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2022-05-15 16:29:47

pilight wrote:

Why not Kari?

I would like to wager that Tracy Torme doesn't even know who Kari is.

2022-05-13 17:13:32

While media casually refers to any property returning after a long hiatus to be a "reboot," there are actually multiple categories of IP relaunches:

Reboot
A reboot is where the continuity starts over again with no acknowledgement of previous productions, and the term is drawn from turning off a computer system and turning it back on. Reboots include THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB (2020), BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (2012) and THE PRISONER (2009).

THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB would not have benefited from actresses in their 40s reprising roles they played 20 - 25 years previous to have their characters resume jobs they held as adolescents. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST was unlikely to secure Ron Pearlman and Linda Hamilton to reprise their roles in a TV sequel, so recasting and starting over made sense, as did rebuilding the entire concept of the show (a highly civilized lady police officer and a savage warrior fighting crime) in the context of 2012 society. Rebooting both made sense and I would call these two examples of successful reboots.

However, THE PRISONER reboot is my example of a failed reboot where the PRISONER reboot eliminated nearly every point of distinction about the original 1960s show. The original show was defined by characters known by number instead of name, a strong espionage-conspiracy thirller concept, a daring action-adventure formula and a acidically satirical vein of social commentary. The reboot had characters known by name, no spy elements, little action, no adventure and no social satire at all; it wasn't THE PRISONER except in name.

I would say that reboots are successful when the concept and character templates (if not the characters themselves) can be reintepreted and rebuilt to be relevant to the present day and market. Batman has been relentlessly rebooted and can be made darker or lighter as needed for each era. However, reboots fail when the concept is out of step with the needs of the audience or if the production is incompetent or if the reboot is so disconnected from the original that it may as well not use the same name.

Revival
A revival is where the production is set in the original continuity as a sequel to the original production. THE X-FILES, GILMORE GIRLS, SAVED BY THE BELL, PUNKY BREWSTER, GIRL MEETS WORLD and SCREAM all benefitted from being revived when the stars of these properties were working actors and the right age to play older versions of their original characters. They also benefitted from their original storylnes being extremely opportune for sequels.

However, THE X-FILES was a creative failure because despite being a revival, it contradicted or ignored its original (and unfinished) storylines and failed to bring Mulder and Scully to the next stage in their personal and professional relationships the way the other revivals listed above did for their cast. THE X-FILES didn't accomplish the goals of a revival, instead skipping back and forth between ignoring continuity and tying into it, and the results were confusingly impenetrable.

I would say that revivals are successful when the original storylines and characters benefit from resumed exploration, but they fail if the original storylines are too dense, contradictory or confusing for a casual audience who may not have seen or remember the original. They also fall apart if the revival doesn't feel like a new chapter of the original.

THE X-FILES was a peculiar case where the original storylines were too dense, contradictory and confusing for the *writer* attempting to produce a sequel that didn't require the audience to remember much; the writer ended up confusing both the long-time fan and the unfamiliar viewer. And THE X-FILES also put Mulder and Scully exactly where they had been back in the 90s; despite the age of the actors, they felt like they hadn't made any progress.

Rebootquel
A rebootquel is where the continuity starts over but acknowledges the previous productions through time travel. Examples include the STAR TREK 2009 movie and TERMINATOR GENYSIS.

I'd say STAR TREK's rebootquel series was a mixed bag. The first movie was strong, enabling long-time fans to accept an altered continuity while being accessible to new fans. The second movie, however, got hopelessly entangled in continuity and callbacks that were obnoxious and clumsy for long-time fans and nonsensical to new fans. The third one was a strong action story that unfortunately couldn't overcome the audience's dismay with the second movie and make enough money in ticket sales.

And TERMINATOR GENYSIS was truly puzzling and counterintuitive; it rewound back to the 1984 time period of the original movie, but then cast off the 1984 setting as quickly as it could, rendering the rebootquel approach pointless.

This tells me that for a rebootquel to be effective, it needs to embrace the specific time period to which the franchise is rewinding but also embrace that it is a new story, not a remake or sequel to an old story.

Deboot
A deboot is where the continuity rewinds itself to a previous installment and ignores some previous sequels but not the original and possibly a select number of sequels. Examples include TERMINATOR: DARK FATE, HALLOWEEN (2018) and others.

HALLOWEEN's new movies ignore all but the first film; TERMINATOR: DARK FATE ignores all but the first two. HALLOWEEN's sequels were a strong distillation of the original concept and an effective update for a new era. TERMINATOR: DARK FATE was... I liked it well enough, but ticket sales were poor and it's possible that after two bad sequels, an unfinished TV show and long periods where the TERMINATOR franchise had been absent, the audience had atrophied.

In this case, a deboot is an exercise in reverting to the original storytelling template after numerous deviations. HALLOWEEN succeeded because the back to basics, non-supernatural horror of the first film had been lost with the sequels becoming increasingly magical; the deboot felt like a return to form. In contrast, the original TERMINATOR and each sequel had generally featured humans on the run from robots and TERMINATOR: DARK FATE, despite being a deboot, was more of the same and the audience had tired of it and stopped going.

In Conclusion
Reboots: Effective when the concept is timeless but the original storylines don't necessarily need sequels.

Revivals: Effective when the characters and storylines of a past TV show benefit from new exploration and can be made relevant in the present day.

Rebootquels: Effective when the franchise has a large audience but also impenetrably dense continuity in need of a new entry point for casual viewers.

Deboots: Effective when the concept has been distorted and a return to the original idea is welcome.

2022-05-13 17:10:01

NAOMI has been cancelled on the CW, that's another DC property ending on a cliffhanger like LEGENDS (a hard cliffhanger) and BATWOMAN (a soft cliffhanger). NAOMI wasn't in the Arrowverse, though, so I'd been waiting for it to finish so I could watch it all in a few days.

ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO was also cancelled despite having yet to finish airing its fourth season (already filmed). CHARMED has been cancelled with four episodes still left to air. Both shows were from CBS (although WB had a partial production role for ROSWELL). I think, very simply, the CW wasn't earning enough money from these shows as their audiences were primarily streamers which makes money for WB and CBS but not for the CW itself -- which is an issue when WB and CBS are seeking to sell the CW, likely to Nexstar. CW can't keep airing shows that earn money for former owners but not itself and its future owners.

Some accounts claim that the studios (WB, CBS and Berlanti) wouldn't renew but that CW wanted to; it's likely that CW would have sought reduced broadcast licensing fees for final seasons of NAOMI, BATWOMAN, ROSWELL and CHARMED to keep the live broadcast viewers they had (even though it's likely a small number). The CW doesn't really have fans; it's the Arrowverse and CHARMED and ROSWELL that have fans. They wouldn't have wanted to alienate whatever audience they had. But the licensing fees for these shows were probably already low.

It's hard to make the economics work when the CW was a perpetual loss leader for the WB-CBS parent company that's now selling it off.

Creatively and financially, I think the best bet is for THE FLASH Season 9 to offer one extra episode to each of the cancelled ARROWVERSE shows and NAOMI that guest-stars a FLASH character.

2022-05-12 18:23:39

I think most people in this world have better things to do than take screenshots of "Double Cross" and upscale them to higher resolution and upload them to IMGbb for you. I think people have lives outside of SLIDERS.

... how I envy them.

That said, these didn't turn out great; there isn't a lot of detail even in the PAL 540i masters and upscaling them from 540 pixels high to 3240 pixels high hasn't done a lot to improve them.

2022-05-11 15:07:29

In 2000, Temporal Flux said that SLIDERS would have its time again. I believed him then. It's now 2022 and 22 years later, I still believe him and think that we're 22 years closer to TF being right.

**

Seasons 3 - 5 of SLIDERS suffered from two areas. The first is that SLIDERS from 1994 - 2000 was produced at a time when television was not taken very seriously as an art form. The second is that the creators did not treat the sliders like friends.

In the 90s, TV was filler between commercials. There was no way to present shows on a home video market when NTSC VHS cassettes could only store four hours of standard definition video. Shows would be syndicated if sufficient episodes were made, but the concern there was again, quantity for more commercials. Quality was a ninth or tenth place priority. TV was not required to be a captivating visual product or a model of capable screenwriting. And because VHS recording was glitchy and you had to be in front of a TV at the same time each week to follow a show, the average viewer only watched maybe one-quarter of each season's episodes.

As a result, the people who made television were not particularly aware of the artform's impact on the audience. It was only in the 2000s that psychology entering the mainstream made it clear to the majority of TV creators: audiences relate to TV characters like they are friends. Following a TV show regularly triggers the same brain activity produced by seeing a dear acquaintance or beloved family member.

The average 1990s-era TV producer did not understand this; wasn't aware of this. To them, SLIDERS was 'only' a TV show; they didn't realize that executing Professor Arturo so horrifically was like killing our dad in front of us; didn't see that raping Wade Welles was like raping our baby sister. They weren't supporting murder and rape; they didn't see it as murder and rape because it wasn't real.

I don't believe there are many producers working in TV today who are unaware that TV characters are like friends to the viewer and so long as whoever reboots SLIDERS is emotionally invested in the characters and has the storytelling and production skill to run a TV show effectively, we'll be in a good place.

But of course, a creator can be overinvested. Going back to MACGYVER (sorry): the fourth season is a perfect example of creators becoming too confident in their character. From Seasons 2 - 3, MACGYVER's creators had thrown MacGyver into impossible situation upon impossible situation: having to scale a mountain with a shoelace, having to quench thirst with only contaminated water, having to recharge a solar panel that had been buried underground, having to pass through a nuclear disaster zone with no radiation shielding.

MacGyver triumphed again and again; the creators believed in MacGyver, believed that MacGyver's ingenuity and cleverness could solve any problem and then they had him take a run at global warming and MacGyver was defeated by the fact that MACGYVER is not real life and only a TV show.

I admit, I'd rather SLIDERS' failures be from being too passionate about the characters instead of being uncaring.

(I can't promise not to bring the MACGYVER reboot up again while we talk about reboots.)

2022-05-09 16:47:38

Thank God.

**

As for reboots -- I think it's simply a matter of doing them poorly or doing them well. Quality in writing, acting, cinematography, production, editing, season-long arc, characterization, social commentary and relevance are more important than whether or not the series is a revival of a pre-existing property or an original creation. Reboots can benefit from the mythic stature of their previous existence.

There is a certain weight, importance and cultural iconography to having MacGyver disarm a land mine with a paper clip that can't be replicated with an original character.

I would say that the CBS reboot of MACGYVER shows reboots at the worst (in the first season) and their best (in the second to fourth season) and their most mediocre (also in the fourth season)

MACGYVER's first season opened with a shallow recreation of MACGYVER's schtick from the 1985 now presented in 2016 and it looked clumsy and dated. MacGyver creates smoke bombs from cleaning chemicals, fingerprint equipment from office supplies -- which now makes him look unprepared in not simply bringing pocket-sized spy gear like smoke bombs and fingerprinting equipment in advance.

In addition, the 2015 reboot saddled MacGyver with an aggressive partner to handle the physical fight scenes and gunplay (which made MacGyver's supposed pacifist philosophy meaningless as he was just having an associate use violence) and a hacker teammate (which made MacGyver's encyclopedic knowledge unnecessary). Why was this show even on the air when MacGyver's brand of espionage was dated, ineffective and irrelevant? Because MACGYVER was a recognizable trademark and brand name.

