“Time Again and World” is episode two (originally shown as episode six) of season two of Sliders.
Wade’s diary says they are reaching the end of another Slide after being stuck for more than two weeks. Everyone is snappy and unhappy. The professor and Rembrandt are drinking in a bar; Arturo is moaning. Rembrandt asks how much he’s had to drink. Not enough. Wade enters and tells them to come on; they’re going to miss the slide. As they leave it can be seen the female bartender has a beard.
Outside, it seems that all women have facial hair. Quinn goes over to the other three as they approach and then there’s a car crash. Two men start arguing, and onlookers comment that it’s Judge Nassau, then the second driver shoots Nassau and drives off. Wade hurries over to help Nassau and he tells her some things like ‘Elsie’ and ‘The Rock’ and gives her a book of matches before dying. Rembrandt and the professor are waiting for the other two and the professor activates the remote.
Once through, Rembrandt asks what happened and if Wade is okay. The matchbook is from a club called Top Hat and inside it is some sort of chip. The professor points out that the last time they got involved in the affairs of another world, in “Luck of the Draw”, Quinn was shot in the back. They’re tourists; don’t become emotionally invested. Wade says she just saw a man gunned down in the street.
In town, everything looks similar. Apart from no facial hair on women. In fact, the same events start to unfold; the same onlookers, the same car crash. Wade yells out that the second man has a gun and this time Nassau shoots him and drives off. Wade goes over to another dying man and gets a very similar message, from a different man. And this came from a man with a badge. Later, there are many more cops, all in kilts, and all four are interviewed.
They check into a hotel, even though Wade wants to go back and tell the police what she knows – from another world. Check-in involves fingerprinting, by order of the SFPD. After they leave, the clerk calls someone and says they have a problem.
Wade wonders if all the cops are Scottish. The professor thinks it’s possible; the Scots are a dour, repressive people. But they did invent Scotch whisky, a definite plus. Quinn heads to get some ice as Wade and the professor start arguing, then the door bursts open and Quinn is knocked back in by two armed people. They tell the Sliders that what they saw didn’t happen. If they want to stay alive. Tell nothing to the police. Next time, this won’t be a threat. With the gunmen gone, Rembrandt wants to head for the hills. Quinn and the professor agree; Wade does not. The other three leave, but then return.
Wade heads to the police station with Quinn and they explain what they saw and heard the dead officer say. The lieutenant is pleased; they have the rendezvous. Wade may even get a seat at the electrocution. Have they heard of the Rosenbergs? The A-bomb spies? No; the circus clowns who assassinated Kennedy. This is a bigger deal. Quinn and Wade wonder if Judge Nassau is a real judge and what horrible thing he did. Then they notice that the two people who crashed their hotel room are cops.
They head back to the hotel to discover the clerk being arrested. They tell the professor and Rembrandt and decide to leave. Wade asks about the chip. Quinn tells her it came from another world; they have enough trouble. More people are being arrested and carted off, so they duck into the hotel bar.
Nassau is on the news and the professor wonders what he was a judge of. A drinker tells him the California Supreme Court. He tried to acquit a guy the FBI wanted guilty. Nassau is the last of the fundamental constitutionalists, who said things were better before martial law. Which has been around since the early 60s, just after Hoover was elected. J. Edgar Hoover. It also seems the video poker game the drinker is playing takes the same chip – or CD-ROM -as Wade found.
It seems Hoover did a power grab and abridged the Constitution, and no-one knows what the original was like (even though it’s hardly likely he would have been able to remove copies from other countries and many people still alive would remember it).
Though the professor had a point about not getting involved, there seems to be a serious flaw. The first world and the second are almost identical, even down to the contents of the CD-ROM. Which contents would be meaningless unless the first world was also under martial law instituted by Hoover for the same reasons. Yet despite two weeks there, the Sliders didn’t seem to know that.