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I wonder if Mill Creek were obligated to hand over to Universal whatever DVD files they produced for ownership purposes. I wonder if Peacock took whatever was most recent in Universal's digital archives for streaming, unaware or uncaring as to whether or not the most recent was what was best.

(This is not an invitation for you to send me phone numbers and email addresses and map coordinates to contact NBCUniversal's home video department. I swear to God, if you do that again, I will jump into an interdimensional vortex with Henry and Ryan and disappear forever.)

I don't know how Peacock got where they did, but the screencaps you're showing look like compressed MPEG-2 that's been re-encoded as compressed h.264.

Where are the screencaps?! How can you let me down after everything!?

:-)

I don't have Peacock. Does anyone with Peacock find the quality to be "near-HD"? (I watched SAVED BY THE BELL through a temporary Stack subscription in Canada.)

The DVD compression for SLIDERS on the Universal discs was not particularly high for a DVD release. I previously said it was; I was mistaken.

Seasons 2 - 3 look fine as 35mm film transferred to 540 line digital videotape, Seasons 4 - 5 look good as 16mm film transferred to 540 line digital videotape.

The blurriness of Season 1's second to ninth episodes is not from DVD compression; the low-compression SD blu-ray release from Germany is even blurrier. The problem is that the film was transferred to low resolution videotape for editing and special effects and with incorrect interlacing on "Prince of Wails," "Fever," "Last Days," "Eggheads" and "Luck of the Draw"; the even and odd fields were swapped by mistake and created jagged edges, flickering lines and increased blur when DVD and blu-ray players attempt to deinterlace the image.

The SD blu-ray of the Season 1 episodes, while detelecined to remove the interlacing errors, is blurrier because it's a 540i PAL format which was produced by Universal simply stretching the video format from 480i to 540i and changing the framerate. In contrast, the Season 2 - 5 episodes, transferred from film to high fidelity SD digital videotape for editing and effects, retain much of the film grain quality of the video images thanks to low-compression SD files in the high capacity blu-ray format.

The pilot looks really sharp and defined in the Universal DVD, moreso than any subsequent episode. Seasons 4 - 5 may look superficially sharper, but that's due to larger 16mm film grains adding high edge contrast when downscaled to SD. The pilot, when reviewed through the magnifying glass of AI upscaling, is so crisply defined that I wonder if the pilot episode were actually edited on 35mm film, being a higher budgeted production than the series that followed and designed specifically to sell a weekly series to networks.

I find this difficult to believe given everyone else's descriptions of poor video quality on Peacock.

I think it's likely, of course, that the Sci-Fi Channel episodes look better than the rest due to Seasons 4 - 5 being filmed on 16mm film stock with larger film grains that retain detail when downscaled to 480p for digital videotape editing in the late 90s.

How would Temporal Flux write a SLIDERS story satirizing NFTs?

I don't know how; I just know that it would be awesome. :-)

Well, with MAGYVER, Richard Dean Anderson thought the reboot was garbage (and it did take about half a season to figure itself out). He refused to be involved with the MACGYVER reboot despite the intense wish that he join the show either as MacGyver 2016's father or mentor. In QUANTUM LEAP's case, Scott Bakula is clearly very keen to be involved in any capacity. As for Bellisario -- I assume he shows up at the office to collect his royalty cheques at minimum.

Disclaimer: I despise James Bond and think he has about as much to offer the twenty-first century as the feather pen. His appeal was that he presented a men's magazine fantasy that is based on consumerism, status symbols, imperlalism, the commodification of women, and white privilege.

That said, Slider_Quinn21 is really onto something because the recent run of Daniel Craig movies would have worked a lot better as a TV series rather than a set of feature films. CASINO ROYALE found a take on James Bond that was true to Bond's cinematic roots. CASINO ROYALE presents Bond as a violent thug, an assassin, a ruthless man in the amoral field of espionage whose 'heroism' is that he's employed by the Western world and by (nominally) democratic governments. But then he has to infiltrate a financial conspiracy for child soldiers and Bond needs a false identity. He has to conceal his bruiser's bearing and savage nature in the guise of a wealthy gentleman, a pleasure-seeking playboy, a high society image of masculinity. He has to adopt a secret identity.

This is a take on Bond that (a) presents the (toxic) male fantasy (garbage) and (b) has sufficient self-awareness. And if CASINO ROYALE had been the first season of a TV show, this theme of Bond having a dual persona, a dual identity, and neither being particularly healthy or admirable would have sustained an entire series.

This run of Bond movies also attempted running plotlines: for the first time in Bond's history, his movie had a direct sequel. Bond encounters the mysterious Quantum organization and then focuses on taking them down in QUANTUM OF SOLACE. Unfortunately, due to a writer's strike, the QUANTUM OF SOLACE script was unfinished, unrefined and simply a collection of empty setpieces. The sense of Bond's dual identity was not mantained for this film.  The Quantum organization was not presented with any clarity and it was confusing as to whether they'd been defeated or not by the end of the film. The Quantum organization would have worked a lot better in a TV show.