But by the end of the first season, MACGYVER finally figured out how to make MacGyver's character work. MACGYVER finally realized that MacGyver couldn't just be sent into spy missions to retrieve MacGuffins or arrest villains; MacGyver was instead best as a problem solver.

MacGyver had to impersonate an assassin and perform assassinations and supply proof of death without actually murdering anybody; had to navigate in and out of a collapsed building with no exits and all his equipment lost; had to find a way to fly a plane without fuel to a distant landing zone; had to save a capsizing ship at sea without ever setting foot aboard. The show finally understood that MacGyver didn't benefit from simple spy missions but impossible problems that the character had to solve. As a result, MacGyver's brand of improvised solutions now felt modern and relevant and MacGyver was suited to facing down present day problems.

And MACGYVER then bit off more than it could chew: Season 4 sent MacGyver up against an unsolvable problem, the crisis of climate change where MacGyver was fighting ecoterrorists and forced to concede that MacGyver and his team were fighting on the wrong side (even though the ecoterrorists were certainly not the right side). It was riveting, gripping and ripped from the headlines. MacGyver, reviewing developments on climate change, had a crisis of faith in his mission and a nervous breakdown, fearing that the terrorists could be right to try to kill 90 per cent of the human population.

How could MacGyver triumph against fossil fuels and a depleted ozone layer and the inertia of human impact on a damaged planet?

Season 4 ended with MacGyver defeating the ecoterrorists from triggering a population-reducing catastrophe and then making a presentation to Washington lawmakers on the climate crisis which... I guess... solved climate change? Because MacGyver never mentioned it again and this 'solution' (a stirring speech and a secret dossier about impending global catastrophe) were apparently all that was needed?

This conclusion to Season 4 did not work. This did not work at all. Season 5 felt truly awkward with MacGyver not dealing with that ecological nervous breakdown of Season 4. There was no on camera explanation for why MacGyver wasn't worried about climate change any more.

(The only rationalization I can offer: the COVID-19 pandemic is said to have happened between Season 4 and Season 5. It's possible that MacGyver was heartened by how during the 2020 lockdowns, ecological damage began reversing itself and this buoyed him up for Season 5 and we never saw him deal with the climate crisis again because the show didn't make it to Season 6.)

However, none of these victories or successes had too much to do with MACGYVER being a reboot. Yes, Season 1 was a reboot of a 1980s property that was painfully outdated in 2015, but that was less about MacGyver's gimmick being 30 years old and more a failure to craft stories that were specifically challenging to the MacGyver character. Then MACGYVER succeeded by presenting MacGyver as a problem solver rather than merely a spy and the series began giving him increasingly impossible problems to solve.

Then MACGYVER failed because it threw MacGyver into problem of the climate emergency which was something MacGyver, being a fictional character, could not actually solve (and his 'solution' in the show was nonsensical).

Quality is far more important than whether or not the property is a revival or an original.

2022-05-08 14:48:02

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Haha, your money is no good here. I'll get it done

Four months later, Slider_Quinn21 has yet to review the DEXTER mini-series and tell me what he thinks of it. I think I know what the problem is. I set the price too low. $20 USD was simply not enough. Slider_Quinn21, I now offer you $25 American dollars to watch the DEXTER mini-series and tell us what you thought of it!

2022-05-08 13:55:57

QuinnSlidr wrote:

Dr. Soong on Star Trek...Dr. Seong on Quantum Leap...they just don't even try to be creative anymore do they? I can imagine the writer's meeting:
"Just replace one o with an 'e'. Nobody will know the difference."

What a ridiculously racist, white-centric post.

The actor Raymond Lee is South Korean. The name of his character is Dr. Ben Seong. Seong is a South Korean name. Your accusation that the name "Seong" must be stolen from a white American's fictional character is patently absurd; the name "Seong" appears in Korean history as early as 1418. STAR TREK debuted in 1966, "Space Seed" featuring Khan Noonien Singh aired in 1967, "Datalore" which first introduced Dr. Noonian Soong as Data's creator aired in 1988.

Gene Roddenberry's characters of Dr. Noonian Soong (STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION) and Khan Noonien Singh (STAR TREK ORIGINAL SERIES) were drawing on the name "Kim Noonien Wang," the name of a Chinese pilot whom Roddenberry befriended during his time in the Army Air Corps; Roddenberry changed "Kim" to a Muslim name, "Khan," and altered "Wang" to "Singh," a Sikh name. Later, Roddenberry referred to his friend again with the character name of "Noonian Soong," altering the spelling of Noonien to use an A and using an unusual transliteration of the Chinese name Sung to "Soong."

It is stupid, ignorant and racist for you to claim that "Dr. Ben Seong", a Korean character with a Korean name played by a Korean actor is somehow stealing from white writer Gene Roddenberry.

It is stupid, ignorant and racist for you to declare that a Korean surname that has existed since the fifteenth century is off limits because a white writer used a similarly-spelled name in a 1988 episode of STAR TREK.

It is stupid, ignorant and racist for you to declare that South Korean characters should not have South Korean surnames because it intrudes upon white characters written by white writers who use Asian names in their fiction.

White people did not create every word and name in the world and the name "Seong" existed long before Gene Roddenberry was born.

The only reason I can see for QuinSlidr to declare that it's fine for Roddenberry to use "Soong" but not fine for QUANTUM LEAP to use "Seong" is that Dr. Noonian Soong is a white character and Dr. Ben Seong is an Asian character and for QuinSlidr, white characters should always be dominant and Asian characters and names should not exist. There is simply no other reason for QuinSlidr to be so offended by an Asian name.

Furthermore, not every STAR TREK-reminiscent name or sound or idea originated with STAR TREK. There is more to the world than STAR TREK.

As someone who has been watching STAR TREK since I was 10, I never thought I would say to someone what I am going to say to you: get a life.

2022-05-06 20:34:17

Great news about QL!

As for Peacock -- from what I can tell, Peacock operates on a model similar to Netflix where they spent huge sums on shows, present them without commercials -- and the hope is that the media reception and word of mouth will lead to new subscribers which allows the streamer to recoup its costs and earn a profit. However, existing subscribers don't produce profit; Peacock and Netflix need a constant influx of new subscribers. This is why Netflix cancels so many shows after 1 - 3 seasons because there comes a point when a show has gained as many new subscribers for the streamer that it will and there's no further financial gain in maintaining the series.

Whether that series is a new property or an existing IP may not be that relevant. Peacock is losing 2.2 billion dollars a year and SAVED BY THE BELL definitely had a loyal audience, but because Peacock doesn't have a very large subscriber base to begin with, that wasn't enough to keep the show going and it's hard to see if Peacock can keep going.

2022-05-04 18:40:00

SAVED BY THE BELL REBORN has been cancelled on Peacock.
https://www.cbr.com/saved-by-the-bell-r … d-peacock/

NBCUniversal is clearly not in a great financial position right now.

2022-05-04 18:28:19

Step one.

Steps two to 13,405 are unfortunately not mine to take.

2022-05-03 18:59:13

I think it is very possible that THE FLASH's ninth and final season will be an anthology across the Arrowverse. Is it probable? I can't say that. But here's why it's possible: Grant Gustin is tired. All the actors are rotating in and out of the show so that they don't have to work as much for Season 8. Seven seasons of a TV show has left them weary. Filming under pandemic protocols with isolation and segmenting has been soul crushing.

Grant Gustin is going to work even less for Season 9 because he's so worn out. Jesse L. Martin will also be reducing his commitment from rotating series regular to recurring guest-star for Season 9. Candice Patton and Danielle Panabaker will probably stay in the rotation. Everyone is exhausted, pandemic protocols are tiring, and Grant Gustin is noticeably low energy onscreen in Season 8.

I wouldn't say his acting has become the equivalent of Jerry O'Connell in Season 4, but I'd say it's closer to Jerry O'Connell in "Eggheads" where Jerry is working hard but clearly spent, possibly due to "Eggheads" having taken up all of his strength with the sports matches.

With the actors tired and working less, it would make sense to bring in the BATWOMAN and LEGENDS and ARROW cast members to fill in the gaps that result when FLASH actors are absent.

With this approach, Diggle's arc could be completed with Barry helping Diggle settle... whatever was going on with him.

The future Canaries could be wrapped up with Chester visting the future to help Mia Smoak save William and cement Mia, Dinah and Black Siren as a team.

Caitlin and a guest-starring Cisco could visit Gotham to help dispatch whatever monster emerged at the end of Season 4 and help Kate Kane and Ryan Wilder agree to both be Batwoman.

The original Harrison Wells could help the Legends escape from the time prison.

It would be great.

2022-05-02 17:35:52

BATWOMAN. *sigh* While I enjoyed the show and objectively, the writing, performances and production were strong, I became deeply uncomfortable with the show after Season 1. The show didn't do anything wrong, I just couldn't adjust my expectations accordingly to what the show had to do to fill more episodes. I liked the Ryan Wilder episodes. Seasons 2 - 3 were very good. But no matter how much I enjoyed Seasons 2 - 3, I was always wondering when Kate would come back. Those who sat through Seasons 3 - 5 of SLIDERS waiting for Arturo / Wade / Quinn will understand.

I wish that Season 2 had kept Kate Kane (Wallis Day) after her return. I would have loved to see Season 3 try to jump the narrative hurdle of having two Batwomans. But, not unfairly, the writers decided that it didn't make sense to have two versions of the same character.

There's also the fact that the writers were hesitant to keep Kate Kane on the show because they were grimly waiting for Ruby Rose to accuse their production team of abusive working conditions. They knew she was angry. They knew she'd be coming after them eventually.

I can see why production elected to give Kate Kane a good sendoff and write Day out; they were urgently trying to clear away Kate's onscreen legacy and wish her well and get her offscreen before Ruby Rose struck at which point Kate Kane's continued presence would make it impossible to get past Ruby Rose declaring that she hated the BATWOMAN TV show and everyone on it. That effectively, Kate Kane hated BATWOMAN and everyone involved in it.

Whether or not Rose's accusations are true (and I believe them up to a point and am unsure after that point), Ruby Rose turning against the show would have forced Wallis Day to either defend the show or validate the claims; to either turn against her own show or call a fellow performer a liar. This would have been untenable and production elected to avoid it by writing Day out fast.

Day was displeased; she thought Kate Kane would be present in Season 3 as a regular. She was apparently informed that it was a possibility; she was irritated that she wasn't told upfront that she was only going to be a Season 2 guest star.

In the end -- I always felt this uncomfortable distance from Seasons 2 - 3 of BATWOMAN no matter how much I adored it. Each week, I'd love the story but keep wondering how this week's episode would have played out with Kate instead of Ryan. I never regained my full comfort level with the show.

And I think it's simply because short-haired, angry lesbians with a chip on their shoulder and a resting scowl - -that's a sort of character I personally relate to a lot. Another Kate Kane-esque character I like is Elodie on the Netflix show TRINKETS, a troubled, grimfaced lady (played by Briana Hildebrand of Negasonic Teenage Warhead fame from DEADPOOL).

Season 2 did a good job of mining the discomfort of Kate's exit for drama. Season 3 did a good job of declaring that Ryan was the star of the show now and that Kate was not forgotten but was doing something else now. I don't criticize the show for making difficult choices in an impossible situation.

