Sliders.tv → Posts by ireactions
I still see the Universal sets for Seasons 1 - 4 on eBay. Season 5 has been hard to find.
I've seen the double-line drop shadow type effect on my Universal discs in the Season 1 episodes, and I had to remove them by using Handbrake's detelecine function. This effect isn't on the German SD blu-ray release, however, although the video quality for S1 is even worse than Universal's.
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?
What have you disliked from Feige?
I have a lot of respect for Ike Perlmutter up to a point. Perlmutter hired Joe Quesada, a terrific storyteller, to become editor in chief of Marvel Comics, and Quesada turned Marvel Comics from a bankruptcy to being a desperately sought after haven of properties for TV and movies.
Perlmutter established a solid financial foundation for Marvel Studios to produce its own movies rather than selling the rights to FOX, Sony, Universal and whatever direct to video junkyard outfit produced those Captain America TV movies. Perlmutter hired Kevin Feige to run the film division.
Perlmutter is the reason why the MCU exists. Without him, Iron Man would still be a D-list character in some comic books that only Temporal Flux and I would read.
However, Perlmutter's contempt for content and insistence that a highly successful movie studio run itself like a student film operation was ridiculous, and Perlmutter trying to fire Robert Downey Jr. for offering to do more work on CIVIL WAR was absurd. Perlmutter's INHUMANS was a national embarrassment, Perlmutter's sexism and homophobia are shameful, and Perlmutter was rightly removed after AGE OF ULTRON.
It leads to me wondering why someone so disdainful towards artists and creativity hired Quesada to run the comics, hired Feige to run the movies and signed off on Robert Downey Jr. to do IRON MAN.
I think that when hired, Quesada was a middle-of-the-road editor, Feige was a middle management producer, and Downey Jr. was a disgraced actor who would probably work for scale. Perlmutter didn't care that he was hiring comic book fans; he saw that they would work really hard for relatively low pay.
Then Feige and Downey Jr. wanted to expanded on their successes and Perlmutter's controlling nature couldn't stand it. Disney executives, while as soulless as Perlmutter, thought it ridiculous that Perlmutter was trying to fire Feige and Downey Jr. when they, not Perlmutter, were the ones bringing in the box office.
Quesada is curious: he was clearly grateful to Perlmutter and when promoted out of comics to act as a creative consultant on the films, he followed Perlmutter's orders. Quesada once remarked that he was hired by someone with whom he had little in common and that it was an example to him of how people need to build bridges to accomplish anything.
When Disney sidelined Perlmutter, Disney also isolated Quesada from the film division. Quesada continued to offer consultation to the TV division, but in 2019, Feige was appointed the head of the TV branch as well as movies.
It looks like Quesada could have stayed on as a consultant or even taken a demotion to comics, but he elected to leave Marvel last year. I'm a big fan of Quesada, but a lot of Marvel comic book readers aren't, perhaps not recalling how badly Marvel Comics was run before Quesada turned the company from a nearly bankrupt operation into a shining gem of intellectual properties.
Anyway. Perlmutter absolutely had to go and I personally haven't disliked anything Kevin Feige's done since Perlmutter's era ended. Certainly, there are films that haven't been to my taste. CAPTAIN MARVEL should have been better than it was, but not every film can be a masterpiece. THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER's political commentary was so spineless as to be meaningless, but any TV show aiming not to offend can stumble into blandness.
MOON KNIGHT felt really detached from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it was a well-intentioned stab at telling its own story. WANDAVISION was brilliant and hilarious,
DR. STRANGE II was enjoyable, all the Feige SPIDER-MAN films have been a delight. Feige fought hard to get a BLACK WIDOW movie made and that was a great ride. Feige also let Taika Waititi go nuts with THOR RAGNAROK and LOVE AND THUNDER and gave us James Gunn unleashed with the joyfully ridiculous GUARDIANS films.
I think it's likely that any other Marvel creative chief could make just as many mistakes as Feige (or Quesada), but other executives might make them while having no real respect or appreciation for the source material and the characters.
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.
Stephen Amell (Oliver), David Ramsey (Diggle), Nicole Maines (Dreamer), Javicia Leslie (Ryan) are booked. There are also returning Flash actors (Lonsdale, Letscher, Parker Kennedy).
But the Legends... there haven't been any announcements to indicate that Caity Lotz, Tala Ashe, Jes Macallan, Matt Ryan, Ramona Young, Olivia Swann, Lisseth Chavez or Adam Tsekhman have signed on to at least cameo.
All we have to go on is Wallace saying, "All the Legends at least are all going to appear in an episode" while specifying that there won't be a LEGENDS series finale. Which has me wondering if the actors are only going to do some B-roll (like the Season 9 finale of SMALLVILLE with the Justice League as talking heads on screens) or have old footage put into a montage.
No word on Brandon Routh and Courtney Ford, but to be fair, they were featured pretty heavily in the ARMAGEDDON crossover.
I didn't think about it before, but it's true to say that THE FLASH getting a short final season is a miracle. BATWOMAN and LEGENDS got cancelled because the studio leases had expired and Warner Bros. didn't want to renew the studio rentals at what would have been a higher rental rate.
THE FLASH could have just as easily been a victim of WB-Discovery's penny pinching, and the fact that THE FLASH's final season is 13 episodes instead of 20 indicates that WB-Discovery very much wanted to minimize any further expense on the CW superhero broadcast slate.
I think it's understandable that with James Gunn wanting to do a unified slate of movies, TV shows and video games all set in the same universe, it doesn't make sense to keep the Arrowverse going. And the CW warned all the DC showrunners that THE FLASH, BATWOMAN and LEGENDS were looking at series finale situations in 2022.
THE FLASH planned for a series finale but got a renewal notice in time to change their plans. BATWOMAN did a soft cliffhanger to hedge its bets, LEGENDS gambled on getting a renewal and both got cancelled. LEGENDS' showrunner, Keto Shimizu, apologized profusely and told fans to blame her and not WB or CW.
Oooh, the S9 premiere of THE FLASH is on Netflix now! Hopefully, I can still log into this account I share with my sister even with Netflix coming down on password sharing.
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.
James Olsen on SUPERGIRL is a character I really struggled with. This charismatic, baritone voiced basketball player looking man built like a tank is not my image of Jimmy. I would have preferred Percy Daggs III (Wallace from VERONICA MARS), someone a little more unsteady rather than the hyperconfident Mechad Brooks.
However, SUPERGIRL did a great job of writing James out in Season 5: James returns to his hometown for a visit to discover it's become a corrupt hellhole revolving around a prison. James moves home to try to change things, no resolution, no confirmation on whether or not he succeeded. Jimmy finds his new neverending battle. The lack of closure and the tentative optimism in this story felt so genuine and sincere and SUPERGIRL found the perfect balance of sentiment and uncertainty.
... 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.
Ike Perlmutter has failed in his bid to regain control of Marvel and failed in his second attempt to fire Kevin Feige.
https://deadline.com/2023/02/bob-iger-s … 235254540/
However, Disney plans to lay off 7,000 employees which is pretty terrible.
I agree. We don't need 13 episodes of Barry Allen fighting supervillains of the week just as we didn't need 13 episodes of Barry fighting mirror monsters. I will say, however, that we're just viewers and we don't know the perspective from inside the show.
