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I can't believe there's a Barney Hill project and Tracy Torme isn't involved in it.

I'm also surprised that Tracy Torme isn't running a reboot of MEN IN BLACK or that he never wrote for THE X-FILES or FRINGE.

It has been 25 years since DEADLY SECRETS was released. I think we can say that SLIDERS' comic book series is cancelled by the official bankruptcy of Acclaim Comics.

Well, former comic book editor Valerie D'Orazio has written some horrible, horrible stories about how she was harassed and threatened as a woman working in comic book publishing and administration. D'Orazio worked at Acclaim Comics during the SLIDERS licensing period and right up to Acclaim's shutdown, and... D'Orazio had absolutely nothing bad to say about the company.

D'Orazio is filled with fiery outrage and loathing for DC Comics and for a stint at Marvel, but with Acclaim, she notes that her boyfriend at the time was cheating on her and that she overindulged at the open bar at an Acclaim party and doesn't remember what happened next.

When D'Orazio got over her hangover and staggered into work, she was forced to attend an office meeting with every staff member present where Acclaim's chief, Fabian Nicieza, proceeded to lecture the entire office on being careful with alcohol consumption, looking out for each other, and ensuring that everyone came out of a party and made it home safely. He deliberately told the entire team to be more responsible and made sure not to single any one person out, giving everyone dignity while laying out their duty.

Acclaim is the only publisher to come out of D'Orazio's memoir looking like a good company of good people. I don't think Acclaim Comics failed; I think their parent company failed them.

There have been numerous allegations of Marvel engaging in plagiarism of the Doom Patrol to create X-Men, but the evidence for this has been uncertain.

Doom Patrol debuted in MY GREATEST ADVENTURE in June 1963, UNCANNY X-MEN was first released in September of the same year. But given the lead-in time, X-MEN would have been conceived, written and drawn starting in June 1963 for a three month lead-in; it's unlikely that Marvel could have read MY GREATEST ADVENTURE and immediately come up with characters and designs and written scripts and produced UNCANNY X-MEN #1 by September; the X-Men would have been in development at least a few months before Doom Patrol first appeared.

The similarities are likely because Doom Patrol creator Arnold Drake and X-Men scripter Stan Lee had similar mindsets: they gravitated to writing about outcasts, misfits and oddballs like the Chief and Professor Xavier; they weren't as enthusiastic about square-jawed, matinee movie handsome stars like Superman. Rather than choose a young, handsome leader, they (separately) chose a man with a disability.

DOOM PATROL has some truly crazy continuity as a comic book series, arguably as tangled and near-incomprehensible as SLIDERS. X-MEN is messy too in its publishing history, but it's periodically smoothed out its bumps. DOOM PATROL, on the other hand, went from a relatively straightforward series about four awkward people in impossible situations (like SLIDERS) to a really tangled, psychologically troubled, self-loathing series.

It's noticeable to me that Professor Xavier, despite being given a dark side, has ultimately been presented as a hero; even when he's had bouts of manipulative and horrific behaviour, X-MEN has in the end redeemed him and cast Xavier's villainy as the character being written incorrectly or Xavier having additional motivations that were heroic. In contrast, the Chief of DOOM PATROL has gone from being a heroic figure to a corrupt, cruel, uncaring, twisted figure of scornful contempt towards everyone and everything.

The difference, however, is that DOOM PATROL has been lauded and admired for its skillful stories of psychological depth as the characters became more self-destructive and dysfunctional whereas SLIDERS is mocked for its incompetence as the show became more and more depressing.

I'm behind on STARGIRL, but I had some thoughts on Season 1 -- specifically the Brainwave Jr. arc. This redemption arc for Henry Jr. never made a ton of sense to me in terms of plotting, but it made me *feel* for him so I accepted it and also -- I felt it was more likely that I had failed to understand Geoff Johns' writing. I felt it less likely that Johns had failed to convey Henry Jr.'s arc properly. Johns is an excellent writer (and I will insist to my dying day that his work on the JUSTICE LEAGUE movie was great even though only I, Slider_Quinn21 and Informant liked it).

The thing that confused me about Henry Jr.'s arc: I didn't understand why he sided with the Justice Society. I didn't understand why Brainwave/Henry Sr.'s betrayal didn't break Henry Jr. but instead inspired him to help the JSA in his final moments.

Henry Jr.'s got a whole superior, survival of the fittest attitude going on; his father is a cold and cruel sociopath who torments him with his inadequacy and is secretly a telepathic supervillain.

Then Henry Jr. manifests telepathic powers and, in a hospital, he overhears the most horrible thoughts: children hoping their parents will die soon, health care workers being dismissive, his housekeeper thinking Henry Sr. deserves to die. When Courtney/Stargirl approaches him, trying to understand why Henry Jr. is a bully, why Henry Jr. showed Yolanda's topless photos to his friends, why Henry Jr. mistreats anyone he can get away with mistreating. He was like this before he had his powers.

Henry Jr. responds by threatening her life. Courtney retreats. But in the next episode, Henry Jr. reaches out to Courtney. His father has amnesia and his personality has rewound by 10 years. The savage, rote cruelty of Brainwave is gone. There's an openness. A blankness.

Henry Jr. believes that his father's grief over the death of his wife and Henry Jr.'s mother twisted Henry Sr., warped him into Brainwave. Henry Jr. also learns that he and Courtney are cousins and Courtney hugs him joyfully. Henry Jr. has hope. He's offered acceptance. He's given a chance. He uses it to help the JSA and tell Yolanda that he wishes she had his powers, that she could read his mind and know his regret. He feels remorse, he wants to change, he hopes his father will want to change too.

But Henry Jr.'s hopes are dashed at the climax: Brainwave reveals that he murdered his own wife, he killed Henry Jr.'s mother, because he saw her as a weakness. Brainwave tells Henry to join him; Henry refuses and Brainwave prepares to kill him.

Then Henry dies fighting for the JSA and... when I first watched it, I didn't understand it. Brainwave, Henry's father, wasn't good; even with his mind rewound 10 years, he was still a murderer. So why did Henry change and why did Henry feel validated as opposed to lost and betrayed?

Rewatching Season 1 again, I came to realize: Henry holds his father in contempt. Brainwave is dismissive, condescending, vicious and scornful, and Henry treats others in a similar way. Henry believes, even before he's verbalized it, that everyone on Earth is a monster. But Courtney invites him to consider the possibility that the monstrosity he sees is only people when they're scared and hurt and lost and alone. Courtney asks Henry to consider that his own crimes against humanity are because his father made him feel small and weak and worthless and that he adopted the same attitude to others.

So when Henry Jr. asks Brainwave to consider that the Injustice Society warped his value system and changed him, Henry isn't looking for Brainwave to validate his hope at all. Henry was a bully given a second chance by Courtney and now Henry is offering his father that same chance. When his father rejects him, Henry isn't broken; Courtney had already healed him and Henry takes comfort in knowing that he was the best of what Courtney thought of him instead of the worst of what Yolanda -- and his father -- believed of him.

"People are good," says Henry Jr., believing the best of himself at last and at the end of his life. "Don't let this change your mind," he tells Courtney, not wanting to be the last questionable person whom Courtney will believe in.

Johns did a good job. I wonder if it should have been clearer... or maybe I should have just paid more attention.

Another reason I prefer wet to dry brining: my mother has some kidney issues, so I can't rub salt all over a turkey.