And also: I would have also been uncomfortable with Wallis Day taking over as Kate Kane, about as much as Ryan Wilder taking over Kate's role. Wallis Day, while bearing a superficial likeness to Ruby Rose, is not at all similar in style. Wallis Day accepts and employs the male gaze for her benefit, dressing like a pinup girl and posing if she has to. Wallis Day doesn't create a distant isolation from others like Ruby Rose.

Day's version of Kate Kane (or any character played by Day, really) is a tactile, humourous, winking, friendly presence. Wallis Day's Kate Kane was never going to have the original Kate Kane's disgruntled demeanor or her seething rage or her withdrawn bearing. Wallis Day's Kate was going to be 'nice' like Supergirl, and lacking in most of Rose's angst and torment. I would not have recognized this version of Kate Kane as the original character.

The truth is, the only thing that would have made me fully comfortable with Seasons 2 - 3 of BATWOMAN would be Ruby Rose playing Kate Kane and that was unfortunately not on the table after Season 1.

2022-05-01 15:33:54

It seems to me that the longevity of lower-rated CW shows like LEGENDS and RIVERDALE was not due to ratings, but due to sales to streaming services where the audience was much higher and recouped any expense from the studio and network. This is why BATWOMAN got renewed for Season 3 so early into the 2021 Season 2.

However, the CW has apparently never been 'profitable'; the studios (Warner Bros. and ViacomCBS which own the CW) made money, but the broadcaster was only breaking even at best. The problem: the majority of the audience watching CW's shows don't watch them on the CW broadcaster. They watch them on streaming services; the CW itself is not a success, but their content has been successful. However, that content is mostly from WB.

At this point, Warner Bros. and Paramount are seeking to sell the CW off, effectively selling off their low-coverage TV broadcaster as Paramount wishes to focus on its Paramount Plus streaming service while Warner Bros. has turned its attention to HBOMax.

With the impending sale, the CW is no longer in a position to renew lower-rated shows as deficit financing where they lose money up front but see a lot more down the line for the parent company and the parent company happy to cover the broadcaster's losses. The CW is about to have a totally different parent company that would not see any of the future profits from an eighth season of LEGENDS or a fourth season of BATWOMAN.

Both shows likely filmed their finales not realizing that their broadcaster was being prepared to be sold off.

THE FLASH will finish out its run. SUPERMAN AND LOIS has an HBOMax deal. STARGIRL is likely fine. NAOMI is on the bubble. But unfortunately, the Arrowverse era is coming to a close for CW-aired, low-budget, low-rated, surviving-through-streaming superhero shows. And sadly, when economics turn against the continued survival of a show, the show will often be denied the chance for a proper finale and conclusion.

I'm sorry that LEGENDS and BATWOMAN are cancelled, but... I have somewhat mixed feelings about the demise of both. I guess I would say: I don't feel LEGENDS suffers too much for a cancellation despite the cliffhanger; the LEGENDS cliffhangers have never been a big deal and I don't feel worried about the characters. I know they will be fine.

And BATWOMAN... it's been a very peculiar journey and it has been confusing to love Kate Kane only for Kate Kane to suddenly disappear from the show and it was further confusing to welcome a new Kate Kane back only for her to leave again and it was confusing that Ryan Wilder, while wonderful, came aboard and promptly assumed Kate's company and Kate's team and Kate's girlfriend which leaves me confused as to why they didn't keep Kate 2.0 if they were just going to tell Kate's stories with Ryan.

I admit that while I am sad not to get more of Ryan and Luke and Mary and Alice... a part of me is a bit relieved that it's over even though I liked the show.

2022-04-30 18:56:28

LEGENDS cancelled on a cliffhanger with all the characters imprisoned. BATWOMAN cancelled with all the characters happy but a new threat rising from the ashes of the Season 3 villains.

*sigh* I'll have to get more into this tomorrow, I am too tired today.

2022-04-28 10:25:40

That's correct, so I'll add some nuance: Trump's Senate majority wasn't as weak as Biden's where Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema stop any and all legislation -- although Trump's majorities had infighting and failure and he failed to take out Obamacare which is a leveller. pilight says the weak majority is non-existent downticket campaigning and that a more vigorous effort could have won Democrats a stronger hand. That's probably true, but I have this terrible feeling that electoral game is so rigged at this point that Democrat votes will count for less in Congress and that Republicans have to win far fewer voters to win a majority in Senate and the House.

I shared this before, an interview with James Carville Jr. where he says Democrats are obsessed with "stupid wokeness" that's unsellable to the American populace and that they sink money into hopeless races and court defeat when their work should be in trying to elect more Democrats to get President Biden more power than he has right now as a figurehead president.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics … atic-party

As a hopefully woke person myself, I'll say that Carville Jr. may have a point that there's no sense in selling what people won't buy.

2022-04-28 00:55:05

It is 2:51 AM. I woke up in the middle of the night. I could not sleep. My mind consumed with the question: which laptop did Slider_Quinn21 buy?

**

Recently, the outer protective case cracked on my Samsung S7 phone. The Samsung S7, released in 2016, has limited accessories on sale these days. I ordered a new case off eBay. It should have arrived within one week. It took a month. During this month, I dropped my uncased Samsung S7 and promptly cracked open the Samsung S7, rendering it unusable and not worth the cost of fixing.

At this point, the protective case arrived in the mail. I informed the seller that I had destroyed my phone and that I would be mailing him his product back for a refund.

The seller told me he felt terrible about how his late delivery had left my phone unshielded. Undefended. And unguarded against all the damage incurred by gravity. He told me not to mail him back his item and he refunded me the $10 USD and begged his Maker for forgiveness for the suffering inflicted upon my treasured timer.

I mailed the case back anyway.

2022-04-27 19:42:13

Democrats did not receive the power that they said they needed. To govern, a US President needs a filibuster-proof majority in Congress. A 50-50 split in Senate with only the VP as a tiebreaker and two Democrat senators who vote against the president is *not* the power that Democrats sought, nor is it the power that the previous president had in his hands.

Democrats seem resigned to losing even their slight, near-non-existent advantage. They aren't trying to sell the story that to accomplish more, they need more power.

Slider_Quinn21 wrote in 2016 that the presidency isn't actually that powerful an office. That's only true when the president doesn't have a strong congressional majority. President Biden is not a powerful president due to his weak majority, and it looks like a Democratic president will never be very powerful while a Republican president will be extremely powerful.

2022-04-26 17:59:26

Biden's presidency has lost its way due to a number of factors from an extremely weak hand in Congress to Biden's handlers isolating him from the press (possibly due to his tendency to go off book). https://time.com/6140442/joe-biden-pres … cond-year/

I protested the idea that Biden was experiencing cognitive decline and I strongly disagreed with Temporal Flux saying Biden wasn't up to running the country and whoever ran his presidency wouldn't be him, but given Biden's non-appearances and unavailability, I have to conclude that Biden's age have worsened his communications difficulties and his PR team just doesn't want him in front of the camera too often if at all. It's possible that when campaigning for the presidency, he had the time to mentally prepare for public appearances but having won the presidency, that kind of prep and private coaching is temporally impossible.

I had hopes for a President Biden, but the truth is, it simply wasn't up to him whether or not his presidency would be transformational; it would be decided by whether or not Democrats would have a filibuster-proof majority in the House and the Senate. And gerrymandering from 2000 - 2020 has left Democrats only able to win slim majorities.

Biden can't enact COVID relief legislation or economic recovery policies or voting reform. Fairly or unfairly (and I am not qualified to comment), Afghanistan was a public failure. Inflation (which Temporal Flux had been warning us about) is beyond the ability of most presidents to address beyond hiking interest rates which are a questionable tactic anyway. And now Democrats are looking at being completely wiped out in midterms by a populace that doesn't agree with James Carville Jr. that the solution to their issues wouldn't be to punish Democrats but to elect more of them.

President Joe Biden seems to have about as much political power as the Queen of England at this point and culturally, he is non-existent and near-invisible.

At this point, with gerrymandering and a population that punishes Democrats for being powerless, any time Democrats have power, it won't be much and any time Republicans have power, they'll either control all three branches of the US government or have enough of the House and Senate to curtail any Democratic efforts.

I'm not really sure how the States proceeds at this point; Republicans are only interested in power and have become a fascist party of deranged lies (horse dewormer, testicle tanning, anti-vaccine, anti-mask, pro-Russian invasion of Ukraine) and America in this situation is incapable of leading the world through the climate crisis, through pandemics, through war and through all the challenges of today.

I'm worried and I'm losing hope and I am going to try to figure out what to do about all this on the weekend, but I'm not that optimistic because I'm not that smart.

2022-04-25 20:25:13

IB: " ... so, what's the deal with the bees?"

KIMON: "Is this a serious question?"

IB: "Yes! I was just telling Brad that every part of the X-FILES mythology makes sense to me in Seasons 1 - 9 except for the bees. I don't understand the role they play in Colonization at all. How are they supposed to carry the black oil in their tiny forms? They're bees!"

KIMON: "The black oil is at its core a virus and the virus was injected into the genetically modified corn which the bees consumed and the bees would then transmit the virus to humans and create a mass pandemic for Colonization."

IB: "So -- the bees are actually carrying the black oil but in a microscopic form."

KIMON: "That's my understanding."

IB: "Oh, okay. I was pondering how the bees fit into the mythology and then I realized I could just ask The Expert. Well. Not The Expert. That's a loaded term in SLIDERS fandom."

2022-04-21 17:35:39

I agree that Mulder and Scully did a lot of foundational work to make the Hollywood Nerd and women in STEM subjects more mainstream and no other show did as much for prioritizing male intellect over athleticism and female aptitude over allure. Mulder and Scully were presented as an image of male and female professionalism. The unfortunate reality of the show, however, presented them as deeply unprofessional.

**

While I am not a fan of THE X-FILES, I do understand THE X-FILES and I feel I can say: the mythology mostly made sense until Season 10.

I would say that about 85 per cent of Seasons 1 - 9 made sense, and the 15 per cent or so that didn't make sense is pretty reasonable as no story is without human error.

Reputation over Reality
THE X-FILES certainly had a *reputation* for having a nonsensical mythology that was made up as the show went along, but having watched the whole series when it first marathoned on the Canadian SPACE channel, I didn't find that to be the case.

Reviewers and viewers who described the mythology as confusing or contradictory in Seasons 1- 9 always struck me as extremely *casual* fans who maybe watched one out of four episodes. The mythology was very, very straightforward.

Purity
The original inhabitant of planet Earth was an alien being called Purity that manifested in two forms: gray aliens and the black oil virus. To survive the Ice Age, Purity departed from Earth but remnants of the intelligent black oil virus were left behind. Purity and their black oil virus conquered the majority of life in the universe, infecting all life forms via the black oil virus, and then returned to Earth as Colonists, intending to use Earth as a breeding ground.

Syndicate
Before the invasion could begin, one of the Colonist ships crashed to Roswell in 1947, alerting world shadow governments to the threat. The shadow government, the Syndicate, threatened to trigger nuclear winter unless the Colonists withdrew; the Colonists in turn threatened to exterminate the planet. A bargain was struck: the shadow government would be permitted to survive and choose survivors if they facilitated the Colonists' invasion of Earth to use black-oil-possessed humans as a slave race.

