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Brad, we have had our differences before, but I must say, I am deeply ashamed of you right now. How could you not offer Tom a theory? Shameful, just shameful! ;-)

Tom, I haven't seen QUANTUM LEAP, but I will venture a theory that the Waiting Room is the friends we made along the way.

Damn it. Okay, here's another theory: what if in this new generation of QL technology, the Waiting Room is instead a state of quantum limbo in which the subject is suspended in a moment of temporal grace, neither dead nor alive, existent nor gone -- until Dr. Ben has completed his mission at which point the personal timeline of the subject is reinstated to resynchronize with the chronological stream of historical constituents?

In addition, what if Dr. Ben's state of existence is in a semi-permanent state of temporal grace created by Ben having detached from his own personal timeline, holding Ben's body in indeterminate nucleostasis as the result of the particle confinement that resulted in his missing memories? What if the restoration of Ben's physical form is dependent upon his balancing the equation represented by his unknown mission that led to his first and subsequent leaps?

Will someone PLEASE help Tom out here? After all he's done for SLIDERS!

(I haven't seen the new QL yet.)

Found this on eBay:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/134142131107

You'll unfortunately have to contact the seller about shipping to Australia.

Or you may have to buy a complete series set to get the NTSC Season 5:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/334605147691
https://www.ebay.com/itm/185178813590

Watching SUPERGIRL, Season 3, Episode 6: "Midvale" where teenaged Kara and Alex are trying to break into the laptop of a murder victim. They seek assistance from a friend of Clark's who's really good with technology, a friend named Chloe Sullivan.

God damn it. What a pretty pass we have come to when the mere mention of Chloe Sullivan makes me cringe. Really great character we used to have here. Now it's all ruined. Thanks a lot, Allison Mack.

The Costco masks are interesting. They use a boat-shaped style where the mask puts more pressure on the side flaps and the design doesn't have to grip into the face to get a good seal. Masks don't have to be in the traditional KN95 tent shape to be KN95 as it's a self-declared standard. The boat shape suggests that the manufacturer wasn't just meeting the KN95 identifiers (the shape, the label) but actually trying to develop a good product while meeting the (self-declared) standard. And Costco tends to buy quality products for their stores.

SUPERGIRL at the end of Season 2 and the start of Season 3 is having a few collisions with reality. SUPERGIRL seems to have no sense of how the US military works and also has no sense of how federal security and counterintelligence agencies would handle a human resource crisis. SUPERGIRL also seems oddly unaware of how big planet Earth is.

Season 2 of SUPERGIRL has a finale that seems to collide with the reality of how the United States would actually respond to an alien invasion and the reality of SUPERGIRL's cable budget. Season 2's finale has the US President fighting aliens on the frontlines and Lena Luthor dosing planet Earth's atmosphere with an anti-Daxamaite poison using a single desktop device that's smaller than a fish tank.

Season 2's finale was, despite some peculiar storytelling choices in military strategy and technological scale, emotionally resonant. All the character arcs are spectacular: Kara can save the world, but she has to render Earth uninhabitable for the love of her life, Mon-El; she has to put him back in his Kryptonian lifepod and launch him away from Earth. The contrivances to reduce a global alien invasion to being confined to National City were... contrived. However, the contrivances were to serve a low budget and also for character beats that made sense emotionally even if the plot itself didn't always make sense.

One has to wonder why the writers weren't finding a more sensible reason to have President Marsdin present in National City than having Marsdin nonsensically leading the US Air Force into battle with the unarmed Air Force One -- such as Marsdin having deliberately ensured being in town to prep DEO defenses against the Daxamite invasion she'd been expecting.

One wonders why the writers didn't establish that putting low level amounts of lead throughout Earth's atmosphere was going to be accomplished with a global network of satellites venting exhaust and that Lena's thermos-sized machine was to link and activate the satellites, not to accomplish the entire planet-sized job from Lena's desk.

Season 1 was very capable in reducing SUPERGIRL's plots to the budget at hand. The Season 1 finale came up with reasons for why the Kryptonian soldiers were reduced to two. The Season 1 finale presented the Kryptonian attack on Earth as a psychic weapon that could be rendered with actors performing headaches so that pyrotechnics weren't needed. SUPERGIRL was good at building ramps over potholes of plot to justify scenes that would otherwise be irrational.

Why did these skills seem to desert SUPERGIRL in Season 2?

It seems to me the problem is the presence of unrepentant sexual harasser Andrew Kreisberg, the showrunner for SUPERGIRL, and the absence of Ali Adler, the original lead writer. Season 1 of SUPERGIRL had its scripts led and overseen by the brilliant Adler (CHUCK, GLEE, NO ORDINARY FAMILY, FAMILY GUY) who had a lot of experience in managing stories to fit low sitcom budgets. But Kreisberg had been sexually harassing and verbally abusing his staff, including Adler. Adler reported Kreisberg to human resources and her complaint didn't move forward. Adler quit SUPERGIRL. I've heard that as of the filming of Season 2, Episode 8, Adler refused to spend another moment on SUPERGIRL and moved into a CBS development deal, taking her away from the CW, from SUPERGIRL and from Kreisberg.

Adler retained an executive producer credit on Season 2 and it seems that her story outlines remained, but Kreisberg took over fleshing them out into full scripts. The stunning Episode 15 would appear to be the finale for Ali Adler's writing on the show.

Adler's story ideas took SUPERGIRL to the end of Season 2, but Adler wasn't shepherding her stories from outlines to scripting to filming. As a result, the Season 2 two part finale seems to feature Adler's emotional points (the President revealed as an alien, Kara having to rescue Lena and Mon-El from the spaceship that Alex has to destroy, fighting a mind-controlled Superman, Kara sacrificing her life with Mon-El to save Earth) -- but not Adler's ability to plot the connective material between the big setpieces and emotional conflicts.

Thanks to the characterization, Season 2 feels like a success, but that success is on some very shaky writing. Kreisberg clearly recognized the value of Adler's character beats, but he also clearly didn't have the skill to move the story from A to B without a lot of clumsiness along the way.

That clumsiness also seems present as we go into the Adlerless Season 3 of SUPERGIRL: Season 3's first two episodes show Kara to be absolutely traumatized by Mon-El's loss. Kara keeps flashing back to her mother (now played by Erica Durance and it's great to see her). Kara keeps remembering the terror and helplessness when she was 12 and stuffed into a metal tube that was shot into orbit while her planet exploded behind her.

