slide to another world, with them quickly giving chase using the reconfigured timer to follow Quinn whenever he goes.
19. The Chase:
Directed by: David Dobkin
Written by: Scott Smith Miller
Synopsis:
The Sliders pursue Quinn and Logan through a series of universes, some socialist (including a universe where Japan colonized the Americas) and some capitalist (including a universe where Mexico controls the entirety of what would be the UASR west coast). Eventually Logan manages to break free from Quinn and reunites with the Sliders but not before Quinn sets up another vortex magnet, once again trapping them on the world they're currently in, a capitalist one in the middle of a civil upheaval.
20. Quinn's Gambit:
Directed by: Vern Gillum
Story by: Tracy Tormé and Jacob Epstein
Teleplay by: Jacob Epstein and Alex Jeffries
Synopsis:
Once again Quinn proposes the same deal as in "Dark Reflections", give him the means to return home and he'll shut off the vortex magnet and allow them to return home but before the Sliders can respond one way or another, an uprising occurs in their vicinity, separating them from Quinn. The rest of the episode is the Sliders struggling to survive in the chaos of the street fighting until Quinn finally holds them at gunpoint and forces them to help him, stating that if Logan tricks him again he will kill them all. In the end Logan relents and allows Quinn to return to his universe with the means to perfect his sliding technology but the Sliders refuse to let him keep it and go after him to his home world.
21. Piercing Attack:
Directed by: Michael Keusch
Written by: Scott Smith Miller
Synopsis:
The Sliders launch their attack on Quinn's sliding compound just as he has a successful test in sending and returning objects and living people from another universe. Sid and Ramona are able to subdue the guards while Wade and Arturo attempt to destroy the data mainframe but are caught before they can do so. Logan confronts Quinn, who reveals that after the events of "Dark Reflections" the scientists working the project were able to restore enough data from Logan's sabotage attempt to reconstruct the co-ordinates for Earth Prime, which is now going to be this universe's first target for conquest, using sliding tech to destroy the UASR's military capabilities without fear of retaliation in preparation for a full scale assault. More guards arrive to apprehend Logan, leaving only Ramona and Sid free to do anything.
22. Endgame:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Written by: Tracy Tormé, Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Synopsis:
Quinn sends an advance guard to Earth Prime to establish a foothold as he prepares to send bombs to all UASR military bases in the region only for Sid and Ramona to sabotage the facility's power supply just before the first bomb can be sent. The two rescue the rest of the Sliders who then redirect one of the bombs back into the facility destroying it. Sid sacrificing himself to allow the rest of the Sliders to escape to Earth Prime. The four meet Bennish and agents from SecPubSafe on the other side who have slowly pieced together what happened to the Sliders and have been preparing for such an eventuality, apprehending the advance guard Quinn sent through. Quinn however is revealed to have made it to Earth Prime and makes one final move for revenge by kidnapping Wade and forcing him through a vortex. The rest of the Sliders give chase despite knowing that it may take them months to recalculate a slide back home and in a final confrontation Logan pushes Quinn off a ledge, seemingly to his death, ending his threat once and for all. The Sliders then continue their journey across the multiverse, Logan remarking that would take at least a dozen slides to pinpoint the co-ordinates for Earth Prime but it would be worth it since they're all together.
23. Aftermath:
Directed by: Jack Bender
Written by: Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Synopsis:
The episode begins with the Sliders performing a memorial service for Sid, Logan eulogizing him as a hero who despite his past, did the right thing in the end. Afterwards the Sliders slide into a socialist world very similar to Earth Prime but with an Azure Gate Bridge instead, the problem is that their next Sliding window is in two months. The episode is a slice-of-life comedy-drama as the Sliders process all that they've been trough over the last year, with Logan and Wade reaffirming their love for one another as they take their old jobs at an electronics store, Arturo and Ramona teaching at local school and bonding with the students. The episode ends with the four feeling confident that the worst is behind them before sliding to a seemingly abandoned San Francisco.
24. Invasion:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Written by: Tracy Tormé
Synopsis:
Exploring the abandoned world, the Sliders come across graffiti that reads "Kromaggs rule", the eponymous Kromaggs then make their appearances, in flying manta ray-shaped vessels capable of sliding. Evading the ship, the Sliders eventually arrive in a world where California is part of a still capitalist Canada and after getting into trouble trying to pay for lunch, the Kromaggs arrive on this world and capture them revealing them as an alternate evolution of mankind, a much more aggressive beast-like race that has discovered Sliding and now seeks to use it to conquer the multiverse, much to the Sliders exasperation at defeating Quinn only to come across a different existential threat. Eventually the Sliders escape from the Kromagg prison facility, determined to return home to warn them of the Kromagg threat. Unbeknownst to them the Kromaggs have implanted Logan with an interdimensional tracking device, meaning that the Sliders will unwittingly bring the Kromaggs to Earth Prime.
Logan Mallory: Wade, listen to yourself. We don't have the time, the energy or the means to help an infinity of worlds where capitalism rules America, it's not possible.
Wade Welles: We don't need to help every world, just this one, and then the next one. One world at a time is all we need to do.
- Sliders, Season 1, Episode 12, "Here We Go Again"
Sliders Retrospective (Season 1) - (1995-1996)
Main Cast:
- Zoe McLellan as Logan Mallory - A university student of Cosmology and Ontology that accidentally invents a method of interdimensional travel called "sliding" and de facto leader of the Sliders, trying her best to bring the Sliders home after becoming lost in the multiverse.
- Wil Wheaton as Wade Welles - Logan's on-and-off boyfriend and computer science student, a radical anarcho-communist, he's the first one to try and change things for the better whenever the Sliders emerge in a dystopian universe.
- Dianna Ross as Ramona Brown - A retired 70s R&B singer turned music teacher that got dragged along on the Sliders adventure after accidentally driving her car through the Sliders' unstable vortex.
- Eduardo Huizar Olmos as Professor Maximilian Arturo - Logan's Professor of Cosmology and Ontology. He becomes a father figure to Logan and Wade over the course of their odyssey through the multiverse.
Recurring Cast:
- Jason Gaffney as Conrad Bennish Jr. - Logan's classmate, parallel universe counterparts of him appear in multiple episodes.
- Jerry O'Connell as Quinn St. Claire - Logan's male, villainous parallel universe counterpart from a universe where America remained capitalist into the present day and is trying to perfect sliding technology on his world in order to use it to plunder other worlds of their natural resources.
- Michelle Hurd as Patricia Simms - A winner of a deadly lottery from a capitalist world that embraced Malthusian population control, she temporarily joins the Sliders to escape certain death on her world and develops feelings for Logan before settling down on a world where John Brown instigated a successful socialist slave revolt in the 1850s Southern US.
- Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Sid Harper - A petty criminal from a capitalist police state universe he joins the Sliders in an attempt to redeem himself for his checkered past after they save his life from corrupt police officers.
Episodes:
1. Think of a Roulette Wheel:
Directed by: Andy Tennant
Story by: Tracy Tormé and Robert K. Weiss
Teleplay by: Tracy Torme
Synopsis:
San Francisco university student Logan Mallory accidentally discovers a method of interdimensional travel that she dubs "sliding" after an encounter with a double of herself that inspires the name. Attempting to slide to an alternate universe with her boyfriend Wade Welles and Professor of Cosmology and Ontology, Maximilian Arturo, she accidentally brings along a former R&B singer Ramona Brown when the sliding vortex goes out of control ans swallows her Cadillac sending the four of them into an apocalyptic universe where the world is in the middle of an ice age.
2. Dark Reflections:
Directed by: Andy Tennant
Story by: Tracy Tormé, Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Teleplay by: Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Synopsis:
After barely escaping the blizzard on the ice age world by activating the sliding timer before the countdown is over, the Sliders find themselves not on their world but on a different one where Douglas MacArthur defeated the Red May Revolution, resulting in America remaining capitalist to date. The Sliders are press ganged into helping local scientist Quinn St. Claire into perfecting their own sliding device with the promise of aiding them return home. Logan however goes back on the deal when she and the Sliders learn that Quinn killed Arturo's counterpart in this world for protesting Quinn's plan to use Sliding technology to plunder other worlds for their natural resources, sabotaging the Sliders project (at the cost of losing the co-ordinates to their home universe). The four escape from the parallel world by reactivating the timer to another socialist world (one where Upton Sinclair and Norman Thomas traded places in history), trapping Quinn in the same predicament as them when they sabotage his timer, leaving him adrift in the multiverse, unable to return home.
3. Permanent Revolution:
Directed by: Jack Bender
Written by: Tracy Tormé
Synopsis:
The Sliders explore the socialist world they arrived in at the end of "Dark Reflections", and discover that its a world where the Second Cultural Revolution of the 1950s is still ongoing as a result of a decades-long backlash to Norman Thomas' cultural conservative social policies in the first period of UASR politics. This has led to the WCPA and DFLP form a permanent coalition and have taken the UASR in a decidedly more vanguardist authoritarian direction reminiscent of the early USSR. After accidentally encouraging the cultural revolutionaries to organize a "Revolt of the Cadres"-style situation after being accused of being counter-revolutionaries, the Sliders slide to a world where San Francisco is about to be destroyed by a tidal wave.
4. Fever:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Written by: Ann Powell & Rose Schacht
Synopsis:
Following on from last episode's cliffhanger, the Sliders climb to the top of a skyscraper to stay alive before sliding to another capitalist world, one where Alexander Fleming never discovered penicillin and as such antibiotics never came to be. Resulting in an America ravaged by bacterial epidemics and infections where the working classes take disproportionate amount of deaths compared to the insulated bourgeoisie. After Wade gets sick, it's up to Logan and Arturo to make some penicillin to treat him before he dies from the disease.