One instance of this: I criticized the SMALLVILLE finale for not making Lex the center of the story and having him only feature in two scenes. You pointed out later: the finale only had Rosenbaum for two days of filming, so they could only film two scenes and the Clark/Lex and Tess/Lex scenes were the scenes to do. I protested that any scenes without Lex could have been filmed with Lucas Grabeel (the young clone) who could morph into Rosenbaum for whatever Rosenbaum would do.
I later learned that this had actually been the plan, but Grabeel took a lead role on SWITCHED AT BIRTH and SMALLVILLE couldn't book him; SMALLVILLE's budget had been so low by Season 10 that they couldn't schedule guest-stars to keep themselves free and could only hope that actors would be available when filming slots arrived.
It's possible that FLASH could only book the LEGENDS actors for a day or two or weren't able to book them all in the same filming slot or could only get them to film insert shots (like in SMALLVILLE's ninth season when all the returning guest-stars were mostly talking heads on Watchtower's video screens). We don't necessarily know the whys.
Of course, it's entirely possible that Eric Wallace just can't imagine THE FLASH's final season not having 13 episodes with Barry Allen experiencing 13 separate crises of confidence and needing 13 individual motivational speeches from 13 different characters in order to get back on his feet for 13 episodes in a row.
Okay, so why was SUPERGIRL never as excellent as Season 4 after Season 4? The writing team didn't change. The cast barely changed. How come SUPERGIRL couldn't maintain the same Season 4 heights for Seasons 5 - 6?
I think the problem is probably: SUPERGIRL's fourth season hit upon a fictional situation that was an excellent allegory for a real world situation: the alien refugees of SUPERGIRL were a powerful analogue for the extremely mixed reception that refugees receive in the United States. The anti-alien hatred storyline was a superb fictional representation to draw parallels between the TV story and real life Islamophobia, white supremacy, white centricism, and hatred and fear of the different. This allegory was perfect -- but then Season 4 concluded its story and SUPERGIRL could never find as strong an allegory in Seasons 5 and 6.
Season 5 has Leviathans declaring that humans have failed to manage the Earth, something Season 6 also takes a stab at. Both times, SUPERGIRL highlights the climate emergency and ecological catastrophe caused by humans. But the issue here: this isn't an allegory. This is a real world situation. And since it would be trivializing and foolish to have Supergirl conquer climate change on Earth 38/Earth 1, the show could only ever raise climate change and then ultimately have to step back from any of the superpowered characters ever doing anything about it.
SUPERGIRL was unable to identify another fictional scenario to mirror the real world, and the show stumbled a bit as it inevitably gravitated back to Supergirl fighting supervillains of the week. And the content was absolutely fine, it just wasn't as relevant and as meaningful as Season 4 where Supergirl was effectively battling representations of alt-right fascism and modern white supremacy.
Could SUPERGIRL have kept the alien refugee storyline going to Season 6 or maintained a focus on alien refugees even after defeating the President of the United States and punching that smug look off Sam Witwer's face?
Perhaps, but we've all seen from THE X-FILES how destructive it is to stretch out a storyline because the creators fear they can't come up with a better one. Ultimately, SUPERGIRL told its alien refugee story... and wasn't prepared to tell more alien refugee stories or couldn't think of anymore. Except the alien refugee arc of Season 4 was so defining and definitive that every non-refugee story of SUPERGIRL was inevitably going to feel like an afterthought.
I love SUPERGIRL, but Season 4 hit a high mark that no subsequent season could reach.
Well, of course they are doing this. They took a blood oath to review every episode of QUANTUM LEAP. So long as there are new episodes, they have to review them! If the new QUANTUM LEAP lasts 20 years, they will have to review it for 20 years. They made a promise. Cory and Tom wouldn't lie to me!
In the third season of SUPERGIRL, the introductory voiceover for the show changed. Where Kara once opened her story with being sent to Earth in a pod, Kara now started with, "I'm from Krypton. I'm a refugee on this planet."
I just know that made certain people cry.
I think the most topically relevant aspect of SUPERGIRL's fourth season is Ben Lockwood: he's initially a mild-mannered, gentle teacher with a small amount of entitlement. A traumatic event followed by slights and challenges nudges him moment by moment from a kind history professor into a sociopathic murderer whose charm and sincerity are now to radicalize others into becoming murderers at his command.
Ben's value system is that aliens will replace humans and humans have to fight back and that the Earth is only for humans. He presents it with earnest language and emotional appeals. Ben offers a framework of colonial history and how colonialism is simply a kinder word for plunder and theft and it can't be allowed to repeat itself. Ben makes genuinely heartfelt pronouncements of love for humanity means taking a stand against those who aren't human.
Ben's has a highly literate presence. Ben's well-fitted suits and Sam Witwer's chiseled good looks and boyish sincerity make everything he says sound so rational, reasonable, well-considered, delivered with a chain of logic that sounds crisp and crystalline in its pronouncements.
But this is an illusion. Ben may be well-spoken and have a persona of professorial wisdom, but that is simply masking his trauma and broken mind which now instinctively reacts to the 'other' with hatred, loathing, contempt, terror and violence.
Furthermore, it's revealed soon enough: Ben may be smart, but his psychological damage has made him easy prey because his entire career as 'Agent Liberty' has actually been manufactured by Lex Luthor.
Lex wanted someone to fan the flames of human nativism against alien refugees. Lex ordered his henchman to look for "patsies". Lex wanted "a real American, someone charismatic, a radical". Lex wanted somebody traumatized and radicalized while having good looks, an academic background, and a talent for conveying empathy within despicable rhetoric.
Lex wanted someone with the capacity to articulate hate speech in the vocabulary of social justice and history, someone to bring America into a state of war so that Lex could 'stop' it and be hailed as a hero.
Ben's erudite, Ben's educated, Ben presents as intellectual, and none of that is an act, but the persona is ultimately a lie, just sugar to make his bitter hatred easier to swallow.
Of course, the Ben Lockwood character and Sam Witwer's portrayal is based on the real life figure of Ben Shapiro and not anyone we know personally... but the parallels are striking.
ireactions wrote:X-FILES got there first, premiering in 1993. SLIDERS didn't make it to air until 1995.
Was the online community significant?
Certainly ours was the first to save a show.
SLIDERS has a place in history, but I don't think it has anything to do with being the first online community (it wasn't) or the first fan community to save a show.
THE X-FILES' debut in 1993 led to a high level of Usenet newsgroup activity and they created what I think is the first online fanfic archive (Gossamer). The first X-FILES Usenet group was formed in December 1993 and the fanfic newsgroup was created in May 1994, leading to mailing lists for story sharing, editing and distribution. SLIDERS wouldn't debut until March 22, 1995.
I guess SLIDERS fans were the first 'online' group to save a show, but I'm not sure the online factor is actually that significant. SLIDERS may have organized online, but their battle to get SLIDERS to a third year was successful via letters by post, faxes and phone calls. Emails, while meaningful, are easily dismissed. STAR TREK was also renewed for a third season due to fan communities mobilizing through mail and phone calls.
I think SLIDERS' place in history is not based in SLIDERS fans being the first to save a show (they weren't) or being the first to gather online (they weren't). I think instead, SLIDERS fans are significant because SLIDERS fans took over roles that would usually be tasked to people who actually worked on the show.