Kara is consumed with guilt that she's now done the same thing to Mon-El, sending him off to dangers unknown. Melissa Benoist's performance is painful to watch.

Kara is coldly unresponsive to the civilians she saves as Supergirl, blank and unable to meet her deadlines as a reporter. Kara is avoiding her friends, cancelling every outing with Lena Luthor and avoiding the weekly game night. When Jimmy, now Kara's supervisor at Catco, reminds Kara to meet her deadlines, Kara is volatile and aggressive. When Alex asks Kara to connect with her friends and sister, Kara is abrasive and declares that Kara Danvers is a failed experiment and that attempting to live a human life has been a mistake.

It's a very strong character arc where Kara's unprofessionalism at Catco continues after best friend Lena Luthor buys the company. Lena sweetly suggests that Kara take a leave of absence to deal with her grief over Mon-El (whom the world knows was dating Kara, not Supergirl). Kara lashes out at Lena and snarls at Lena to only speak to Kara about work and not personal matters; Lena agrees and informs Kara: Kara is missing meetings. Kara is treating work orders from her employer as an inconvenience. Kara's behaviour at work is unacceptable.

Kara softly says she'll get to work on Lena's assignment. Later, Kara apologizes to Lena, thanking her for being a great friend and a great employer, and Kara recognizes that something inside her is fundamentally broken that has to be addressed.

SUPERGIRL's Season 3 character arc is fine. Kreisberg is solid with characterization. But the plot makes no sense. Kara Danvers is an employee of the Department of Extranormal Operations, a federal emergency response bureau. Kara Danvers just fought in a war. Kara Danvers is on active duty. Kara is a federal employee with the highest levels of federal security clearance; there is no way that the DEO would not be putting her in mandatory psychotherapy after Season 2 for survivor's guilt (she thinks Mon-El is dead), for combat trauma (she had to fight Superman) and for grief.

I understand that two episodes of Kara lying on the psychoanalyst's couch would not be the greatest use of Supergirl and her superpowers. But it's ridiculous to think that J'onn J'onzz, a federal emergency response manager, would allow Kara's trauma to go untreated. Or that Alex Danvers, a medical doctor (license unacquired), would leave Kara to deal with all these serious mental health issues on her own. Or that President Marsdin would allow a trauma victim with superpowers to keep working in a high securlity clearance government role without counselling sessions.

Once again, the issue here is rationalization to justify the more irrational story points. Adler would have understood that Kara would be seeing a DEO therapist; Adler would have found a way to have the therapist report that Kara was not a danger to anyone but deeply depressed over issues that Kara wasn't willing or able to verbalize, enabling the story to proceed with Kara trying to manage her grief alone.

Kreisberg seems rather dismissive of mental health care in real life and on his shows. And in a fictional context, it made sense that Oliver Queen wasn't seeing a therapist because he had a secret identity to protect. Barry Allen also had a similar situation. But Kara Danvers was working for the federal government as a secret agent and her sister was a physician (albeit having never been licensed).

It makes no sense that psychotherapy is never even discussed, and it speaks to Kreisberg's mindset where psychological problems are to be addressed with force and catharsis in the course of dominating life's problems rather than seeing a doctor.

It's noticeable that in Season 4, SUPERGIRL introduces a psychotherapist and neurologist in the Kelly Olsen character -- a development that could only happen after Andrew Kreisberg had been fired off the Arrowverse the previous year.

The Season 2 finale has Lena Luthor build a device that can seed the entire atmosphere of planet Earth with trace amounts of lead to render it uninhabitable for the Daxamite invaders, forcing them to leave. This device is a cube that's about the size of the blu-ray set for all 15 seasons of SUPERNATURAL and SUPERGIRL genuinely wants us to believe this little square space heater sized object can instantly spread lead through the entire planet.

Strange things happen when the majority of the effects budget is blown on Supergirl pushing a giant spaceship back down to Earth.

The general CDC guidance is that you need to wait (a) 10 days after the first positive test and (b) for the testing to be negative.

The updated CDC guidance is that you can wait (a) 5 days after the first positive test and (b) for the testing to be negative. This updated guidance struck me as more about fewer sick days being paid out than reducing contagion.

My personal threshold: recently, my niece had COVID-19, but because I had responsibilities to her, I went to see her despite only five days having passed. However, I brought along an air purifier to situate in our space and also used the Vicks nasal gel. I did pre-emptively make some arrangements to self-isolate in case I tested positive, but this proved unnecessary.

My air purifier (not necessarily the one you should get, but I have four of these in my condo)
https://www.amazon.com/Kaz-Honeywell-HP … ref=sr_1_9

Vicks nasal gel
https://vicks.ca/en-ca/shop-products/vi … us-blocker

SLIDERS on SD blu-ray if you need a conversation starter
https://www.amazon.com/Sliders-Die-komp … 01JOCMST0/

I cannot stress enough in the name of Quinn's hair gel, Rembrandt's afro, the Professor's beard and Wade's leather jacket that the pandemic mitigation opinions of ireactions are not the views of the Sliders.TV community.

On some level, MACGYVER's writers seemed to truly believe this. They threw MacGyver into a real-world crisis for Season 4's 13 episode run, and they seemed genuinely certain that MacGyver would have something to say. And I felt the same way for the first 12 episodes of Season 4; I desperately needed my hero, MacGyver, a Quinn Mallory-esque figure of boyish genius with interesting hair, to give me the answers I needed.

And MacGyver did have something to say. It was pretty much the same as what Al Gore said in 2006 in AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH to very little effect. MacGyver saying the same things in 2020 was not the impactful moment that MACGYVER's writers seemed to hope for.

In a mild defense (excuse) for the MACGYVER writers: COVID severely impacted the Season 4 finale in which MacGyver's victory over climate change is a slideshow in Washington. That scene was not supposed to be the Season 4 finale, but the episode was hastily assembled and re-assembled in the edit bay as a season-ender when MACGYVER had to suddenly shut down production and send its cast into lockdown.

