From MadCap's Couch - Sliders: "The Alternateville Horror"

"He said it was called 'Shining' and then he said he had to meet somebody named 'Optimus'."

Oooookay, so it's been a long while since I reviewed Sliders. Like, a ridiculously long time. We are also, like the Quantum Leap review for this month, jumping a good bit ahead. Chronologically, we ended on Season 2. This episode is the eighth one of Season 4 and you'll notice some changes right off the bat.

First off. Wade and Professor Arturo? Gone, and in a way that ultimately did no justice to either character, but more on that later.

...or is it earlier?

Instead, we have two new characters - Maggie Beckett and Collin Mallory, played by Kari Wuhrer and Charlie O'Connell (yes, the brother of Jerry O'Connell) respectively. I'll get the pair of them in more detail when I get to their introduction episodes but, spoiler warning, Maggie is a character that I dislike highly for a variety of reasons and Collin is Quinn's brother who was stuck on a parallel Earth for various reasons that get increasingly more stupid the longer you think about them. Said parallel Earth also has him speaking like someone out of the 1600s which, if you don't believe it gets old very fast, believe me it does.

But hey, at least we still have Quinn Mallory and the legend himself - Rembrandt "The Crying Man" Brown! Heck yeah!

"Ah, yes, your room key, sir. Room 667."
"...uh..."
"Yeah, we left that one out. Don't ask."

The Alternateville Horror starts out with a joke about men crossdressing that works in 1999 but wouldn't in the present year for a variety of reasons. This is thankfully cut off by Collin asking the three veteran Sliders (he, himself, joined only at the beginning of Season 4) if they ever get tired of sliding from world to world and into dangerous situations. This, in turn, is cut off by the inhabitants of the world they have landed on trying to get out of the rain... the acid rain. They hop into the nearby Chandler Hotel, the replacement for the Dominion Hotel of the first two seasons, and find a receptionist - Holly - eagerly welcoming them in and putting their acid-scarred clothing in a nearby trash can.

Not all is well, however, as it seems the guests that are trying to leave the hotel en masse. One of them in particular claims she would rather be out in a typhoon in her birthday suit than spend another night in the hotel. Holly brings the group up to the presidential suite, dodges questions about why the other guests would leave so suddenly and brave the acid rain, and leaves them to get settled in. With twelve hours to go before they slide, Quinn, Maggie, and Rembrandt hit the bar while Collin decides to stay in and rot his brain with some television.

We get a good moment where Quinn questions whether or not he was right in bringing Collin along with them, clearly still holding some regrets not only dragging him out of his life, but also Maggie and Rembrandt (and, no doubt, Wade and Professor Arturo as well). He lets the others know that, if they ever find a peaceful world that they want to stay on, he understands. By this point, however, the three have become True Companions and they're in with Quinn for the long haul.

Upstairs, Collin is watching the 1931 Frankenstein when the television seemingly shuts itself off. Looking over, Collin sees the image of a little boy holding the TV Remote. Without a word, the boy walks away. Collin follows him out, finally catching up with him at the door to a room 315. Try as he might, however, Collin cannot hear the words that the boy is saying. Soon enough, the boy simply walks through the door... which is locked.

Collin shows up at the bar and is met with suspicion, the others thinking that he may have just fallen asleep while watching Frankenstein. While they are suspicious, Holly catches an ash tray moving on its own out of sight of the Sliders. The others don't believe him and Collin is less than pleased, declaring himself a man of science and that he knows what he saw.

Who else knows? The Shadow Knows... or, rather, a guy who is wearing a fedora and a half-mask that shows only the eyes... for reasons that don't exactly pan out.

Quinn tries to console Collin, but it doesn't help in the least and is honestly a rare moment of dickishness from Quinn. A rare miss. Maggie goes to get ice, finding the fedora-wearing man running around with what is clearly a hand vacuum that makes humming noises. He leaves before she can confront him.

Rembrandt gets a creepy message of "Help Us" scrawled on the mirror while he's shaving and Maggie sees her own head in the ice machine, and they're both more keen to believe Collin. After rushing to tell the Mallory brothers, all four miss one of their drinks floating away...

As they investigate the ice machine, something is watching them... something that turns and moves toward their room, picking up the Slide timer.

"Jazz hands activated!"

The fedora man picks up some of the ice cubes from around the machine after the four leave.

Quinn remains skeptical, trying to come up with any other explanation until they realize that the timer is gone. The four split up, Quinn going to speak to Holly while the other three go to speak to the mysterious fifth guest. Quinn finds Holly, who agrees to help him look for the timer... and I almost feel as though there's a vague hints of an attraction between the two, which is kind of par for the course.

Maggie, Collin, and Remmy barge into the room of the mysterious man - finding a bunch of scientific equipment. The man, John Smith (yes, that's apparently his name), insists that he's taking a meteorological survey. After Collin messes around with a device, it begins to beep strangely and gets Smith's attention. They resolve to keep an eye on Smith, deciding to check the rest of the hotel is well... and Smith is likewise watching them, a smile on his face that is altogether menacing.

Down at the bar, Maggie is met with the lights going out and bad writers' jokes. Also, apparently, the whales from Star Trek IV if the noises they use are any indication. Alas, George and Gracey aren't going to get them out of this one, although that might possibly make this the best episode of Sliders ever. Taking a flashlight and calling out for Quinn, Maggie wanders off in a way that would definitely get her killed in an actual horror movie.

While they walk around, Holly drops some exposition to Quinn - she and her husband bought the Chandler two years before and her husband unfortunately promptly died of cancer two months after they opened the doors. When Quinn asks if she wants to go somewhere else, she insists that she's... invested in this place. Again, we get a moment of human connection between the two where it seems that they're trying to show hints of an attraction between the two, touching on a bit of Quinn's loneliness having been bouncing from world to world to world for so long.

