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THE FLASH 9.03, "Rogues of War", has an interesting, endearing story about the Flash trying to get (semi) reformed criminals to help him outheist some thieves trying to steal parts to build a time machine. It's engaging and fun and enjoyable... but wouldn't we rather have had Barry spring the Legends from time jail to run this job for him? Also, I couldn't remember who the Carver character was which may be my fault and not the show's.

I'm really enjoying how Iris remains in charge of Team Flash; meanwhile, Barry recruits a group of criminals and can't get any of them to follow his leadership. Jaco, the least malevolent of the bunch, is crushed when Barry confesses that he doesn't trust him. Barry can't even keep Pied Piper in line and Pied Piper is supposedly on Barry's team. That was hilarious. Barry is good at lots of things, but he doesn't have the natural authority of Oliver Queen or even Kara Danvers.

Former barista Jaco realizing that Barry is the Flash because they have the same coffee order is hilarious. Barry's embarrassment at his secret identity screwup is hilarious.

I am really confused about a bunch of things. Khione has joined the team to do interior decorating, having no scientific, strategic or combat skills; why is she there beyond giving Danielle Panabaker her contractually required screentime? Why is no one mourning Dr. Caitlin Snow? Barry's friend and personal physician is DEAD. Was there a funeral? Did anyone tell her mother? Why did Eric Wallace remove Caitlin and all of Caitlin's relationships from the series and replace Caitlin with a blank slate of nothing?

Why did Allegra engage in flirting with Chester for Season 8 only to avoid him after kissing him? Why does Chester keep trying to talk to someone who kissed him and for whatever reason regrets it? Chester is a bottomless well of fun, cleverness and easygoing charm; surely he doesn't have to stick within Team Flash for dating prospects.

The ending was... I guess, interesting. It's good to see a certain someone back even if she doesn't seem to be herself.

While I love SLIDERS and am obsessed with upscaling it, SLIDERS is a product of a bygone era. It was written and filmed when TV was a visual format that was paradoxically driven by dialogue.

TV started as pre-recorded stage theatre. Stage theatre is driven by dialogue because audiences can't necessarily see facial expression or minute physical action. You couldn't necessarily see facial expression or minute physical action too well on cathode ray tube TVs, either.

TV, even in the 90s, was still stepping away from stagework on a screen to becoming a dynamic visual experience with stories told by moving images rather than being a radioplay with pictures. SLIDERS was closer to the end of this transition than, say, KUNG FU: THE LEGEND CONTINUES, but SLIDERS clearly prioritizes dialogue over visual storytelling without always achieving a synthesis of both.

Compare the SLIDERS pilot to, say, the pilot episode of THE FLASH, and you'll see how television has sped up significantly and employs visual information far more than a 1994 pilot movie. We don't see Barry Allen describing his forensics job; we see him doing it in a short scene with visual details that are crisp and clear on a 16:9 HDTV but would be difficult to make out on a 20 inch CRT of the 90s.

A lot of SLIDERS is written and filmed with the expectation that CRT SD broadcast means viewers can't see everything clearly. SLIDERS in 1994 uses a slow pan across all the set dressings in Quinn's room; it's slow because video editing was slow in 1994 and because it was made for SD broadcast. Any faster and you couldn't read the posters and book titles and see the dinosaurs in the haze of diodes.

From a scripting standpoint: SLIDERS introduces Quinn's job, boss, and has him pass by a TV commercial for a lawyer and a homeless man. This is to establish Hurley, Ross J. Kelley, and Kenny; this way, we have a contrast with the doubles of Hurley, Kelley and Kenny on the Soviet Earth. SLIDERS also has Quinn go on a solo-slide and meet a Quinn-double. This is all expository and gently paced for an audience that has yet to fully embrace small screen visual storytelling.

A 2023 SLIDERS done with the speed of THE FLASH likely has characters like Hurley, Kelley and Kenny made into classmates or faculty at Quinn's school and Wade is likely in Quinn's class to avoid needing one introductory scene per character. There is likely no solo-slide for Quinn; instead, his first slide is with the other three sliders. Quinn wouldn't rattle off the titles of Arturo's papers out loud; we'd see him reading them in a montage with flashes of text and authorship.

The 1994 pilot is slow because the era was slow. 1994 TV production was a slow process on a fast schedule. After shooting on film, film had to be copied to videotape and then copied again from videotape source to videotape recorder with effects done in a separate suite. Overly complex edits were too time consuming to produce on videotape. Film meant only so many shots and takes could be recorded.

Dialogue and gentle pacing were achievable on TV. Teleplays of the era used dialogue over imagery because dialogue was reliable. Visual storytelling could be shaky or not capture the scripted intent due to having only so much film for the day.

Andy Tennant directed the SLIDERS pilot in 1994. Since then, his style has leapt forward. Compare his work on the 2005 romcom HITCH and his 2018 - 2021 episodes of THE KOMINSKY METHOD, and you can see that Tennant in 2021 is clearly not Tennant in 2005 or 1994. Digital cameras mean faster setups; digital editing means more intricate presentation.

Hire Tennant to direct a new SLIDERS pilot and he would use montages, visual information and rapid-fire cuts to get through exposition and introductions. He would, of course, slow down to 1994 speed for scenes of emotional intimacy and gravity. In the 90s, there wasn't much choice in speed.

The 1994 Pilot performances are also done with SD broadcast on small TVs in mind. One of the most common criticisms from a post-2000s viewer of SLIDERS: Sabrina Lloyd's line deliveries and acting are criticized as being stilted and some of SLIDERS' biggest fans call Lloyd the worst actress of the original quartet. This is because stylistic markers in acting have shifted since the 90s.

SLIDERS was made at a time when dialogue-driven storytelling and limited takes necessitated actors hyperemphasizing the information in their lines. It was important to hear dialogue clearly as visuals could be small, hazy or both. Today, the priority is delivering dialogue as though the words have just come to mind for the actor/character.

Within the 90s style, Jerry O'Connell's performances have a few instances of stilted delivery for expository purposes ("Just a little light reading"), Cleavant Derricks could disguise it with his lyrical voice and John Rhys-Davies would hide it with bombast.

Sabrina, however, has a very sharp tone to her voice when speaking at a higher-than-natural volume. Unnatural overenunciation is hard for her to mask. 90s-style expository performance doesn't suit Sabrina whose naturalism was a little ahead of the era.

As a result, there are a lot of lines in Season 1 where Sabrina's delivery sounds forced because the emphasis is on enunciation rather than conversation. Season 2 shows marked improvement in Wade being scripted and Sabrina being directed to be more conversational; Season 3 is very hit and miss for her. Sabrina would not play Wade with 90s-style expository-performance today; she would aim for the illusion of being unscripted. Tell Sabrina to characterize Wade like she did in 1994 with a 1994 script and she would tell you where to shove it.

