The hook leading into the title sequence works wonderfully for triggering the imagination and creating anticipation for interesting areas that the story may be about to explore. Nice. The backdrop for the story's next new world is a fantastic architectural piece of eye-candy, and at many times the camera can't help but to take some time to show it off. Quite rightly too. Ultimately the contrast between this world and the last one are quite a successful juxtaposition. The opening exploration scenes of this part of the show are amongst its best. Enjoy it while you can. The premise for the world and its rules are mildly interesting, and the story saves one of the world's major differences for a surprise twist. All good. Perhaps it's best not to dig too deeply into the ideas though, because it seems to house motivational holes that will hamper believability. In the relative harmony of the new main world for the story, time is taken to explore the major guest characters and their differences with the sliding regulars. While this is normally a good idea, the two sliding guests don't prove to be any deeper or more interesting than stereotypes for participants in a violently bad relationship, which produces predictably ugly scenes for the viewer to sit through. Yawn and snore. L.J. seems to be a more interesting character, and certainly holds his own during early portions of the story.... As the story progresses, it creates less and less anticipation that it is going anywhere interesting, and drags itself through one tired television adventure cliché after another, most of which do not end in believable fashion. The ending is both disappointing and feels quite incomplete, with many interesting questions for the four sliders' motivations left unanswered as though the writer just doesn't care, or realize the importance of putting them in. What actually plays out is not really worth putting on screen. There is much more to be said on that in the in-depth analysis version of this review. Even then, this story fails to come to any kind of real emotional resolution, settling for just another jump through the wormhole again. Curiously, the visual beam effects for the timer are back, and the wormhole is done full justice again. No complaints there. Most interestingly, it seems that the episode might be deliberately saving some developments for the next episode, where the show could complete a short arc. Perhaps all that was slated for a production with the following number K0803.... only there is no completed episode of Sliders with that code, and this episode's unfinished business is curiously never seen or heard from or spoken about again. Thus the easiest and most fascinating development that could spring from this story is non-existent and not dealt with. A grand disappointment.
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