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I've been meaning to write on BATWOMAN for weeks, but I've been so busy with upscaling Season 1 of SLIDERS and the other thing, what is it, that thing I do during the day, that job, the day job, but really upscaling Season 1 of SLIDERS.

Slider_Quinn21 is quite correct to point out the absurdities of Ryan Wilder somehow running Wayne Enterprises on Kate's say-so; it's also ridiculous that Kate was running what was described as a multibillion dollar corporation. Wayne Enterprises would not be a family business for Bruce's cousin to take and then hand over to her stepsister's roommate; there would be a shareholders' board and a hiring process.

There's also the fact that across the first two seasons of BATWOMAN, Wayne Enterprises *never* seemed like an actual business and Wayne Tower *never* came off as a workplace of any kind. I was shocked to see Tom Lenk guest-starring as the Wayne Enterprises crisis communications worker. I had been under the impression that Wayne Enterprises was just a holding company for various patents and businesses at this point that had outsourced all its work to smaller firms since Bruce had left Gotham in a fit of something or other. I didn't think anyone did any actual work there and figured that while Kate had access to the executive floors of Wayne Tower, the rest of it had probably been rented out as office space to other businesses.

Also, if we accept -- and you may not -- that superheroes are written and watched or read by predominantly left-of-center creators and viewers, then there has never been a more unfashionable time for a superhero to own or run a multinational corporation. In my head canon (and no one else's), Bruce Wayne would not run a multinational corporation. Bruce Wayne would run a not-for-profit foundation; Bruce's wealth would have come from his father having invented various small medical patents in surgical technologies and real estate investments.

The writers of BATWOMAN are obviously left-of-center creators, and they have deliberately left Wayne Enterprises vague and undefined. It's partially because Wayne Enterprises doesn't really matter except as a thin justification for how Batwoman can afford all her hardware; it's primarily because the writers don't really want to show their heroic lead character running a corporation of any kind but felt compelled to maintain that part of the mythos.

What exactly does Wayne Enterprises buy or sell or offer?

Also, what business was Queen Consolidated in, exactly? And what does STAR Labs do any more after the particle accelerator explosion? Of all the fictional 'businesses' in the Arrowverse, the only recurring ones that have ever really made sense are the dating app Upswipz, the CC Jitters coffee shop, the Big Belly Burger fast food chain and Palmertech (which at least had a self-explanatory name).

**

I find it interesting that BATWOMAN has accepted that it can't do what it set out to do in telling Kate Kane's story; BATWOMAN has become BATS OF GOTHAM: THE NEXT GENERATION, creating a second generation Batwoman, a second generation Joker, a second generation Poison Ivy and I assume that any day now, we'll get a second generation King Tut and a second generation Marsha Queen of Diamonds. It's all about the fragments and pieces left after Batman departed and... it's not the original plan and I'd have been baffled to watch the Season 1 premiere of BATWOMAN followed by the Season 3 premiere of BATWOMAN. BATWOMAN has become as alien to its starting point as SLIDERS. However, its heart is in the right place and the writers are making the best of a very strange turn on an unmapped road.

**

Caroline Dries, showrunner, worked on SMALLVILLE for many years. One of the more baffling things about SMALLVILLE: the way the manipulative, evil Lionel Luthor had a sudden redemption arc in Season 4/5 that made little sense where Clark briefly inhabited his body and suddenly, he was a good guy, trusted by Clark and treated like a father figure, welcomed at the Kents Thanksgiving dinner, etc..

Something similar but better has happened with Alice joining the team; BATWOMAN has a crazy but oddly sensible contrivance with Renee Montoya forcing the Bat-team to help her track down the villains' artifacts and making Alice help. But Dries also does a great job of showing how Alice is not accepted as a member of the team and will turn on them if it suits her; she's a ticking time bomb that still blows up when the gang least expects it.

**

I love Ryan Wilder, but with the mid-season finale of BATWOMAN, I have to ask if she is quite possibly the *worst* superhero to ever feature in the Arrowverse. She was handed the mantle of Batwoman by the original; she was given full control of Wayne Enterprises; she was given a personal physician; she was given a tech genius as her IT support; she was given a home; she was given billions in financial resources; she was given the Batcave; she was given the Batmobile. Seven episodes in, she has somehow managed to alienate her doctor and sign the rest away.

