5. Summer of Love


Aired:		Wednesday, April 19, 1995
Filmed:		???
Production #: 	70401
Network #:	SL-104
Written By:	Tracy Torme
Directed By:	Mario Azzopardi
Music By:	Mark Mothersbaugh
Edited By:	Leon Seith

Ratings:			Competition:
	Viewers: 9.3		NBC:	9:00 	"Dateline NBC" (10.4/13)
	Rating: 6.7		ABC: 	9:00 	"Grace Under Fire"(r) (10.4/15)
	Share: 10		ABC:	9:30 	"Coach"(r)(17.5/19)
	Rank:	 69/90		CBS: 	9:00 	Movie (13.1/61)
				Fox:  9:00 	"Sliders" (6.7/69)
				WB:  	9:00 	"Unhappily Ever After"(r) (2.3/99)
				WB:	9:30 	"Muscle"(r) (1.9/100)

Repeated: 	August 13, 1995
Repeat Ratings:  Viewers: 5 million; Rating: 3.4; Share: 7; Rank: 81/90.
Logline: The sliders are separated on a world where Oliver North is the president, the U.S. is at war with Australia, and the Hippie movement is alive and strong. While Wade and Rembrandt are mistaken for otherworldly prophets at a commune, Quinn and Arturo search for a way to open the vortex and find the others.
World Into:
Swarm World:A deserted version of San Francisco where southwestern America is about to be overrun by Spiderwasps.

Duration:

The four left after about four minutes.

Timer Status:

Quinn must activate it early to escape the Spiderwasps and as a result the gate is split into two, which leaves the sliders separated when they enter the next world.

World Into:

Hippie World: Remmy was a kept man on this world and a soldier in the army.

Duration:

Unknown because they have to fix the timer but about one full day.

Timer Status:

Damaged from using it before it was ready. Quinn suggests they let it "cool off."

World Into:

Tidal World: The sliders next world seems like home, CDs and tapes are for sale and the architecture is similar, but on this world there is a tidal wave ready to slam into coast-side San Francisco.

Duration:

48 minutes.