Resist or Serve
However, both sides were plotting treachery: the Colonists intended to use the infected humans as breeders regardless of the deal. The shadow Syndicate was attempting to create a vaccine against the black oil. A third faction entered the conflict: the Faceless Rebels, a race of aliens who had sealed their mouths and eyes shut to prevent black oil infection and landed on Earth and killed most of the Syndicate members.

The Colonists replaced their human collaborators by capturing key members of world governments (and a small town sheriff and some of his neighbours, very odd). They converted these humans into alien supersoldiers to infiltrate all levels of human society to keep their 2012 invasion plan on track. The series ended/paused in 2000 with a two part finale that gave a full summary of the mythology, the intent being to continue/conclude this story in a feature film series that didn't come to pass.

Loose Ends
There are a few myth-arc elements that don't fit into the overall story very smoothly. Episodes in Seasons 3 - 4 indicate that the aliens are quietly infiltrating the human race, living civilian lives, waiting for humanity to destroy itself so that they will quietly inherit the planet. This doesn't track with later seasons indicating that the plan is in fact outright invasion.

The alien-human hybrids were intially presented as the civilian-aliens experimenting with alien-human co-existence and being exterminated by the alien bounty hunter at the behest of the Colonists. The bounty hunter, however, would later be shown as aligned with the Faceless Rebels.

I don't understand what the bees were all about and nobody has ever been able to explain it to my satisfaction.

It's unclear why the Colonists wanted a few randoms from a small American town to be their supersoldiers when the other supersoldiers were high level government operatives. But this is well within the range of human error for most shows with myth-arcs.

Most of the other aspects of the mythos fit into Colonization: the clones were attempts to create black-oil-resistant biology, the abductions were for tests for the same project.

My Struggle
The Season 10 premiere, however, abruptly declared that the entire Colonist plotline had been a massive hoax and that the true endgame had been humans using stolen alien technology to create the Spartan Virus to massively depopulate the human race.

This did not track with the Colonization arc at all. While an understandable retcon to simplify things, the Season 10 finale made it even more tangled by declaring the Spartan Virus and Colonization to be the same conspiracy and presenting the Colonization conspirators as participants of the Spartan Virus plot.

This threw Seasons 1 - 9 into a state of hopeless confusion: how had the 2012 invasion date and the abductions and the black oil been relevant to a plot about human depopulation? And what about the supersoliders?

This is the part where THE X-FILES actually stopped making any kind of sense in its mythology, sadly. Carter was shockingly careless and indifferent to a mythology he'd built up over nine seasons. Season 11's premiere confusingly declares that there was a plot for alien colonization but it's not clear if this is a reference to the Spartan Virus or the disavowed Colonization plot.

To Be Fair
With THE X-FILES having been off the air between 2000 and 2016 and having missed the 2012 invasion date, it made sense to set the Colonization arc aside. But Carter didn't conclude it; he come up with a completely different story for Season 10 and claimed it was the same story as Seasons 1 - 9.

It seriously undermines the entire structure of the show. It makes Mulder look ridiculous for devoting 1993 - 2000 (if not more) investigating an alien invasion plot that was all a joke. In Season 11, Mulder encounters Deep Throat's grave, but Deep Throat's death and role in the Colonization conspiracy has been completely undermined by Colonization being a hoax. All the angst over hiding William from the Colonists is silly if the Colonists weren't real and had no plans to invade.

The X-Files Reborn
I think that Carter could have wrapped up the myth-arc in a single episode for the Season 10 premiere. The 2016 premiere could have shown an uninvaded Earth, Mulder and Scully retired from the FBI -- only to be recalled due to a series of murders where the victims turn out to be former employees of the now-defunct Syndicate. The murderer turns out to be a man targeting people he deems to be traitors to the human race in an alien invasion.

Mulder confronts the murderer, tracking him to the New York City Syndicate headquarters. Surrounded by artifacts and tools of the Colonists, Mulder reveals to the killer: the Colonization of Earth has been cancelled. The Colonists have lost interest in Earth, a warming planet with depleted resources, and no invasion is coming. The murderer can't accept that Colonization has been cancelled as the conspiracy gives his life meaning and kills himself.

At the end of the episode, Mulder and Scully prepare to return to civilian life only to find that since 2000, the X-Files office has accumulated thousands of paranormal casefiles, all unsolved, all filed under X, all in need of a believer and a skeptic to investigate. Mulder and Scully decide to return to the FBI and the adventure begins again... preferably with Glen Morgan running the show...

...

If only.

**

I have sent the webmaster of EatTheCorn.com a message. I've asked him what the bees were all about.

2022-04-20 15:18:13

Alfred Gough and Miles Millar created SMALLVILLE. They are also showrunning the new WEDNESDAY ADDAMS series on Netflix.

A WEDNESDAY ADDAMS series is a dream come true for me, but hearing that Gough and Millar are writing it -- well, it's the equivalent of hearing that NBCUniversal has commissioned a SLIDERS revival but hired Keith Damron to run it.

Gough and Millar are a truly peculiar choice for a property as eccentric and idiosyncratic as THE ADDAMS FAMILY. SMALLVILLE had 217 episodes. Gough and Millar were showrunners for 152 of those episodes. Of 152, they only wrote nine. Their nine episodes, while solid, are action adventure mixed with teen angst and have none of the macabre, gothic, comedic sensibilities of THE ADDAMS FAMILY. Gough and Millar aren't innovative, insightful, witty or clever. They're entertaining and competent.

Outside of those nine 'event' episodes, SMALLVILLE under Gough and Millar had a serious quality control problem. Season 1 had a lot of adequate to excellent entries but were hyperformulaic with a repetitive monster of the week format, apparently mandated by Gough and Millar.

The backchatter I've heard from is that Gough and Millar were incredibly disengaged from SMALLVILLE. They originally set out to do BRUCE WAYNE: THE SERIES about Bruce's adventures between graduating from college and becoming Batman. They were unable to license Batman but were told they could get the rights to a young Superman. They sold the pilot to series on the WB network.

After that, Gough and Millar didn't know what to do and didn't bother. They had made Clark Kent too powerful to be seriously threatened; they had geographically isolated Clark to a small town and didn't have a wide range of story ideas within the town. Gough and Millar told the writers room for Season 1 to do monster of the week episodes to fill in the 22 episode orders and then Gough and Millar stopped working on SMALLVILLE scripts, focusing instead on writing screenplays (SHANGHAI KNIGHTS, SPIDER-MAN II).

The Season 1 writers came up with arcs and running plots in Gough and Millar's absence; when Gough and Millar came back at the end of the year to write the season finale, they threw out the Season 1 writers' arcs. The Season 1 writers mostly left for other shows. A new team was hired for Season 2 under the same restrictions with absent showrunners who'd occasionally return and demand that any character or plot development be reset.

As a result, Seasons 2 - 7 suffered from scripts that were produced under severe restrictions, trying not to build any characterization or storylines that the showrunners would just tear down when passing through. Gough and Millar didn't know how to run a 2000s-era TV show of ongoing arcs, viewing TV as strictly standalone, siloed episodes. They were as indifferent to SMALLVILLE as David Peckinpah was to SLIDERS, bringing their A-game to the episodes they personally wrote and uncaring about the rest.

As showrunners, they wrote only 6% of Seasons 1 - 7 and only seemed to give SMALLVILLE 6% of their attention.

Gough and Millar were, however, very successful at the *business* side of running SMALLVILLE. They got it to seven seasons and their successors got it to ten. Gough and Millar hired most of the 'regular' actors on 13 episode contracts and have them absent from nine a year, trimming those costs signifcantly. They cast unknowns to pay lower but equitable rates and less than what more experienced performers would cost. They marketed their actors as heartthrobs for their audience and kept them in the press.

They were great at selling the show and reducing their budget to keep pace with diminishing ratings. They were great at making SMALLVILLE cost less than its earnings in ad revenue. They were great at keeping SMALLVILLE on the air.

I am unnerved by Gough and Millar scripting a WEDNESDAY ADDAMS series, a show that calls for eccentricity, humour, inventiveness, wit, quippy dialogue, and the ability to balance the morbid with the amusing. Gough and Millar wrote nearly humourless scripts for SMALLVILLE even at their best. Their scripts were functional superhero stories that were nominally related to teenagers and had a flair for visuals, scenes that were playable for actors, a sense of myth and legend, effective in their action -- but they weren't comedies and they weren't in the vein of offbeat horror-comedy like THE ADDAMS FAMILY.

It looks like Gough and Millar are writing eight of WEDNESDAY's 10 episodes. That's 80% of the scripts. Hopefully, they'll give it 80% of their attention as well.

In addition, all ten episodes of the show are being directed by Tim Burton, also the executive producer of the show. Burton is a master of the eccentrically gothic and morbidly bizarre.

Maybe Burton is the true showrunner and actively reworking and writing Gough and Millar's scripts.

Maybe Gough and Millar's 6% efforts are all that Burton requires for his vision. I love Wednesday Addams and I hope that is the case.

2022-04-18 12:43:49

I was recently having a discussion with a gentleman who runs the front desk of a hotel. His name is Charlie. I asked Charlie: how would the sliders go about getting hotel rooms when they have no ID and no credit cards that would function on a parallel Earth? Charlie replied that his hotel and most would likely not allow the sliders to rent a room without ID and credit or debit. Hotels require a form of payment that can be charge for "incidentals" in the event that the guest smashes up the room or steals all the furniture and has to be charged for repairs and replacements, and that no prepaid card or card without matching ID would be accepted nor would cash be suitable (because a few hundred dollars in cash might not cover the cost of potential repairs for reckless or destructive guests).

I protested: what if Charlie were hired by the writers of SLIDERS to find a loophole to get the sliders a room? Charlie replied that there is no loophole.

I asked: could Charlie be bribed with cash? Charlie replied that no amount of cash the sliders might carry on their person would induce him to risk his own job or to shoulder the cost of the potential incidentals.

I told Charlie that he was a lousy friend because if the positions were reversed, the sliders would find some way to get Charlie a room in order to progress the plot and then I wondered if there might be a DECLASSIFIED-brand solution.

2022-04-16 15:45:08

The idea of the snake having a different iconographic implication reminds me of "World Killer" where one of the nuns wore stones instead of a cross to indicate that Jesus was executed by being beaten to death with rocks rather than crucifixion. I can see the idea of immunizing people through feeding them small amounts of toxic materials could also lead to interesting social commentary on how our civilization often encourages denying the existence of illness, pain, infirmity or disability as part of a culture of toxic masculinity. I also like how you've presented this story in sociological terms that are more like Seasons 1 - 2 of SLIDERS rather than the sci-fi technology bent that Zicree and others would take.

I'm relieved that you note that the conspiracy is indeed nonsense as COVID is an airborne virus, but even then, the World Health Organization nonsensically took two years to acknowledge that transmission was not merely droplet based but aerosol driven as well, and in the absence of authoritative acceptance of obvious fact, people will fill in those gaps with randomness.

2022-04-14 11:58:22

This is just my personal opinion: Mulder and Scully are bad friends, bad employees, bad neighbours -- I don't mean bad as in evil, I mean bad in that they are incompetent and terrible at their jobs and responsibilities. They are arguably worse than the sliders.

I'm not a fan of THE X-FILES. I do not like it. I respect its place in TV history. I am a student of THE X-FILES. I've watched it. I'm aware of it. I'm familiar with it. But I didn't buy that X-FILES casefile format episode guide because I like THE X-FILES or feel compelled to purchase the merchandise; it was an interesting project. I didn't buy THE X-FILES comics because I am a fan of the show; I liked the writer, Joe Harris, and felt he would do something strong with the series.