Yes, the chicken broth I soaked my turkey in has about 40,000 mg of sodium. However, the turkey only actually absorbs about 0.57 percent of that, so it's 228 mg of sodium distributed across a 15 pound turkey. Also, despite the low sodium content, the turkey absorbs enough of the flavour to taste lightly salted and it also opens the meat up to absorb garlic, mustard, pepper, basil, oregano, lemon and duck fat flavour.

However, in the spirit of making these advantages more accessible -- I guess you could inject a turkey with chicken broth throughout the body and let it sit for 2.5 hours per pound to absorb. That would be more salt staying in the bird than I'd want for my family meal, but others may have higher tolerance for sodium.

You could follow up with injecting fat into the bird anywhere from 12 - 2 hours before roasting. The fat doesn't have to be duck: it could be olive oil, butter (probably diluted with water to stay liquid, avocado oil -- it just has to be liquified and room temperature so that it's injectable and doesn't cook the turkey before it's in the oven.

I actually ran out of duck fat when injecting last night and had to make up the difference with bold olive oil mixed with minced garlic, poured into the injector. Probably fine, it just won't have the distinctive duck flavour of a fully duck fat infused turkey.

This information is courtesy of EarthPrime.com.

In pre-production for Season 5, Bill Dial contacted Tracy Torme to talk SLIDERS and asked Torme what would make him happy with Season 5. Torme thought SLIDERS was well-past making him happy -- but he told Dial that he would like to see Conrad Bennish Jr. return, if only to get Torme's friend, actor Jason Gaffney, a guest appearance job or two.

This happened during the period when Dial was under the impression that Jerry O'Connell would do six episodes of Season 5.

Dial devised outlines for a five episode arc that would feature Jason Gaffney playing various Bennish doubles and the Bennish from the Pilot.

The outline had Quinn and Colin together for the first five episodes, engaged in random sliding. There would also be a framing sequence to each of these five episodes, featuring the ongoing FBI investigation into Quinn's disappearance with a new FBI agent, Melissa Hunter, having taken over the case and retaining Conrad Bennish Jr. as a consultant.

The presence of the Bennish character would make it clear: the Kromagg invasion of Earth in "Genesis" was staged on a different parallel Earth from the one in the Pilot. The first five episodes of Season 6 would feature Bennish on Earth Prime with Melissa and then the sliders would encounter a Bennish double on the parallel Earth of the week.

In the fifth episode, the opening sequence on Earth Prime would have Melissa triggering a vortex and vanishing into it, leaving Bennish behind by accident.

Meanwhile, the sliders would make it to Kromagg Prime only for Quinn (and only Quinn) to discover that Colin is a Kromagg sleeper agent, a clone of Quinn programmed to infiltrate the team. Quinn would learn that "Genesis" and his brother and his whole Kromagg Prime backstory was a Kromagg trick, and then get separated from Rembrandt and Maggie and disappear into a vortex, destination unknown. Rembrandt, Maggie and Colin would slide away, resuming random sliding and Colin keeping his true nature secret. (This would have been a rewrite of Marc Scott Zicree's "Revelations" story intended for the Season 4 finale.)

I believe the idea was that the fifth episode would have a final scene back on Earth Prime in which Bennish is in Quinn's basement, unable to retrieve Melissa -- and a vortex appears and Quinn emerges. This would establish that Quinn had finally made it home.

In the sixth episode, Rembrandt, Maggie and Colin would encounter Melissa. At this point, Rembrandt and Maggie would discover Colin's villainy and they would abandon him, sliding out with Melissa.

The Rembrandt/Maggie/Melissa team would be the sliders for the remainder of Season 5. In the Season 5 finale, Rembrandt would discover that Melissa came from the real Earth Prime and Quinn would return to defeat the Kromaggs once and for all and end the series.

This was thrown out when Jerry O'Connell went from offering to do six episodes to none.

Bill Dial and Keith Damron started over and while they initially planned to keep Bennish in the storyline, they decided that it was too expensive to fly Jason Gaffney from Vancouver to Los Angeles, especially when the Quinn-centric plot that Bennish had been a part of would not be possible in Jerry's absence.

In 1999, Temporal Flux reported that a return for Bennish had been planned and then abandoned. In a fan chat, Season 5 SLIDERS story editor Keith Damron denied that Bennish had ever been in any planned storylines for Season 5 and said that Temporal Flux and others were liars.

While I have no strong feelings about "others", Damron insulted Temporal Flux's honour and in this moment, Keith Damron became my mortal enemy.

Why did Damron lie about it? I'll refer to my previous theory: that Keith Damron hated SLIDERS, only cared for it as
far as the expense account for his free lunches, and he felt triggered when the unpaid fan enthusiast demonstrated more passion for Damron's show than Damron himself. Damron felt diminished in his job and he went on the attack.

Anyway. In 2009, Tracy Torme confirmed that Bennish had indeed been in the original Season 5 outline as conveyed in faxes and memos sent to him by Bill Dial and Keith Damron.

**

On a more pertinent note: Mangold says that the supposed 'leak' from a "test screening" is a lie because there have been no test screenings of the film at this writing.

Director James Mangold has refuted the entire rumour report linked to above.
https://variety.com/2022/film/news/jame … 235450127/

I think it's time some of you found another film and TV news site, one that actually has sources as opposed to making up points of grievance based on a general hatred of anything adjacent to women. A website with articles written with some control of the English language employed to convey information as opposed to absurd, subliterate, paranoid ranting driven by gender bias. A website that doesn't seriously and portentously present a source with the name of "DoomCock".

Try denofgeek.com

A point of intrigue for me: Damon Lindelof's writing is based on a technique explained by JJ Abrams as The Mystery Box technique.

Abrams explained that as a little boy, he bought a 'mystery magic box' from a magic store that continued some random magic trick. Abrams never opened the box; imagining what might be inside was far more compelling than actually finding out.

Lindelof never wrote for Abrams' ALIAS, but ALIAS seems to be founded on this formula as much as LOST. ALIAS, a spy-fi action show, is supposedly about the mysteries of Milo Rambaldi, a fifteenth century alchemist whose blueprints and scientific formulae add up to some unknown, world-changing endgame of cataclysmic or utopian promise. By the middle of Season 2, it becomes clear: the writers don't know what the Rambaldi endgame is and don't care. Rambaldi is a plot device to create MacGuffin plot devices. ALIAS wasn't about Rambaldi; ALIAS was about Sydney and Jack and their twisted and troubled daughter-father relationship as they chased down Rambaldi artifacts.

Abrams's Mystery Box seems to have been an inspiration to Lindelof.

That said, any storytelling tool can be misapplied. The Mystery Box was a serious problem on THE X-FILES where Chris Carter was obsessed with what was inside the Box and built his show around brief glimpses of what was within -- but Carter kept changing his mind as to what was inside. The alien colonization of Earth became the Spartan Virus depopulation of Earth which became the colonization of space which became a cloning project which became... something about Scully getting pregnant again. And THE X-FILES was just as incoherent with character arcs. Even in Season 11, THE X-FILES couldn't figure out if Mulder and Scully were a couple or not from episode to episode. THE X-FILES failed to satisfy with both its mysteries and its characters.

The Mystery Box approach has been both misused and well-used for SLIDERS fanfic. From 2000 to about 2005, numerous wonderful fans wrote heartfelt and passionate Season 6 stories, tearing open the Mystery Box of SLIDERS to finally explain and resolve all the mysteries of the series.

