“Slide by Wire” is episode sixteen of season four of Sliders.
On a military base, an MP is swiping his wrist across electronic locks, checking they are secure. He heads to the toilet where he’s ambushed by Maggie. She cuts out an electronic device from his wrist, then uses it to gain access to a room where an unconscious man is wired up to machines. She removes a disc from an implant in the man’s neck and puts a copy in place. Maggie now has to break out, changing as she does, meeting the other three outside just as they slide out of there. Leaving behind another Maggie.
The Sliders arrive in a barn and Maggie is unusually excited by the ride. Quinn asks where she was and tells her not to cut it that close again. Maggie sees horses and wants to go riding.
The other Maggie is being spoken to by a colonel who will give her the benefit of the doubt as to why she was outside the wire. Maggie claims she saw intruders, three men and a woman. They assaulted a guard. The colonel, Burke, says a guard was assaulted near the quantum translocation lab. He remembers being jumped but not much else. Since the Soviets rose again, they are on heightened alert. The Joint Chiefs have just rescinded the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Burke can have suspected spies shot at her discretion. Maggie is sent to quarters.
The other Maggie, who may well be AltMaggie, is asked if she made it to the sliding lab. Yes, but that world hadn’t got very far. Maggie is enthusing about the world they are on, which seems medieval, when bells ring and everyone heads inside. A man is hustled out by others; he’s claiming he didn’t; do anything. The leader proclaims the man possesses Tech. He says he just found it. A television. Those who possess Tech must be punished, by the laws of El Diablo. The man is hustled through a door with a blue glow, and a radiation symbol on the door.
Maggie is hustled to a dormitory where she speaks to a pilot, Siskin. Siskin suggests linking in to the combat matrix. Maggie asks how long they’ve been flying together. Three years. And how does he put up with this?
The others are talking in a pub; it looks like the locals have a religion that fears technology. Quinn advises Rembrandt hide the remote. Maggie wants to dance with Quinn. They dance, she ends up kissing him then feels a bit odd. She runs outside and attaches the disc she stole to an implant on her neck, feeling better for doing so and confirming she is AltMaggie.
Maggie has sneaked out of the dormitory and is looking through some files when a voice speaks behind her. She calls him Steven (her husband, but a different actor) and claims she wanted to see him. It seems that AltMaggie was married to Steven too. However, this Steven was never injured in a skiing accident because they stopped doing stuff together when AltMaggie joined the programme, a programme that AltMaggie blames Steven for, as he implanted her, even though it was her desire. Steven says Maggie was his wife, but now she’s some sort of machine. If she wants to talk, jack in and talk to her plane.
AltMaggie is with Quinn. She’s suggesting they could be more than just good friends, as when sliding, who do they have apart from each other? Colin and Rembrandt arrive; Colin promised to teach Maggie how to ride. When they leave, Rembrandt asks Quinn if Maggie is okay. Quinn doesn’t know. Rembrandt has never seen Maggie like she was the previous night. Quinn asks if he means happy. Maggie lost her husband and her world; maybe she’s finally starting to heal.
Their Maggie, meanwhile, is stuck inside a military base where dangerous and sometimes fatal experiments are being carried out on pilots. And she lacks the neural implant the other pilots have. AltMaggie really doesn’t want to go back home, but the other Sliders eventually figure out who she is, which means they have to go back there for their Maggie. And AltMaggie is not in great shape either.