To review the sliders: Quinn was a terrible scientist and team leader in Seasons 3 - 4; Maggie was a terrible soldier in Season 3 and had a number of odd lapses in Seasons 4 and 5. The only reason Wade, Rembrandt and the Professor don't rank as terrible friends is because Wade vanished, Rembrandt only received four A-plots across Seasons 3 - 5 ("The Prince of Slides," "Asylum," "The Java Jive" and "Requiem"), and the Professor died before it went from bad to really bad.

But Mulder and Scully are arguably worse than the sliders. The sliders lost their original creators. In contrast, Mulder and Scully had Chris Carter writing them from 1993 - 2018.

Mulder is a bad friend and a bad partner: right up to 2018, he would not provide Scully, his colleague and teammate, with a desk in her office.

Scully isn't a bad friend to Mulder, but her attitude towards her life of public service is suspiciously inept.

Mulder and Scully are terrible investigators: they repeatedly fail to do anything more than observe paranormal events. They are also terrible public servants, repeatedly abandoning innocent people to die.

The most telling example for me when I was watching this show in middle school: in the Season 3 episode, DPO, Mulder and Scully encounter a psychotic teenager with electrical powers. By the end, Mulder and Scully have failed to find a way to charge the perpetrator with the murders or to depower or contain or imprison him; the next episode has them working on their next case, having presumably abandoned the entire state of Oklahoma to be ruled by a low-rent Electro.

By the Season 4 premiere, Mulder has a full picture of the alien invasion coming in 2012 and a weapon that is effective against aliens; despite this, Mulder makes no effort to share this knowledge or mount a defence and as late as 2008, Mulder is pointedly ignoring any need to fight off Colonization.

Mulder and Scully are terrible friends who are making zero effort to save your life or mine from an alien invasion and the fact that no invasion happened in 2012 seems less like effort and more like luck. If there are two people I don't want around in a crisis or a mystery, it's Mulder and Scully.

To be fair: I don't think it's entirely deliberate. I think that 90s TV called for running arcs to be siloed and Chris Carter wrote Mulder and Scully as passive observers because he found it unrealistic that normal humans could seriously battle supernatural forces -- but considering Mulder and Scully have been working since 1993, their total lack of professional development right up to 2018 is extremely poor.

Darin Morgan, Glen Morgan, James Wong, Vince Gilligan and even Frank Spotnitz recognized the problem that Mulder and Scully were overly detached and passive. All of them wrote scripts that made some effort to change this, but Carter would invariably revert to his factory defaults right up to the 2018 season's "Plus One" where Mulder and Scully are shockingly indifferent to a man fearing for his life.

Writer Joe Harris for the IDW comic book line made a determined effort to have Mulder and Scully actively focusing on the delayed but impending alien invasion only to be curtailed and cancelled.

As it stands onscreen: aside from short exceptions, Mulder and Scully are not good at being your friends and not good at their jobs. They are incompetent, ineffectual, indifferent, non-commital, uninvested, disinterested and have no regard for saving your life. That's not how the actors play their characters, but the show makes it clear: If you, RussianCabbie, were being tormented by a psycho with electrical powers, Mulder and Scully would show up, take notes, file a report, and then leave you to be further menaced and eventually murdered.

In the event that you are facing a psycho with electrical powers or an alien invasion, I suggest you skip calling Mulder and Scully. Call Sam and Dean from SUPERNATURAL or Peter and Olivia and Walter from FRINGE or Wynonna Earp or Liv Moore from iZOMBIE or the cast of DOCTOR WHO or Emma Swan from ONCE UPON A TIME, all of whom actually try to close the paranormal case of the week before going to the next one.

I would call the sliders, but I can't totally recommend that either given their poor job performances across Season 3 - 5.

2022-04-07 16:23:45

I find THE X-FILES quite dated. The show is founded on the idea that government is insidiously all-powerful and all-controlling. Reality has revealed that government is in fact divided, incompetent and ineffectual.

The show is founded on the idea that evil is an extrinsic force alien to human nature. Since the 90s, psychology and psychiatry have further penetrated the mainstream and instead indicate that evil is due to human failings and human self-interest.

Carter attempted to update THE X-FILES mythology to the modern era, but his update was incoherent and non-committal, backtracking on Colonization, backtracking on backtracking on Colonization, backtracking on backtracking on backtracking on I've lost track and so has he.

The entire episodic non-structure of THE X-FILES is also extremely dated. While the non-Carter scripted, individual episodes are strong, they don't cohere as a series. Season 10 is confusing even within a mere six episodes. 10.1 declares Colonization was a hoax; 10.2 has Mulder describing a Colonization plot like it was genuine (because Carter didn't inform the 10.2 writer of 10.1's retcons). 10.2 shows them falling back into work like they never left; 10.3 has Mulder doubting that the supernatural is real. 10.1 ends with Mulder and Scully getting text messages from the FBI about an "urgent" situation; 10.2 starts with them reinstated at the FBI with no explanation as to why.

Season 11 was even worse. One episode shows Mulder and Scully as a couple living together in Mulder's house; another indicates that Scully lives separately and that Mulder has never been to her house and will disappear into the woods for days without letting her know.

This negative continuity was awkward in the 90s and simply unprofessional in 2016. It reminds me of Mr. Bean's teddy bear constantly being destroyed only to be made whole in the next scene.

THE X-FILES is also further dated in that Mulder and Scully are fundamentally passive characters, observing but rarely driving the story forward. Their involvement rarely if ever saves any lives in their cases of the week; the monsters are regularly free to prey again with Mulder and Scully seeming indifferent as they move onto the next case of the week wtihout having addressed the previous one. This may have been fine in the 90s when the average viewer was only watching 40 - 60% of each season's episodes, but it made the characters seem weak and inept when watching the show as a whole via streaming and time-shifted viewings in 2016.

My impression of Carter based on his dull, uninspired scripting: he just isn't interested in TV any more or in modern television. That's why he was hacking out first drafts to be filmed and performing none of the reworking and revision he did before. I think he got burnt out in the 90s.

In this 90s, Carter hired a collaborator, Frank Spotnitz (who was not available for the revival due to running THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, Slider_Quinn21's favourite Nazi show which he assures us is very, very good).

Strangely, Carter hired Glen Morgan and James Wong for the revival and gave Glen Morgan an showrunner-executive producer credit for Seasons 10 - 11 with Morgan's name appearing at the end of all episodes to indicate Morgan's stature on the show. Morgan declared this an inappropriate credit, saying he wasn't particularly involved in any episodes beyond his own.

Morgan's two scripts show that he is extremely interested in removing the passivity of Mulder and Scully and engaging in running arcs: "Founder's Mutation" had them investigating Colonization-adjacent technology and "This" had them more actively engaged in the story than any X-File before or after. Glen Morgan clearly had a vision for updating THE X-FILES, but it was confined to his own episodes.

Morgan could have revised scripts for consistency and running arcs. Morgan could have taken Carter's basic ideas for the "My Struggles" and written the full teleplays. Morgan has flaws like any writer, but he's engaged and Carter is disengaged.

I will forever wonder why Carter gave Morgan the showrunner/executive producer title, the closing credit and the money, but never had him do the job. It is apparently a mystery to Morgan as well who tried to refuse the title (and presumably the money too) and felt it was a little disrespectful to Frank Spotnitz (whom Morgan noted was an actual co-writer and script editor and nevergot the showrunner credit at the end of episodes).

2022-04-03 10:06:13

A friend of mine recently told me that he was no longer going to wear a mask because the law said he didn't have to and that it was time for him to live a "normal" life again. It is beyond me what activities, tasks and responsibilities he or anyone could possibly have that are in any way impeded by taking three seconds to put on a face covering before entering high capacity public gathering spaces.

Yes, vaccines protect from hospitalization and death, but I've had several fully boosted friends lose a month of their lives to COVID. They weren't sick enough to need ventilators, but they had to stay home for two weeks coughing and fevered and sore followed by two to three weeks of brain fog and sleepiness.

My province has *completely* given up on fighting COVID. The vaccine requirement for public gathering places is gone. The push for third dose boosters is gone. The mask mandate outside of transit and health care facilities is gone. The testing and recording program to track how many cases we had per day is gone. As a result, our case counts are rising. These rising case counts eventually cause the health care system to become overloaded. As a result, patients with cancers and heart conditions and lung issues can't get life-saving chemotherapy or surgery or transplants and die.

On a personal level, I think my three doses and my 95 per cent face-sealed mask will protect me from the worst of it, but if I should break my leg or need heart surgery or trauma care after a car accident or a fall, I'll be in serious trouble.

2022-04-02 15:23:38

Chris Carter and Mulder and Scully have been given more chances than anyone who has ever worked in television. One would expect a paranormal procedural on FOX in the 90s to get cancelled after 6 - 9 episodes; they got a full first season and renewed for a second. One would expect a modest run of 3 - 5 seasons; they got a feature film after his fifth year followed by four more seasons. One would have thought that the Season 9 series finale would have been the end; they got a second feature film. One would have thought that poorly performing film in 2008 would have been the end; they got a six episode season for 2016 and a 10 episode season for 2016. In each revival, Carter seemed to dig a deeper hole for Mulder and Scully.

I think you might consider wishing you had less Mulder and Scully instead of more; perhaps five seasons followed by a big budget feature film series finale.

However... I agree that the Season 10 and 11 standalones were mostly very strong and there is a certain absurdity that the myth-arc episodes were only the premieres and finales and yet diminish the show far more than the standalones can elevate it.

2022-04-02 14:04:50

How is that depressing?

Chris Carter is a mess. He hasn't been able to write a coherent screenplay since 1998; he only held it together after that because he took on a co-writer, Frank Spotnitz, and by 2008, Spotnitz was unable to wrangle Carter's incoherent, stream-of-consciousness, first -drafts-as-filming-drafts approach. Carter and Spotnitz cite the writer's strike forcing them to rush the 2008 I WANT TO BELIEVE script, but considering they'd had eight years to work on that story, this seems like an excuse. And with the 2016 and 2018 seasons, Carter has proven completely incapable of running a TV show. He failed to script-edit, so the episodes alternate with Mulder and Scully living together/separately, romantically involved/platonic, believing in the paranormal/totally skeptical, searching for William endlessly/never mentioning him. The Season 10 premiere and finale show the Cigarette Smoking Man hideously scarred by the missiles of Season 9; the very first Season 11 episode has him totally healed. The Season 10 finale has the Smoking Man triggering a biological attack; the Season 11 premiere rewinds to moments before the Smoking Man is about to start his plan and he nonsensically doesn't start it. Season 10 ends with a spaceship descending on Mulder and Scully; Season 11 rewinds time and never reveals why that ship was there or who was piloting it or what the crew's mission would have been.

Who would want a twelfth season of THE X-FILES from Chris Carter? Why would Gillian Anderson want to be in it?

Anderson's stipulation is simple and totally reasonable: she will only come back to THE X-FILES if Chris Carter is not writing it and if a new set of writers transition from Mulder and Scully to a new generation of X-Files investigators. Considering how badly Carter has handled his show and how Mulder and Scully can't be FBI agents forever, this is entirely sensible and rational and it would be better to have no more X-FILES than an X-FILES that is incomprehensible and incompetent. Chris Carter is incompetent.

