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 Impressions of "Slide By Wire" 
 Blinker  June '99 
First, the teaser:

REMBRANDT: Ten seconds -- where's Maggie?
QUINN: Don't worry, I'm sure she'll turn up eventually if we slide randomly long enough. (smirking) Just like... WADE!!! (breaks down laughing as REMMY and COLIN stare dumbfounded)
ALT-MAGGIE: Waaaaiiiit! Doooon't leeeaaave wiiiithooouuut meeeeeeee!
REMBRANDT: Man, I can't believe people thought *Sabrina* had a whiny voice.
(Vortex opens with customary whooshes)
QUINN (wildly gesticulating to ALT-MAGGIE and making full use of his monosyllabic Season Three vocabulary): GO! GO!! GO-GO, GO, GO, GO!!!
(QUINN and ALT-MAGGIE join hands and leap towards the wormhole. At the last instant, QUINN looks back and sees the real MAGGIE barreling towards them. He smirks again and flippantly waves goodbye as she sinks to her knees wailing.)

Steven finding Maggie snooping around his office:

STEVEN: What are you doing down here?
MAGGIE: Um, sleepwalking? Yeah, um, I got this real bad case of the munchies, and I thought I'd come see if there was anything for a midnight snack sitting around the Quantum Translocation Lab.
STEVEN: Maggie??
MAGGIE: Wait a minute -- I know you! You're that guy, right? My dead husband! (grins stupidly)
STEVEN: That's right! I'm also not only a brilliant neurosurgeon who's shortly going to be operating on someone intimately related to me, a contrived and highly unlikely plot device also used in "My Brother's Keeper," but a groundbreaking quantum physicist to boot. Not to mention a paleobotanist, a Shakespearean scholar and captain of the world champion underwater elephant polo team!
MAGGIE: But don't you care anything about me? How would you feel if I'd been that pilot who died?
QUINN: If you died? Frankly, I'd be relieved.
MAGGIE: Jerry, you're not even in this scene!
QUINN: Sorry. It just looked like one of my lines.

Quinn saving Remmy from the villagers:

HIGH PRIEST (pointing at REMBRANDT): This man... has been found in possession of TEK! (Holds up book labeled "TEK JUSTICE by WILLIAM SHATNER") You know the word!
VILLAGERS (in jerky Shatneresque voices): And... the WORD, is, LAW!
(COLIN looks about to say something, but QUINN cuts him off)
QUINN: Simple villagers... William Shatner novels are neither good nor evil, they are merely tools which can be used for either. For evil by reading them, or for good by using them as firewood.
COLIN: Um, brother...
QUINN: Quiet, nepo-boy, you've had your two lines. (warming to the role) I am Quinntar, the mighty wizard! I will destroy you all!
COLIN: Brother, the slide was five minutes ago. We missed it.
QUINN (as villagers advance brandishing torches): Should I try being conciliatory now?

Finally, the hasty conclusion:

QUINN: If you know anything about our Maggie at all, you know she has excellent taste in friends. Unless you count her disdain for Wade and the Professor and her torrid affair with Colonel Rickman.
STEVEN (arriving at gate): Well, it sure is a good thing I instantly saw that e-mail. It's not every computer that lights up the whole screen in huge psychedelic letters saying "YOU'VE GOT MAIL" whenever a message comes in.
(The scene cuts to MAGGIE on an operating table, wearing an outfit that would make a stripper blush)
STEVEN: Give her four hundred volts! Her breasts still aren't jiggling enough!
(MAGGIE jerks spasmodically on the table)
STEVEN: *Five* hundred!
QUINN: It's OK, we just got the ratings in and "Sliders" beat "Farscape" by a nose.
STEVEN: Whew! All right, you can power down the Shake-o-Matic.
MAGGIE (groggily): What's happening?
REMBRANDT: Basically, we just killed you and brought you back to life. But don't worry; we were fairly sure the whole time it would work.
MAGGIE (shuddering): With friends like these...
(Aided by large cue cards, MAGGIE and her double proceed to hold an entire conversation without looking at each other.)


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