Written by Christine Donlon, Turok Andar, and Jackson Roykirk, and directed by Darin Scott, this is a dark sci-fi episode of Femme Fatales.

Ashley Noel stars in a dual role. Her main role is Matilda, who leads a group of young scientists including her fiance Nick (Philip Boyd), his brother Aaron (Preston Jones), and Abby (Hollie Stenson). The four of them have been working on a teleportation device, and Robert Picardo plays Mr. Hawks, their wealthy benefactor who’s been funding their project. After years of little success, they’ve finally managed a breakthrough and demonstrated their device which teleports Mr. Hawks’ wallet across a room.

Mr. Hawks is excited by all the money he thinks he can make with this device as an instantaneous shipping service. He’s ready to pay them, making them all rich, and get ready to market, but Matilda wants to keep working on the project believing that with some improvements they can also teleport organic matter, although all of their previous efforts to test the device on animals resulted in those animals deaths. Mr. Hawks thinks it will take too long to get it ready, so he rebuffs Matilda’s appeal for more time and money.

After he leaves, Matilda convinces the others to keep trying to make the device work on humans, while they still have some time. It’s at this point that we learn some more about the dynamics of the group. Abby hates Matilda because Matilda is such a hard ass who always makes her feel like crap, due to her not having as much experience, or a PHD, like the rest of the group. Plus, she and Aaron are in a relationship (we get a hot scene of the two of them having sex), but she feels like Aaron still has unresolved feelings for Matilda because he and her were dating in college before she left him for Nick.

After some more work, Matilda impulsively tries the device on herself and finds herself teleported to an alternate Earth in a parallel dimension. This is dystopian Earth, where the sky is red from radiation due to nuclear fallout and a worldwide war has been raging for the past 52 years. Matilda is confronted by armed soldiers, who bring her to an alternate version of herself, who is credited as Dark Matilda. Matilda is naturally confused, and when Dark Matilda attacks her the both of them teleport back to our dimension, where they tie up Dark Matilda until they figure out what’s going on.

Matilda wants to keep her doppelganger, to use her as proof of alternate dimensions, and to continue their research.  While showing Dark Matilda the outside world, to prove that she’s in another dimension, Aaron finds out that he and Matilda were married in her world, but he was killed in the war 3 years earlier. She comes on to him and they have sex. She later tells Abby that in her dimension the two of them are best friends.

But both Matilda’s start to get really sick. They’re throwing up and getting weak. It’s determined that the problem is that both of them can’t live in the same dimension, so Dark Matilda must be sent back before they both die. And then there’s the big plot twist.

SPOILER ALERT, I GUESS...

After Dark Matilda is sent back, Matilda recovers and she and Nick have sex. We see Aaron confront Abby, he says that he saw her switch the bodies, to attempt to keep Dark Matilda here and send Matilda to the dark dimension. Abby admits that she planned to, but says that she changed her mind at the last minute. That’s when Aaron reacts in shock, revealing that since he thought Abby changed the bodies, he changed them back. We then see Matilda appear in the dark dimension and scream. Then back in our dimension, Dark Matilda has killed Nick, Aaron, and Abby, and walks out of the lab, boasting to herself that if everyone in this dimension is as naive as those three, she’ll be running the place soon.

I like this episode, with its plot that’s like a classic Twilight Zone story. Ashley Noel shines in the dual role of both versions of Matilda, managing to make each one seem like separate but fully developed characters. This is one of the series’ better episodes.

Chacebook rating: FIVE STARS

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