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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.

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.

FLASH's creators assure fans that Oliver's Spectre storyline won't be overturned:
https://www.cbr.com/the-flash-oliver-qu … ow-events/

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?

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.

https://web.archive.org/web/20030719094 … eason4.asp

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

With my lightning fast mind, I only needed 20 hours to realize what you were getting at. Haha!!

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!

Where is this fanfic?! I must read it!

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.

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.

"As Time Goes By" finished. I can report that the AI-upscaled Turbine file looks astonishingly good and well beyond on-the-fly filters for SD upscaling. Topaz has resolved the mild fuzziness and transformed all of the blockiness in the Turbine file into crisp, crystalline detail. Also, the new grain effect prevents the waxy look of earlier upscales.

Turbine has added film grain texture to offset the waxy effect of my previous upscales. I was really impressed by how the Pilot episode, being shot and edited on film, could be AI-restored to 1080p and its original film look thanks to Topaz's new film grain feature. This 720p version of "As Time Goes By" looks as crisp as the film-look of the restored Pilot, although I did have to up the grain layer by 25 percent. I don't think a 1080p upscale would quite as sharp, however, as "As Time Goes By" was shot on film but transferred to 1996-era 540 line videotape.

The AI upscale definitely looks better than the Turbine version on an upscaling TV. The small, blocky texture on the the Turbine image looked nice at living room distance; it looked like film grain. However, the AI has converted that into sharper detail and texture: the grainy approximation of texture has become actual texture for dirt on the ground, for the actors' skin. It captures the sharpness of HD quality at edges, although it still doesn't have the fine detail of a true HD image. The wide shots still have a bit of telltale AI-imprecision although the grain effect has offset it so it doesn't distract. 1080p would probably make the lack detail and the wide shot issues more prominent.

Currently upscaling "Season's Greedings". I don't know if Turbine can this one better than the TV's on-the-fly upscaler, however. Season 3 seems to be using a 1997 digital videotape format for editing and effects that seems to capture even more of the original film's detail in a downscaled state.

It's truly ironic: each subsequent season of SLIDERS seemed to get crisper, sharper and more detailed even as the writing production became clumsier, shoddier and shabbier. The better SLIDERS' image quality became, the less it had to show.

The Universal DVD for Season 1, Episodes 2 - 9 is blurry, smeared and dull and half of the episodes have interlacing issues meaning there are jagged edges on any straight lines. Turbine's blu-ray files for these episodes are even blurrier and more desaturated, but the interlacing has been cleaned up. It looks to me like Episodes 2 - 9 were stored on low-res analog videotape and stretched to the slightly higher resolution of PAL.

Since Turbine uses the PAL masters, those Season 1 episodes have poorer video quality. However, it looks like Turbine's version is interlaced correctly and doesn't have the jagged lines. It looks to me like Universal's home video department misidentified the even and odd fields when authoring their DVDs while Turbine got it right.

I'm going to run an upscale on "As Time Goes By", "Season's Greedings" and "New Gods for Old" just to see if Turbine files gain anything from upscaling files that range from good to really good, and then I'll see if "Summer of Love" turns out well if aiming for the lower hanging target of a good 480p upscale.

I think the ghosting you describe is because your player is American and can't handle the European PAL format correctly. I've copied the blu-ray files to MKV and that distortion is not in the raw files. There isn't ghosting on mine, but I think I just lucked out that this discounted blu-ray player I bought from a refurbished-tech store could adjust for different framerates.

I am in the market for a new tablet. Fast charging has messed up the battery on my old one.

I mostly use my tablet for media consumption. My sister recently had me carry two new televisions into her apartment. "The pandemic's not ending any time soon," she explained. I have a tablet for the same reason; I sometimes go months without turning on my actual TV.

I have gotten a lot out of my Samsung Tab A7 since 2021, a cheap Android tablet with a 10.4 inch screen and limited processing power (midrange processor, 3GB of RAM) that's adequate for movies and TV and ebooks -- but it's been having some issues. The main problem: the battery capacity has dropped severely in the last eight months. It used to last for ten hours of video playback; now it makes it to about three.

The reason: well, I've reviewed the battery logs and the battery capacity began to fall severely starting in March 2022. This is at the time I read an article saying that fast charging doesn't damage battery capacity because tablets can regulate the incoming electricity, so I enabled fast charging, happy to have my tablet go from 50 - 100 percent inside an hour.

