The Other Slide of Darkness
A toxic fog hangs over a secluded village where Rickman is hiding. While in pursuit, a local seer warns Wade Quinn will never leave the fog, a prediction that forces an angry revelation from Rembrandt. Despite repeated protestations from the others, Maggie attempts to retrieve Rickman herself. When she fails, Quinn goes in after her and discovers that the leader of the village is another version of himself. More specifically, it’s the same version of himself that solved the GUT equation is his basement. He has gone insane with guilt over the role he played in aiding the Kromaggs and demands that Quinn kill him. If he refuses, he’ll have the villagers kill Maggie. Wade and Rembrandt stage a rescue with a magic potion given to them by the seer, but not before Rickman escapes. Quinn leaves his double to his fate.
Worlds Visited
 | Fog WorldA civilization reminiscent of the hillbillies of Appalachia have overrun an earth that belches hallucinogenic fog from the ground. |
Details
- Adra advises the Sliders not to mind Billy T. because he’s never been to Ms. Porters.
- In the clinic, Maggie comes across a file of a man named Theodore Lloyd, who has type-O blood and whose address has been ripped from the file.
- Near the beginning, you can see a red, dirty, 1951 Hudson Convertible pulling off screen.
- The drink that enables people to breathe sulfur is called Witch’s Brew.
- When Quinn and Maggie are kidnapped at about dawn, there is 12 hours left until the slide.
Character Information
- Wade indicates that she knows the legend of the Tarot cards — furthering her revelations in Into the Mystic and Dragonslide that she’s attuned to the occult.
- Bunt’s wife died in a hospital earlier in his life.
- Wade feels that out of all of the Sliders, Rembrandt is the one with the most religious beliefs.
- When Rembrandt was in the Navy, he was stationed in Haiti for a while. He struck up a friendship with a local with an angelic voice and took it upon himself to set him up with a record label. “He just thanked me,” Rembrandt says, “and then told me that he was going to die.” It seems that the man had just had his tarot cards read and, believing in their power, took the reading to heart. He wanted to believe that his death would happen just has the tarot cards had predicted. Rembrandt was disgusted by the man’s death “crusade” and has had strong feelings against the supernatural element ever since. “He believed himself to death,” Rembrandt says. “What a freaking waste.”
- Adra was born and raised in the Foggins’ village that is. She fell in love with a man from the town below and the Foggins killed him and blinded her for her indiscretion.
- Both Wade and Rembrandt indicate that they often make decisions using the “Rock, Paper, Scissors” method. Wade always plays “rock” while Rembrandt always plays “paper.”
Money Matters
- Wade doesn’t pay for her tarot card reading.
Cultural References
- Alt-Quinn looks at the equation on the wall and says “what horrors” — establishing the link between this episode and Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness. In the book, an insane army officer that the protagonist is sent to track down dies at the very end and whispers “the horror… the horror” in his last breath. To further understand the link, rent either of the films “Apocalypse Now,” based on Conrad’s story, or the 1994 film “Heart of Darkness,” a truer adaptation starring John Malkovich.
Notable Quotes
- “You know what else I miss about the Professor? Soft landings. Whenever he was around I always had a cush spot to aim for.” — Rembrandt as he tumbles through the vortex, prompting Wade to ask “So you wereaiming?”
- “No ifs. I’m getting home. Or I’m going to die trying.” — Wade’s response to Adra’s insistence that she must fight the evil if she’s ever going to get home.
Nitpicks/Errors
- I’m all for references to past episodes, but it seems that the writers really went to too much trouble in trying to set up the continuing story arc for viewers that didn’t see The Exodus. Moreover, Wade’s protests towards Quinn’s treatment of Maggie (covered thoroughly in The Breeder), the ‘introduction’ of the Kromaggs (seen in Invasion) and the return of Quinn’s double (met first in the Pilot) are set up for far too long. This not only wastes valuable narrative time that could be used on other stories, but it’s very hard on the fans of the show who are forced to go back to Sliders 101. As Quinn says to Maggie early on, “…we’ve been through this.”