Chris Carter had NINE seasons, TWO feature films, and then 16 years after the original finale and eight years after the second film, he received SIXTEEN episodes with a full budget and his original actors and he STILL could not bring his storylines to a conclusion while leaving room for future follow-ups. What kind of showrunner receives the opportunity to do a SIXTEEN EPISODE epilogue to his unfinished TV series and still can't finish it?

A bad one and Gillian Anderson is done with him. Who can blame her?

2022-03-31 16:23:15

Weird. I didn't get around to watching DISCOVERY Season 3 or 4 (yet). I guess Season 2 felt like a finale.

I am three episodes into PICARD. As always, I am in dire need for Professor Arturo. I need the Professor to come back. I need his wisdom, his perspective, his bombast, the patience beneath his impatience. But I'm alright because even though we don't have the Professor right now, we have our Captain back.

2022-03-30 14:03:33

I don't know what Ezra Miller is on, but Miller cannot seem to go for particularly long without one absurd incident of violence after another.

https://www.cbr.com/the-flash-ezra-mill … -arrested/
https://www.cbr.com/flash-ezra-miller-r … h-threats/

I'm also not sure what a (supposedly) grown adult is doing randomly meeting people at farmers markets to press into service as personal assistants who provide lodging and bail and in return are threatened and robbed.

If you meet Ezra Miller and Miller offers you an assistant job for no apparent reason, keep your distance, don't make eye contact and head for an exit.

Could we please be done with the DCEU Flash and Ezra Miller now?

Temporal Flux once voiced a mild terror that Warner Bros. might enact some Byzantine, Machiavellian scheme to get CW's THE FLASH cancelled so that WB's FLASH movie could take the center stage.

I assume that Berlanti Productions reads this message forum. That they spotted Temporal Flux's alarm. That they responded accordingly: they found some way to encourage Zack Snyder to cast a volatile, unstable, deranged lunatic to play the Flash and figured that the DCEU Flash situation would self-implode well after Grant Gustin would be winding down his time as the Flash.

2022-03-29 18:15:09

BATWOMAN had a good third season... so good that I wish they had stuck with the original character somehow. I wish they hadn't hired a notoriously flaky, unreliable, argumentative, volatile performer who had never done a long-term TV job to be the star of BATWOMAN. I love Javicia Leslie, but it's irksome that Leslie's Ryan Wilder has Kate's company, Kate's team, Kate's superhero codename, and now Kate's primary love interest, Sophie. If Ryan is so functionally similar to Kate Kane, why not just do it with Kate Kane? But I concede that the show would probably be just as awkward if all of Kate's supporting cast and surroundings were removed as well.

BATWOMAN has not been renewed for a fourth season yet.

LEGENDS had a good seventh season of comedy hijinks and a bizarre yet compelling choice in having Matt Ryan play a character who isn't Constantine. The gang's adventures through history were great fun and the show also ended its seventh season on a cliffhanger with no renewal announced as of yet.

I sure hope this doesn't blow up in their faces.

I am not caught up on STARGIRL or SUPERMAN AND LOIS or THE FLASH.

ireactions wrote:

I stopped reading comics awhile ago because spending $4 - 9 on a single 20 page comic book was economically unsound and superheroes were all over Netflix. However, I bought subscriptions to Marvel Unlimited and the new DC Universe Infinite apps because two $60 annual fees to Marvel and DC each is effectively $10 a month. Marvel Unlimited has a lot of gaps in its older material and new titles are added three months after they've gone on sale, but if you're working your way through their library from 2000 onward, it's a good deal.
Just make sure to read at least 15 individual DC issues and 15 individual Marvel issues and you'll have read the number of comics you could have bought individually in print for the same cost and you'll have gotten your money's worth.
I am not sure if DC Universe Infinite is as good a deal. They only add new titles six months after initial release -- which is fine for me since I'm still reading 2016 DC comic books. I don't know how complete their library is. However, Scott Snyder's entire run of BATMAN would cost me a lot more than $60 and it's all here, so that alone has justified at least a one year subscription for me.

I stayed home with a migraine today, but in the afternoon, I read the DARK NIGHT: METAL Batman crossover. Maybe it's this severe-then-mild headache, but I couldn't understand what was going on. I moved onto reading the FOREVER EVIL JUSTICE LEAGUE crossover and that I understood just fine, but I confess that a storyline of evil versions of the JLA attacking Earth is not exactly the most intellectually challenging even if the characterization is strong and there's a neat arc of Lex Luthor renouncing Evil to fight the eviler JLA.

I also note: DC Infinite's reading lists are good. Marvel Unlimited's app is kind of a mess in arranging all the separate issues of a crossover into the correct reading order. The SECRET EMPIRE / Captain America's history is rewritten to make him a Nazi storyline, for example, was missing entire sequences of comics in the supposed reading list and I had to turn to Wikipedia, Amazon and various fan sites to figure out what to read and in what order. In contrast, DC Infinite had all the issues of DARK NIGHT: METAL and FOREVER EVIL in the queue, listed in order -- so I can't say that DARK NIGHT: METAL was confusing because I missed some tie-in or ancillary issue.

I have to say, reading Lex Luthor inspired to join the JLA is kind of an emotional boost and makes me really keen to go to bed early and get back to work tomorrow. This is why I like superheroes.

2022-03-28 19:47:22

Not a drinker. Nice to have the non-alcoholic option!

2022-03-28 18:29:40

I stopped reading comics awhile ago because spending $4 - 9 on a single 20 page comic book was economically unsound and superheroes were all over Netflix. However, I bought subscriptions to Marvel Unlimited and the new DC Universe Infinite apps because two $60 annual fees to Marvel and DC each is effectively $10 a month. Marvel Unlimited has a lot of gaps in its older material and new titles are added three months after they've gone on sale, but if you're working your way through their library from 2000 onward, it's a good deal.

Just make sure to read at least 15 individual DC issues and 15 individual Marvel issues and you'll have read the number of comics you could have bought individually in print for the same cost and you'll have gotten your money's worth.

I am not sure if DC Universe Infinite is as good a deal. They only add new titles six months after initial release -- which is fine for me since I'm still reading 2016 DC comic books. I don't know how complete their library is. However, Scott Snyder's entire run of BATMAN would cost me a lot more than $60 and it's all here, so that alone has justified at least a one year subscription for me.

2022-03-28 16:05:46

Hmmm. This is odd, I thought I'd written more underneath the Deadpool image.

I haven't had time to rewatch the movie, but thinking about it: you're right. There is no indication that the villains are sent back to the present day. Peter notes that each villain was transported out of their universe moments before their deaths; Strange says those are their fates. Peter says that if he can cure the villains of the afflictions that made them villains, maybe they don't have to die when sent back.

Why did I think they would be sent to the present? I guess, because Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield were pulled from the present, I assumed that the villains would return to the same point as the Spider-Mans, but there's nothing in the movie that actually establishes that. There could have been some technobabble about conservation of whatnot blah blah to justify the latter or former. There isn't. It's ambiguous.

As for whether or not these are plotholes -- I defer to Deadpool.

2022-03-27 18:44:00

Spoiler warning

Season 6 opened in a parallel universe, revealing that an explosion in the S5 finale had ripped open the walls of reality and created an alternate version of Riverdale called Rivervale that was defined by supernatural and occult forces. After five episodes, the situation was explained and we returned to the supposedly non-supernatural Riverdale --

And due to some aftereffect of the extradimensional energies that were unleashed, Archie and Betty are now manifesting superpowers. Archie now has invulnerability and super strength and Betty is developing psychic powers.

...

This all works for me. So long as the characters' personalities are present, RIVERDALE thrives on shifting from dramedy to serial killer hunting to crime drama to horror to occult roleplay to cults to paranormal investigations to supernatural horror to superheroes.

I'm sure there are plenty who will disengage or simply be unwilling or unable to accept such turns of narrative because genre shifts within a single series can be unsettling. Some will go so far as to declare that genre shifts within a series are "creatively bankrupt 100%" just because it's outside the previous boundaries of the series. But for me, if the genre shifts serve the characters and are written with awareness and a genuine love for whatever the genre is, it can work, unlike, say, the clumsy MAD MAX and DRACULA ripoffs of SLIDERS.

That said, some will react to RIVERDALE's shift to superheroes the same way we reacted to SLIDERS becoming a clumsy TV approximation of DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS / DRAGONHEART / SPECIES / THE RUNNING MAN / ANACONDA.

2022-03-27 12:55:37

I keep forgetting that Stephanie's characterization was revised significantly before it was filmed and cut. I couldn't really imagine Jerry performing the original draft scenes where Jerry keeps trying to ask Stephanie out and she keeps shooting him down. I can't really imagine Quinn coming up with excuses to get a boyfriended-Stephanie to talk to him in the draft that I assume was filmed, but I suppose the scene is playable for Jerry.

Torme certainly had an intriguing fixation on Stephanie. In his unfinished fanfic outline that he started writing in 2009 and ultimately abandoned, he had the sliders (post-"Guardian") encountering Stephanie and her husband and Stephanie extending her hospitality to the sliders as they try to recover from a series of exhausting slides and examine the malfunctioning timer, meaning that even 15 years after the Pilot, he still had Stephanie on his mind (as opposed to Daelin). Perhaps all heterosexual men have a Stephanie in their minds if not in their lives.

Personally, I like to think that Stephanie is a representation of Robin Torme, who is Tracy Torme's wife.

2022-03-25 19:07:33

Jim_Hall and I have been chatting. He thinks Seasons 4 - 5 might have been shot on 35mm film (and Zicree recalled that it was) but with the image sensor set to a higher level of light sensitivity and therefore higher levels of noise in addition to film with a higher grain content.

I suppose that's possible. I've always thought that Seasons 4 - 5 of SLIDERS look like they are shot on 16mm film due to the high grain quality which I've seen on CHUCK and the first season of BUFFY. DAWSON'S CREEK's pilot episode had the sharp clarity of a Season 3 episode of SLIDERS but immediately afterwards, the series acquired the grain texture of SLIDERS in the Sci-Fi Channel years and I later read that DAWSON's pilot was filmed on 35mm but the series was done on 16mm. THE DEAD ZONE had a S4 - S5 look in its first three seasons and then looked more like the pilot episode of SLIDERS because it went to 720p digital and was edited on 480p digital videotape.

However, my eye isn't exactly practiced in noting film quality. I've never even held so much as a film cannister. I'm just a viewer observing that Seasons 4 - 5 of SLIDERS have a similar grain level that matches other TV shows that I know to be filmed on 16mm. It's entirely possible that S4 and S5 acquired a similar look for entirely different reasons.

2022-03-25 13:29:59

These are all excellent questions and I feel the only answer will come by turning to Deadpool's usual response to questions of this nature.

2022-03-24 18:11:26

I'm not sure I understand the question. The villains were pulled out of the timestream either moments before their death or when their timelines ceased to intersect with Spider-Man's and they were returned in the present day to their home universes. Gwen would have been retrieved moments before her neck snapped if she'd been drawn in by the spell.

Maybe she was off camera somewhere and returned to Andrew Garfield's dimension in the present day and they were reunited in time.

