9. Luck of the Draw

Aired:		Wednesday. May 17, 1995
Filmed:		???
Production #: 	70409
Network #:	SL-110	
Written By:	Jon Povill
Directed By:	Les Landau
Music By:	Dennis McCarthy	
Edited By:	Brian L. Chambers
Ratings:			Competition: 
	Viewers: 9.9		ABC: 	9:00  	"Grace Under Fire" (22.8/7)
	Rating:	6.7		ABC:	9:30  	"Coach"(r) (19.4/14)
	Share:	11		NBC:	9:00  	"Dateline NBC" (12.8/38)
	Rank:	70/85		CBS: 	8:30  	Movie: "A River Runs Through It" (11.6/55)
				Fox:	9:00   "Sliders" (9.9/70)
				WB:  	9:00  	"Unhappily Ever After" (3.0/85)
				WB:	9:30  	"Muscle" (2.0/86)

Repeated: 	Sunday, August 27, 1995	
Repeat Ratings:  Viewers: 5.4; Rating: 3.8; Share: 8; Rank: 81/93.
Logline rewrite: The travellers find themselves in what first appears to be paradise until Wade wins the lottery.
World Into: Lottery World :
Duration: Wade says three days but it's more like two and half day.
Timer Status: Okay.
World Into: Park World : The sliders, plus Ryan, escape to this world from Lottery World but Quinn collapses in a heap after being shot in the back by a pursuant Lottery police officer.
Duration: (from Into the Mystic)
Details, Details:
  • Signs at the grocery mart advertize celery for nine cents, 12 apples for 25 cents.
  • The billboard above the grocery suggests "Drink BC Cola: Birth Control In a Can!"
  • The sliders each say they are staying in room 12 at the Motel 12.
  • After asking the old man about a taxi, the sliders walk past an antique shop with the word "Treasures" in the front window. That building lies directly beside the building marked "Public Transit Authority" where the courtesy cars of the "Golden Bay Rapid Transit."
  • The licence plate of the blue car the sliders take is 3DUF173.
  • The title of the magazine that Quinn gets is information out of is "Economic Weekly" with a picture of a white haired man in a dark suit with the caption "World's Most Powerful Man." The advertisement on the back appears to be for some sort of camera with the caption "Capture the Color."
  • Just before dinner, Quinn is reading some sort of almanac with "The 1995 Events Calendar" printed on the cover.
  • Lottery Winner Julianne Murphy lives at 3107 Grandview Lane.
  • The brochures that Wade gets from the Lottery read: "The Lottery: Winners Information Guide" and "The Lottery: What to expect on the big day.
  • Wade makes stops at both Gucci and Cartier, two very high-end stores, and then buys a BMW with her White Card.
  • The brochure that the priest hands to Quinn reads: "Stop the Lottery! Act Now, Save a Life."
  • Julianne is saying in Parlour B at the hotel.
  • The Lottery Commission Police arrest Remmy at around 3:45 am.
  • The right-to-life picketers hold signs that read: "Natural Causes Should Be the Only Causes," "Stop the Lottery," "President Elders The Whole World is Watching" and "Birth Control Yes! Lottery No!"
  • After Remmy escapes, he, Quinn and the Professor get into a Ford courtesy car with the licence plate 30VA284.
  • When the police come looking for Wade in the ballroom, the timer reads one minute and 50 seconds to the slide. Two minutes and 13 seconds later, the vortex closes after they've slid.
    Personal File:
  • Arturo says that the low prices on Lottery World remind him of when he was a boy in England. "Of course, the prices were in Sterling then."
  • Rembrandt mentions that he played a concert in Rome in 1983 and the city was very expensive.
  • Arturo doesn't like dogs.
  • Wade says that she loves animals and misses her pet cat at home.
  • Arturo enjoys fishing, as does Rembrandt.
  • Quinn has never been horseback riding before this episode.
  • One of Rembrandt's cooking specialties is Trout Almandine.
  • Remmy says that the last time he took a ride in a large limo was with the Spinning Topps.
  • Wade tells Ryan that she was a Romantic Literature major in school. She once wrote a paper on Yeats.
  • Rembrandt laments: "My dead relatives were a pain in the butt! I don't care to deal with any of them!"
    Arturoisms:
    "There's no such thing as something for nothing."
    "Nothing more satisfying that coaxing one's supper from the depths."
    Script Snips:
  • "I'm English. We invented fishing." -- Arturo to Rembrandt upon being asked whether he fishes.
  • "We're not trying to catch blue jays, professor." -- Rembrandt to Arturo after he gets his line caught in a tree overhead.
  • "Takes a sophisticated fly fisherman to haul in a monster like that." -- Remmy while pointing to Arturo's comparatively tiny trout.
  • "I'm too young to die. Too famous!" -- an angry Rembrandt as he's being hauled away by police.
  • "Don't ever criticize of my fishing again." -- Arturo to Rembrandt after Quinn and the professor rescue him.
    Rewind That!:
  • The first video cycle to pick the first lottery winner flashes at least 63 faces before coming up with Julianne Murphy, including those of Arturo and Rembrandt. However, it should be noted that upon freeze-frame analysis, it's evident that some of those faces appear twice. Then again, it should also be noted that the streetscape backgrounds behind many of those faces are very different which takes the time to show that there are Lottery machines all over the city. On the computer's second pass to pick a winner, it cycles through only 26 faces but nearly all of those are carry-overs from the first cycle.
    Remmy Sings: No, but he talks about writing a song for Julianne.
    Money Matters: Quinn asks to borrow a dollar but it seems Arturo has lost his wallet. Though it's given back to him by a kind stranger seconds later, and Arturo pays the grocer one bill from it, money is not really a problem on Lottery World where money is seemingly free. Later, at the cash machine, Remmy "orders" $5,000 and Wade "orders" $1,000 while a humble Arturo asks for a mere five dollar bill.
    Nit-picks:
  • After Quinn bumps his head, he touches the wound with his left hand and his watch is turned around so the face looking inward. In the very next scene, from a different angle, he resumes touching his head but the watch has turned around to the standard position.
  • The debate continues as to how to spell Wade's last name, either Wells or Welles. The computer in the lottery spells it without an 'e' as do Fox and MCA press releases, the official Sliders web site for both Fox and Universal, as do many other print sources. Still, co-creator Tracy Torme insists that the spelling should include the second 'e' as the scripts do as early as the "Pilot" and as recent as the third season's "The Exodus." The closed captioning also cites 'Welles.'
  • While the lottery winners are all lined up for the midnight toast at the ball, there are 15 of them, while the television host said only 12 winners would be chosen.
    Neat-picks:
  • When Henry the dog jumps on Arturo, Quinn tells him to look at the bright side "at least he's not biting you." But if you look closely, that line was vocally added later and Jerry O'Connell says another word other than 'biting." The closed captioning reveals that Jerry actually said "at least he's not humping you."
    History Lesson:(rewrite)
    Low prices Birth control no pollution, no "racial strife," no crime, no poverty Lottery machines dole out cash to whom ever wants to play. The more money you take out of the machines, the more chances you have of winning the lottery. The lottery winners are announced via a television program. courtesy cars. There are only 500 million people on Lottery World (less than 10 per cent that of Home World) while the population of San Francisco is under 100,000. President Jocelyn Elders faces pressure from right-to-lifers during a dedication of the Thomas Malthus Center for Sexual Ethics and Education. On Home World, Jocelyn Elders was a Surgeon General from () while the Reverend Thomas Malthus was an English economist from the 19th century who postulated, per Arturo, that the society was destined for eternal misery because the population would always increase faster than the world's food supply. The Lottery Commission holds drawings seemingly every night in which a computer picks 12 winners from that day's entrants. Those winners will share the multi-million dollars of prize money and will eventually "take home" five million dollars each. The winners will also receive a White Card which will give them unlimited access to anything their hearts desire, the bearer cannot be turned down. "It's society's way of saying 'thanks'." The lottery has killed 50,000 people in America since its institution. They call the sacrifice "making way." The penalty for subverting the Lottery system is called "the process," they'll make you pay in pain before they kill you. That takes place at the "Municipal Processing Center." Arrested by Lottery Commission Police (LCP) 
    Guest Stars:
	Nicholas Lea		Ryan [Simms]1
	[Cynthia] Alex Datcher	Julianne Murphy
	Kevin Cooney		Ken Neisser
Special Appearance by:
	Geoff Edwards		Himself2
Co-Starring:
	Tim Henry		Agent Jones3
With:
	Mike Kopsa		Agent Wilson
	Nathan Venering		Father Fergus
	Walter Marsh		Fatherly Man *4 (on video in truck)
	Kristina Matisic	News Anchor
	Ted Cole		Friendly Man5
	David Glyn-Jones	Elderly Man (who explains the courtesy car concept)
Uncredited:
	Cameron Labine		Rollerblade Kid*6
	David Adams		The Operator*7
	Jason Gray Stanford	Bell Hop* ("some guy was trying to kidnap...")
	Charlie McGlade		English Charlie*8? one of winners?
	Mike Levy		Mike Levy*8?
	The woman at the door of the ball who stops Quinn from entering,
	the officer who shoots Quinn.

