redux

This episode opens with the Sliders and about four others all crammed into a humvee engaging in a stereotypical gun battle with KroMaggs in the stereotypical backlot-looking war zone as they rush to find a safe place to slide from. They end up in an alley, hop out of the humvee, activate the vortex, take time to say a long goodbye to their new friends (in spite of the fact that there are bullets flying everywhere), and slide out.

They emerge from the wormhole (with the Professor landing on hard pavement and everyone else falling on him) into a dimension where the Earth�s orbit is decaying towards the sun. Of course, this isn�t happening naturally (because that would be far too simple an explanation); it�s the result of a mad scientist�s evil experiments. The mad scientist, one Oberon Geiger, mysteriously vanished about four years ago (he was wiped out along with all the other Geiger doubles when the Geiger we know first became unstuck), but the planet is still being pulled toward the sun. This world will be uninhabitable in just over three weeks; the sliding window doesn�t arrive for another six weeks. They find all this out by talking to Bernie the newspaper vendor. When the vendor expresses the standard disbelief in the fact that the Sliders don�t know what�s going on, Colin gives the man the old �We�re from Canada� spiel, and even though the whole earth-colliding-with-the-sun thing would be featured prominently on TV and radio and in every newspaper and magazine in the world, Bernie inexplicably believes the explanation. The Sliders split up and begin to deal with their impending doom in various ways.

The Professor joins up with a team of scientists who are working to find a way to save the day, preferably at the last possible second. This team of scientists is lead by Dr. Vladimir Jariabek and also includes this world�s versions of Steven Jensen, Michael Mallory, Mike Mallory Jr. (a Mallory double), Kyle Wing, Dr. Rembrandt Brown, Dianna Davis, and Conrad Bennish.

While the Professor works with them, Logan and Colin look to each other for support during the final days. They soon elope and rush off to the same hotel they always go to, the Dominican Hotel, to consummate their developing relationship before it�s too late.

Rembrandt goes to church for spiritual guidance and finds himself drawn into the church choir. He soon becomes the lead singer and begins to fall in love with a woman in the choir, who has signed him to a record contract. At this point, Rembrandt seems to remember (for no reason at all) the Slidewave technology (from �World Killer�). He rushes off to tell the Professor about it just as his new girlfriend�s wrestler husband (very special guest star, The Rock) arrives.

After having been told about the possibility of using a Slidewave device to save the world, the Professor arrives at the Dominican Hotel and interrupts Logan and Colin just as they�re about to consummate their marriage. The Professor seems unaware of what he�s just interrupted and tells Logan that he needs her help in developing a Slidewave device. She quickly gets dressed and goes with the Professor to the U-Cal campus, where the scientists are working. After Logan leaves, Colin decides to go get something to eat. He emerges onto the street and is immediately killed when a madman religious fanatic who is trying to get in good with God before the end by killing all the world�s sinners opens fire with a semiautomatic into an unsuspecting crowd of people.

Wade now suddenly comes back into the picture (a quick line of dialogue that says she was at her parents� doubles� house is thrown in to explain where she�s been) as she arrives at U-Cal. She�s been asked to join Remmy in scouting alternate worlds for a suitable place for this world�s population to be relocated to (a la �The Exodus�). Using a hastily assembled timer created by some of this world�s scientists (in conjunction with the Prof. and Logan), Wade and Rembrandt go off to do their thing. The Professor, Logan, and the other scientists continue their work. When Logan finds out about Colin�s death, she reacts by committing suicide.

Wade and Remmy come across dinosaur-infested worlds, KroMagg-occupied worlds, and bad-movie-rip-off worlds, eventually finding a world that is perfectly habitable yet conveniently devoid of any human life. They return to the doomed world and report that they�ve found somewhere to send the people of the planet. With only minutes to spare before the world is completely incinerated, the Slidewave device is completed. They activate it. Something goes wrong with the device and instead of shifting everyone to another dimension it begins vaporizing every living thing on earth. For some bizarre reason, the device begins wiping people out on the opposite side of the Earth first, conveniently giving the Professor just enough time to realize that the flaw in the device was something that only Logan could have caught, and would have caught, had she not killed herself. The Professor makes some comment on the irony and then the killer Slidewave vaporizes him and everyone else around him.

There are several shots of empty, lifeless cities around the world (shots which are clearly in reality matte paintings). Then, back in San Francisco, a wormhole opens and out come our five Sliders. It turns out we�ve been watching the wrong group of Sliders the whole time. The Sliders see the abandoned streets and wonder where everyone went, but they don�t have time to find out because the next window is arriving in seven seconds. They slide out of the doomed world unharmed. It is of course at the very moment that the wormhole closes that the surface of the planet is incinerated by its proximity to the sun.

THE END

NOTE: In case you couldn�t tell, this was a tongue-in-cheek episode. It was poking fun at such over-used Sliders� plot devices as the doomed world that the Sliders are able to save, the recurring characters, the movie rip-offs, the KroMaggs, the opening gun battles, the chick-of-the-week, the killing-off of doubles, the ever-changing hotel, the �We�re from Canada� explanation, the mad scientists, etc., etc., etc. The title, �Redux,� means �return� or �brought back� and refers to the re-use of all these old plot points and ideas. The earth-colliding-with-the-sun idea was taken from Tracy Torm�s brilliant-but-unused �Heat of the Moment� story, as was the idea of the real Sliders showing up at the end. The rest of the plot was mostly a combination of �Last Days� and �The Exodus� with some other stuff thrown in as well. I don�t mean this to be insulting towards Sliders�I love the show (why else would I have wasted so much time on a non-existent sixth season?)�I just think its good to laugh at yourself once and a while. With the series about to end, I thought it�d be fun to remind viewers of things past without throwing together a cheesy clip-show; this episode managed to do that while hopefully giving fans a good laugh at the same time.