Summer of Love
After slide after slide attempting to get home, the timer picks an inopportune time to burn out — the empty city of San Francisco is besieged by a plague of Spiderwasps. Rembrandt and Wade are able to escape, but the vortex collapses behind them. A second tunnel is opened just in time to ferry Quinn and Arturo away, but there is no sign of the others.
Unknown to them, all four have landed in an America still fighting the culture wars of the 1960s. Rembrandt and Wade’s slide is witnessed by a wealthy faction of hippies who revere them as prophets. The two scientists fare worse, holing up in a loft to repair the timer. Rembrandt, believing himself trapped forever, takes the place of his deceased double only to find the funeral had been premature. While escaping his outraged wife, he reunites with Quinn and Arturo as they flee from Oliver North’s newly empowered FBI. The damage to the timer prevents it from opening a tunnel at will. It can only access the gate at a specific time which it now counts down toward.
Worlds Visited
 | Spiderwasp WorldVenezuelan labs are about as secure as you’d expect — unfortunately, that means that they’ve released deadly hybrid spiderwasps into the wild. |
 | Hippie WorldWho would’ve thought losing the Battle of the Coral Sea would push the peace movement back 30 years? Or lead to the election of Oliver North and the suspension of civil rights? |
 | WaterworldSure, San Francisco may look dry, but that’s during low tide. Wait for high tide and you’ll see seven story tsunamis coming your way. Here the polar ice caps have melted leaving the city of San Francisco hundreds of feet underwater. |
Details
- A television broadcast provides the details on the large and deadly Spiderwasps:
- It is a hybrid between a wasp and a spider.
- It was created in a Venezuelan lab as a potential form of pest control.
- A queen escaped from the compound in 1987 and in just eight years, her brood has moved 2,000 miles north leaving a path of massive devastation in its wake.
- It has a wing span of up to one foot, an immunity to pesticides, barbed stingers filled with venom and the ability to eat through walls “rendering most buildings extremely vulnerable to attack.”
- Rembrandt promises Wade that he will search Chaney Street for Arturo and Quinn.
- Rembrandt’s double is Sargeant 1st Class — 42nd Infantry in the U.S. Army.
- Rembrandt’s double was about 27 when he started going out with Sharon. This can be surmised because he asked her for a date to the prom in high school (he probably about 17) but it took her 10 years to finally say yes to a date.
- Quinn and Arturo decide to pool their funds to rent a loft where they plan to work out a calculation, based on the (Alexander) Helix Spiral Theory, that will allow them to slide out of Hippie World.
- Ezra Tweak rents Quinn and Arturo her loft at 14 Bell Street.
- The army telegram is signed by Lt. William A. Calley.
- Quinn activates the gate with two minutes and 17 seconds left on the timer.
Signs on Waterworld
- Cash for tapes & CDs
- God is Alive Dead
- The End is Here
- Grace is Faith
- Fear is D.O.A,
- Tony’s Burgers, Floats & Fries.
- The ones between cash… and the last one are spray painted.
Signs on Hippie World
- Lacey Maribelles and Hardware
- Outback Cong!, US Out!
- End the War Now
- U.S out of Australia
- End the War Now!
Character Information
- Quinn is an advanced physics student and a specialist in superstring theory. He lives at 3759 Lab…(rest missing)
- Arturo is a noted international physicist and is an expert in the fields of Ontology and Cosmology. He lives at 17A Cave…(rest missing) and his middle initial is P.
- Wade lives at 302-714 Ma…(rest missing) and is attending North Shore Junior College where she majors in extemporaneous poetry and prose. Her middle name is Kathleen.
- Little is learned about Rembrandt because Agent Yenn doesn’t produce a driver’s license photo, only an out-of-date publicity shot of “The Crying Man.”
- We also learn that the four “have been missing since Tuesday.”
- Quinn was a quarterback on his high school football team and favored a wishbone offence.
- Wade is a Virgo, which puts her birthday between August 23 and September 22.
- Quinn is Libra which puts his birthday between September 23 and October 22.
- Rembrandt is Gemini which puts his birthday between May 21 and June 21.
- Rembrandt can’t swim.
Money Matters
- While Wade and Rembrandt don’t really need money, it seems Quinn and Arturo have just enough to rent a loft, buy a bag of cookies, a jar of peanut butter, a box of Ritz Crackers and complete second-hand hippie outfits.
Notable Quotes
- “Of course, who else could be here but us, the happy wanderers.” — Arturo, upon hearing that everyone should evacuate the city in Spiderwasp World.
- “Oh, and that’s supposed to make me feel better, that these spiders can fly and sting my head off?!” — Rembrandt, to Wade, after she tells him that the insects are more of a wasp than a spider.
- “Right on, right on.” — Cezanne Brown.
- “Musical talent? you couldn’t carry a tune if it was strapped to your back!” — Rembrandt to his braggart big brother.
- “Ya, and I’m Snoop Hippie Dogg.” — Police officer, in response to Arturo’s claim that he’s a university professor, a reference to popular rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg.
Arturoisms
- “Blistering idiot.” — to a mime on the street and again later to FBI agent Yenn.
