This Slide of Paradise

“This Slide of Paradise” is a failure in every sense of the word; it treats the Sliders with contempt, reduces the recurring villain into a feral lunatic, and posits a world where a mad scientist can set up a spacious jungle plantation and create human/animal hybrids without anyone raising an eyebrow. It also has the misfortune of separating the team and leading to a ridiculous cliffhanger where Quinn and Maggie “must have slid into the future.”

But was it always that way? Surprisingly, no—the original ending was even more grim and nihilistic, with Rickman’s timer destroyed in the cliffside battle and the Sliders left with their hopes of getting home dashed on the rocks. Take a look below to see how the story took shape between February and March of 1997.

“Untitled”

An undated memo lays out a loose framework (and references to a lost story called “Resurrection”) for episode 25. In this earliest iteration of the story, the vortices guided by Rickman and the Sliders actually overlap, dropping them all onto a remote island. A young boy who is part of an unknown scientific experiment befriends and betrays both parties: he’s “duplicitous” and “it’ll be a strange twist when he turns out to be a conniving snit.”

Aside from that, the memo only offers up three other salient bits of information. The first reveals Maggie and Rickman were in love, and that she was going to leave Dr. Jensen until his accident kept them together out of guilt. “Rickman never took the rejection well,” we’re told. “Maggie thinks part of the reason Rickman killed Steven was to finally get back at him and her…”

The second is a weird character beat for Maggie that makes no sense after the events of “Slither,” “Sole Survivors,” and “Stoker.” Throughout this episode, they want to “keep Maggie in a ‘Scully’ like attitude. She holds to logic. She won’t believe in mythical beasts or genetic animals until she is absolutely faced with the realities.” But will she do it… to the point of myopia?

The last plot point involves the dramatic showdown at the end. Rickman is defeated and tries to goad Quinn into killing him. Quinn refuses; he only wants the timer for their home coordinates. Maggie intervenes; her “lust for revenge” overtakes her and she kills the Colonel. “He tumbles over a sea cliff and disappears into the water—taking his timer … their hopes of getting home.”

In other words: “The end could be: Fuck. Now we're right back to where we started.” And isn’t that a great place to be after a nine-episode arc?

“The Hour of Reckoning”: February 20, 1997

After this memo, story editor Nan Hagan shares an outline that reads like a fusion of what aired with elements of Worlds Apart, the discarded Logan St. Clair follow-up. Many beats are familiar, but there are substantial differences that get ironed out between this and the first full script draft.

The teaser opens on Rickman making his way through the compound, already devastated by a hybrid attack. (Note: he does not transform into a hybrid himself in the outline.) The Colonel finds a scientist, gravely injured and begging for help. Rickman hears his cries and silences them by taking his brain fluid. Throughout this, a young hybrid named Janus watches Rickman retreat from the lab after being attacked by a hybrid, then follows.

We then join the Sliders as Maggie and Quinn are about to be hanged in a Mexican border town by Panchito, a local. Just as the clock strikes noon, Rembrandt and Wade arrive on horseback, shoot down the nooses, and grab their friends. Panchito follows the team, sees them open the vortex, and is accidentally swallowed up before the wormhole closes!

Panchito is quickly dispatched by a hybrid, but as the remaining Sliders flee the encounter, they conveniently find Rickman’s timer on the jungle floor. Elated by this discovery, they make their way inland. Janus observes from a distance before reporting back to Rickman what he’s seen. Even though he’s injured from the lab attack, Rickman convinces Janus to join him as they hunt the Sliders so they can leave this world together.

The Sliders reach a clearing in the jungle. Maggie offers to cover the others while they cross, but when she spots Rickman lurking nearby, she takes her eye off Rembrandt right before he is attacked by the hybrid. Quinn fights the beast off, and they converge to find Remmy "bloodied, savaged and unconscious." Wade is furious at how Maggie's shifting priorities have endangered Rembrandt's life. Quinn stops the argument by leading them to the lab, hoping to find medicine or equipment to patch up the Cryin’ Man. All they find, however, is wreckage and some notebooks talking about DNA experiments.

Janus then reveals himself to the Sliders, and shares both he and the Beast were created by the dead scientist. Maggie doesn’t trust Janus. Quinn focuses on Rembrandt—he’s in bad shape. “Quinn tells [Wade] he can't locate the home coordinates here,” the outline notes. He needs better equipment to identify which of the coordinates on Rickman’s timer correspond to Earth Prime. They’ll have to slide from here, stranding Rickman, and then use time on the next world to get Rembrandt patched up and then get home.

There’s another confrontation between Quinn, Maggie, and Rickman outside the lab. Janus steals Rickman’s timer back and the two flee into the jungle, with Maggie in pursuit (“there go their home coordinates”). Wade tells Quinn they’ve got to slide to save Rembrandt. Maggie wants to end it here, once and for all; Quinn agrees. His compromise? Send Wade and Rembrandt back to a previously unseen world with medical technology with the Egyptian timer, since it’s scheduled to leave before Rickman’s.