5. Last Days:
Directed by: Michael Keusch
Written by: Dan Lane
Synopsis:
As Wade still recovers from his illness the Sliders arrive on a socialist world about to be destroyed by an incoming asteroid when it collides with the Earth in three days, long before their Slide window. Arturo joins a gathering of Comintern scientists where he discovers that the Atom bomb was never invented when Einstein and Oppenheimer sabotaged the original Trinity test bomb and faked research "proving" that nuclear fission simply isn't feasible, forcing him to team up with this universe's Conrad Bennish Jr. to rebuild the original Fat Man atomic warhead in a last ditch effort to destroy the asteroid. Meanwhile Ramona experiences a crisis of faith as she comes face to face with certain death and Logan and Wade confront their feelings for each other. Eventually Arturo and Bennish's gambit is successful and the atomic bomb destroys the asteroid, saving this Earth, but giving it access to atomic weaponry despite Arturo's efforts to keep the atomic bomb knowledge from this world.
6. Eggheads:
Directed by: Timothy Bond
Story by: Jacob Epstein and Scott Smith Miller
Teleplay by: Scott Smith Miller
Synopsis:
Following their brush with death, the Sliders arrive in a capitalist world where as a result of a cultural shift during the early-20th century, capitalism has opted to glorify intelligence and academic skills rather than athletics, resulting in a world of intellectual refinement but all the other hallmarks of capitalism (poverty, unemployment, exploitation, crime, etc) as Logan and Arturo experience firsthand, as in this timeline Logan is the star player in San Francisco's Mindgame team (a game that combines elements of basketball, trivia and reversi) but is also hunted by the mafia for owning them money, while Arturo is a wealthy, successful scientist whose marriage to his wife is falling apart as a result of his counterpart's infidelity. The episode ends with the Sliders despondently leaving this world, with Arturo remarking that "as long as capitalism exists, it will corrupt everything mankind tries to create."
7. Anarchy in America:
Directed by: Vern Gillum
Story by: Wil Wheaton
Teleplay by: Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive in a world where the Franco-British Labour Party remained in power after WWII, resulting in the FBU experiencing a socialist revolution of its own in the 1950s, and a global socialist revolution occurring by the 1980s. Most of the episode concerns the Sliders' exploration of this world's more higher-stage communist society and Wade is tempted to remain in this world as it is much closer to an anarchist, classless, stateless and moneyless society than Earth Prime's lower-stage communist society. Ultimately he chooses to continue traveling with the rest of the Sliders, albeit very reluctantly. The big plot development this episode being that Logan tracks down her counterpart, who proceeds to aid her in figuring out the means to return home, but the process would take a dozen or so slides before the timer can lock back onto Earth Prime.
8. The Chairwoman has Returned:
Directed by: Vern Gillum
Written by: Tracy Tormé
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive on another socialist world, one in which Ramona Brown is one of the most famous R&B musicians of all time (the titular Chairwoman of R&B) but in which she died in a tragic accident in the late-70s, her appearance here prompting a new wave of "Ramona faked her death" conspiracies. Like with Wade last episode, Ramona is tempted to remain in this world and assume her dead counterpart's more successful life but in the end she realizes that it's not fair to do so and that it feels hollow to just assume someone else's success instead of working to achieve it herself, passing herself off as an impersonator and leaving with the rest of the Sliders.
9. Dominion:
Directed by: Félix Alcalá
Written by: Lee Goldberg & William Rabkin
Synopsis:
The Sliders (after a rougher than usual vortex transit) arrive on a world where the Franco-British Union reigns supreme as a result of a failed American Revolution turning the United States into another dominion in the British Empire. They soon discover than they were forced into this world by Quinn St. Claire using a device to divert their sliding vortex to this world and to keep them here should they try to leave, forcing the Sliders to team up with a socialist guerrilla group to attack Quinn's base of operations and destroy the "vortex magnet" as Logan dubs it. The attack is successful but Quinn remarks that they won't like the next world they'll go to.
10. Luck of the Draw:
Directed by: Les Landau
Story by: Jon Povill and Tracy Tormé
Teleplay by: Jon Povill
Synopsis:
Following on from last episode, the Sliders arrive on another capitalist world, one which seems to place quite a bit of emphasis on population control, having embraced the ideas of economist Thomas Malthus. Needing money to stay alive till they slide in a week, Wade enters himself into a bizarre lottery where the more money you withdraw from an ATM-like machine, the higher the likelihood you win the lottery (which amounts to millions of dollars). When Wade does indeed win the lottery, the Sliders discover the horrific truth behind it, it is a form of population control, the lottery winners are euthanized and their families collect their winnings, most lottery winners of course being working class people fallen on hard times and having no choice but to participate in the lottery in order to make ends meet. The Sliders manage to save Wade and fellow lottery winner Patricia Simms and escape from the Malthusian world but not before Logan is shot in the back by a police officer.
11. Insurance Fraud:
Directed by: Les Landau
Story by: Jon Povill and Tracy Tormé
Teleplay by: Tracy Tormé and Scott Smith Miller
Synopsis:
After Logan is shot, the Sliders find themselves on yet another capitalist world, one where the nascent Franco-British Union was taken over by fascist politicians like Oswald Mosley and Marcel Déat resulting in it switching sides to the Axis powers, resulting in an eventual Franco-British invasion of the UASR resulting in restoration of capitalism under MacArthur's corporatist military government. This is a problem since Ramona, Patricia and Arturo are seen as undesirables in this world and Logan is detained at the hospital due to lacking health insurance. Like with "Dominion" the story becomes a "the Sliders help the communist rebels" plot as they rescue Logan from the hospital where he's being kept to be experimented on means to pay off her debt, the Sliders escape at the last second but Patricia is very much disturbed by this alternate universe's Fascist America.
12. Here We Go Again:
Directed by: Richard Compton
Written by: Jacob Epstein and Steve Brown
Synopsis:
Arriving on the latest capitalist world, the Sliders are immediately caught in the middle of a stand-off between the police and a socialist resistance group. With less than a minute before the slide, Wade gets involved and is given a CD by one of the resistance members before being gunned down by the police. Sliding to the next world, they realize that it's the same world as the one they just left, except that the shootout is about to happen, giving Wade the opportunity to change the outcome only to discover along with the rest of the sliders that they're seemingly trapped in a time loop as they keep sliding back to the same universe just before the shootout happens. Eventually they realize that this is another trap by Quinn St. Claire to force the Sliders to send him back home with the knowledge he needs to perfect sliding. His plan is foiled and Wade sees that the disk contains the collected works of many socialist and anarchist writers in file format before giving it back to the resistance members in an iteration of the loop where they emerge victorious in the shootout.
13. Vanguard:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Written by: Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Synopsis:
The Sliders, after a long streak of capitalist worlds, finally slide into a world where the Red May Revolution still happened but something has gone wrong, America is a police state in this world. Looking into it the Sliders learn that the Revolt of the Cadres occurred differently and was ultimately stamped out by William Z. Foster's politburo at the behest of Joseph Stalin, resulting in America becoming a one-party dictatorship similar to the Soviet Union's first period of politics before Molotov and later Frunze's reforms. As the Sliders try to keep their heads down and not draw attention to themselves, lest they be branded as counterrevolutionaries, they accidentally become embroiled in a left communist underground movement to end the vanguard's rule and restore democracy in America. The experience of this world gives Patricia a decidedly negative view of communism, straining her relationship with Logan and Wade.
14. El Sid:
Directed by: Félix Alcalá
Written by: Jon Povill
Synopsis:
Following their escape from the Vanguard world, the Sliders arrive on a world where San Francisco is one giant prison as a result of California being much more tectonically unstable, with the city potentially sinking into the ocean any day now. Meeting up with and saving the life of petty criminal Sid Harper, the Sliders attempt to lay low but are forced into participating in the gang politics of the city after a gang steals the timer. In the end Sid takes a bullet retrieving the timer and departs with the rest of the Sliders to a world that appears to be racist against non-whites.
15. Emancipation:
Directed by: Richard Compton
Story by: Alex Jeffries* and Jon Povill
Teleplay by: Alex Jeffries
Synopsis:
The Sliders, are forced to take Sid to a back alley doctor after being rejected from the hospital as they learn that in this universe John Brown led a successful slave revolt in the south in establishing the Socialist Republic of New Afrika, encompassing the American Southern states but as a consequence the rest of America became hardline reactionary on social issues and remains capitalist to date with ethnic minorities living in under a Rhodesian-esque apartheid system. In the end Patricia chooses to stay on this world after the Sliders rendezvous with a New Afrikan underground operation designed to smuggle minorities into New Afrika, seeing it as the best world they've been to thus far. Meanwhile Logan believes that after the next slide, the calculation for Earth Prime's co-ordinates would be complete and they'll be able to go home.
16. The Young and the Relentless:
Directed by: David Dobkin
Story by: Michael X. Fernaro, Edward Anthony and Von Whisenhan
Teleplay by: Edward Anthony and Von Whisenhan
Synopsis:
After arriving on a capitalist world, Logan and Wade end up embroiled in corporate intrigue when Wade's businessman counterpart is killed and Wade is forced to pose as him by Logan's counterpart, a shrewd and capricious businesswoman desiring profit above all else, taking the rest of the Sliders hostage to force Wade's compliance. After a failed attempt to rescue the rest of the Sliders, Wade is given no choice but to go along with alt-Logan's plan, only to discover that Quinn St. Claire is alt-Logan's new business partner.
17. Hostile Takeover:
Directed by: Timothy Bond
Story by: Tracy Tormé
Teleplay by: Tracy Tormé, Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Synopsis:
After last episode's cliffhanger, Quinn confronts the Sliders and forces them to give him the co-ordinates to his home universe. Arturo and Sid manage to escape while Logan and Wade are forced to do as Quinn asks or Ramona will be killed. Eventually Logan manages to trick Quinn into thinking he has the co-ordinates to his home but Quinn insists on taking Logan with him to be sure. The rest of the Sliders choose not to return to Earth Prime despite now having the co-ordinates, in favor of Arturo and Wade reprogramming the timer to follow Quinn into whatever universe Logan tricked him into.
18. Narcotica:
Directed by: Richard Compton
Story by: Jerry O'Connell
Teleplay by: Jerry O'Connell and Jacob Epstein
Synopsis:
Following Quinn and Logan, the Sliders arrive on a capitalist world where all drug use is not only legal but encouraged as a state-sponsored coping mechanism from the harsh reality of working under capitalism. Wade and Sid quickly become addicted to heroin after being press ganged into taking some while Ramona is forced to remember her early-20s and how she wound up trapped in an abusive relationship with a heroin addict in the 60s. Eventually the Sliders locate Logan, just in time to see her and Quinn slide to another world, with them quickly giving chase using the reconfigured timer to follow Quinn whenever he goes.
