Giant mutated earthworms are afoot in a sleepy little town the rest of the country has forgotten. Quinn comes to the aid of an attractive geologist who’s partner has gone missing. Unable to get the lazy sheriff to help out, Quinn volunteers the Sliders to hunt down the missing man. While Remmy and Wade pay the bills, Arturo makes a string of alarming discoveries about the town including just a handful of tombstones since the late ’40s. Wade, smitten with her employer, follows him to a secret meeting where she learns the town’s true secret — the citizens never age thanks to the product of a radiated worm. Arturo is lured into a trap by the townspeople to feed the worm. Fortunately, the worm saves some of its food for later and the others find him undamaged in the worm’s lair. Quinn blows the worm and all of its offspring to kingdom come.
![]() | Worm WorldA mining experiment gone awry has turned an innocuous worm into a flesh-eating immortal mutant. |
We vow to keep the secret. We vow to keep the silence.
We [thank them for] the sacrifice.
We vow to keep the secret. We vow to keep the silence.
We ask for [your] forgiveness.
We vow to keep the secret. We vow to keep the silence.
We prey they did not suffer.
We vow to keep the secret. We vow to keep the silence.
We prey their souls are at peace.
We vow to keep the secret. We vow to keep the silence.
While Arturo talks about his days spent in Eden in North Africa, the closed captioning doesn’t follow. Once the professor says “I don’t know about Paradise …” the closed captioning goes on to read ” … but there is a place called Barnette” rather than quoting his line about Eden.
In the 1940s, Paradise Beach was a simple uranium mine until a freak accident killed 50 people and mutated some kind of underground earthworm. While the worm does feed on humans, the black, oily by-product of its waste contains a component that somehow stops the aging process. Many residents thought of that by-product as a gift, others believed it was the devil’s work and refused to eat it.
The creature needs human flesh to stay alive so the residents feed it with the bodies of drifters, criminals and outcast — essentially anybody that won’t be missed by family or friends.
On a more global scale, there was a borderconflict between the United States and Canada that left many dead and many more maimed and wounded.
Exciting stuff, eh?
After location shooting had taken place for this episode, producers approached star John Rhys-Davies and told him that his character, Professor Maximillian Arturo, would be killed in the two-parter The Exodus.
In an interview with Earth Prime, Cleavant Derricks detailed how it was done, and how the high spirits amidst the staff and cast disappeared the moment it was announced.
“Hey, John,” said a producer, “you know the two-parter you wrote? Well, we’re gonna kill your character in it.”
For the record, cast are never routinely and cavalierly fired in such a fashion. When a contract is terminated by the studio, it’s done in private for obvious reasons.
Ironically, during this shoot, Rhys-Davies quietly approached the other members of the cast — Derricks, Sabrina Lloyd and Jerry O’Connell — to tell them that he had heard that they would be fired.
Why? In turn; Jerry O’Connell was not perceived as a big enough star and would be replaced with someone who was, Sabrina Lloyd was not sexy enough to draw the male audience and Derricks’ character, Rembrandt “Cryin’ Man” Brown was a cipher that the writers couldn’t figure out.
In the end, however, Rhys-Davies would be the one cut loose.