Even a 90s-era, dialogue-driven filmmaker like Kevin Smith uses modern visual storytelling and editing techniques in his recent films. JAY AND SILENT BOB REBOOT and CLERKS III are very 90s-style dialogue driven, but there are still individual sequences that use quick cuts, montages, onscreen text, anamorphic lenses, HD-dependent visual details and short shot lengths -- techniques that Smith couldn't use in the 90s because he was using comparatively primitive film editing and only had so much money to buy film.

The SAVED BY THE BELL revival proved that it's possible to recreate a 90s-look and scripting style, to mimic the lighting, the expository dialogue, the 4:3 framing, to degrade the image to look SD -- but SAVED BY THE BELL did it for flashback sequences, not the entire revival. No one would ever agree to do it for an entire production.

Yes, limits spur creativity. 1994 was a time when TV creators had to work a lot harder to get characterization and plot information to the viewer. But I can't see a 2023 production crippling itself to mimic a style of scripting, dialogue, performance, filming, cinematography and editing based in 1994 - 1999 limitations.

Writing and filming in 2023 already has its own challenges: pandemic protocols, location access, stitching together distanced extras, production pods, relighting digital video in post, union regulations for intimacy, matching digital stunts to practical effects, malfunctioning drones. What producer wants to add 1994 limitations on top of that?

What would be the point of producing a 4:3 product for a world of 16:9 televisions? Who in 2023 would write and direct like it's 1994? Even THE X-FILES in 2002 didn't look like its 1994 episodes.

Fairly or unfairly, SLIDERS is a TV show that was first made in 1994 and uses a 1994 style of writing and filming within 1994 - 1999 limitations that no creator or actor or zero-budget film student would tolerate today. No studio or broadcaster is going to ask that a 2023 show look like or be written as a 1994 show nor would anyone be willing to make it that way.

If you were to do this story, you would probably have to premiere the 2023 show with the new sliders and put your revelation about the original sliders at the end of the first season to make it an entry-level story.

Maybe the sliders are four homeless people who choose to squat in the soon-to-be demolished Mallory house, they find Quinn's abandoned sliding machine and uncover Quinn's first-first timer (a MicroTAC 9800x rather than the UltraLITE model, presumably a prototype of the original timer that Quinn powered with double-As instead of the regenerative power chip). The new sliders trigger the timer by accident and are lost in the multiverse.

Throughout the new pilot and subsequent episodes, the new sliders encounter Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt, Arturo, Maggie, Colin, Diana and Mallory who appear as recurring doubles: Quinn is a tech support worker at a computer store, Wade is a journalist, Rembrandt is a music teacher, the Professor is the Professor, Maggie is a cop, Colin is an airplane mechanic, Diana is a doctor, Mallory is a thief.

Then in the season finale, the new sliders realize that these guest-stars they've met along the way were split across multiple realities as fragments, and the new sliders have to recombine these fragments in order to get Quinn's help to fix their broken timer.

PARTY DOWN is a cancelled two season show that's a bit like that reboot of SLIDERS that I pitched where Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are running a mini hamburger restaurant called Sliders. PARTY DOWN is about a gang of misfits who are alternatively depressives or delusionals or some combination of both; they are caterers and wait staff for parties. Every episode features their hijinks and disasters at a different party whether it's a birthday, a corporate function, an orgy, a funeral, a wedding, or a mafia meeting.

PARTY DOWN features Adam Scott as Henry, a deeply depressed bartender/waiter/ex-actor whose miserable neuroticism is oddly reminiscent of Tracy Torme's original conception of Quinn Mallory before Jerry O'Connell was cast. There's also Ryan Hansen, an airheaded male model/actor whose dim-witted good-naturedness and strangely compelling talent is oddly reminiscent of Jerry O'Connell in his early 20s. Also present is Lizzy Caplan as Casey, a sardonic stand-up comedian with a certain wonky energy that's oddly reminiscent of Sabrina Lloyd but with a more cynical bent.

Rounding out the waiters is Jane Lynch as Constance, a bit-part actor who thinks she was more successful than she actually was with a certain hapless confidence that's oddly reminiscent of Cleavant Derricks. And then there's Ken Marino as Ron, the groundlessly arrogant 'team leader' who is vastly overconfident in his leadership and oddly reminiscent of John Rhys-Davies.

The show is noteworthy for how it is bitterly devoid of optimism. None of these would-be actors ever get a worthwhile role and even if they do, their scenes are cut from the movies. None of their business plans to escape their minimum wage drudgery go anywhere. None of their romantic pursuits are in any way a meeting of the minds and in fact just add a numbing effect to their mindless jobs as caterers and waiters. None of the supposed professional opportunities they find from 'networking' as caterers and waiters lead anywhere.

I'm not sure who even watched this show; there was a 20 episode order across 2009 - 2010 on STARZ and the show reportedly had an audience of around 100,000 viewers. STARZ rightly cancelled it in a vaguely optimistic 20th and final episode and that was clearly the end of that.

For reasons I cannot explain, PARTY DOWN had its Season 3 premiere this past week, 13 years after the Season 2 finale back in 2010. Everyone except Lizzy Caplan as Casey has returned for a new run of six episodes. (She had scheduling issues.) The show has had to come up with a reason for why everyone except Casey is still cater-waitering after 13 years. I'm excited to watch it.

Nobody watched this show. It was cancelled. It was over. Now it's back. Could this happen with SLIDERS?

An interesting proposition. If only there were some way to present this story in a teleplay that could have plausibly been scripted, performed and filmed in a 46 minute episode of television to be produced and aired as a sixth season premiere.

Soooo, in my recent upscale of SLIDERS 1.02 - 1.09, I became overly enthusiastic about upping the saturation levels for the episodes. And now... my upscales of 1.04 - 1.09 are entirely too saturated; the skin tones all look radioactively pink. It is ghastly and I have to redo them all.

In addition to giving myself extra work, I have also made pneumatic's point about reckless colour changes.

Every season of SUPERGIRL seems to do something new that no subsequent season could maintain. Season 3 is really the only season to change Supergirl from being superhumanly nice to a more complicated character. Supergirl in Season 3 is deeply depressed.

The loss of Mon-El and the grief of sending him away has left Supergirl traumatized like Barry Allen. The guilt is making her distant and aloof from her friends like Oliver Queen. Season 3 is where Supergirl's character starts to become dimensionalized beyond niceness; we see that she withdraws, that she wants to subsume herself in an alternate identity, that she's lost joy in helping people or being Kara Danvers at Catco, that she's unable to handle a 9 - 5 job effectively and becoming difficult to work with for the DEO; she stops even wanting to be Kara Danvers.