- “Impudent yahoos.” — to the cops in the coffee shop.
Nitpicks/Errors
- When Wade and Rembrandt first land at the commune, why would Rembrandt ask what year it was? He should know by now that the year is always the same. (This could be because this episode was supposed to air second, after the Pilot.)
- If you listen carefully, John Rhys-Davies flubs his line while trying to plead his case to Agent Yenn. He almost says “pipe bam” instead of “pipe bomb.”
- The rat Mrs. Tweak holds is clearly not real.
- Before the end slide, Quinn says that because the timer is busted the four may land on “six, six-hundred or six million” worlds but they have already been to (or know of) at least six worlds.
- When they’re sliding out near the commune, Rembrandt thanks Skid and Seeker for the use of the car and says “sorry about the lights,” a reference to Sharon’s barrage of buckshot as he was speeding away from her house. But it appears that the tail lights were not shot out as evident to the absence of glass on the street during the “peel out” scene and no sound effect of broken glass.
- At the end, right before sliding off Hippie Earth, Arturo exclaims that they have an awful lot of sliding to do. This is a dub, because Arturo’s lips say “jumping” to do. “Jumping” also appears in the closed captioning.
Neatpicks
- Cezanne, while explaining this world to Remmy, quotes a line from the song “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy.
- As Wade readies herself to slide through she turns to the handful of stunned hippies watching the vortex and says: “Remember, all you need is love,” to wit the hippies respond, in unison: “Love is all you need.” An obvious reference to the Beatles’ song. Another subtle Beatles reference would be made in The King is Back.
Rewind That!
Watching Rembrandt listen to his own funeral while hungrily devouring a doughnut and then bump his head in a door way while being carried around the room. A classic scene.
History Lesson
On Hippie World, the U.S. lost the battle of the Coral Sea during World War II and the Japanese invaded Australia. When the Nazis surrendered, the Russians entered the Pacific war and helped liberate North Australia. But they didn’t give it back after the war. In 1995, the north was attacking the “Outback Cong” south and the similarities to the Vietnam War prompts Arturo to assess: “Different Earths, identical mayhem.” (Alternate America’s strained ties with Australia are later re-explored in second season’s Love Gods.)
The Inside Slide
Once the completed shows started arriving at Fox, the broadcast order of the shows diverted from the continuity established in a certain number of the shows. “There was a very specific order,” says show co-creator Robert K. Weiss. “We’d had a lot of discussion at the outset about how tightly the shows should interlock, because when shows go into syndication, they are often not shown in the order they were broadcast; it turns out that many one-hour shows that must be seen chronologically don’t fare very well. So we didn’t want to do too much of that. However, since we had our characters escaping one world to slide into the next, we had a built-in problem.
“As we laid out the air order, it all would have made sense. When the network started seeing the shows as they came in, their consideration was how to build viewership. They wanted to start with what they felt was stronger material, and that was how ‘Fever‘ moved up in the viewing order.
“They were absolutely right, because if you start off with weak shows, you’re never going to build an audience. But it affected us in two ways; it affected how we went in and out of shows, and it also affected a couple of shows internally.
“For example, there was an explanation of the timer in the ‘Summer of Love’ episode, which was originally to follow the Pilot. On each slide, a window would open up after a predetermined amount of time, which was random. So, each time they arrive on a world, they look at the timer, which tells them how much time they have before that ‘window of opportunity’ opens up. They miss that window, and they’re stranded for 29.7 years.
“So when the air order was changed, that scene didn’t play properly, and we eliminated it. When we went into repeats, there was some discussion of what order they should be rebroadcast, but — as they weren’t about to re-edit the episode to put that material back in — we decided that there was no point in going back to the original air order. For the purists who are out there spotting there ‘continuity errors,’ they are absolutely right, but it was done for the overall benefit of the series.”
· · ·
“[Fox] did not like the way ‘Summer of Love’ was directed […they felt it was] too static,” Tracy Tormé says. “I think … it was behind schedule and went a bit over budget.” As a result, Tormé feels that Fox “turned on” the director, Canadian Mario Azzopardi.
“Unfortunately, that happens way too often in this business. Somebody doesn’t like someone for a dumb reason and it stinks. They weren’t thrilled with what he did on that show — I think he did a good job — but once that [snubbing] happens, it sometimes takes a couple of years for someone to wise up and use somebody again.”
· · ·
Fans may wonder what ever became of the FBI’s investigation of the sliding machine. Tracy Tormé explains:
“Well, the idea is that back on Earth, there’s somebody back here who pretty much dissected things and knows, and we even had an idea that there might be some FBI agents or people who would go after them at some point and get caught themselves in being lost from world to world,” he says. “So that was just another one of those things, you know, that we did a lot, that we sort of set up and then it was never taken anywhere. That was one of my favorite scenes, though. I like that scene [where] Bennish is hitting on a bong when the FBI shows up and they thought it was like a vase or something.”
· · ·
There were many things that were filmed for this episode (which was also the first one filmed of the season besides the Pilot) that didn’t end up making the final broadcast cut:
- Pictures of Newt Gingrich on a big billboard dressed in a Chairman Mao outfit giving a peace sign.
