Genesis
After angering a bunch of biker Indians, Quinn finally repairs the timer so it can track Wade and Rembrandt’s photon trail to Earth Prime. After landing in an apocalyptic Los Angeles, Maggie finds that her lungs have adapted so that she can breathe the atmosphere. However, Quinn is startled to see a Jeep of Kromaggs, an advanced race of ape, drive down the street. The Kromaggs have invaded this world and have destroyed most of the major metropolitan areas and shipped the women off to breeding camps.
Walking to the Chandler Hotel, Quinn and Maggie meet up with a resistance cell leader named Marta who knew Rembrandt and Wade well. Marta tells Quinn and Maggie that their friends were captured and enlist the aid of a computer hacker named Trevor Blue to gain entrance to the Kromagg Re-Education Camp. During the escape, Quinn rescues Rembrandt but is captured himself and is tortured by a Kromagg leader. During his torture, Quinn learns that Wade has been shipped off-world.
Meanwhile, Rembrandt, Maggie and Marta stage another rescue attempt to get Quinn back.
In a Kromagg detention center, Quinn coincidentally meets his mother, who reveals that he is not from this world and that his real parents are Sliders. They left Quinn and his brother with their doubles to guard their safety during the Human-Kromagg War on Quinn’s home world. Quinn doubts the veracity of his mother’s claim, but she digs into her arm and produces a microdot which she says will back her assertions.
Another resistance raid liberates Quinn at the cost of Marta’s life. Back at the Chandler Hotel, Quinn places the microdot on his forehead and learns his family’s back story, including the fact that he had a brother. Quinn decides he must slide to find his brother and to find a weapon that will destroy the Kromaggs, and Rembrandt and Maggie join him.
Worlds Visited
 | Indian Biker WorldAfter ten worlds in the past three months, it comes as little surprise that Quinn and Maggie have angered the locals. Indian biker gangs rule and they aren’t very happy since Quinn’s no-good double burned down the bikers’ casino at Little Big Horn. |
 | Earth Triple Prime/Kromagg Outpost 161Is Quinn home? He can smell Mrs. Randall’s chicken soup and his mother found that necklace he bought her for her birthday… |
Details
- The Sliders now stay at the Chandler Hotel.
- Computer geek Trevor Blue’s base of operations is dubbed the “House of Blues” (a play on both his name and the restaurant/club franchise).
- On the CB, Trevor talks to someone working for the M-1 arm of the resistance pocket.
- Rembrandt’s Kromagg file in their database:
BOOKING #: 13558
Driver’s License #: 57200272
STATE: California
ADDRESS: unknown
DESCENT: B [likely for black]
HAIR: B[lack]
EYES: B[rown]
HEIGHT: 5-20 [?]
WEIGHT: 175
AKA NICKNAME: Cryin’ Man
BIRTHPLACE: San Francisco, CA
ARRESTING: Mumunit W-11
LOCATION OF ARREST: Hollywood
CHARGES: SEC-8176, Treason, Sedition, Driving without a license. - On his computer, Trevor pulls up a blue print of the “E.C.H.O. Floor Plan, Situation Room, Top View” at the Kromagg camp.
- When Maggie uses the Kromagg key in the detention center, the sign above the panel reads “All Incoming Prisoners Must Be Approved By The Watch Commander.”
- The sign to the left of the panel reads “Authorized Personnel Only.”
Character Information
- At the Chandler Hotel, Wade waitressed in the three months after she and Rembrandt arrived. On the same token, Rembrandt sang and played music in the bar of the Chandler Hotel before he and Wade were taken by the Kromaggs.
- Via the Kromagg computer file, we learn that Rembrandt was born in San Francisco.
- Shortly after the invasion, Wade was kidnapped by the Kromaggs and taken to another world and placed in a breeding camp where she was subjected experiments involving cross-species replication.
- Rembrandt has lost track of his family’s whereabouts since the invasion.
