I've never seen "Species," but "The Breeder" is an abomination. Even if you find Kari's objectification entertaining, the entire episode is witless, crass, clumsy, dull and deeply unprofessional.
There is absolutely no social commentary or satirical points made in the US Government treating the poor as organ farms; there is no effort to explore what kind of mindset produces such a society or to give any meaningful characterization to the people who live in it.
Dr. Sylvius written innanely and flatly as nothing but a malicious antagonist, completely failing to represent this world or its history. The plot deliberately and lazily avoids having the sliders engage with this society at all: they only seek out health care because of Maggie and the focus is on her parasite, not this world.
The sliders are portrayed as ineffectual. Quinn and Rembrandt inexplicably interfere with the authorities arresting a woman, and even if you set aside their total ignorance as to what they're getting involved in, they themselves prove incapable of rescuing the woman and are shown to be incompetent blunderers despite nearly three years of sliding.
The sliders are also portrayed as abrasively toxic towards each other and the world around them. Wade, expressing her emotional turmoil in response to all the death she's seen, receives not comfort from Quinn but verbal abuse. Rembrandt is offended when Quinn fails to check out girls. And at the end, our so-called heroes abandon an entire world to the parasite that they brought into this environment.
The entire production for "The Breeder" is inept by any measure of scripted and visual storytelling. The sliders leaping into the vortex is presented in a take where Jerry O'Connell misses his mark and visibly walks offscreen. The shot of Maggie assaulting the man in Diggs' bar is missing sound effects. Maggie is frozen at the beginning of the episode with no ill-effect on the parasite, yet freezing is presented as the solution at the end. The performances are pathetic as Jerry and Kari are clearly on the verge of laughing at this ridiculous script throughout.
It's very obvious that the creators do not care if their material turns out well and have absolutely no concern for viewer enjoyment whatsoever. And that and everything else in this episode is a complete betrayal of SLIDERS.
I'm not saying Seasons 1 - 2 were perfect television, but they demonstrated effort and care in crafting plausible physical environments that resembled the real world with a meaningfully documentary-style aesthetic in Season 1 that gave way to a more shadowy and vivid approach in Season 2 with great attention to set and prop design, sound, cinematography, blocking and performance -- as opposed to "The Breeder" which can't even render the sliders leaping into the vortex correctly.
Seasons 1 - 2 also made sure that despite the darkness and horror of sliding, it was livened up by Cleavant's comedy, the student/mentor relationship between Jerry and John, the heartfelt compassion of Wade and the friendship with all four. "The Breeder," in contrast, presents the sliders as so utterly poisonous that no viewer would want to spend any time with these people. If the worlds aren't compelling and the people aren't worthwhile, what exactly is the point of this series?
And finally, "The Breeder" turns the sliders into idiots and villains. They can't work together, instead fighting and arguing pointlessly and making every bad situation worse. They are incompetent in trying to save innocent people. Maggie murders several people throughout the episode and this has no emotional consequences for her, presenting a crassly indifferent view to human life that is totally at odds with SLIDERS' original faith in the power of ideas to save people's lives. And then the sliders condemn this world to a fate they inflicted upon it.
"The Breeder" features a poorly considered script that makes little to no use of the SLIDERS storytelling engine and is the production is fundamentally unprofessional in all areas of television storytelling. If you like this episode, you are simply wrong. I can prove it with charts.
The breeder parasites, this script, this episode and the entirety of its contents should be put in the ground, dug up, shot repeatedly to make sure its dead, buried again, and then expunged and erased from SLIDERS history.
Anyway. I made sure to include the breeder parasites in SLIDERS REBORN, specifically on Page 2 of the second script ("Reunion") and the parasites will return again in the sixth and final script. I'm sure you understand why.
