episode #06 - Last Days

Air Date: 4/5/95 writer: Dan Lane Directed by Michael Keusch

It's the end of the world... the Sliders arrive on an Earth which will be hit by a 10-mile long asteroid in two days; as fate would have it, they are scheduled to stay on this Earth for 3 days. The group divides: Rembrandt goes off to join some of the people who are having a last party; Quinn & Wade head to Quinn's home in the hopes of finding sliding equipment (why wasn't this done more?); while Arturo teams up with none other than hippie/genius Conrad Bennish (Jason Gaffney) to create the atomic bomb (on this Earth, Einstein had purposely failed in his equations to develop the bomb). Rembrandt's quest turns into a moment of truth between a man and his wife (Jennifer Hetrick), a parable on avoiding decadence and despair. Quinn fails to switch on the sliding equipment and this becomes a brief moment for Quinn & Wade to explore their feelings (mostly at Wade's insistence). While Arturo & Bennish succeed beyond expectations - before the deadline, they've got the U.S. government sending their new bomb on a missile course to impact the asteroid.

The concept of an approaching asteroid is nothing new - see Meteor (1979), though this episode did beat the two big films of 1998 (Deep Impact and Armageddon) in getting such a story to the screen. There was also the similar Miracle Mile (1988), though that involved nuclear missiles only. This presents the idea of how people would spend their time if they knew that they had only a couple of days left. In the case of Quinn and Wade, it forces them to confront issues about their relationship - are they boyfriend & girlfriend, or not? It's telling that this all went to the wayside in subsequent episodes. Also, clues about the Quinn of this world are dropped - that he was more interested in dinosaurs and time travel - but it's never clear how or if he left this world; his equipment is all covered up, as if not used in a year. The more entertaining portions are Bennish annoying Arturo and the eventual reveal that Bennish will have a lot of power by the conclusion. It's also interesting that it is Arturo - not genius Quinn - who works on a complicated scientific solution (as in the previous episode), showing that he is the adult scientist in the group. BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10


Earths Depicted:
----------------- Earth #13 - Earth about to be struck by an asteroid