Had MACGYVER not been shut down, I have to think that the writers would have reviewed the initial cut of the Season 4 'finale' and realized that the ending didn't work. I have to think they would have shot an extra scene of MacGyver at the US capitol. Maybe MacGyver's boss, Matty, asks him how it went. Maybe MacGyver says he failed; government is declaring that short-term economic gain is their priority. Maybe Matty tells MacGyver that real change doesn't come from one person with a slideshow and a Swiss Army knife; it's the product of many collective efforts across civilization, and that every time MacGyver averts a disaster, he's giving the world another chance to get things right. And maybe MacGyver says that the Phoenix Foundation can't just be content with spy missions and rescue work anymore and that Phoenix has to start building a better world, not just preserving it as it is.

TV trivializes real world difficulties when it has fictional characters 'solve' problems that remain unsolved in reality, but TV can certainly have characters pledge to be companions on the path to a better tomorrow. And Season 5's episodes would have benefitted from a regular mention of MacGyver's ecological work and some eco-focused episodes (villains who create oil spills to drive up fuel prices, climate change disasters where MacGyver has to deal with a flood or an earthquake). However, this didn't happen; MacGyver's nervous breakdown over the environment in Season 4 was completely gone in Season 5.

This appears to be due to COVID. When production resumed for Season 5, the world was experiencing an ecological new dawn: lockdowns had prompted a stunning level of environmental repair from travel and manufacturing having shut down across the globe. With Season 5 taking place at some unspecified point 'after' the pandemic, it didn't make sense to have MacGyver still in crisis until production actually found out what this post-pandemic world would be. Unfortunately, it once again left MACGYVER in this foggy landscape of somehow having 'solved' climate change in the previous season.

One peculiar thing about SUPERGIRL: every season accomplishes something wonderful that no subsequent season could repeat or maintain. Season 1 achieved Superman-style aerial combat on a TV budget with Supergirl. By the end of Season 1, this had become unaffordable and Supergirl is mostly fighting earthbound foes from Season 2 onward.

Season 2 managed to give Kara Danvers a meaningful romance, something SUPERGIRL was unable to ever accomplish ever again in any subsequent season. The Mon-El/Kara romance worked on every level: it was a triumph of scripting where Mon-El had a really distinct individuality beyond being a supporting character for Kara. It was a triumph of performance with the actors showing why Mon-El could reach Kara in all the ways Winn Schott and Jimmy Olsen weren't as suited.

It was a triumph in real life: Melissa Benoist throughout Season 1 had been falling apart in her abusive marriage and staggered into Season 2 having initiated divorce proceedings and fled to Vancouver, Benoist met actor Chris Wood as he played Mon-El and clearly, what was onscreen was present in real life too. Benoist says that Wood loved her and taught her to love herself as well, and they got married three years later.

Why did the Mon-El/Kara romance work, and why couldn't the show ever find a new romance? Well, it helps to look at why Winn and Jimmy didn't work out with Kara. Winn's attraction to Kara is played as Winn seeing himself reflected in Kara. He's anxious, insecure, silly, goofy, humourous and loves board games; that's basically Kara's identity too.

The issue with that is that Winn didn't bring anything to the table that Kara didn't already have. Winn and Kara cancelled each other out romantically which was why Kara enjoyed spending time with him but never felt romantic tension with him. Noticeably, Winn's girlfriends after his failed pass at Kara had a certain ruthlessness and killer instinct (Silver Banshee, Lyra the art thief) which Winn himself lacks.

And on Kara's end: the bubbly, emotive girlchild personality was a part of her, but it was not the entirety of her character, just a civilian identity. The Supergirl identity is a relief worker and warrior and that's a part of her that Winn could never really reach. Winn was only compatible with Kara Danvers, not Supergirl.

Then we have Jimmy. Kara admired Jimmy as someone who exemplified all the confidence and security and clarity of moral and professional purpose that she herself wished she had. Jimmy was also tall, muscled and beautiful. Kara crushed on Jimmy hard.

But as Kara grew more confident and capable and began to clamp down on her youthful anxiety, she started to develop a similar problem with Jimmy that ruled out any romance with Winn. Jimmy and Supergirl were becoming incredibly similar to the point where they were cancelling each other out, and Jimmy also lacked the laidback goofiness that Kara enjoyed in civilian life. Once they were on an equal level, it became a friendship.

So then we come to Mon-El. It certainly helped that Mon-El was, like Kara, and alien and had some superpowers to join her in crimefighting. However, superpowers alone didn't really make him Kara's equal: Mon-El's superstrength and invulnerability didn't compare to Supergirl's flight, heat vision, x-ray vision, superspeed, etc..

Mon-El was someone who ultimately came to enjoy fun as much as heroics and could speak to both Kara Danvers and Kara Zor-El. He was the only person with whom Kara ever felt comfortable getting drunk.

He was also a survivor of a planetary apocalypse; he was open to stepping into the life of a superhero but also willing to enjoy civilian life on his own terms. He had a lot to learn, starting out with a certain hapless entitlement where, without malice, he would often offload his work on anyone he could and seize any attempt for hedonism over work; but he was also able to accept criticisms and find a better work-life balance. He wasn't evil, he was just lazy.

Mon-El is further exposed when Kara dumps him and Mon-El still chooses to be a hero even if he's going to be doing it without Kara in his life, finally proving his mettle and resilience. Mon-El could be both a hard partying hellraiser and a thoughtful observer of life, and he had a certain focus on self-preservation first that created a lot of fun tension and conflict between him and Kara.

Mon-El was particularly enriched as a character when his snobby, elitist, homicidal, planet-invading, slave-owning parents showed up; it became clear that Mon-El was a glowingly positive and good-hearted soul at his core because despite these two murderous human traffickers being his parents, Mon-El only turned out a little spoiled without any of the selfish cruelty exemplified by his mother and father.

Mon-El had a distinct and understandable approach to life: he would always save his own neck first and save himself before he got to work saving other people. In contrast, Kara rarely thought of herself in a crisis.

This small distinction made him different from Kara but also compatible, whereas Winn's goofiness and Jimmy's heartfelt sincerity were always too similar to Kara. This was effective from a writing standpoint, allowing Mon-El to be his own character and not just Kara's boyfriend, and it made Mon-El's mentality and philosophy individual. It was perfect.