It lasts two episodes and then Kara starts to recover, regaining most of the Melissa Benoist charm but with occasional moments of depression and sadness. Then Mon-El returns, but what was seven months for Kara has been seven years for Mon-El and he's gotten married and moved on while Kara hasn't. In a twisted way, helps Kara recover fully. She knows that Mon-El is alive and well but their relationship is over. Also, Mon-El has become a serious-minded, heavy-hearted hero without the mischief and hedonism that made him a good match for Kara's goofiness and Supergirl's heroism. He's effectively a different character played by the same actor.

The upshot of this: Kara as a more downbeat and sad character just didn't work for SUPERGIRL and they let it ride for two episodes and then started shifting back. The reason I think it's for the best: Melissa Benoist, as an actor, isn't like Grant Gustin when playing tragedy. Grant Gustin's sense of tragedy is haunting torment that he has Barry run to escape, it's very dynamic and troubled. And Melissa Benoist, as an actor, also isn't like Stephen Amell who conveys howling rage in a state of upset. Benoist can do anger, but she doesn't really do seething anger for every second of every minute; instead, her anger comes out in massive bursts and then she's spent.

Melissa Benoist playing Supergirl with a Barry/Oliver sized grief and trauma isn't empathetic like Gustin or riveting like Amell; it's simply depression. And Benoist's depression for Supergirl is in fact really distancing. It's hard to connect with Kara or Supergirl when Benoist plays this version of the character because Benoist's body language and expressiveness become completely flattened out, giving no real information to the viewer. For Benoist, depression isn't about increasing the sadness or the anger; it's instead an absence. This doesn't play to Benoist's strengths as an actor who's all about the physicality whether it's pushing a spaceship or bounding through Catco.

This seems to lead into Season 4 where the writers seemed to realize that Kara Danvers doesn't really need to be too heavily written or characterized. The writers decide to just let the character be heroic as Supergirl and a bit silly as Kara and very passionate about helping people in both personas and have crazy things happen around her.

The writers stop trying to give Kara an arc of feeling downbeat and working to triumph or self-discovery or overcoming a personal weakness. This version of Kara doesn't actually need that because this Kara has Melissa Benoist's screen presence and charisma and ability to generate empathy from the viewer. Melissa Benoist will handle the characterization after Season 3 and the writers leave it in her hands.

I don't believe Jerry was ever offered the role of Peter Parker/Spider-Man.

He certainly wanted it, as he stated during a commercial break during a talk show (Conan O'Brien? Can't remember). He seemed strangely (and delusionally) certain of getting it. He may have even had a meeting or a screen test and his agent was certainly pursuing it.

Jerry would never have gotten the role and wasn't offered the job; Sam Raimi had a very clear image of what he wanted his Peter Parker to be and if you look at Tobey Maguire and Jerry O'Connell, you can see how Jerry doesn't fit Sam Raimi's vision at all.

Jerry did indeed audition for the role of John Jameson (Mary Jane's fiance) in SPIDER-MAN II and did not get it. I'd like to say he blew it, but as someone with a lot of actress friends, I know that actors can audition wonderfully and still get passed over because they had the wrong eye colour or reminded the casting director of a hated roommate or whatever.

Tangent: if you read Tracy Torme's original SLIDERS pilot script, the character of Quinn is clearly not Jerry O'Connell at all; it's more a Tobey Maguire type if not necessarily Maguire himself. (Also, Professor Arturo is clearly Raul Julia.)

It's interesting that Jerry turned his back on Quinn Mallory but then thought he would be hired to play another science hero, Peter Parker.

But if Jerry had been hired for Sam Raimi's film, Jerry would have just put in another SLIDERS in Season 4 performance. It's just who he was at the time, sadly. The heartfelt sincerity of Season 1 - 2 Quinn was gone. After 2005, Jerry regained his gifts and has been pitching his roles as a more hypercaffeinated goofball, a bit like Andrew Garfield's version.

Jerry still has the capacity to play the thoughtful intellectual. One of the most interesting non-performances I ever heard with him: he was on Macaulay Culkin's podcast and he was talking about the technical craft of acting and discussing whether or not his daughters had those skills. He was discussing a 'science' of sorts, and that told me that Quinn Mallory is still inside him.

That said, I have never really thought of Jerry O'Connell as Quinn Mallory. I have always thought of Jerry as the skin that Quinn Mallory wears.

One character I really wanted Jerry to play back in his SLIDERS-days was the character of Nightwing, an adult Dick Grayson who had graduated from being Batman's Robin to becoming an independent hero. Dick's long hair and pleasant features have long resembled Jerry. In 2007, Jerry even voiced Nightwing in THE BATMAN animated cartoon. You can hear him in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4AZHyoPn34

Around Season 3 of SLIDERS, I no longer wanted Jerry to play this character. Slider_Quinn21 once remarked that Nightwing should be Jared Padelecki and Jared Padelecki has indeed cornered the market on what was Jerry O'Connell's niche in the 90s: the sensitive, thoughtful male hero. 

Brenton Thwaites on TITANS certainly has the look of Nightwing, but Thwaites and the writing have made Dick a depressive, miserable person whereas the Nightwing of the comics is more like MacGyver (whether Richard Dean Anderson or Lucas Till), a relentlessly positive soul, an irrepressible hero with interesting hair.

I haven't gotten any fogging up ever since switching to KF94 with the nose wire that folds in a rounded shape over the nose. But whenever I get haircuts, I use a bifold KN95 mask (sigh) because that's a mask where I can use double-sided mounting tape on the inside to attach it to my face.

Even when the KN95 earloops come off for my haircut, the mask stays on. Mounting tape on the inside of the mask isn't effective with KF94 masks because the grip is in the flaps and earloops resting on your face instead of gripping the face.

Mask tape might be better and work with my boat shaped KF94s.

What I signed up for: it's apparently a Novavax trial. Novavax wasn't designed with any Omicron subvariants available for targeting, but it's prompted strong antibody response against BA.1, BA.4 and BA.5. I'm not sure it would be superior to an actual BA.4 and BA.5 bivalent dose, however.

I'm a little hesitant about KN95 masks. There is no real oversight on KN95 manufacturing. I could sell napkins as KN95 and there would be no consequences (aside from people not buying them). In contrast, KF94 masks are reviewed by the Korean government and have to filter at least 94 percent of incoming particles and withstand stretch tests for the earloops or the manufacturer will be fined. N95 masks are also reviewed by NIOSH.

It's interesting to me: KN95 masks are five layer masks: an outer water-resistant layer, two layers of meltblown polypropylene filtration to electrostatically capture particles, a layer of hot air cotton to catch larger debris, and a skin friendly layer.