I find this highly relatable; if I were a superhero, I'd probably screw up in much the same way. I'm not knocking Ryan, but I do cringe for her self-esteem this year.

Well, I took a seven minute clip of "Prince of Wails" and dropped it into Topaz for upscaling. It says it'll take nine hours so I guess we'll see if it's worth it.

Well, I have a hypothetical Season 3 by Tucker where Tucker starts the season with "Slide Effects," a story to resurrect Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo and roll the timeline back to "As Time Goes By." After that, Tucker did some great scripts with "The Alternateville Horror," "Lipschitz Live," "Roads Taken" and "Exodus" rewritten to feature the original cast. "Exodus" is particularly good: a bloated disaster movie with an asinine slasher villain is, under Tucker's hand, a small, intimate story of danger and survival. Charmingly, Tucker took my "Slide Effects" script for a season premiere (and it's open source, so that's precisely how it was meant to be used) and rewrote two lines of dialogue to serve this alternate Season 3.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/171b … sp=sharing

I also have an alternate Season 3 that I like where I wrote almost none of it. First, we start with my "Slide Effects" at https://docs.google.com/document/d/11KF … sp=sharing

Followed by some stories written by Nigel Mitchell, arguably the best SLIDERS writer to ever work on the property.

All For One
http://freepdfhosting.com/c2567b8241.pdf
Weightless
http://web.archive.org/web/200710140743 … tless.html
Bloodline
http://freepdfhosting.com/464c4d00fa.pdf
Double Trouble
http://web.archive.org/web/200808280600 … ouble.html
Summer's End
http://web.archive.org/web/200710140745 … ummer.html
Keep On Trekkin'
http://web.archive.org/web/200808280601 … ekkin.html
Underground
http://web.archive.org/web/200810110948 … rgrnd.html
No Smoking
http://web.archive.org/web/200810110946 … oking.html
Chase (with Jules Reynolds)
http://web.archive.org/web/200811212316 … chase.html
High Society (with Jules Reynolds)
http://web.archive.org/web/200810110948 … ciety.html
Your Ad Here
http://web.archive.org/web/200811212230 … ur_ad.html

Followed by some selections from Diana Jones:

For The Child's Sake
http://web.archive.org/web/200710241156 … dsake.html
A Second Chance
http://web.archive.org/web/200710241608 … chanc.html
Wade's Idea
http://web.archive.org/web/200710241554 … eidea.html
The Cry of the Birds
http://web.archive.org/web/200710241556 … birds.html

One story by Maureen Johnson:

To Dream of the Promised Land
http://web.archive.org/web/200710240240 … mised.html

And then some stories by the incandescently talented Jules Reynolds:

Depthcharge
http://web.archive.org/web/200710140750 … hchrg.html
Consequences
http://web.archive.org/web/200710140749 … onseq.html
The Gift
http://web.archive.org/web/200710140751 … /gift.html
Chill
http://web.archive.org/web/200710140752 … chill.html

A final two stories by Nigel Mitchell:

Slide Rulers
http://web.archive.org/web/200710140744 … ulers.html
Sliders/X-Files
http://freepdfhosting.com/2e80122e71.pdf

I think the crossover with the X-FILES makes for a great season finale and that all of the above form a very nice alternate Season 3 or Season 6. I like to imagine that right after "The Seer," the show reset itself and carried on with the original journey for Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. And while I think it could go on forever, there comes a point when a conclusion is longed for.

It's at this point that we move into some Season 3 episodes, first "Double Cross" (Logan St. Clair is introduced) and "The Guardian" (it's revealed that Arturo is dying). We watch all the episodes up to "The Last of Eden" (it has Rembrandt finding out that Arturo is sick). But we don't go to "The Exodus" after that.

