Sliders - creating alternative realities

Few days ago I had the opportunity to see the pilot to scif-series Sliders, from 1995. In the show punch of people "slide" from world to world trying to find a way back home. The plot of the pilot was - to make long story short - about four people who are stranded on an alternative timeline, where Soviet Union had won the Cold War.

For the record, I happen to like alternative timelines, the "what if"-scenarios. But I didn't like this one. A fast plot summary;

The sliders arrive to the new world, thinking they are home and separate. The first is in hurry and shouts a taxi; the second one decides to call home and the rest two (the inventor and his teacher) start to talk about physics in the park where they landed. Then each notices that something is wrong;

• The telephone box doesn't have a coin slot and the operator wants to know if the slider has calling privileges, and thus wants to know her id-number. The operator further mentions that the box is operated by PT&T (People's Telephone & Telegraph).
  
• The taxi driver speaks Russian and not English.
  
• There's a statue of Lenin in the park, instead of Lincoln.
  

The plot starts to develop as the taxi drives through a toll booth, and the slider pays his trip with a dollar he had in his wallet. This promptly gets him to jail.

Meanwhile the three sliders walk around seeing police beating, arresting and even shooting citizens. They stop to buy a sausage from a stand and pay with a dollar. The sausage seller mistakes the sliders into revolutionaries and reminds them not to waive the dollars around; apparently they are used by the resistance as a code. The official new dollars are printed with red ink and have Khrushchev's picture in the middle.
At this point police takes interest in the three sliders and the sausage seller helps them away into revolutionaries hide-out. Once there they see a broadcast from People's Court; apparently the show is entertaining in nature and has a smiling host. During the case witnesses are sworn in with the traditional oath, which ends in "...and help me God". One of the cases handled is that of the fourth slider, who is sentenced to Alaskan gulag for 15 years.

The revolutionaries explain how the world has come to this; how losing the Korean War started a set of events which spread communism to the rest of the world, leaving USA economically separated from the other countries. In the end even USA fell, and thus they are now living in the The Socialist States of America.

The revolutionaries help to free the fourth slider. After farewells the sliders depart the world.

* * *

I found the episode to be fairly painful to watch. The changes were for shock value and not at all consistent; the telephone box wasn't operated by coins but the city (San Fransisco) had toll booths; the court used vows that mentioned God; the difference between streets were the police acted like thugs and the devoted people who saluted voluntarily when the national anthem played and so on.

I have noticed similar problems with several stories; the writers often just replace some things (such as statues) and names (AT&T => PT&T) without considering how the changes affect the larger dynamic of the world. Writing a story is not just about character interaction (while that was pretty painful as well) but about surroundings, particularly in a show that is devoted to alternative timelines.

I don't know why I'm so disappointed. Maybe because the articles I read promised a show with large following and it had nine stars out of ten; maybe because once you see a story that has done it RIGHT you can't help but compare the rest to that one (for example some episodes of Stargate SG-1, Star Trek DS9, X-Men, Buffy.. the comicbook Exiles is all about alternative outcomes of other comics...) .