SLIDERS has a truly peculiar situation: fans with no official status are regarded are the authorities of the show. In contrast, the official creators who worked on the show for the bulk of its episodes are regarded with mistrust, suspicion and derision.
When we want behind the scenes information on SLIDERS, we barely look to the show's creator much (because he left before all the crazy stuff happened) and we don't look to interviews with producers David Peckinpah and Bill Dial. We are skeptical and suspicious of the official accounts published by story editor Keith Damron. Instead, we turn to some guy who was buying SLIDERS trading cards and props off eBay from crew members, a guy who would converse with these sellers and then corroborate the anecdotes from multiple sources and then share his findings online (Temporal Flux).
When we want SLIDERS merchandise, we don't waste our time looking to the studio or its licensors: we've had to make our own DVD upscales and cases and replica props.
When we want SLIDERS episode guides, we don't look to the officially published guide, a book so thin and inaccurate that it still has interviews with former cast members talking about how they never want to leave the show that they'd left by the time the book saw print. We go online to the fan guides.
When we look at SLIDERS fan pages describing the properties of interdimensional travel and the pseudoscience of the series, we note that the official creators of the show were so lazy that for their series bible, they simply copied the fan pages rather than do their own work on their own series.
When we want tie-in storytelling, we don't waste our time on the poor to middling Acclaim comic books. Instead, we turn to the novellas written by Nigel Mitchell, Mike Truman, Jules Reynolds, YA novelist Maureen Johnson.
When we look to who is maintaining the legacy and memory of SLIDERS, we look to fan fiction: Tracy Torme's unused reset story, "Slide Effects", is screenplay, and there's also the SLIDERS REBORN twentieth anniversary fan fiction. We look to podcasters who reviewed every episode of the show and ended their time on SLIDERS with reviewing "Slide Effects" and the twentieth anniversary special.
SLIDERS is the show where the creators put so little effort into the show and the studio had so little interest in monetizing the fans that the fans had to do everything short of filming the episodes themselves. That is SLIDERS' place in history.
Hmm.
It's true that the narrative pace of THE FLASH has slowed to a crawl in recent years. After seeing the Flash spend an entire season failing to defeat one guy with a knife, I too find it hard to believe that THE FLASH needs all 13 episodes to wrap up Barry Allen's story.
Why aren't they just limiting themselves to 11 episodes of Barry fighting a monster of the week? Why aren't they doing the Justice League versus Destro?
I suspect part of the reason is budget. A 20 episode order allows you to do some bottle episodes and let the saved budget go into other episodes to hire more guest stars and have more effects; a 13 episode order gives you less financial room to maneuver.
In addition, there's also time constraints: a 20 episode order means you have a lot more space to schedule the cast of BATWOMAN and LEGENDS and SUPERGIRL and SUPERMAN AND LOIS (Arrowverse edition) and have a wider window to get everyone booked at the same time. A 13 episode order narrows the window significantly.
But. It's absolutely true that there have been entirely too many sequential episodes where Barry is moping around STAR Labs until someone gives him a sappy motivational speech. And I find it really difficult to believe that THE FLASH has to do another 13 and cannot spare 1 - 2 episodes to get the Legends out of jail.
X-FILES got there first, premiering in 1993. SLIDERS didn't make it to air until 1995.
Rewatching SUPERGIRL's fourth season. It's the best season of the show. Frustratingly but perhaps inevitably, SUPERGIRL was *never* able to reach these heights again.
The fourth season has Supergirl at her most tormented and under fire. Melissa Benoist's sunny, cheery personality enlivens Kara's simple, straightforward character, making her an excellent viewpoint character as Supergirl finds herself hunted by the US government and Lex Luthor and feared by every civilian as Ben Lockwood is maneuvered by Luthor into fomenting anti-alien hatred.
Season 4 was one of the most bloodthirsty, violent seasons of SUPERGIRL. And yet, the show had some hesitation: there's an episode where Lex Luthor, in an absurdly petty act, targets a 10 year old boy with sea to surface missiles in order to make a Supergirl-clone hate America; however, the show reveals that the kid survived because Luthor's henchman, Otis (or rather, the show) was not willing to kill off a child character. It was SUPERGIRL's bleakest season, yet the show insisted on a hint of hope.
Despite the darkness of this era, the friendships between Kara and Lena, the sisterhood between Kara and Alex, the loving energy between Dreamer and Brainy, the charm of Brainy as comic relief -- it all heartened a wounded nation living in an age of Donald Trump.
Why couldn't the show get back here for Season 5 and Season 6? The writing team didn't change. The cast barely changed. And while Seasons 5 - 6 were good enough and had some great episodes, it was never as excellent as Season 4. What happened?
I'll have something to say about it tomorrow.
To be fair, Earth 214's individual episodes are short stories/novellas, not full-length teleplays.
Also to be fair, the highly readable length probably led to more readers whereas my SLIDERS REBORN magnum opus has been dismissed and derided as unreadably lengthy (mostly by me).
LEGENDS will unfortunately not get a series finale on THE FLASH.
Eric Wallace:
It’s disappointing to me. But we just don’t have the bandwidth.I had hoped that we’d have 20 episodes. My original concept was to have at least one — if not a two parter — that wrapped up LEGENDS OF TOMORROW. A little crossover: we get them back, we get them out of time jail, all these good things, Booster Gold.
When we found out we only had 13 episodes, that was no longer possible.
All the Legends at least are all going to appear in an episode.
I suspect that Oliver will appear in the show as the Green Arrow via time travel with Barry encountering Oliver before Oliver became the Spectre.
Well, Earth 211 is a quick read. It's just the synopses of the episodes, not full scripts.
https://web.archive.org/web/20030711182 … efault.asp
I think only an insane person would try to write full scripts for even a mini-season of SLIDERS.
Rewatching Season 4 of SUPERGIRL. It is clearly the best season, viewed as the season where Supergirl fights an analogue of the Trump administration.
But watching it today, it's clearly Supergirl versus Informant. SUPERGIRL even hired one of Informant's favourite actors, Sam Witwer (whom Informant loved from BEING HUMAN), to play the role of Informant as a refugee-despising racist cult leader.
All things being equal, the character of Manchester Black, an enraged refugee turned vengeful terrorist who has given into his hatred and fury, struck me as the equivalent of 2015 - 2020 era ireactions.
Funny observation about DOCTOR WHO:
I remember watching Series 5 and Series 6 of DOCTOR WHO (2005) where Matt Smith, to my eyes, seemed to age so much between the two seasons. The smooth visage of Matt Smith's Doctor in Series 5 seemed to have become more weathered and lined in Series 6. It was very appropriate because Matt Smith's Doctor in Series 6 is actually several hundred years older than he was in Series 5.
However, I recently watched Matt Smith's debut episode in HD instead of DVD and... Smith's face actually looks pretty much like it will in Series 6. It's just that I watched Series 5 in standard definition which blurred/smoothed facial textures on my old 32 inch TV and I watched Series 6 in HD on a 40 inch television, and in HD, the sharpness shows all the pores and marks and lines in Smith's face.
FLASH's creators assure fans that Oliver's Spectre storyline won't be overturned:
https://www.cbr.com/the-flash-oliver-qu … ow-events/
It's funny. Earth 211 triggers this hungry, gnawing, painful longing in me, this desire for all of these beautiful synopses to be made into whole scripts. Earth 211 is the true SLIDERS. The SLIDERS we have on our world is a collapsed, broken version of the real SLIDERS.