Then we have SKYFALL which is a great movie that doesn't acknowledge the Quantum organization at all (so we're to take it that they were defeated in QUANTUM OF SOLACE). This movie focuses on whether or not Bond's brand of espionage is still relevant -- a bizarre question because espionage in real life is not a James Bond movie. Regardless, SKYFALL is a great standalone adventure and yet, seems to be building to a sequel: it ends with a recreation of Bond entering the MI-6 headquarters as seen in the first Bond film, stepping past a padded door, greeting Moneypenny, and entering a mission briefing from his superior, M. While not sequelizing the elements from the previous two films, SKYFALL ends like it's a end of a pilot episode of a TV show.

Then comes SPECTRE which really would have worked better as a 10 - 13 episode season of a TV show. Bond discovers that the events of the previous three movies were plotted by a single organization that encompasses Quantum, an organization called Spectre. Bond discovers that this organization is headed by his foster brother, Blofeld. Bond defeats Spectre and Blofeld in the very same movie in which Spectre and Blofeld were introduced, making the supposed scale of their villainy quite small. Had the Spectre organization been built up over a season and then defeated, it would have seemed more meaningful. SPECTRE also presents the love interest Madeleine as a significant and meaningful romance when they barely have any connection onscreen; it's a relationship that would have worked better across multiple episodes rather than one film.

And then we have NO TIME TO DIE which is a TV show's series finale and would have worked a lot better had there actually been 30 - 50 episodes before it as opposed to four. NO TIME TO DIE insists that Bond and Felix Leiter have a close bond of friendship when they barely spoke to each other in CASINO ROYALE and QUANTUM OF SOLACE and Felix wasn't even in SKYFALL or SPECTRE. NO TIME TO DIE depends on Madeleine being the (second?) most significant woman in James Bond's life based on some fairly forgettable romantic scenes in SPECTRE. NO TIME TO DIE thinks that Blofeld is the most frightening demon in Bond's past when Bond was barely aware of Blofeld until the middle of the previous film.

All this -- the dual identity approach, Quantum, Spectre, Felix and Madeleine -- would have worked better as a TV show.

Recently read the three volumes of STAR TREK: CODA novels. After the NEMESIS feature film, the novels took over all the NEXT GENERATION, VOYAGER and DEEP SPACE NINE ongoing stories and also produced a series of novels that served as the fifth season of ENTERPRISE (the Romulan War and the rise of the Federation). From 2002 to 2020, this was STAR TREK's ongoing storyline for the 24th century and there were no TV shows or movies to say otherwise until STAR TREK: PICARD presented a completely different situation for the Federation and the TNG, DS9 and VOY characters. It was unclear what the novels would do: they couldn't dovetail, they couldn't coordinate. They would have to stop publishing in their current continuity, much like the STAR WARS novels. However, the STAR WARS novels avoided a grand finale and just had a low key installment as their last.

However, STAR TREK: CODA's three book series has the book continuity versions of the cast discovering that reality is under attack from omniversal beings called the Devidians. They collapse timelines and consume the energies of dying timelines and now they've come for this one, the Prime Timeline. The TNG and DS9 crews investigate and soon realize: they aren't the Prime Timeline. They are actually a splintered timeline from the original; the events of FIRST CONTACT in which the Borg attempted to use time travel to invade Earth created an alternate thread of time that stirred the Devidians' interest in eating timelines. This splintered timeline, while originally close to the Prime Timeline (for the remainder of DS9 and VOYAGER and INSURRECTION and NEMESIS) has diverged farther from the Prime Timeline, granting the Devidians more power from their consumption.

The TNG and DS9 characters discover that the Devidians have become so powerful that they can't be stopped; instead, the crew must use time travel to erase their splinter timeline -- and their adventures and relationships and families created since NEMESIS -- or the Devidians will destroy all realities including the Prime Timeline. Many of them are killed off in the course of this mission; eventually, Picard resets reality, erases the novel universe from existence. The NEW FRONTIER books, the SHATNERVERSE novels, the post-NEMESIS adventures, the TITAN series, the DS9 relaunch, the VOYAGER relaunch -- anything published and set after NEMESIS is effectively wiped out of all existence along with the Devidian threat, saving all other realities.

The only record that they ever existed are in typewritten manuscripts containing the text of all the STAR TREK novels written by a psychic author living in the 1960s (Benny Russell from DS9's "Far Beyond the Stars") and this author sets aside these manuscripts as a story he has finished writing. He turns his typewriter to writing the story of STAR TREK: PICARD.

... that is... not the ending I would have chosen, to put it mildly.