- Quinn explaining the functions of the timer to the others — the scene wasn’t needed because a scene in Prince of Wailsreiterated what was said and it aired before this episode.
- Wade’s conversation about astrology to the hippies at the commune was trimmed. “We lost a whole big chunk of that scene,” says Tormé. “Well, my wife [Jennifer] and I are both Aries and our dog [Willow] is an Aries — we were all born in like three days of each other — so I had a much longer scene where one of the hippies goes into a thing about that he’s and Aries and he’s discovered all of the problems within. It was a very funny scene but it got cut out of the final version.”
- “There’s also a fun scene between Quinn and Arturo where they’re at the blackboard and they’re talking about the Helix Spiral and the theory as to why they can open the gate briefly during that one minute of opportunity,” Tormé explains. “Then it was decided that, because the episode came in quite long — it was one of the longer original cuts that we ever had — we had to take out several minutes one way or another.”
While Tormé wishes that such scenes don’t have to be snipped, he realizes that it’s a fact of television but still, as he says it’s “always painful.”
· · ·
Gerry Nairn’s role as crazy Mace Moon was also cut back not because of time, however, but because the concept of the Moon character didn’t evolve quickly enough.
“I’m a Moonatic, don’t be a lunatic, come on down and buy from me,” Tormé recalls, chanting the electronics store owner’s intended jingle. “That was a character who had a lot bigger part originally as written and then it got whittled down. It was supposed to be one of the running themes throughout this episode that you met Mace Moon in different incarnations.”
It was the creators’ intentions that viewers were supposed to see Moon on all three worlds in this episode and each time he was supposed to be a “I must be crazy to have prices this low” kind of character.
“It was an idea that wasn’t really fleshed out by the time it got to the screen,” Tormé says. “It was a lot better fleshed out on the page.”
· · ·
Another instance where “it worked better on paper” is the rest of the scene that has the hippies trying to equate the Sliders’ visit with the lyrics of a song. Tormé had originally written a full set of lyrics for the song though only a line or two make it into the final version.
“I just sort of saw these hippies as a lovable, naive group of dreamers,” Tormé explains. “I wrote this very Dylanish song called ‘The Summer of Love’ (see Song Lyrics) and it was supposed to be that the arrival of the Sliders fit the lyrics of that song in their goofy way of thinking and I guess I was sort of poking fun at people who find all kinds of things in song lyrics especially in the ’60s.”
Unfortunately, once more, the clock forced a knife on the extended scene.
“Again, which so often happens, it’s an idea that’s very well thought out on paper but by the time it’s been shot and edited it sort of becomes a lot less tangible.”
· · ·
Robert (Bob) Lee, who plays Agent Harold Yenn in this episode, has fond memories from his days on the Sliders set.
“I wish that time had been longer,” he says. “I spent four shooting days [and] I remember that everyone was very courteous and pleasant, from Jason Gaffney to John Rhys-Davies and Jerry O’Connell. That might not sound like much, but it’s not always the case in TV.”
But while the filming held fond memories for Lee, the end result left him speechless — literally.
“My least favorite memory was, when the show was first broadcast, finding out that my voice had been dubbed with someone who had more of a foreign accent, which is not how I did the part at all,” Lee recalls. “I sent a message to Tracy Tormé, who took the trouble to phone me in Seattle to say that he agreed with me that the dubbing was a mistake, that I sounded like something out of a ‘Godzilla’ movie, and that he hoped to bring back my character, and that my American voice would remain.”
Guest Stars
- Obba Babatundé1 as Cezanne Brown
- Deborah Lacey as Sharon [Brown]
- Arthur Reggie III as Rembrandt Brown, Jr.
- Jason Gaffney2 as Conrad Bennish, Jr.
Co-Starring
- Gerry Nairn3 as Mace Moon
- Michele Goodger as [FBI agent] Copeland
With
- Robert Lee4 as [FBI agent] Harold [Yenn]
- Barry Pepper as Skid
- Ajay Karan as Seeker
- Richard Leacock as [FBI agent] Tremelo
- Gabrielle Miller as Fling
- Joy Coghill as Mrs. [Ezra] Tweak**
- Mike Dobson5 as First Policeman
- Joanna Piros as Newscaster
Unaccredited
- Andre Benjamin as Street Radical
- Obba Babatundé has a very deep Sliders connection. Not only was he very close to landing the original role of Rembrandt Brown (he likely would have if Cleavant Derricks hadn’t been able to commit to it), but Babatundé also appeared in the Broadway musical “Dreamgirls” with Derricks and the two were actually up for a 1982 Toni Award in the same category, Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical. Derricks won the award.
- Jason Gaffney also appears as Bennish in the Pilot, Last Days and Invasion.
- Gerry Nairn returns as Mace Moon in Last Days.
- Actor Robert Lee’s voice was dubbed out of the final version of the episode and replaced with that of someone with a foreign accent. (See Inside Slide for more details)
- Mike Dobson plays a cop in Last Days as well.