Of course, since it was Season 2 and Melissa Benoist was on contract for six seasons, it seemed far too early for Kara to settle down and SUPERGIRL elected to send Mon-El into the future, creating a tragic love story where he validated Supergirl's legacy while never able to reunite with her; by the time he could make it back to the present, he had moved on and even gotten married to someone else.

SUPERGIRL would never again be able to create a love interest as well-suited to Kara. Ultimately, the Mon-El character proved to be a unique blend of hiring an excellent actor who was so perfect that Kara loved his character and Melissa Benoist loved the performer. The Mon-El character was an interesting mix of being non-maliciously self-serving while having a certain innocence and goodheartedness that would always win out. The Mon-El character had a certain penchant for hedonism matched with a sweetness and warmth that made him alarming but also unthreatening.

Any male character after Mon-El would always pale in his prospects with Kara and on some level, the show knew that, not even bothering to introduce any boyfriends for Kara for two years. Season 5 brought in William Dey as a love interest. And while William was a wonderfully performed and charmingly scripted character, the writers couldn't find a way to have him connect to Kara Zor-El and Kara Danvers, and ultimately, Season 6 chose to present William as merely a friend.

The only character who really stood a chance of being a good match for Kara after Mon-El was Lena Luthor, but for reasons that need their own post, this was unfortunately not to be.

From a budget standpoint, I find that the two Season 2 premiere episodes of SUPERGIRL, both episodes featuring Superman, might be better viewed as a special television event production separate from the rest of Season 2. These two episodes are clearly budgeted at a higher rate than the rest of the year.

After Season 1 had Superman texting Supergirl, Season 2 opens with Supergirl struggling to save a crashing space shuttle and Superman actually shows up in person to help her. The aerial sequences are astonishing with Superman and Supergirl battling drones in the airspace of National City and keeping a collapsing building from falling apart. The special effects are dense, lavish, detailed and expensive.

This premiere also adds extra effects to a Season 1 sequence. The Season 1 finale had Kara and J'onn investigating a crashed Kryptonian pod that looked exactly like Kara's pod (same CG model and physical prop). Season 2 actually shows the pod crashing and creates an additional action sequence of Kara saving civilians caught in the pod's flight path.

Slider_Quinn21 noted that some of the Metallo makeup was not great and it wasn't, but the shots went by so fast that it didn't seem to matter too much (at least to me).

However, one area where SUPERGIRL is clearly preparing for a cheaper season: Superman and Kara are no longer fighting supervillains who are capable of flight. Season 1 had a lot of Kryptonians fighting Supergirl, Kryptonians who could fly and had the same powers. Season 2 has supervillains who are mostly on the ground, meaning Supergirl has to land to confront them.

After the two episode Season 2 debut, the series starts to cut down on flight-driven action sequences. Kara is fighting people on the ground rather than in the skies, justfiying it through supervillains who can't fly. But even when J'onn is fighting another Martian, the fight is kept on the ground even though both characters can fly. In general, Kara flies less; her habit of hovering above the ground for conversations is reduced to nearly nothing.

Season 2 clearly has less money to build new sets every week. Season 1 would often have the characters in a new location or an indoor set built just for the episode: Maxwell Lord's office and labs, train stations, an outdoor desert combat training location, a toy factory. Season 2 cuts down: villains lounge in vaguely defined warehouses or facilities with lots of pipeworks. There's an effort to move as many scenes as possible to the DEO location's operations bay and medical centre. Mon-El seems to live there. A reporter, a city cop and a bartender can walk in whenever they want to hang out in this top secret, off-the-books, black-ops federal facility that is a closely guarded secret restricted to the highest echelons of government.

However, all this trimming is clearly trying to make it so that when a standout, lavish, wirework driven action sequence is needed, it's significant and impactful. Episode 15, "Exodus", is one of the most impressive episodes of SUPERGIRL ever made and it seems that I somehow missed it on its original airdate and missed chunks of it when rewatching the second half of Season 2 on streaming in summer 2017. (I was having some internet service issues at the time.)

Looking over my posts from the era, it seems I didn't see the second half of this episode because I kept saying that Jeremiah Danvers' motives weren't explained when they were; I distinctly remember thinking the last time we ever saw Jeremiah was J'onn impersonating him to see if Alex would help Cadmus if Jeremiah asked (and when Alex agrees to help Jeremiah, J'onn suspends Alex from the DEO). Clearly, that's when my CW app went down and when my ISP cut out.

"Exodus" is an epic episode. Since Season 2, Cadmus has been plotting some terrible endgame with alien refugees that involves Alex's father, Jeremiah Danvers (Dean Cain). Jeremiah is revealed to be helping Cadmus with their plans, causing Alex to go completely insane after this betrayal. "Exodus" reveals that Jeremiah was helping Cadmus retrieve and rebuild spaceships to forcibly deport alien refugees away from Earth which Jeremiah considered to be preferable to Cadmus wanting to kill them.

"Exodus" is where Alex Danvers' scientific background as a medical doctor and a biologist seem to disappear entirely from the show. Alex delivered some technobabble in Season 1, but it's been less and less as we get into Season 2 and this week, Alex goes from being Dr. Caitlin Snow with combat training to commiting fully to being a female version of Tom Cruise in the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movies. Alex becomes a tactical genius of masterful improvisation.

Alex, suspended from the DEO, goes rogue in hunting down Cadmus: she interrupts a Cadmus-organized round-up of alien refugees and tracks down the Cadmus base where the first alien deportation ship is loaded with aliens and soon to launch and will reach lightspeed after exiting Earth's atmosphere.

Alex gets captured on purpose so she can inform the Cadmus ringleader that she's planted 10 bombs around the entire facility to destroy it. When Cadmus doesn't believe her and sets the ship to take off, Alex sets off the first two bombs; when Cadmus reveals the takeoff can't be turned off. Alex sets off all the bombs to prevent any further spaceship launches. Jeremiah betrays Cadmus and tries to help Alex, but gets knocked unconscious and his fate is left ambiguous. Alex boards the ship just as it achieves lift off, hoping to stop it from inside.

It's here that we come to Season 2's standout action sequence: Alex discovers that she can't take control of the autopiloted spaceship about to transport her and 500 innocent aliens to the other side of the galaxy. The DEO has no space travel capacity and no means to retrieve them; Season 1 established that Supergirl can't even fly outside of Earth's orbit.