I mean there was no period where Luke and Mara were dating or even hanging out that much. They had the three books in the first Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn where they were at odds, uneasily working together and then apart. Other writers took over the STAR WARS series and there were maybe three to four books where they were peripherally in the same room while some crisis was unfolding.

Then, when Lucasfilm shifted the novel license from Bantam Books to Del Ray, author Timothy Zahn returned to write the Hand of Thrawn duology as a finale to the Bantam era. Luke and Mara spent the first book apart and the second book on a quest during which they decide they're in love and that they are getting married. The entire period of getting to know each other, dating, seeing if they can stand to spend the night together, working out if they would be good together long term -- all that was skipped. They met and worked together, then didn't see each other for ages, then over the course of a couple days, decided they were getting married. And then, the Del Ray era novels (NEW JEDI ORDER and onward) had them as a happily married couple.

Well, 'better' is subjective. I am not a fan of Zahn's STAR WARS, but I do respect it.

From 1954 to 1955, J.R.R. Tolkien made a massive splash with LORD OF THE RINGS, a massive book that was so big that the publishers had to split it across three volumes just so they could afford to print and bind it. He seemed to create an entire publishing industry for multi-volume fantasy novels.

LORD OF THE RINGS was still selling in huge numbers in the 90s and Zahn's writing, I would guess, was an effort to bring STAR WARS into this highly lucrative publishing market. His Serious writing and Serious tone and Serious military science fiction trilogy were perfect for producing STAR WARS novels on shelves adjacent to LORD OF THE RINGS, DUNE, Asimov's FOUNDATION and Stephen King's DARK TOWER in bookstores while presenting STAR WARS in terms of military science fiction like THE FOREVER WAR and STARSHIP TROOPERS and straightforward military fiction like Tom Clancy's THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER and PATRIOT GAMES.

This looked like the only future for STAR WARS at the time. RETURN OF THE JEDI had come and gone from the theatre eight years previous. In 1991, STAR WARS' ongoing saga was not going to be in film or TV or, it seemed, anywhere but novels. STAR TREK novels, while having a strong audience, were generally regarded as something that only spoke to STAR TREK diehards.

In contrast, Zahn's writing had the benefit of being accessible to a casual audience who'd only needed to watch three movies that had been a globally enjoyed cinematic experience. And from what I can tell, TIMOTHY ZHAN'S STAR WARS resounded with an audience who wanted Serious Military Science Fiction Literature and appreciated STAR WARS shifting into this genre and format. The readership at the time were fine with TIMOTHY ZAHN'S STAR WARS having little of the 1977 movie's high adventure or humour and being more like a novelization of a Stanley Kubrick-directed STAR WARS movie. It seemed to inspire an entire publishing line of STAR WARS novels that were sequels or prequels to Zahn's writing as well as video games and comic books that all used Zahn's trilogy as a starting point.

Timothy Zahn's writing may not have aged well. I'm not a fan. You're not a fan. Subjectively, Zahn's vision of STAR WARS leaves me really cold. But objectively, the massive sales and long-term sequelizing indicates that Zahn's writing style was the right choice for that specific book market at that specific moment in the STAR WARS franchise. Zahn's writing got the world at large to take STAR WARS novels Seriously as Serious Literature when media tie-ins are usually regarded as little more than branded fanfic.

I guess we had to be there to like it if we were ever going to like it.

Of course not.

Although it's strange to me that you're only now reading the Timothy Zahn Thrawn stories when you have previously made mention of the Luuke clone that features in the conclusion of the Thrawn trilogy.

I think I was 10 when I read the Thrawn STAR WARS trilogy. And despite being a speed-reader, it took me like a month to read all three. It was dense. It was thick. It was slow. It was Serious Military Science Fiction Literature. This was not George Lucas' STAR WARS, a lighthearted, slambang action thrill ride that sought to capture the high adventure of FLASH GORDON with the thoughtful mysticism of a Japanese samurai movie.

Instead, TIMOTHY ZAHN'S STAR WARS was -- I'm guessing -- an attempt to write STAR WARS like a war novel akin to Norman Mailer's THE NAKED AND THE DEAD (a 1948 WWII set novel). Combined with the military science fiction stylings (but not the values) of Robert Heinlein's STARSHIP TROOPERS and its counterpoint, THE FOREVER WAR by Joe Haiderman. And with the mythic self-importance of LORD OF THE RINGS novels (which are grimdark misery after the first 50 pages of the first one).

There was a market at the time for thick, dense, hyperdetailed, Serious Military Science Fiction Literature in the early 90s. The Thrawn trilogy, coming out from 1991 to 1993, was an Adult Hardcover Novel for the people who enjoyed STAR WARS movies as children who were now Grown Adults who would appreciate STAR WARS as an Adult Product.

I've never dared admit this to anybody, but while I respected and appreciated the craft and skill of the trilogy and the concluding duology by Timothy Zahn -- it was quite boring. And when I got to the end of it, I felt like I had read an Important Science Fiction Novel, but it wasn't fun. It was like eating unflavoured protein powder by spoon.

