S1 | 7/10 | “Last Days”

Posted Thomas on February 28th, 2008 | Filed under Episode Reviews

Episode Review: “Last Days”
Season 1
Original Airdate: 4/5/95
Review Rating: 7/10

The Sliders arrive on a world where an impending asteroid threatens to eradicate all of civilization.

The middle of the street is just not the place to land after a slide, but luckily the area the Sliders arrive in is deserted. As soon as they arrive into town however, an array of abandoned vehicles, police officers and distant vandalism awaits them. The Sliders find refuge in an electronics store, while curious of all the mayhem in the streets.

The store owner warns them of the coming asteroid and as serious as the situation is, you can’t ignore his amusing sarcasm, “you people just crawl out from under a rock?” The asteroid is scheduled to arrive in two days, but the Sliders find themselves with a timer counting down with nearly three. Rembrandt decides to leave the group while Quinn and Wade head off together to find their families. They all pledge to regroup before the impact and Arturo is left to find an answer before their lives become history.

Arturo teams up with one of his former students, Conrad Bennish Jr., in anticipation of creating an atomic bomb to destroy the asteroid. It’s interesting that on this world Einstein rigged the bomb during WWII, simply because he didn’t want to accept the responsibility of its destructive powers and the moral issues that it came with. You would think Bennish would be one of the last individuals to solve Einstein’s secret, but he’s also the type not to know how to handle the power.

While Arturo is off trying to save the world, Wade and Quinn try to find some sliding equipment as well as their undiscovered relationship. I believe this episode begins to slow rapidly when the two try to develop that relationship. It’s something that needs to be addressed but it’s just too long and there’s too little dialogue between the two, to the point that it gets tiresome.

Although this episode contains “end of days” human behavior like unruly party animals and last minute “reborn agains”, I don’t think the subject was entertained nearly to the degree it should have been. One question that arises is how the government trusted Arturo and Bennish’s bomb after Einstein supposedly failed at his. Some of the most entertaining elements of this episode however, is Bennish’s obnoxious behavior and the race against time.

The Sliders wait in anticipation to see if the atomic bomb will save the earth, their time till the slide and the countless lives who feel the end is near. Although this episode contains some flaws, it’s a rather basic and entertaining subject for sci-fi and the realm of parallel worlds. All in all, I think you should find this episode quite enjoyable for a troubling last days scenario among the lives of our heroic team of Sliders.

Memorable Quotes:

Quinn: “Maybe the dust cloud won’t be as bad as they think, or they miscalculated somehow.”
Wade: “Don’t, okay? I don’t want to spend my last few hours worrying about something I have no control over.”
Quinn: “You’re amazing. I never realized it.”
Wade: “There’s a lot of things about me you never realized.”
Quinn: “Oh yeah? What else?”
Wade (resisting kissing): “Do you have any matches?”
Quinn: “I’ll go check.”
Wade: “Great.”
Quinn: “If I had to do it over again… I wouldn’t have been so impatient. I would’ve waited till I knew more about what I was doing before I started sliding.”
Wade: “Hmm. Part of me likes not being in control, just having to go with the experience. It’s like… when I am in control I just – I just can’t let go, you know? It’s like I’m always afraid to do what I want… or say what I’m really feeling.”