Supergirl arrives on the scene as the ship is in stratosphere and tries to stop the ship with superbreath and a layer of ice. The ship, being built to withstand the cold of space, smashes right through the ice. Supergirl flies to the front of the ship, sees Alex through cockpit viewport and the sisters lock eyes. Supergirl launches herself at the front of the ship, trying to force a 100 million kilogram spaceship with engines that can achieve lightspeed back to the ground.

It's here that Season 2's scrimping and saving since the Season 2 premiere is all put on the screen. The special effects are stunning: the ship breaching mesosphere, Supergirl's face breaking with physical agony as she tries to push the ship back, Alex looking on from inside the ship, and the two Danvers sisters mutually realizing, to their horror: Supergirl isn't strong enough to push the rising ship back down to Earth. Kara's power has reached its limits.

The effects are very important, but it's the acting from Melissa Benoist and Chyler Leigh that makes them meaningful. elevating the moment from Supergirl pushing a heavy object to a horrific revelation of defeat: Alex is helpless and Kara has pushed her body to its limit and it isn't enough. If Kara keeps fighting the ship, she'll just be driven into orbit with it and suffocate in space.

Then Alex puts her hand to the viewport glass and Kara instinctively does the same. Both realize that Kara can't live without exerting every last drop of strength to stop the ship. Kara pushes again and realizes while she isn't stronger than the ship, she's stronger than its engines and generates enough opposing force that the ship's thrusters stall and blow out from the resistance, leaving the ship adrift in thermosphere and gradually descending.

It's an astonishing combination of effects, editing, music and performance, and this was absolutely the very best place for SUPERGIRL to blow its effects savings for the year even though we still have seven episodes left in Season 2.

I'd agree about having two different colour gradings in the video stream.

Setting aside personal taste: objectively, Lucas' colour regrading of the original STAR WARS trilogy created a lot of visual problems that were incredibly distracting even on late-90s VHS. Lucas' colour grading was ultimately to replace the low-contrast high-brightness look of his trilogy with a hypersaturated, high contrast look that would ultimately mimic Lucas' prequel movies.

These changes unfortunately led to crushed blacks and damaged hues: Darth Vader's costume went from being a disturbing robotic approximation of humanity to a vague shadow of blackness. Lightsaber colours were warped: Luke's blue blade became mismatched from shot to shot, going from green to blue to green. Darth Vader's lightsaber, a terrifyingly imposing red of harshness and horror, became a faded pink. The crisp and deadly white cores of the lightsabers became a muddied set of the outline colours.

The changes also damage the coherence of the movie. In the original trilogy, the movie often seemed a little too bright in the desert because the intense sunlight was more than what the camera and film technology of the era could capture. But when the blowouts are managed, then the desert garb costumes look less like Tatooine clothing and more like the hacked up blankets gathered by a scrambling costume master. Obi-Wan's costume looks less like the garments of a hermit warrior and more like a bathrobe over a T-shirt when the film is too clear and overbrightened. The visuals weren't meant for this level of lighting. And that's before we get into how the computer generated X-Wings are severely mismatched to the practical models.

Getting back to the subjective: BACK TO THE FUTURE actually benefits from the 1985 scenes looking a little drab compared to the pop art hypersaturation of the 1960s. This specific movie series benefits from looking as bright and rich as Bob Gale wants it to look because the main special effect of the series is the vivid settings of the 1960s, the '2015' future, the alternate 1985, and the wild west of the third movie.

I personally wouldn't dare to say that all colour regrading is good or bad; I would say that for the specific project of BACK TO THE FUTURE's three movies, Bob Gale's intentions and results were, in my opinion, very good and that the original material could withstand and even shine with the Gale-regrading. But I am totally on board with viewers being able to select what they want to see.

Another inconsistency between SUPERGIRL's first and second season: when Jimmy Olsen and Winn Schott show up in the DEO desert base, every DEO agent flips out. It's a massive security breach to have two journalism employees in a covert, black-operations, off the books, officially non-existent spy operation. J'onn is furious at their presence and throws them out, but grudgingly tolerates Jimmy frequently venturing into this top secret base every time he wants a heart to heart with Kara.

Then we go to Season 2... and pretty much anyone is allowed to come into the DEO and wander the premises. Mon-El, an alien refugee with a shaky backstory, is basically allowed to live there. Maggie Sawyer, a National City police officer, is injured and Alex Danvers brings Maggie to the DEO for medical treatment instead of taking Maggie to... a hospital.

Winn is hired to work at the DEO, but he's apparently allowed to use DEO materials and a DEO van and DEO computers to help James become a vigilante superhero and Winn never has to account for using alien technology, DEO hardware and DEO vehicles for his hobby project. Jimmy keeps going to the DEO to hang out with Winn. Winn keeps describing his workday and various projects to Jimmy despite Winn's work and projects being part of a black-ops, off-the-books government operation. J'onn brings a random bartender to the DEO for no apparent reason beyond the show not having the budget to construct another set as a neutral gathering place.

The DEO has gone from being a secret base to basically being the National City public library. It's very, very, very funny. I love it.

Also, I was wrong when I said that none of the DEO agents who thank Kara for her valour are seen again. Vasquez (the shorthaired DEO agent played by Briana Venskus who also plays Piper on AGENTS OF SHIELD) is still appearing at the DEO throughout Season 2. She will stop appearing eventually, however; she probably decided it didn't make sense to keep flying to Vancouver to guest-star when she was guest-starring on AGENTS OF SHIELD in Los Angeles without needing a plane to get to the set.

My guess would be that there were originally some extra scripted lines in Cadmus' broadcast manifesto, some dialogue about how, "We are Cadmus, we will no longer follow the leadership of the United States government. If government won't protect its human citizens, we will. If government won't eradicate the alien menace, we will."

The CW was hoping that viewers who'd skipped SUPERGIRL on CBS would be drawn to watch a season premiere featuring Superman, viewers who may not have seen the previous episodes describing Cadmus as a DEO-associate. My guess would be that going into Season 2, there was some thought that new viewers might be confused by the complication of Cadmus being a government agency that is no longer a government agency.

Rather than invite the audience to grapple with that complexity, SUPERGIRL elected to just present Cadmus as a terrorist organization and not mention that Cadmus had previously been a partner branch of the DEO and I imagine those lines were cut from the script.