19. The Chase:
Directed by: David Dobkin
Written by: Scott Smith Miller
Synopsis:
The Sliders pursue Quinn and Logan through a series of universes, some socialist (including a universe where Japan colonized the Americas) and some capitalist (including a universe where Mexico controls the entirety of what would be the UASR west coast). Eventually Logan manages to break free from Quinn and reunites with the Sliders but not before Quinn sets up another vortex magnet, once again trapping them on the world they're currently in, a capitalist one in the middle of a civil upheaval.
20. Quinn's Gambit:
Directed by: Vern Gillum
Story by: Tracy Tormé and Jacob Epstein
Teleplay by: Jacob Epstein and Alex Jeffries
Synopsis:
Once again Quinn proposes the same deal as in "Dark Reflections", give him the means to return home and he'll shut off the vortex magnet and allow them to return home but before the Sliders can respond one way or another, an uprising occurs in their vicinity, separating them from Quinn. The rest of the episode is the Sliders struggling to survive in the chaos of the street fighting until Quinn finally holds them at gunpoint and forces them to help him, stating that if Logan tricks him again he will kill them all. In the end Logan relents and allows Quinn to return to his universe with the means to perfect his sliding technology but the Sliders refuse to let him keep it and go after him to his home world.
21. Piercing Attack:
Directed by: Michael Keusch
Written by: Scott Smith Miller
Synopsis:
The Sliders launch their attack on Quinn's sliding compound just as he has a successful test in sending and returning objects and living people from another universe. Sid and Ramona are able to subdue the guards while Wade and Arturo attempt to destroy the data mainframe but are caught before they can do so. Logan confronts Quinn, who reveals that after the events of "Dark Reflections" the scientists working the project were able to restore enough data from Logan's sabotage attempt to reconstruct the co-ordinates for Earth Prime, which is now going to be this universe's first target for conquest, using sliding tech to destroy the UASR's military capabilities without fear of retaliation in preparation for a full scale assault. More guards arrive to apprehend Logan, leaving only Ramona and Sid free to do anything.
22. Endgame:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Written by: Tracy Tormé, Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Synopsis:
Quinn sends an advance guard to Earth Prime to establish a foothold as he prepares to send bombs to all UASR military bases in the region only for Sid and Ramona to sabotage the facility's power supply just before the first bomb can be sent. The two rescue the rest of the Sliders who then redirect one of the bombs back into the facility destroying it. Sid sacrificing himself to allow the rest of the Sliders to escape to Earth Prime. The four meet Bennish and agents from SecPubSafe on the other side who have slowly pieced together what happened to the Sliders and have been preparing for such an eventuality, apprehending the advance guard Quinn sent through. Quinn however is revealed to have made it to Earth Prime and makes one final move for revenge by kidnapping Wade and forcing him through a vortex. The rest of the Sliders give chase despite knowing that it may take them months to recalculate a slide back home and in a final confrontation Logan pushes Quinn off a ledge, seemingly to his death, ending his threat once and for all. The Sliders then continue their journey across the multiverse, Logan remarking that would take at least a dozen slides to pinpoint the co-ordinates for Earth Prime but it would be worth it since they're all together.
23. Aftermath:
Directed by: Jack Bender
Written by: Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Synopsis:
The episode begins with the Sliders performing a memorial service for Sid, Logan eulogizing him as a hero who despite his past, did the right thing in the end. Afterwards the Sliders slide into a socialist world very similar to Earth Prime but with an Azure Gate Bridge instead, the problem is that their next Sliding window is in two months. The episode is a slice-of-life comedy-drama as the Sliders process all that they've been trough over the last year, with Logan and Wade reaffirming their love for one another as they take their old jobs at an electronics store, Arturo and Ramona teaching at local school and bonding with the students. The episode ends with the four feeling confident that the worst is behind them before sliding to a seemingly abandoned San Francisco.
24. Invasion:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Written by: Tracy Tormé
Synopsis:
Exploring the abandoned world, the Sliders come across graffiti that reads "Kromaggs rule", the eponymous Kromaggs then make their appearances, in flying manta ray-shaped vessels capable of sliding. Evading the ship, the Sliders eventually arrive in a world where California is part of a still capitalist Canada and after getting into trouble trying to pay for lunch, the Kromaggs arrive on this world and capture them revealing them as an alternate evolution of mankind, a much more aggressive beast-like race that has discovered Sliding and now seeks to use it to conquer the multiverse, much to the Sliders exasperation at defeating Quinn only to come across a different existential threat. Eventually the Sliders escape from the Kromagg prison facility, determined to return home to warn them of the Kromagg threat. Unbeknownst to them the Kromaggs have implanted Logan with an interdimensional tracking device, meaning that the Sliders will unwittingly bring the Kromaggs to Earth Prime.
That's why I felt it deserved a better go around in the Reds!-verse. I'll do season 2 next.
Sorry to bother you, but here I noticed one phenomenon that should be taken into account.
Latin America has traditionally been heavily influenced by the Catholic Church. In recent decades, under the influence of events in Europe, the Roman cleric has been trying to reform certain provisions of the doctrine towards cultural liberalism. At the same time, the influence of radical evangelical sects in South America increased. That is, the most convinced and conservative believers either ignore the attempts of the Pope to play in progress (80 percent of parishioners have a negative attitude towards homosexual marriages), or move to a more radical confession.
What am I doing? As you know, after the revolution there was a sect of Catholics known as the "Trinitarian Church", which. Over time, it became the dominant Christian denomination. At the time of "our day", it is a very "progressive" denomination. Despite the fact that the most consistent Christians are usually extremely conservative, and the above example suggests that the Trinitarian Church, even if it is influential for some time, will eventually lose it. The most adamant in the faith join either the Evangelicals or the Roman Catholics.
Latin America has traditionally been heavily influenced by the Catholic Church. In recent decades, under the influence of events in Europe, the Roman cleric has been trying to reform certain provisions of the doctrine towards cultural liberalism. At the same time, the influence of radical evangelical sects in South America increased. That is, the most convinced and conservative believers either ignore the attempts of the Pope to play in progress (80 percent of parishioners have a negative attitude towards homosexual marriages), or move to a more radical confession.
What am I doing? As you know, after the revolution there was a sect of Catholics known as the "Trinitarian Church", which. Over time, it became the dominant Christian denomination. At the time of "our day", it is a very "progressive" denomination. Despite the fact that the most consistent Christians are usually extremely conservative, and the above example suggests that the Trinitarian Church, even if it is influential for some time, will eventually lose it. The most adamant in the faith join either the Evangelicals or the Roman Catholics.
I'm of the opinion that the Trinitarian Church (or various revolutionary aligned splinters in general) are a reasonable enough occurrence. I would however say, that the apparent doctrine of the Trinitarians in Reds doesn't particularly fit with that of a Catholic splinter. A "Red Pope" or a council of Bishops agreeing to somehow jointly hold apostolic authority (Sede's anyone?) is far more likely than union with another church.
Especially the Methodists and Episcopalians.
To sum things up, my primary gripe with the Trinitarians is that for being supposedly Catholic originated they don't follow much Catholic doctrine, they more resemble a protestant church attempting to go revolutionary.
I figure that most of Latin America, even parts of Africa and Asia would be divided between the traditional/Conservative religions (Roman Catholic, Sunni/Shia, Orthodox Judaism) , more liberal/progressive movements (Reform Judiasm, Episcopal, various Protestant sects) and then more 'fringe' movements (Evangelicals, Trinitarians, various Fundamentalists). I developed the Trinitarians as a form of Christian Socialism with a strong emphasis on social action since even after the Revolution, Civil War and Cultural Revolutions the basic tenets of Christianity would remain with many people. Post war I thought many Trinitarians would go into social service around the world to help the poorest and most marginal populations. They would face resistance from local elites and local government who are afraid to lose their power since the Trinitarians and later other movements provide services and help to people that were abused and neglected.
Now most of the richer members of the Alliance would provide a social safety network to prevent unrest and maintain a healthy and active workforce. However in more rural areas or poorer sections of major cities the various religious groups would clash over influence and members.
Well, I think a similar situation will be in the North American Union.
Sliders, Season 2 (By the Jovian)
Logan Mallory: You showed me the Professor dying, Wade mutilated and Ramona traumatized beyond recovery. You took away everything I ever loved and you put me through a living hell. I swear I will make you pay for that.
The Kromagg Infiltrator: You are welcome to try Logan Mallory.
- Sliders, Season 2, Episode 13, "Slide Effects (Part 2)"
Sliders Retrospective (Season 2) - (1996-1997)
Main Cast:
- Zoe McLellan as Logan Mallory - The reluctant leader of the Sliders, she is struggling to get Wade, Ramona and Arturo back to Earth Prime.
- Wil Wheaton as Wade Welles - Logan's loving boyfriend, he is still determined to right any wrong he encounters in their journey back to Earth Prime.
- Dianna Ross as Ramona Brown - A woman struggling to figure out her place in the multiverse, is settling into being a mother figure to Logan and Wade.
- Eduardo Huizar Olmos as Professor Maximilian Arturo - The father figure to the team, he finds himself facing the biggest challenge of his life.
Recurring Cast:
- Jason Gaffney as Conrad Bennish Jr. - A university student recruited into a government Sliding program to try and find the Sliders, the focus of a few episodes this season.
- Yee Jee Tso as Michael Wing - Bennish's friend and partner in the Sliding project.
- Kelly Hu as Naomi Fang - Agent of Secretariat for Public Safety in charge of the Slider Project.
- Ron Pearlman as the Kromagg General - The big bad of Season 2, the leader of the Kromaggs' multiversal war effort, he has taken a keen interest in the Sliders as a threat to their homeworld.
- Doug Jones as the Kromagg Infiltrator - A Kromagg surgically altered to look human, tasked with keeping an eye on the Sliders wherever they go.