Maggie gets trapped in the basement. With rats that they don't have the budget to show.

Concentrated pain. Every moment of it.

Meanwhile, Remmy and Collin reach Room 315 and Remmy leaves to go get a key for the door. Collin remains and sees the boy again, once more trying to communicate with him and once more being unsuccessful. Over Collin's shoulder, John Smith is scanning with his device. The boy points to room 315... with a key suddenly in the door to open it. Stepping in, Collin finds the boy pointing to... something offscreen, which he follows the boy toward. John Smith enters not long after, shocked by what he sees and recoiling from it almost immediately. The door slams shut on its own immediately after.

Collin hears Remmy coming back, who now cannot see or hear him. When Collin tries to touch him, his hand passes right through him. He has become Sam Beckett!!!

...I'm kidding, but still.

Collin finally properly meets the young boy, who introduces himself as Matthew. It seems that Matthew has been here on "[his] side" for an unknown amount of time and Collin is the first person who has seen him in all that time. Matthew doesn't like to go to "the other ones" because they're mean, which intrigues Collin.

In the basement, Maggie dodges rats and uses a wine bottle to attack Remmy with extreme prejudice. Again, something that works in 1999 but in 2023 would be a hate crime. He helps her out of the basement, giggling at her predicament.

Regrouping with Quinn and Holly, Remmy brings up some exposition - there is no key to Room 315. He also informs Quinn that Collin is missing. Whatever is going on, that is the only other connection that they have. Fed up with it, Maggie and Remmy demand to know what is really going on and Holly has to admit the truth - the Hotel is haunted. Quinn is skeptical until a chair pulls itself out and nearly knocks him over. Holly also reveals why she can't leave - she has a son, Matthew, who went missing.

She unlocks Room 315 for the Sliders and we see what Collin and John Smith saw before - a Slide portal, but not one of theirs. Finding Smith's equipment left behind in the room, which Quinn identifies as an EM scanner, they corner him and he explains: he's a ghost hunter, namely debunking ghosts as travelers from parallel universes. After CalTech cut his funding, he's been trying to prove his theories on his own and the Hotel is his best chance.

Quinn is able to bridge the gap between normies and science tech and gives a very brief explanation of the quantum realities and the frequencies they operate at. Using Smith's tech, they are able to seemingly bridge the gap and reveal Collin and Matthew along with a fine-suited Rembrandt Brown, an exotic dancer Maggie Beckett, and... the most annoying version of Quinn Mallory in the multiverse. However, they're only visible not actually there. The equipment lets them be seen... and it seems that before, they were only able to interact briefly and in ways that made the place seem haunted.

As they fade out again, Collin shouts "Frankenstein!". The vortex is collapsing, according to Smith, and Quinn says they'll be crushed by the collapse if they can't save them. When they get back to Room 315, they find that the vortex isn't collapsing yet but is highly unstable and generating more power to handle Collin being in the mix. Quinn hits upon the idea of using Smith's equipment and - as Collin gave him the idea with his comment - using lightning to empower it.

Using the fact that Maggie saw her head in the freezer, Quinn adjusts Smith's tech to project colder temperatures in the hopes of opening the vortex again. Holly agrees to the risk, but Smith snatches the device away and refuses to give up his work to them... and gets electrocuted for his trouble as he unplugs the power supply.

"Hey, baby! How about a little head? AHAHAHAHAHAHAH!"

He survives, and Quinn gets the device. On a crazy hunch, Quinn takes the device into the portal to go after the cable. Re-attaching, Quinn opens the portal for the other Sliders to return to their Earth. Douchebag Quinn tosses the brothers back the Slide timer. They leave with Matthew and, for a moment, it seems as though all three are lost... and then they all emerge from behind the sofa. Holly embraces her son, the Sliders reunite, and even Smith gets his happy ending as his technology did take the readings and he joyously runs out.

Holly invites them all to stay as long as they like, but Collin is the first to speak up: they have a lot of traveling to do. And, like the end of many a horror movie, the sun is rising outside... the rain is gone...

And that's it for The Alternateville Horror. Not a bad ghost story on a TV budget, even if no actual ghosts were involved. The atmosphere is pretty well done. The power is out in the hotel for almost the entire episode, creating dark environments without tossing us into full pitch black. The direction isn't exactly inspired with any unique camera angles or setting, but is set up like a stock horror movie would be. The special effects are largely done practically and to pretty okay effect. Nothing too out of place or too cheesy to break the tension, particularly early on in the episode. Add in a good score by series composer Danny Lux placed at really good moments for it and you have a pretty enjoyable haunted house, or rather haunted hotel, story.

We also get the human element in Holly, who is one of the more memorable guest stars in the show's back half as well as having a relatable story told in a small amount of time with her dead husband and her missing son and her determination to find the latter.

As much as I rag on his character, Collin proves himself to the other Sliders in this one as not just a country bumpkin from backwoods Earth. Like his brother Jerry, Charlie isn't a bad actor, it's really just the writing for Collin that I'm not the biggest fan of.

That's all I have to say for this Slide. Don't worry, we'll be getting back to the adventures of Quinn, Remmy, and all our Sliding pals (and in the right order, too!) soon enough now that I have access to the entire series once again. We have one more episode review for Horror Month 2023 and on October 31st itself, no less! What could I do for such a momentous occasion?

Well, since we're already in the late 90s, early 2000s, why don't we take a little trip from the Chandler Hotel down to the city of San Francisco. We've dealt with vampires plenty of times here on the blog, but now I think it's a good time for us to really get embraced...

Be there!