And over the last eight months, my tablet went to 30 percent of its original longevity. It's pretty clear to me that just because a tablet *can* regulate fast charging doesn't mean it actually will; the increased heat of fast charging has damaged the battery. The heat also seems to have slightly warped the metal frame; when looked at the side, it looks like it's bent in the center.

The screen has also developed a peculiar fault where the left side has a strip of space that is brighter than the rest of the screen. The LCD backlight seems to have been damaged by the heat.

Anyway. I'm going to sell off the A7 for around a hundred bucks USD, take advantage of a Boxing Day sale, and buy a heavily discounted Samsung Tab S7 FE, a tablet with a massive 12.4 inch screen and 12 hours of video playback. If I switch on the charge limiter and keep it to slow charging, this tablet should last me at least five years for media consumption and ideally, a decade.

Even with a discount, this tablet cost a little more than what I think anyone should really spend on a tablet. I thought about spending less on the Samsung Tab A8, a 10.5 inch Android tablet, but I decided to get the S7 FE for a little more money because it's unlikely I'll ever look at a 12.4 inch tablet and feel tempted to upgrade to a bigger screen.

The new tablet arrives in the mail in two days along with a tempered glass screen protector. The case apparently has to be shipped from South Korea, so I'll probably keep the tablet confined to carpeted rooms until the armour arrives. This tablet has to last forever.

Let this be a lesson: fast charging is not as safe as all those fawning tech articles make it out to be.

It's weird. I was watching NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST, a 2008 film, on DVD and on a very average 55 inch TV. Scaled and converted from from 480 to 1080, the image looked a bit blocky and with jagged edges at first, but then the TV switched to DVD-specific settings that I hadn't realized were there.

The TV increased the contrast at the edges and boosted the contrast and colour levels so that blacks looked darker and then applied a grain reduction filter that managed to smooth out the blockiness while maintaining some of the film grain and any blur was offset by the sharpening.

I don't generally put a lot of stock in these enhancements and I haven't watched any DVDs in awhile, but I was struck by how NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST, when stretched to 1080 pixels high and lightly denoised and contrast & colour boosted -- well, it looked like some of the better AI upscales of SLIDERS.

It didn't look like an HD transfer of NICk AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST, it didn't have the crystal sharpness of a real HD image, but it was dizzyingly adequate, smoothed out without being waxy or blurry or with the AI watercolour effect on long shots. Which, once more, has me wondering if AI upscaling is a lot of CPU cycles for very modest gains.

I'm currently in the process of converting SLIDERS REBORN, which my therapist described as the equivalent of a graduate school thesis, into ePub format. I've blocked off some time over the holidays to get it all done. One of the ideas in the story is "Teslanium", a concept created by the brilliant Nigel G. Mitchell who helped me world-build an alt-Earth where the global water supply has been contaminated by a toxic fuel substance created by Elon Musk. This featured in Part 3 of SLIDERS REBORN.

Nigel offered the name and I referred to Musk because, back in 2015, I was under the impression that Musk was a diligent, ambitious, self-driven engineer with a desire for positive social and technology change as opposed to being Donald Trump with a crappy car company. I referred to Musk because Nigel's Teslanium seemed to provide reference to Musk's Tesla cars even though Nigel was, of course, referring to revolutionary scientist (and later madman) Nikola Tesla.

Given Musk's trajectory to becoming a deranged alt-right loon...

I actually find it fitting that "Teslanium" turns out to be a toxic substance in SLIDERS REBORN that poisoned an entire Earth; and I had a throwaway line in Part 6 where the sliders have, between Parts 5 and 6, found a way to remove Teslanium from that Earth's water. However, I'm no longer willing to use Musk's name or anything tangentially connected to this man in my writing. I've removed the reference to his name and I'm going to rename the "Teslanium" to be "Newtonium".

May God and Nigel G. Mitchell forgive me.

It looks to me like the Season 4 vortex was a victim of shrinkflation.

The Season 1 vortex had flowing lines of energy that indicated the specific direction of the vortex and had a transparency at the edges that required blending into and warping the image of the surroundings. The silver glow effect required multiple layers of composition and animation for both the perimeter of the vortex and the internal body as well as rendering the vortex at different angles. The Season 1 vortex was effectively a rippling hole in the skin of reality, often resembling a bubble that was partially bursting to allow entry.

The Season 2 vortex, however, reduced the transparency ripple at the perimeter severely while the silver light was now filled in with blue. This appeared to be, in some ways, a cost or time saving measure. It was no longer necessary to blend the vortex into the shot with lens distortion effects because the transparency was reduced and the interior of the vortex was now filled with blue light rather than a transparent silver. The Season 2 vortex was less an aberration in reality and more a doorway to wonder.