    1. Canadian actor Nicholas Lea is better known as bad guy Alex Krycek on The X-Files but he also spent three years on The Commish as Officer Enrico "Ricky" Caruso. He would return briefly in "Into the Mystic" to wrap up the events of the cliffhanger.
    2. Geoff Edwards, former host of the game show The New Treasure Hunt, has also appeared on the 1973 musical variety program The Bobby Darin Show, and starred as Jeff Power on Petticoat Junction in 1968.
    3. Tim Henry co-starred as a federal marshall on the X-Files episode "Colony."
    4. Walter Marsh can be seen as a judge in the X-Files episode "Miracle Man."
    5. Ted Cole would show up later as FBI Agent Reid in the episode "Greatfellas."
    6. Cameron Labine played Rick Mazeroski in the X-Files episode "Red Museum."
    7. David Adams was Dr. Girardi on the X-Files episode "Sleepless."
    8. McGlade and Levy are credited, but not seen, in this episode. It's probable that their scene was cut from the final version.
    The Inside Slide:

  • "... I really liked "Luck of the Draw," the season finale," Sabrina says. "Intellectually, it was the most intriguing of all the episodes ... [the concept is] something I would like to see more of [in future episodes], plotlines that really make you think."

  • At the 5th Annual Environmental Media Awards (on Oct. 13, 1995) writer Jon Povill received the Turner Prize and $10,000 for this episode. The Environmental Media Assn.'s annual awards are presented to productions that help raise the eco-awareness of the American public. Those presenting the awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel included Ed Begley Jr., Anthony Edwards, Laura Dern and Ed Asner.
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