Rembrandt finds the original Professor who helps split the Quinns followed by retrieving Colin followed by rescuing Wade followed by revealing that the Earth Prime in "Genesis" was not the real home Earth followed by revealing that Colin is a clone with a sleeper personality programmed by the Kromaggs followed by defeating the Kromaggs followed by giving Maggie, Colin, Mallory and Diana a happy ending followed by the original sliders getting home.

The reaction to these stories was often mixed even though these stories boasted some wonderful scenes. The contrivances to make all of the above happen would be unconvincing. The contents of this version of SLIDERS' Mystery Box turned out to be... a set of plot convolutions so unwieldy and random that even a resurrected Ernest Hemingway would fail to wring a strong story from them. There's no shame in struggling to craft a tale out of these fragments.

Starting from 2009 or so, however, we started to see a Mystery Box approach to Season 6 fanfic where the authors clearly preferred to keep Box closed, to delay opening it for as long as possible, to keep the Box at a distance when it was finally opened.

These 2009 and onward fanfics start with Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo already alive and well when the story begins. The Mystery Box holds an answer to the questions: how are they alive? How has the Kromagg invasion somehow been undone? How did they find each other again?

These latter-era fanfics present the opening of the SLIDERS Mystery Box as both tantalizing and unwanted. What if the contents of the Box are insufficent to answer our questions? What if there is a terrible price to be paid for Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo coming back from the dead?

In many ways, withholding the explanation for how the sliders are alive is a tacit admission; the writers of these 2009-onward SLIDERS stories *know* that the explanation won't be that great. The Mystery Box contents can never live up to the speculation around what's inside.

But the true secret of the Mystery Box here might be: the fanfic readers and writers don't actually care how the original sliders are back. They just want to feel it and believe in it. They want to see Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo deal with the trauma of being merged-erased, sent to a rape camp, losing every friend, and dying; they want to see them survive and endure.

These 2009-onward writers frontload their stories with the reunion of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. By the time the Box gets opened, it's just a formality; it doesn't matter how the sliders came back. They are already back. And it's a good thing that it doesn't matter because the plot devices to bring the sliders back to life aren't any better than the ones in the pre-2009 fanfics.

This Season 6 Mystery Box for SLIDERS is actually more potent when unopened. Yes, SLIDERS fans may be very concerned with the Kromagg-Human War and the secrets of Colin Mallory and the fate of Logan St. Clair. But the story that will speak to these fans most deeply is the one where Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are reunited and restored. SLIDERS fans on some level know that the Kromagg-Human War and Dr. Geiger and whatnot are only the bridge they have to cross in order to get back to Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo -- and if offered them a zipline to swing right over this bridge, the zipline is preferable.

If your fanfic focuses on the rationale for how Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo back, if you open the Mystery Box and lay it out piece by piece and point by point, the reader will only see the forced logic and strained contrivances; their disbelief will keep the story and characters at a remove.

But if you start your fanfic by making the reader happy to see Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo together again, if the characters and emotions feel real, then the reader will tolerate the rationale for the resurrections being strained and somewhat unconvincing and contrived.

I think this goes back to Slider_Quinn21's point: when a story leaves the audience satisfied with the characters' journeys, then it's alright for the Mystery Box content to be disjointed, contradictory, unresolved, and not even that interesting and often out of focus. The audience will forgive that. Or at least Slider_Quinn21 will. Again, I have not finished LOST, but my sense from Slider_Quinn21 is that even if the Island wasn't ever explained, the character arcs were satisfying.

I think the main criticism of TOMORROWLAND is that it's a lengthy rant about the pointlessness of dystopian fiction and the importance of maintaining a positive attitude -- and reviewers comment that a positive attitude doesn't end human trafficking, the climate emergency, global starvation, etc.. That's fair, but TOMORROWLAND is just a fun adventure movie with a streak of optimism and I don't think we should expect a work of fiction to cure cancer or anything. It's okay. I think Damon Lindeloff did fine.

Another point of criticism was that Britt Robertson was way, way, way, way, way too old at 25 years old to play 15 - 17. This is not unreasonable. The odd thing is, Robertson played a teenager in many 2010 - 2015 projects and played a teenager after TOMORROWLAND in the movie THE SPACE BETWEEN US. Robertson looked teenager-ish before TOMORROWLAND and teenager-ish again in THE SPACE BETWEEN US. But in TOMORROWLAND, Robertson has surprisingly deep lines in her skin and a rougher texture than she had in other films and TV shows of that period.

I suspect that probably, a lot of Robertson's previous roles as a twentysomething playing teens was from 2010 onward in TV and indie and low budget film projects that used inexpensive digital cameras and soft focus lenses. However, TOMORROWLAND was shot with maximum budget Sony lenses in a 4K digital format. Robertson with her slender build and rounded face looked somewhat teenagerish on lower budget lenses and in 1080p digital video creating a sheen over her features. But at 4K, she looked her actual age.

I guess that could happen to anybody. I've elected to accept and ignore it, but some people can't.

Another issue of contention was having 53 year old George Clooney in the movie partnered with a 12 year old Raffey Cassidy and a 25 year old Britt Robertson, but that's people seeing something that isn't there; there is not a hint of sexuality between them. The relationship is clearly Clooney as a disgruntled brother with his sisters, one manipulative and disdainful, one optimistic to the point of being obnoxious.

Anyway. Damon Lindeloff did a nice job with TOMORROWLAND, although I'm sure Disney doesn't agree since it was a $180 million loss. I still really like the movie.

Even the writers can't explain the Kromagg Dynasty endgame for Kromagg Prime. The entire Kromagg arc seems to be rewritten on the fly from episode to episode with every intention for the storyline in one episode abandoned by the next episode.

The fan consensus is that the Kromagg Prime arc was a really good idea from Marc Scott Zicree that was mishandled later. My opinion is that after "Invasion", the Kromagg arc was a disaster from conception to scripting to filming to airing.

"Invasion" introduces the Kromaggs: they are an interdimensional empire who are xenophobically obsessed with enslaving all humans in all dimensions. The Kromaggs loathe humans and are enraged that the Kromaggs don't seem to have any doubles (at least none that they've found) in the multiverse. They plant a tracking device in an unidentified slider, intending to invade the sliders' home Earth once they stop sliding. This sets the stage for a sequel that is completely inevitable; the sliders' central goal, home, is now entangled with the Kromaggs.

In preproduction for Season 4, incoming story editor Marc Scott Zicree clearly felt the show was in a bad state. It had lost two original actors. Zicree said in an online fan chat that he was "horrified" by the Season 3 episodes at the end. Zicree felt that with Arturo dead and Wade to be lost off-camera, it was time to steer SLIDERS into a more overtly science fiction and technology driven approach: the Kromagg Invasion of Earth.

Zicree's storyline: Quinn and Maggie return to Quinn's home Earth in the S4 premiere, but the Kromaggs have invaded. Quinn also discovers that he is actually from the Kromagg homeworld, that the Kromaggs and a race of humans once lived in peace as an interdimensional civilization of sliders led by Quinn's father, Michael Mallory.

In the Kromagg-Human war, Quinn's father placed Quinn with doubles of Quinn's parents, and placed Quinn's brother, Colin, with another set of doubles. Quinn determines that his birth father's weapon was successful as his biological parents attempted to retrieve him but couldn't; he, Rembrandt and Maggie set off to find the Kromagg homeworld and this weapon.