- When Adra picks up the timer from the table, it reads 24 hours, 49 minutes and 43 seconds until the slide. When she throws it back down on the table less than two seconds later it reads 24:49:00.
- What are the odds that Alt-Quinn knows that Quinn knows about the Kromagg Dynasty? Moreover, how does Alt-Quinn know that our Quinn is the one he met in the basement three years ago?
- When Alt-Quinn holds up Quinn’s timer to show him that he doesn’t have much time left, it appears to read 53:23:36 even though there are just a couple of minutes left until the slide.
- Quinn’s stand-in double used when filming Jerry O’Connell in the white wig has nowhere near the amount of hair that O’Connell has on the back of his head.
Neatpicks
- While Wade and Rembrandt are recovering from the affects of the Fog, Wade makes reference to The Exodus, part I when she observes “I guess that’s how Maggie must have felt when she landed on our world and couldn’t breath.”
- To put it simply, the double, god-like Quinn of this world is the same lout that met our Quinn on Earth Prime at the beginning of the Pilot.
- To put it a little more complicated — that Quinn is the reason the Kromaggs from Invasion started sliding in the first place. “I gave them the formula [for sliding] and they destroyed my home,” he elaborates. Quinn2 also notes that the Kromaggs hate instinctively and act with a crystal willful intelligence which he admires.
Rewind That!
Adra says, while explaining her ways to Wade, that in order to beat the ‘haints’ you have to move past the haze. In CC, it’s actually ‘haunts’ that she says. Possibly an over-zealous Appalachian accent on Oona Hart’s part.
History Lesson
Fog World has the feel of a world bogged down in 70 years of depression. The streets are dirt-paved even though there are cars, houses and stores are delapidated and show little care for maintenance.
The strangest part of this world is the fog, of couse. Underneath the mountain ranges that climb high into the California skyline lay an obscene amount of sulfur. Heated by the Earth’s core, the sulfur seeps out from underground and lies thick around the base of the mountains. The fog is poisonous and causes people to collapse and die if they spend too much time in it. A clan of natives aptly dubbed the Foggins live above the poison line and have an immunity to the toxins in the air below.
Fortunately, a root grows in the forest that, when distilled, creates a toxic potion enabling people to breathe sulfur.
Legends and superstitions have crept up over the years as a result, leaving the populace heavily reliant on the occult as a belief system. It’s called the Craft and it’s a mixture of voodoo, Tarot cards and blind faith.
There is some medical technology on this world, but it’s not widely accepted as the superstitions of the locals put them ill at ease with hospitals and such.
The Inside Slide
The working title for this episode in pre-production was “Raging Quinn.”
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“The Other Slide of Darkness” was the first episode of the third season to have its story broken (judging by its production numbers). After John Rhys-Davies was fired from the show, the story, written in June of 1996, was reworked considerably to fit in the character of Maggie Beckett and the Rickman arc.
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“I think all actors bring a little bit of themselves to a character, unless they’re playing a really crazy character,” says Jerry O’Connell. “That’s another attractive feature about working on Sliders, is that I can create completely different characters. In one of the episodes I played a double who’s like Kurtz from Heart of Darkness so I got to play a really dark character there. I use Quinn as a starting point — I say, ‘Okay, how am I going to make this guy different from Quinn?,’ The real challenge is the acting, and that’s why it’s such a great job, because it’s so cerebral.”
Guest Stars
- Oona Hart as Adra
- Kevin Quigley as Bunt La Croix
- Neil Dickson1 as Col. Angus Rickman
- Franc Ross as Billy T
Co-Starring
- Amy Wheaton as Lucy La Croix
Unaccredited
- Gregory Norman Cruz as Dagan (Quinn2’s henchman)
- Neil Dickson took over the role of Col. Rickman in the later episodes of season three because Rickman’s original portrayer, Roger Daltrey, was filming a movie in the Netherlands at the time these episodes were filmed. The change is explained by a mutation that occurred via Rickman’s ability to morph into the people from whom he steals brain fluid. He is later seen in the episodes Stoker, Dinoslide and This Slide of Paradise.