“Eye of the Storm” is episode seventeen of season five of Sliders.
For once, there is a ‘Previously…’ segment.
Mallory is attempting to appease the weather gods. There’s a small flood. With only a couple of minutes before they slide, they take bets on what the next world will be like. Diana says that since they used a living gem to recalibrate the timer in “To Catch a Slider”, all the old coordinates have been erased and they’re sliding blind. Rembrandt just wants to go home.
They slide out in a place that looks deserted with energy discharges by the sounds of it. Then see someone running and follow. He stops by some kind of energy barrier, begging for mercy. It’s Dr Geiger. When asked how he got there, Geiger says he sinned. Only death can bring you here and death can’t get you out. He walks into the barrier and, by the sounds of it, dies painfully.
They force their way through a barricade into the Chandler. It looks empty, but the barricade was built from the inside. Geiger didn’t seem to recognise them. The Sliders wonder about food and the bellhop, Stu (Jay Acovone), pops up from behind the counter and says the kitchen is closed. And don’t expect clean sheets or chocolate either.
When asked what happened, Stu says the universe disappeared. One day his world became three square blocks of Wiltshire Boulevard. For the past six months, nothing has come in. Until them. They must know a way out. There are more people and Stu tries to grab the timer. Rembrandt says they’re stuck like him, but Diana is a scientist and though he can’t promise it, she’ll do her best to get them out. Stu would rather depend on the man upstairs.
In the room, Diana thanks Rembrandt for telling the others she could save them. And the only other time she got readings like this was in the stasis field around Geiger’s lab. As to whether they can slide out again, she won’t know until they try. Stu is eavesdropping and there’s a thump outside as Diana says they can’t take everyone. Rembrandt asks how they feel about walking away and leaving the others there.
Rembrandt talks to Maggie and wonders if, going by what Geiger said, this place isn’t just hellish, but the actual bad place. Not literally, but they’ve seen worse places, so what if hell as they know it is a real place? Another dimension. There’s another thump from above and Mallory decides to go speak to the man upstairs, and the others follow.
Upstairs, in a room filled with instruments, is Dr Geiger. In far worse shape than the previous one they saw. He is glad to see they made it safely. Diana asks who he is. Geiger knows he doesn’t look great but he didn’t think she’d forget him. When asked, he says that the Geiger they saw die was the alternate from this world. He had told Diana that when he came unstuck, he destroyed the alternates, but Geiger says that turned out not to be true.
When asked about bringing them here, Geiger explains that he was being pounded by spacetime. He’s not going to try to collapse the universes again, because it won’t work. The experiment they tried would never have worked. A tiny error that compounded. Geiger wants it to stop, and he made a tiny haven in the ocean of spacetime to live out his life in peace. The others who were trapped were another mistake. That’s why he directed their wormhole here; he needs Diana to help set things right. The field protecting the area will collapse in a few days, maybe weeks, and this world and everyone in it will be crushed into a quantum singularity.
Diana storms off, not feeling like helping Geiger, and is grabbed by Stu. He wants her to take him with her when she leaves and grabs the timer. There used to be 50 people in the place; now there are only less than 20. Maggie shows up and punches Stu again and takes the timer. She and Rembrandt are going to scout outside; Mallory will stay with Diana. They try scooping some cash from a bank, but a cop draws a gun on them.
Geiger’s estimates of how long before the place collapses is way out, and there are still the other people. Plus, whatever’s preying on them. Geiger himself says he can split Quinn and Mallory, but can he be trusted? About anything? His track record is not great.