Zicree's intention: Quinn would find Colin. As for Wade: options were to have guest characters report that Wade had escaped the Kromaggs and was fine or to have Wade appear as a guest-star if Sabrina Lloyd could be secured to give the character an ending. The Season 4 finale: Quinn, Rembrandt, Maggie and Colin arrive on the Kromagg homeworld. Colin begins acting strangely, and Quinn's birth parents declare that they never placed their son Quinn with any doubles and they have no idea who Colin is supposed to be. It's revealed: Quinn's entire Season 4 backstory was a Kromagg trick.

The Kromaggs used Quinn to regain access to the Kromagg homeworld to retake it from the humans and Colin is not Quinn's brother, but rather a Quinn-clone who has been altered to look different with a sleeper personality. Quinn succeeding in reaching the Kromagg homeworld has also shut down the humans' security functions that barred the Kromaggs from sliding in; the finale ends with Quinn fighting Colin while Kromagg manta ships fill the sky. Season 5 would have had Quinn discover: the invaded Earth in "Genesis" was not Quinn's real home Earth. Colin would be killed off or his human personality would override the sleeper personality and he'd stay on as a regular.

Most SLIDERS fans really like this storyline idea and are upset by how it actually unfolded after David Peckinpah and Jerry O'Connell and Bill Dial changed it. I'd argue that the story was a disaster from start to finish.

First, "Invasion" plainly establishes that the Kromaggs are appalled by the existence of humans. "Genesis" declares that Kromaggs and humans once lived in peace and shared a dimension. This is completely mismatched to the xenophobia of the "Invasion" Kromaggs. While it's not unreasonable to note that the "Invasion" Kromaggs were liars and that their stated backstory could be a lie, if one wants an interdimensional race that once lived in peace with humans, it'd be better to create a new species rather than hammer the Kromaggs into this completely opposing template.

"Genesis" refocuses SLIDERS with Quinn now a soldier and a central figure in a decades-spanning interdimensional war. This doesn't work for me either: the appeal of Quinn, to me, is that he's the American whiz kid making gadgets in his basement, a rebrand of the middle-aged English-Victorian inventor. To turn him into Kal-El of Kromagg Prime is, to me, an absurd turn of backstory that Quinn's creator, Tracy Torme, described as "pretty ridiculous". And it's clear that the creator of this storyline, Zicree, also though it ridiculous because he was going to overturn it later.

The main problem I have with this: SLIDERS is about characters who come from our world (or at least something close to it), reacting to parallel universes being different from the world in which the viewer lives. If Quinn's homeworld is now Kromagg Prime, if Rembrandt's homeworld is now a Kromagg battlefield, then the viewer no longer shares a recognizable version of "home" as a common point of reference. Again, Zicree seems to know this because he was going to reveal that the invaded home Earth wasn't truly the home Earth -- but he was going to let these revelations stay in place from episodes 1 to 21 of Season 4; that's 21 episodes where the sliders are no longer from our home and trying to find their way back to our home.

The secondary but no less glaring issue: if Quinn and Rembrandt think everyone they've ever known and loved is a Kromagg victim or prisoner, then SLIDERS' comedy episodes become awkward and all the worlds where the sliders liberate a dystopian regime make the sliders seem uncaring for fleeing their own dystopian Earth. The Kromagg Invasion of Earth, even if to be overturned later, makes every post-invasion story depressing and hypocritical.

The entire Season 4 arc was, in my personal opinion, a disaster even at this stage. 

The subsequent changes to Zicree's plot just dug it into a deeper hole. "Genesis" as scripted sends Wade to a rape camp, something that horrified Zicree. "Common Ground" continues with the idea that Quinn is being manipulated to retake the Kromagg homeworld and brings up searching for Wade, but "Common Ground" also rewrites the Kromaggs significantly from "Invasion".

The "Invasion" Kromaggs were distant manipulators speaking through a human agent; the Kromaggs now are written as evil Klingons from STAR TREK, a warrior race concerned with honour and military grandeur when the "Invasion" Kromaggs were unapologetic colonizers with a self-image of manifest destiny to justify their campaigns of conquest and enslavement.

"The Dying Fields" rewrites the Kromaggs and the Kromagg arc again, saying the Kromaggs have rape camps because Kromaggs were sterilized by the anti-Kromagg superweapon. Kromagg sterilization wasn't part of Zicree's plot and it undermines the original intention: that the Kromaggs have cloning technology to produce Colin. It's peculiar that the Kromaggs would have cloning technology but use humans to repopulate their fighting forces.

And now the anti-Kromagg superweapon is also changed. "Genesis" declares that Michael Mallory was a scientist who engineered sliding technology; the superweapon was presumably an application of sliding. Now, the superweapon has become some sort of biological agent of sterilization.

Also, "The Dying Fields" has the Kromaggs not recognizing the sliders and actively trying to kill them when "Genesis" and "Common Ground" established that the Kromaggs need to keep them alive to retake Kromagg Prime. The Kromagg plot was stretching before; now some cracks are showing.

Then we have "Mother and Child" where the Kromaggs recognize the sliders and declare that the previous order to keep them alive has been countermanded. No explanation is provided as to why the Kromaggs are suddenly abandoning their plan to use Quinn to reconquer their homeworld. "Lipschitz Live" also features a Colin double which undermines the original intention that Colin was an altered-Quinn clone created recently.

What happened here? According to Temporal Flux, Zicree was struggling to work with David Peckinpah and Bill Dial. Peckinpah seemed irritated by Zicree's desire to work on scripts and do rewrites; Dial was annoyed that Zicree called him out for playing Solitaire during what were to be writers' room meetings. Meanwhile, Jerry O'Connell disliked the idea that Colin (played by Jerry's real life brother Charlie) wouldn't be Quinn's actual brother.

It would seem to me: Peckinpah and Dial decided to throw out Zicree's original intention and declare that Quinn's Kromagg Prime homeworld backstory was true, at which point Zicree gave up on the show and switched his focus to DEEP SPACE NINE. Why did "The Dying Fields" and "Mother and Child" abandon the arc of the Kromaggs keeping the sliders alive? It was to upset Zicree and get him to stop showing up to work, presumably so that Peckinpah could focus on his lifelong mission to kill himself with heroin while Bill Dial played Solitaire.

Then we have the Season 4 finale, "Revelations" where Quinn nonsensically does not go to Kromagg Prime despite boasting of having found a way to get past the Kromagg Prime security lockout that blocks incoming sliders. We have an aimless runaround where Quinn finds a pretty acceptable superweapon to free our home Earth but unfathomably expresses no interest in using it, leaving it to Rembrandt, only for Rembrandt to forget about the superweapon also.

It's no longer clear what the point of the season is: the sliders are clearly not attempting to liberate Rembrandt's home Earth since they don't make any effort to seize technology to make it happen. They are clearly not trying to get to Kromagg Prime since they have the coordinates and the means to arrive but do not use them. It's inexplicable.

To me, the appeal of TRACY TORME'S SLIDERS is that it's a simple concept. The sliders are people lost in the multiverse, trying to find their way back home. That's a 15 word summary.

MARC SCOTT ZICREE'S SLIDERS concept, even before it was altered, is that the sliders are people whose home Earth has been invaded by an interdimensional dynasty of conquerors except one of the sliders is actually from this dynasty's homeworld and this homeworld is now occupied by humans who have a superweapon that can drive away the dynasty except later it'll turn out this human who was thought to be from the homeworld isn't from the homeworld and the invaded home is not actually the home of the sliders because their real home is fine and for God's sake, that was 82 words and it's still confusing.