In contrast, the first STAR WARS movie had been a pretty great bacon cheeseburger from an indie burger restaurant, the second one had been an unexpected gourmet prime rib, and the third had been a satisfactory fast food Big Mac.

There were points of interest like Mara Jade and Luke's relationship and the twisted lessons of C'Baoth, but Zahn's prose is so serious, so muted, so avoidant of strong emotion and drama that it isn't that inspiring.

Zahn's favourite character is clearly the cold, academic, aloof, mysterious Grand Admiral Thrawn and Zahn's great at writing distant, unknowable characters and less great at writing more earnest, heart-on-their-sleeve characters like Luke and Han and Leia.

I have a lot of respect for how Zahn repackaged STAR WARS as Serious Literature with the publishers maintaining that brand identity for very long periods between 2001 - 2014. Of course, there were plenty of STAR WARS novels that were just weak media tie-in merchandise, but there were plenty that were good and fun and exciting and comedic and closer to the movies, and there were also a bunch that followed the Zahn model of Seriousness. Seriousness was in vogue in 1991. There was a big market at the time for Zahn's books..

Probably doesn't read well today.

I meant to type that Republicans don't want "universal voter ID accessible to any and all." I apologize for the typo.

I meant to say that the Republicans who don't want "universal voter ID accessible to any and all" are the fascist alt-right wing of Republicans that have come to dominate Republican representation in media and politics, not Republicans in general. I apologize for the... well. I apologize.

The issue is that fascist alt-right Republicans don't want "election integrity." They want to use procedural methods to declare themselves the winner of any election regardless of how many votes they get. They don't want voter ID because if everyone could vote, they'd lose. I've also read that even Democrats wouldn't want a full turnout because every eligible voter voting would lead to Libertarian or Green Party victories. I don't know how true that is.

The 'fairness' of American political system was always wobbly from the start: the electoral college was, by design, to grant more power to slaveowner states. This attitude of disenfranchisement is found throughout the system: disproportionate representation in the Senate (two senators per state despite population), and gerrymandering and voter suppression are new manifestations of a very shaky system.

**

Going back to DON'T LOOK UP  (briefly) -- it's hard for fiction to confront real world situations effectively and positively. DON'T LOOK UP, judging from the reviews, confronts the fictional equivalent of a real world situation effectively and negatively. Negativity is a deeply alienating approach for media even though it may be totally valid, accurate, correct and reasonable.

One of my favourite (if flawed) shows, the MACGYVER reboot, attempted to say something positive about the climate crisis. It was, to be frank, a a bit of a disaster where the show in some ways trivialized and dismissed the climate emergency.

MACGYVER's fourth season has MacGyver facing a bioterrorist group seeking to reduce the global population by 50 per cent through engineering a series of environmental disasters. It's revealed that this plot is actually drawn from a secret US government file, File 47, where US scientists and spies engaged in a thought experiment in how human-created natural catastrophe could create doomsday scenarios.

A CIA administrator came to view File 47 as a threat to the US and assassinated everyone except for two scientists who escaped and decided to form a bioterror group, an organization called CODEX, which would enact the plan in File 47.

MacGyver at first tries to stop CODEX, but then finds himself confronting how his work as a spy for the US government has protected a broken system that's destroying planet Earth. MacGyver abandons his spy agency and joins CODEX. However, MacGyver ultimately stops CODEX from unleashing nuclear disaster, yet vows to dedicate himself and his agency to battling the environmental catastrophe that the world is facing. He also presents File 47 to various US government committees to show how the world's ecosystems will collapse without immediate action.

MacGyver presenting File 47 is the Season 4 finale, it's presented with a stirringly victorious musical soundtrack -- and it's absurd.  This is a 2020 episode of television suggesting that MacGyver explaining climate change with a top secret CIA file will somehow spark action. Climate change has been a part of our global lexicon since 2006. Al Gore couldn't get the world to take climate change seriously. It is in some ways insulting for MACGYVER to say that MacGyver and a grim PowerPoint presentation will somehow end decades of inaction and indifference.

The Season 4 finale also has MacGyver taking control of his spy agency and declaring that their mission will to build a better future going forward, implying that MacGyver will be leaving behind his usual spyfi hijinks for something more meaningful. That was the Season 4 finale. The Season 5 premiere opens with...  MacGyver engaged his usual spy hijinks on another mission, business as usual; the climate crisis angst of Season 4 is almost totally forgotten.

It's as though MACGYVER's fifth season is declaring that, upon further consideration, the climate crisis isn't something the show wants to think about any more, that File 47 has completely solved global warming, and the biggest problem on MacGyver's mind now is stealing this week's secret files from tis week's villain.

