Quinn Mallory

Quinn R. Mallory is a fictional character on the science fiction television show Sliders, played by Jerry O'Connell.

Background

Childhood

Quinn was born in 1973 and raised in San Francisco, California, the son of Michael and Amanda Mallory. The driver's license shown in the episode "Summer of Love" indicates his birthday is January 24, but in the same episode, Wade says that Quinn is a Libra, which would put his birthday between September 23 and October 22.

Quinn was skipped ahead two grades in school at some point before 1984. He was bullied in junior high, and being skipped ahead two grades made him smaller and physically slower than his classmates. His father died in 1984. The week after his father's death, several students, including Rex Crandall, bullied Quinn at school, which ended in an incident where he hit Rex with a baseball bat. Quinn shattered Rex's kneecap, and Rex walked with a limp for the rest of his life. In the episode "The Guardian", on a world where events occurred as they did on Earth Prime twelve years ago, Quinn prevented history from repeating itself.

In "Summer of Love", Quinn confesses to Arturo that he was starting quarterback in high school (indicating that despite being slower than his classmates in junior high, he became an athlete in high school, probably driven by a in this case healthy inferiority complex). In the episode "Slide Like an Egyptian", Quinn meets his father in the afterlife while being used for life after death experiments. They discuss how they enjoyed playing American football together.

Invention of sliding

Quinn attended the fictional California University during the early 1990s to earn his master's degree in physics, specializing in superstring theory. In 1994, he invented a device that allows people to travel from one parallel dimension to another. Quinn referred to this technology as "sliding." On September 27, he went through the vortex with Wade Welles and Maximillian Arturo. Rembrandt Brown happened to be traveling in the area and was accidentally pulled into the vortex.

The four of them landed on a parallel world where San Francisco was in an ice age. They holed up in Rembrandt's car until a deadly tornado headed their way. Because of the way the sliding technology functioned, the group's only choices were to reset the timer and potentially lose the possibility to go home, or to wait for the timer to hit zero and go home then. Since the tornado was likely to kill them, Quinn had to reset the timer and lost the ability to return himself and the others home. For the next five years, Quinn and the others slid randomly to each world with a fixed amount of time on each one, hoping each slide will be the slide home.

Distant origin

In the fourth season premiere "Genesis", Quinn learned that he was not originally from Earth Prime, but that he was actually from Kromagg Prime, an Earth where humans and Kromaggs coexisted until a civil war broke out between the two species. He learned that he was transported to Earth Prime when he was a baby and left with his parents' doubles. When his parents came back to get him, his adoptive parents were too attached to him so they hid Quinn, and Quinn was raised on Earth Prime. Quinn only learned this after he returned to Earth Prime after the Kromaggs had invaded two months prior. He also learned that he had a brother, Colin, who was transported to another alternate Earth as well.

The Unstuck Man

In late 1998 or early 1999, in the season five premiere "The Unstuck Man", Quinn and his brother Colin were unwillingly used in an experiment by Dr. Oberon Geiger to merge people and parallel worlds together. As a result of this experiment, Quinn was merged with a fraternal double of his who was referred to as "Mallory" (although his double's personality became dominant).

After Mallory was sliding for a while, the Sliders met back with Dr. Geiger in the episode "Eye of the Storm", and he attempted to unmerge Quinn from his double. Unfortunately, Dr. Geiger said that the two had been merged for too long and the only way to bring Quinn back would require killing Mallory. Rembrandt said that Quinn wouldn't want that, so Dr. Geiger ended the experiment and Quinn was presumed to be gone for good. But near the end of the series, Mallory would again show signs that Quinn still existed within him.

Relationships

• Wade Welles: Quinn and Wade were close friends, working at the Doppler Computer Store. Wade had a crush on Quinn, something that he was too oblivious to notice for some time. Afterwards, both were too shy and occupied by situations they were thrown in to act upon their feelings; it was never followed through due to a calamity befalling the Sliders.
• Maximillian Arturo: Being Quinn's professor, it wasn't always easy for Arturo to accept his student surpassing him. However, Arturo often doubled as a surrogate father for Quinn. Quinn's relationship with Arturo meant a lot to him, and Quinn was very hurt when Colonel Rickman murdered him.
• Rembrandt Brown: Initially, Rembrandt was at odds with Quinn, being the only one not to consent to sliding. The bitterness continued for a short duration, but dulled as Rembrandt gained respect for Quinn. The two became fairly close friends, though they still occasionally harbored conflicting views. Rembrandt gave Quinn the nickname "Q-Ball". In "Genesis" when given the choice to stay on Earth Prime to continue to fight the Kromaggs or go Sliding again, Rembrant told Quinn "you know I'm always with you Q-Ball."
• Maggie Beckett: Quinn might have been attracted to Maggie. In "The Breeder", Wade remarked to Quinn, "You have a thing for her [Maggie]?" which Quinn denied. In "The Exodus, Part Two", Dr. Stephen Jensen (Maggie's husband at the time) accused Quinn of having a romantic interest in Maggie, saying "I see the way the two of you look at each other and I don't like it." Quinn told Dr. Jensen that he felt Maggie is just someone he had to put up with, but Dr. Jensen did not believe him. In "The Other Slide of Paradise," Maggie and Quinn kissed when it appeared they wouldn't ever see each other again and Maggie's fantasy in "Virtual Slide" showed that she held feelings for Quinn. In "Roads Taken", Quinn and Maggie were married in a "bubble universe" that existed only for the two of them.