There are stories in E211 from Transmodiar, Recall317, Nigel Mitchell, Jules Reynolds and others. It all makes me want so badly to find Quinn's timer and slide to this beautiful world where SLIDERS thrived and flourished and FOX polished it like a gem and made it the crowning jewel of their network and Universal stood by Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo for six wonderful seasons of wonder, terror, action, humour, inventiveness, imagination, creativity and SLIDERS truly was that series that never, ever ran out of ideas.
As much as I love what I came up with in SLIDERS REBORN and all the splendid contributions that Transmodiar, Nigel, Slider_Quinn21, Jim Ford of SLIDERSCAST and Informant made to turn the real world version of SLIDERS into a story with a restoration of the original sliders and a closing (but not final) adventure and a happy ending, and as much as I love Tracy Torme's "Slide Effects" story, these fanfics were salves and bandages.
A full-fledged version of Earth 211 is what I would really, really, really want.
I wonder if Steven Moffat (DOCTOR WHO) would ever be inclined to pitch a SLIDERS reboot.
I guess the end-scene of "This Slide of Paradise" also had anti-gravity technology and would we consider the Kromagg manta ships anti-grav as well?
Will Marvel's former chairman, the man who nearly drove Kevin Feige to DC, regain control of Marvel and Disney?
https://www.comicsbeat.com/report-ike-p … ney-board/
On EarthPrime.com, the EARTH 211 episode guide fanfic posited a parallel Earth where FOX supported SLIDERS, the ratings were huge, Tracy Torme stayed with the show for all six seasons, there were no cast changes, and Season 4 had an episode called "AntiGrav":
AntiGrav: This lighthearted episode shows the results of Quinn's experimentation had it actually gone as planned – a world where antivgravity has created a society in the clouds, with flying cars and buildings. Quinn's double shunned his celebrity and went into hiding, prompting him to re-emerge when his double starts taking a lot of the credit.
Very nice. What is the name of the device that everyone has their arms on?
It's the set dressing for Quinn's sliding machine in the basement lab. The set dressings included the sliding coils and these sliding towers. In my personal head canon, the sliding coils are for harnessing exotic matter to trigger an opening in the gateway and the towers are for isolating a vibrational frequency to secure an exit point. I assume that as an anti-gravity machine, the exotic matter was originally to trigger particle repulsion to achieve lift and the towers were for controlling direction.
DC Films seems to have a very bright future for 2024 with an all-star lineup of writers including James Gunn, Tom King (BATMAN comics) and Drew Goddard (a Whedon veteran).
https://www.comicsbeat.com/dcus-gods-an … -projects/
Rumour has it that THE FLASH's ending will once again be changed to set up the James Gunn era.
Actually, James Gunn says SUPERMAN AND LOIS will make it to at least Season 4.
https://www.cbr.com/james-gunn-superman … e-seasons/
I agree. It's a problem with broadcast TV (and has been a problem with streaming lately).
I hope THE FLASH will be a strong conclusion to the Arrowverse. The creators have, understandably, said they can't promise that because their priority is concluding THE FLASH.
Eric Wallace
Going to save the Legends…. As much as I’d love to do that, that’s not something that is very easy to do in a season when I may have to wrap up my own story. I want to be honest, and not get anybody’s hopes up.
Broadcast shows are meant to go on indefinitely. It's like driving a car with a broken fuel gauge and a vague memory of when you last refilled the tank. Ideally, you get where you want to go, but all-too-often, you realize in mid-journey that you're running out of gas and you have to settle for a closer destination and still don't quite make it or you get stranded on the highway.
There are exceptions. SUPERNATURAL and LOST negotiated an endpoint. Some shows like FRINGE, STARGIRL, DOOM PATROL and SUPERGIRL had the advance notice to see that with contracts expiring and studio personnel shifting, a finale story was needed.
One of my favourite Netflix shows, TRINKETS, had a first season that was well-regarded but only had somewhat above average streaming numbers. Another show in a similar situation was AMC's KEVIN CAN F** HIMSELF. Netflix and AMC renewed both shows for second seasons but informed the creators that there would be no third season, enabling the creators to craft conclusions.
I think BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and SUPERNATURAL did a good job of ensuring that each season was a 'chapter' within itself. SUPERNATURAL could usually count on another season when it engaged in cliffhangers, but both BUFFY and SUPERNATURAL often presented season finales that could conceivably work as series finales (although SPN would have needed some re-editing).
But then we have LEGENDS and BATWOMAN: the creators were strongly advised to write series finales. LEGENDS gambled on a renewal and lost. BATWOMAN hedged its bets, creating a 'teaser' cliffhanger while not endangering any of the lead characters. ARROW tried to launch a spinoff that didn't get picked up. We have MACGYVER which awkwardly re-edited its Season 5 finale into a vague attempt at a series finale. We have the recent slate of Netflix shows cancelled on cliffhangers which includes THE OA, TEENAGE BOUNTY HUNTERS, I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS and the very charming sitcom BLOCKBUSTER.
And sometimes, we have creators who seem utterly unaware. On SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES, Josh Friedman knew his show was highly unlikely to get to Season 3, was only still on the air because WB cut the license fee to get some cheaper advertising for the fourth TERMINATOR film -- and he still ended on a cliffhanger. Tim Kring knew HEROES REBORN would have no second season and inexplicably crafted a cliffhanger. Chris Carter got 16 episodes of THE X-FILES and somehow failed to wrap up his show and managed to alienate his lead actress, somehow failing to consider that if he wanted to keep doing X-FILES with Mulder and Scully, it might be important to maintain a positive relationship with the person who plays Scully.
For the most part, when a show ends, it isn't because it's come to a conclusion or the end of various contracts; it's because something has gone catastrophically wrong behind the scenes whether it's ratings, studio funding and broadcaster support, actor issues or creator issues. Usually, when a show ends, it isn't because the car made it to its endpoint, it's because the car ran out of gas on the highway.
And that's generally reflected in the final product: storylines aren't concluded in an effective or coherent fashion, threads are left untied, a final summation of the show is lacking, or the show seems to be leading into a new chapter that never arrives. It's one of the perils of TV.
I think BUFFY had the right approach with series finales that could be serviceable series finales, and TRINKETS and KEVIN CAN F*** HIMSELF were handled with care by the streamers. But as of late, I've read that Netflix often mandates cliffhangers even on shows they don't plan to renew because a cliffhanger gets the audience to watch something else on the streamer while waiting for a resolution that may or may not come.
No era can last forever. I'm glad that ARROW and THE FLASH, despite their faults, had a full run. And even if SUPERMAN AND LOIS only makes it to Season 3, it doesn't feel like it was cut short. SUPERMAN AND LOIS will have been a three year Superman event, a long-form Superman trilogy. The STAR WARS trilogy didn't feel incomplete for only being three movies. Not every story needs to last 15 years like SUPERNATURAL.
I think there is a lot making a SLIDERS revival difficult right now. Peacock is losing $3 billion this year. Revivals of existing NBCUniversal properties have proven to have a lot of misses, a few small successes, and not necessarily a lot of hits. MACGYVER and QUANTUM LEAP did okay. But SAVED BY THE BELL, PUNKY BREWSTER and pre-streaming revivals like KNIGHT RIDER and BIONIC WOMAN all had more cultural weight than SLIDERS and none of those were successful enough to stay on the air.