To be fair (ish), Season 4's finale wasn't meant to be the finale at the time, but the 13th episode of a 22 episode season that got cut down to 13 due to the COVID shutdown. There would likely have been another nine episodes exploring MacGyver's personal crisis if not for Season 4 production being stopped.

There is some unspoken rationale in Season 5 for why MacGyver wouldn't be pursuing his environmental concerns. Season 5 establishes that MacGyver hasn't had many missions since Season 4, that his agency was shut down for the entirety of the pandemic (which is stated to have happened and been resolved over an unspecified period of time). Also, the 2020 lockdowns were a massive, global showcase for how the environment could repair itself without constant toxic emissions into the atmosphere, a far more meaningful display than anything a fictional character in a CBS spy show could have ever done. Later in Season 5, we learn that MacGyver has been trying to use some of the material from CODEX to create a cure for cancer.

But all these are simply excuses. In Season 4, MacGyver was experiencing a crisis of faith, of conscience, of purpose and while he didn't adopt CODEX's murderous methods, he accepted their worldview that the world is in serious trouble and that he was working on the wrong side of the crisis (even though that didn't make CODEX the right side). In Season 5, MacGyver is up to his usual adventures and his journey in Season 4 is forgotten.

Season 5 does end with MacGyver ultimately deciding to stop taking any work from the US government and to be an independent agent, but it doesn't seem connected to the CODEX arc and the show ended on this adequate if inconclusive note.

And yet... it's arguable that having MacGyver fight climate change was simply asking too much of a fictional character who cannot actually affect the real world with his actions in a fictional world, and whose fictional existence will always revolve around spyfi hijinks.

MACGYVER was never going to be anything but MacGyver MacGyvering his way out of various immediate situations with improvised inventions using every day objects. MACGYVER was never going to do anything about the climate crisis beyond making a statement, offering a performative gesture, and then going back to the next spy mission. Which has me wonder if maybe they shouldn't have even told this story in the first place -- although once again, the Season 4 that aired was short by nine episodes, so it's not reasonable to judge the writers harshly for a story they weren't able to finish.

That description was perfect. :-)

Biden is not taking the massive danger of minority rule seriously.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics … ext-policy

His administration has been focused on his failed infrastructure deal; he has failed to rally Democrats to mount any defense towards how Republicans intend to seize power through taking control of elections at the state level.
https://www.salon.com/2022/01/06/the-in … te-houses/

The ineptitude of the original January 6 insurrection to overturn the legitimate outcome of an election will be replaced with competent procedural cheating next time -- and Biden is taking no real action, raising no awareness, governing like Republicans are just normal politicians on the other side of the aisle when they have completely signed onto fascism, delusional conspiracy theories, gerrymandering and violence.

Biden's mild comments on Omicron and allowing the CDC to cut quarantine time from 10 days to five is entirely too relaxed. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory … s-82072671

While I'm not a huge fan of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Canada, he has warned of an extremely difficult winter as even 'mild' Omicron COVID is causing massive work absences that make it impossible for businesses and public services to function and even a small percentage of a massively infectious COVID variant will break the health care system. Undoubtedly, the United States is closer to the peak of Omicron than Canada, but had Donald Trump had the same tone as Biden has had for Omicron, Democrats would have savaged him for downplaying Omicron.

This may not be a problem for some people, but it is really cold here in Canada and when I walk around outdoors, my boat shaped masks (KF94, 99 per cent filtration, perimeter is tight and further tightened with cord locks on the earloops) -- well, it gets soaked from all the moisture coming out of my exhaled air. I'm pretty sure that the water droplets from the condensation are soaking the electrostatic filter inside the mask and rendering it inoperative. Once an electrostatic filter gets wet, it can no longer electrostatically filter. Wet masks need to go in the garbage.

I guess there's a couple solutions: to throw out the mask as a single use product once it's wet (which kind of ruins the cost-effective approach of rotating between masks every day and going through five masks a month).

Another option is to, when outdoors, switch to a cheap surgical mask. Outdoor transmission risk is fairly low and even a surgical mask with gaps would be sufficient protection and it's only like a 25 cents lost when throwing out the worn and dampened mask.

Another another option would be to put a PM2.5 filter (a flat, charcoal filter layer the size of two business cards) into my KF94s and see if that can absorb the moisture in my exhales before it soaks the mask.

I suppose I could also consider not wearing a mask when outdoors, but... I just don't do that. Again, outdoor transmission is negligible; I think it is unlikely to catch COVID outside, but a mask turns the "unlikely" risk into a risk so fractionally low that it's functionally non-existent.

From a TV standpoint: MACGYVER and SAVED BY THE BELL were both hit by the pandemic and had to shut down production in 2020 and resume under strict quarantine protocols. They were filming new episodes during the pandemic, and they proceeded to set their stories *after* the pandemic.

However, most of these stories are basically written as though they were *before* the pandemic despite references to COVID and 2020.

