As Time Goes By
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Seasons 1 & 2
DVD Box Set
Region 1 NTSC
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Seasons 1 & 2
DVD Box Set
Region 2 PAL
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(Sliders Story No. 20, starring Jerry O'Connell)
- written by creative consultant Steve Brown
- directed by Richard Compton
- music by Stephen Graziano
- produced by Tim Iacofano
(and Jon Povill, Tony Blake and Paul Jackson)
- Production # K0808
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Story: Discovering doubles of his lost highschool sweetheart
Daelin Richards on several worlds prompts Quinn to try to
rekindle their feelings and help her escape to a better life.
But does he really know what he is doing? Upon discovering
a world where time flows in reverse, a seemingly
inevitable fate provides Quinn with his biggest challenge
and deepest perspective yet....
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In-Depth Analysis Review
by Martin Izsak
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WARNING: This review contains "SPOILERS", and is intended for
those who have already seen the program. To avoid the spoilers, read
the Buyers' Guide version instead.
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I was sure that Sliders had shown its season two finale and looped
back into re-runs long before the broadcasters finally first chucked
this episode at the viewers in the middle of summer like an afterthought....
and having flown to another continent for a wedding by then, it remained
unknown to me until I was pleasantly surprised by its existence in re-runs.
A bonus season two episode with the original cast! Yes, we'll take it.
This story taps into some archetypal human struggles to get the audience
invested in its main characters, before launching into one sci-fi twist
after another to lend some fascinating perspectives and philosophies
on the situation. Although some of the dialogue dredges up similar dynamics
to the anti-choice time travel conundrums often plaguing 20th century
sci-fi, the devices used in this story force one to dig deeper and
think more extensively about the dynamics in play, and it becomes something
truly unique in the annals of science fiction. I'm impressed, and I think
I like it a lot in spite of its few glaring shortcomings.
The opening is very unusual, and perhaps not ideal for introducing
the regular characters to new audiences, since we begin somewhere in the
middle of their time in Nueva España, just before the
first big excitement
begins. It can get away with it by letting the title sequence take up the
slack, and by its position late in the season. And of course the story
more than makes up for this with its later portions.
"...Reminds me of Vancouver."
The portions in Nueva España world are full of a lot of tongue in cheek
in-jokes, some of which unintentionally magnify in retrospect. First,
there are the Canadian connections. All the complaining about San Francisco
weather is in a way masking the fact that what cast & crew REALLY want to
do is complain about the weather in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, which is equally
if not more cold & wet. (This is more of a west coast thing than a Canadian
thing, especially the wet part.) And they have had far wetter and darker
conditions to deal with during season two's shoot than the much brighter
conditions seen in season one.
I can assure you that we Canadians listen to a vastly wider variety of
music than our most clichéd exports Anne Murray and Gordon Lightfoot,
who are good but
don't really register on my list of favourite or repeat-listening music.
Come on, Rembrandt, get with it. Of course the supporting cast and
half the crew are Canadian themselves, with "Sliders" being Jerry O'Connell's
second major TV series shot in Canada after Toronto's "My Secret Identity",
so you have to assume that they're poking fun at themselves
with half of this stuff.
This also seems to be the perfect story segment to vent such complaints,
considering that the main twist here is to swap ethnic roles within what
used to be U.S. territories, while Canada and its border take on the
stereotypical role more often associated with Mexico. All "Sliders" stories
so far have pretty much taken place in present-day San Francisco up until
this point, but finally it looks like a little cross-country trip is in
order. But it's not quite so far flung, as later portions reveal.
The second big in-joke is of course Charlie O'Connell's guest appearance
in the cast. I can't help chuckling when he claims to be Daelin's brother,
and Quinn says, "Oh yes, I remember you." firstly because the actor is in
fact Jerry O'Connell's brother (so he definitely should remember him),
but also because he will later go on to play
Quinn's newly-discovered long lost brother in the fourth season.
Yes, we remember him too! His appearance here is fun, and Charlie
plays this role to good serious effect.
"This is so trippy!
We keep getting involved with the same group of people."
The action in the first segment is typically good "Sliders" stuff,
but doesn't stand out too much other than in the expanded location that
the story makes you think you're headed towards. The wormhole effect then
enjoys a very effective introduction at this later stage. A lot of other
"Sliders" stories feature similar events at their conclusion, and this now
becomes a story of escalating proportions as it continues to look for greater
resolution beyond the formulaically obvious.