Then we have Tracy Torme who, for reasons I fully understand, pitched a revival that wasn't going to be a clean reboot like MACGYVER but instead called for using Jerry and Cleavant as the original sliders with paths to bring John and Sabrina in pending their availability. This next-generation approach was highly successful for GHOSTBUSTERS and BILL AND TED (on streaming services), but GHOSTBUSTERS and BILL AND TED were cultural phenomena. With SLIDERS, yes, people remember the pilot on FOX, but SLIDERS is in the position of really needing to start over and build the brand from ground-up.
Torme, however, seemed to want to build on a foundation that, fairly or unfairly, is viewed as shaky and a little inaccessible (if we're sticking to the theory that Torme was going to say that some time after "The Guardian", the sliders missed the window and hand to settle down on a parallel Earth and all the post-"Guardian" episodes were doubles/dreams and nightmares after the Professor had a bad taco). It wasn't a clean reboot, and NBCUniversal very understandably didn't want a SLIDERS that wasn't a clean reboot.
Torme might feel that the only version of SLIDERS worth pitching was the one he felt passionate about pitching and that was a next-generation pitch, whereas someone else could pitch the clean reboot. And maybe that's what needs to happen: someone like Seth MacFarlane has to pitch NBCU (and maybe Torme) on getting behind a reboot to SLIDERS featuring new performers playing Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. It clearly isn't Torme's first choice, but it's called BROADcasting for a reason.
TITANS and DOOM PATROL are cancelled but will receive series finale stories.
https://www.cbr.com/doom-patrol-titans- … bo-max-dc/
I assume SUPERMAN AND LOIS will have to do the same.
Probably, SLIDERS reflects how it came from creators who had previously worked on the NAKED GUN series and SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE -- comedies and parodies. In contrast, THE X-FILES was based on KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER and inspired by the Watergate scandal; THE X-FILES was a criminal procedural in a world of horror while SLIDERS was a dramedy drawing on the talent of sketch comedians.
During lockdown in 2020, I bought myself an Oculus Go, the cheapest Oculus VR headset. I used it to watch movies and TV in a virtual reality cineplex. It was like watching a movie in IMAX from my living room. Recently, I decided to watch THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER on the VR headset. Except... I just kept not getting around to it for weeks. And months. Finally, on Friday, I had some time and put on the headset.
It sucked. The headset was just too heavy and uncomfortable to enjoy it for more than a few minutes. I was hyperaware of wearing a brick on my face. I put up with it during lockdown. But after two years, I've come to realize that I'd rather not wear a VR headset just to watch a movie and will settle for a 55 inch screen or a 12.4 inch tablet.
Putting the VR headset on sale tomorrow. Might get a few bucks out of it.
I'm only 20 minutes into the X-CAST episode, but regarding Chris Carter's post-Season 11 interviews: Carter's comments have been incoherent and nonsensical and contradictory. He said he didn't adjust his script for Gillian Anderson quitting; then he said he did adjust. He said that he knew Gillian Anderson was quitting; then he said it took him by surprise. He said he'd do a Season 12 without Gillian; then he said he wouldn't. He's also said that the mythology of Season 10 isn't meant to pick up on the original mythology and then claims that it does; that the black oil was going to return in Season 11 (even though it didn't), that Monica Reyes would have a huge role in Season 11 (but didn't), etc..
My personal opinion: Carter smokes a lot of weed. And there's nothing wrong with personal enjoyment, but it's pretty clear to me that constant, daily, high usage has damaged his memory and made him incapable of planning or recall, which is also why Carter couldn't seem to keep track of where Mulder and Scully were living in Season 11 or which cars they drove.
And when he's like this, Carter is hopeless. Oh, in X-CAST, I've just come to the segment where Carter says he wasn't aware that Gillian was quitting until he read about it on the internet at which point he decided to create a cliffhanger with Skinner getting run over -- except Gillian didn't say she was quitting until well-after that episode had been filmed.
This man can't remember what he's saying or doing from minute to minute. I really don't think it would kill him if he stayed sober on weekdays or the night before interviews.
I give up.
I guess, coming from comic books:
There was a period where Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, became a mass-murdering supervillain named Parallax in 1994. He became the enemy of every DC superhero. And by 1995 or so, it became clear that turning the heroic Hal Jordan into a bloodthirsty psycho was going to stick for awhile.
Even then, it was obvious that Hal Jordan would eventually be flying around saving people, fighting supervillains and making green energy constructs again at some point. The status quo for Green Lantern would inevitably reassert itself. It's a bit like SLIDERS: did you ever really believe that Professor Arturo was dead? Didn't you feel on some level that the Azure Gate Bridge professor would be back?
In 1996, the FINAL NIGHT crossover had Hal Jordan sacrifice himself to save planet Earth while offering no real apologies for destroying the Green Lantern Corps and killing all his friends. And it was a bit like Wade 'dying' in "Requiem": did you really believe Wade was gone forever? Or did you feel on some level that Wade's life could somehow exist beyond SLIDERS' fifth season? At some point, Hal Jordan was going to be a hero and a Green Lantern again.
In the 1999 crossover DAY OF JUDGEMENT, Hal Jordan became the Spectre, seeking redemption for his crimes as Parallax. And again, this was declared to be the new status quo. But even then... it was a bit like Quinn being erased. Whether or not SLIDERS could deliver on Quinn's return, Quinn's return seemed inevitable just as Hal Jordan becoming Green Lantern and his crimes being addressed seemed inevitable.
And in the 2004 GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH, Hal Jordan discovered that his turn to supervillain psychopathy had been due to his mind being infected by a primordial fear entity from the dawn of time called Parallax, warping his perceptions and morality and transforming him into a murderer. The Spectre had been drawn to use Hal as a host in order to burn the fear entity out of his psyche. Hal was able to cast out the Parallax infection (along with the Spectre) and restore his body to life and his Green Lantern ring to power. Hal then confronted a DC Universe crisis, explained the situation to Superman, Batman and the Flash, and began rebuilding the Green Lantern Corps. Also, subsequent stories revealed that Hal hadn't killed any Green Lanterns; they had all survived his attacks but been depowered, and Hal rescued them and redeemed himself again.
It was inevitable. The status quo reasserted itself. And I always knew it would. The same way when, watching SLIDERS: I knew that Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo would find their way back to each other. We never saw it onscreen and the show was cancelled, but on some level, I feel that you, Slider_Quinn21, know that shortly after "The Seer", the original sliders were reunited and the original platform of the show was restored.
I imagine that something similar will happen with Green Arrow because ultimately, the iconography of Oliver Queen is not based in him being the Spectre, the Wrath of God, the Voice of Judgement, the ominous extradimensional identity appearing to hand out plot exposition in a booming voice. The iconography of Oliver Queen is that he is a street level vigilante superhero who uses a bow and and arrow.
But maybe they'll accomplish that by having Barry meet Oliver before he became the Spectre via a time travel story.
So, how is QUANTUM LEAP for everyone?
I am hoping to catch up with the revival some time in March. I hope everyone likes how it's shaping up. As SLIDERS fans, we must always wish revivals the very best in their content and fan response.
