Originally aired June 25, 1999
Written by Keith Damron
Directed by Richard Compton
The Sliders arrive in a barren wasteland where the countdown on the timer is frozen. Worse, they're forced to join a ceaseless conflict between Kromaggs and human soldiers from Kromagg Prime, who are guarding a mysterious bunker.
Tropes present in the episode:
- Break the Cutie: What happens when Diana, a perky nerd, is thrown into a war.
- Despair Event Horizon: Rembrandt gives up all hope after learning the truth about the anti-Kromagg weapon. He's able to pull it together enough during the climax, but he's still quite depressed in the final scene.
- Downer Ending: With the anti-Kromagg weapon flawed, Rembrandt is left lamenting that he's run out of chances.
- How We Got Here: The episode starts with a sight of a shell-shocked Diana in a tent, then flashes back to the Sliders stepping out of the vortex.
- In Spite of a Nail: One of the biggest of the series. Two sentient species, humans and Kromaggs, evolved on Kromagg Prime. In spite of this rather big historical divergence, that world seemingly still has Robin Williams, the Land of Oz books (possibly the many adaptations including the 1939 film too) and Eliot Ness and the Untouchables (again, possibly the television series and the film based upon their exploits as well).
- MacGuffin: The bunker. No one really knows what is inside, which doesn't keep humans and Kromaggs from fighting each other to death over it.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: The search for the anti-Kromagg weapon invented by Michael Mallory ends up becoming this in this episode: it's revealed that the weapon is very effective not only against the Kromaggs, but also against every other living thing on the planet. Rembrandt, who was looking for this weapon for over a year in hopes of saving Earth Prime, is understandably bummed out.
- The Reveal: The climax reveals the bunker is housing the anti-Kromagg weapon.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Larson initially believes the Sliders to be from his own world.