TRACY TORME'S SLIDERS is a simple idea that I can explain in 10 words or less. I can't explain MARC SCOTT ZICREE'S SLIDERS in 82 words. I don't think I could explain it in 100 words or even 1,000 words.

This is why, to me, MARC SCOTT ZICREE'S SLIDERS is a failure from start to finish. You can't claim the sliders are searching for home if home is a battlefield they're escaping, and then separately, a place to which they've never been. You can't present the sliders as representing the viewer's world if the sliders now come from two different Earths that don't reflect the audience's Earth.

It's confusing. You can't sell a confusing message.

To me, the 'best' route for Season 4 without Arturo and Wade would have been to have Quinn sliding alone (and sadly lose Rembrandt but retain Cleavant to guest-star as a double a few times). If we can't do the original sliders, then reformat the show to be Quinn sliding alone, five years after the Season 3 finale. Maggie has left Quinn offscreen. Quinn is still searching for a way home.

He encounters a homeless young girl who broke into Quinn's basement looking for a place to sleep and accidentally triggered his sliding machine which through a combination of technobabble and luck, brought her to Quinn. Quinn takes on the new kid as his protege, recreating a version of SLIDERS' original formula of older and younger characters. Just keep it simple.

Anyway. I've never gotten past Season 5 of LOST, but it's pretty clear to me that LOST kept its focus on the characters. LOST is about troubled people on an island of supernatural phenomena. LOST ensured that it was about the people, and that meant that LOST could always be explained in 11 words.

In total, Gough and Millar wrote nine scripts for SMALLVILLE, two of which were plotted by other writers. The scripts they wrote solo: the pilot, "Metamorphosis", Rosetta", "Exodus", "Exile", "Memoria" and Crusade." The scripts they wrote from staff-produced outlines: "Tempest" and "Covenant".

They also wrote the story ideas for three episodes "Zero", "Vortex" and "Lineage", and other writers wrote the final teleplays.

Seven solo scripts, two scripts that were originated by other writers, three story ideas that were completed into scripts by other writers.

Now, Gough and Millar were definitely empowered to rewrite all 152 scripts and showrunners often don't get onscreen credits for rewrites on their staff writers' pages. Most Season 1 scripts seem to have been refined by Gough and Millar, boasting thoughtfully understated yet mythic dialogue, strong setpieces, references to Shakespeare and Nietzsche and Sun Tzu and historical references to Napoleon and Kaspar Hausar -- those are all very distinctive Gough and Millar flourishes.

While it's possible that the staff writers were mimicking their showrunners' approach, starting with Season 2, that style vanishes. Suddenly, dialogue is clumsily expository and literary references are gone -- except when Gough and Millar are credited with the script.

In Season 1, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar wrote the Pilot episode and the second episode, "Metamorphosis", to start the show and the weekly formula. They wrote the plot for "Zero", but the script was written by Mark Verheiden. They had Philip Levens write the plot for "Tempest", the Season 1 finale, and then Gough and Millar wrote the script, wanting to end the season on with their words.

Gough and Millar claim that they were constantly rewriting scripts throughout their seven years, but this only appears to be true for Season 1 as their very distinctive voice is largely gone after "Tempest".

In Season 2, they wrote the plot for the season premiere, "Vortex", but the script was by Phil Levens. It's at this point that Gough and Millar seemed to disengage from SMALLVILLE, writing only two more scripts this year.

They wrote the plot for "Lineage", but the script was by Kenneth Biller and Biller has a more emotionally charged approach where Gough and Millar are more restrained. Gough and Millar wrote "Rosetta" beause they wanted to handle the event episode introducing Christopher Reeve as Dr. Curtis Swan. They also wrote the Season 2 finale, "Exodus", again, so that the season would end on their terms.

On-set producer and frequent director Greg Beeman remarked that SMALLVILLE suffered from Gough and Millar writing scripts from Los Angeles to be filmed in Vancouver without really understanding what the budget could and couldn't handle. They seemed to struggle with it in Season 1 and then decided to just restrict themselves to big budget premieres, finales and mid-season episodes.

In addition, Gough and Millar had accepted numerous feature film screenwriting jobs outside of SMALLVILLE. They were physically distant and creatively detached -- but they didn't step down, meaning no one was appointed or empowered to take over script rewrites for continuity and arcs. In fact, Gough and Millar considered it unnecessary to have continuity and arcs, saying that standalones were preferable to keep the show accessible to casual viewers.

They wrote the Season 3 premiere, "Exile" and later wrote "Memoria". The plot for the Season 3 finale, "Covenant", was written by Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer, but Gough and Millar wrote the final script. All are strong stories, but the episodes between these tentpoles are mostly very weak; Gough and Millar didn't seem to get involved.

One of the most glaring aspects of Season 3: Clark spent months living as a Red Kryptonite deranged criminal. Even after the Red Kryptonite was removed, Clark still had occasional bursts of rage in the second episode of the season. But in the third episode, Clark's personality abruptly snapped back to 'normal' and stayed normal until episode 8 at which point the 'new' Clark made an unexplained comeback. Why did this happen?

I've heard that Gough and Millar were extremely late in writing the Season 3 premiere script. The Season 3 writers had to start writing the post-premiere scripts and wrote the default Clark-personality. By the time Gough and Millar turned in their Season 3 premiere script and a short brief for Part 2, the writers had finished scripting episodes 3 - 7. Only then did the Season 3 writers learn that Clark was going to have a more aggressive personality in the premiere. But it was too late to go back into the already-written scripts to add it in. This is why Clark's angrier characterization vanished after Season 3's second episode and didn't reappear until episode 8.

Gough and Millar wrote "Memoria", a very significant episode where Clark has flashbacks of Krypton. And they wrote the Season 3 finale, "Covenant", again, to end the season. They wrote the Season 4 premiere, "Crusade" -- and after introducing witches and whatnot to SMALLVILLE, they seemed to vanish from SMALLVILLE completely, contributing no scripts, no rewrites, no story ideas, no more season premieres, no more season finales.

Also strangely, Gough and Millar didn't appoint anyone to take over as the lead writer and showrunner. It's peculiar that Warner Bros. TV and the WB/CW network tolerated a situation where the two people hired to showrun SMALLVILLE were no longer performing their responsibities. Seasons 4 - 7 have no leadership, no guiding hand -- just staff writers awkwardly writing monster of the week stories.

Why did WB allow this? Well, screenwriter Kevin Williamson has explained that writers who have multiple TV and film projects have to lay out, contractually, which project is in "first position" and which projects take "secondary position". Williamson was writing SCREAM scripts and overseeing DAWSON'S CREEK, but he was contractually required to drop all DAWSON'S CREEK work if Miramax summoned him or set a deadline or needed him on set.

Williamson said that eventually, SCREAM being in first position made it physically impossible to get any work done for DAWSON'S CREEK and he left the show after Season 2. This would happen in reverse later in Williamson's career: he sold THE VAMPIRE DIARIES to CW and was showrunner, then Miramax hired him to write SCREAM 4. Williamson had more drafts to write, but then the CW ordered that he fulfill his first position duties as showrunner and Williamson had to stop working on SCREAM 4 and let another writer take over.