I think that AI has its place as an assistant. When writing my fanfics, I had a lot of help: Transmodiar helped me better understand the screenplay format. Nigel Mitchell came up with all the alt-world concepts. Slider_Quinn21 made my last script readable, something I struggled with due to the densely layered plot.
I think it'd be great to use AI to determine if the writing is sufficiently visual, to accumulate scene description details for a human writer to select, to offer dialogue suggestions drawing on machine-learning to review every line of dialogue ever spoken by Jerry, Sabrina, Cleavant and John in any production to create a reference base of their specific vocal mannerisms.
As it stands, any 'writing' from AI is just pulling words from pre-existing content, using thesaurus-algorithms to paraphrase the nouns and verbs and adjectives, rearranging the clauses by assigning importance to any sentences with key words relevant to the query, and presenting a mismash of semi-random content that has been given a bit of polish to somewhat hold it together. An AI episode of SLIDERS would just be inserting the character-names into a STAR TREK or STARGATE screenplay, moving around the language and replacing and paraphrasing names and descriptions.
AI stands for artificial intelligence, but as it stands, it's not really that intelligent. I'd call it assistive iteration; it's not creating, it's just repeating, recombining and repackaging content from different sources, and all those sources were first written by a human. AI is a useful tool to algorithmically review your own writing to determine if your writing is clear, readable, consistent, meets formatting requirements and to gather research, but as a writer, AI basically the Season 3 staff of SLIDERS ripping off popular movies.
If you look on some of the AI-generated plots for SLIDERS on Reddit, the stories are obviously just LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, STARGATE and STAR TREK synopses that have been randomly recombined.
I would say: I don't think anyone should be using AI to recreate Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. I don't agree with the aesthetic of creating a digital pastiche of the actors this way; new SLIDERS content with those characters should either have actors playing the roles (original or recast) or feature writers bringing the characters to life in prose. A simulacrum of Jerry, Sabrina, Cleavant and John is only ever an impression and an imitation rather than a genuine portrayal. Mark Hamill's Luke Skywalker in THE MANDALORIAN and THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT may be a technical marvel, but it has absolutely no acting; it's just repurposing Hamill's old audiobooks and animating old photos.
As someone who has spent a lot of time watching Jerry, Sabrina, Cleavant and John, it was never (entirely) about just typing out their lines. It was instead about capturing how they made me feel.
Jerry O'Connell is 48 years old but has the impetuous energy of a 10 year old. In my fanfics, wanted to capture Quinn's pensiveness and improvisational spirit first and recreating Jerry's line delivery -- the weighty burden of wisdom matched with the thoughtful thrill of adventure -- that's important, but without the characterization beneath it, it would have been an imitation of Jerry's line deliveries without the heart of Quinn Mallory.
Sabrina has this openness in her presence: openly earnest, openly defiant, and I wanted to render how she made Wade a person who wears her heart on her sleeve in ways that can be very low key but also extremely aggressive when pushed.
Cleavant has this brilliance to his performance where he's playing a kidnap victim who is helpless and traumatized, but Cleavant's comedic sensibilities make Rembrandt's situation funny instead of terrifying and disturbing. I wanted that pinpoint perfect sense of comedy to my version of Rembrandt. Too many well-meaning fanfic writers give Rembrandt vaguely ebonics-based dialogue or have him end every sentence with "girl" or "Q-Ball" without thinking about Cleavant's masterful grasp of tone within a scene.
I guess the Professor is actually quite straightforward: he's verbose and bombastic and egotistical, but it's also important to indicate that the Professor has known terrible suffering and tragedy in his life as well as humiliation and disrespect. His pompous, blustering manner conceals insecurity and a painful sense of failure -- although I didn't do a great job with it because my Professor Arturo is generally the cool old man, a wise sage who has almost no dark side whatsoever. The Professor, to me, is Professor Dumbledore. He is Gandalf. He's Temporal Flux. He's Dad. The perfectly imperfect father.
Ultimately, I think SLIDERS should be more than just animating old photos and sound clips, even as fanfic. It might be a neat proof of concept, but I don't want to see an AI recomposition of the original quartet. I'd rather the actors play them.
I cannot stress enough in the name of Quinn's flannel, Rembrandt's shiny jacket, Wade's sweater and the Professor's bow-tie that the opinions of ireactions do not represent those of SLIDERS.tv.
I agree with this, but I suspect that the wish is that if Stephen Amell appears, he's wearing a hood and a mask and firing arrows as opposed to standing in a cloak giving grim intonations.
In terms of BATWOMAN: I don't think there's anything to wrap up beyond a brief reference to how the Season 3 soft cliffhanger has been dealt with. I guess they could also establish that Kate Kane (Wallis Day) has located Bruce too.
And for LEGENDS: ideally, the Flash rescues everyone from Time Jail and they live happily ever after.
You know, I wonder if there's any way to explain why Quinn's cat wasn't in "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome" with no mention from Quinn.
Henry Cavill's announced return to Superman was unannounced.
Wonder Woman's third film will not proceed with Patty Jenkins.
There will be no Black Adam sequel.
THE BATMAN still has a sequel in development.
It looks like James Gunn is starting over with the DC Universe, and while it's unfortunately to see Cavill's return being cancelled... it might be Gunn's only move.
The foundation of the DC Extended Universe has been shaky since DAWN OF JUSTICE and fairly or unfairly, JUSTICE LEAGUE made the whole thing unworkable: a premier superhero team that won't get another movie, a Batman who had mostly quit, a Superman whose contract was expiring, a Wonder Woman with a baffling sequel movie, a Flash whose actor is psychotic -- with all DCEU movies having to navigate awkwardly through this wreckage with AQUAMAN rewriting the JUSTICE LEAGUE backstory for Aquaman, BIRDS OF PREY avoiding Batman, SHAZAM being unable to show Superman, etc..
Fairly or unfairly, the DCEU had been crippled and was crawling forward. And Gunn ended an untenable and impossible situation. It was sad, but there were no good options left for the DCEU.
I dunno.
Javicia Leslie will be in THE FLASH, but I've read that she may not be playing Ryan Wilder but rather a parallel universe doppelganger and that Leslie's appearance isn't meant to tie up BATWOMAN in any way.
I generally think that the fan preference is for characters to return as the characters; Oliver Queen as Green Arrow, Ryan Wilder as Batwoman 2.0. Maybe the creators have a plan to give us that but in an unexpected way.
I'd appreciate it if such posts came with context.
https://screenrant.com/joker-new-son-za … dc-comics/
At least have the decency to let us see that novel you wrote!
**
"The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat" rubs a lot of X-Philes the wrong way because the Dr. They conspiracy and the plot are deliberately contradictory. Reggie is a mental patient, yet Mulder meets Dr. They and Skinner recognizes Reggie as a an FBI colleague. The episode also declares that in an era of absurd misinformation and conspiracies that have terrible real world consequences, THE X-FILES has become an artifact that might best be laid to rest.
It's a good episode.
I would wager that Torme and Linaweaver's friendship had nothing to do with Linaweaver's writing and everything to do with both of them being Libertarians (as opposed to liberals or Democrats); I would hazard a guess that Tracy Torme has never seen a single page of this novel but was happy for his friend to get some writing work and assumed that barely anyone would read the book. I wouldn't be surprised if Torme never even read the comics despite sending over his old Post-Its and napkins to Acclaim Comics.
A review I wrote of the novelization a little while ago:
On love...
