The Fire Within
- Written By // Josef Anderson
- Director // Jefery Levy
- Music // Stephen Graziano
Reviews
// Earth Prime
// External Reviews
Worlds Visited
Baseball World
Rembrandt was on a hot streak in a game of Home Run Derby, and ready to take the crowd’s bets against him.
Inferno
Arturo says it best: “This entire world is on fire!” possibly from extreme volcanic activity or natural gas deposits. It’s barren of life, but home to a single Flame that is very much alive — which follows the four through the vortex. Some debate has raged over the fact that Quinn said at the end of the episode that they’ve “got to get [the Flame] home.” Also, the Flame stated earlier that it had the power to send itself home. So it’s likely that they came back, dropped it off and then went sliding randomly again.
Refinery World
Southern California must have been a popular vacation spot 65 million years ago on this world, too, since most of the dinosaurs died here instead of the Middle East, providing the locals with an abundance of gasoline. (Not to be confused with Oil World from FeverFeverThe Fire Within.)
Details
- On the Home Run Derby virtual batting cage screen, Rembrandt had 58 homeruns and a total score of 33028 at the “Major League” level. He then hits his 59th dinger and ties the all-time high score with his 60th homer to the crowd’s delight.
- Ironically, the sign on the outside of the batting cage reads “Warning: Only one person allowed in the cage at any time.” Quinn then opens the fence and steps inside with Wade and the Professor.
- The instructions for the Home Run Derby™ game per the sign on the inside of the cage are:
- Take bat from holder.
- Insert Money.
- Press START.
- Always keep both feet in the batter’s box.
- Always keep both hands on the bat while swinging.
- Replace bat when game is over.
- While watching the news broadcast, Quinn is holding a newspaper with a headline that reads “Pan-Global Stands Firm.” The headline is in reference to the contract negotiations between Pan-Global Oil and the workers union “The Brotherhood of Petrol Workers.”
- In the grocery store, one of the products on the shelf is Lirio soap, it’s right next to the “Sodium Fluoride” toothpaste that Amanda steals.
- Some of the picketers’ signs read: “PGO Unfair”; “Pan Global Unfair”; “On Strike”; “Save Our Children”; “No Health, No Wealth”; “Child Killers;” “Children Are Our Future.”
- The license plate of the yellow GMC truck that the flame hides behind reads “3G44626.”
- The matching frequency for the Flame is 6562.72 Angstroms.
- Just before Quinn feeds the Flame newsprint, a television infomercial is visible advertising “Dr. Coheeba’s medically proven” weight-loss Aerobiciser. “All it takes is $19.95 and a credit card.”
Cultural References
- Quinn chidingly asks Remmy if he wants to sing “Light My Fire” to the Flame. “Light My Fire” was a hit by “The Doors” in the summer of 1967. It stayed in the Billboard No. 1 spot for three weeks.
- Quinn, in trying to converse with the Flame, gets it to repeat the line “Mr. Watson, come here.” Those were the first words ever spoken over a telephone line. The full line, “Watson, come here. I want you,” was spoken by Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) on March 10, 1876. Mr. Watson refers to Bell’s assistant, who was on the other end of the line in a room down the hall.
- Arturo says that they can make a decision about what to do with the Flame after their “fireside chat” has ended. In the 1930s and 40s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used to address the nation via a weekly radio program in which he would talk about the state of the union and later the state of the Second World War. Roosevelt called these programs “Fireside Chats.”
Character Information
- Arturo says that when he was a boy his father used to scare him by telling stories of the Corracha Cagalt—the “blue-flame spirits of fire that punish naughty boys.”
- Wade helped take care of her cousin when she had her first child.
- Facing death by fire, Wade tells Rembrandt of her long-kept desire to one day have a baby. “Not now, I mean maybe in a couple of years,” she says. “But I wanna have a baby.”
- Wade’s mother was her age when Wade was born.
Notable Quotes
- “Considering we’re leaving this dimension, I think it’s fair to say all bets are off.”—Quinn, to the stunned batting cage crowd just before he slides.
- “The hell it was.”—Arturo’s response to Rembrandt’s observation that maybe Inferno was actually Hell.
- “Nothing appeals like a good set of wheels!”—Rembrandt’s reaction to the classic Cadillac, and he’s apparently speaking for the excited Arturo as well.
- “That wasn’t spaghetti. That was oil slick with noodles.”—Arturo’s opinion of the Sliders’ first meal on Refinery World.
- “I thought only the British were capable of destroying breakfast.”—Arturo’s opinion of the Sliders’ second meal.
