For some reason or another, today I happened to have been thinking about the lousy fourth season finale ("Revelations"). I also was thinking that, even with Peck nixing the original idea for it, could we have gotten something that would have been better than what what we got AND would have provided a smoother "back-door" exit for the O'Connell brothers without intentionally being that way.

Then the idea came to me. What if in "Revelations" our sliders did end up sliding to "Kromagg Prime"? What if they then learned about the Voration device (instead of in "Strangers and Comrades") and that only after it was used did the people of "Kromagg Prime" find out that it did have health impacts on the human population? What if they learned all this from an ailing Michael Mallory, who also tells them that Mrs. Mallory (Quinn and Colin's "real" mother) died from complications as a direct result of an illness broght on by the use of the weapon and that he is slowly dying as well. What if at the end of the episode we were left with a cliffhanger: are Quinn and Colin going to choose to stay with their ailing father and take care of him until either a cure is found or his death (which may take months, or even years) or will they continue to slide with Rembrant in order to find Wade and to figure out some other way to drive the Kromaggs off of Earth Prime? And while Rembrant's choice to continue sliding is obvious, what will Maggie do if the Mallory boys decide to stay?

Although I personally prefer the Colin Kromagg spy idea over even my own idea, I think my idea would have been an acceptable alternative for several reasons:

1) Although I never had a problem with how Quinn and Colin were written out of the show, this episode would have been a nicer way to transition the Mallory characters "off camera" out of the show. We would learn in the first episode of the fifth season that Quinn and Colin chose to stay with their ailing father and Maggie chooses to slide with Rembrant because, as much as she cares for Quinn, she cares about Rembrant too and can't let him go off by himself. The door would be left open for Rembrant and Maggie to return to "Kromagg Prime" (since the timer would have its coordinates) or for Quinn and Colin to build a sliding machine and return to "Earth Prime".

2) In a dream scenario, this would also have opened the door for both Arturo (JRD) and Wade (Sabrina) to return as the replacement sliders. In a more realistic scenario (since Sabrina was still doing "Sports Night" and JRD probably wouldn't return unless Torme or even Weiss did and Peck is gone), two new characters are introduced (Diana Davis and another character, not Mallory, played by Floyd) that for some reason end up joining Rembrant and Maggie.

3) It would have also left the door open for the Mallory boys to be back for all or part of the fifth season. In the scenario where they return, we would learn that the Mallory boys' father has died and Quinn and Colin, having nothing left to keep then on "Kromagg Prime", decide to rejoin (or continue if they're in the entire season) Rembrant and Maggie in order to find Wade and find another way to drive the Kromaggs off of "Earth Prime" so that they can live there instead.

4) The storyline with Quinn being from another Earth and finding his real parents would be wrapped up at the end of the fourth season instead of being left as a dangling thread for the rest of the series and beyond.

I guess the producers would have needed foresight (i.e. the difficulty in getting JOC to return) in order to have come up with this fourth season finale but it would have definitely been better than the piece of garbage we got.

Not to steal another poster's idea but I guess that's my "thought of the day".