Otromundo

When this show was on the air, I was in high school. I thought the show had lots of imagination. Some episodes worked, others didn't. But when they worked, they were great! I just wish there had been more episodes produced. I think there were only like 8 episodes made.

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

If Otherworld had gone into production 5-7 years later, it might have enjoyed a long run and been regarded as a classic of the genre.

The series revolved around the Sterling family, Hal, his wife June and their children, Trace, Gina and Smith, who while touring the pyramids of Egypt, found themselves whisked to the "otherworld," a parallel world with pockets of civilization or provinces, separated by a forbidden zone where only the "Zone Troopers" are allowed to travel. All this is ruled from the capitol province of Ymar (e-mar) where a portal back to Earth was said to exist.

What follows in the 8 filmed episodes are the adventures of the family as they travel from province to province, on a journey to Ymar, always hounded by Kommander Nuveen Kroll, the sadistic Zone Trooper leader the Sterlings ran afoul of upon their arrival.

Created by Roderick Taylor, a musician, Otherworld always maintained a surreal quality with music and effects, where everything is just off kilter, maintaining the feeling of another reality. Each province had it's own character, from a colony of androids to a repressed 50s style city, ripe for the introduction of Rock n' Roll.

There was no resolution to the series which disappeared after the last (and best) episode, "Princess Metra" faded out with the Sterlings continuing their journey home. This was a surprise, since Taylor had said in newspaper interviews, the network had commissioned 13 episodes, even describing a couple of upcoming episodes (the Sterlings encounter duplicates of themselves was one), but the series was apparently canceled before the full production run.

Still, there are rumors of several lost episodes that were never broadcast. So, who knows?

Too bad CBS never gave the series a fighting chance, choosing to bury it on Saturday nights. Stories were always, well written, entertaining and pro-family. Repeated often was the refrain that family was always the Sterlings main strength. Otherworld might have found a bigger audience with more promotion and a better time slot, but, in my opinion would have found great success in the kinder, gentler television of the 90s.

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

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

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

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

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

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