- Quinn’s faux mom gives the best preamble for the following information: “This is going to sound crazy, but I swear to you, it’s true.” According to Quinn’s mom, Quinn is actually from another parallel world. It seems that when Quinn was just a baby, his birth parents entered into a civil war with the other species living there — the Kromaggs. In trying to fight the Kromaggs, Mike and Elizabeth Mallory began to develop a weapon to destroy them. Meanwhile, they used sliding technology to slide and drop Quinn off with their doubles — promising that they would return for young Quinn once their world had destroyed the Kromagg threat. Meanwhile, so as not to put all of their eggs in one basket, Quinn’s birth parents also slid into another parallel world and dropped off Quinn’s brother with their doubles on that world while making the same promise to return. When Quinn was about two years old, his birth parents, having defeated the Kromaggs, returned to claim Quinn, but his adoptive parents were too attached to young Quinn to let him go, and they hid the boy from their doubles so as not to lose him.
Money Matters
- Before the invasion, Wade and Rembrandt found it necessary to get jobs while waiting for the others to arrive.
- Marta jokes that Rembrandt owes her $50.
Notable Quotes
- “Yeah, Wade said you were a tough bitch.” — Marta, to Maggie after a Mexican stand-off.
- “You’ve never seen weapons like theirs. Freaking space ships shooting lasers. The whole sci-fi enchilada.” — Marta, on the Kromaggs’ attack of this world.
- “Mad Marta, patron saint of assault and battery.” — Trevor’s nickname for Marta.
- “Marry me. Be my love monkey.” — Trevor, to Maggie, in dialogue that sounds more like it’s from Buffy the Vampire Slayer than Sliders.
- “Stay with me man, things might get a little weird.” — Quinn, before he puts the microdot on his forehead, although he might as well be describing the revelations in this episode.
- “The good news is, I’m not crazy. The bad news is, it’s all true.” — Quinn’s take on the revelations in this episode.
- “After that, this gizmo’s worth about as much as an eight-track tape player.” — Rembrandt, regarding the timer’s usefulness after the countdown has expired.
Nitpicks/Errors
- In San Francisco, the Sliders always stayed at the Motel 12 and the Dominion Hotel. While in Los Angeles (during the third season) the group stayed at the Royal Chancellor Hotel. However in this episode, Quinn says that he’ll check the Chandler Hotel for Wade and Rembrandt. He also mentions to Maggie that the Chandler Hotel is where they “always used to stay.” Bottom Line? It’s not and never has been.
- Since when is Rembrandt from San Francisco? All prior indications revealed a Motown adolescence and a deep south upbringing.
Neatpicks
- That the Kromaggs charged Rembrandt with driving without a license is pretty funny stuff.
- As amazing as the story of Quinn’s origins seems, it goes a long way to explain why Quinn’s adoptive mother never really seemed surprised that her son had been sliding around for three years and why he was obsessed with his basement laboratory. Was his creation of sliding an accident after all? Or was his design and development of the sliding machine pre-programmed in his brain since birth?
- Rembrandt says “That first time that the Kromaggs had us, they had me convinced that I was talking to my father, remember?” He is referring to the events in Invasion.
Rewind That!
As Quinn and Maggie are leaving the House of Blues Trevor gives Quinn the Star Trek Vulcan “live long and prosper” hand symbol (a space between the middle and ring finger). Quinn, the consummate nerd that he is, shoots it right back at him.
Rewind That!
After Marta, Maggie and Quinn open the first door in the detention cell, a poorly dubbed voice-over of Quinn saying “Kromaggs can really mess with your brain. Who knows what you’ll find” is not included in the closed captioning. The line apparently was put in later to explain to new viewers that Kromaggs have mastered mind manipulation (seen in Invasion) and that that’s the reason for Rembrandt’s initial reaction of disbelief upon seeing Quinn.
History Lesson
Kromagg Outpost 161 was invaded by the Kromagg Dynasty just three short months ago. The major cities were attacked initially, scoring “awesome casualties. San Francisco fell to the Kromaggs shortly after Los Angeles did and those who weren’t killed were taken prisoner. As such, the Kromaggs have prison camps all over the state.