KF94 masks tend to be three to four layers: the water-resistant layer, a structural layer for shape, one layer of meltblown polypropylene electrostatic filtering, and the skin friendly layer. Some KF94 masks omit the structural layer. Any KF94 mask on the market has had to pass filtration tests, most tend to filter in the 97 - 99 percent range. This means that you don't actually need two layers of electrostatic filtering or the hot air cotton. So why do KN95 masks have those two extra layers?

The hot air cotton may be helpful as a structural layer, but it seems to me that the cotton and the two layers of electrostatic filtering are probably the manufacturer using poor quality meltblown material, and having to stack two layers of meltblown filtration on top of the hot air cotton in order to keep the customer feeling like the air is being filtered and willing to keep buying the same brand of mask.

KN95 masks have been on a sad trajectory in my experiences with them. I would buy one great brand, but when buying more of the same, the newer masks would have poor stitching and rip apart at the center or at the earloops when I put them on. Newer batches of the same brand would use less material for the mask surface and earloops: the mask wouldn't fit or rip apart when stretching the loops to the ears. This has happened to me with four separate brands of KN95 masks and I just can't afford to keep buying unreliable masks for myself.

However, some of my friends find that KF94 masks don't fit them, and I've occasionally picked up some KN95 masks for them. And if a KN95 mask doesn't fall apart when you put it on, those two layers of meltblown material in the tent shape are probably better than a leaky surgical mask or a useless cloth mask

But the supply is highly unreliable, or at least it's been for me.

In other news, I recently ordered a water mister. I'm going to put artificial sweetener and water in the mister and create cool, sweet mist and see if I can taste the sweetness when wearing one of my masks. If I can't taste it, I'll know the mask is working correctly; if I can taste it, I'll know there are gaps in the seal.

The mister:
https://www.amazon.com/GIVERARE-Recharg … 08LGLZ8PT/

I'll actually be posting any and all information about the vaccine trial here for us all to contemplate.

I don't see it happening, I doubt I'll actually get into this trial, but it's certainly interesting to look into it.

I posted earlier about how SUPERGIRL doesn't do well when attempting to confront real world issues without allegory or metaphor.
https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 854#p13854

I'm at the two part Season 2 finale of SUPERGIRL and... SUPERGIRL isn't that great at dealing with reality in general. By this, I mean that when events on SUPERGIRL prompt a response from the US federal government, that response makes no sense in both our reality and the reality of Earth-38.

In the Season 2 finale story, the Daxamites stage an invasion of Earth, attacking National City. Since Earth-38 is presented as similar to our Earth with a semi-sensible representation of government, one would expect a US military response: blockade National City with fighter jets to isolate the airspace, prepare a surface to air missile response to take on the Daxamite mothership, dispatch soldiers to defend and evacuate civilians, and then we go from there.

Instead, SUPERGIRL decides that the United States response to an alien invasion of a major US city is to... fly Air Force One in the general direction of the alien ship. With the President aboard Air Force One.

Let's note that Air Force One has no armaments of any kind and no sane military strategy would have you throw your unarmed leaders at an invasion force.

SUPERGIRL also decides that the person who will be negotiating with the Daxamite invasion leader will be... the White House public relations director, Cat Grant, as opposed to literally anyone else with something resembling diplomatic skills and experience working with aliens.

*sigh*

SUPERGIRL is a very well-meaning, earnest, sincere show that wears its heart on its sleeve, but SUPERGIRL does better when it stays out of reality and confines its situations within the superhero bubble of National City.

On a side note: I've stopped wearing masks outdoors. I feel that the risk of outdoor transmission is negligible, so I'm now only putting on a mask before walking into a public indoor space like a grocery store or (on occasion) a movie theatre. I've been going to some restaurants, but I bring with me this USB-powered air purifier that I plug into a mobile powerbank. I also put this gel up my nose that's supposed to catch viruses before they infect the respiratory tract. I'm looking forward to a summer of not wearing masks outdoors and not having to search for a thin, summer-wearable mask.

I recently signed up for this medical trial to get a sixth dose COVID vaccine booster, but I'm not sure if they'll call or if I want to potentially get a placebo dose.

And now, I don my political criticism hat to criticize SUPERGIRL:

SUPERGIRL in Season 2 starts to attempt some real world topicality: the Parasite is an angry, murderous scientist targeting climate change deniers and big business polluters and Supergirl tracks him down and stops him. The probably-unintended message here seems to be that anyone who tries to do anything about climate change is a homicidal maniac.

The tail-end of the season has Lena Luthor working with Daxmamites on matter-transporters via datastream which Lena thinks could solve climate change as well; the probably-unintended message seems to be that any technology that could battle climate change is too dangerous.

This is one of those awkward situations where SUPERGIRL's writers are drawing on real world issues for character motives -- but keep assigning those motives to antagonists like the Parasite and the Daxamites. And yet, having Supergirl work on climate change wouldn't be effective either. Supergirl's action-oriented character wouldn't have much to do standing in marches and crafting environmental legislation.

Supergirl voicing climate change concerns would leave you wondering why she and Superman aren't using Kryptonian technology to offer repair and alternative means of food production and fuel.

In fact, SUPERGIRL claiming that Earth-38 is experiencing climate change in some ways undermines its plot for Seasons 1 - 4: that alien refugees are coming to Earth as a safe haven. The viewer has to wonder why aliens keep gravitating to a warming planet of overpopulation diminished resources. There's some attempt to address this by noting that Kryptonians aren't any better than humans, blowing up their own planet whereas humans will merely render Earth uninhabitable for themselves and that no planet is really free of this no matter how advanced. But then why isn't climate change Supergirl's number-one priority? Why is fighting bank robbers more important?

Ultimately, real-world climate change is extremely ill-suited to a superhero show that deals in escapism and action, and a show that does not have any real world solutions to a real world problem.

In fact, SUPERGIRL might have been better off avoiding this real-world subject in this direct fashion. It's not that I think fiction should avoid saying anything about obvious ecological catastrophe; it's that I don't think this fictional show can say anything worthwhile about it. Every time they try, they inadvertently present any character worried about the environment as a crazy supervillain. Meanwhile, the superheroes never actually voice any climate opinions at all.

What would Supergirl even have to say about it? In the context of Earth-38, one would think that Superman and Supergirl would have gifted Kryptonian technology to all of Earth, but that humans are going to need decades to recreate and adjust the technology to solve humans' problems. Furthermore, Kryptonian technology led to Krypton exploding, so Kryptonian solutions aren't actually solutions in themselves without a lot of extra work.

In terms of fictional functionality, Earth-38 cannot be the real world. If it were, alien refugees would likely choose another planet. I don't think superheroes like Supergirl are the right choice to address global warming in this manner because when the writers raise the issue, you wonder why Supergirl is stopping bank robberies and why Superman is coaching football teams instead of working on the environment.

