prisoners

Maggie, Dianna, and Mallory are the focus of this movie, which begins with their being captured on the Seer�s world (that happened between "The Seer" and "Turning Point"). Tthe remainder of the action takes place entirely within the KroMagg prison where they�re held. The cell they spend most of their time in is much more like the one depicted in �Invasion� than the simple steel-barred cells of later episodes.

As a result of all the KroMagg mind-manipulation Mallory and the others are forced to endure, Quinn�s personality begins to resurface alongside Mallory�s, and the two personalities begin struggling to share the body they�re both trapped in. Throughout the movie, Mallory continually switches back and forth between having Quinn�s personality and his own. At a point when Quinn�s memory has surfaced, he is able to recognize the man in the cell next to them as Ryan Simms, the lost slider (from �Luck of the Draw� and the beginning of �Into the Mystic�); the group begins to bond with him.

Maggie is dealing best with their incarceration because she was trained by the Marines to be prepared for POW situations. Quinn/Mallory is next, though they�re struggling because they�re two people trying to live in the same body. And Dianna is not coping well at all, for she has never really been punished before in her life; her parents never punished her for anything, and she�d never broken the law, so she was used to total freedom and not having it is making her more than a little stir-crazy. That doesn�t help the three of them get in good with the KroMagg guards, and when Dianna�s claustrophobia begins to resurface (she�d pretty much beaten it by the end of �A Thousand Deaths,� but facing life-long imprisonment in the confined spaces of this prison seems to have brought it back), that doesn�t help either.

The reason the three of them were not separated or killed is because the �Maggs know they�re Sliders and hope to gain information from them about parallel worlds. They put Ryan in the next cell because through their mind-interrogations of him, they�d managed to learn about his past with the Sliders, and they�d hoped that his being in the next cell would encourage them to discuss some of their past adventures more openly. The �Maggs, of course, have video cameras in all the cells.

The Sliders all know that, though, so they find alternative ways to communicate. But they talk about escape, not past worlds. Quinn and Dianna both know sign language, so they talk to each other using that. Quinn, Maggie, and Ryan all know Morse code, so they talk to each other using that. They test this system of communication out a few times and the guards don�t seem to think it�s anything more than the stupid humans giving each other puppet shows or tapping out crappy human music, so they began to use it to talk to each other about escape, taking a chance and hoping that even if the guards ever figured out that they were talking to each other, they�d never be able to figure out what they were saying.

And, yes, the KroMaggs could extract that information by performing mind scans, but because they can�t make sense of Quinn/Mallory�s double-mind, the group has ended up having Quinn becoming the only one who really knows the full plan of escape. He�s the go-between. He has planning sessions with Dianna via sign language, and then later tells Maggie and Ryan only the bare essentials of what they need to know from that planning session. He then has separate planning sessions with Maggie and Ryan using Morse code, and then communicates back to Dianna in sign language only the bare minimum of what she needs to know from that conversation. Thus the Sliders all know only very limited things and would not be particularly useful�except for Quinn/Mallory, who knows everything, but whom the KroMaggs can�t read.

In spite of all the secrecy and planning, when the escape attempt finally is made near the end of the TV-movie (a point now equivalent to three months before �End of the Road�), it is unsuccessful. A guard kills Ryan in the attempt, and the three Sliders are put in separate cells (which is really what the warden of the prison thought should have been done all along, but he had orders from higher-up to keep them together until there was a concrete reason not to). They are each left to mourn the loss of Ryan and of their hopes for freedom alone in solitary confinement. They are doomed to die; a hearing has yet to take place to determine for sure whether or not they will be executed, but the three imprisoned Sliders know that the question is not ultimately whether or not they will be executed, but when. Fans must wait until �End of the Road� to learn the fates of Maggie, Dianna, and Mallory.

THE END