2022-03-23 19:20:05

I was telling Jim_Hall on Twitter: I am amazed by his beautiful restoration work on SLIDERS publicity photos which he acquired at considerable expense and cleaned up in Photoshop with an astonishing level of dedication and effort. I've been using Gigapixel on some old low-res publicity photos of LONELYGIRL15 myself, but it really shines with Jim_Hall starting with 35mm slides.

2022-03-23 18:29:31

I would certainly like a Marvel One Shot with the Spider-Mans.

It's strange: when Andrew Garfield's movie series was cancelled, I was both disappointed and relieved. I was disappointed that we wouldn't delve into AMAZING's mysterious backstory for Peter Parker's father, I was also relieved because AMAZING SPIDER-MAN II was such a mess that I didn't want any more from this Sony regime (and clearly, Andrew Garfield didn't want any more either because he deliberately got himself fired from AMAZING SPIDER-MAN III).

The only thing that I really wanted from NO WAY HOME that I wanted them to do and they tried to do but couldn't do: I wanted them to resurrect Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy. There was a clear path to fix this hateful mis-step from ASM2, but it looks like (a) pandemic protocols and scheduling made it difficult to book Emma Stone and (b) the story was already getting a bit cluttered.

Kind of frustrating that Willem Dafoe's Norman Osborn is hale, hearty and healthy while Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy remains dead and buried. There's no justice in this world!

2022-03-23 18:24:08

I think Torme definitely had certain people on his mind when writing SLIDERS and Maurice Hurley was someone he despised on STAR TREK, so it makes sense that he made an arrogant middle manager Michael Hurley and a malevolently psychotic little creep Maurice Fish.

Future Torme biographers would also find it a profitable line of inquiry to look into Stephanie, a character deleted from the Pilot. Stephanie was a classmate whom Quinn was hopelessly in love with despite Stephanie regularly rejecting Quinn in one way or another. This may have made more sense when Torme was writing the script and imagining Quinn as a Tobey Maguire type instead of a Tom Cruise type.

Temporal Flux says that Stephanie's scenes were filmed and cut, but I can't imagine Jerry O'Connell's version of Quinn Mallory being afraid to tell a woman that he likes her or obsessing over someone who isn't interested.

2022-03-21 16:56:48

I honestly didn't notice anything wrong with the CGI in NO WAY HOME, but that doesn't mean anything at all. Marvel may have fixed any issues for streaming.

Alternatively, I might not notice because I have come to accept painterly, animated-looking effects that aren't photorealistic. It used to really bother me that BABYLON 5's spaceships looked like PS2 graphics and now it seems fine. There was that CG giant that the Flash fought in the Season 7 premiere that you called out as terrible and it didn't even register to me as bad. I am the last person to be asked about CG; the last time I remember disliking a CG effect was the Scorpion King in THE MUMMY RETURNS.

From what I can tell, Tobey Maguire asked that his Peter Parker's home life and whatnot be kept vague for whatever reason and Andrew Garfield said that was fine too. But yes, I'd like more detail. However, Andrew Garfield seems to have recovered from his depression after the catharsis of saving MJ and Tobey Maguire is probably feeling better that despite failing to save Harry Osborn, he was able to save Norman Osborn after all. And to me, these are very significant developments even if we don't know if Andrew Garfield ever got to the bottom of his father's secret research or if Tobey Maguire was able to keep his staff photographer job from SPIDER-MAN III.

I'd still like to know those things too, of course.

2022-03-21 16:52:37

To me, normalcy will be wearing a mask. I started wearing a mask in February 2020 and haven't had a single cold since then. So long as we wear masks and get our boosters, we can resume our normal activities. It's a mask. It's not a scuba suit.

I don't know if it's helpful to direct a someone living in Austin, Texas, United States to a retail store called Canadian Tire which exists in the Commonwealth of Canada.

It looks like you could get surgical ASTM Level 3 masks in the States here: https://bonafidemasks.com/black-surgica … s-per-box/

They filter about 3 per cent more than ASTM Level 1 and cost more, but $17.50 USD for a box of 50 isn't bad.

The problem with surgical masks, including these ones, is a poor seal around the nose and cheeks. However, if you put the earloops through cordlocks with a toothpick, you can tighten up the fit.
https://www.amazon.com/OCEANTREE-Adjust … 08C7CRBPP/

That said -- I wore the surgical mask with cord locks for one day at the office and it wasn't that convenient because I was constantly taking my mask off in my private office and putting it back on when leaving my office. Each time, I had to adjust the cord locks to tighten up the earloops.

In contrast, my bifold KN95 mask can come on and off with almost no adjustments because of the firm, tight fit. I think even in the summer, when I switch to a thinner ASTM L1 mask, I'll need to keep bifold KN95s for the office.

This morning, I hung some masks outside my office door with the unwritten implication that if a co-worker wants to speak to me in my office, I would like them to wear a mask for the duration of our conversation.

My co-worker who said she wasn't going to wear a mask has decided to resume mask-wearing anyway because most people in the office are still masking.

I spoke with her and told her that if she doesn't want to mask any more, it's nobody's business to demand that she do so or to criticize her because she has the right to not wear one. There is no legal requirement and no one should be pressuring her to wear a mask. We have to defend people's rights even if we don't agree with how they use them.

She said she appreciated that, but she has changed her mind because she thinks wearing a mask will make everyone feel safer and she assured me that nobody pressured her and it is no trouble.

2022-03-20 10:27:03

I don't know that SLIDERS lends itself to being directly interconnected in a shared universe. The sliders don't *stay* in the same universe; how often can they really crossover in such a fashion?

I think SLIDERS' hypothetical crossovers would be more like what TF suggested: the sliders are seen running through the background of various scenes of other TV shows on the same streaming service / network.

2022-03-20 09:53:48

Crossovers have a lot of potential. You could say that about any idea. Crossovers have a lot of potential problems. You could say that about any idea.

I am in favour of crossovers that are done well and I feel SLIDERS could do them well.

PROFESSOR: "I support the good things in life. I oppose the bad things in life."

QUINN: "Way to go out on a limb, Professor."

2022-03-19 20:24:43

Somewhere, Nigel Mitchell is kicking himself for writing a SLIDERS/X-FILES crossover where it's just Quinn and Arturo investigating the murders of their doubles and encountering Mulder and Scully when TF has now proposed a more complex and challenging path for the story.

2022-03-19 18:42:24

I find this concern absolutely unfathomable.

If SLIDERS in its revival doesn't have legal clearance and a licensing agreement to do a crossover, they won't do a crossover at all. It is physically impossible for SLIDERS to do a crossover and then experience legal action for unauthorized use of copyright; studio lawyers simply wouldn't allow an unauthorized, legally questionable crossover to be filmed in the first place.

There are, of course, unauthorized but legally solid crossovers. For example, the General on SLIDERS in "The Return of Maggie Beckett" is meant to be Tom Beckett from QUANTUM LEAP, but it's never specified that he's Dr. Sam Beckett's brother, so it's fine. The sitcom TWO AND A HALF MEN featured a cameo from two characters who were supposedly Dharma and Greg from DHARMA AND GREG, but the show had no legal clearance to use Dharma and Greg, so the characters weren't named while still played by the same actors. The technical term for this is Lawyer Friendly Cameo: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ … endlyCameo

2022-03-19 10:46:30

I saw SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME. It was really good. I was impressed by how the story folded Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire's versions of Spider-Man into the story without overshadowing each other or Tom Holland. The moment where Andrew Garfield saves MJ the way he couldn't save Gwen was a beautiful moment of closure. The entire arc of Tom Holland's Spider-Man trying to save the villains rather than kill them was perfect.

The ending was an interesting rejection of Spider-Man as a privileged child of wealth and legacy; he has literally been reduced to being absolutely nobody and therefore everybody.

It's interesting to contemplate what this film would have been if it had been made without access to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Foggy wouldn't have been in it. Dr. Strange wouldn't have been in it. It could have alluded to the existence of all the Avengers characters, but it could not have shown them or featured them in any plot developments. There was some hint that the story might have been every bounty hunter on Earth pursuing Spider-Man with Kraven the Hunter being the most successful. But the writers never had to write this version of the story.

2022-03-19 09:49:05

I was joking.

In other thoughts... I do think SLIDERS will eventually come back. I just don't know if it will be TRACY TORME'S SLIDERS when it does.

I would expect that a SLIDERS revival would be like the MACGYVER reboot: recast actors playing the original parts. The producers wanting the original actors to play the parents. Richard Dean Anderson was asked to play MacGyver's mentor (not necessarily his father) but Anderson declined. And MACGYVER had a very shaky start with episodes that ranged from poor to average, but it gradually found its feet and was a pretty great show by the end of Season 1 and it had a five year run with a less-than-satisfying finale because it had been filmed as a season finale in anticipation of a sixth season that didn't come. MACGYVER was consistently good by Season 2 and often great by Season 3. Season 4 was excellent. I haven't finished Season 5 yet, but it's been as good as Season 4.

MACGYVER had the original creator involved and he wrote a few scripts on the writing staff, but the showrunner was the (now-disgraced) Peter Lenkov and then Monica Macer.

That's what I'd expect for a SLIDERS revival: a new producer who loved SLIDERS and wants to do a reboot and start from the ground floor. It's not what I would personally want. It's not what Tracy Torme wants. But it's what I think a studio and network would believe they could sell.

I like Temporal Flux's AFTERLIFE model for SLIDERS.

One model of a revival that I do not like and found offensive in some ways was LONELYGIRL15. This 2006 web series went on permanent hiatus in 2008 due to funding issues and ended on a massive cliffhanger. In 2016, LONELYGIRL15 came back with new videos. The first one left the cliffhanger still unresolved. There were three more videos indicating a larger story was to come -- and then nothing, with the producer revealing that the project did not have funding yet and that releasing the four videos in total had been an attempt to draw in potential sponsors. It didn't work and LONELYGIRL15 once again ended/didn't end and it was inconclusive and confusing.

THE X-FILES ended in 2000, came back in 2016 and 2018 and also failed to address the unresolved cliffhangers of 2000 and also ended inconclusively and confusingly.

Having protested absolutes, I will say this: it is really unreasonable to ask audiences to invest emotional energy and loyalty into stories that creators don't end, so whatever form SLIDERS returns in should be a complete and satisfying product within the limitations. If SLIDERS in its revival is only guaranteed six episodes or, like LONELYGIRL15, four short webisodes, then it would ideally (at least for me) be a complete story with a beginning, middle and end, albeit an ending that leaves space for more should the opportunity present itself.

2022-03-19 09:01:23

TemporalFlux wrote:

I still think it would be genius marketing to have the Sliders just pop up in the background of other shows or even movies produced by the studio. They don’t have to be prominent or obvious - just place them in as background extras with non-speaking roles. They would appear to be having arguments or amusing interactions or even running away in panic - maybe you could sometimes make out the timer in their hand.
It would create buzz with a Where’s Waldo type game. From a story perspective, we would be left to debate and discuss. How did the Sliders get there? What happened to them in the end? The Sliders series itself could even have a passing mention of a place or situation that seems to match what they may have been doing.
It would create a kind of living multiverse

I would LOVE that.

My dream project -- I have had dreams about it -- it would be a podcast where Spider-Man/Peter Parker regularly has coffee with Quinn Mallory and they talk about all the crazy crap they've been through as both Spider-Man and Quinn have had to contend with vampires, super-intelligent snakes, dinosaurs, intelligent living flames, remote controlled cars that shoot lasers, Dream Masters, zombies, walls of fog, brain-draining serial killers, murderous gameshows, and alarming revelations about their family histories.