“‘This will work,’” Quinn notes. “‘Then you'll come back for us.’ It's Remmy's best chance. They'll get Rickman. Remmy'll get help. They'll meet back here in 12 hours. Wade nods.” [It’s unknown how Quinn knows the return trip will be less than 12 hours, but just roll with it.]

So the team splits up, with Wade and Rembrandt traveling backward through the interdimension and Quinn and Maggie on the hunt for Rickman and his timer. Wade and Rembrandt arrive on the previous world where they first entered it, though—and it’s a long hike to civilization. Rembrandt can’t make it, so Wade drops him off at the cave set and goes for help, which involves free-climbing a cliff to flag an ambulance down!

Meanwhile, Quinn and Maggie gear up in the abandoned compound and head out. They follow Rickman’s trail and disarm his traps while discussing what will happen to Maggie when this is all over. “Maggie acts like she doesn’t care. They can just drop her off somewhere along the line. Quinn doesn’t like the idea. Maybe there’s some way she can live on their world. Maggie doesn’t think so. We have a moment where Quinn realizes that getting home means losing Maggie. An idea he doesn’t like.”

After more back and forth with the Beast, it’s revealed the Beast is a clone of the scientist that “went bad.” Janus appears, shocked by the revelation. He asks if he can come with them when they leave this world, promising to lead them to Rickman to atone for stealing the timer. “Quinn considers it. He figures they can take Janus to a world where he’ll be safe and where people will be safe from him.”

More tracking of Rickman and avoiding or escaping from the comically large number of traps he was able to set in the short time he’s been on the island. Quinn and Maggie hear a vortex open and rush to it, thinking it may be Rickman escaping. Instead, it’s Wade and Rembrandt, back as promised. Remmy’s in bad shape, but got enough medical attention that he’ll be okay.

The final confrontation; Quinn chases Rickman and they face off on an ocean overlook. Rickman activates his timer, but Quinn pins him down so he can’t leave. In the struggle, Rickman breaks free and Maggie shoots him. The Colonel tumbles over the cliff, “taking his timer with him.”

While the Sliders are distracted and fighting with one another, Janus jumps into Rickman’s vortex and slides (“Oh shit”). Outraged at Maggie, Quinn walks off into the jungle alone while Wade and Rembrandt look devastated at losing their one chance to return home.

And off that humdinger of a cliffhanger, the season ends. Super fun, right?

Writer’s Draft: March 14, 1997

Dubbed the “Scary Writer’s Draft” by Hagan, this full script jettisons a bunch of the outline’s elements as it inches closer to the finished product. It features versions of Allesandra, Daniel, and Dr. Vargas (“LeSandra,” “Demeter,” and “Dr. Paulis Paivon”), Ceres, a few other beasts, and the broad beats in place—as well as a ton of missing words and spelling errors.

As with the outline, we start with a teaser that establishes events on the compound before the Sliders arrive. We’re also treated to a more fleshed-out version of Quinn and Maggie’s rescue, including romantic confessions and insane world-building. (The border town? Populated with Latinos who are culturally Irish.) Panchito still joins them for the slide and is dispatched a few pages later by a hybrid, giving Quinn a rare moment of reflection when he expresses guilt: “He wasn’t even supposed to [be] here.”

The Sliders flee the hybrid hunting party chasing them and are rescued by Lesandra, who leads them away to Paivon’s compound. They’re almost there when “a woman/leopard leaps at Quinn.” She grabs the timer and races off into the jungle, leaving everyone safe but trapped.

Ceres emerges and talks to Lesandra through the compound fence. The beasts are in agony because they’ve been denied “medicine” by Dr. Paivon. Demeter and Lesandra counter that Paivon cannot produce enough medicine for them all, leaving Ceres to rage, “Then he should have made all of us at all!” before storming off.

The Sliders want to arm up and head back out to retrieve the timer, but Paivon appears and mentions a “non-violence policy on the island.” Instead of the megalomaniac Vargas in the final version, Paivon is more reserved and detached; he has a mild interest in understanding why the hybrids have become so violent.

It’s here we take a break from the action for more unnecessary world-building. According to a map on the wall that mentions Carson City Beach and some comments from Vargas, this world’s California shattered into hundreds of islands and archipelagos during the 1906 earthquake. “Fortunately,” Paivon says, “most of the people made it to the Nevada Coast.” Paivon’s lab is in “the Santa Barbara Keys.”

Stop and consider this for a moment. Look at a map. This script is asking the viewer to accept that a regional earthquake at sea level was able to sink the Sierra Nevadas. Lake Tahoe and Carson City are more than a mile above sea level; who thought this was a good idea?