Instead, we go to some selections from Earth 8950, all terrific stories by Mike Truman, set post-Season 3 but ignoring Arturo's death:

From Earth Prime With Love, by Mike Truman
http://www.slidersweb.net/otherworlds/8950/401.htm
Nobody Move
http://www.slidersweb.net/otherworlds/8950/403.htm
The Thriller is Gone
http://www.slidersweb.net/otherworlds/8950/405.htm
The Missiles of November
http://www.slidersweb.net/otherworlds/8950/407.htm
Checkers
http://www.slidersweb.net/otherworlds/8950/409.htm

After that, we come into the homestretch -- a final eight-episode run of stories by the brilliant Mike Truman where he brings the SLIDERS saga to a grand climax and a fitting conclusion. Truman's E317 series is meant to replace the final eight episodes of Season 3 (so nothing from "The Exodus onward happened in this continuity) and I think it serves our purposes well here.

http://slidersweb.net/otherworlds/317/

I suspect the problem with Windows tablets is poor driver authoring and support. Windows is designed to work on the widest range of hardware possible and it's generally done well with keyboards, touchpads, external mouse control, microphones, wifi and such. However, I've found Bluetooth on Windows machines to be shaky and unreliable.

Windows tablets introduced a touchscreen and it all went to hell. Suddenly, Windows machines needed drivers for a gyroscope and a touch interface and, unlike keyboards and such, there was still way too much variability across manufacturers and no standards for these components and drivers. Even my Surface tablet had a tendency to crash at random times and the Microsoft Store's tablet-driven apps were constantly freezing up. Windows is a keyboard and mouse platform.

Yes! I don't qualify for one until December 15. It'll have been six months since my second dose. I did get my flu shot, though.

I watched a bit of "Prince of Wails" (Universal DVD, deinterlaced in Handbrake, upscaled to 1080p via Lanczos). The result looks good at 1080p; Lanczos deartifacted the image a little but left a layer of noise that looks like film grain. The grainy quality actually helps: the video image under all that grain is quite fuzzy and bare. I think I actually prefer this to all previous upscales of these episodes because it's the closest the low-res videotape image has come to looking like the original film. The blurry haziness is offset by the noise.

I did run a few shots of "Prince of Wails" through Topaz and -- I don't know if it's feasible because the AI needs 20 - 22 hours to denoise and deblock each 1080p scaled episode. Topaz did lift off the grain, but removing it just shows how dull and undetailed the image is without the grain.

The reduced compression texture might be best left there for these analog videotape Season 1 episodes. What's under the compression isn't very good anyway and would take almost a day per episode to unearth, at least on my hardware.

Took some time to review the Topaz deblocked-denoised Universal DVD Season 1 files after scaling them to 1080p bicubically and then with Lanczos. Watched scenes from each of the eight post-pilot Season 1 episodes on my Android TV.

Lanczos worked out well with "Summer of Love," "Fever," "Last Days," "The Weaker Sex" and "The King is Back," scaling the image a little more forgivingly than bicubic and bringing out the detail a bit better than bicubic.

However, "Prince of Wails" had wide shots that looked really bad via Lanczos; it seems to be Topaz AI trying to sharpen up wide shots that weren't in soft focus and Lanczos blowing up that damage. In contrast, bicubic scaling added some pixelation at the edges that obscured the problems while also adding a bit of blockiness to medium shots while close ups looked as good as Lanczos.

"Eggheads" and "Luck of the Draw" were also blurrier than the rest on the Univeral DVD; Lanczos pixel blending made them even blurrier whereas the bicubic scaling added pixelation that made it seem sharper.

It'll be neat to see how the Universal files look when scaled via Lanczos with no Topaz deblocking/denoising, and then to find out if Topaz can do anything to improve those files.

Hey, if SLIDERS comes back, will Temporal Flux resume his role as THE Temporal Flux and devote himself to infiltrating every level of SLIDERS production from crafts services to executive boardrooms? If Jerry O'Connell eats a danish, will TF have a drone taking photos of the bite marks?

If SLIDERS comes back, I would like to write one extremely mediocre licensed SLIDERS tie-in novel and get paid approximately $1,530 to hack it out in a month and I would like this extremely mediocre licensed novel to be blatantly contradicted onscreen in the TV show before the book is even released. I would like to see the novel reviewed on Amazon.com with all the reviews commenting that surely the publisher could have found a more capable fanfic writer instead of this bland formula.

Most importantly, I would like Slider_Quinn21 to not bother reading it and say so. The moment Slider_Quinn21 says he is vaguely aware that I wrote a SLIDERS novel that he will never get around to reading is the moment that I know I have made my mark on this world.

Armageddon Part 1 was okay! Nice to see Ray again. Not sure why he was in the story. Wondered where Joe was. Watching Part 2 tomorrow when it's on Netflix.

