From MadCap's Couch - "Sliders: Fever"

"Hey, Remmy, have I got something in my teeth?"

We begin the third episode of the first season with the Sliders apparently being in a world where everyone in San Francisco has oil, so everyone is rich beyond their wildest dreams. Never mind basic economics where having more of something will actually make the thing in question less expensive due to more supply to fit the demand, but we can't expect writers to actually do any research on that, and I'm going off on a tangent about a cold open gag, and if I do that on this show we'll never see the end of it.

They slide off after getting all the dough they can stuff into their pockets and end up in a rather 1984-esque world. Where the CDC has taken over, and Wade is saved from being run over by a man with severe jaundice who chastises her upon kissing him on the cheek as a thank you.  Rather depressingly, they learn they will be on this Earth for a little over two days. Heading into a diner, they find that the food is prepackaged and apparently worse than the airline version. Throwing up part of a burger, Rembrandt finds a wanted poster for Quinn Mallory of this world, who is subtitled in a rather foreboding manner as "Patient Zero".

Times the Sliders Have Run into Parallel Versions of Themselves: 4

Rembrandt shows the poster to the others and they decide to beat a hasty retreat from the dinner, though not before a scene where several men in hazard suits rush in and subdue a man standing behind Quinn...only for Quinn to be recognized by one of the waitresses at the last minute. As they escape, Wade begins to feel dizzy - which certainly has nothing to do with the yellow man she kissed - so Quinn and Arturo enter a nearby pharmacy with such stock as witch hazel and wormwood on its shelves, but lacking in so much as Aspirin, which they chalk up to it being an alternative medicine store.

However, a crazy employee recognizes Quinn for his double and calls up the CDC so he can die like a martyr, who manage to subdue him after a fight, leaving Arturo behind. Wade and Rembrandt have checked into a hotel and the Professor arrives to tell them the news, as well as telling them that the Quinn of this universe was a failing medical student who released a plague out to the general public. Where did he learn this? I assume he read the script, because there are a few logic problems with the thought that he might have been asking around about the background of the man who is quite literally public enemy number one.

Wade, as it turns out, has taken a plot related turn for the worse. She experiences some creepy hallucinations while Quinn is put through a severe detox shower so that the female viewership can gawk at his abs, which are admittedly not unimpressive. In scanning him, however, they find that Quinn does not have the infection that his double on this Earth has while he explains that he's not from this Earth. The doctor overseeing his tests wants to look further into it.

Y'all futhermockers need Lysol!

Back with the others, Arturo is likewise getting sick after exposure to the disease...and Wade has somehow managed to escape the room, still afflicted by the fever hallucinations. Luckily, Rembrandt and Arturo find her just in time to be accosted by the Morlocks! ...okay, they're not the Morlocks, but people who have been affected by the plague Quinn's double created, whereupon they actually meet this version of Quinn.

Apparently, he's set up a quarantine area to try and cure the plague if at all possible. Red Eye Quinn reveals that he himself did not actually create the Q, he was merely given it by a scientist he signed up for a test trial with who released him back into society. He also explains the situation of society - the rich stay in a hygienic utopia while the poor get sick and die. And thus, we come to the topic the episode is soapboxing about - corporations and the rich hording high end medicines while the poor are left to die. This isn't so blunt force as later stands the show tries to take, but it's still pretty intense, Red Eye Quinn angrily pointing out two of the people in the shelter and teling Rembrandt to "ask them" if he didn't believe him about the state of things.

Then, the twist occurs when Arturo asks why the plague is resistant to antibiotics, and Red Eye asks him what those are.

Then we get a short scene where our Quinn is further interrogated by the Squeaky Clean Health Police who refute his claims that he is not the Quinn Mallory that they know.