This second portion of the tale contains the emotional heart of the
story, and as such, all its differences from our normal world are defined
in terms of the different lives its central characters have led. No major
sociological differences are defined for the world at large. Smart and
refreshing. Interesting patterns and recurring themes begin to take shape
here, having an extra weight now that they've been played out by the same
people under different circumstances in very different parallel worlds.
One of the best parts of this story's score is Stephen Graziano's
underscore for the departure scene at the end of the second act,
a nice complement to many of the livelier action cues used in other
parts of the story.
Time's Arrow
Even just having a third act on this subject would yield a good,
powerful, high-ranking story within season two, but our creative writer
Steve Brown doesn't stop there. In comes yet another idea so unique,
I don't think any other sci-fi show has even attempted it before or since,
and thankfully it is a really good match to what the rest of the story
has been about. The theory explored here seems to want to prove that
time is a scalar rather than a vector, and is just as likely to flow in
reverse as it is forwards.
Two caveats spring to mind instantly. If that was the case, one might
expect half of the parallel universes we encounter on the show to be running
in reverse, when clearly this is a huge rarity. Also, if this universe is
running in reverse, it seems lucky that it reversed itself to 1996 just as
all the other universes moved forward into 1996, and we're additionally lucky
that the Sun and Earth are in a similar position in their orbits such that
our sliders don't come out of their wormhole in outer space. Maybe there are
good reasons why it should all work out so conveniently, but the script
isn't giving those to us.
Discontinuity
One of the most difficult concepts of this story is that of "discontinuity",
which basically allows chunks of time to appear to be going in the same
direction for our sliders and the rest of the world they are in, until
a woozy visual effect dances before us and makes it look as though the
Sliders have popped a bit back in time. This probably contributes to the
reason why neither we nor the Sliders see themselves come out of the wormhole
into this world.... although that still isn't explanation enough on its own.
At least the Sliders question this, allowing one to go with it for the moment.
"Discontinuity" doesn't really make satisfying sense if one looks purely
at physics alone. It seems to work better once the mind/brain and its
functions of perception come into play. I'm reminded of the experiment
in which, for days on end, people wore special glasses that made everything
look upside down. After a while, their brains compensated for what they
were seeing and they could perceive the world right side up again,
walk around, pick objects up, etc., and basically function as normal again.
(Check out "What the Bleep Do We Know"
for the full story on that.) Perhaps something similar is happening here
to the Sliders.... as their brains take a chunk of reversed time and
play it forward in attempting to understand it, and then reach for the
next chunk which chronologically belongs before it. Now it's somewhat
more plausible. It's still not quite as neat or accessible to the audience
as a similar disoriented memory effect that was achieved in
the coolly bizarre film "Memento" with Joe Pantoliano and Carrie-Anne Moss.
This story really has belonged to Quinn and two of the guest stars, focusing
on them fairly well while also giving the other three Sliders just enough to
do to remain decent. Highlighted are both Quinn's desires and his
altruistic heroics,
whilst the question brews up if he will have to sacrifice one to have the
other, or if he can really have both at once. Yes, this is the same
dynamic that really supercharged the Spiderman films. Earlier in the
series, one might have expected Wade to weigh in on this a little more,
but since her escapade in
"Obsession" (story no. 19),
not to mention her admissions in
"In Dino Veritas" (story no. 17),
it seems only fair that she gives him equal rope to explore the avenues
that he does.
Through his dialogue, the writer leans a little too heavily on the idea of
pre-destined time-lines for my tastes, which all too often grate against
heroics and common sense. Even here, there's absolutely no sensible reason
why Quinn should declare himself guilty before the courts, or encourage
his friends to do the same. The verdict in the court will neither help
nor hinder them from moving "backwards" in this world's time and getting
unhandcuffed and unarrested, and they honestly don't know what their
involvement was / will be concerning the incident of the case.
Quinn's heroics do fare a bit better during the conclusion of this story
than in pretty much all previous stories with the exception of
"The Good, the Bad, and the Wealthy" (story no. 16),
and we have to thank in part his belief that his involvement with the locals
is "predestined". But we can be even more thankful that Quinn doesn't
accept the predestined outcome that they have been made aware of, and instead
he searches for a way to make things better. Excellent!