This is also noticeable in the mild retcon to Superman's schism with J'onn J'onzz and the DEO where the reasoning for why Superman won't work with them is altered to say that J'onn's kryptonite armanents are the conflict. "You can't offer friendship with one hand while holding kryptonite in the other," Superman says, making no mention of refusing to have any association with Cadmus.

I would think that Superman would have had some dialogue indicating that he'd learned Cadmus had originally gathered the kryptonite that the DEO was now keeping, using that as an example of how agencies don't keep the same leaders with the same scruples forever.

In Season 1 of SUPERGIRL, J'onn is exposed as a Martian pretending to be human. He is captured, imprisoned, and told that he will be sent to "Cadmus" which J'onn describes as the unit of the US Department of Extranormal Operations that performs dissections and eviscerations of aliens in order to kill their races more efficiently and also to co-opt and reproduce their powers. Cadmus is the reason why Superman refuses to work with the US government or the DEO.

In SUPERGIRL's Season 2 premiere episodes, National City is attacked by Cadmus, now described as an anti-alien terrorist organization that declares the US government to be an enemy of Cadmus for the United States' systemic sympathy for alien refugees and for the announcement of the Alien Amnesty Act granting refugee status to interstellar newcomers. Cadmus has no association with the US government.

There are moments in television that can truly only be summed up in a single, succinct word:

Whoops.

Sorry to hear PAL has let you down again. Is it just the Season 1 episodes that are poor, or is it all five seasons? Seasons 2 - 5 look great on the German-released Turbine blu-ray which uses the PAL masters.

Here's a question: does Universal actually have the original negatives at this point?

The blu-ray release of THE X-FILES has numerous sequences with standard definition footage that's been upscaled. Many effects and background plates were sourced from the SD videotapes and rotoscoped onto HD rescans. And THE X-FILES was one of FOX's biggest shows, the crown jewel of their network for nearly a decade.

If FOX had trouble hanging onto the negatives for one of its biggest franchises, how likely is Universal to have held or stored to the original film for SLIDERS? Universal can't even release BACK TO THE FUTURE on DVD or blu-ray without massively screwing it up.

For years, Temporal Flux's enemies (I'm not among them) have speculated on all the treasures that TF may be storing in his basement: gag reels, scripts, beat sheets, pitch documents, casting calls, trading cards, original art, storyboards, audition sides, cheque copies, party invitations, locks of Sabrina Lloyd's hair, Jerry O'Connell's baby teeth, John Rhys-Davies' saliva samples, Cleavant Derrick's unfinished sandwiches, Kari Wuhrer's self-respect, Scott Smith Miller's dream journal, David Peckinpah's sobriety, Bill Dial's heart, Keith Damron's spine, Tracy Torme's pizza boxes, Robert K. Weiss' robots.

I am absolutely sure Temporal Flux has all of these things, but unless he's storing SLIDERS' film cannisters under his bed, I suspect they may be hard to locate at this point.

Anyway. I'm going to watch a super-grainy version of "Summer of Love" on my TV in a bit while a fine-grain upscale runs on it again on my computer.

SUPERGIRL's Season 1 finale... had a little more money than the two bottle episodes before it, but not that much. The superpowered fight scenes are still a bit minimal, with most of the money going to Supergirl throwing the giant Kryptonian prison into space.

I'll have more to say about it later, but I will note how darkly amusing it is: at the end of episode, the entire DEO thanks Supergirl for saving their lives. We're never going to see any of these extras or anonymous DEO Agent #3s again once the show moves to Vancouver.

At the end of the episode, Maxwell Lord has a sinister moment where he hands over the Myriad mind control components to General Sam Lane; we're never going to see Maxwell Lord again and Sam Lane's next appearance is as an alternate on SUPERMAN AND LOIS and Myriad will return in Lena's hands.

At the end of the episode, J'onn J'onzz says he intends to work with Lucy Lane to run the DEO; we're never going to see this Lucy again, only her alternate on SUPERMAN AND LOIS.

At the end of the episode, Kara gets a new office; this office didn't make the move to Vancouver. Kara will be back in the bullpen next season.

At the end of the episode, Alex vows that she will find Jeremiah Danvers (Dean Cain); that's not going to turn out well onscreen or in real life.

At the end of the episode, Jimmy and Kara kiss; this gets instantly deep sixed in Season 2 and the show never refers to it again like they're embarrassed about it.

Well. I guess it could be worse. At least nobody got shot and exploded after getting their brain sucked out.

Judging from what pneumatic has said, Universal's home video department converted the Season 1 analog video tapes into DVD with a primitive anti-flicker method for interlaced video, designed to make the image more attractive on CRT televisions. The diode pattern of a CRT TV would likely hide these flaws, but when these DVDs and digital files are played on modern LCD televisions, there are problems.

You see jagged edge throughout Season 1 episodes for straight lines (signs, furniture, buildings, cars) and the horizontal lines across the opening titles and the credits. This distortion in the even-odd fields of interlaced DVD video are now part of the digital NTSC masters that Universal delivers to home video distributors and streaming services.

I'm sorry to hear your PAL DVDs aren't good. I have the German Turbine blu-ray set which uses the standard definition PAL files. Season 1 looks very blurry, worse than Universal, but without the combing artifacts. Even the Turbine Pilot, which looks amazing on the Universal DVD, is blurry. Probably, Season 1 was stored on non-digital, analog videotape and stretched to the PAL resolution.

Season 2 looks good with heavy film grain texture. Season 3 looks very good with a very crisp visual quality. Seasons 4 - 5 look excellent.

I also have the Universal Dual Dimension Set (Seasons 1 - 2) and the Universal Season 3 set. I find that the Universal version of the pilot is beautiful, but the next eight episodes are blurry and filled with combing issues. Seasons 2 - 3 look good but a slight step down from the Turbine versions.

Oddly, I find that the Mill Creek versions of Seasons 4 and 5 look good despite the compression (although the Turbine versions look great). This is probably because Seasons 4 - 5 were shot on cheaper 16mm film which has larger image forming grains that could survive videotape transfer and DVD compression more capably than 35mm film.