I think that for SUPERGIRL to take on climate change, it'd be better to concoct an allegory: perhaps Kryptonian technology is being misused in a way that damages the Earth's core stability or drains human bodies of lifeforce, and Supergirl has to convince people to stop using it in this fashion. SUPERGIRL found a highly potent metaphor for immigration with the alien refugee storyline of Season 4 and found a somewhat less potent metaphor for social media with the VR contact lenses of Season 5.

But when SUPERGIRL tries to pretend that the show is set in the real world as opposed to a superhero reality, it raises questions that the show ultimately can't answer on subjects where the show doesn't really have anything meaningful to say.

On an adjacent note: another example of a goodhearted TV show inadvertently trivializing climate change is MACGYVER where, in the fourth season, MacGyver has a nervous breakdown over the climate emergency, but then goes to Washington to present ecological warnings to various politicians, and MACGYVER nonsensically presents this as MacGyver having somehow solved climate change with a PowerPoint and a speech.

Because of Slider_Quinn21, I now have to look at every Season 9 episode of THE FLASH and ask: is this story more important than resolving LEGENDS OF TOMORROW? And watching Season 9, Episode 2, I have to ask: why did we need an entire episode of Team Flash not resurrecting Caitlin Snow and effectively killing off Caitlin and Frost?

The story plays almost as though THE FLASH suddenly lost the performers who play Caitlin and Frost except Danielle Panabaker is still on the show and still on contract. This removal comes off as completely nonsensical and pointless. Why is THE FLASH introducing a new regular character in its final season when they have little time to build and explore this new role?

I just don't understand it. With only 12 episodes left, why isn't THE FLASH simply getting what is left of its cast and characters back onscreen with a minimum of fuss, but instead actively removing two cast members even when the actor is still being paid to film? Why isn't the final season of THE FLASH featuring Dr. Caitlin Snow being a biologist and medical doctor and featuring Frost being aggressive and reckless? It would have taken a lot less screentime to resurrect Frost and bring back Caitlin than the whole episode it took to deep-six Caitlin and Frost.

Was this really more important than resolving LEGENDS OF TOMORROW?

Hilarious inconsistency between Seasons 2 and 4 of SUPERGIRL:

In Season 4, the President of the United States demands to know Supergirl's civilian identity and when Supergirl refuses to give it, he fires her from the DEO. Later in the season, it's declared that at the DEO, only J'onn, Alex and like three other anonymous DEO agents know that Kara Danvers is Supergirl.

Except in Season 2: Kara is constantly walking around the DEO in her glasses and plainclothes. One might wonder if Kara has a civilian job at the DEO in addition to being Supergirl, but Kara rips off her shirt to reveal the Supergirl costume underneath in several scenes while surrounded by DEO staff.

Kara is addressed as "Kara" by various DEO personnel like Agent Vasquez. Alex and J'onn call her "Kara" while DEO extras are walking back and forth through the operations bay. At one point, Mon-El announces to the DEO at large, "Kara and I are dating!"

Supergirl being Kara Danvers is clearly not a secret when every janitor and short order cook who clocks in at the DEO is allowed to overhear all this. There may have been some cut dialogue about J'onn periodically wiping DEO agents' memories of The Secret, but as it stands, this is another massive continuity error across entire seasons, and... I think it's just great.

I don't know why Quinn being nearsighted in the Pilot but having perfect vision afterwards bothers me but this error delights me; I have to assume that I just really like Melissa Benoist's Kara and will tolerate anything to hang out with her.

In the case of BACK TO THE FUTURE, the colours were always meant to look rich and hypersaturated. But what looked colourful and vivid on theatre projection screens in 1985 was looking faded and washed out on LCD televisions in 2015. Movie theatre screens were dimmer than the screens in our living rooms today.

In addition, the 2015 remaster of BACK TO THE FUTURE wasn't recoloured by a random someone, it was done by Bob Gale, the original writer, producer and storytelling force behind the series. Robert Zemeckis, the director, has always struck me as more the technical genius behind the movie, but less the creator and more the special effects facilitator.

Now, not every change made by the original creator of a property will be effective. George Lucas' hideous STAR WARS recolourings and replacement effects are a disaster.

However, I feel Bob Gale had the right approach: he adjusted the colouring of each scene individually, not just amping up the colour vibrance across the board. He wasn't trying to change BACK TO THE FUTURE as much as he wanted it to look as good on 2015 TVs as it did in 1985 movie theatres.

The frustrating thing about BACK TO THE FUTURE that you've noted: the previous blu-ray release in 2015 was overseen by producer Bob Gale who amped up the colours significantly to make the film look vibrant and new on HDTV screens. It was done with care and thought, making the film fit for modern day viewing on modern equipment without cheapening the original intentions. The 2020 release may be in 4K and have HDR, but it's completely undone all of Gale's adjustments for HDTV presentation when Gale had found a happy medium between Lucas-style overrevisionism and historical preservation.

I'm currently upscaling SLIDERS episodes 1.03 - 1.09. Just letting it run at home over the weekend while I go on a roadtrip.

This is deeply comforting, thank you!

Universal has been screwing up DVD releases since at least 2002 (the mis-framed BACK TO THE FUTURE release) and right through to 2022 (messed up colours on the new BTTF blu-ray). But if the negatives are still in storage, then perhaps we're just a few regime changes and scanning adjustments away from Universal making better use of its back catalog.

I just watched a hypergrainy AI upscale of "Summer of Love" and it looks like we have a choice between Episodes 1.02 - 1.09 looking really grainy (like a the very grainy Season 2 Turbine PAL release) or like a really waxy watercolour. I guess grain is preferable.

We may not want to assume that pneumatic lives in the United States. In fact, given their linguistic patterns and specific vocabulary choices, I would surmise that pneumatic lives in Australia.

(I'm just messing with you, that's the geolocated IP address indicated by the Bboard.)

SUPERGIRL's first season finale is a very solid piece of work. The threat of Myriad is resolved with a truly stirring speech from Supergirl, beautifully performed by Melissa Benoist.

The writing has many shining moments. There's J'onn J'onzz silently revealing that he could have escaped the DEO at any time but chose to stay to help the humans and the DEO against the Kryptonians. There's the extremely well-written dialogue where Alex establishes that Kara can't survive in outer space and that her flight abilities wouldn't allow her to generate thrust to return to Earth should she enter orbit and escape planetary gravity.

The finale also establishes the futility of violence: Supergirl has the same powers as the Kryptonians, so combat would be pointless and the day has to be won with strategy, tactics and sacrifice as Supergirl gives up her own life to remove Myriad from planet Earth. The shot of Supergirl floating away into space only for her pod to come to her rescue with a glimmer of Alex in the cockpit is beautiful, as is the soft transition to Kara waking up in the DEO lab.