· · ·
Kromagg Double Prime was the site of a bloody interspecies war — Human versus Kromagg. Fought over 20 years ago, the humans finally developed a device that pushed Kromaggs off their world entirely. It’s unknown what caused the conflict, as it is known that the Kromagg and the Human populations lived in relative peace for a lon time before the war.
Quinn’s parents, Michael and Elizabeth Mallory, are two of the primary inventors of sliding on this world and are also largely responsible for the weapon that forced the Kromaggs to retreat to the safety of another world.
The Inside Slide
“It’s a fairly tough show; it’s dark emotionally, it gives the actors a chance to stretch, and I hesitated to make it so dark but to introduce a race of higher primates that are absolutely ruthless you need a rather dark palette,” says David Peckinpah. “The Sci-Fi Channel is willing to play ball with us, so we’re going for it.”
· · ·
“We’ve also brought the Kromaggs back,” notes Marc Scott Zicree. “That’s the race of monstrous, other dimensional Sliders introduced in second season’s Invasion. They were characters that Tracy created that were offshoots of human ancestors, and we thought they were very good adversaries. I didn’t like their uniforms, and there were certain things that I thought were kind of geeky about them, but we’ve been able to address that. The whole idea of an offshoot race that’s more intelligent and more ruthless than man is very interesting, so we brought them back as our villains.”
Although the Kromaggs will be “ruthless and relentless,” the writers hope to make them more than Mongols of paratime by developing them as individuals and as a culture. Zicree explained, “Although they’re the enemy, they do have, from their viewpoint, a valid reason for what they do. So although we’re going to keep them as the adversary and fairly dark characters, we’re going to get to know them as people and as individuals.
“So the face of the enemy will become — I was going to say ‘a human face;’ it’s not quite a human face, but it’s certainly a personality that we can connect with… and also we’ll find there are differing philosophies in the Kromagg culture, so some of the Kromaggs we encounter will be more hard-edged than others; they aren’t a uniform mindset. As with any culture, there’s diversity.”
· · ·
Enough about Kromaggs. Where’s Wade?
“Wade is lost in a Kromagg breeding camp,” says Kari Wuhrer. “She’s good breeding stock!”
Sabrina Lloyd, according to the Dimension of Continuity, left the show during the third and fourth season hiatus after friction on the set between her and Wuhrer led her to demand that Executive Producer David Peckinpah pick between the two of them. Peckinpah chose Wuhrer — and Wade was left to occasional mentions as a breeding host for Humaggs.
· · ·
The premiere airing of “Genesis” netted The Sci-Fi Channel a 2.2 rating — the highest premiere rating that the station had ever received up until that point. A 2.2 rating translates into approximately one million homes — not bad for a cable channel!
· · ·
According to Marc Scott Zicree, he amassed ten pages of corrective notes for David Peckinpah’s original draft of the script.
Guest Stars
- Sandra Hess as Marta
- Charley Lang as Starke
- Bodhi Pine Elfman as Trevor Blue
- Linda Henning1 as Mrs. Mallory
- John Walcutt2 as Quinn’s Father
- Marnie McPhail3 as Quinn’s Mother
- Danso Gordon as Otis
Co-Starring
- Mongo Brownlee as Quinn’s Guard
Featuring
- Tracie May as Kromagg aide
- Monte Perlin4 as Forklift operator
- Ted Barba as Kromagg guard
- Buddy Daniels as Horny Kromagg guard
- Linda Henning also plays Amanda Mallory in the Pilot, The Guardian, The Exodus, part I and The Seer.
- John Walcutt portrays Mike Mallory again in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, Slidecage, My Brother’s Keeper and Revelations.
- Marnie McPhail plays Elizabeth Mallory in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? and Revelations.
- Monte Perlin played a motorcycle guard in Double Cross.