The Season 3 vortex benefitted from a higher special effects allocation: the animation of the water-whirlpool effect of the vortex was far more intricate and detailed than the first two seasons. The silver colour of Season 1 was restored and and a thin level of transparent edge distortion. Also, the lines of energy charging into the vortex took on a more nebulous but varied and denser; it looked less like straight lines and more like flowing water.

So what happened with the Season 4 vortex? Like the Season 2 vortex, they simplified it. They simplified the perimeter: the transparent edge effect was only present on specific shots, so there was now no effort to blend the vortex into the surrounding shot.

They simplified the body of the animation: rather than lines of energy or a mass of flowing water, it was now a rotating spiral of cloudy energy composed of grainy dots, an effect that, if nothing else, was captured well by the grainy format of the 16mm film of the Sci-Fi Channel years.

And with so little animation and a vaguely defined body texture and no transparency blending, the vortex in silver-blue would have just looked like a blurry coin or a puddle on the video, so to fill in an otherwise blank void, they made it a hypersaturated blue and green designed to contrast against the shots because they no longer had the time, money or inclination to blend and coordinate the vortex to match the shots.

It's rather sad because the vortex is a vital part of SLIDERS' iconography: the timer, the basement, the wise Professor, the funny soul singer, the sweet shorthaired girl, the flannel clad boy genius, and the rippling, glowing tear in reality that is a gateway to adventure. But by Season 4, the gateway looked less like a tunnel and more like somebody spilled blueberry Gatorade on the lens.

I am a Gatorade Zero person myself.

Oh my God, please do not tell me you're still obsessed with some comic book series from the late 90s. Now, returning to my obsession with some TV show from the late 90s:

I think part of the distinction between DOOM PATROL and SLIDERS is the kind of drugs at play here. I am not the person to impose sobriety on anyone; while I haven't been inebriated since... I think 2011? I never find fault with people for using chemicals as they see fit; I myself take a lot of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, herbal supplements, fiber supplements and fish oils for energy, vision and gastrointestinal maintenance.

That said, there are some drugs that are ultimately debilitating and designed to suppress life and biological function and David Peckinpah was addicted to them and they killed him. SLIDERS was being made on cocaine and heroin, drugs that, in their function and usage by Peckinpah, were antithetical to life.

In contrast, Grant Morrison's drugs of choice were about mind expansion and perspective: they took marijuana, mushrooms, acid and other hallucinogens, but while physical pleasure was a part of it, it was also about stepping outside empirical reality and exploring perceptual and emotional reality which they then put into their writing. In contrast, David Peckinpah's use of drugs was to take him away from writing.

DOOM PATROL benefitted from a somewhat the psychedelic perspective that Morrison brought to it whereas SLIDERS did not benefit from Peckinpah numbing himself to his grief and tragedy. In addition, I don't believe that Morrison's hallucinogens were physically addictive whereas Peckinpah lost control of his body and his mind and his life and his TV show.

I guess it's fair to say that Grant Morrison warped DOOM PATROL as much as David Peckinpah twisted SLIDERS, but Grant Morrison arguably brought new life to DOOM PATROL that continues to this day whereas Peckinpah killed SLIDERS and buried it deep. After that, however, Peckinpah killed himself, so I am disinclined to hold a grudge at this point.

It's interesting because DOOM PATROL was, like SLIDERS, an underperforming property. DC Comics, like FOX, cancelled it, but it had a following and DOOM PATROL, like SLIDERS, kept finding its way back into the publishing/broadcasting schedule. And DC decided to make DOOM PATROL a more conventional superhero action series just like FOX decided to make SLIDERS a more conventional sci-fi action series.

The results were mediocre at best, and then DC and FOX decided to take a strange turn with DOOM PATROL and SLIDERS into body horror, sexual savagery, an extremely in-depth (and confusing) mythology that was initiated by one writer and then overwritten and rewritten by a subsequent writer and then another writer after that.

Both DOOM PATROL and SLIDERS became taken over by creators who were deeply invested in drug culture and writing DOOM PATROL and SLIDERS as a response to their use of drugs. Both DOOM PATROL and SLIDERS became frightening, upsetting, confusing, disorientingly out of sync with their previous incarnations and deeply disturbing.

However, DOOM PATROL was great and SLIDERS was a disaster. I will try to figure out why later.