Why is the SLIDERS novelization of the Pilot so terrible? It always struck me as strange that Brad Linaweaver's novel wasn't at least mediocre; I mean, he already had the story and just needed to convert it to prose.
Thinking about it recently: my take is that Tracy Torme's Pilot script is a love story, but Brad Linaweaver wrote the novelization as a hate story.
Linaweaver's writing career was defined by writing novels that expressed his contempt and loathing for Nazism and Communism. His magnum opus was MOON OF ICE, a novel about an alternate history in which Nazi Germany developed the atomic bomb first. Linaweaver developed his writing skills by penning angry essays about the triumph of capitalism over communism, Libertarianism over National Socialism. He wrote from a place of anger and contempt against that which he (not necessarily wrongly) judged to be evil.
Then he was handed a SLIDERS script to turn into a novelization. One would think he'd be a great choice. Unfortunately, Linaweaver's novelization is a cruel, grotesque affair. The emphasis is on Soviet America's violent bloodshed; the novel opens with the sliders observing a crowd being gunned down by soldiers massacring civilians and children with Linaweaver delighting and relishing the corpses and splatter, all of it giving voice to his hatred for Russian communism.
Linaweaver seems to disdain America and Americans too, however, but it's self-superiority as opposed to hate. Linaweaver is mocking towards academia and Arturo, mocking towards Wade's feelings towards Quinn, mocking towards Quinn's class and wealth in the family being able to afford a gardener. Linaweaver writes from a default level of looking down on others when writing Earth Prime. His writing turns to loathing and contempt once the story moves to Soviet America, laying out everything in the most repulsive fashion: the streets, the smells, the food. Everything under Linaweaver's pen is dirty and unpleasant, moreso in the parallel world of the story.
This may be why Linaweaver also did such a terrible job on the SLIDERS episode guide. SLIDERS: THE CLASSIC EPISODES was over a year late and with all the episode entries based on the shooting scripts with Linaweaver never bothering to watch the episodes and creating errors in his already slapdash plot summaries. Why did he do such a lazy, indifferent job on this next SLIDERS book?
I suspect it's because hate is cunning and cruel and knows loyalty to nothing and no one, not even its most devout practitioners. I suspect that Brad Linaweaver liked SLIDERS' scripts, he liked Torme, and he therefore couldn't tap into the fuel that made him write with passion. As a result, Linaweaver was paralyzed: he couldn't write SLIDERS: THE CLASSIC EPISODES as the only content he ever wrote well or would ever want to write: he couldn't write a hate story.
In contrast, Tracy Torme's Pilot script is a love story. The Pilot is about how Tracy Torme is in love with the United States of America. Now, we can argue whether or not anyone should love a piece of land or a government. We can note that Torme grew up the son of a wealthy musician, that Torme was able to enter screenwriting and earn a great living, and that Torme's love for America is because Torme had the great fortune to be born into privilege and comfort and associates that fortune with the country. We can certainly be aware that America has treated its citizens abominably.
But regardless, Torme's love for America is heartfelt, sincere, loving, patient and kind. While Torme's love for his country is at times boastful, arrogant, rude and overly insistent on its own way, it isn't resentful nor does it rejoice in wrongness. Instead, Torme presents the contrast between the United States of America and the parallel Soviet America through a series of gentle jokes.
In the United States of America, the legal system allows an injured worker to profit from his own misfortune and an opportunistic lawyer to ensure a payoff for a percentage; what's more, the legal system is daily entertainment. America's entertainment is filled with opportunity: an over the hill entertainer like Rembrandt Brown believes he has a second chance, radio news is provocative yet relatively harmless.
The homeless man ranting about communism is a silly curiosity. Capitalism and the free market allow smart young women like Wade Welles to turn down thousands of dollars in sales today for tens of thousands in a month. Trickle down economics allow Quinn to find all the scrap parts he needs to build sliding. The power of the US dollar is so prevalent and strong that everyone can have some.
In Soviet America, the legal system is a quagmire with TV court being for fascist show trials and entertainment is for suppressing free thought; the TV lawyer is a deadly interrogator, the homeless communist is a political leader, and holding the US dollar makes one a target of the communist regime. In Soviet America, everything that Torme loves about America has been twisted into something bizarre and uncanny, but Torme emphasizes the peculiarity and baffling humour of the situation and plays it all for laughs. Rembrandt's capture, interrogation, trial and sentence are played as comedy.
Torme doesn't play it for too much danger or fear; Torme clearly doesn't like communism yet, unlike Linaweaver, Torme doesn't use the Pilot to hate what he disdains. Instead, Torme uses Soviet America to create a sense of unfamiliarity, homesickness and longing for what he loves.
The characters are striving to return home; the skewed inversions of the United States in the Soviet America are all to emphasize everything that Torme loves by noting their absence in this world. Furthermore, ends the visit to Soviet America by offering the hope that even in this terrible place, what Torme loves might still be saved.
The Pilot novelization is a story of hate. But the Pilot script and the Pilot episode offer a story of love. A story of Tracy Torme's love for America.
I think, as Jim_Hall purchased these scans and spent days, weeks, months (and years?) of his life cleaning them up, it's up to him to post them when he's ready and when his Slidecage website is back online. I ran some upscaling for him, but I'm sure he's still doing some further refinement since he's a REAL photographer.
In other news, I have been converting SLIDERS REBORN from PDF screenplay format (created in Fade In) to ebook format where the presentation resembles a stageplay rather than a script. The stageplay format simply scales better to phone reading and I think that if SLIDERS REBORN had been more readable on small screen devices back in 2015, it would have had (a few) more readers. While removing line breaks and mass find-and-replace functions help, it's also necessary to go through the document to add quotation marks throughout, remove ALL CAPS descriptions that are unpleasant to read on a smaller screen and clean up various anomalies that come from converting a screenplay into something close to prose.
I have one script left to finish converting.
Also, Jim_Hall of Slidecage is kindly contributing some high res 35mm scans of 1994 - 1995 era cast photos for me to digitally age to use as book covers.
The Pilot Episode: The Universal DVDs are best, the Turbine blu-ray from Germany is bad, the Mill Creek DVD is terrible.
Remaining Season 1 Episodes: The Universal DVDs are bad, the Turbine blu-ray from Germany is very bad, the Mill Creek DVD is terrible.
Season 2: The Turbine blu-ray from Germany is very good, the Universal DVD version is good, the Mill Creek DVD is terrible.
Season 3: The Turbine blu-ray from Germany is great, the Universal DVD version is very good, the Mill Creek DVD is terrible.
Seasons 4 and 5: The Turbine blu-ray from Germany is amazing, the Universal DVD is very good, the Mill Creek DVD is bad.
Full details on Page 1 of this thread here:
https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=2078#p2078
90s nostalgia has begun: https://www.cbr.com/that-90s-show-nostalgia/
Let us once again take a moment to say PROPERTY FROM OVER 22 YEARS AGO is making a comeback, can a SLIDERS revival be far behind?
To which the answer is: of course the sliders will come back. There will come a time when we are faced with deadly ultimatums from armadas craving blood and splendor, when we are beset by narcotica-driven madness from false claims of deadly secrets. In our moment of greatest need, Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo will return to save us. I admit, I've been waiting a long time, but it's been 22 years, and I can wait a little longer.
ireactions wrote:Dallas is featured very prominently in the first X-FILES movie, FIGHT THE FUTURE.