My guess would be that SMALLVILLE was a fairly low-budgeted show and Gough and Millar's contracts allowed them to put SMALLVILLE in permanent secondary position and do absolutely no writing for the show and still get paid as showrunners. In addition, whatever payments they received for scripting episodes were likely lower than their payments for writing Lindsay Lohan movies and scripts for THE MUMMY, so they put their attention towards their features and ignored their TV show.

To be fair(ish): Gough and Millar did keep working on the studio and licensing arrangements for SMALLVILLE. They negotiated extensively with WB to license Lois Lane for a short guest run in Season 4 and eventually got Lois approved as a regular character.

They put in further effort to acquire licenses for Green Arrow, Cyborg, Aquaman, the Flash and the Martian Manhunter in later seasons, although they failed when negotiating for Bruce Wayne.

All these added licenses brought in a lot of publicity for SMALLVILLE. In Seasons 6 - 7, they aimed for lower hanging fruit with Jimmy Olsen and Supergirl (who were part of the Superman library and easier to secure). Gough and Millar used these licenses to raise the profile of the show. And they managed the budget and cast contracts so that SMALLVILLE always made more in sales and ad revenue than its budget, ensuring continued renewals.

They kept the show going, they just stopped writing for it.

Their lack of interest in writing for SMALLVILLE was most evident in the Season 8 changeover. SMALLVILLE secured three final seasons via severe budget cuts. Gough and Millar were going to see a paycut; the lower budget also meant they wouldn't be able to hire as many writers as in previous years. They had previously been paid for doing little to no writing; they would now be paid less and required to actually write some scripts to get paid at all.

Gough and Millar immediately quit.

Note that in Season 8, the promoted showrunners Brian Peterson, Kelly Souders, Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer collectively wrote six episodes out of 22, and it's also clear that they rewrote every single script of the year.

The Peterson/Souders/Slavkin/Swimmer style is different from Gough and Millar: they wrote SMALLVILLE as an exaggerated, highly melodramatic superhero fantasy matched with intense emotionalism and made lavish references to superhero comics rather than classical literature and mythology.

Every script of Season 8 featured that voice even if the showrunners weren't credited for the teleplay; the four producers were very involved in every episode. This was a level of work that Gough and Millar hadn't put into SMALLVILLE since the Season 1 finale and when Season 8 called for them to put in some writing, they ran.

Why are Gough and Millar putting in the work on WEDNESDAY?

Well, unlike SMALLVILLE, Gough and Millar were actually present for filming, moving to Romania for the duration of the WEDNESDAY shoot. This likely made it easier for them to put their creativity into the show. In contrast, Gough and Millar wrote their SMALLVILLE scripts in LA while the show filmed in Vancouver; Gough and Millar often seemed to forget that SMALLVILLE existed whereas WEDNESDAY was in their line of sight.

They also secured Tim Burton to direct half of WEDNESDAY's episodes and maintain the visual tone for the other half as a producer. Burton is a hyperdetailed, obsessive director from the prestige world of film. He is unlikely to tolerate absenteeism from writers even if working in television.

Also, WEDNESDAY is only eight episodes as opposed to 22 a year. The light workload that Gough and Millar enjoyed on SMALLVILLE would not be allowed in the modern prestige TV market; Netflix would expect their hired showrunners to run the show. And Gough and Millar weren't as busy with feature film assignments while WEDNESDAY was being prepped, written and filmed.

My guess is that Gough and Millar aren't bad people, they're just inclined to do the very least they can get away with doing. It's human nature. In addition, coming from the world of films shown in theatres, they had a certain level of dismissiveness for TV. They felt that season premieres and finales were important and that everything in between didn't matter. The show was cheap, so the network and studio allowed it since the money was coming in; the ad revenue exceeded the costs.

Since then, the world of TV has acquired the same public prestige as feature films. And also, whatever their faults, if Gough and Millar sign a contract to write four episodes and script edit four more, they'll do their job and do it well. They just won't do more than they are contracted to do. They won't go above and beyond.

In contrast, we have Tom Welling. In Season 10 of SMALLVILLE, Welling did 22 episodes, but he was only paid for 21. What happened to this 4.55 percent of his Season 10 salary? Welling took a paycut to increase the offer to Michael Rosenbaum to secure Rosenbaum's guest appearance in the series finale.

Gough and Millar don't operate on this wavelength. They are businessmen first and writers second. They are good writers when they actually do the writing. And they didn't do enough writing on SMALLVILLE.

TNG was shot on 35mm film for all seven seasons. But admittedly, not every 35mm film stock is the same. If you ever have time, download and watch the 4K77 version of STAR WARS, a digital scan of a theatrical print of the 1977 movie. The movie was shot on four different kinds of film depending on whatever was available and what was needed for layers of effects, and all four are rather mismatched in how they capture light and how much grain is on the image.

TNG could have changed film stocks between or even within seasons. And certainly, the lighting shifted throughout the seasons, lenses and cameras improved every few years, and colour processing techniques advanced (although the HD remaster would have had to do colour processing all over again as they rescanned the original film).

Netflix's high bandwidth streaming is probably higher bandwidth now than it was in 2012. They didn't even start 4K until 2014.

The SLIDERS series bible was originally written by assistant-to-writer Jeremy Smith, then Karen Miller later in Season 3 (not sure about her title), then Season 4 staff member Janice Fishman for the fourth season, and finally, Keith Damron for the last season (thanks, TF!).

The bible was used to give incoming and freelance writers a crash course in SLIDERS at a time when writers could not reasonably be expected to have watched every (or even any) previous episodes of a show due to the non-existence of view-on-demand video services, the cumbersome and limited format of VHS, and the impracticality of booking studio video suites for every single freelance or staff writer to watch old episodes.

If nothing else, summaries of previous episodes let writers know what had already been done before.

Copies of this bible have been floating around Los Angeles for years, retained by former writing assistants. A fan of SLIDERS once reported visiting Zicree's office and finding numerous copies of this document but finding them undeserving of interest as most of the material was just episode summaries and printouts of fan pages.

To 'write' large portions of the manual, Jeremy Smith simply printed out web pages from Robb Potter's Sliders.net, the alt.tv.sliders newsgroup, Ed Brillig's page, Tim Lucas' page, Nigel G. Mitchell's SLIDERS TECHNICAL MANUAL, and some photocopies of magazine articles by Amanda J. Finch and Dan Webber.

The episode summaries, I assume, were pre-broadcast loglines and cast and crew details photocopied from memos to FOX's marketing department.

I recall TF originally reported that Jeremy Smith was fired for his blatant lack of actual work on the Bible, and here, TF says that it happened in Season 3 with someone named Karen Miller taking over from Smith. I'm not sure what she did differently.

The Season 4 loglines have a Post-It saying it was written by "Janice Fishman" and while I can't find any credits for this person, the name "Janice Fishman" along with SLIDERS crew member "Paul Cajero" are found in Marc Scott Zicree's novel MAGIC TIME. TF says that Keith Damron wrote the S5 pages. (My use of "TF says" is to give him credit, not to cast doubt.)

Anyway. When writing my SLIDERS fanfic magnum opus, I too drew on the work of Nigel G. Mitchell -- which is to say I contacted him and offered him money to consult. He wouldn't take any money, so I just bought all of his novels off Amazon. In time, I will hunt down Jeremy Smith and demand that he cut Nigel a cheque.

Why would TNG look different? The HD remaster was released 10 years ago. How did it look better? It's unlikely CBS and Paramount have done anything to improve it ever since the TNG remaster was a financial loss.