- “If you expect me to carry you again, Mr. Brown, I suggest you lose a little weight.”—Arturo, about the warehouse rescue. For the record, this is the second time the professor has joked about Rembrandt’s weight.
Arturoisms
“Five more seconds I’d have been Beef Wellington.”—notable because, oddly, this is the third reference in the series Arturo has made to Beef Wellington.
Money Matters
- On Baseball World, Rembrandt ‘the treasurer’ left what money the Sliders had on the bar to try his hand in a betting batting cage. Soon, he was cleaning up but with $600 riding on his record breaking performance, the others forced him through the vortex before he could collect his winnings, pay the hotel bill or retrieve the money from the bar. Bottom line? They have to get jobs.
- But after they do, money isn’t a problem anymore: they get a hotel, Wade goes grocery shopping and the four go out for a night on the town; and Rembrandt buys two pairs of sunglasses (red and purple).
- Anyway, they steal all of the computer equipment they need to eventually study the Flame.
Nitpicks and Errors
- They actually named the arsonist Ashton!
- Despite the fact that there’s plenty of oil drilling and refining in Southern California, Arturo takes one look at the abundance of gas guzzlers on the street and assumes that the world’s oil deposits are only in Los Angeles? Come on.
- How did Wade afford all that hi-tech computer equipment on one day’s temp salary? We know she bought a projection unit and a laptop. Are scabs that valuable?
- Yes, the hotel room is a standing set. Still, did they need to use it for the room they stay in on Refinery World?
- Why are some people using typewriters and desk lamps while others are using computers and talking with cordless phones? Is this some weird leap in technology?
- In an editing error, during the warehouse rescue, Arturo prompts Quinn to look at the human form of the Flame—before it forms.
- The Flame takes its human form and speaks to the Sliders, even though it doesn’t have the computer hardware that Quinn provided in his laboratory.
- The Flame can get itself home. Why can’t it help the Sliders do the very same thing?
Neatpicks
- Just before the union busters break open Quinn’s laboratory door he yells “Go away, we’re spraying for cockroaches,” a possible play on Jerry O’Connell’s appearance in the 1996 summer-release film Joe’s Apartment which cast O’Connell with thousands of roaches.
Guest Starring
- Anthony Tyler Quinn as J.C. Ashton
- Brigitta Dau as Amanda
- Lynn Clark as Diana Sylvius
- Terry Markwell as TV Reporter [Tess Martin]
- Ferdinand Carangelo as The Foreman
Co-Starring
- Veronica Cartwright as The Voice of the Flame
Unaccredited
- The dancer on stage during breakfast.
Script Archive
Click on the links below to download rare scripts, outlines, and memos associated with this episode.
September 24, 1996
Production Draft
October 11, 1996
2nd Pink Revisions
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The Inside Slide
The working title for this episode in pre-production was “The Substance of Fire.”
· · ·
“This week we’re in fire world—we go to a world where natural gases are abundant and fires are all over the place, and then we go to an oil refinery world and bring back some fire with us,” Jerry says enthusiastically. “This week it’s pretty hot on set!”
Cleavant Derricks actually spoke highly of the writing in this episode.
“I am not a writer, so all I can say is that when I read what comes in, if there is not a whole lot of gratification there because my palate is not satisfied, my imagination is not stretched, my character’s imagination isn’t stretched, so their depths aren’t stretched, then the audiences can’t get a chance to really see us in a full, complete picture,” he says. “Sometimes we have hit it, like with the idea of a living flame you can communicate with.”
· · ·
Digital Muse’s Brad Hayes created the CGI of “The Flame,” which Jerry O’Connell calls amazing. “We were all staring at what was supposed to be a huge fire, when it was just these huge lights putting a fire pattern on our faces,” he says. “Then you see it all cut together, and we are actually standing amidst a huge fire. It is surprising when you look at it from that sense. I love it and it keeps things exciting.”
· · ·
With regard to the batting cage, the last time Cleavant Derricks hit that well was in the film The Slugger’s Wife. Unfortunately, Derricks wasn’t at all adept at baseball when he got the role in that film.” [Baseball was] not one of my sports in school,” he says in The Slugger’s Wife press kit. “I was into football and track. Fortunately, most of my baseball scenes are in the dugout or in the dressing room, but I did have one sequence where I had to get a hit. Because of that, I spent weeks working out with the team when I wasn’t shooting to get my swing down right. Only I will know how much work went into that brief shot.” The practice obviously paid off.