MACGYVER had to do this because its fifth season was using a number of unfinished Season 4 episodes. MACGYVER's fifth season opens with one of these started filming before / completed filming after episodes. A dubbed in line of dialogue declares how MacGyver had to shut down all missions during the pandemic, but they are back on the job now that it is over, having been resolved in some unspecified fashion during an unstated amount of time.

SAVED BY THE BELL ended up doing the same thing: Season 2 is set a year after the pandemic and has everyone declaring that everything is normal now that all have been vaccinated, and while characters lament a lost year, there is no talk of boosters or variants and there is no ongoing masking; the stories outside, of the lost time and year of social distancing, are clearly written in a pre-pandemic world.

In the real world for people who took COVID-19 seriously: people kept wearing masks, understanding that vaccination doesn't stop you from getting sick, it only allows you to get better after getting sick without needing hospitalization, and getting sick with COVID after two doses is still severe and debilitating for at least a few weeks. People were cautious about physical contact with anyone they hadn't known to have been fully vaccinated. People were worried about new variants and the need for booster shots.

This isn't a failure on MACGYVER or SAVED BY THE BELL. Both shows, filming during the pandemic, had no way of knowing how long the pandemic would last or how it would end. They took the view that life would go back to 'normal' because that was a world they could write, perform and render without guesswork outside of the guess that 2021 would be like 2019.

**

I do think we could be near the tail-end of the pandemic. Viruses can't mutate infinitely without losing what makes them transmissible, virulent or vaccine evasive, and for a virus to be transmissible, it has to be mild enough at least at the outset for the patient to be unaware that they're sick and spread it. Omicron is a serious problem even with a lower percentage of severe cases because that lower percentage is still a very big number when it's so contagious. However, Omicron's transmissibility will prevent other variants overtaking it in spread. Those who survive Omicron (which you can without hospitalization if you're vaccinated) retain the immune system responses needed to defeat this and previous variants. COVID-19, for the vaccinated and for Omicron survivors, would become a mild illness going forward.

I'm not a doctor, I could be WRONG.

https://www.salon.com/2021/12/23/some-s … cs-finale/

Yeah, it's awful how neglectful Universal is towards SLIDERS.

Here are the samples of all nine episodes Season 1. It's all the end-scenes (the conclusions of each episode, right up to the producer credits) except for "Eggheads" where it's Arturo's scene with his wife. See the sliders fleeing the Russian mob in crisp HD 1080p! See Quinn and Arturo engage the FBI in... less crisp, approximated HD.

https://mega.nz/folder/b9x0AabS#fvf1LxhBxNaFWgBdtE7ZMg

All the episodes were detelecined to remove the aliasing. After that, the saturation was increased on each episode from 15 - 30 per cent. The Pilot was upscaled to 1080p via Topaz deblurring. The rest of the episodes were simply deartifacted with Topaz but left at 480p and with film grain texture added. Then they were scaled to 1080p via a bicubic algorithm and the codec 'tuned' to retain film grain.

I actually increased the film grain on "Luck of the Draw" by more than the rest by about 25 per cent more than the other episodes. This was to offset the episode being significantly blurrier than the rest, more than Topaz could sharpen up.

It's imperfect, but it's significantly better than what I had before with previous upscales when Topaz didn't have a deblur option yet.

**

It's interesting what RussianCabbie says about smeared text. This is an anomaly in many upscaled video files done with Topaz 2020. However, I'm running an upscale of Season 2's "Time and Again World." The out of focus text of the Lamplighter bar sign looked really smudged under Topaz 2020's preset for removing compression. However, the 2021 preset for deblurring just leaves it out of focus... but still in HD.

Outside of the Season 1 episodes after the Pilot, upscaling SLIDERS is drag and drop. NBCUniversal could easily do it for most of the episodes and use a slightly more complicated process for the problem episodes of Season 1.

I'd like to believe that people will band together, but that's proven untrue. Look at vaccinations: people accepted vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox and flu without complaint; then white supremacists presented the COVID-19 vaccine as a divisive point and now we have a pandemic extended by the unvaccinated. People believe what they're incentivized to believe even if that incentive is as shallow and meaningless as claiming expertise and unassailability by virtue of privilege, even to the point of psychosis and eating horse de-wormer.

Look at the Center for Disease Control, supposedly run by sensible adults with President Joe Biden in the White House. They have nonsensically reduced the quarantine period from 10 days to 5 not because people aren't potentially contagious after 5, but because, as Dr. Anthony Fauci himself said, companies can force people to go back to work faster and keep the capitalist machine churning.

People are ultimately for themselves; they will only act in their own perceived best interests and those perceptions are often flat out stupid. My suspicion is that we will only work together if enough people can be convinced that what's in everyone's best interests is also their own, but people can have an incredibly shortsighted view. If my country and yours hadn't hoarded vaccines from poorer countries, COVID wouldn't have had the opportunity to continue spreading and creating new mutations.

