“Applied Physics” is episode two of season five of Sliders.
Unusually, there’s a recap of the events of the previous episode, “The Unstuck Man”.
The Sliders are in a park and Diana, who’s joined them, says she can’t get the two Quinns separated here. And she needs power. Rembrandt says they have 56 hours until they slide; if the world is as close to Diana’s as she says, the Chandler will be near. Then a little girl comes and calls Diana mommy. Despite her denying it. Maggie says they’ll find her mother and hear a woman calling for Nadine. It’s Diana’s double and Rembrandt tells Diana to make herself scarce. Nadine is collected by her mother and Diana asks about alternates. Maggie and Quinn Mallory are clashing; she’s going to call him Mallory as he’s not Quinn. Diana wat5ches her alternate leave.
The Chandler is a bit different to normal and Maggie and Rembrandt reminisce about a similar one they went to. Mallory is seeing things that are similar, but not quite right. Then he sees someone shoot him and falls to the ground in pain. In their room, Mallory says he had a memory of something that never happened. Diana has Mallory remove his shirt; he has a burn where the bullet grazed him. Mallory describes how he saw someone shoot him for cheating. Maggie and Rembrandt recognise what he describes; it happened to their Quinn.
Diana says that Mallory and Quinn were fighting for control of the body originally, and Mallory won. Quinn became dormant, but now he’s trying to come back. There’s a chance they can be separated. Mallory says if they can’t, which Quinn do they want? Not him, it seems.
Diana heads out and is asking about a fusion reactor a professor is describing. The professor asks if she’s actually in the class.
Maggie finds Mallory and ask how he’s doing. He’s having dreams that are Quinn’s. Maggie says he’s having Quinn’s memories of a place that was like this. She tells him Diana is at the university looking to see if they have equipment to restabilise him. She wants to show Mallory something.
They find Rembrandt with a device; Rembrandt says it’s the travel agency. This world is a bit more advanced, and the device, when Mallory touches it, shows them somewhere else. A hologram; the device reads Mallory’s thoughts and shows him what he wants. In this case, his home and his parents. Maggie thought it would help Mallory adjust to sliding.
Diana hears her double on the phone, arguing with her ex about custody and what he owes her. When she returns to the hotel, she’s a bit distracted as Rembrandt and Maggie explain what they’ve been doing with Mallory. She thinks the university may be able to help. They go check on Mallory to find a Kromagg holding a gun on him. However, it’s a hologram. They tell Diana what it is and Mallory didn’t deliberately conjure it up; he’s never seen one before. He was using the travel agency when the visions came again, and it made the Kromagg appear. He remembers what happened to the professor, as well.
Diana heads back to the university and bumps into her alternate by accident. The alternate is astonished, introducing herself as Diana Davis, or DeeDee.
Mallory asks Maggie how she does it. The things she’s seen; Kromaggs, people she cares about dying, having no home to go to. Maggie says she made the friends she never expected to have, through sliding. She decides to show him the bubble universe from “Roads Taken”.
DeeDee is now talking to Diana, who seems uncomfortable; DeeDee thinks Diana is just a double. DeeDee dropped out of university when Nadine was born, but she still works there. She was a physics major and they, unsurprisingly, had the same professor at one point. But DeeDee quit physics, took American literature and met Doug the Poet. Diana – calling herself Maggie – says she thought of switching majors, but Dr Geiger became her mentor.
Diana is struggling to cope with the reality of an alternate, especially one who is struggling so much. She makes some poor decisions as a result. Mallory is struggling to keep together, and two different minds in a device that reads minds and projects what it sees is not great. He also risks coming unstuck like Colin and Geiger. Maggie in particular is missing her Quinn.