- Sabrina Lloyd as the Speaker - The human woman that serves as the voice of the Kromaggs to other humans. Secretly she longs for freedom but is too afraid to act.
Episodes:
1. The Guardian:
Directed by: Annika Schultz*
Story by: Tracy Tormé
Teleplay by: Tracy Tormé, Dawn Prestwich and Nicole Yorkin
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive on a world identical to Earth Prime but one where events that happened 12 years prior are occurring in 1996 (such as Fred Hampton still being premier), one such event being the death of Logan's father, Michael. Logan, much to the other Sliders' chagrin, attempts to change an event in her counterpart's life, an incident in which she accidentally crippled a schoolyard bully for life by inserting herself into her alternate self's life by passing herself off as a friend of her father's. In the end Logan's efforts prove successful and past-Logan merely scares away the bullies. The Sliders then depart this world, unaware that they're being watched by a Kromagg Infiltrator disguised as a human.
2. The Slider Project:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Written by: Tracy Tormé and Marti Noxon
Synopsis:
Taking place almost entirely on Earth Prime, the episode focuses on Conrad Bennish Jr. and Michael Wing as they struggle to recreate Logan's sliding experiments as part of a government sanctioned Sliding project led by the mysterious and super serious Agent Naomi Fang. In the end Bennish and Wing successfully slide into a parallel world in the middle of nuclear winter (thankfully while wearing hazmat suits at Fang's insistence) and back again. "Next step, tracking and navigation" Bennish remarks with a smile.
3. Class Subconsciousness:
Directed by: Annika Schultz
Story by: Scott Smith Miller and Melinda M. Snodgrass
Teleplay by: Melinda M. Snodgrass
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive on a world where neuroscience is much more advanced compared to Earth Prime and unfortunately is being used by a capitalist government as means of suppressing dissent by means of dream manipulation to scare the population into passivity. Despite the team's best efforts, they're unable to do anything to change this world for the better, leading to them nearly being captured before they slide to safety.
4. Intervention:
Directed by: Adam Nimoy
Story by: Jerry O'Connell and Jacob Epstein
Teleplay by: Jacob Epstein
Synopsis:
From the events of "Narcotica" onwards, Wade has been struggling with staying sober after becoming addicted to heroin. In this episode it comes to a head after he's caught by Logan using, prompting the Sliders to give Wade an intervention. The episode is a character drama focused around Wade's addiction and Logan's attempts to help him get clean. In the end Wade admits that he still wants to shoot up but makes Logan promise him to do everything she can to keep him from doing so.
5. As Time Goes By:
Directed by: Jack Bender
Written by: Steve Brown
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive in a world where time is seemingly running backwards relative to the rest of the multiverse, which they perceive as moving forward only to suddenly jump backwards by a few hours. Piecing together the backwards timeline of this universe and what resulted in the Sliders being sentenced to imprisonment, realizing that an innocent woman is about to die in their relative future, Logan attempts to save her only for the resulting paradox to seemingly destroy the universe as they slide out.
6. Dead Man Sliding:
Directed by: Richard Compton
Written by: Nan Hagan
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive on a capitalist world where Wade's counterpart is a sadistic serial killer that's wanted nationwide, forcing the Sliders to run from the authorities until the slide window comes. Things a complicated by Wade's continuous struggle to stay sober, especially after accidentally hiding out in a heroin den but the Sliders manage to escape from the world at the last second but Wade is clearly traumatized by the experience.
7. The Search:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Story by: Tracy Tormé and Marti Noxon
Teleplay by: Marti Noxon
Synopsis:
Back on Earth Prime, Bennish and Wing continue the Slider Project by trying to see if they can replicate Quinn's ability to track wormholes in order to locate and contact the Sliders. After tracking what they think are the Sliders they arrive on a capitalist world where they encounter the Logan double from "Think of a Roulette Wheel", explaining the situation, Alt-Logan agrees to temporarily go with Bennish and Wing to Earth Prime to aid their research revealing that since her initial encounter with Prime-Logan, Alt-Logan has managed to somewhat navigate her slides and also vary the timer countdown but also reveals that she too has encountered the Kromaggs and that they're likely prioritizing worlds where Sliding has been invented for conquest. Before she can help however, a shadowy figure assassinates her much to Bennish and Wing's shock.
8. Post-Traumatic Slide Syndrome:
Directed by: Alex Jeffries*
Story by: Nan Hagan
Teleplay by: Nan Hagan and Alex Jeffries
Synopsis:
In a framing device of Ramona in a therapy session, she recounts the events of the episode. After a dozen or so slides, Logan is convinced that the timer has recalculated the co-ordinates for Earth Prime, the team slides to what they believe to be Earth Prime, complete with Bennish's Slider Project, however there are obvious inconsistencies, such as Alt-Logan not being mentioned and Bennish getting historical details wrong (such as saying Jay Lovestone being Premier of the UASR after John Reed), leading Logan to believe that they're not home but both Arturo and Fang are adamant they remain. In the end it's revealed that in this world Arturo didn't slide with Logan, Wade and Ramona and is now determined to complete the Slider Project and take all the credit by using the Sliders' work. After a protracted struggle the Sliders manage to slide away but not before the Kromaggs are given the false impression that this is Earth Prime, prompting them to invade and in a twist ending its revealed that the Arturo from this world slid with the rest of the Sliders when the Arturo that remains recognizes the Kromagg manta ray ships.
9. In the Heat of the Moment:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Story by: Tracy Tormé
Teleplay by: Tracy Tormé and Jon Povill
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive on a world that's experiencing some sort of environmental calamity as the planet is uncomfortably hot. Investigating the Sliders learn that something has shifted Earth's orbit to a much lower one around the sun, a consequence of Alternate-Logan and Bennish accidentally inventing a gravity manipulation device (while trying to invent sliding in a reversal of Prime-Logan accidentally inventing sliding while going for anti-gravity) that accidentally caused a spontaneous increase in Earth's mass, enough to cause the orbital shift. Unless the Sliders aid Alt-Bennish in figuring out how it happened so that they can reverse it, this Earth will soon become uninhabitable due to its unstable and decaying orbit. Alt-Turo figures out how to make it work but he's gunned down by a looter before he can tell anyone, forcing the Sliders to abandon this world to their death as the Sliding window arrives, all the while the Kromagg Infiltrator continues to watch and observe.
10. Everything Must Go:
Directed by: David Dobkin
Written by: Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Synopsis:
As the Sliders grieve Alt-Turo's death they arrive on a capitalist world obsessed with consumerism where Wade and Ramona's poor decision making leads to the two of them accidentally selling themselves into indentured servitude, prompting Logan to figure out how to save them. While Ramona becomes a housemaid to a racist business owner, Wade quickly ends up being sold for medical experiments. After rescuing Ramona from her predicament, Logan tries to save Wade, only to arrive too late, after a grisly surgery that has left him barely alive. Lacking any means to save him, Logan tearfully euthanizes him before breaking down and refusing to admit that this was real, causing reality to glitch and for her and Ramona to find themselves into safety with only a minute left before the slide, much to their shock and confusion.
11. Breaking Point:
Directed by: Alex Jeffries
Story by: Alex Jeffries
Teleplay by: Alex Jeffries and Steve Brown
Synopsis:
After escaping the consumerist world, Logan and Ramona find themselves in a sequence of successively more and more dystopian worlds, many of which feature institutionalized racism which drives Ramona to the breaking point. After finally finding themselves on a socialist world Ramona becomes too scared to slide again, in case she and Logan slide into another capitalist world. In the end Logan is forced to slide alone only to find herself in an empty black void, where she loses consciousness.
12. Slide Effects (Part 1):
Directed by: Richard Compton
Written by: Tracy Tormé
Synopsis:
Logan wakes up to find herself back on Earth Prime on the day she first slid much to her confusion, she contacts the rest of the Sliders only to learn that they have no memories of them sliding. Over the course of the episode she manages to gather together the Sliders and explain the situation to them, eventually she gets them to remember their journeys and that's when they discover that all the events they've experienced since "Post-Traumatic Slide Syndrome" didn't happen, instead they were drugged by the Kromagg Infiltrator and forced into this shared illusion where Logan experienced the worst possible outcome of the last three episodes, when in reality those events are mere possible futures that the Infiltrator cherrypicked to try and break Logan's spirit, and now he plans to do the same to the rest of the Sliders.
13. Slide Effects (Part 2):
Directed by: Richard Compton
Written by: Tracy Tormé
Synopsis:
The Sliders, trapped in the Infiltrator's telepathic illusions, struggle to escape from them as he subjects them to even more bizarre, horrific scenarios such as mind-controlling parasites, sentient fire, a fight with a dragon and vampires. Eventually however Logan realizes that the reason the Infiltrator can do this is because he's tapping into the tracking device (which malfunctioned after getting exposed to the time rip from "As Time Goes By") in order to see future possibilities and expose the Sliders to an illusion of them and rips it out of her head, severely injuring her but knocking out the Infiltrator, dispelling the illusions and freeing the Sliders just in time for them to slide away.
14. Whodunit?:
Directed by: Richard Compton
Story by: Tracy Tormé and Marti Noxon
Teleplay by: Marti Noxon and Jon Povill
Synopsis:
The episode sees us return to Earth Prime in the aftermath of Alt-Logan's assassination and focuses on Agent Fang's investigation of the murder, interrogating several members of the Slider Project and examining the evidence. Meanwhile Bennish and Wing begin to track an irregular sliding pattern, investigating it, they discover that it's a damaged Kormagg manta ship that keeps sliding from one universe to another, not wanting to risk getting spotted by it, they return to Earth Prime, just in time fro Fang to reveal a member of the Slider Project as the culprit, who then exposes himself as another Kromagg Infiltrator. The manta ship slides into Earth Prime and attacks the Slider Project compound before retrieving the infiltrator, only for Fang to shoot it down with a rocket launcher after Bennish and Wing figure out how to block its ability slide.