Hypothetically, it could be your 2022 TV being better than your 2022 TV, but you haven't mentioned it.

Two possibilities come to mind: the video was reprocessed for high dynamic range for increased shadow and brightness detail. The other possibility: the 2012 release was compressed for digital broadcast and streaming which meant some blur and loss of detail, but in 10 years, improved internet speeds and video compression codecs have led to more or all of the HD video detail finally coming through.

I don't think Tom Welling was worried about being typecast because he wasn't expecting to work much after SMALLVILLE and was only thinking of a long vacation. He seems to enjoy acting in guest roles now and then.

I think Tom's initial concern about SMALLVILLE was that he didn't want to wear a Superman costume because when sought out for the role, Tom didn't really consider himself an actor and did not feel he had the experience or skill to play an American icon. When he read the script, he saw that he was playing an uncertain teenager; this was a character he felt his uncertain acting could handle. He asked the creators when Clark would wear the costume and become Superman, a character he wasn't sure he could play. He was told, "Never." This seems to what stuck with him more than "no flights no tights".

Welling developed a fealty to the original authorial intent of the creators: no costume. Maybe he was afraid back in Season 1, but by Season 10, I'm sure it wasn't fear, it was a sense of loyalty, I think. And I personally think it was misguided, because Tom's restriction meant that "Finale" was trying to film Superman sequences but having to now film Tom at a distance or at bizarre angles and with a CG cape just to meet Tom's stipulation that he never wear the costume.

That said, I can't imagine the accountants protested this creative decision. "You mean you DON'T want to spend five to ten thousand dollars to create a tailor-made Superman costume for Tom Welling that he will only wear for 5 - 10 minutes of one episode of the show? That is a very responsible choice."

One example of a show that had a natural ending that refused to provide it: SMALLVILLE. Actually, SMALLVILLE probably had two natural endings.

The natural ending of SMALLVILLE was for Clark Kent to put on the Superman costume. That was the the ending of the first-draft script for "Finale". Tom Welling refused to do it. He said that SMALLVILLE wasn't about Superman and he would not perform in a full body shot wearing the Superman suit. He only agreed to wear the chest piece to open his shirt.

Ultimately, this was a situation where the actor would not perform the inevitable ending; he wanted SMALLVILLE to stick to Clark Kent in an attempt to maintain what he felt was the correct focus for his show (and it was his show by Season 10). Welling is a pretty decent human being: he gave his whole life to SMALLVILLE and he spent his free time truckloads of children's toys from Vancouver stores and wrapping them to distribute to children's charities during Christmas. So why wouldn't he wear the suit?

Welling's explanation was this: when Alfred Gough and Miles Millar first met with him about SMALLVILLE, they told him that their vision was for Clark to never wear the suit and for the show to only be about Clark's life before Superman.

Welling stuck to that even though that intention was no longer suited to where SMALLVILLE had ended up by Season 10. By Season 8, Clark had already formed a rough draft of the Superman identity and assembled the Justice League and Watchtower, etc.. SMALLVILLE had become a show about people in their mid-twenties. Welling was insisting on a story restriction that only made sense when SMALLVILLE was a high school show.

I suspect that Gough and Millar never imagined SMALLVILLE getting past the high school years. They were drawing on the John Byrne comics in which Clark, after high school, leaves Smallville to travel the world and has many years of adventures as an anonymous hero, trying to understand what the world needs from him. The decision to become Superman would happen long, long after Clark left Smallville and long after the SMALLVILLE series ended.

Tom Welling became co-executive producer of SMALLVILLE starting with Season 9 and right into Season 10. While he was not the showrunner and not running the writers room, it was ultimately his show and this was his decision. Due to budget cuts and the departure of so many cast members and crew, I think it made sense that Tom took over the direction of the show -- but Tom is not a screenwriter. He was barely an actor. (I haven't seen any of his post-SMALLVILLE roles, don't know if he's gotten better.)

Tom was -- and is -- a nice man whose natural demeanor and screen presence made him an excellent match for Clark Kent because he never really had to act. He could just be himself. But he is not a trained, skilled storyteller. Ultimately, he was doing what he thought was best and I think he made a mistake, albeit a mistake with the best of intentions.

Clark leaving Smallville to travel the world was probably the original and natural ending for SMALLVILLE. The inevitable yet unexpected: Clark goes into his last year of high school, Season 4, eagerly looking to apply to Smallville University to be trained as a journalist. The future is post-secondary education.

But as the season nears its end, Clark realizes he doesn't need a bachelor's degree as much as he needs to see the world outside Smallville and find out what he can give. Instead of going to university with Chloe, Pete and Lana, he tells them that he has to leave and he doesn't know when he'll come back.

Maybe Chloe cracks wise about how with all the weird stuff Clark always seems to blunder into and all the great stories and scoops he finds, he might not even need a journalism degree and could get a job through experience and a massive publishing history of freelance work. This will explain why Clark doesn't need a journalism degree to become a reporter in the future.

I could also imagine a Season 3 / 4 episode where Clark encounters Zatanna the magician. Zatanna could tell Clark about how her father, John Leonardo, was a famous magician with the stagename Zatara Zatanna. John created a pair of magic glasses that separated his onstage persona from his real life; he would put on the glasses to maintain his identity as John Leonardo and no one would recognize him as Zatara Zatanna until he took the glasses off.

Zatanna has been contemplating using the glasses, but she ultimately decides not to and gives them to Clark, saying they're not right for her, but they might someday be right for Clark.

Don't make excuses for them.

I am sorry that David Peckinpah had a nervous breakdown for the death of his son, but he could have simply taken a leave of absence from TV and gotten his life together rather than acting out his slow slide into addiction and self-poisoning on a national broadcast stage. I'm sure whoever decided to do copy-pasting rather than engage in their job with passion and interest had their own stuff going on too, but they could have at least opened a thesaurus and put the fan material in their own words.

Never seen a single episode of DEXTER, but Slider_Quinn21's fascinating thoughts (thank you!) have touched on something: there's what we, the viewers, *want* to happen to and for the characters. And then there's what the natural outcome is for the events and situations and character traits within the story.

My niece once told me, "An ending should be inevitable but unexpected." And yet, no two people will necessarily agree what is the inevitable.

Judging from your words, you think the inevitable result of Dexter's life was to suffer some cataclysmic consequence for his life: either permanent seclusion or death. Your preference was for Dexter to suffer being forever alienated and isolated, but the showrunner's decision was that the inevitable outcome was for Dexter to die.

It sounds like there was some contrivance to have Dexter do something unforgivable as a (to you) hamfisted means of reminding the audience that Dexter is not a moral person and isn't a hero, merely less abhorrent than most of his victims, a conceit that the showrunner presents as a lie by having him kill Logan (?). And it sounds like this was a worthy and competent follow-up for you...

But a bit of an afterthought epilogue that you didn't really need.

Hi, I took the liberty of uploading the Bible and changing the link in JamesL's post.

Special thanks to Cez for sending it to me in the first place.

It turns out my Blu-ray player wasn't doing any upscaling. My TV was increasing the sharpness levels. When my Android box self-updated to 4K, the sharpness on my TV was causing 'sparkling' on straight lines on 4K video and I had to turn that sharpness off. Then the Sliders Blu-ray image looked like it did on my computer.

I had to buy the paid version of MakeMKV to rip Blu-ray.