**

I have to say: I agree with Slider_Quinn21 that BATWOMAN might have worked best if Bruce Wayne had been killed off at the start -- and maybe they should have done that even if Warner Bros. said they might be willing to someday let BATWOMAN add Bruce to the cast. BATWOMAN should have said that Bruce died in some final confrontation with the Joker that killed them both, and that it happened a decade ago (although ARROW did refer to Bruce Wayne as though he were alive). Of course, if BATWOMAN ended up getting the license to use Bruce, they could reveal that Bruce survived his off camera death.

**

Warner Bros. has never given an official statement as to why they license some characters but not others or why they withdraw licenses, so we can only observe their actions and results and infer their intentions.

My sense is that Warner Bros. considers itself a film studio that creates Serious Cinema like Christopher Nolan's Batman movies. When it comes to television, they look at it the way Paramount Studios looks at STAR TREK novels: licensed merchandising tie-ins that keep the brand present and draw in some revenue, but Paramount's core TREK content is TV and the occasional movie and they don't want their licensees interfering with Paramount's primary interests.

Historically, Warner Bros. has looked down on anything that isn't film. In 1995, the comics changed Batman's costume slightly, giving up on the light gray look with light blue mask / boots / gloves / cape / trunks in favour of dark gray with navy blue on top and no trunks. The editor got The New York Times to do a story on the costume change and according to comics veteran Mark Waid, that editor was nearly fired because the article was considered interference with the ramp up to BATMAN FOREVER.

Warner Bros. takes the attitude that they want to control the primary, mainstream, general audience image of Batman and that image is to be whatever they present in their feature films. They are possessive, proprietary, controlling -- and they consider the Arrowverse shows to be outsiders.

The Arrowverse shows are funded and produced largely by Berlanti Productions, an outside studio that licenses Warner Bros. properties for television. The Arrowverse shows air on the CW, a venture between ViacomCBS and the Studios and Networks division of Warner Media; Warner Bros. does not consider the Arrowverse shows to be in-house.

They view the Arrowverse the way FOX looks at the comic book publisher IDW when IDW licensed the X-FILES brand only for their supposedly in-continuity X-FILES comics to be displaced by an actual X-FILES Season 10 on TV. The way Marvel Studios looks at the Sony AMAZING SPIDER-MAN movies starring Andrew Garfield or the FOX movies with the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. Warner Bros. considers Berlanti to be temporarily renting Warner Bros. characters whereas Warner Bros. owns them outright. And Warner Bros. doesn't want renters renovating too much or acting like they own the place and they prefer to only rent out what Warner Bros.' film division isn't using.

I find it unlikely that Berlanti Productions would have produced ARROW and SUPERGIRL if they had been able to access Batman and Superman.

That also seems to be the rationale for why ARROW had an off-camera voice cameo from Harley Quinn but ultimately couldn't use the character. And why ARROW introduced Deathstroke and the Suicide Squad only to see both concepts removed from the show because Deathstroke was marked for a Batman feature and Suicide Squad and Harley Quinn were reserved for the SUICIDE SQUAD film. And why Superman wasn't allowed to appear on camera in SUPERGIRL.

Even the HBO Max shows, which are big budget prestige television, have limited access to the Warner Bros. library. TITANS' first season could only show Batman if Batman were largely out of frame; the second season could show Bruce Wayne but only out of costume and played by an actor in his late 50s so that the 'mainstream' image of Batman would be whoever appeared in JUSTICE LEAGUE or THE BATMAN.

When Superman was allowed to appear on camera in Season 2 of SUPERGIRL, it was at a time when Warner Bros. had decided not to move ahead with a standalone MAN OF STEEL sequel and only feature Henry Cavill as part of BATMAN and JUSTICE LEAGUE features. They didn't feel the need to control the mainstream image of Superman and ensure it was for their feature film for Superman because they weren't planning to make one. That's also why Berlanti was finally able to license Superman fully for SUPERMAN AND LOIS.

In addition, there was a period when Geoff Johns, a producer on the Arrowverse shows, had been promoted to Chief Creative Officer of Warner Bros.' DC films division. Arrowverse producers now had the option of contacting Johns directly and he signed off on Deadshot and Deathstroke returning to ARROW. However, after Johns' demotion, ARROW once again lost access to those characters.