Back in the sick house, Arturo begins to dig through the trash to make penicillin, bringing up the very real point that they can't leave with Wade or himself infected as they risk becoming the Patient Zero of another world if they don't have a cure there either. Rembrandt gets a pep talk from Red Eye, learning that Quinn has been taken to the CHC's facility nearby and that he's the only one who can save the day...because he's the only healthy one.  He also mentions the doctor currently testing Quinn, saying that she's a friend and will help.

And indeed she is helping, bringing Quinn a hazard suit and telling him to put it on and the pair of them escaping so they can work on a cure together. There's a shootout with the surprisingly efficient CDC troops...and sadly, Red Eye's Doctor friend dies in Quinn's arms. With the help of the taxi driver from the Pilot, Quinn and Rembrandt escape.

The Professor and Red Eye work on the potential cure, the former giving the potential reason why Wade's sickness is progressing so fast being that they're from a different Earth and thus have different immunities. Wade has more hallucinations, this time of of Quinn professing his undying love, and Quinn arrives to finally meet Red Eye and the both have a nice, wholesome, WTF?! moment.

With luck, the Professor has finished his first bit of the potential cure and prepares to take it, Red Eye pointing out that there are many others who are far sicker than he. In one of the moments that remind me why I love his character, Arturo brings up the fact that he has no idea if the cure will work and that it could possibly kill him due to the fact that the ingredients not doing the same thing that they do in the universe he knows. Rather than have it not work on someone sick or kill someone, Arturo elects to take the potential sacrifice himself.

It's a very interesting idea that sadly never really gets explored over the course of the series. Besides some minor quirks, everything in every other parallel universe sadly runs the same way as it does in the main universe throughout the rest of the show.

However, we're less than ten minutes from the end title card, so the Medic Militia tracks down the Cabbie of Destiny and has him point out where he dropped off Quinn and Rembrandt and charge off to break down the resistance.

Also, Rembrandt gets the disease at the last minute, but apparently the Professor's cure has been duplicated and thus it's...completely pointless. Because yes, Arturo is cured and his fever broken, thus Wade can be cured and so can everyone else. All is well with only twelve minutes to go before the Slide. Nice that everything in the episode was wrapped up in a nice little bow like tha-oh right, the CDC, I forgot.

The CDC gets in and starts tagging everyone, the Sliders held up some steps for their slide with only a minute to go. Red Eye faces off against the doctor leading the swat team (only in reviewing things like Sliders do I ever get to say something like that), declaring that he's somehow managed to get word to other infected in other quarantine zones about the cure and how to make it, and that the government won't be able to keep it just for the wealthy. I'd question how he managed to do that, but the Sliders are about to escape so it's not really all that important.

They jump and we cut to Wade waking up next to a fire, apparently all better now minus a little grogginess.  Quinn tells her that she'll be fine and about that they found a cure for those people. Sliding made a difference. Wade settles in to get some rest, and Rembrandt and Arturo arrive to ask him Quinn if he told her about the cannibals...who have ominously stopped playing their drums. Cue audience laughter as the episode closes...

"Hey, babe, I'm Jerry O'Connell. Don't you wanna say you got with Jerry O'Connell?" 

As I said before, this episode is very obviously a jab at the pharmaceutical companies and the like that withhold cures only for the rich, building a society that is built around that crux point.

Also as I said before, it's not as anvilicious as many later Lessons of the Day are, the only scene where it really shines through and beats the viewer over the head in Red Eye's showdown with the doctor. It brings up the interesting idea that maybe the very chemistry of a universe is not necessarily the same as another, even if that idea is never really brought up again or followed up on. The ending is a little rushed, but that's the case with quite a few endings so it would be rather unfair to rag on that too much.

A good enough episode and a better concept for introducing the multiverse theory to the audience than the Pilot episode gave.

Because, y'know, a world where the Soviet Union took over is way less believable than a world where the government controls the people through a campaign of disease and fear and holds up the only cure for how much money it can make off of people.

...actually, given recent events...eh, too topical, too topical.

Come back next week for a hop across the pond.

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