Parallel vs. Branching Universes
Those of you who have been reading my reviews of time travel conundrums
know how passionately I favour heroics over pre-destined outcomes,
and how much I often claim that awareness of parallel universes
such as the ones explored continuously on this show, are in fact the best
cure for the kind of pre-destiny reverence that fuels heroic phobias.
Technically, we shouldn't really call such universes "parallel" within
my paradigm, because the word suggests that they would never intersect.
We should really call them "branching" universes, since one universe
upon reaching a point where an individual makes a choice, and all other
conscious entities in that universe make quantum complementary choices,
would then split into two or more universes.... and so on and so on,
multiplying the number of branching universes tens of thousands of
times each day, as time moves forward.
Uh oh. What if time were now moving forward for some decision-makers,
while moving backwards for others? Are alternate universes now branching
off of one another in two different "directions" of time? Or is one set
of decision-makers stuck with "collapsing" universes, as they get closer
and closer to a "common root" on the decision-making cause-and-effect tree?
Very few sci-fi stories successfully challenge my current paradigm and
cause it to grow. This one has at least thrown down the gauntlet
successfully. Respect.
While my usual theory might cause one to automatically dismiss the explanation
spouted by Arturo for the bizarre visual effect spectacle that challenges
the story's conclusion, you have to take a moment and wonder if such a
side-effect isn't possible, at least in the perception of four people
swimming upstream of time's natural flow who also regularly tie these
branching universes together with wormholes.
At any rate, I doubt if Arturo's comments can really tell the whole story
of that visual effect, or even relay the most important bits. Quinn does
manage to create a better personal outcome than the one they learned of
earlier, although (1) it is still less than he would ultimately hope for,
(2) it isn't really clear how
the old outcome ever actually came about, and (3) Arturo can easily make
the audience believe that messing with pre-destiny is something you should
never do, which I won't buy for a minute even here. All things considered,
Quinn got a decent heroic finish in at the end of the story, plus
another one just before leaving the previous world in the second act,
both of which were all about helping locals and had nothing to do with
the inevitable escape into the wormhole. The audience just has to remain
sophisticated enough to believe in it.
"The way your Karma was headed, ... you'd probably ... destroy the world."
One other thing this script has going for it, which ends up explaining
the reality of the events we see on screen far better than the prominent
pre-destiny bits, are the references to the needs of the soul. "Karma"
is a word that is often not interpreted in the best way to understand
this, but understanding is more superbly and subtly achieved by watching
how the same soul can make different choices in alternate universes
with different window-dressing and still wind up facing the same challenges
with the same other souls repeatedly. Often the real heroics are the
inner challenges, overcoming the interpretations that lead people to
respond the way they typically do. Quinn's actions in Daelin's apartment
in the second act certainly echo many similar scenes we've witnessed
throughout season two. And perhaps he still has his best moment
of overcoming his interpretations at the very end, when he simply chooses
not to go for a fourth act of the Daelin saga on yet another world.
All things considered, a fair wrap up. Perhaps it could have been stronger
had Wade voiced her understanding of what souls need to learn here
as strongly as she did in
"Obsession" (story no. 19).
Most of these considerations point to the reason WHY souls get to choose
their way through multiple branching lives, WHY of all the doubles it's
possible to encounter of the rest of the souls anyone sees in their life,
the observer will always see the ones that have made choices that
reflect and complement the observer's own. The others' doubles who made
non-complementary choices are in an alternate universe with a double
of the observer whose choices complement theirs. Sadly,
"As Time Goes By" doesn't convey quite as much, but it is inspirational
for those that already get it.
Well, though this episode may try to explain everything itself
adequately, I rather think it forces audience interpretation after sparking
them with some very challenging out-there concepts, and with some very
successful emotional weight behind them as well. Beautiful. This is what
art should be. However, with some of the offered dialogue and visual effects
likely to encourage some audience members to accept less healthy ideals,
it does allow a number of other great episodes to stay ahead of it in the
season rankings. Watch this one with an open mind, without taking every
stated theory to be 100% correct, and see how your interpretation might
inspire you.
This story has become available on DVD.
Click on the Amazon symbol for the location nearest you
for pricing and availability:
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Seasons 1 & 2
DVD Box Set
Region 1 NTSC
for the North American market:
in the U.S.
in Canada
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Seasons 1 & 2
DVD Box Set
Region 2 PAL
for the U.K.
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