In terms of Batman: unlike Superman, Warner Bros. has ongoing ambitions for Serious Cinema and they want people to associate Batman with their movies whether it's Affleck and Keaton in THE FLASH feature or Pattinson in the BATMAN movie. They are less than enthused about loaning out Batman to an outside licensee like Berlanti Productions; they want all attention on Batman going to Warner Bros. movies.

There's also the fact that BATWOMAN's creators are probably less than enthused about having Bruce Wayne appear and take control of a narrative that has been designed to make Ryan Wilder the star.

I don't really see 'sense' in Warner Bros.' attitude. I see controlling possessiveness. I think it was ridiculous that ARROW lost the Suicide Squad and Deadshot and Deathstroke. However, in BATWOMAN's case, it's possibly for the best; if Bruce Wayne showed up, it might not be Batwoman's show anymore. That said, it remains as clear as ever that BATWOMAN does not have the license to use Batman, Bruce Wayne, the Joker, the Mad Hatter, Killer Croc, Nightwing, Red Hood, Robin, Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, Barbara Gordon or Catwoman. So instead, we get Hush, Magpie, the Cluemaster, the Spoiler, and various people with the Mad Hatter's hat, Catwoman's whip, Killer Croc's teeth, the Joker's acid flower, Mr. Freeze's cryogenic chemicals.

I assume that Ryan will eventually be menaced by the Red Hood's dirty socks, Alfred's mop, Commissioner Gordon's glasses, Tim Drake's boots and Dick Grayson's cotton candy machine from the circus. Warner Bros. isn't planning much with those.

Now this is interesting. "Prince of Wails," scaled to 1080p via Lanczos, had really messed up wide shots which looked like broken stained glass due to the algorithm being unable to blend in the new pixels effectively. But "Summer of Love," upscaled to 1080p via Lanczos, doesn't have the same problem; the wide shots look about the same as they would through the bicubic algorithm while the medium and close up shots look okay / forgivingly scaled from 480 to 1080.

This speaks to what RussianCabbie pointed out: the Season 1 episodes are in poor video quality, but even within being poor, there are degrees of visual failure with some episodes being worse than others. "Summer of Love"'s wide shots weren't as bad as "Prince of Wails" for pixel blending.

Avidemux only takes about an hour to encode each episode to 1080p bicubically or via Lanczos, so I'm going to set a queue to encode each of the low quality eight Season 1 episodes to 1080p twice, once bicubically, once in Lanczos. And then I can compare and see which one yields better results and whichever ones look good in Lanczos can be retained.

It's interesting: I was reading that the blu-ray and HD streaming re-release of THE X-FILES (Seasons 1 - 9), despite being composed of rescanned film, has many shots and entire scenes that are unfortunately fuzzy SD footage stretched to HD resolution for at least Seasons 1 - 2. Some are establishing shots, some are special effects -- but some are entire scenes that production would have shot on 35mm film. Why are these in SD videotape for an HD release? Why weren't they at least upscaled?

I imagine FOX must have lost multiple reels of film and could not fully reassemble every episode from film. Also, the effects and any stock footage are upscaled SD videotape. THE X-FILES' first two seasons were 1994 and 1995, so both would have, like SLIDERS, been film transferred to analog videotape for editing and effects. For the missing sequences, the HD versions of THE X-FILES would use SD footage that, like SLIDERS in Season 1, lacks the lines of resolution and/or film grain needed for an effective upscale.

Are there missing film sequences for Seasons 3 - 9? Possibly. But I imagine that by Season 3, THE X-FILES would have switched from analog to digital videotape and any missing sequences (as well as effects and stock footage) could be upscaled effectively, if not via AI, then through Lanczos and spline algorithms.

**

Back to SLIDERS: Just to see, I encoded the Universal-disc copied, Topaz deblocked / denoised "Prince of Wails"  from 480p to 1080p with bicubic scaling. Then I played the 1080p file on my Android TV at 55 inches and watched the first 10 minutes. Then I played the 480p file on my Android TV and watched the first 10 minutes. I couldn't tell the difference. The cleaned up DVD file at 480p looks a bit hazy, but without the compression artifacts getting in the way.

