| abstract | - This Slide of Paradise in the final episode for the third season of the science fiction television series Sliders. The Title is borrowed from F. Scott Fitzgerald's debut novel, This Side of Paradise. In their final showdown with Rickman, the Sliders arrive on a tropical island populated with human-animal hybrids. This episode also marks the final appearance in the series of actress Sabrina Lloyd as Wade Welles, although she does a voice over for her character in the fifth season episode "Requiem". The sliding vortex opens above the ocean and Maggie, Quinn, Rembrandt, and Wade swim to shore where they are pursued by half-human outcasts from the experiments of Dr. Vargas, a geneticist who's been combining human and animal DNA to create a docile servant race. The Sliders reach Vargas' compound, but Quinn loses the timer in the struggle. Rickman, another Slider from Maggie's home world who requires periodic injections of human DNA to survive, struck an unholy bargain with the outcasts' leader, the leonine Ceres; in exchange for the Sliders and Vargas' DNA, Ceres will accompany him when he slides from this world. Maggie, Quinn, Rembrandt, and Wade reach the compound with one of Vargas' hybrid servants, Alessandra. Another servant, Daniel, admits them and Vargas reveals that he's been creating hybrids for five years. Rembrandt and Alessandra become close before he and the other Sliders go to find Rickman, who they followed to this world. However, he and the hybrids ambush Maggie, Quinn, and Wade. Rembrandt escapes back to the compound to get help, and Vargas offers it in exchange for Rembrandt's DNA. Rembrandt refuses, and he returns to the outcasts' encampment by a different route than Vargas and Daniel use. Rembrandt frees his friends, and they take both their timer and Rickman's, without which he'll be stuck on this world. Also, Rickman's timer has the dimensional coordinates for the Sliders' (except for Maggie) home Earth, so they'll be able to slide home. With forty minutes left before they can open the vortex, Rembrandt chooses to go and rescue Alessandra, who's been severely beaten by Vargas (her "master"). On his entry into the compound, Rembrandt is captured and strapped down so Vargas can extract his DNA. But Rickman, believing that he's lost his timer for good, leads the hybrids to Vargas and slay him just as Rembrandt is helped to escape by Alessandra. By a cliff overlooking the ocean, Quinn uses Rickman's timer and opens the gateway to their home Earth, originally with the intent for him to go along with Wade and Rembrandt, and for Maggie to slide with the other timer a few minutes later. Rickman showed up right after Quinn opened the vortex, didn't want Maggie to have to fight Rickman alone, so decided not to go to earth prime. Rembrandt and Wade insisted on staying with Quinn, but Quinn didn't want them to and shoved Rembrandt and Wade through the vortex. Rickman jumps for the vortex, but it closes just as he reaches it and he falls to his death. Quinn, who would not leave Maggie behind on the island (on their Earth once before, Maggie nearly suffocated), eludes their hybrid pursuers (who by now have fully given in to their animal instincts) and opens a portal to what he believes is the same Earth Rembrandt and Wade slid to, but it turns out to be a futuristic (not future, since the timer cannot take its users through time) cityscape somewhere between San Francisco and Los Angeles, California. The plot of this episode owes a debt to the H. G. Wells novel The Island of Doctor Moreau. Also, Michael York (Dr. Vargas in this episode) portrayed Andrew Braddock in the 1977 adaptation of Wells's book.
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