Movies like TOMORROWLAND give me a little respite from all that and say that it's possible that people will figure it out. Not that they will; no movie can assert that sincerely. Just that it's possible.

Well, reading the Wikipedia summary was an unpleasant experience, but it's clearly a story that's meant to be unpleasant. Ultimately, we live in the world of DON'T LOOK UP and we can watch that movie any time we read a newspaper which I do every morning and evening. I have an annual subscription to The Toronto Star, so I have to read it or it's like burning money.

My preference for a movie on such subject matter would be the film TOMORROWLAND, but that's because my preference is to look for something with hope. That said, TOMORROWLAND is only a movie and despite having a character who is relentlessly determined to do SOMETHING about the problems of the world, the movie doesn't (and can't) offer a solution to climate change and world hunger. All it can do is ask people to serve their best impulses and not their worst.

Movies and TV are great for normalizing sexual and gender identities and condemning transphobia and climate change denial, but actually offering a solution to defeating greenhouse gas emissions may be asking them to punch above their weight. It's entertainment.

Well, I've read the (negative) reviews and the Wikipedia summary and it seems like a pretty good movie to me, but I would never watch it. I'm sure it's great, it's just that if I want to see people being self-destructive and incompetent, I'll just read the newspaper. I turn to entertainment for what is somewhat inflammatorily described as "competence porn." I want fantasies of people being good at things, sometimes at the expense of their needs in other areas.

**

I got my third dose. Pfizer not available to my age bracket, only Moderna. Canada currently has lots of Moderna and not as much Pfizer.

I'd agree with that.

The thing about a film like THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS: everyone who would go to a movie theatre or pull up a streaming service knows who Neo and Trinity are. While Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are as significant to *me* as Neo and Trinity and Captain Kirk and Sherlock Holmes, that's not the case for the average TV viewer.

I can't help but wonder if these difficulties would make a clean reboot preferable to what Torme seems to want which sounds a bit like HALLOWEEN doing a requel that ignores all sequels but the first. In Torme's case, he would probably consider everything after "The Guardian" to be the unwanted sequels.

I'd agree with Grizzlor that unless Torme is being guarded, he does not see John Rhys-Davies being a series regular in his revival and he doesn't expect Sabrina Lloyd to be involved, although I'm sure he would find a way to get them in if they were available, and that's assuming there even is a SLIDERS revival or that NBCUniversal wouldn't just hire someone other than Tracy Torme to produce a SLIDERS reboot. They can do that. If Lana Wachowski hadn't been inspired to make THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS, Warner Bros. would have hired someone else to make a new MATRIX movie.

Every time someone says they got a booster, I feel a great sense of relief.

My reading indicates that for reasons scientists don't fully understand yet, alternating between Pfizer and Moderna has provided a higher number of antibodies than matching vaccines. I encourage mixing. I've had two doses of Moderna and I'm expecting a third, but I'd be happy to get Pfizer on Wednesday.

On average, early reports indicate that Pfizer and Moderna give you about 75 percent protection against getting sick at all, but after 10 weeks, that drops to anywhere from 30 - 45 per cent. Omicron has unfortunately rewritten the rulebook; earlier, Grizzlor shared a doctor's expectation that a third dose could be the last vaccination needed, but that was only for Alpha to Delta, not for Omicron. However, even if the 10 week wane is true, the booster would still protect you from getting seriously sick, from having to go to the ICU, from being put on a ventilator, and from dying of COVID.

No vaccine could have ever granted permanent immunization. Even if Delta had been the last variant, a third dose would not have prevented people from getting sick from Delta; a third dose would prevent people from dying of Delta.

Vaccines aren't cures as much as teachers; they teach your body how to create the antibodies against a specific virus; they teach your body to cure itself. Anyone who calls vaccination useless because it doesn't prevent infection is either ignorant or lying. Vaccines don't stop you from getting infected; they stop you from getting so sick that you die. This is the case with all vaccines whether it's tetanus, measles, flu, polio, hepatitis or COVID-19.

People in the first 10 weeks of their third dose could still get infected by Omicron; they just have a 70 - 75 per cent chance of never developing a fever or a cough. Michael Rosenbaum caught Delta after two doses of an mRNA vaccine and lost two weeks of his life to fever and exhaustion -- which is significantly better than losing his whole life.

I salute Slider_Quinn21 for doing his duty and protecting his family, his friends, his neighbours and his country.

I'm surprised that a KN95 makes you sweat and makes your nose run!

I have experienced that in winter with an ASTM3 mask where the water-resistant outer layer was wrapped around the mask and on the inside too. When exhaling air and water vapour in cold temperatures, droplets would form on the inside of the mask that I would end up breathing in and sneezing out. I've switched to KF94s that are more like Slider_Quinn21's Kleannara's with a quilted cotton layer that doesn't have as much condensation.

