“The Alternateville Horror” is episode eight of season four of Sliders.
The Sliders are on a street when everyone else starts panicking. Someone tells them to get off the street; it’s going to rain. They, foolishly, don’t take the warning seriously. Until the rain starts. Acid rain.
They get inside the hotel and the woman there, Holly, asks if they didn’t hear the weather report. No, they didn’t. Holly thinks they must be from out of town. Colin explains they’re from Canada. She’s putting their smoking outerwear in a metal bin using tongs and says they have vacancies. As all the other guests suddenly run downstairs in protective outerwear, preferring to face the storm than stay in the hotel. Holly suggests discussing room rates.
Holly shows them to the presidential suite. When asked why the others were leaving, her reply results in Quinn asking her if the other guests ran into an acid rain storm because room service is just too good. Holly doesn’t answer, shows all the provisions for acid rain and leaves. It’s 12 hours until they slide. Quinn is going to go to the bar. Rembrandt and Maggie join him; Colin is going to stay in the room. Rembrandt suggests he check out the Spice Channel. Colin does. It’s not what he expected. He changes back to a Western.
In the bar, Quinn is wondering if he did the right thing bringing Colin along. He doesn’t even know him. Maggie points out he didn’t know her or Rembrandt. Quinn says if they ever want to settle down somewhere, it’s okay with him. Maggie suggests he doesn’t want them to meet his parents. Holly takes their orders of draught and talks about the weather. Where they here in ’93 when Santa Monica Bay caught fire? The beers are blue. Holly asks if they wanted oysters in them.
Colin is watching Frankenstein when the television goes off. He turns it back on. The remote falls off and the television goes off again. When Colin looks, there’s a blueish boy holding the remote. The boy walks off and Colin follows into the corridor. The boy is trying to say something – it looks like he’s asking for help – but nothing can be heard. Then he walks through a door, leaving the remote behind.
Colin finds the others downstairs and explains what he saw. Quinn asks what Colin was watching. A program about a medical pioneer. He explains. Rembrandt thinks it sounds like Frankenstein. An ashtray slides and Holly grabs it before anyone notices. Maggie suggests Colin fell asleep. Colin says he isn’t a backwards rube afraid of evil spirits; he’s a man of science. Another customer enters, with a lot of luggage, and Holly heads to help.
Quinn is suggesting Colin fell asleep; Colin isn’t pleased. Rembrandt is shaving and Maggie is getting ice; she sees the other guest examining the place with equipment. Rembrandt sees ‘HELP US’ written on the mirror and Maggie sees her own head in the ice machine. It opens its eyes. They run to tell Quinn.
There’s nothing in the ice machine now but someone is in their room taking the timer. Quinn still doesn’t believe anything is off, though the others do now. The other guest is examining the dropped ice. Back in their room, Quinn notices the timer is gone. Maggie mentions the other guess; she, Colin and Rembrandt will check him out as Quinn heads to speak to Holly.
Holly – who appears to be the only one working at the hotel – agrees to help Quinn look. The others get inside the other person’s room. He has a lot of equipment set up. For meteorological experiments. His name is John Smith. Maggie doesn’t believe him. It is; he’s a graduate student at Caltech (and it sounds like John Smith is an unusual name on this world). Colin is fiddling with some kind of detector. And it looked like it detected something about him.
It’s pretty clear that Smith isn’t running meteorological experiments. And his equipment reacted to a Slider. Quinn takes some convincing there’s something odd, but there definitely is. Is the hotel haunted? Or might is be something else entirely?