New Gods for Old

// E0810 · Originally aired July 16, 1999

When Mallory is paralyzed escaping from a anti-nanotech society, his only salvation lies on a similar world where that nanotech has been embraced for its communal properties and healing powers.

Written By // David Gerrold
Director // Richard Compton
Music // Danny Lux

Reviews

// Earth Prime

Watching this brings back memories of the second season. Perhaps it was the intertwined trio of worlds that hinged on one series of events, but more than anything else this episode asked me to think about what I was watching, a phenomenon that’s been all too absent in much of the last two seasons.

// Think of a Roulette Wheel

Rembrandt Brown is an awful human being, and I hate him. Didn’t see that one coming, didn’t you?

// External Reviews

Martin Izsak

Worlds Visited

BIR Prime

A world where nanotech engineering resulted in a bloody war between those who embraced it versus those who sought to control it.

BIR Double Prime

A broken world where the war with the Bureau of Internal Reconstruction ended with the Believers gaining control over the nanotechnology.

BIR Triple Prime

Nanotech was researched but never discovered on this world, and a peaceful society is the result.

Details

Unit 3 is asked to hold position on BIR Prime.
There is a poster with Krislov on BIR Prime with the phrase BIR underneath his photo.
BIR stands for the Bureau of Internal Reconstruction.
Krislov’s restaurant on BIR Triple Prime world is called “Krislov’s Excellent Fare.”
There is alternative medicine to Jill’s spinal problems in Mexico.

Character Information

Mallory would do anything to walk again after being confined to a wheelchair for years.
Rembrandt doesn’t believe that Quinn is gone.

Notable Quotes

“I’m not going back to a wheelchair.”—Mallory.
“That’s okay, being me isn’t that much fun anymore.”—Mallory, after Krislov tells him that he won’t like himself after taking the Gift.
“My mother showed me pictures.”—Maggie, about the ’60s.
“Everything seems weird to me since I started sliding with you.”—Mallory.
“You want comfort? A grave is comfortable and nobody ever climbs out of one.”—Maggie, to Mallory after his transformation.
“What we are is very much determined by what we’re challenged by.”—Rembrandt.
“We’re our worst nightmare… we’re BIR-men.”—Rembrandt.
“Mallory, transformation comes from the heart, not some glass pitcher!”—Maggie, about the Gift.
“I don’t. And I won’t.”—Rembrandt’s belief about Quinn being ‘gone.’

Money Matters

The Sliders are able to purchase food and lodgings on BIR Triple Prime.

Nitpicks and Errors

The Sliders walk down the street with Krislov in tow and spend 45 seconds discussing how they’re traveling through a cluster of similar worlds. Couldn’t that wait until Krislov is out of earshot?
What is the deal with the “zombie-walk” the Believers have when they subdue Rembrandt on BIR Triple Prime?
The meeting hall is the Chandler set dressed down.
If the shutdown signal is contagious through the whole system, and if the “system”—the network of nanotechs—communicates from person to person through the skin, then why isn’t everybody cured when only one is hit with the Dead Man’s Light? All of the Believers felt it when Mallory turned the Dead Man’s Light on himself, which means that the nanotechs in their systems were getting some kind of a signal from the dying ones in Mallory. So why didn’t the shutdown code affect all the nanotechs in all the Believers?

Neatpicks

The Believer’s compound is located in the same meadow seen in The Last of Eden.

Guest Starring

Stephen Macht¹ as Krislov
Angela Bettis as Jill
Sandra Lee Peckinpah² as Martha
Michael Keenan as George

Stephen Macht appeared as Kromanus in Common Ground .
Sandra Lee Peckinpah also appears as a Woman in California Reich.

Script Archive

Click on the links below to download rare scripts, outlines, and memos associated with this episode.

The Inside Slide

“New Gods for Old” began its life during the fourth season. All told, there were four different versions of this story broken before settling on Mallory’s infestation—in season five.

The first version, “God’s Country,” placed Quinn as the first to succumb to the nanites, followed by Maggie and Rembrandt. It would be up to Colin to rescue them. The second version, “Semi-Colin,” left Colin the only one infected, and “God in the Machine” gave Rembrandt his tap to a “a gestalt mind and one’s personal connection with God.”

Eventually, the arc of season four (and possibly The Chasm, which had a similar theme) forced the staff to abandon production.

“It must have been providence,” exclaims Keith Damron. “By the time we got up to speed with season five we realized that New Gods would fit perfectly into the new series arc as a Mallory vehicle. We still owned the story. We gave David [Gerrold] some new notes on his treatment. It was re-worked and the script finally written.”

· · ·

Bill Dial believed that Gerrold’s script could easily be adapted to fit the character of Mallory. In fact, in some ways this worked to the episode’s advantage, as it confronts how the character copes with sudden paralysis. For Mallory, this allows past ghosts to resurface, as he reverts to the infirm state he endured before Geiger’s intervention.

“I get shot in the back just as we’re diving through the Vortex,” Floyd offers. “His legs are wiped out. He had to go back and face the worst thing possible in his mind—being back in the chair. When he is cured, I think that’s a turning point and his beginning of really trusting others. Before that, it was all about me. From then on you start to see more of an inner strength in him. Before it was more on the outside.”