Anyway. Paivon then reveals he’s the creator of the hybrids, that they’re all created with his DNA and that of “various test breeds.” He’s been working in solitude for “not quite a year.” He’s in the process of telling the Sliders how staggering his results have been in such a short time when Lesandra has a seizure. Demeter runs for some of the medicine Ceres foreshadowed earlier and has Paivon administer it. The seizure subsides, but it’s clear now the hybrids face constant existential pain.

The story moves back into the jungle, intercutting between the Sliders as they search for Rickman and Rickman preaching to the assembled hybrids. Rickman tells his followers Quinn is an evil scientist like Paivon while Quinn and Maggie discuss the ethics of gene manipulation and the end of their journey. Quinn’s still not okay with leaving Maggie behind when they’ve defeated Rickman. Then they kiss—and almost tranq dart Rembrandt in the head in the process.

Because the Sliders are somehow collectively less intelligent than Rickman and a bunch of hybrids, Wade, Rembrandt, and Maggie are captured. Quinn escapes and returns to the compound for help. Paivon asks for Quinn’s DNA to replace his own in his experiments (he’s too old, and DNA ages!); Quinn agrees, and they set out at sunrise.

Rickman and Maggie argue in the animal lair. Surprisingly, we get a little more about Rickman than we’d expect: he’s got a serious (justified?) beef with scientists. The ones who developed “Agent Yellow” that started eating his brain. “Then there's Mallory,” he adds. “Thanks to him, I get to exist in a constant state of panic, hunted on every world, unable to stay long enough to get the proper fix …” Even Paivon, whose hybrid brain fluid doesn’t stave off Rickman’s disease. He even wishes he’d died when the pulsar hit! “At least then I would died a man and not the pitiful half-breed addict I’ve become!” And then we get the revelation that he and Maggie were lovers. (Yay.)

Rickman then shows a shocking amount of empathy for the hybrids. He watches one die in agony before Paivon, Lesandra, and Demeter arrive to help Quinn rescue the others. “How could a father who loves his children treat you as he does” Rickman asks “He allows you to live in pain, when all along he hoards the medicine which would ease your lives.” He then castigates Paivon for keeping medicine for Lesandra and Demeter (his “newer models”) and not euthanizing his earlier creations. Righteous Rickman may be trying to rile up the hybrids, but he’s also making good points!

Quinn frees the others (but not the timers; Rickman still holds them) just in time for them to discover the hybrids have murdered Lesandra and Demeter in a fury. And because this show is good at tone, the scene after this is another argument between Wade and Maggie about her affair with Rickman. We learn Maggie almost married Rickman, but when she chose Steven instead, Rickman volunteered for the Gulf War mission that injured him. Wade is surprisingly sympathetic to Maggie’s need to put a bow on all this drama.

To recap: Rickman has both timers. The Sliders are on the run. Paivon is dazed and bloody. Demeter and Lesandra are dead.

Rickman and Ceres track the Sliders and Paivon back to the compound and taunt them with the Egyptian timer: 15 minutes left. Paivon wants to know what the timer is and the Sliders tell him. He barely cares. The Sliders proceed to berate him for his experiments while the clock ticks down. Paivon still offers to help them escape with his lab equipment.

While the Sliders arm themselves, we get a legitimately good exchange between Maggie and Quinn:

Quinn: We get our timer back. That's it. If we can grab his too, we do. Otherwise, we wait for the next world to get it. We don't need to kill him.

Maggie: Quinn, don't be such a…

Quinn: I've given this a lot of thought. Killing him won't bring back the professor. It won't bring back Steven. It serves no purpose other than vengeance. And I don't want that to be part of me.

Maggie: You mean, you don't want to be like me.

Quinn: I mean—I don't want you to be like that, either. I don't want that for any of us.

Then Quinn goes off to destroy the samples he gave Paivon of his own DNA. Paivon says he’ll continue experiments with his genetic material, but Quinn tells the doctor to just leave him out of it. “I’d invite you to slide with us,” he adds as he leaves, “but I’ve already caused enough pain in the universe. You I don’t want responsibility for.”

The Sliders step outside to see Rickman open the Sliders’ vortex. There’s then a very fast battle between them, Rickman, and the hybrids. At first Rickman has the upper hand, but Maggie manages to hit the Colonel with a dart that causes him to seize and fall into the electrified fence. He and his timer are fried by the electricity, but the Egyptian timer is okay.

Defeated, the Sliders pick up their timer and keep sliding. “And so, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride continues…”

First Pink Revisions: March 20, 1997

Names are starting to resemble the finished product; only Dr. Paivon hasn’t changed to his final form yet.