However, all this writing noting that superpowered combat wouldn't accomplish anything at times looks less like high minded ideals and more like a budget crash. SUPERGIRL at one point has Kara demand to know where the 50 or so superpowered Kryptonian soldiers are and why she doesn't have to fight them; it's explained that they're all in their sleeper pods preparing to leave Earth, so J'onn and Kara only have to fight General Non and Indigo.

The fight scenes are quick and to the point with J'onn ripping Indigo apart while Kara and Non firing heat vision back and forth with minimal wirework and fight choreography. The writers do a solid job of hiding the shortfalls and it all felt suitably epic when this first aired, but on a second viewing, I can see the bare budget even though I admire and enjoy how the writers are doing their best to cover for the shortcomings of their accountants.

This minimalist approach to superpowers and visuals is pretty much the scale of the show once we settle into Season 2.

It's a bit alarming that we started SUPERGIRL's first season with a hyperdetailed rendering of Kara saving a crashing plane in the pilot. Now the finale has blurs of CG and two actors glaring intensely at each other with ray beams as they stand in the desert outside LA.

The cliffhanger has a spaceship crashing to Earth and Kara and J'onn investigating the crash. Kara is astonished to see that the spaceship is just like her own Kryptonian pod; it's a fascinating mystery to lead us into Season 2. However, one can't help but note that using a Kryptonian pod allowed SUPERGIRL to reuse the same CG spaceship model and the same physical prop they've had since the pilot, an unavoidable design choice since SUPERGIRL couldn't afford to create a new ship design or build a new prop.

Money issues also seem to have struck one of the closing plot developments of Season 1: the unseen President of the United States declares that J'onn J'onzz is pardoned for impersonating a federal agent and commanding a federal defense agency, and furthermore, J'onn is now officially installed as director of said federal agency. This is absolutely nonsensical on every level except the one on which it was originally intended: we were supposed to meet the President much earlier in Season 1 and get some rationale for this bizarre turn of events.

Episode 11, "Strange Visitor from Another Planet", featured Senator Miranda Crane, an publicly anti-alien politician who changes her mind about anti-alien legislation after Supergirl saves her. It looks like this character was originally meant to be President Olivia Marsdin, to be played by Lynda Carter.

Furthermore, the episode was to reveal to the viewer (but not the characters) that Marsdin was an alien who'd deliberately presented an alien-hostile platform in order to publicly 'change' her mind to puncture anti-alien prejudice and start the path to human and alien unity, much in the same way J'onn impersonated the alien-loathing Hank Henshaw to imprison violent aliens and protect peaceful ones.

This would then explain why President Marsdin would pardon J'onn and reinstate his command at the DEO. Unfortunately, due to the show's financial issues, Carter couldn't be booked until Season 2. The show decided to save Carter's character and plot twist for later, but in doing so, SUPERGIRL lost its rationale for J'onn getting his old job back.

I like the Season 1 finale a lot, but I can certainly see how the Los Angeles production had become unworkable.

With regards to the Universal home video department's crimes against humanity: one wonders why they had to increase the size of the image when producing DVDs.

My theory: Episodes 1.02 - 1.09 do not look like 480i files to me. The container may have that resolution, but the video content itself looks more like 360i, maybe even 240i. My guess would be that the finished episodes for 1.02 - 1.09 were on low resolution analog videotape that was below the resolution of DVD VOB containers and these analog scans were stretched to 480 size and likely stretched with a clumsy method that expanded the even and odd fields separately.

**

I've been running some more tests with "Summer of Love". I find that when working with the maximum bitrate files and outputting to 480p only, the results are decent for close and medium shots -- but the wide shots are like watercolour paintings when watching them on a 55 inch TV. I'm running another upscale right now to add on a very high amount of AI film grain. This adds a lot of 'static' to the shots, but it adds some weight to the wide shots while being consistent across the entire file.

One thing about Topaz AI's latest update: the setting to make the AI film grain small seems to have been deleted. AI film grain is now medium, large and extra large. I may have to roll back to the previous Topaz version so as to make the grain finer and less like static.

One other flaw in my previous methodology: I would often look at the upscale results on my monitor and think they looked good only to find later when watching them on my living room TV that they didn't look good after all, so I'm not calling anything 'done' until I've watched a significant portion of the episode in my living room.

Well, the main production problem with SUPERGIRL on CBS: CBS budgeted for a Los Angeles tax credit that, for some reason, didn't come through. The show had been spending like it was Season 3 of SLIDERS on a lavish FOX budget only to abruptly discover it was actually Season 5 of SLIDERS on a shoestring Sci-Fi Channel budget. Production was suddenly underfunded. They finished the season, but it was financially impossible to stay in Los Angeles.

I'm not sure any level of ratings success would have allowed CBS to fund this Los Angeles-filmed show without the LA tax credit. And I can't see CBS funding a Vancouver-filmed version of SUPERGIRL because CBS requires a certain level of ad sales to make a show worth their investment, and SUPERGIRL could not command that level of ad sales and would have had to start charging less.

I guess, if SUPERGIRL had gotten its tax break and had huge ratings, CBS could have kept it. Cat Grant and Maxwell Lord would have stayed in the show because Callista Flockhart and Peter Facinelli wouldn't have been facing a move to Vancouver.

Mechad Brooks was not happy playing Jimmy Olsen and was ready to quit after Season 1. He didn't think Jimmy had much to do, didn't think he had any romantic chemistry with Benoist. Production didn't wish to keep him against his will and was willing to release him from his contract. However, the move to Vancouver made Brooks decide to give the show another chance; it's likely that Season 2 would have had Brooks written out by request if it had stayed in LA.

I'm not sure SUPERGIRL could have participated in crossovers beyond Arrowverse stars guest-starring in individual episodes of SUPERGIRL if it had stayed on CBS. "World's Finest" was very difficult to film because Grant Gustin would have had to fly from Vancouver to Los Angeles and film within a tight window before being flown back to Vancouver for THE FLASH. It would not have been feasible to regularly fly the stars of ARROW and FLASH between LA and Vancouver more than once a year.

I don't think Alex would have been gay in a CBS version of the second season because the first season was clearly pairing Alex up with Maxwell Lord and Peter Facinelli's departure opened other doors for Alex that led to her coming out.

A CBS version of SUPERGIRL would have maintained a very high budget and probably been only a few steps behind the visuals we get in SUPERMAN AND LOIS rather than the artful speed-blurring of the CW version of SUPERGIRL.

