The Unstuck Man

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Sliders notable episodes List of Sliders episodes

Season one Sliders, Part One Sliders, Part Two Summer of Love The Weaker Sex The King Is Back Luck of the Draw Season two Into The Mystic The Good, the Bad and the Wealthy Time Again and World Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome Invasion As Time Goes By Season three The Prince of Slides The Exodus The Breeder This Slide of Paradise Season four Genesis Just Say Yes Slidecage Data World Revelations Season five The Unstuck Man Requiem Eye of the Storm The Seer

The Unstuck Man is the first episode for the fifth season of the science fiction television show Sliders. The Sliders arrive on a world where one scientist's attempt to influence reality on a quantum level could have disastrous consequences. This episode is also the first appearance of new series regulars Robert Floyd and Tembi Locke as Quinn Mallory and Diana Davis, respectively.

The episode opens with Dr. Oberon Geiger (guest star Peter Jurasik) behind a bluescreen preparing to run a "quantum translocation program" with his research assistants. The countdown proceeds to begin the experiment, but it's stopped at 33 seconds to unknowingly bring it in line with the timer Rembrandt uses to slide himself, Colin, Maggie, and Quinn from a gunfight in another world. As Rembrandt and the others slide through the vortex, a burst of energy envelops Colin and Quinn.

Maggie and Rembrandt arrive just outside Los Angeles and encounter Quinn's double on this world, who looks nothing like the Quinn they know. He gradually explains that he's an employee of Geiger Applied Research, and Oberon Geiger merged Quinn and his double together like he's done several times before. Upon arriving at the Chandler Hotel, Maggie and Rembrandt learn that it has been raining and thundering for 17 days straight due to Geiger's use of a device called the Combine which merged Quinn and Mallory (the character's most often called "Mallory" through the rest of the series) and can merge any person or object's quantum duplicates together. Such a treatment enabled Mallory, who had been a paraplegic, to walk again.

Upon arriving at Geiger Applied Research, Maggie and Rembrandt meet Diana Davis, the assistant director, who says she'll do everything she can to separate Quinn from Mallory as well as retrieve Colin, who lost his dimensional anchor in Geiger's experiment so he cannot stay in one dimension. When Mallory, with Quinn's mind fighting him for dominance, meets Geiger by himself, he learns he was the guinea pig for a more ambitious project -- the use of the Combine to merge this Los Angeles with its quantum duplicate in another dimension so Geiger can walk free of his magnetic force field. Like Colin, Dr. Geiger is also an unstuck man. (The viewer will learn in the fifth season episode Eye of the Storm that unstuck also means that all of an individual's quantum duplicates -- their "doubles" -- are killed.)

Maggie and Rembrandt are persuaded that Geiger can halt the timer's countdown with his stasis generator. They hold the timer as Geiger fires the generator that places them in stasis as well. Diana learns of Geiger's plan from Mallory and frees Maggie and Rembrandt just in time to turn the quantum translocation program on Geiger himself, disincorporating him and his force field. Diana retrieves all information Geiger had on their work as she accompanies Maggie, Mallory, and Quinn offworld to continue efforts to separate Quinn from Mallory and retrieve Colin. Outside Geiger Applied Research, the weather is finally clearing up.