The Lanczos version looked even clearer for close-up and medium shots, but wide shots looked jagged and ugly because the SD image had no detail for effective pixel blending. The bicubic version hides these issues with a pixelated fuzziness, but that fuzziness is present on all the shots, so if you get used to it after a few minutes, it isn't jarring.

I think I'll just leave the files at 480p; there's no point inflating the file sizes from 1.5GB or so to 3 - 5GB if the video output results are the same.

In terms of process: the only reason to run Topaz AI over these fuzzy Season 1 episodes is to remove DVD compression. However, I don't think the original NTSC master tapes would suffer from DVD compression; the blurry quality is due to 250 line analog videotape and the PAL masters are blurrier due to being copied via an analog process and stretched from 480 pixels high to 576.

I don't believe there's any gain to running AI processes over non-DVD compressed masters; they aren't effective on a 250 line videotape image. If they have to be put into a 1080p video file, they could be scaled bicubically. The Lanczos version is a little nicer than the bicubic version for medium and close shots -- but really not by much.

The pilot and Seasons 2 - 5 can be dragged and dropped into Topaz and upscaled via Artemis HQ to 1080p. They have sufficient film grain in the digital videotape for the AI to render the grain detail into pixel detail at a higher resolution.

I don't see why you couldn't have a Lanczos-created 1080p file and a bicubically stretched 1080p file, made from a Topaz-cleaned version. And then assemble the best versions of each shot from both.

I just... don't have time for that. I need to go teach my mother how to use a Google Nest and an Instant Pot. And I need caulk for my windows.

At this point, BATWOMAN has had a CRISIS, multiple attacks on Gotham City, a mass escape from Arkham and the former Crows turning on the city. If Bruce Wayne didn't come back to help with any of those situations, it's not because he didn't care, it's not because he was embittered -- it's because he couldn't come back, he couldn't help. Whatever reason for Bruce's absence has to cover BATWOMAN not having the license to use the character, only a special dispensation for imposters and dream sequences.

I think Bruce must be incapacitated or trapped somehow. Batman has been absent before; during KNIGHTFALL, he was paralyzed and searching the world for a cure. During 52, Bruce had a nervous breakdown stemming from the death of Professor Arturo -- I mean, the death of Jason Todd -- and spent some time writing a lavishly elaborate SLIDERS fanfic -- I mean, he spent some time travelling the world with Dick Grayson and Tim Drake, revisiting the places where he'd learned all his skills to become Batman and building a post-trauma version of Batman.

During BATMAN AND ROBIN REBORN, Bruce was thought dead at Darkseid's hand; he had actually been sent backwards in history and was an Unstuck Man in a crazy, lunatic, bizarre, continuity and mind-bending story until he finally made it back to the present in THE RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE.

I think the show will hesitate to lay out a definitive reason for awhile longer because the longer Bruce is absent / withheld by the licensing department, the more severe the reasons must be for Bruce not coming back for every season's cataclysm. In Season 1, he might have been having a nervous breakdown. In Season 2, he might have had a nervous breakdown and suffering from arm and leg injuries and a heart condition. In Season 3, he might be dealing with a nervous breakdown and paralysis. In Season 4, he might be dealing with a nervous breakdown and paralysis and severe acid reflux.

Hmm. Lanczos proved effective for closeup and medium shots, bringing them from 480p to 1080p without degradation (and the videotape image is already pretty degraded). However, for wide shots where the actors are standing at a distance and there was no real detail in the standard definition image -- well, Lanczos can't seem to figure out what colour pixels to add and what blending and blurring is needed to make it smooth. As a result, those shots have jagged edges that are really jarring when all the closeup and medium shots look okay.

The 480 version, when played at 1080p, had a certain layer of haziness from the bicubic scaling that obscured the problems with the wide shots. Lanczos, however, makes those problems really apparent, so I think the best thing is to either let the HDTV scale the image or create the 1080p file bicubically after all.

But not everything needs to be a 1080p file, especially when the file itself is not particularly improved by being encoded at 1080p.

I might just leave the Universal files as Topaz-cleaned 480p SD files. I mean, for Seasons 2 - 5, my best versions are just the plain Turbine 576p SD files that scale to an HDTV just fine and I won't be boosting those any further.