We may still have gotten Chris Wood as Mon-El as the actor is LA based, but I don't know if we would have gotten Katie McGrath as Lena Luthor. There was certainly interest in the Lena Luthor character, but the presence of one somewhat amoral technology industrialist (Lord) may have made Lena Luthor unnecessary; Lena may have been cast more as an outright villain to contrast with Lord merely being egotistical but decent (ah, very, very, very deep down). They may have cast Lena differently and probably not promoted her to a regular role.

I don't know if we would have gotten Tyler Hoechlin as Superman. While Hoechlin works in Los Angeles and Vancouver, the addition of Superman to SUPERGIRL appears to have been due to WB wanting to give CW reason to take on a show that CBS had found untenable. The ability for the CW to market SUPERGIRL as featuring a newly cast Superman (and at a far lower rate than expected) made SUPERGIRL extremely attractive to the CW network.

I can't see this happening if SUPERGIRL had stayed on CBS; a WB would have demanded a huge licensing fee for CBS' SUPERGIRL to feature Superman and SUPERGIRL was making do with CG models and body doubles filmed at a distance.

I don't know if SUPERGIRL could have ever become a big hit. I love Supergirl, but fairly or unfairly, Supergirl is seen as a derivative character who is always adjacent to Superman. Any SUPERGIRL TV show feels like a spinoff to a SUPERMAN television series even if Superman at the time did not have his own TV show.

Fairly or unfairly, Supergirl is not a cultural icon like Superman. Superman is a global phenomenon, a media giant, a multimarket empire of films, shows, stageplays, musicals, novels, radio shows, action figures, costumes, and toys. Supergirl is his cousin and Supergirl is a fundamentally niche property. While FRASIER became independent from CHEERS, the name "Supergirl" forever defines Kara as adjacent to Clark Kent. There's a bit of a glass ceiling on Supergirl as a character.

Fairly or unfairly, there was always going to be the sense that the SUPERGIRL television show existed because Berlanti Productions couldn't get the TV rights to Superman. And that only changed in 2020 when the DC film division got stalled on doing any more movies with Henry Cavill and WB decided that the Superman license might as well be bringing in some more revenue on TV since it wasn't bringing any from movie theatres.

Continuing my rewatch of SUPERGIRL. It's pretty obvious that once Cat Grant surmises that Kara is Supergirl, she isn't actually fooled by J'onn J'onzz impersonating Supergirl to meet Kara in Cat's presence. Cat becomes far more sympathetic and encouraging to Kara and Supergirl afterwards.

The peculiar duplication of SUPERGIRL is... strangely not as irksome as on a first viewing. When watching the original broadcasts, it was bizarre that Kara Danvers was a junior intern and a high ranked secret agent of a federal emergency bureau; a superhero with a secret identity that was only a secret to Cat Grant; a nervous bookworm and an hardy warrior, etc..

On a second viewing... From a characterization standpoint, however, it works that Kara has both a capable soldier and a nervously naive girl inside her.  But practically, Kara's civilian job as an assistant, while making Kara more 'normal', seems like a complete waste of time; Kara flat out dismisses her assistant job in the pilot as not being worth her time.

And yet, the Catco setting has become such a fixture of SUPERGIRL after six seasons that when rewatching Season 1, Catco feels warmly familiar. It'd be weird if it weren't there now in this rewatch.

SUPERGIRL was reportedly having budget problems in the latter half of the first season. I personally found the episode budgets pretty lavish and extensive until episode 18, "World's Finest" when Grant Gustin appeared as Barry Allen and then half the budget seemed to disappear in the Flash's wake.

With "World's Finest", fight scenes suddenly seem to be missing critical effects shots, coverage of fight scenes is strangely missing with the heroes and villains filmed in separate and isolated shots, key moments of physical interaction oddly missing.

A fight scene inexplicably cuts off with the Flash and Supergirl firing wind at the enemies; then we cut away to the Flash and Supergirl having inexplicably fled the scene, running away from the supervillains they were trying to catch. A key moment has firemen saving the Flash and Supergirl; we never see the firemen arrive and they're obviously not in the wide shots. The producers remarked that the budget issues were manifesting earlier with villains constantly confronting Kara in her apartment set, but there were a lot of intense outdoor action sequences in the pre-"World's Finest" episodes. The money seemed to run out here.

Episode 19, "Myriad", the penultimate episode of Season 1, seems to be a bottle episode. The majority of the episode is set on standing sets (the Danvers house, Catco) or in a black void of nothing. Supergirl's flight avoids any extensive wire work in favour of filming Melissa Benoist from the chest up, and the only costly action is J'onn and Indigo having a fight in a parking lot.

The episode works really well to build drama and to assert that violence isn't an effective solution towards the mind control of Myriad, but after "World's Finest" couldn't seem to pay for a complete fight scene in Episode 18, the avoidance of superpowered scenes in "Myriad" looks less like a writing choice and more like a budget shortfall.

I can't remember how well the finale went; I remember it being good, but I wonder if it suffered from the financial crisis that 18 and 19 seemed to experience.

How did you feel about CRISIS on TV where Superman looks like Tyler Hoechlin and Brandon Routh and Tom Welling and for some reason, Superman also looks like Ray Palmer? How did you feel Barry Allen looking like both Ezra Miller and Grant Gustin? How did you feel about Alura Zor-El for some reason looking like Lois Lane?

How did you feel about SUPERMAN AND LOIS where Clark, Lois, Lucy Lane and Diggle look the same but Sam Lane and Morgan Edge have completely different personalities and faces?

CRISIS didn't even try to offer an explanation, but if you demanded that I give you one, I would stammeringly defer to the explanation given in the DOOMSDAY CLOCK comic book: the DC Universe in the comics is not a single universe or timeline; it is in fact a "metaverse", where every shift in the timeline of the DC metaverse and every past variant of the DC metaverse reverberates across existing and new parallel universes. The core metatemporal event that creates shifts in time: it's the arrival of Superman's pod on planet Earth, an event that is constantly moving forward in time, altering the past and the future.

In addition, since faces aren't consistent, we have to take that to mean that genetic expression in facial features is not totally consistent across universes. We've seen this peculiarity across the street at Marvel where Peter Parker looks like Tom Holland and Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire.

So why do some faces stay the same or manifest in totally different people?

It would seem: each new variant on the DC metaverse whether the Arrowverse or the Donner films or the DCEU or the SUPERMAN AND LOIS timeline will contain echoes of the previously existing universes. New DC universes are like coffee from a well-used coffeemaker. No matter how much you clean the machine or change the brand of beans, your coffeemaker will have mineral and bean residue from every previous cup you've ever brewed. These echoes manifest in events (the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne, the destruction of Krypton) and sometimes in faces (Ray Palmer/Clark Kent, Barry Allen/Henry Allen/Jay Garrick, Alura/Lois, Dinah Redmond/Beth Kane).