15. Relief and Recovery:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Written by: Dawn Prestwich and Nicole Yorkin
Synopsis:
Escaping from the Kromagg Infiltrator's base of operations, the Sliders luck out by sliding to a world where the FBU has just collapsed and the UASR is celebrating the end of the Cold War, giving them two weeks reprieve as they take refuge in a small commune to allow Logan to recover from her injury. During their stay Alt-Turo from struggles to maintain the impression that he's the Prime Arturo but manages to remain above suspicion. In the end Logan recovers and realizes that she made an error in the timer's programming which explains their arrival in the close-enough universe from "Post-Traumatic Slide Syndrome". Recalibrating the timer, Logan surmises that it would take them a few more slides before they can slide back home.
16. Honored Guest:
Directed by: Adam Nimoy
Written by: Nan Hagan and Jacob Epstein
Synopsis:
The episode focuses on Prime-Arturo after being captured by the Kromaggs after the events of "Post-Traumatic Slide Syndrome", he is once again interrogated by the Kromaggs via their human Speaker but defiantly refuses to talk despite being psychologically tortured similar to the way the Sliders were in "Slide Effects" so he's sent to a Kromagg prison camp where he's forced into hard labor to fuel the Kromaggs' interdimensional war effort. In the end Arturo begins to gather parts for a sliding device but it would take him a while to assemble it.
17. The Magnificent Sliders:
Directed by: Jack Bender
Written by: Scott Smith Miller
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive on a world where the Western United States experienced an anarchist revolution in the aftermath of the Haymarket Massacre, where a small Californian anarchist commune is under threat from Eastern bandits and the Sliders need to help the commune repel the immediate attack, Western action shenanigans ensue and the Sliders are ultimately victorious. In the process however Alt-Turo blows his cover by revealing his firearms proficiency (which Prime Arturo lacked) and the Sliders allow him to continue sliding with them until they can return to Earth Prime and figure out how to get back to Alt-Turo's world.
18. Breakout:
Directed by: David Dobkin
Written by: Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Synopsis:
On the Kromagg Prison Camp world, Prime Arturo continues to work on his escape plan, to which he has brought in the Slider Project members from the "Post-Traumatic Slide Syndrome" world. Things take a turn for the worse when Alt-Bennish is taken to be tortured for information and the Kromaggs gouge his eyes out when he refuses to talk, leading to him sacrificing himself to allow Arturo, alt-Wing and alt-Fang to make a run for it. Alt-Wing is killed in the escape but Arturo and Alt-Fang commandeer a manta ship (after Arturo's makeshift timer refuses to work) and slide out, with Arturo noting the ship's navigation system and determining that Earth Prime must be close to Alt-Fang's world, as the two set off to try and find it.
19. Class Conflict:
Directed by: Annika Schultz
Written by: Melinda M. Snodgrass
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive back on the world from "Class Subconsciousness" to discover that their actions did indeed have a positive effect, as they've slid in the middle of a nationwide general strike. Under Wade's prompting the Sliders help the striking workers of San Francisco and force the government to acquiesce to the strikers' demands before Logan confirms that the timer has locked back onto Earth Prime, the Sliders eagerly engage the votex to finally return home.
20. Homecoming:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Written by: Jon Povill
Synopsis:
After sliding into (and confirming that it is indeed) Earth Prime, the Sliders can finally take a breather with Logan shutting down the timer for the first time since they started travelling. Logan, Wade and Ramona reunite with their friends and loved ones after almost two years of Sliding and afterwards Logan is recruited into the Slider Project to try and locate Alt-Turo's home universe in order to send him home and retrieve Prime Arturo from it. Soon afterwards Logan encounters the Infiltrator (who's here investigating the disappearance of the manta ship Fang shot down in "Whodunit?") and is pleased to have finally discovered the co-ordinates of Earth Prime. Before Logan can do anything to stop him, the Infiltrator slides away to the Kromagg base to inform the Kromagg general of this development, who orders preparations to begin for an assault on Earth Prime.
21. Odyssey:
Directed by: Adam Nimoy
Written by: Alex Jeffries
Synopsis:
We jump back with Prime Arturo and alt-Fang as they try to figure out how to navigate the multiverse to make it to Earth Prime as they travel from universe to universe. After visiting several parallel worlds, the manta ship's autopilot engages and the ship slides to Earth Prime, only to be shot down by the Slider Project SecPubSafe members, severely injuring the two of them, Alt-Fang critically so. Before she dies however she warns the Sliders of the horrors the Kromaggs will force on this world when they invade it.
22. Beachhead:
Directed by: Jack Bender
Story by: Tracy Tormé and Marti Noxon
Teleplay by: Marti Noxon
Synopsis:
The Kromaggs invade Earth Prime with manta ships sliding above the skies of many major Earth cities. Despite some degree of preparation, the WFRA is ultimately unable to fully push back the Kromaggs, who take control of several cities in the continental United Republics. The Sliders are invited to a summit of TCI and AFS diplomats to try and persuade both sides to join military forces to defend their Earth from the Kromaggs and fully back the Slider Project. To that end the FBU demands the Sliders share the Sliding tech with them equitably much to the Sliders' apprehension at the possibility of the FBU using it the way Quinn St. Claire intended. In the end the summit is a success and the two power blocs united the resources to combat the ongoing Kromagg invasion, with the Slider Project being at the forefront of the counter-invasion plans.
23. Counterattack:
Directed by: Annika Schultz
Story by: Tracy Tormé and Scott Smith Miller
Teleplay by: Scott Smith Miller
Synopsis:
The Slider Project is tasked with aiding the Earth Prime counter attack against the Kromaggs by working out how to slide someone to a parallel Earth and back again, just in a different location, basically a dimensional teleporter. After small scale tests work, the Project sends in a strike force into occupied Los Angeles only to be wiped out. Ramona meanwhile opts to leave the Project and try to resume her life only for a Kromagg attack to claim her former bandmates form her time as a singer, causing her to return. At the same time Prime Arturo and Alt-Turo have a heated argument about the latter's selfishness stranding the former on a world invaded by the Kromaggs, and how he wound up spending months in a Kromagg labor camp. In the end the two agree to work together to stop the Kromagg invasion of Earth Prime and eventually to aid Alt-Turo's Earth in their resistance against the Kromaggs. Soon afterwards the second wave of Kromagg ships attacks DC and destroys the White House and Capitol Building, and the UASR's central government before they can be evacuated as all out war breaks out.
24. Downfall:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Written by: Tracy Tormé and Marti Noxon
Synopsis:
With the Kromaggs launching a full scale invasion, the Slider Project is sent into an underground research facility for their safety, only for the Kromagg Infiltrator to make his way inside. The episode is a tense inversion of the Die Hard formula as the Project members struggle to find the Infiltrator. In the end, Ramona manages to injure him and Logan uses a mis-calibrated sliding tunnel to scatter him across the multiverse with Alt-Turo sacrificing himself to push him in, killing him at long last. News outside are grim however, the Kromaggs have seized control over most major cities and are systematically herding the population into isolated zones to be transported to offworld prison camps. Lacking other options, Logan volunteers to search the multiverse for allies against the Kromaggs, and the rest of the Sliders agree to join her, accompanied by a British soldier, Marc McFadden, sliding away to an unknown world as the season draws to a close.
The Kromagg Infiltrator: You are welcome to try Logan Mallory.
- Sliders, Season 2, Episode 13, "Slide Effects (Part 2)"
Sliders Retrospective (Season 2) - (1996-1997)
Main Cast:
- Zoe McLellan as Logan Mallory - The reluctant leader of the Sliders, she is struggling to get Wade, Ramona and Arturo back to Earth Prime.
- Wil Wheaton as Wade Welles - Logan's loving boyfriend, he is still determined to right any wrong he encounters in their journey back to Earth Prime.
- Dianna Ross as Ramona Brown - A woman struggling to figure out her place in the multiverse, is settling into being a mother figure to Logan and Wade.
- Eduardo Huizar Olmos as Professor Maximilian Arturo - The father figure to the team, he finds himself facing the biggest challenge of his life.
Recurring Cast:
- Jason Gaffney as Conrad Bennish Jr. - A university student recruited into a government Sliding program to try and find the Sliders, the focus of a few episodes this season.
- Yee Jee Tso as Michael Wing - Bennish's friend and partner in the Sliding project.
- Kelly Hu as Naomi Fang - Agent of Secretariat for Public Safety in charge of the Slider Project.
- Ron Pearlman as the Kromagg General - The big bad of Season 2, the leader of the Kromaggs' multiversal war effort, he has taken a keen interest in the Sliders as a threat to their homeworld.
- Doug Jones as the Kromagg Infiltrator - A Kromagg surgically altered to look human, tasked with keeping an eye on the Sliders wherever they go.
- Sabrina Lloyd as the Speaker - The human woman that serves as the voice of the Kromaggs to other humans. Secretly she longs for freedom but is too afraid to act.
Episodes:
1. The Guardian:
Directed by: Annika Schultz*
Story by: Tracy Tormé
Teleplay by: Tracy Tormé, Dawn Prestwich and Nicole Yorkin
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive on a world identical to Earth Prime but one where events that happened 12 years prior are occurring in 1996 (such as Fred Hampton still being premier), one such event being the death of Logan's father, Michael. Logan, much to the other Sliders' chagrin, attempts to change an event in her counterpart's life, an incident in which she accidentally crippled a schoolyard bully for life by inserting herself into her alternate self's life by passing herself off as a friend of her father's. In the end Logan's efforts prove successful and past-Logan merely scares away the bullies. The Sliders then depart this world, unaware that they're being watched by a Kromagg Infiltrator disguised as a human.
2. The Slider Project:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Written by: Tracy Tormé and Marti Noxon
Synopsis:
Taking place almost entirely on Earth Prime, the episode focuses on Conrad Bennish Jr. and Michael Wing as they struggle to recreate Logan's sliding experiments as part of a government sanctioned Sliding project led by the mysterious and super serious Agent Naomi Fang. In the end Bennish and Wing successfully slide into a parallel world in the middle of nuclear winter (thankfully while wearing hazmat suits at Fang's insistence) and back again. "Next step, tracking and navigation" Bennish remarks with a smile.