In my view, Kara Danvers having a very simple, straightforward, uncomplicated character meant that SUPERGIRL had a lot of range for a wide cast of characters and could incorporate a lot of identities and social justice themes into the show.

I'd consider that an asset, but I totally agree that the simplicity of Kara's character also made it impossible for SUPERGIRL to have only Kara carry the show or the season-long character arcs.

In contrast, Oliver Queen on ARROW was such a damaged, twisted, troubled story whose life was filled with such incident and trauma and grief and horror that he only ever needed one supporting character (and it didn't have to be anyone in particular, just someone he could talk to for expository purposes). Kara's character, however, could not have functioned without a large supporting cast.

Is Kara Danvers, being so simple, a boring character? I think there are plenty of people out there who consider Kara Danvers bland, uninteresting, flat and predictable. I think there are plenty of people who found Kara Danvers uplifting, inspiring, stirring, and that even if the character didn't have a lot of personal drama, the charisma of Melissa Benoist's performance made her a pleasure to have in the living room every week.

Certainly, regardless of where you fall on that scale, the Kara character was highly dependent on Melissa Benoist's performance to make a potentially dull personality into a warmly engaging onscreen presence. Kara Danvers was a total non-entity in a number of Season 4 episodes when Benoist was doing a musical and out of Vancouver. For those episodes, Kara was onscreen a lot but trapped in a lead-lined spacesuit with a helmet and Benoist filmed insert shots later of Kara's face under the helmet. Without Benoist to fully infuse the character with vulnerability and interest, there was no way to connect to the character.

A simple lead character can be handled poorly or well. I feel SUPERGIRL handled Kara's simplicity very well, but some shows don't.

SMALLVILLE's seventh season, for example, had a completely de-complicated version of the Clark Kent character: he wasn't in college studying to do anything, he had no parents onscreen anymore, he had no job beyond supposedly maintaining his farm, he had no ambitions for becoming a superhero, he wasn't actively looking for people to help, he wasn't actively looking for villains to stop. He wanted to do nothing but wake up on his farm next to Lana, harvest crops, milk cows and there was absoutely nothing there. The character seemed to drain energy from the stories when he appeared. The Season 7 Clark existed only to grant Tom Welling his contractually required screentime and Oliver and Lex became the de-facto lead characters. Thankfully, Season 8 gave Clark some actual goals again: to be come a journalist and to become a superhero.

I think Kara's lack of complexity was in SUPERGIRL's favour, but if handled poorly, it could have become a liability.

The Lanczos algorithm turned out pretty well for taking the Topaz Artemis HQ deblocked-denoised 480p file of "Summer of Love" and increasing the resolution to 1080p (although it took a 1.8GB file and made it 5.5GB). The Lanczos 1080p video file looks a little better than my blu-ray player or Android TV bicubically scaling the 480p file to 1080p; the added pixels are smoothly integrated into the image to avoid jagged edges.

My upscaling blu-ray player, when playing the disc, toned down the DVD compression artifacts, and bicubically stretched it to 1080p, creating some pixelation at the edges of any objects or people. Topaz AI has been able to remove remove that compression from the DVD file completely. Lanczos has taken that denoised, deblocked file and smoothly stretched it to 1080p without creating any pixelation.

The cleaned-up/Lanczos stretched version doesn't look HD, but the low quality SD flaws of compression and pixelation have been removed. The AI issues of jagged, flickering edges and watercolour distortion are avoided. Admittedly, the underlying image remains a 250 line analog videotape instead of a 540 line digital videotape, but the artifacts and pixelation issues were a massive distraction from the story. Now they're gone.

I did have to turn off all Lanczos sharpening functions.

Lanczos on my old home theatre PC was fine for upscaling early 2000s standard definition TV because all those shows were shot on film or digital HD and simply downscaled to SD, so Lanczos was merely restoring the sharpness inherent to the file. SLIDERS in Season 1, unfortunately, is a pretty fuzzy image devoid of grain detail, so there isn't much for a sharpening filter to build upon.

Most blu-ray players and TVs will scale an SD video to HD with a bicubic algorithm that increases pixel contrast at any edges within the image in adding more pixels. Lanczos blends the added pixels into the image more smoothly, and is a more forgiving scaler, but because it's CPU-demanding, it's more than what a blu-ray player or Android TV box may be able to offer.