I generally don't recommend KN95s because there is no review standard or oversight; anyone can make a KN95 and call it a KN95 even if the filtration may be significantly less than 95 per cent. I do have some KN95s where I've bought a box of 10 and checked to make sure it actually has two interior layers of electrostatic filtering. But there's a lot of garbage KN95s on the market that only filter about 20 - 50 per cent, some below standard ones that only filter 70 - 90 per cent -- all generally due to poor manufacturing with the interior layers being either stretched to breaking or missing those layers entirely. KF94s, however, are subject to strict government standards before export.

One of the issues with double-masking: it can be harder to breathe. That said, it works for a lot of people. The surgical mask has electrostatic filtering; the cloth mask applies a firmer seal at the sides to prevent gaps. It's not something I like, though. I prefer to have one good mask rather than two poor ones.

I wore an N95 mask today for six hours. I have to tell you, these things hurt due to the clamp-like seal and the overhead bands (as opposed to earloops). They really hurt. A lot. I'm not sure the average person could tolerate wearing one for long; if people are going to consistently wear masks, they have to be as comfortable as a KN95 or a KF94.

Third dose for Wednesday for me!

I don't know what this means, you're being unclear.

When it comes to pandemic information, we should endeavour to be clear. At two doses of vaccination, you have 33 per cent protection from being infected by Omicron exposure and about 70 per cent protection from hospitalization and death. At three doses, you have 75 per cent protection from being infected by Omicron exposure and about 90 per cent protection from hospitalization and death.

People who are unvaccinated and unmasked have no protection. They infect others with COVID-19. They themselves will become infected with Omicron and require hospitalization. The mass numbers of unvaccinated hospitalizations slows health care systems to the point where they have to cancel routine and emergency surgeries; instead of treating patients with cancer or hurt by assaults and car accidents and chronic conditions, nurses and doctors are tied up treating people who won't get vaccinated and won't wear masks.

People who refuse vaccinations and refuse to mask are stealing health care from people with blood vessel disorders, with diabetes, with heart conditions, with genetic disorders.

The season 2 finale of the SAVED BY THE BELL has flashbacks to the 90s show (of which I saw very, very, very little), and the footage has been filtered to look like low-grade VHS that looks... strangely like a Universal DVD of a Season 1 episode of SLIDERS.

Annie's credentials -- they are roulettewheel on this forum and they wrote the Think of a Roulette blog and covered every episode of SLIDERS and all the comics -- are irrelevant as to whether or not their opinion is worth considering.

Annie's opinion is valid and their criticisms are very reasonable: Jerry O'Connell is old. Tracy Torme may be seriously out of touch with TV. Tracy Torme may be seriously out of touch with present day concerns of identity and culture and economy.

Tracy Torme may be seriously out of touch with reality to think that NBCUniversal would ever revive SLIDERS with the original cast instead of, say, doing what they did with MACGYVER and rebooting it with new actors playing the original character(s).

Annie Fish could be completely and totally right. However, writing is not like selling IKEA shelves. Torme is so rich that he invites homeless people to live with him. Torme is so rich that heart surgery and prostate cancer didn't put him out on the street when most people with that sort of medical cataclysm in America end up renting cardboard boxes for shelter.

Torme comes to SLIDERS now from a place of passion, not avarice. The only SLIDERS writing Torme wants to do is the writing in which he will invest his heart and soul into and the only writing for SLIDERS he wants to do is a vision of SLIDERS with Quinn Mallory played by Jerry O'Connell, Wade Welles played by Sabrina Lloyd, Rembrandt Brown played by Cleavant Derricks, and Professor Arturo played by John Rhys-Davies (and additional new characters should the originals prove difficult to book).

There is no point in Torme pitching a SLIDERS continuity reboot with recast versions of the originals if that isn't what makes Torme passionate. If that's the only revival that NBCUniversal would ever want to do, then that revival can come after Torme dies or is abducted by aliens.

Tracy Torme deserves the chance to fail. It is Torme's right to pitch the revival he wants to pitch because SLIDERS is his show. If I decide to paint my house glow in the dark green before putting it on the market, that's my right too.

If Torme's revival bid proves unmarketable and unapprovable, so be it. It was the revival he wanted to make. We can criticize the creative and marketing merits of this approach and we can review the unlikely successes and likely failures of his efforts. We can talk about what we'd like Torme to do with SLIDERS. But it's never going to be up to us to say what Torme should or shouldn't do with SLIDERS. Tracy Torme is SLIDERS.

(I would also argue that Temporal Flux is SLIDERS, but that's a different thread.)

I applaud Annie Fish for raising all of these extremely self-evident and likely problems with what Torme is trying to sell, but doing so in a way that in no way invalidates Torme's right to do as he sees fit with his show and in no way denigrates the fans' longings to see SLIDERS and be reunited with the sliders.

And Annie is right about those podcasters, they are abominations of broken humanity.