I've just always thought it was funny because it was clearly filmed outside of Dallas because there aren't mountains for hundreds of miles in the real Dallas
With my lightning fast mind, I only needed 20 hours to realize what you were getting at. Haha!!
If x files was never a tv series and I Want To Believe didn't have the name x files in it, you would still feel the same?
I think it works well... Either for a x files film or as a standalone creative work.
FIGHT THE FUTURE isn't a standalone movie. It's a very peculiar movie where the supposed heroes don't seem to accomplish anything; it's not even clear if their actions are why the X-Files were reopened. One reason the movie is like this: it was filmed between Season 4 and Season 5, and the creators were clearly unsure of what would happen in Season 5, so they made sure the movie wouldn't have anything too eventful would actually happen and no progress would take place. Of course, Mulder and Scully never accomplished anything on TV either.
I WANT TO BELIEVE is... peculiar and puzzling in so many ways to me. It's a film without any tension or stakes; where the lead character 'solves' the mystery through luck; and once again, it's a film where Mulder and Scully fail to save the people they were brought out of retirement to save. Just baffling. Carter and Spotnitz say that they had to rush the script due to the writers strike of 2008, but they'd had six years to think about it since the original series finale!
This is why I was a fan of my fanfic season of Supernatural. I think it would've been cool if something the boys did to save the world actually broke the fundamental laws of the world. What if Dead Man's Blood didn't work against vampires? What if silver didn't work against werewolves? What if the Colt didn't work against *anything*? Because I think at some point, the monster of the week stuff got stale because none of the traditional monsters were much of a challenge. John's book essentially was a cheat code.
But if the boys had to start fresh? Find new ways to kill vampires, werewolves, ghosts, demons, etc. Write their own book. That would've really reinvigorated the show, especially in the later years.
Where is this fanfic?! I must read it!
I honestly don't remember thinking it was as well done as I did on the last watch. Maybe my age. Either way was quite an interesting story. Far better than the super hero schlock of today.
I fundamentally disagree with this on every level. The entire thesis of THE X-FILES seems to be: you can't make a difference. No one can make a difference. Mulder can't do anything about the alien invasion except talk about it. Scully can't seem to get anywhere in her career: no matter how many times she gets fired or quit, she ends up working at the most disdained department in the FBI.
Even the evil characters can't seem to accomplish anything on THE X-FILES. The alien invasion is never coming; the Syndicate is constantly referring to how "the date is set" and "they're coming, they're here, they've been here for a long time, they're only coming back" and then Season 10 went and declared that the alien invasion was never happening at all and all those ominous, mysterious men were wasting their time.
In addition, THE X-FILES also seemed to be unable to grasp the concept of education. Mulder and Scully never seemed to collate and accumulate their details on the monsters or the Syndicate: by Season 11, they were as incapable of stopping monsters as they were in Season 1.
This is the antithesis of a superhero movie. The superhero movie declares: we can all make a difference and anyone can be a hero. Even the most obnoxious or easily dismissed or ordinary can be heroes. Tony Stark is a drunken moron tripping on ego and liquor; when stripped of his wealth and luxuries and forced to survive, he discovers he has what it takes to battle war itself.
Dr. Donald Blake seems to be a crazy person who thinks he's the Norse God of Thunder and here to help people; it turns out he actually is Thor. Steve Rogers is a washout and a reject who can't find shoes small enough to fit the feet on his frail frame; he is determined to battle Nazis and is given a body that is as strong as his decency of character. Everyone has it in them to be a hero; it's just that not everyone looks hard enough or digs deep enough to find it.
And I know what some will say: well, that's a fairy tale. THE X-FILES is far more realistic (because yes, a TV show about aliens made of black oil colonizing the Earth with bees and supersoldiers is truly very grounded), THE X-FILES' cynicism is believable. But cynicism is easy. Despair and depression and giving up are the easiest options for a person and for a storyteller. It is much harder to tell superhero stories than it is to tell X-FILES stories.
One of the hardest parts of writing the TV show SUPERNATURAL, I think: it has to be finding a way for Sam and Dean to find some solution to beat the monsters of the week, to defeat Lucifer, and to, in the final season, take on God Himself. But THE X-FILES takes the easy way out by never having Mulder and Scully triumph.
Writing THE X-FILES is shooting fish in a barrel: raise mysteries and don't resolve them, create monsters and don't find a way to stop them, have two lead characters passively wander through the story and accomplish nothing whatsoever. Superheroes take much more talent.
I cannot stress enough in the name of Quinn's cat, Wade's teddy bear, Rembrandt's shiny suit and Arturo's bow tie that the opinions of ireactions are not the views of Sliders.TV.
I think everything on my TV is being stretched to 4K at 55 inches, and the TV has some grain reduction and sharpening for lower-resolution video. It's best to turn all that off for anything at 720p or higher.
I didn't find multiple passes in Topaz to be effective. And if you look at the above screenshots, I don't think there's anything more to develop. Season 2 looked good enough on Universal's DVD, had a bit more detail and film grain texture on Turbine, and after Topaz AI, Season 2 is approaching the quality of the film-based Pilot episode and Season 3 is only a few steps past it.
The original quartet was wonderfully cast and assembled. It will always baffle me that David Peckinpah looked at them and declared John had to go and Sabrina could go next. Heroin makes you stupid.
Well, here's a comparison for "As Time Goes By: 540i Turbine on the left (stretched) and Topaz upscaling it to 720p on the right. As you can see, Topaz has given "As Time Goes By" quite the boost in visual quality, getting it closer to the original film.
And the 720p version of "Season's Greedings" next to the 720x540 blu-ray version -- well, it's better, but a TV upscaler that did sharpening and smoothing wouldn't look very different. The only real difference is that Topaz AI has refined the detail rather than just upping pixel contrast.
A TV upscaler adds more jagged edges to the grass; Topaz AI actually rebuilds the grass. But from a living room standpoint, Season 3 already looked crisp and clear, and all Topaz AI does it make it look a little crisper and clearer.
540i on the left (stretched to fill the screen) and 720p on the right:
Dallas is featured very prominently in the first X-FILES movie, FIGHT THE FUTURE. The extended scene in FIGHT THE FUTURE is primarily some extra dialogue explaining why Samantha was kidnapped by aliens... which no longer makes any sense due to the revelations of the Season 10 episodes.
The second film, I WANT TO BELIEVE, is set primarily in Washington, DC and then Richmond, Virginia. The director's cut on the second one is only four minutes longer and it's barely significant.
I don't recall doing more with Turbine's Season 2 beyond the second Daelin segment of "As Time Goes By", and I lost my enthusiasm for upscaling SLIDERS because if Season 1 doesn't look good, what's the point of upscaling any other episode? I also didn't work on it enough to figure out if AI upscaling was any better than on-the-fly smoothing and sharpening. However, it looks like Season 2 does upscale really well and benefits from AI upscaling and not just some non-adaptive filters.
I did attempt to upscale every Season 1 episode with Turbine at which point I realized Turbine's Season 1 video quality was actually worse than Universal's Season 1.
I'm just doing some experiments out of curiosity. I have the feeling that Topaz won't be able to do much with the Turbine versions of Seasons 3, 4 and 5 since those benefitted from advancements in digital videotape while Season 2 was using digital videotape in its earliest form.
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