I guess you could say that writer Grant Morrison destroyed the Doom Patrol, but it could be argued that he destroyed it to save it. There would be no DOOM PATROL television show if Morrison hadn't changed the series from a lighthearted, somewhat peculiar superhero adventure into psychological body horror.

The comics where DOOM PATROL took a turn into darker territory and tore down its characters are regarded as the high point of the series with very high quality scripts and artwork. I don't think anyone would consider the script or direction of, say, "The Breeder", to reflect any quality.

I'm personally a bit mixed on DOOM PATROL's shift into darkness. Morrison's reinvention has stood the test of time with most subsequent writers building on his foundation and with the DOOM PATROL television series (and their brief appearance in TITANS) drawing on Morrison's version of the team. Maybe he did the right thing even if I personally take issue with it.

The original Doom Patrol debuted in MY GREATEST ADVENTURE from writer-creator Arnold Drake. Drake was a great writer who presented the Doom Patrol as goodhearted, optimistic misfits: a racecar driver with a huge heart trapped in a robot body (Robotman). A fighter pilot who thrived on physical adventure trapped in a form of "negative" energy (Negative Man). A movie star actress in a body that now stretched and contorted into grotesque forms (Elasti-Girl). All three of them had been caught in bizarre accidents (a car crash, a flight crash, exposure to toxic chemicals) that had warped their bodies into these new forms.

All three of them had been recruited by a heroic genius in a wheelchair (the Chief) to form the Doom Patrol superhero team. All three of them fighting other outcasts who hadn't coped with their situation as well as the Doom Patrol.

Drake wrote great stories and created incredible villains. But MY GREATEST ADVENTURE, later DOOM PATROL, didn't really set the world on fire with sales and didn't become a cultural phenomenon. After a decent run of 41 issues, the 1968 issue of DOOM PATROL #121 killed the team off in a heroic sacrifice to save a small village.

Why did DOOM PATROL fail where X-MEN succeeded? Well, X-MEN didn't actually succeed in its 1963 run either! X-MEN limped to seven years with the original run of Xavier, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Angel and Beast; it wasn't until the 1975 revival with Angel and Beast swapped out for Wolverine, Storm and Nightcrawler that the X-Men took off in sales. The teen X-Men were too bland; the older and more conflicted newcomers were more compelling.

DOOM PATROL was a good book, but it was arguably not as good as it could have been. Arnold Drake wrote the Doom Patrol as winning, positive personalities with occasional flashes of the body horror and despair suggested by Robotman, Negative Man and Elasti-Woman's situations. The Chief was a reliable, brilliant hero; everyone seemed mostly happy. DOOM PATROL didn't make itself as unique as its characters and concept suggested.

DOOM PATROL was often a very straightforward superhero series, albeit an extremely charismatic, memorable, inventive and fun read. It was probably as good as it could be in a time when storytelling in comics had to be kept simple for readers who might not be able to get every issue, for broad newsstand distribution, for DC's audience being children and young teenagers. The 1968 finale seemed to be the end of the line.

In 1977, writer Paul Kupperberg sought to revive DOOM PATROL. Kupperberg used stories in the SHOWCASE anthology title to reveal that Robotman had survived the explosion that had supposedly killed the team back in 1968. Kupperberg created a new team of original characters joining Robotman to form a new Doom Patrol... and it wasn't great. Kupperberg wrote this new Doom Patrol as a completely generic superhero team run by superheroine Celsius, the previously unknown wife of the Chief.

Due to delays and low sales, DC didn't approve and print a Kupperberg DOOM PATROL series until 1987. The Doom Patrol under Kupperberg were basically the Avengers or a lower profile Justice League; they had none of the original Doom Patrol's eccentricity and all the generic aspects of the team had been amplified.

Kupperberg later blogged about his revival, saying he had changed Doom Patrol to be more like any other superhero team, realizing only later that he'd taken away what made them unique. In all fairness, original creator Arnold Drake often wrote Doom Patrol like any other superhero team with small nods to their peculiarities; Kupperberg took a property that was 80 percent AVENGERS and 20 percent TWIN PEAKS and made it 100 percent AVENGERS. Kupperberg wrote that he met Arnold Drake long after his revival and that he apologized to Drake.

Drake shrugged it off, patted Kupperberg on the shoulder and assured Kupperberg all was forgiven.