3. Class Subconsciousness:
Directed by: Annika Schultz
Story by: Scott Smith Miller and Melinda M. Snodgrass
Teleplay by: Melinda M. Snodgrass
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive on a world where neuroscience is much more advanced compared to Earth Prime and unfortunately is being used by a capitalist government as means of suppressing dissent by means of dream manipulation to scare the population into passivity. Despite the team's best efforts, they're unable to do anything to change this world for the better, leading to them nearly being captured before they slide to safety.
4. Intervention:
Directed by: Adam Nimoy
Story by: Jerry O'Connell and Jacob Epstein
Teleplay by: Jacob Epstein
Synopsis:
From the events of "Narcotica" onwards, Wade has been struggling with staying sober after becoming addicted to heroin. In this episode it comes to a head after he's caught by Logan using, prompting the Sliders to give Wade an intervention. The episode is a character drama focused around Wade's addiction and Logan's attempts to help him get clean. In the end Wade admits that he still wants to shoot up but makes Logan promise him to do everything she can to keep him from doing so.
5. As Time Goes By:
Directed by: Jack Bender
Written by: Steve Brown
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive in a world where time is seemingly running backwards relative to the rest of the multiverse, which they perceive as moving forward only to suddenly jump backwards by a few hours. Piecing together the backwards timeline of this universe and what resulted in the Sliders being sentenced to imprisonment, realizing that an innocent woman is about to die in their relative future, Logan attempts to save her only for the resulting paradox to seemingly destroy the universe as they slide out.
6. Dead Man Sliding:
Directed by: Richard Compton
Written by: Nan Hagan
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive on a capitalist world where Wade's counterpart is a sadistic serial killer that's wanted nationwide, forcing the Sliders to run from the authorities until the slide window comes. Things a complicated by Wade's continuous struggle to stay sober, especially after accidentally hiding out in a heroin den but the Sliders manage to escape from the world at the last second but Wade is clearly traumatized by the experience.
7. The Search:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Story by: Tracy Tormé and Marti Noxon
Teleplay by: Marti Noxon
Synopsis:
Back on Earth Prime, Bennish and Wing continue the Slider Project by trying to see if they can replicate Quinn's ability to track wormholes in order to locate and contact the Sliders. After tracking what they think are the Sliders they arrive on a capitalist world where they encounter the Logan double from "Think of a Roulette Wheel", explaining the situation, Alt-Logan agrees to temporarily go with Bennish and Wing to Earth Prime to aid their research revealing that since her initial encounter with Prime-Logan, Alt-Logan has managed to somewhat navigate her slides and also vary the timer countdown but also reveals that she too has encountered the Kromaggs and that they're likely prioritizing worlds where Sliding has been invented for conquest. Before she can help however, a shadowy figure assassinates her much to Bennish and Wing's shock.
8. Post-Traumatic Slide Syndrome:
Directed by: Alex Jeffries*
Story by: Nan Hagan
Teleplay by: Nan Hagan and Alex Jeffries
Synopsis:
In a framing device of Ramona in a therapy session, she recounts the events of the episode. After a dozen or so slides, Logan is convinced that the timer has recalculated the co-ordinates for Earth Prime, the team slides to what they believe to be Earth Prime, complete with Bennish's Slider Project, however there are obvious inconsistencies, such as Alt-Logan not being mentioned and Bennish getting historical details wrong (such as saying Jay Lovestone being Premier of the UASR after John Reed), leading Logan to believe that they're not home but both Arturo and Fang are adamant they remain. In the end it's revealed that in this world Arturo didn't slide with Logan, Wade and Ramona and is now determined to complete the Slider Project and take all the credit by using the Sliders' work. After a protracted struggle the Sliders manage to slide away but not before the Kromaggs are given the false impression that this is Earth Prime, prompting them to invade and in a twist ending its revealed that the Arturo from this world slid with the rest of the Sliders when the Arturo that remains recognizes the Kromagg manta ray ships.
9. In the Heat of the Moment:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Story by: Tracy Tormé
Teleplay by: Tracy Tormé and Jon Povill
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive on a world that's experiencing some sort of environmental calamity as the planet is uncomfortably hot. Investigating the Sliders learn that something has shifted Earth's orbit to a much lower one around the sun, a consequence of Alternate-Logan and Bennish accidentally inventing a gravity manipulation device (while trying to invent sliding in a reversal of Prime-Logan accidentally inventing sliding while going for anti-gravity) that accidentally caused a spontaneous increase in Earth's mass, enough to cause the orbital shift. Unless the Sliders aid Alt-Bennish in figuring out how it happened so that they can reverse it, this Earth will soon become uninhabitable due to its unstable and decaying orbit. Alt-Turo figures out how to make it work but he's gunned down by a looter before he can tell anyone, forcing the Sliders to abandon this world to their death as the Sliding window arrives, all the while the Kromagg Infiltrator continues to watch and observe.
10. Everything Must Go:
Directed by: David Dobkin
Written by: Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Synopsis:
As the Sliders grieve Alt-Turo's death they arrive on a capitalist world obsessed with consumerism where Wade and Ramona's poor decision making leads to the two of them accidentally selling themselves into indentured servitude, prompting Logan to figure out how to save them. While Ramona becomes a housemaid to a racist business owner, Wade quickly ends up being sold for medical experiments. After rescuing Ramona from her predicament, Logan tries to save Wade, only to arrive too late, after a grisly surgery that has left him barely alive. Lacking any means to save him, Logan tearfully euthanizes him before breaking down and refusing to admit that this was real, causing reality to glitch and for her and Ramona to find themselves into safety with only a minute left before the slide, much to their shock and confusion.
11. Breaking Point:
Directed by: Alex Jeffries
Story by: Alex Jeffries
Teleplay by: Alex Jeffries and Steve Brown
Synopsis:
After escaping the consumerist world, Logan and Ramona find themselves in a sequence of successively more and more dystopian worlds, many of which feature institutionalized racism which drives Ramona to the breaking point. After finally finding themselves on a socialist world Ramona becomes too scared to slide again, in case she and Logan slide into another capitalist world. In the end Logan is forced to slide alone only to find herself in an empty black void, where she loses consciousness.
12. Slide Effects (Part 1):
Directed by: Richard Compton
Written by: Tracy Tormé
Synopsis:
Logan wakes up to find herself back on Earth Prime on the day she first slid much to her confusion, she contacts the rest of the Sliders only to learn that they have no memories of them sliding. Over the course of the episode she manages to gather together the Sliders and explain the situation to them, eventually she gets them to remember their journeys and that's when they discover that all the events they've experienced since "Post-Traumatic Slide Syndrome" didn't happen, instead they were drugged by the Kromagg Infiltrator and forced into this shared illusion where Logan experienced the worst possible outcome of the last three episodes, when in reality those events are mere possible futures that the Infiltrator cherrypicked to try and break Logan's spirit, and now he plans to do the same to the rest of the Sliders.
13. Slide Effects (Part 2):
Directed by: Richard Compton
Written by: Tracy Tormé
Synopsis:
The Sliders, trapped in the Infiltrator's telepathic illusions, struggle to escape from them as he subjects them to even more bizarre, horrific scenarios such as mind-controlling parasites, sentient fire, a fight with a dragon and vampires. Eventually however Logan realizes that the reason the Infiltrator can do this is because he's tapping into the tracking device (which malfunctioned after getting exposed to the time rip from "As Time Goes By") in order to see future possibilities and expose the Sliders to an illusion of them and rips it out of her head, severely injuring her but knocking out the Infiltrator, dispelling the illusions and freeing the Sliders just in time for them to slide away.
14. Whodunit?:
Directed by: Richard Compton
Story by: Tracy Tormé and Marti Noxon
Teleplay by: Marti Noxon and Jon Povill
Synopsis:
The episode sees us return to Earth Prime in the aftermath of Alt-Logan's assassination and focuses on Agent Fang's investigation of the murder, interrogating several members of the Slider Project and examining the evidence. Meanwhile Bennish and Wing begin to track an irregular sliding pattern, investigating it, they discover that it's a damaged Kormagg manta ship that keeps sliding from one universe to another, not wanting to risk getting spotted by it, they return to Earth Prime, just in time fro Fang to reveal a member of the Slider Project as the culprit, who then exposes himself as another Kromagg Infiltrator. The manta ship slides into Earth Prime and attacks the Slider Project compound before retrieving the infiltrator, only for Fang to shoot it down with a rocket launcher after Bennish and Wing figure out how to block its ability slide.
15. Relief and Recovery:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Written by: Dawn Prestwich and Nicole Yorkin
Synopsis:
Escaping from the Kromagg Infiltrator's base of operations, the Sliders luck out by sliding to a world where the FBU has just collapsed and the UASR is celebrating the end of the Cold War, giving them two weeks reprieve as they take refuge in a small commune to allow Logan to recover from her injury. During their stay Alt-Turo from struggles to maintain the impression that he's the Prime Arturo but manages to remain above suspicion. In the end Logan recovers and realizes that she made an error in the timer's programming which explains their arrival in the close-enough universe from "Post-Traumatic Slide Syndrome". Recalibrating the timer, Logan surmises that it would take them a few more slides before they can slide back home.
16. Honored Guest:
Directed by: Adam Nimoy
Written by: Nan Hagan and Jacob Epstein
Synopsis:
The episode focuses on Prime-Arturo after being captured by the Kromaggs after the events of "Post-Traumatic Slide Syndrome", he is once again interrogated by the Kromaggs via their human Speaker but defiantly refuses to talk despite being psychologically tortured similar to the way the Sliders were in "Slide Effects" so he's sent to a Kromagg prison camp where he's forced into hard labor to fuel the Kromaggs' interdimensional war effort. In the end Arturo begins to gather parts for a sliding device but it would take him a while to assemble it.
17. The Magnificent Sliders:
Directed by: Jack Bender
Written by: Scott Smith Miller
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive on a world where the Western United States experienced an anarchist revolution in the aftermath of the Haymarket Massacre, where a small Californian anarchist commune is under threat from Eastern bandits and the Sliders need to help the commune repel the immediate attack, Western action shenanigans ensue and the Sliders are ultimately victorious. In the process however Alt-Turo blows his cover by revealing his firearms proficiency (which Prime Arturo lacked) and the Sliders allow him to continue sliding with them until they can return to Earth Prime and figure out how to get back to Alt-Turo's world.
