| “Paradise Lost” | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Episode no. | Season 3 Episode 15 | ||||||
| Written by | Steve Stoliar | ||||||
| Directed by | Jim Johnston | ||||||
| Guest stars | Will Schaub (Parker Whitmore) Pat Gebhard (Trudy Whitmore) J. Gordon Noice (Fred) Jeff Markey (Bud) Rob Youngblood (Sheriff Burke) Kristi McDaniel (Alice) Todd Babcock (Michael Levy) Lara Steinick (Laurie Miller) | ||||||
| Production no. | K1818 | ||||||
| Original airdate | 1/31/1997 | ||||||
| |||||||
| List of Sliders episodes | |||||||
Plot[]
A man in a tent makes a phone call to his partner, a geologists, frantically raving about something he's found that could be living underground making incredible vibrations. Then he is ambushed and taken to a cove on the beach where something sucks him down into the earth (we don't see what it is at first, all we see is trail in the sand left by something moving under him). And then the sliders arrive, wandering into a small town that is inhabited by people who are very wary of strangers, and also appear to be quite young, in fact, other than a strange old lady named Trudy, Arturo is the oldest one there, no one any older than 30. Well to make a long story short, they end up discovering the towns secret, it turns out that in the 1950s, there was some kind of explosion at the uranium mine down by the shore, and it mutated a worm into a terrifying monster (in the episode, Quinn refers to the creature as, "some kind of freak nemertine," which Remmy clarifies for us as Latin for, "big freakin' worm.") Originally, however, the towns people tried to kill this beast until they found something it left behind, some kind of bluish, purplish, goo, and when you eat it, it will allow you to live for over 100 years, but never looking a day over 30. The professor is then taken by the worm, and then Quinn, Remmy and wade know that they have to put an end to this terror. They go to the cove where it lives, and there they find a cave lined with uranium(obviously cause that's how it mutated in the first place)wade and Quinn free Arturo, while Remmy is outside in the middle of a gun fight with the town's sheriff, who will stop at nothing to make sure that the creature is not destroyed. Once Arturo is freed, they discover a whole nest of at least 1000 eggs. back outside, Remmy manages to get past the sheriff's bullets, and into the cave with the rest of them, Quinn begins chucking gasoline, on the eggs, and even puts down dynamite to blow the place up. That's when the sheriff comes in and tries to stop him, in the middle of the confrontation, the "worm" finally surfaces and kills the sheriff, giving Quinn time to get out of the cave before the dynamite goes off, and the whole place is blown to smithereens. And once again to make a long story short, the creature is destroyed, and the sliders slide on out of that world.
Trivia[]
The idea for this episode, came from the 1990 Kevin Bacon creature feature, "Tremors." Obviously considering that the plots are almost identical, a giant worm underground, well, you get the picture. In this episode the town of Mt Dora was mentioned in conversation between Rembrandt and Wade. It may be a little known fact, but this is the birthplace of Sabrina Lloyd. Maybe this was offscreen banter brought in for random material
Goofs[]
- If you notice at the end, just before the worm grabs the sheriff in it's mouth, the actor playing the sheriff in that one scene, isn't actually there, he was actually in front of a green screen, and was edited in there, and then when the worm does grab him, you'll notice, that it's actually not a real guy in the worms mouth, it's actually a computerized guy.
- Also, when the sliders free that girl from the cocoon, if you look carefully, you'll see she has a booger hanging out of her nose.