Slidecage
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Template:Infobox Sliders episodes
Slidecage is the ninth episode of the fourth season of the science fiction television show Sliders. Quinn and Colin find the coordinates to their homeworld, but they, Maggie, and Rembrandt are shunted into, to use Rembrandt's phrase, "a roach motel for Sliders".
Maggie and Rembrandt are receiving some rest and relaxation at a spa when Quinn tells them they'll be sliding in about three minutes. Working with his brother Colin's microdot (the same transmitter used to reveal Quinn's true identity in "Genesis"), Quinn discovered the location of their original homeworld, "Kromagg Prime". After they slide, the Sliders find themselves inside a prison complex on a Venus-like Earth with two moons. Colin, Maggie, Quinn, and Rembrandt are directed to a prerecorded message where Michael Mallory, Colin and Quinn's father, explains that this 73-level, 2,000 tunnel facility they're in -- the Slidecage -- was constructed at the end of the Human-Kromagg War to keep anyone from sliding to that world. Food and shelter is provided in the Slidecage, but they'll never be able to leave since the timer no longer functions.
The Sliders are embroiled in a conflict between trapped humans and Kromaggs. Rembrandt is taken prisoner by the Kromaggs while Colin, Maggie, and Quinn are confined by the humans. Maggie is dispatched outside when she challenges the humans' leader and saved from suffocation by Thomas Beecham, a War veteran who went AWOL and slid into the Slidecage and now inhabits its lower levels. Colin and Quinn are locked in the computer room and escape by learning how to affect the Slidecage's main power grid. Rembrandt is freed from Kromagg captivity by the hooded son of the Kromagg leader Kolitar, Kaldeen. Rembrandt asks Kaldeen to remove his hood, and it's revealed that he is human as well -- he was captured in a Kromagg raid on the humans years ago and raised as Kolitar's own son.
Before Rembrandt can return to his friends, Kolitar forces him to reveal that he was given a posthypnotic suggestion while on "Earth Prime", Rembrandt's homeworld from "Genesis" that's now a Kromagg outpost. Once they reached the Slidecage, which the Kromaggs knew he would on their way to Kromagg Prime, Rembrandt was to let Quinn disable it and then kill him. Quinn brokers a truce between the humans and the Kromaggs since the power grid they need to access is in Kromagg territory. Kaldeen is reunited with the humans, but when they reach the grid it is bittersweet -- since Kaldeen (born Jules Koenig) was born in the Slidecage, he has no slide signature to indicate a previous world that he slid from. Upon averting Kolitar's attenpt on Quinn's life via Rembrandt, Kaldeen resigns himself to remaining behind, and Thomas offers to join him in the Slidecage. Quinn reverses the polarity of the Slidecage so everyone who slid there will be slid back to the world they came from.