18. Breakout:
Directed by: David Dobkin
Written by: Tony Blake and Paul Jackson
Synopsis:
On the Kromagg Prison Camp world, Prime Arturo continues to work on his escape plan, to which he has brought in the Slider Project members from the "Post-Traumatic Slide Syndrome" world. Things take a turn for the worse when Alt-Bennish is taken to be tortured for information and the Kromaggs gouge his eyes out when he refuses to talk, leading to him sacrificing himself to allow Arturo, alt-Wing and alt-Fang to make a run for it. Alt-Wing is killed in the escape but Arturo and Alt-Fang commandeer a manta ship (after Arturo's makeshift timer refuses to work) and slide out, with Arturo noting the ship's navigation system and determining that Earth Prime must be close to Alt-Fang's world, as the two set off to try and find it.
19. Class Conflict:
Directed by: Annika Schultz
Written by: Melinda M. Snodgrass
Synopsis:
The Sliders arrive back on the world from "Class Subconsciousness" to discover that their actions did indeed have a positive effect, as they've slid in the middle of a nationwide general strike. Under Wade's prompting the Sliders help the striking workers of San Francisco and force the government to acquiesce to the strikers' demands before Logan confirms that the timer has locked back onto Earth Prime, the Sliders eagerly engage the votex to finally return home.
20. Homecoming:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Written by: Jon Povill
Synopsis:
After sliding into (and confirming that it is indeed) Earth Prime, the Sliders can finally take a breather with Logan shutting down the timer for the first time since they started travelling. Logan, Wade and Ramona reunite with their friends and loved ones after almost two years of Sliding and afterwards Logan is recruited into the Slider Project to try and locate Alt-Turo's home universe in order to send him home and retrieve Prime Arturo from it. Soon afterwards Logan encounters the Infiltrator (who's here investigating the disappearance of the manta ship Fang shot down in "Whodunit?") and is pleased to have finally discovered the co-ordinates of Earth Prime. Before Logan can do anything to stop him, the Infiltrator slides away to the Kromagg base to inform the Kromagg general of this development, who orders preparations to begin for an assault on Earth Prime.
21. Odyssey:
Directed by: Adam Nimoy
Written by: Alex Jeffries
Synopsis:
We jump back with Prime Arturo and alt-Fang as they try to figure out how to navigate the multiverse to make it to Earth Prime as they travel from universe to universe. After visiting several parallel worlds, the manta ship's autopilot engages and the ship slides to Earth Prime, only to be shot down by the Slider Project SecPubSafe members, severely injuring the two of them, Alt-Fang critically so. Before she dies however she warns the Sliders of the horrors the Kromaggs will force on this world when they invade it.
22. Beachhead:
Directed by: Jack Bender
Story by: Tracy Tormé and Marti Noxon
Teleplay by: Marti Noxon
Synopsis:
The Kromaggs invade Earth Prime with manta ships sliding above the skies of many major Earth cities. Despite some degree of preparation, the WFRA is ultimately unable to fully push back the Kromaggs, who take control of several cities in the continental United Republics. The Sliders are invited to a summit of TCI and AFS diplomats to try and persuade both sides to join military forces to defend their Earth from the Kromaggs and fully back the Slider Project. To that end the FBU demands the Sliders share the Sliding tech with them equitably much to the Sliders' apprehension at the possibility of the FBU using it the way Quinn St. Claire intended. In the end the summit is a success and the two power blocs united the resources to combat the ongoing Kromagg invasion, with the Slider Project being at the forefront of the counter-invasion plans.
23. Counterattack:
Directed by: Annika Schultz
Story by: Tracy Tormé and Scott Smith Miller
Teleplay by: Scott Smith Miller
Synopsis:
The Slider Project is tasked with aiding the Earth Prime counter attack against the Kromaggs by working out how to slide someone to a parallel Earth and back again, just in a different location, basically a dimensional teleporter. After small scale tests work, the Project sends in a strike force into occupied Los Angeles only to be wiped out. Ramona meanwhile opts to leave the Project and try to resume her life only for a Kromagg attack to claim her former bandmates form her time as a singer, causing her to return. At the same time Prime Arturo and Alt-Turo have a heated argument about the latter's selfishness stranding the former on a world invaded by the Kromaggs, and how he wound up spending months in a Kromagg labor camp. In the end the two agree to work together to stop the Kromagg invasion of Earth Prime and eventually to aid Alt-Turo's Earth in their resistance against the Kromaggs. Soon afterwards the second wave of Kromagg ships attacks DC and destroys the White House and Capitol Building, and the UASR's central government before they can be evacuated as all out war breaks out.
24. Downfall:
Directed by: Mario Azzopardi
Written by: Tracy Tormé and Marti Noxon
Synopsis:
With the Kromaggs launching a full scale invasion, the Slider Project is sent into an underground research facility for their safety, only for the Kromagg Infiltrator to make his way inside. The episode is a tense inversion of the Die Hard formula as the Project members struggle to find the Infiltrator. In the end, Ramona manages to injure him and Logan uses a mis-calibrated sliding tunnel to scatter him across the multiverse with Alt-Turo sacrificing himself to push him in, killing him at long last. News outside are grim however, the Kromaggs have seized control over most major cities and are systematically herding the population into isolated zones to be transported to offworld prison camps. Lacking other options, Logan volunteers to search the multiverse for allies against the Kromaggs, and the rest of the Sliders agree to join her, accompanied by a British soldier, Marc McFadden, sliding away to an unknown world as the season draws to a close.
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Regarding Trinitarianism--
It comes down to fundamental world views I guess, whether one assumes that
1) It is just a way station toward rational agnostic-atheism, that agrees with the deep conviction of Marx and a great many other 19th century and later progressives, that there is no rational reason whatsoever to believe there is any kind of mystical dimension to human existence, and that therefore religion as such is an amalgam of ignorance, class ideology, and non-verbal human thinking in imagery. The latter factor is something Red psychology needs to analyze and unpack, and IMHO learn to respect. A lot of our brain matter just isn't primarily organized to think verbally, and a lot of human intelligence potential is best unlocked by respecting this fact and learning to as it were teach our non-verbal layers to harmonize with our rational understandings--and thus enhance them. We can think mystically without thereby automatically be thinking irrationally. But while our deep ingrained structured reflexes might incline us toward believing there is some kind of mystic layer of existence beyond the material, the Red orthodoxy says, no, it all emerges from physics. There is no mystical substrate or alternative to reality.
This might well still leave a role for Trinitarian sourced mythos of course, as one of many human cultural traditions framing our non-verbal mysticism. Note too that Marx himself gave grounds for respecting a fourth component of what is apprehended traditionally as "religion"--the ideological element is not pure ruling class dictat. After all, the ruling classes don't have a scientific understanding any more than the working classes who outnumber them by far; they are groping around in the dark with ad hoc evolved memes just as much as the workers, and again there are more of the latter, and for a religion to serve as a tool to manipulate and control worker behavior, it has to engage with their interests somehow, or they have no reason to listen. Workers push back dialectically on the ideology, and in the same essay where Marx famously (or infamously, to the bourgeoise) says "Religion is the opiate of the people," he also points out that opium of course is functional where there is much pain, and also that it is a reservoir of populist moralism and sentiment and even revolutionary thinking.
Thus, as it were Trinitarianism would over time distill out the elements of 8000 years or so of social stratified societies based on exploitation and terror, that actually are a repository of working class mythically-phrased wisdom. It would merge with people's psychology--at the scientific end being parsed in abstract and Logos type Aristotlean logic terms, at the mythic end--ritualizing a valid understanding of dialectical materialism in a nonverbally satisfactory way.
Rather than strict Trinitarianism, which is in origin a way for faithful Catholics to reconcile their embrace of Red convictions, this Church would merge with humanistic Unitarian Universalism, arriving at the same useful destination from another direction, one closer in harmony to Marxist/Debs-DeLeonist concepts. To be sure the specific OTL early 20th century history creating the UU amalgam would be much butterflied, and my observation (as someone originally raised Roman Catholic, later embracing Marxist thinking, and for a time participating actively in a UU congregation) is that UU congregations of OTL are pretty bourgeois in social composition (generally very progressive politically, but deeply embedded in the existing class structure all the same--reformists, not revolutionaries). For this reason, the Trinitarian tradition (US Roman Catholics tending to be more mired in the less privileged, working class strata, especially in the late 19th-early 20th century context, though of course there have been very powerful and sometimes severely reactionary Catholics going back before 1776) might be more of a live wire in post-revolutionary culture, and UU, perhaps never having merged and perhaps even avoiding the Humanist Manifesto phase for fear of its revolutionary implications, might wither quite away, or mostly so, as its adherents polarize into reactionaries or plain agnostic-atheists not worrying too much about the mystic and mythic any longer, leaving only a small substrate of mythic Seekers.
But meanwhile I think the social aspects that do attract some people to UU OTL would form some sort of community; the question is whether they just merge into Trinitarian and other progressive Christian traditions or stand on their own, with or without continuity with the parallel, Congregationalist derived, Unitarian and Universalist traditions.
2) Perhaps we will find, should we ever achieve a society moving away from the massive social disjunctions involved in institutionalizing exploitation and stratification of prestige and power, as Reds! of course postulates is well on the way (and with ongoing distortions, committed to further relaxation of these tensions) that either a) we recognize irrationality in human perceptions of "woo," but also that it is too deeply embedded in our psyches to try to dissolve, dissipate or otherwise dismiss, or b) the tantalizing consensus emerges that reality does seem to contain some sort of mystic aspect, some still small voice of conscience beyond mere psychology or social conditioning, or some sort of providence, or karmic justice, or call it what you will--in these moods I lean toward "Tao" myself. In other words, there might be a God after all, or something beyond humanity pervasive in the cosmos we can have some kind of dialog with.