I would want Spider-Man to be voiced by Christopher Daniel Barnes from the 90s animated series and Jerry would be the voice of Quinn.

Slide Override wrote:

ireactions wrote:
Slide Override wrote:
Rant about how if you write a story Slide Override doesn't care for in concept or execution, you shouldn't have ever written it at all and your writing is therefore ludicrous and Slide Override's likes and dislikes are a universal restriction to be enforced upon all with no exceptions ever.
Now that's just childish.

Let me be perfectly clear about you and your future in the SLIDERS community.

If there is a revival/reboot and there are crossovers, I will carefully catalog them for you so that you do not have to watch them. I will set up a Wikia specifically so that crossovers are noted and you can avoid them and not have your (hypothetical) viewing experience marred by them. I will help you out with this. I would never, ever want you to have to watch something you don't want to watch and there is no limit to what I will do to assist you in this matter. I am on your side even if I don't share your tastes.

No Slidehead will ever stand alone. Know that you are among us even when you stand apart. We are with you. We go with God. We will not stopped.

2022-03-19 08:45:59

Slide Override wrote:

Rant about how if you write a story Slide Override doesn't care for in concept or execution, you shouldn't have ever written it at all and your writing is therefore ludicrous and Slide Override's likes and dislikes are a universal restriction to be enforced upon all with no exceptions ever.

I don't see how Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo making brief cameos in PARTY OF FIVE would have destroyed the creative structure of SLIDERS. I don't see how Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo meeting Mulder and Scully would have destroyed SLIDERS. Even if you didn't personally like it, it's TV and there'll be another episode.

There is explaining why you don't like something. Then there is declaring that nobody else should like it either and that it shouldn't exist and that if you like it or made it exist or would like it to exist, you are a disaster.

I continue to adore the brilliant Nigel Mitchell's SLIDERS/X-FILES: X-MARKS THE SPOT novella. http://freepdfhosting.com/2e80122e71.pdf

You are free to not read it and not like the idea of it, but Nigel Mitchell having written an X-FILES crossover among his numerous SLIDERS stories does not make him "creatively bankrupt" "100%." Your tastes are your own.

2022-03-19 06:51:31

SLIDERS can do anything. John Rhys-Davies says you can go anywhere in the universe with SLIDERS, so it's not for John to then say SLIDERS can't pass through PARTY OF FIVE. You can't have it both ways. Either SLIDERS can go anywhere or it can't, so which one is it?

I am always deeply suspicious of the claim that if creator tells Insert Story Idea One Person Doesn't Like, that creator is therefore out of ideas. That's not constructive criticism, that's presenting a personal taste as a universal restriction on what does and doesn't count as a good idea.

I think there should have been a full-fledged crossover with THE X-FILES that could have hopefully drawn some of that show's audience to SLIDERS.

I think that the sliders could have made passing cameos on every show on FOX, building intrigue, drawing more characters to SLIDERS.

Now, it's fine if that isn't something you personally enjoy or wouldn't care for or prefer not to see. But to claim that anyone who would want to do something like that with SLIDERS is not a creative person is casting a blanket generalization.

I don't believe good storytelling comes from declaring that you are never to use certain tools (like crossovers). Good storytelling comes from using storytelling tools effectively and meaningfully.

"No, don't do that" is not an effective principle of storytelling. My personal and primary principle of storytelling is that every story written now or ever is a SLIDERS story. My personal belief is that we are all SLIDERS stories.

2022-03-18 21:33:57

I recently took my mother to get a fourth dose of Pfizer. I have had my third.

My province has dropped the mask mandate, an obvious effort from the currently conservative administration to score points and win votes from anti-vaxxer/anti-masker types in the upcoming election. One office-mate recently got COVID and lost a week of her life. I also found out that this co-worker (A) didn't get her third dose booster and (B) intends to stop wearing her mask the day the mask mandate is lifted.

I've reread the employee handbook and employment legislation and the law is quite clear: my workplace had the right to mandate that all employees get two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine or they could find another job. My workplace also had the right to mandate masks so long as there was an actual public health mandate from the province or the city. My co-worker is well within her rights to not get a third dose booster and not wear a mask at the office and no one has any business confronting her about her exercising her own free choices that are no longer within the bounds of workplace regulations.

It is impossible to mandate that someone get a third dose because so many have had COVID-19 infections after their second dose that, while mild, means they cannot get a booster until at least 12 weeks after they've recovered.

I'm still masking. I recently discovered a new source of ASTM Level 1 surgical masks and also earloop cordlocks. Surgical masks, while a bit loose on the face, can be made to fight tightly without gaps using cordlocks. ASTM Level 1 masks rank third in the ASTM hierarchy, filtering only 95 percent while ASTM Levels 2 - 3 filter 98 per cent, but given that I've been using KF94 and KN95 masks, that seems negligible and more important is fit.

Also, my KN95 and KF94 masks cost me about $1 - $1.65 per mask whereas an ASTM L1 surgical mask and a pair of cordlocks only cost $32 cents. I might just have to switch permanently to ASTM L1 mask with tightened earloops because the economics make too much sense not to. In addition, ASTM L1 masks are three layer masks that are far more breathable in hot summer air whereas KN95 masks are only wearable in spring, fall and winter. (Never tried a KF94 in the summer.)

2022-03-18 17:56:29

Among the many missed opportunities with SLIDERS: it never did crossovers. For cross-marketing purposes, SLIDERS should have crossed over with every single Vancouver-filmed show on the FOX Network and every LA-filmed series on the Sci-Fi Channel. It never did and it's a huge waste of potential. SLIDERS should cross over with every NBCUniversal property.

**

I was recently watching HOW I MET YOUR FATHER, a soft-revival of the seminal sitcom HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER. While set in the same continuity and in the same city and using all-new characters and using a beautiful remade instrumental of the opening theme, HOW I MET YOUR FATHER is a bland, empty, vacant, soulless photocopy of the original series. HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, while 'just' a sitcom, was an extremely daring series. Its storytelling deliberately stretched it timespan over decades, attempting to set up plot points that wouldn't pay off for seasons in advance, hitting the target more often than it missed. HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER was unafraid to deal with grim tales of loss and loneliness and becoming resigned to isolation.

HOW I MET YOUR FATHER is not daring or bold. It's simply offering bland sitcom misunderstandings in a romcom formula. It doesn't attempt to use any extensive timespan for drama or comedy; it doesn't do flash forwards except as an expository device; it doesn't switch into multiple genres; it isn't willing to confront defeatism. It's just a lightweight, bland sitcom about a bunch of pleasantly affable New Yorkers having pleasantly affable problems. It's completely generic. It isn't bad. It's so okay it's dull.

I hope no SLIDERS revival is ever so okay it's dull.

2022-03-08 17:04:08

Who would be in a position to tell you not to? Haha!

I really hope QUANTUM LEAP fans get everything they want and need from a reboot.

2022-03-03 18:59:29

To be fair, I'm far more partisan than Wikipedia would ever allow. The world may not agree that the Mr. Knight era was the height of MOON KNIGHT comics, for example. And some people seem okay with the weird retcon around Moon Knight's initial debut as as a villain, but I think it's ridonk.

2022-03-02 19:11:14

The Mr. Knight era was extremely popular and arguably the most significant and successful period of Moon Knight's publishing history.

Moon Knight always struggled. His debut in 1975 was as a villain and it wasn't the character who intrigued; it was just the costume, hence the strained retcon to reveal his villainous debut had been a tangled undercover mission.

MOON KNIGHT has always been a fit of very random elements: the costume was designed to reflect a crescent moon to counter the werewolf imagery of a full moon. This was combined with an origin of Marc Spector being resurrected by an Egyptian god Khonshu (?) to fight crime in New York City (?). The character with his gadgets and cape often seemed too close to Batman. Various writers added more elements: Moon Knight had three civilian identities and a superhero persona. The four became four separate personalities in one body. Moon Knight was mentally ill and possibly hallucinating every interaction with the Egyptian god who supposedly gave him his powers.

Disgraced emotional abuser Warren Ellis simplified Moon Knight: Moon Knight became a consulting detective referred to as "Mr. Knight" who helped police solve all the paranormal crimes of a superhero universe. The police referred to him as "Mr. Knight" so that they could indicate who had offered assistance in reports as if Moon Knight were to show up, the police would be obligated to arrest him.

Ellis wrote only six issues, but this redefinition was a critical hit: it distinguished Moon Knight from Batman in that Moon Knight worked with police side by side, it made him a civilian associate, and the costume was now a white business suit with a mask. Marvel then hired disgraced sexual harasser Brian Wood to write the next six issues and maintain largely the same style. Marvel then hired good egg (as far as I know) Cullen Bunn to write another five issues in the Ellis-template.

After that, Marvel hired eccentric and brilliant writer Jeff Lemire to write 14 issues. Lemire kept a lot of the stylings of the Ellis-template but made it even weirder.

Lemire penned a beautiful tale of Moon Knight trapped within his own fractured mind and tormented by Khonshu, eventually revealing that Khonshu had sought to exploit Marc's disassociative personality disorder to fragment and destroy Marc's mind in order to possess his body. Marc defeated Khonshu in the finale, freeing himself from Khonshu forever.

At 31 issues and about two and a half years, however, Marvel apparently felt that they'd played out the whole "Mr. Knight" era. In 2017, as part of the Marvel Legacy relaunch theme, Marvel 'reset' a lot of their characters back to 'basics' and after Lemire, writer Max Bemis featured Marc back in his original Moon Knight costume fighting crime and with his criminal consultant role set aside.

It looks like Disney+ would prefer the Mr. Knight+ approach because that costume is probably easier to create on a prestige TV budget. Superheroes with big capes are very, very, very difficult in live action.

2022-03-01 15:26:27

The "Mr. Knight" era of Moon Knight:

ireactions wrote:

The 2017 run of MOON KNIGHT by Warren Ellis and Brian Wood (both now disgraced sexual harassers who are unemployable) had Moon Knight change his costume into a white suit and present him as a consulting detective to police on offbeat crimes. It was revealed that Khonshu was no god, but an interdimensonal entity that had 'colonized' Spector's brain and manifested in inconsistent ways that were Spector's interpretation of a pan-dimensional being.
Then came the Jeff Lemire run you read where Moon Knight is in a hallucinatory, unreal, dreamlike prison which he identifies as Khonshu trying to reassert total control of his psyche. This time, Spector finally defeats the Khonshu influence on his brain once and for all, declaring that he is in control of his own future, not Khonshu. "I am Marc Spector. I am Steven Grant. I am Jake Lockley. And we are going to be okay. We are going to live with who we are. We are Moon Knight. And we never needed you," Spector tells Khonshu, casting out this entity / demon / god / whatever from his mind once and for all.

After the Lemire run, there was a time gap. In the next issue by Max Bemis, Moon Knight was back in his pre-Mr. Knight costume, Khonshu was now a benign entity whispering in Moon Knight's era, and in Bemis' hands, the Lemire run was largely dismissed as a hallucination.

In a more recent storyline, Khonshu went insane and tried to take over the world and Moon Knight defeated him and had him imprisoned in Asgard. I assume that in some subsequent issue, this too will be dismissed as a hallucination. Haha!

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