The original Doom Patrol had been interesting but occasionally too bland; Kupperberg had made Doom completely bland. Neither version really landed in the public consciousness and Doom Patrol was likely to fade away except writer Grant Morrison took over from Kupperberg starting with #19 of the revival. Kupperberg killed off his original characters to give Morrison a clean slate.

Morrison brought the Chief and Negative Man back to join Robotman but left Elasti-Girl dead. Morrison introduced the character of Crazy Jane, a woman with 64 separate personalities with each having a separate superpower. Morrison changed the cheery tone of the original Chief/Robotman/Negative Man team to all three being more depressed and bleak, especially with Crazy Jane in the mix. Morrison highlighted how the Doom Patrol were troubled, damaged, broken people whose damage sometimes manifested as superpowers useful for investigating 'weird' crime and bizarre supervillains who were engineering the collapse of reality itself.

Morrison also changed the Chief significantly. Arnold Drake's Chief had once been a warm father figure and a genius. He could be bad tempered and impatient when under stress, but he was ultimately a good guy. He was Temporal Flux. He was Professor Arturo. He was Dad. With Morrison, the Chief remained a genius, but he was now distant and cold to Robotman, strangely indifferent to the previous version of the Doom Patrol being killed, and his interest in the Doom Patrol's enemies seemed more about co-opting their powers rather than stopping them from harm. Arnold Drake's Chief was focused on using the Doom Patrol to save lives; Morrison's Chief didn't seem to care.

This change in character was, however, justified by the events of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS the previous year which had destroyed and rebuilt the DC Universe and its history in a new timeline; this new Chief did not necessarily have the same history or character as the original.

Morrison's final arc revealed: the Chief had secretly engineered the race car accident, plane crash and toxic exposure that had turned Cliff Steele into Robotman, Larry Trainor into Negative Man and Rita Farr into Elasti-Girl. He had deliberately set out to mutilate them, curious to know what kind of "freaks" these formerly photogenic, popular figures would become. He had always despised them, regarded them as shallow and narcissistic.

Morrison also revealed that the Chief had also arranged for the 1968 explosion that had killed off the entire team (until they were brought back to life); the Chief had gotten bored with the Doom Patrol, only to become annoyed when the ex-wife he'd abandoned took over his team and legacy and he used her death to regain control. The Chief only allowed the Doom Patrol to learn the truth just when the Chief was about to unleash a nanobot apocalypse upon Earth that would cause Doom Patrol-style mutations across the entire human race.

The arc ended with the Doom Patrol defeating the Chief and decapitating him.

The blatant retcons of the Chief are upsetting to me because I loved the original Chief. The revisions to the Doom Patrol's origins are, to me, offensive and completely out of sync with Arnold Drake's original DOOM PATROL issues. But... Drake actually retconned himself frequently, writing continuity inserts where Robotman had a period of violent instability before the Chief stablized his mind, inserts that didn't fit into Drake's own previous issues.

Later stories have largely maintained Morrison's run. The subsequent Rachel Pollock run kept the Chief's decapitated head alive and offered him a chance for redemption before he met with a final death, concluding this iteration of DOOM PATROL in 1995.

In the 2001, there was another DOOM PATROL revival from the brilliant John Arcudi where Robotman joined a reality TV show of people trying to use the Doom Patrol team name as the brand had fallen out of use; this fun comedy series did a few sequels to the Morrison/Pollock stories. The sales were not great, but it was a highly enjoyable story with a strong ending and an epilogue to the Morrison/Pollock era.

In 2004, DOOM PATROL was rebooted entirely after another CRISIS-continuity restart, and writer-artist John Byrne had the Chief recruit Robotman, Negative Man and Elasti-Girl for the 'first' time. Most people hate the Byrne run. I thought it was okay. A subsequent CRISIS, however, restored the original continuity of the series in an interesting way: the latest CRISIS causes the rebooted Chief, Robotman, Negative Man and Elasti-Girl suddenly find memories of all their previous adventures (and deaths) returning to them.

The Doom Patrol next appeared in Geoff Johns' TITANS as guest-stars, declaring that their history from the Morrison/Pollock run had been reinstated; the entire timeline, including the reboot, were merged into a single history (although some areas remained vague). Robotman, Negative Man and Elasti-Girl had forgiven the Chief for causing their origin stories; it was explained that the Chief (who is somehow alive after his death in DOOM PATROL #95) found remnants of Elast-Girl's elastic form after the 1968 explosion and was able to "regrow" her back to wholeness. He presented saving Elasti-Girl as his apology to the team.