Details, Details:
  • A news broadcast on a television in the provides details on the large and deadly Spiderwasps.
    • It is a hybrid between a wasp and a spider.
    • It was created in a Venezuelan lab as a potential form of pest control.
    • A queen escaped from the compound in 1987 and in just eight short years, the brood she fostered has moved 2,000 miles north leaving a path of massive devastation in its wake.
    • It has a wing span of up to one foot, an immunity to pesticides, barbed stingers filled with venom and the ability to eat through walls "rendering most buildings extremely vulnerable to attack."
  • Rembrandt promises Wade that he will search Chaney St.
  • About Hippie Rembrandt, we learn: He is Sgt. 1st Class - 42nd Infantry; Hippie Remmy was about 27 when he started going out with Sharon. This can be surmized because he asked her for a date to the prom in high school (he probably about 17) but it took her 10 years to finally say yes to a date. Because Rembrandt Jr. is about 11 we can either surmize that Rembrandt is about 38 years old (which is unlikely) or that Junior was born out of wedlock.
  • Quinn and Arturo decide to pool their funds to rent a loft where they plan to work out a calculation, based on the (Alexander) Helix Spiral Theory, that will allow them to slide out of Hippie World.
  • Ezra Tweak rents Quinn and Arturo the loft at 14 Bell Street.
  • The army telegram is signed by Lt. William A. Calley.
  • Quinn activates the gate with two minutes and 17 seconds left on the timer.
    Personal File:
  • Quinn is an advanced physics student and a specialist in superstring theory. He lives at 3759 Lab...(rest missing)
  • Arturo is a noted international physicist and is an expert in the fields of Ontology and Cosmology. He lives at 17A Cave...(rest missing) and his middle initial is P.
  • Wade lives at 302-714 Ma...(rest missing) and is attending North Shore Junior College where she majors in extemporaneous poetry and prose. Her middle name is Kathleen.
  • Little is learned about Rembrandt because Agent Yenn doesn't produce a driver's licence photo, only an out-of-date publicity shot of "The Crying Man."
  • We also learn that the four "have been missing since Tuesday."
  • Quinn was a quarterback on his high school football team and favored a wishbone offence.
  • Wade is a Virgo, which puts her birthday between August 23 and September 22.
  • Quinn is Libra which puts his birthday between September 23 and October 22.
  • Rembrandt is Gemini which puts his birthday between May 21 and June 21.
  • Rembrandt can't swim.
    Arturoisms:
  • "Blistering idiot." -- to a mime on the street and again later to FBI agent Yenn.
  • "Impudent yahoos." -- to the cops in the coffee shop.
    Script Snips:
  • "Of course, who else could be here but us, the happy wanderers." -- Arturo upon hearing that everyone should evacuate the city in Swarm World.
  • "Oh, and that's supposed to make me feel better, that these spiders can fly and sting my head off." -- Remmy to Wade after she tells him that the insects are more of a wasp than a spider.
  • "Right on, right on." -- Cezanne Brown.
  • "Musical talent? you couldn't carry a tune if it was strapped to your back!" -- Rembrandt to his braggart big brother.
  • "Ya, and I'm Snoop Hippie Dogg." -- police officer in response to Arturo's claim that he's a university professor, a reference to popular rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg.
    "Rewind That!": Watching Remmy listen to his own funeral while hungrily devouring a doughnut and then bump his head in a door way while being carried around the room. A classic scene.
    Remmy Sings: "Cry Like A Man," his own hit single, while he is being catered to in a commune tent and again later while cruising in the purple Caddy.
    Money Matters: While Wade and Rembrandt don't really need money, it seems Quinn and Arturo have just enough to rent a loft, buy a bag of cookies, a jar of peanut butter, a box of Ritz Crackers and complete second-hand hippie outfits.
    Nit-picks:
  • When Wade and Remmy first land at the commune, why would Rembrandt ask what year it was? He should know by now that the year is always the same. (This could be because this episode was supposed to air second, after the Pilot.)
  • If you listen carefully, John Rhys-Davies flubs his line while trying to plead his case to Agent Yenn. He almost says "pipe bam" instead of "pipe bomb."
  • Before the end slide, Quinn says that because the timer is busted the four may land on "six, six-hundred or six million" worlds but they have already been to (or know of) at least six worlds.
  • When they're sliding out near the commune, Remmy thanks Skid and Seeker for the use of the car and says "sorry about the lights," a reference to Sharon's barrage of buckshot as he was speeding away from her house. But it appears that the tail lights were not shot out as evident to the absence of glass on the street during the "peel out" scene and no sound effect of broken glass.
    History Lesson:

    On Hippie World, the U.S. lost the battle of the Coral Sea during World War II and the Japanese invaded Australia. When the Nazis surrendered, the Russians entered the Pacific war and helped liberate North Australia. But they didn't give it back after the war. In 1995, the north was attacking the "Outback Cong" south and the similarities to the Vietnam War prompts Arturo to assess: "Different Earths, identical mayhem."(Alternate America's strained ties with Australia are later re-explored in second season's "Love Gods.")

    They've landed at a commune outside San Francisco.

    The year is 1995, the governor of California is Pete Wilson (the actual California governor at the time of this episode) but the president of the United States is Oliver North (a fact that neither party seems too happy about).

    Guest Stars:
	Obba Babatunde 1	Cezanne Brown
	Deborah Lacey		Sharon [Brown]
	Arthur Reggie III 2	Rembrandt Brown Jr.
	Jason Gaffney		Conrad Bennish Jr.
Co-Starring:	
	Gerry Nairn		Mace Moon
	Michele Goodger 3	[FBI agent] Copeland
With:
	Robert Lee		[FBI agent] Harold [Yenn]*
	Barry Pepper 4		Skid
	Ajay Karan		Seeker
	Richard Leacock		[FBI agent] Tremelo
	Gabrielle Miller	Fling
	Joy Coghill		Mrs. [Ezra] Tweak**
	Mike Dobson		First Policeman
	Joanna Piros		Newscaster
Uncredited:
	Andre Benjamin	Street Radical