Since the Ezra Miller version of Barry Allen appeared in CRISIS, this phenomenon of echoes across parallel universes can reach the DCEU as well. This means that if the FLASH movie collapses and rebuilds time, it may be a feature echoes of past elements of the DCEU and new elements of the DC Gunnverse. The new Wonder Woman and Aquaman of the Gunnverse may look like Gal Gadot and Jason Momoa; the new Flash of the new universe may not look like Ezra Miller, the new Superman will not look like Henry Cavill.

Note that Wonder Woman and Aquaman's continuities don't seem to be entirely consistent between BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (actual title), WONDER WOMAN, JUSTICE LEAGUE and AQUAMAN. BVSDOJ established that Wonder Woman separated herself from humanity after WWII; WONDER WOMAN ignores this. JUSTICE LEAGUE has Aquaman say he was abandoned by his mother; AQUAMAN shows she was kidnapped and presumed dead.

We also have two separate and contradictory versions of the events of JUSTICE LEAGUE, one in which the resurrection of Superman is a first step in the Darkseid invasion of Earth and Dr. Silas Stone is dead; one where the resurrection of Superman curtails the invasion of Earth through Lois Lane and Dr. Stone is alive and well.

These anomalies may, to the untrained observer, appear to be due to movie studio incompetence, but upon closer inspection, it would indicate that Ezra Miller's Barry Allen has been attempting to investigate his mother's death by using time travel and has been inadvertently splitting the timeline, creating alternate backstories and events that will eventually have to be reconciled with some overwriting others in order to restablilize the multiverse into a coherent core timeline.

This would appear to be James Gunn's perspective.

I went back to the Season 1 SUPERGIRL premiere and... wow, this is a significantly different show in some subtle but distinct ways.

The budget of Season 1's earlier episodes is clearly higher. There is a lot more outdoor location filming in Los Angeles than in the Vancouver years. Supergirl has fight scenes outdoors in desert locations and on highways instead of inside factories/studio sets with generic pipeworks).

Flight is more in evidence: there's more effort to have Supergirl hovering in combat and in various scenes where the later seasons mostly had flight being a method of transport. Overall, the effects budget is clearly 2 - 3 times more than the CW seasons: there are hyperdetailed renderings of Supergirl saving a plane rather than the motion blur minimalism of Seasons 2 - 5 for such scenes. In addition, the DEO and Catco are filled with 50 - 100 extras whereas the CW scenes would have maybe 10 - 20.

Funnily enough: Seasons 2 - 5 were constantly coming up with silly psychological excuses for why J'onn J'onzz and other Martians were affecting a human appearance and why J'onn's memories of Mars always had the Martians looking human. Season 1 was probably the only time the show would have had the resources to make heavy use of the computer generated martians.

The main distinction is the performances. Melissa Benoist's Kara is played so young in the pilot. Kara is unsteady, insecure, shaky, hot tempered, a little unstable. I recall that by the start of Season 2, Kara had become a more seasoned relief worker with an easy self-confidence and the hyperactive neuroticism would only come out in comedy scenes. Benoist plays Season 1 Kara like a teenaged girl, but starting in Season 2, Benoist began transitioning to playing Kara with more maturity and Kara by Season 3 is finally a grown-ass woman.

Strangely, Alex is the least different. Chyler Leigh found Alex's hyperconfident demeanor pretty early on in the pilot. The only distinction: for some reason, the pilot strongly highlights that Alex is a biologist with expertise in alien biology and microbiology, but the show never really used Alex's scientific background much.

For the most part, Alex is played as a master tactician, a cunning warrior, a brilliant strategist, more Maggie Beckett than Quinn Mallory (or, if you prefer, more Sara Lance than Dr. Caitlin Snow). Instead, Lena Luthor would become the scientist on the show and Alex's scientific skills would be abandoned in favour of her combat skills. Alex is the soldier while Kara is a firefighter.

The one thing that is a complete disaster, that does not work at all... it's absurd for James Olsen to be telling Kara that Superman is proud of her, for James to be handing over a cape on Superman's behalf. It makes absolutely no sense that Clark is using Jimmy as an intermediary like Superman would be afraid to talk to his cousin in person and has to hide behind a friend.

I'm not sure how this could have been different as the WB licensing department would not grant SUPERGIRL the right to use Superman and have him on camera until Season 2. However, Tyler Hoechlin's appearances as Superman in Season 2 make the absent Superman of Season 1 look ridiculous.

Well, when my external blu-ray cable arrives (the old one broke), I'm going to recopy 1.02 - 1.09 from the Universal discs, run them through detelecine to produce h.264 files at 480p, and see if the latest version of Topaz video can clean them up at 480p and at least get a decent SD image. The Universal episodes aren't clear enough to bring them to even 720p, but I would like to get them looking at least as good as the Universal versions of Season 2. It's a cultural injustice that "The Breeder" looks so crisp and sharp while "Eggheads" is a blurry mess.

Why don't the lines show in my detelecined S1 files during playback on my Android TV box? My guess is that it's some combination of the player app or the SoC in the Android TV box.

You're clearly in a position of superior knowledge despite self-identifying as an amateur, so let me ask you: looking at even the transcodes of the S1 discs --

What went wrong with Universal's home video department when they handled SLIDERS? Why are there so many combing artifacts and double line artifacts? Why is the video quality ghastly for the S1 episodes but excellent for the Pilot, pretty good for Season 2 and really good for S3 - S5? I have my theories, but what are yours?

Why is the file quality even worse in the Mill Creek version? What would you suggest for correcting the errors in the Universal discs?

Also, as someone who knows more than I do: would you have any suggestions for cleaning up these files and engaging in AI upscaling for Episodes 1.02 - 1.09?

I'm glad you found your discs. It would be interesting to know if the PAL versions of the Universal DVD releases are any better or worse than the NTSC DVD or the German PAL-masters on the SD blu-ray.

The SD blu-ray release had very poor video quality Season 1 (including the pilot), worse than NTSC Universal, but the SD blu-ray looked absolutely terrific for Seasons 2 - 5. Season 2 is a little fuzzy and heavily grainy, but it looks rather nice at living room distance and the film grain texture allowed for terrific looking AI upscales. Seasons 3 - 5 look great in that you have razor sharpness for all the god-awful Season 3 monsters and pathetic Season 4 Kromagg makeup and tedious conversations of Season 5.

Of course, that's my perspective from my amateur eyes and you are clearly a well-informed video maven as opposed to some guy messing around in Handbrake and Topaz for a half-hour before queuing up the jobs and going to bed.

Hmm. I can see what you've screencapped when I hit pause on the detelecined file, but I don't seem to see it when the video file is actually playing on my Android TV box.