Total Recall: Sliders “Double Cross”
Welcome to Season Three, the last season we’re going to recap here at Everything Action. The show moved to Los Angeles from Vancouver and, as such, Fox had more of an influence on how the show proceeded. Pretty rapidly this meant that the show devolved into worlds based on movies and other TV shows instead of the social/politcially influenced worlds of season one and two. There are still some fun episodes this season but by the end of the season the show was pretty much dead. We kick it off with what Fox aired as the second episode but was supposed to be the season opener, Double Cross.
The gang arrives on their newest world in some sort of tunnel. As they try to get their bearings, they see lights coming at them and a rumbling sound and quickly realize they are in a subway tunnel with a train bearing down on them. The gang tries to outrun the train but Rembrandt, who bought a new suit and boots on the last world, gets his boot laces stuck in the tracks and the gang is unable to get him free before the train reaches them. Luckily the train stops short due to some sort of daily blackout and the group frees Rembrandt and heads quickly for the surface. The gang learns that they’ve arrived on a world where Los Angeles and San Fransisco have merged into San Angeles and that natural resources across the world are severely limited; newspapers are a single page and horses are on the endangered species along with daily brown outs and black outs.
The group tries to get something to eat but a local street vendor only has something called geomash and hot dogs are ancient history. Rembrandt gets an offer of some real food from a hot fan of his double and heads off with the blessing of Arturo, telling him to carpe diem. More on Rembrandt’s wacky adventure later.
The remaining trio soon finds themselves getting chased by some motorcycles after the not hot dog vendor points them out. After trying to outrun them, the gang finds themselves in a dead end alley but are shocked to learn that their pursuer is a woman named Logan St. Clair and that she knows they’re sliders. It turns out that Logan works for a company called Prototronics, which is trying to develop sliding technology on this world. They also learn that Arturo’s double was involved in the project as well but he slid prematurely and died due to the instability of the wormhole. Logan shows them her lab and explains that they have been sending probes out into the wormholes but they come back scorched. Quinn offers to help Logan lock down the re-entry problem and in return, Logan offers Quinn use of the lab to find the coordinates of Earth Prime. Quinn uses the programming of his timer to try and synchronize the programming of Logan’s equipment. Arturo and Wade grow uneasy with Quinn giving up so much information but he doesn’t believe there’s any harm and stays behind to keep working while Arturo and Wade head to the Dominion to wait for Rembrandt.
At the Dominion, Arturo learns from the manager that his double frequently came to the hotel for “nooners” with Logan, which adds to their growing suspicions. They go to visit the other Arturo’s widow and learn that the company is trying to keep his death hushed up. Arturo and Wade decide to investigate the other Arturo’s office and Wade finds a surveillance video of Logan shoving the other Arturo into the wormhole, killing him. Wade copies the video to a floppy disk (ah 90’s technology) but is captured by Logan’s boss, Adrien.
Meanwhile, Quinn makes some progress with Logan’s sliding tech and she does a test to see how stable the the wormhole is but she puts too much power into it and she and Quinn are almost sucked into it. Deciding they need a break, Logan shows Quinn around San Angeles and asks him if he would consider staying with her and getting their sliding tech locked down. Quinn admits that he has never clicked with anyone as easily as with Logan but unbeknown to him, that’s because she’s his double. Fortunately the show doesn’t get into the creepy ramifications of making out with essentially yourself.
Quinn meets up with Arturo the next morning at the Dominion and both wonder where Rembrandt and Wade are. Arturo says that Wade disappeared last night and no sooner does he say this than Wade rolls up, saying that she got questioned all night by Adrien but he eventually decided that she didn’t know anything and let her go. Quinn heads back to the lab to not raise suspicion with Logan while Arturo and Wade go to break the news about the other Arturo to Mrs. Arturo. She tells them about a disc Arturo made that caused him to want to halt all the research on sliding, even though he invented it. Arturo is impressed that his double was the one that invented sliding here but Wade mentions that it would make sense that he would invent it on multiple Earths. Obviously this alerts Arturo to the fact that Prototronic replaced Wade with her double so he quickly ties her up and stashes her in a janitor closet at Prototronic. He rounds up Quinn and they go to try and find the video disk the other Arturo made. The find it under the other Arturo’s science medal and they see it’s a video of Logan discussing their plan to use sliding to rape other worlds of their natural resources and then control the flow of resources back on this world, essentially making them the rulers of the world. Outside in the parking lot, Arturo and Quinn are ambushed by Logan, who demands the disk and tells Quinn she’s his double. He and Arturo attempt to take out the guards but Logan activates a wormhole with her timer and pushes Arturo into it. Quinn is led back into the lab and he causes the programming that was working on the timer technology to get erased. He says he won’t fix it until the real Wade is brought back in. Logan and Adrien do it but demand that Quinn fix the computer but Arturo arrives to help Quinn and Wade escape, having returned safely due to Quinn’s work on the re-entry coordinates. The trio rushes back to the Dominion to try and round up Rembrandt and slide since they only have 15 minutes left to slide.
Speaking of Rembrandt, he has one of his typical solo adventures where his romantic escapades go horribly wrong. It turns out that his fan, Monique, is an insane stalker who wants to marry him and has a jam packed room full of Crying Man memorabilia in her house. Rembrandt is chased out of the house by Monique’s brawny fiance and tries to catch a train back into the city. He doesn’t have any money so he follows a guy who is lashing himself onto the roof of the train and barely manages to hold on as the train goes over 200 mph back into downtown San Angeles. The sliders are reunited at the Dominion and get inside just as the daily blackout occurs, locking Logan out. The gang slides out and ends up in a Los Angeles tropical bar. Quinn realizes that Logan must have switched out their navigation system for hers, meaning that now the Sliders could end up anywhere in a 400 mile radius. Another wormhole opens up and Logan arrives, since she is able to track wormholes. Logan demands that Quinn fix her timer or she’ll kill Wade. Quinn enters some numbers and Logan is forced to slide, since she only has 30 seconds on this world. Quinn says he entered the coordinates of another dimension, causing Logan to wander other dimensions just as they have been. The episode closes with Rembrandt wondering if they’ll see her again, since she’s able to track wormholes.
The answer to that question is no, they never see her again because Fox decided the actress who played Logan, Zoe McLellan, wasn’t attractive enough. Logan was supposed to be a recurring villain and it would have been great to have a villain character that was Quinn’s intellectual (and everything else) double. Later this season the gang will face off against another sliding villain but the results are not great. Next week the gang finds themselves in middle of a Running Manesque game show.