An interesting failure I've always been interested in is MALLRATS. The lead character, TS Quint, is played by actor Jeremy London. London's performance has always confused and intrigued me. He's a floppy haired young man in flannel, very much like Jerry O'Connell's Quinn Mallory.

The TS Quint character makes no sense to me: there are times when Quint is an angry, volatile hothead who loses his temper with his girlfriend, snaps at her and triggers a breakup, there are scenes where Quint angrily punches out someone who has been harassing him.

For the rest of the movie, however, Quint is extremely shy and withdrawn: he shifts his weight awkwardly, he is nervous and anxious and always retreating when other characters are in his face, and his expression indicates that he is struggling to bear the weight of the world on his shoulders -- very much like Quinn except the script insists that TS Quint is an unambitious, impulsive twentysomething. Despite being the lead character, Quint has very little dialogue and it's almost like his scenes and lines have been edited down.

It's very odd: all the scenes where Jeremy London plays TS Quint as aggravated and lacking self-control are filmed outdoors; all the scenes where London plays Quint as uncertain and thoughtful are filmed indoors at a shopping mall (where the bulk of the film is set).

In the audio commentary, director Kevin Smith expresses great frustration with actor London, saying that London was unprofessional, high on marijuana for during filming and unable to remember his lines in most of his scenes, requiring numerous takes. This indicates that the impulsive, aggressive TS Quint was Smith's intention, but the only time London performed the character as intended was for the brief outdoor shoots.

The shy and anxious Quint was the performance London gave for most of the movie. The anxiously pensive expression that London has throughout the movie is London inebriated and trying to remember his lines; it isn't an acting choice.

I think I would rather send you an old blu-ray player that I'm no longer using. It plays the German standard definition blu-ray release of SLIDERS without the framerate issues you experienced when you bought the set and tried to play it.

I'm not sure there's much point in upscaling Seasons 2 - 5 when the German blu-ray uses high quality PAL masters.

Upscaling those 540 resolution video files to 720p and then adding the AI film grain to make up for the loss of the original film texture would leave you... pretty much what you'd get with standard bicubic upscaling.

You might as well just take my blu-ray player and play the S4 blu-ray disc.

That said, if your heart is really set on getting California Reich in AI-upscaled 1080p, I will run the job for you.

You know, we seem to have this discussion every 2 - 3 years.

You say that 4:3 TV shows don't play well on 16:9 television screens.

I bring up PowerDVD, a Windows DVD software with non-linear stretching which slightly zooms in on a 4:3 image and then stretches the sides of the image. The branding term Cyberlink Pano Vision: https://www.cyberlink.com/support/faq-c … do?id=1373

You say you'll try it sometime.

You attempt a stretch but use linear-stretching which distorts the image which you comment upon.

I specify that the PowerDVD version uses non-linear stretching.

You say you'll try it some time.

12 - 24 months later, you comment that 4:3 TV shows don't play well on 16:9 television screens and I bring up PowerDVD...

Anyway. PowerDVD is a proprietary, patented software and the Cyberlink Pano Vision algorithm is, I think, patented. This is probably why it was never used back when there was a home video market for originally-SD television shows released to HD.

Javicia Leslie (BATWOMAN) will be on THE FLASH, so that's one show addressed. Hopefully, some of the LEGENDS gang will show up too.

I'm sad that STARGIRL is cancelled, but I feel we could look at it not as a TV show that was cancelled at three seasons, but as a TV event trilogy that had a beginning, a middle and an end.

I like ARROW and THE FLASH a lot (yes, still), but I have to say: there are a number of ARROW seasons and many FLASH seasons that were just hammering out more product on the TV assembly line to sell more units of ad time. STARGIRL wasn't like that. Every season and every episode had a narrative and creative purpose. An insight beyond executing the formula. A point beyond filling a timeslot.

Time has been hard on STARGIRL executive producer and creator Geoff Johns. Actor Ray Fisher (Cyborg in JUSTICE LEAGUE) has accused Johns of racism in calling the Snyder version of Cyborg "an angry black man" and he accused Johns of permitting and enabling Whedon's abuse and harassment on JUSTICE LEAGUE. Johns was effectively fired from Warner Bros. after the Whedon cut of JUSTICE LEAGUE failed at box office. Johns is no longer in a leadership position for DC's films.

Johns was able to keep working on numerous DC movies and shows because he was individually contracted to each project as a consultant (AQUAMAN, SHAZAM, BIRDS OF PREY, WW1984) and as a writer-producer (all the CW and HBO Max DC shows).

Johns didn't respond directly to Fisher's accusations. A Johns-spokesperson said that Johns' comments were standard story and character notes and that racial implications were not intended. My suspicion: I think Johns is probably an okay guy who, like any white person of privilege, has blindspots of sensitivity. I don't believe there is hate in his heart, but there was probably a failure to recognize how his communication with Fisher regarding Cyborg was disrespectful to the lived experience of a black man.

I don't believe that Johns is a Klansman or anything, but I believe Fisher; I believe that Johns spoke poorly and without sensitivity or respect for the relationship that Fisher had with Snyder where Snyder drew on Fisher's lived experience.

I also think that Johns turned a blind eye to Whedon's behaviour: he may have been starstruck by Whedon and misread Whedon's toxic behaviour for sardonic humour (as I certainly have).

Johns has kept his head down since JUSTICE LEAGUE, returning to (lower paid) comic book work and writing FLASHPOINT BEYOND and some creator owned comics, running STARGIRL, serving as "executive producer" on SUPERMAN AND LOIS, DOOM PATROL and TITANS (probably just reviewing scripts, monitoring production, and offering feedback and suggestions and the occasional rewrite if asked).

I believe that STARGIRL represents Geoff Johns and that Geoff Johns is STARGIRL the show (the character of Stargirl is his sister). STARGIRL is heartfelt, inclusive, joyful, warm, loving and kind. I hope that Johns finds a way to make things right with Fisher if he can, and continues to produce good work. That said, I reserve to retract all of the above if more accusations from others come out. Don't let me down, Geoff. Don't be another Whedon. Be good.

James Gunn has been made head of the DC film division.
https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a4183 … s-dc-boss/

Henry Cavill has signed for MAN OF STEEL II, but Zack Snyder won't return to direct. No director or writer have been hired as of yet.
https://screenrant.com/superman-dcu-fut … ames-gunn/

Cavill also resigned from THE WITCHER and will be recast with Liam Hemsworth (brother of Chris).

While David Zaslav has been slashing and burning TV projects and low budget film projects, I can't imagine James Gunn working with DC unless he's been assured that he'll have reasonable blockbuster stability for his projects.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: SLIDERS is fundamentally a sitcom and the best reboot is Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo running a hamburger joint specializing in mini hamburgers. Quinn handles the grill and deep fryer. Wade is the cashier. Rembrandt is the cleaner and inventory organizer. Arturo is the manager. They are the staff of Sliders. This is also the plot of SLIDERS REBORN: Part 6: "Regenesis". (No, really, that is the plot.)

Shortly after this speech, Kevin Smith had a heart attack from which he recovered; he lived to direct THE FLASH another day.

A lot of people will get a COVID vaccination with no perceptible reaction. The vaccine is still working; the immune system of these particular people are is able to incorporate this specific dose of vaccine without raising the 'volume' of the body's defense mechanisms. However, in my case, the pharmacist did warn me that I wouldn't be getting the same protection of a booster as people who waited six months rather than 3.5..