    1. Obba Babatunde has a very deep Sliders connection. Not only was he very close to landing the original role of Rembrandt Brown (he likely would have if Cleavant Derricks hadn't been able to commit to it), but Babatunde also appeared in the Broadway musical "Dreamgirls" with Derricks and the two were actually up for a 1982 Toni Award in the same category, Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical. Derricks won the award but it's also interesting to note that actor-comedian David Alan Grier ("In Living Color," "Jumaji") was also nominated in that category that year for his role in "The First." Babatunde has also guest starred on "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" and "Friends."
    2. Arthur Reggie III starred as 11-year-old Alfie Parker on Nickelodeon's 1994 sitcom "My Brother And Me."
    3. Michele Goodger played young mother Belle Ramsey from 1990 to 1992 opposite Mickey Rooney on "The Adventures of the Black Stallion" (1990-1993).
    4. Barry Pepper has appeared in an episode of "The Outer Limits" and had a recurring role as Mick on the Canadian teen soap drama "Madison."
    * Actor Robert Lee's voice was dubbed out of the final version of the episode and replaced with that of someone with a foreign accent. (See Inside Slide for more details)
    ** Mrs. Tweak's first name is only mentioned on-screen.
    The Inside Slide:

  • "[Fox] did not like the way 'Summer of Love' was directed [they felt it was] too static," Torme says. "I think ... it was behind schedule and went a bit over budget." As a result, Torme feels that Fox "turned on" the director, Canadian Mario Azzopardi.

    "Unfortunately, that happens way too often in this business. Somebody doesn't like someone for a dumb reason and it stinks. They weren't thrilled with what he did on that show -- I think he did a good job -- but once that [snubbing] happens, it sometimes takes a couple of years for someone to wise up and use somebody again."

  • Fans may wonder what ever became of the FBI's investigation of the sliding machine. Tracy Torme explains:
    "Well, the idea is that back on Earth, there's somebody back here who pretty much dissected things and knows, and we even had an idea that there might be some FBI agents or people who would go after them at some point and get caught themselves in being lost from world to world," he says. "So that was just another one of those things, you know, that we did a lot, that we sort of set up and then it was never taken anywhere. That was one of my favorite scenes, though. I like that scene [where] Bennish is hitting on a bong when the FBI shows up and they thought it was like a vase or something."

  • There were many things that were filmed for this episode (which was also the first one filmed of the season besides the Pilot) that didn't end up making the final broadcast cut, including a picture of Newt Gingrich on a big billboard dressed in a Chairman Mao outfit giving a peace sign.

    In another scene, Quinn explains the functions of the timer to the others but the scene wasn't needed because a scene "Prince of Wails" basically reiterated and that was aired before this episode.

    "There's also a fun scene between Quinn and Arturo where they're at the blackboard and they're talking about the Helix Spiral and the theory as to why they can open the gate briefly during that one minute of opportunity," Torme explains. "Then it was decided that, because the episode came in quite long -- it was one of the longer original cuts that we ever had -- we had to take out several minutes one way or another."

    While Torme wishes that such scenes don't have to be snipped, he realizes that it's a fact of television but still, as he says it's "always painful."

    Also, the segment that has Wade is talking about astrology to the hippies at the commune also had to be trimmed.

    "We lost a whole big chunk of that scene," he says. "Well, my wife [Jennifer] and I are both Ares and our dog [Willow] is an Ares -- we were all born in like three days of each other -- so I had a much longer scene where one of the hippies goes into a thing about that he's and Ares and he's discovered all of the problems within. It was a very funny scene but it got cut out of the final version."

    Gerry Nairn's role as crazy Mace Moon was also cut back not because of time, however, but because the concept of the Moon character didn't evolve quickly enough.

    "I'm a Moonatic, don't be a lunatic, come on down and buy from me," Torme recalls, chanting the electronics store owner's intended jingle. "That was a character who had a lot bigger part originally as written and then it got whittled down. It was supposed to be one of the running themes throughout this episode that you met Mace Moon in different incarnations."

