The Great Work

// E0806 · Originally aired July 9, 1999

The Sliders help a monastery safeguard records which chronicle its civilization.

Written By // Robert Masello
Director // Reza Badiyi
Music // Danny Lux

Reviews

// Earth Prime

This is a filler episode in a filler season. We’re just killing time until the theoretical syndication money rolls in.

// Think of a Roulette Wheel

WE HAVE TO GO BACK, MAGGIE. WE HAVE TO GO BACK TO THE ISLAND.

// External Reviews

Martin Izsak

Worlds Visited

Beach World

A world where Maggie had been tied up in some very close and hot waters.

Volsang World

A unified world government collapsed by a ship full of barbaric raiders? You can’t make this stuff up.

Bigger World

Once again, the Sliders visit a world where they’re smaller than the competition.

Details

The Sliders slide onto the edge of the northern sea, the island of St. Caroline.
The mainland is overrun by the Volsangs.
After dinner everyone on the island goes into their quarters for solitary contemplation and for their own safety because of the dangerous people at large.
The penalty for spying is death.
Everyone earns their food and shelter by doing various chores.
Sarah’s job is to input data into the computers.
Each disk containing the Great Work holds hundreds of volumes of information. The disks are made of dissolved silicates that they reprocess in the lab.
The Volsangs have taken over the isle of Anna Cappa and killed the inhabitants.
The leader of the Volsangs is named Vortak.
The people on the island of St. Caroline survived through subterfuge by pretending to be a penniless contemporary order.

Character Information

Keeper Abraham is the master of the sanctuary.
Diana says she knows “a little” about computers.
Diana says she worked with silicate derivatives before.
Diana says she devised a form of crystal silicate encryption.

Notable Quotes

“If you’re job requires you to wear a paper hat and somebody hands you a hoe, you’ve made a really bad career choice.”—Mallory, to Seth while on their way to do some digging.
“You sure can squeeze one fine damn grape.”—Mallory to Keeper Abraham at the dinner table.

Money Matters

All of the needs of the Sliders are met by the Keepers, as long as they perform the tasks set out for them each day.

Nitpicks and Errors

At one point in the episode Seth makes sure that Rembrandt promises to return Seth’s help with a favor. He mentions it to Rembrandt again later in the episode but when the end comes it is never shown to the audience what the favor is or if Rembrandt did it for Seth.
Explain how an Alliance half the size of the planet can be overthrown by barbarians. No, really.
At the end Rembrandt says there is 14 seconds left until the slide. 28 seconds later, they slide.
So Diana got all the information encrypted onto the quartz crystal. Great! Did she also give anyone instructions on how to modify a laser to read the information at a later date? What good will it be to save a bunch of data that nobody can read?

Neatpicks

Rembrandt makes a reference to the fourth season episode Prophets and Loss when he says to Mallory that about a year ago they slid into a very spiritual place that was very religious until they found out that the head preacher was frying the congregation and stealing all their money.

Guest Starring

Rob Youngblood¹ as Keeper James
Granville van Dusen as Keeper Abraham
Austin Nichols as Seth
Vicki Davis as Sara
Eamon Behrens as Keeper Samuel
Cissy Wellman as Head Matron
Marshall Bell as Vortak

Rob Youngblood appeared as Sheriff Burke in Paradise Lost. Since Burke’s name was never revealed, Keeper James my be a double.

Script Archive

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

The Inside Slide

The working title for this episode in pre-production was “Lindisfarne.”

· · ·

This story was initially far different. How so? Well, it didn’t involve a bunch of Vikings taking over the world, for one.

“In [writer] Robert [Massello]’s original concept the monks were an order who were gathering not just the knowledge of their world, but the knowledge from many parallel Earths,” notes Keith Damron. “The monastery was to be a sort of pan-dimensional library at Alexandria. The monks’ mission was to protect this legacy from Kromagg invasion and conquest.

“We didn’t want too many people to posses the sliding technology. We would always strive to make the four Sliders (any four) travelers on a one of a kind journey. When it was vital to a story in development this rule was broken but not very often. In the case of “The Great Work” it hardly impacted the story at all so it was decided to drop the multi-dimensional library in favor of a single Earth venue. We also found we didn’t need the Kromaggs in this episode for that same reason.