In 2009, the excellent Keith Giffen had a 22 issue run of DOOM PATROL with the rebooted-memory-restored team. Giffen told terrific 'weird-superhero' stories and made lavish use of the Morrison/Pollock stories with the Chief remaining a manipulative and dangerous leader. There were also two issues devoted to the odd continuity situation: Robotman recalls his entire history with the team and his joy when Elasti-Girl finally turned up alive.

Unfortunately, Giffen's run on DOOM PATROL was cut short at #22 before he could ever explain how the Chief went from being a decapitated head who died to a (relatively) restored human body again between 1995 and 2004.

The New 52 reboot in 2011 seemed to once again erase the entire Doom Patrol and restart them. The new Doom Patrol appeared in Geoff Johns' JUSTICE LEAGUE series with the Chief leading the Kupperberg team -- with the Kupperberg characters being killed off in their first appearance. They were treated as cannon fodder in the JUSTICE LEAGUE: FOREVER EVIL crossover. However, their appearance ended with the Chief seeking a new team, presumably Robotman, Negative Man and Elasti-Girl who showed up later in JUSTICE LEAGUE again.

Then we come to the Gerard Way (UMBRELLA ACADEMY)  revival of DOOM PATROL which debuted after the DC REBIRTH story altered DC continuity again where the pre-New 52 continuity starts merging with the New 52 history. The Gerard Way incarnation of DOOM PATROL follows this and is set after the events of the Keith Giffen run while folding in the John-stories as recent events. However, there have been some hints that Gerard Way's series is set in a different continuity from other DC books.

Ultimately, Grant Morrison changing DOOM PATROL from lighthearted adventure to dark body horror has, fairly or unfairly, stood the test of time.

Making the Chief a villain was... a peculiar turn, to put it mildly. In some ways, it was the equivalent of revealing that Professor Arturo deliberately got the sliders lost in the universe by sabotaging Quinn's timer and then faked his own death, then allied himself with the Kromaggs as their spy, then arranged for Wade to be sent to a Kromagg rape camp, then hired Oberon Geiger to trap Quinn in Mallory's body just because he found Quinn annoying.

However, Morrison's storylines and arcs were extremely well-received and have come to define the Doom Patrol. Why is that?

First, it's doubtful that the DC-Vertigo indie comics readership who thrilled to Morrison's writing in 1989 had read the original Arnold Drake issues from from 26 years in the past at a time when reprints and trade paperbacks of underperforming comics were hard to find.

Second: before Morrison, the Doom Patrol concept wasn't reaching its full potential; its more optimistic stories were also blander and too close to other superheroes. Morrison emphasized all the things that made the Doom Patrol different, creating a version of the Doom Patrol that doubled down on the most original asepcts of the original concept.

Morrison's Doom Patrol could actually be distinct from other superhero teams like the X-Men or the Avengers or the Fantastic Four or the Legends of Tomorrow or Team Flash or Team Supergirl. This is the version that has been adapted and sold to television. This is the version ongoing in the Gerard Way series. In contrast, the original Doom Patrol was perhaps not sufficiently distinct from its competitors. It could be argued that Morrison had to break the Doom Patrol in order to save it.

Personally, I don't mind the idea of putting the Doom Patrol in darker stories and circumstances, but my preference is to leave the characters alone. We wouldn't turn Peter Parker (Spider-Man) into a mime who takes a vow of silence; his defining characteristic is his verbal humour. We wouldn't turn Bruce Wayne (Batman) into a deadly gunslinger. (Well. We wouldn't do those things permanently.) But it was apparently okay to turn the Chief from a heroic figure who believed that extraordinary personalities emerged from extraordinary adversity into a twisted supervillain who believed in mutilating people to satisfy his curiosity.

To be fair, Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne never had sales so low that their comics got cancelled. It could be argued that Arnold Drake's Chief was not memorable enough to endure. Timothy Dalton wouldn't have been interested in playing Arnold Drake's Chief; he wanted to play Grant Morrison's Chief. That said, the TV show has found a middle ground for Morrison's Chief: he has done terrible and downright evil things, but he did them to protect one person rather than out of morbid and uncaring curiosity.

I accept that Morrison's new version of the Chief and the Doom Patrol's history were justified by CRISIS changing continuity. And I accept that Morrison's Doom Patrol team was an unforgettable masterpiece whereas Arnold Drake's Doom Patrol team was... written professionally and enjoyable to read, but would probably be forgotten if Morrison hadn't revised it. In contrast, David Peckinpah broke SLIDERS just to break it.