Also oddly: the SD blu-ray versions of Season 1 look very good on my TV and blu-ray player. My TV was increasing the pixel contrast, deepening the colour. This and the lack of jagged edges made the blu-ray look a lot better than the DVDs. Only when looking at the raw files on my computer did I see the blurriness of the Season 1 blu-ray image quality.

The Universal versions of Season 1, despite the field errors, have a lot more texture and detail (although it's still quite low).

I found that the blu-ray versions of Seasons 2 - 5 are excellent for Topaz AI to upscale to 720p and 1080p results thanks to the high levels of film grain needed for an AI to rebuild a video image at a higher resolution.

I have never seen the VIA Vision files, so I can't speak to how that distributor may have messed up the PAL masters or if those same flaws are in the Turbine SD blu-ray.

I'm currently running a new round of upscales for Episodes 1.02 - 1.09.

In the past, I think the main issue for 1.02 - 1.09 has been combing errors. In my first AI upscaling attempt, the jagged edges on any straight lines (signs, furniture) would get stretched out and distorted and appear and disappear. It was visually distracting. And the video quality under these distortions was extremely muddy, almost like a watercolour painting.

In my second attempt, I found that while the detelecine setting smoothed out these lines, the smoothing was also creating a blurriness across those detelecined surfaces. The AI upscaler couldn't sharpen the image effectively, and stretching the video to 1080p gave everything a painfully waxy look that no amount of AI grain could offset.

In my third attempt, I tried having the AI upscaling leave the files at 480p, and then used Lanczos to stretch the upscaled 480p image to 1080p. The results were a little less waxy than before, but not by much.

However, I think I may have been muddying the DVD files. I was converting the files from DVD VOB files to MKV with MakeMKV followed by using Handbrake to detelecine the files and get them to h.264 MP4 and then using AVIDemux to increase the colour saturation. During all these conversions, I set the bit rate to Super HQ which was a bit below the Production Max preset.

At the time, I thought it wouldn't make any difference to create 1GB SuperHQ files instead of 2.5GB Production Max files. Certainly, it made no visible difference for Season 2 - 5 video files.

But since then, I've been comparing SuperHQ and Production Max transcodes of the Universal files... and the Production Max transcodes have just a little more texture and detail (although it's still not much). I think my conversion methods (Handbrake encoding at the Super-HQ preset) reduced image quality in video files that didn't have much margin for loss.

For my new attempt, I'm having Handbrake detelecine and output at the Production Max preset. The Production Max files are 2.5GB per episode. I'm then having AVIDemux add colour and save at the Lossless HQ preset. It's giving me files that are 7 - 9GB per episode.

These files still look rather hazy and undetailed; I don't think they can be upscaled to a higher resolution.

I'm currently running the files through Topaz AI, but I'm setting Topaz to only output 480p files. It's possible that Topaz AI can refine the 480p image to deblur the fuzziness, sharpen up the textures, apply AI grain to offset the lack of the detail, and get the episodes to passable DVD quality and look almost as good as Season 2 on the Universal discs.

Right now, the 'best' video quality for Episodes 1.02 - 1.09 is on the Universal discs and that quality is poor. I would like to get it looking okay, even if it would only rest on my hard drive.

The Nerds of Color say that they misquoted Eric Wallace:

Since then, Nerds of Color posted an update to the article:

I'm not sure how this incorrect quote somehow made it into the interview, I don't know how someone could mishear or mistranscribe that, but regardless, it has been withdrawn and it looks like no LEGENDS cast are booked at all for THE FLASH.

I have heard that Brandon Routh will be appearing on QUANTUM LEAP. Probably not playing Ray Palmer.

Episode 1.02 of SUPERGIRL has a Kara/Alura fight scene that's incredibly close to some of Superman's fight scenes on SUPERMAN AND LOIS with intense use of superpowers (heat vision, freeze breath) and intense punching.

I think that SUPERGIRL's lightweight, romcom tone made the budget cuts for Season 2 easier to accept because even though SUPERGIRL had some intense superpowered physicality, it was really about the characters and their relationships and less about the spectacle.

Also, as I recall, the failure to acquire an LA tax credit meant that the show was hit by severe budget issues in the second half of the season, so the downturn of the visuals actually started in Season 1 which probably softened the blow of Season 2 having even less money.

Despite supervillain Ezra Miller's best efforts, THE FLASH movie trailer is out:
https://youtu.be/9vwaD9cHLNw

Let us take a moment to appreciate how this movie was announced before Season 1 of THE FLASH television show and will now make it to theatres after the Season 9 series finale of THE FLASH. Temporal Flux once theorized that WB would try to kill the Flash TV show to try to prop up a Flash movie, but Grant Gustin's Flash outran anything Ezra Miller could throw at him.

FLASH's Season 9 premiere was okay. Some good character work with Iris disliking how her future is entirely too known to her and being irritated with Barry wanting Iris to follow every hint of the future to the point of everything being obnoxiously predestined and controlled. FLASH notes that the show has always been about Barry's mysterious future whether it was CRISIS or Nora 1.0 or Nora 2.0 and Bart and how that can become extremely trying on Iris trying to live in the now. Some good jokes. Some nice character beats in Barry and Iris' marriage.

It was nice. It was fine.

**

And back to my rewatch: the Season 6 premiere of SUPERGIRL has Supergirl cut a deal with Lex: she demands that he cease his attempt to eradicate 50 percent of the global population. Supergirl says, "I'll give you what you've always wanted. Me. I think your obsession with me outweighs your desire to kill half the world."

... this doesn't make sense. In Season 4, Episode 15, the episode's cliffhanger is Lex in a helicopter and Supergirl entering his flight path. "We meet at last," Lex remarks, establishing that Lex and Supergirl have never met, never had a conflict involving each other.

Throughout Season 4, Lex loathes Supergirl the way he hates any Kryptonian, and he sees her as a pawn to stage an assault on America (via Red Daughter) and take credit for foiling it, but at no point has Lex ever obsessed over Supergirl or wanted to possess her or defeat her in the intensely personal manner in which he hates and despises Superman. Superman is established as a threat to Lex's ego; Lex wanted to be seen as the world's saviour. Supergirl, while terrific, is seen by the world as young, inexperienced, naive, well-intentioned, powerful but hardly on Superman's level. Supergirl is a junior superhero still.