In such a case, the many religious traditions of the world shall not in fact wither away, nor will active persecution totally eradicate them, because they have a true source in some sense Not Of This World, and some people are going to be seeking or stumbling on contact with it, no matter how an impatient authoritarian gang of militant atheists might seek to isolate them in a quest for purified New Socialist Men. Given the libertarian and diversitarian aspects of American Debs-DeLeonist political tradition, and the canon toleration or even embrace of Red Religiousity of which the Trinitarian Church is just the largest (thanks to Catholics being the plurality of US Christian denominations) example--an equilibrium will form in which the various churches remain rooted in a confident basis of faith, no matter how impressive the achievements of Reds who frame things in astringent or simply matter of fact atheism. And the atheist Reds in turn will observe that the "superstitious" Reds are perfectly good working class activists too, nor do they have some kind of agenda to steamroller those the various sects regard as unorthodox.
Religion then on track 2, for reasons of evolved human brain structure perhaps, or reasons of metaphysics indeed either transcending or being embedded in material reality, never goes away.
In that case, odds are excellent the distinctively Roman Catholic, Latin Rite based Trinitarian tradition remains one of the most vibrant and popular branches.
In case 1, there being no rational basis for religion really beyond mere historical-cultural tradition outmoded by modern science, all religion will gradually dissolve away in time.
But in case 2, I do think that despite its peculiarly USAian-Yankee origins and peculiarities, the basic Catholic traditional roots will resonate with Latin American Red societies too, and a large part of the Spanish and Portuguese and French speaking nations in the Comintern sphere populations will either form a parallel branch that in time merges, or simply adhere to the Yankee rite and modify it in the best Catholic traditions of syncretism. Norteamericano comrade congregants will embrace cultural practices from south of the border in recognition of their mythic functionality--a process I observe from afar happening in OTL US Catholicism anyway, though I am sure the interpretation and social meaning of the Latino ritualism will be different!
OTL the Catholic Church, having harshly repudiated Liberation Theology, has been losing membership to evangelical denominations. I think there would be less of that tendency in the ATL; persons who don't much like the Trinitarian version will, some of them, indeed drift toward more Protestant sects, or just relax into indifferent agnosticism.
It comes down to fundamental world views I guess, whether one assumes that
1) It is just a way station toward rational agnostic-atheism, that agrees with the deep conviction of Marx and a great many other 19th century and later progressives, that there is no rational reason whatsoever to believe there is any kind of mystical dimension to human existence, and that therefore religion as such is an amalgam of ignorance, class ideology, and non-verbal human thinking in imagery. The latter factor is something Red psychology needs to analyze and unpack, and IMHO learn to respect. A lot of our brain matter just isn't primarily organized to think verbally, and a lot of human intelligence potential is best unlocked by respecting this fact and learning to as it were teach our non-verbal layers to harmonize with our rational understandings--and thus enhance them. We can think mystically without thereby automatically be thinking irrationally. But while our deep ingrained structured reflexes might incline us toward believing there is some kind of mystic layer of existence beyond the material, the Red orthodoxy says, no, it all emerges from physics. There is no mystical substrate or alternative to reality.
This might well still leave a role for Trinitarian sourced mythos of course, as one of many human cultural traditions framing our non-verbal mysticism. Note too that Marx himself gave grounds for respecting a fourth component of what is apprehended traditionally as "religion"--the ideological element is not pure ruling class dictat. After all, the ruling classes don't have a scientific understanding any more than the working classes who outnumber them by far; they are groping around in the dark with ad hoc evolved memes just as much as the workers, and again there are more of the latter, and for a religion to serve as a tool to manipulate and control worker behavior, it has to engage with their interests somehow, or they have no reason to listen. Workers push back dialectically on the ideology, and in the same essay where Marx famously (or infamously, to the bourgeoise) says "Religion is the opiate of the people," he also points out that opium of course is functional where there is much pain, and also that it is a reservoir of populist moralism and sentiment and even revolutionary thinking.
Thus, as it were Trinitarianism would over time distill out the elements of 8000 years or so of social stratified societies based on exploitation and terror, that actually are a repository of working class mythically-phrased wisdom. It would merge with people's psychology--at the scientific end being parsed in abstract and Logos type Aristotlean logic terms, at the mythic end--ritualizing a valid understanding of dialectical materialism in a nonverbally satisfactory way.
Rather than strict Trinitarianism, which is in origin a way for faithful Catholics to reconcile their embrace of Red convictions, this Church would merge with humanistic Unitarian Universalism, arriving at the same useful destination from another direction, one closer in harmony to Marxist/Debs-DeLeonist concepts. To be sure the specific OTL early 20th century history creating the UU amalgam would be much butterflied, and my observation (as someone originally raised Roman Catholic, later embracing Marxist thinking, and for a time participating actively in a UU congregation) is that UU congregations of OTL are pretty bourgeois in social composition (generally very progressive politically, but deeply embedded in the existing class structure all the same--reformists, not revolutionaries). For this reason, the Trinitarian tradition (US Roman Catholics tending to be more mired in the less privileged, working class strata, especially in the late 19th-early 20th century context, though of course there have been very powerful and sometimes severely reactionary Catholics going back before 1776) might be more of a live wire in post-revolutionary culture, and UU, perhaps never having merged and perhaps even avoiding the Humanist Manifesto phase for fear of its revolutionary implications, might wither quite away, or mostly so, as its adherents polarize into reactionaries or plain agnostic-atheists not worrying too much about the mystic and mythic any longer, leaving only a small substrate of mythic Seekers.
But meanwhile I think the social aspects that do attract some people to UU OTL would form some sort of community; the question is whether they just merge into Trinitarian and other progressive Christian traditions or stand on their own, with or without continuity with the parallel, Congregationalist derived, Unitarian and Universalist traditions.
2) Perhaps we will find, should we ever achieve a society moving away from the massive social disjunctions involved in institutionalizing exploitation and stratification of prestige and power, as Reds! of course postulates is well on the way (and with ongoing distortions, committed to further relaxation of these tensions) that either a) we recognize irrationality in human perceptions of "woo," but also that it is too deeply embedded in our psyches to try to dissolve, dissipate or otherwise dismiss, or b) the tantalizing consensus emerges that reality does seem to contain some sort of mystic aspect, some still small voice of conscience beyond mere psychology or social conditioning, or some sort of providence, or karmic justice, or call it what you will--in these moods I lean toward "Tao" myself. In other words, there might be a God after all, or something beyond humanity pervasive in the cosmos we can have some kind of dialog with.
In such a case, the many religious traditions of the world shall not in fact wither away, nor will active persecution totally eradicate them, because they have a true source in some sense Not Of This World, and some people are going to be seeking or stumbling on contact with it, no matter how an impatient authoritarian gang of militant atheists might seek to isolate them in a quest for purified New Socialist Men. Given the libertarian and diversitarian aspects of American Debs-DeLeonist political tradition, and the canon toleration or even embrace of Red Religiousity of which the Trinitarian Church is just the largest (thanks to Catholics being the plurality of US Christian denominations) example--an equilibrium will form in which the various churches remain rooted in a confident basis of faith, no matter how impressive the achievements of Reds who frame things in astringent or simply matter of fact atheism. And the atheist Reds in turn will observe that the "superstitious" Reds are perfectly good working class activists too, nor do they have some kind of agenda to steamroller those the various sects regard as unorthodox.
Religion then on track 2, for reasons of evolved human brain structure perhaps, or reasons of metaphysics indeed either transcending or being embedded in material reality, never goes away.
In that case, odds are excellent the distinctively Roman Catholic, Latin Rite based Trinitarian tradition remains one of the most vibrant and popular branches.
In case 1, there being no rational basis for religion really beyond mere historical-cultural tradition outmoded by modern science, all religion will gradually dissolve away in time.
But in case 2, I do think that despite its peculiarly USAian-Yankee origins and peculiarities, the basic Catholic traditional roots will resonate with Latin American Red societies too, and a large part of the Spanish and Portuguese and French speaking nations in the Comintern sphere populations will either form a parallel branch that in time merges, or simply adhere to the Yankee rite and modify it in the best Catholic traditions of syncretism. Norteamericano comrade congregants will embrace cultural practices from south of the border in recognition of their mythic functionality--a process I observe from afar happening in OTL US Catholicism anyway, though I am sure the interpretation and social meaning of the Latino ritualism will be different!
OTL the Catholic Church, having harshly repudiated Liberation Theology, has been losing membership to evangelical denominations. I think there would be less of that tendency in the ATL; persons who don't much like the Trinitarian version will, some of them, indeed drift toward more Protestant sects, or just relax into indifferent agnosticism.
MacArthur Awards (Bookmark1995)
Bookmark1995
Banned
Carol Burnett Presents the 30th annual MacArthur Award: Commending the People Who Have Discredited the Capitalist System With Their Very Existence
March 18th, 1997
Carol Burnett: And the 30th annual MacArthur goes to...Sarah Robertson.
(footage of a 20-something woman walking around a Cubamerican mall)
Carol Burnett (voice-over imitating a nature documentary narrator): Watch as Sarah demonstrates the capitalist in its true, unhinged form.
(cut to Sarah getting to a tug of war with another woman over a new dress)
Sarah: It's my dress, bitch!
Other woman: Why would you buy this? You're big as a fucking whale!
(Sarah tackles the woman and starts yanking on her hair)
Carol Burnett (crying joyfully): Thank you so much Sarah, for helping the world move one step closer to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
March 18th, 1997
Carol Burnett: And the 30th annual MacArthur goes to...Sarah Robertson.
(footage of a 20-something woman walking around a Cubamerican mall)
Carol Burnett (voice-over imitating a nature documentary narrator): Watch as Sarah demonstrates the capitalist in its true, unhinged form.
(cut to Sarah getting to a tug of war with another woman over a new dress)
Sarah: It's my dress, bitch!
Other woman: Why would you buy this? You're big as a fucking whale!
(Sarah tackles the woman and starts yanking on her hair)
Carol Burnett (crying joyfully): Thank you so much Sarah, for helping the world move one step closer to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
It seems kinda reactionary to attack two women for fighting, wouldn't you say?
Also, why would anyone in the UASR give a shit about two women in Cuba fighting over a dress?