    It was the creators' intentions that viewers were supposed to see Moon on all three worlds in this episode and each time he was supposed to be a "I must be crazy to have prices this low" kind of character.

    "It was an idea that wasn't really fleshed out by the time it got to the screen," Torme says. "It was a lot better fleshed out on the page."

    Another instance where "it worked better on paper" is the rest of the scene that has the hippies trying to equate the sliders' visit with the lyrics of a song. Torme had originally written a full set of lyrics for the song though only a line or two make it into the final version.

    "I just sort of saw these hippies as a lovable, naive group of dreamers," Torme explains. "I wrote this very Dylanish song called 'The Summer of Love' (see Song Lyrics) and it was supposed to be that the arrival of the sliders fit the lyrics of that song in their goofy way of thinking and I guess I was sort of poking fun at people who find all kinds of things in song lyrics especially in the '60s."

    Unfortunately, once more, the clock forced a knife on the extended scene.

    "Again, which so often happens, it's an idea that's very well thought out on paper but by the time it's been shot and edited it sort of becomes a lot less tangible."

  • Robert (Bob) Lee, who plays Agent Harold Yenn in this episode, has fond memories from his days on the Sliders set.

    "I wish that time had been longer," he says. "I spent four shooting days [and] I remember that everyone was very courteous and pleasant, from Jason Gaffney to John Rhys-Davies and Jerry O'Connell. That might not sound like much, but it's not always the case in TV."
    But while the filming held fond memories for Lee, the end result left him speechless -- literally.

    "My least favorite memory was, when the show was first broadcast, finding out that my voice had been dubbed with someone who had more of a foreign accent, which is not how I did the part at all," Lee recalls. "I sent a message to Tracy Torme, who took the trouble to phone me in Seattle to say that he agreed with me that the dubbing was a mistake, that I sounded like something out of a "Godzilla" movie, and that he hoped to bring back my character, and that my American voice would remain."

  • Interestingly, in May of 1997 -- the 30th anniversary of the Summer of Love -- the actual term "Summer of Love" found itself in a legal dispute. The term, which came to signify the proposed rejection of commercialism in the United States by young people, grew out of, where else, San Francisco.

    The Following is taken from The Toronto Star May 22, 1997:
    "The rights to the name had been snapped up by rock promoters Bill Graham Presents. Graham, who packed the Fillmore Auditorium in the '60s with acts such as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Cream, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, was killed in a 1991 helicopter accident, but his company is still the San Francisco Bay area's dominant concert promoter.

    One of the first people to run afoul of the copyright was [Chet] Helms, who served on an informal council in 1967 that he said coined the term Summer of Love. Helms also put on concerts in the era, but his tended to be free parties in the park.

    "Chet and Bill were like the antithesis of each other at the time," said Jerry Pompili, vice president of operations for the promotion agency. "Bill was the commercial promoter, Chet was the groovy guy -- he was part of the times."

    The Summer of Love, Helms said, evolved out of the first "Be In" in Golden Gate Park at the end of 1966. Allen Ginsberg read poetry. Timothy Leary encouraged thousands to turn on, tune in and drop out.

    The psychedelic '60s had begun.

    And in the spirit of that era, Bill Graham Presents and Helms seem to have worked out an accommodation. Pompili has offered to license Summer of Love to Helms for an October concert in Golden Gate Park for a fee of $1 (U.S.)."

    References:
  • Cezanne, while explaining this world to Remmy, quotes a line from the song "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy.
  • As Wade readies herself to slide through she turns to the handful of stunned hippies watching the vortex and says: "Remember, all you need is love,"To wit the hippies respond, in unison: "Love is all you need." An obvious reference to the Beatles' song. Another subtle Beatles reference would be made in "The King is Back."

    Song Lyrics:

    The Summer of Love
Written By: Tracy Torme

The gods will come
down from the sky.

Just two months
after July.

In the Summer of Love
They'll descend from above

And the men will no longer die
and our brothers will no longer die.
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