Lex hates Supergirl the way I hate cryptocurrency; I dislike it on principle, but I'm hardly obsessed with anyone in crypto. The show tries to note that Lex is obsessed with showing up Kryptonians in general, but SUPERGIRL's "Rebirth" dialogue positions that as an obsession specific to Kara and... it just plays oddly. It's not the first peculiar note for Lex in Season 6.

Still, given the circumstances in which this episode was cobbled together (portions filmed in a previous season, trying to finish it under COVID protocols with no access to a pregnant and absent Melissa Benoist), I'm surprised it holds together as well as it does.

It's good to have an expert looking at this. Where did you acquire your knowledge of video processing?

While Cleavant Derricks is always nice to fans, I'm afraid no individual actor or even series creator can make a SLIDERS revival happen. It has to start with NBCUniversal and... they seem hesitant, especially after SAVED BY THE BELL and PUNKY BREWSTER revivals didn't set the world on fire. Their streaming service is currently losing 2.5 billion dollars USD a year.

If you would like to get back to Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo after Season 5 and don't mind fan fiction, here are some options.

That said, SLIDERS in the alternate medium of digital type in prose and screenplay isn't for everyone.

Okay, I have a complaint about Feige.

I don't understand why Disney+ is reviving the Netflix DAREDEVIL series but not hiring Deborah Ann Woll (Karen Page) and Elden Hensen (Foggy).

Doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, they've hired Vincent D'Onofrio to play the Kingpin, so why aren't Karen and Foggy in the show?

I love Marvel Unlimited and DC Universe Infinite. I sometimes feel like I'm wasting money not reading them enough... but then I just remember that I only need to read about 15 comic books from each service and I've effectively read the number of print comics I could buy with the subscription fee.

But, uh... Comixology Unlimited may not be long for this world. Read everything you can while you can. Amazon could pull the plug any day now.

Batman could be 25 - 30 in a BATMAN AND SON movie adaptation.

I think writer Grant Morrison intended Batman in the BATMAN AND SON comic storyline to be about 40 and Damian to be 10. Morrison clearly loved writing Damian, emphasizing Damian's ruthlessness and bloodthirsty lunacy as well as Damian's tiny stature and innocent face. Damian's age meant Batman and Talia conceived Damian when Batman was 30. However, Morrison changed the continuity: Morrison misremembered BATMAN: SON OF THE DEMON where Bruce and Talia have a romantic evening. Instead, Morrison scripted BATMAN AND SON to have Batman refer to an insane "eugenics experiment" where he was sedated and his biological matter harvested.

Then we had the events of FLASHPOINT and THE NEW 52 where Batman's publishing history was reduced to Batman having only been in operation for five years and he was de-aged to being 30 -- but Damian was still present as Robin. This timeline made it impossible for Damian to be 10 -- unless we go the Morrison-route where Damian is a genetically engineered clone of Bruce, produced to infancy, then artificially aged to a level where he'd be capable enough for League of Assassins combat training.

On a side note, this five year timeline also made it difficult to see how Batman could have had four Robins (Dick Grayson / Jason Todd / Tim Drake / Damian Wayne) in five years.

Since then, the events of DC REBIRTH and DOOMSDAY CLOCK revealed that Dr. Manhattan ripped a decade out of the DC Universe timeline, but Wally West's return and Superman's confrontation with Dr. Manhattan saw those 10 years start to bleed back into reality, and the SON OF THE DEMON backstory has been reinstated.

However, if James Gunn wants a younger Batman in his late 20s or early 30s, Morrison's continuity error in making Damian an altered child clone of Bruce could be used.

I can't see Christopher Nolan using a sci-fi fantasy trope like clones, but Gunn's version of Batman is supposed to exist in a shared universe of Kryptonians, Greek demi-goddesses, interstellar police forces, speedsters, monsters, time travellers and swamp things, so clones would be no big deal.

Funnily enough... Grant Morrison didn't actually write for Damian and Bruce all that much. Morrison introduced Damian in BATMAN AND SON in 2006, but Damian vanished in an explosion at the end of this short arc. Damian returned just in time for BATMAN RIP in which Batman 'died' at Darkseid's hands (was unstuck from time and space). This led into BATMAN AND ROBIN REBORN where Morrison had Dick Grayson assume the role of Batman with Damian as Robin (and Tim Drake became Red Robin).

Bruce returned to the present in 2010, but declared that Damian was completely unsuited to being Bruce's Robin and said that Dick and Damian should remain Batman and Robin in Gotham while Bruce would be a more global Batman with Batman Incorporated. This led into BATMAN INC. being Bruce's title and Dick and Damian remaining the stars of BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS.

The NEW 52 reboot of 2011 saw Dick return to being Nightwing and Bruce and Damian now being Batman and Robin in a relaunched BATMAN INC. title with Morrison offering no explanation beyond a time gap. The BATMAN AND ROBIN title by Peter Tomasi also focused on Bruce and Damian while the BATMAN, DETECTIVE COMICS and BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT titles focused more on Bruce.

The second volume of BATMAN INC. ended in 2013 with Damian killed off and Grant Morrison departing the title. Morrison had always intended for Damian to die. However, Damian had proven to be a wildly popular character and the fans missed him and were not happy about his death. The writers of BATMAN AND ROBIN, BATMAN, DETECTIVE COMICS and DARK KNIGHT also seemed less-than-thrilled to have lost such a fun character.

In 2014 - 2015, Peter Tomasi's BATMAN AND ROBIN title presented the "Robin Rises" arc in which Damian's body is stolen for genetic material and Batman pursues his son's body as far as Apokalips, facing down Darkseid again. This time, Batman not only survives but reverses the deadly effect of Darkseid's technology and Damian is resurrected. Damian only stayed dead for 16 months and fans were very happy to have this pint sized homicidal Robin back in the mix.

One issue with a BATMAN AND SON movie adaptation: even if they hire a 10 year old to play Damian, that actor isn't going to stay 10 for the entire lifespan of the James Gunn DC movies. Something to think about.

... how's that Comixology Unlimited subscription, Slider_Quinn21? It sadly wasn't available to me in Canada and now, according to news reports, Amazon bought Comixology and laid off 75 percent of all the Comixology employees. Is Unlimited even working right now?

Awful to see this happen. I feel horrible. Comixology was amazing and Amazon destroyed it.