The weird Irish nonsense is gone but the hanging remains. And, in a cost-cutting move that makes sense, Wade and Rembrandt open the vortex under the platform trap door, allowing Maggie and Quinn to slide as the trap door opens! Panchito—sorry, Hanging Harry in this draft—still decides to see where the hole in the universe goes, so we’re stuck with him for a few pages in this draft, too. “Welcome to our nightmare, Harry,” Maggie notes dryly.

The teaser plays out similarly to what aired, with the inciting incident being Harry’s abduction by hybrids. The script follows Harry when the Sliders don’t; he’s taken to Rickman and summarily dispatched for his brain fluid.

The Sliders, meanwhile, get in a few remarks about the killer quake that created this island showdown before heading inland. They realize they’re being hunted and are rescued by Alisandra. Since the story is starting to settle into place, these beats are largely the same. Maggie does get in some good comments about questioning Alisandra’s loyalties, but that doesn’t stop them from heading into the compound to hash it out with Paivon. The only significant change from the last draft is that Ceres accuses the Sliders of being scientists here to aid the doctor’s work, and his insistence that Alisandra and Daniel will be exiled when another hybrid comes along.

Quinn is anxious to get back out into the jungle to retrieve the timer, which has now been left behind during the altercation with the leopardwoman instead of outright stolen. Paivon gives Quinn some tranq guns and the speech about gene manipulation we see in what was televised before we get to Alisandra’s seizure. In this draft, however, the medicine doesn’t work and she dies. Wade and Rembrandt are rightfully outraged, but Quinn brushes it off: “Look, I feel bad about her too, but we need to focus on finding the timer without becoming somebody's lunch. Heads up, okay?”

After Ceres’ conversation with Rickman, we get a new conversation between Maggie and Quinn. She’s in favor of the experiments if it leads to lives saved, but Quinn has a moment of empathy for the deceased. “I thought you, as the scientist, would be more into the brave new world thing,” she says. Quinn counters: “Don’t get me wrong. Science is a really great thing, but it has its problems.”

The rest of this version hew close to the Writers Draft: we get a slightly different version of the Quinn and Maggie kiss scene outlined earlier; the same action that leads to the Sliders captured and Quinn on the run; Quinn returning to the compound and sharing his DNA for help (now Paivon’s end goal is curing cancer); and the Rickman/Maggie confrontation, now stripped of his justification for hating scientists. (Since Alisandra’s already dead, Daniel is the only casualty when he, Quinn, and Paivon visit the animal’s lair.)

The final battle with Rickman moves to its resting place on the cliffs after a scene where Quinn violently subdues Dr. Paivon and destroys his research. This time, Maggie hits Rickman with a dart that causes him to seize up and fall off the cliff, killing him and destroying his timer. They have enough time to be pissed at one another before jumping into the collapsing vortex and continuing to slide…

First Blue Revisions: March 24, 1997

Say goodbye to to Irish Backlot World and Hanging Harry, and hello to Hybrid Rickman! A lot’s changed in four days, with the script more or less tracking with what we saw on screen. Sure, Wade is wearing a leather skirt and Rickman’s eating bugs like an animal, but we’re in the fine-tuning stages of the script. Vargas is now Vargas (and a megalomaniac), Rembrandt now has his B story with Alisandra; there’s not much to report on at this stage. Here are a few bits and bobbles that stand out:

• Alisandra has only seen two humans before the Sliders—Vargas and “the Captain.” When Rembrandt asks if she means Colonel Rickman, Alisandra clarifies that the captain is someone who helicopters supplies over from the mainland.
• Rembrandt is now the one who escapes capture by Rickman and Ceres. When he returns to the compound, Daniel can sense him by his scent.
• Rembrandt and Alisandra part ways before they make their way to the cliffs, so his return to the lab and his capture by Vargas in the aired version doesn’t happen.

First Yellow Revisions: March 25, 1997

Almost there! A comical typo on page 43 aside (Colonel Ricmna?), all the pieces are in place. Rembrandt is now on a quest to go back for Alisandra after escaping the animal lair (even though producer notes say CUT! over these scenes), this is pretty much what we saw, minus the slide to Future World. “He aims the timer; the VORTEX OPENS. He takes her hand, and together, they leap into the Vortex... and into our next season…”

It’s clear the ask from FOX to separate the crew to create that pocket-sized fourth season with just Maggie and Quinn came around this time. Why else separate the Sliders after teeing up an anticlimax for six weeks of production?

Second Green Revisions: April 7, 1997

If it’s not the shooting script, it’s right next to it. No surprises here; even the dumb cliffhanger is here in all its glory. If it means anything to you, Quinn and Maggie were supposed to land in Golden Gate Park:

In the distance, a SPACESHIP gently and quietly LIFTS OFF off a pad near the Golden Gate Bridge, HOVERS A BEAT, then SHIFTS TO LIGHT SPEED, DISAPPEARING INTO THE NIGHT SKY LIKE A SHOOTING STAR.

And off our worried looks…

FADE OUT.