My old HTPC used an i5 processor and a dedicated GPU to make it happen. Sadly, I don't have it any more after a power surge. In most use cases, Lanczos is best applied when encoding a video so that the gains are contained within the file itself.

The AI deblock-denoise takes about seven hours per episode and Avidemux using Lanczos in stretching the video to 1080p takes about 90 minutes per episode, at least on my hardware. I wonder how much that would factor into a future upscaling effort from a home video distributor or streaming service.

Bah! I don't get to see it until tomorrow when it's streaming on Netflix!

Ray is back!? Eeeek! I love Brandon Routh. I'm the man I am today because of Brandon Routh. (I've been following his diet plan, don't make it weird.)

Sorry you can't see it for awhile.

Now, responding to something Grizzlor and I were talking about over in "The Return of Sliders":
http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=12217#p12217

I wouldn't say Nicole Eggert is my favourite anything. That was just me being random and silly. I have always wondered what Nicole Eggert is really like and I have been regularly asking Grizzlor what Nicole Eggert is really like because I once saw a photo of Nicole Eggert with Grizzlor:

In the 90s, I was a pre-teen boy and like many pre-teen boys, I had a sister and we bonded over a shared love of meatloaf, club soda and a pre-teen book series called THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB. My favourite of the baby-sitters was Dawn Schaefer, a 13 year old girl from California who was vegetarian, dedicated to the environment, a staunch social crusader, a devotee of living life without makeup, and a lover of the sun and the beach who found herself out of place when her mother moved her to Connecticut.

Also like many pre-teen boys, I had a television and at one point when channel surfing, I saw possibly 10 minutes of an episode of BAYWATCH where Nicole Eggert was playing a teen girl trying to pass a lifeguarding test to get a job. I never finished watching it, but I thought Eggert looked exactly like how I pictured Dawn Schaefer in my head (even though Dawn was eternally 13 in the books and Eggert was 20).

After that, I studiously avoided BAYWATCH because all the boys at school seemed obsessed with it and I hated all the boys at school and hated anything they liked. That said, I liked the look of Nicole Eggert for Dawn Schaefer.

I have never seen a full Nicole Eggert performance in anything, but she's Dawn Schaefer to me despite having never played the role and potentially not being anything like Dawn at all. Also, in the Netflix adaptation of THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, Dawn is Latinx which, to me, makes a lot of sense. The Club was always way too Caucasian and there are plenty of blonde, white girls in film and TV; Dawn's characteristics aren't tied to her skin or hair colour.

Fun fact: Xochitl Gomez played Dawn in the first season of the Netflix show, but then Marvel hired her to play Ms. Marvel in a new Disney+ series. In the second season, Kyndra Sanchez took over the role. In a podcast interview, BABY-SITTERS CLUB showrunner Rachel Shukert was point-blank asked why Dawn looked different and nobody was discussing it onscreen.

Shukert replied in a serious tone that after Season 1, Dawn went to visit her father in California and got in a horrific car accident that mangled her face and required extensive reconstructive surgery and her fellow baby-sitters were politely not mentioning it and that all this physical therapy and plastic surgery all very plausibly happened in the three weeks that passed between Seasons 1 and 2.

I have been mildly impressed with Microsoft's hardware. I had a Surface 3 for awhile. I had a Surface Pro 3 for awhile. My aunt has a Surface Pro 4.

I've never had a Surface Laptop Go laptop, but the reviews were modestly impressive, mostly taking issue with the original $900 USD price being way too much for an i5 processor and 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. Those are specs for a budget performer, so the price was really more for the lightweight form factor. However, the $550 that Best Buy is charging for it now is pretty reasonable. That's probably the best value on the table here.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/microsoft- … Id=6428996

The Geek Squad warranty for this item is also interesting: it actually covers accidental damage protection. The price is a bit high for that, but it looks like you could take it scuba diving and still be entitled to one replacement.

As for storage: if you boosted the Surface Laptop Go from 128GB to 256GB, it's another $150 USD. That seems unnecessary; you could just store your files on a $45 external hard drive with 1,204GB / 1TB.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easysto … Id=6406515

I am deeply invested in whether or not Slider_Quinn21 likes the new DEXTER.

(Never seen a single episode of it myself.)

Didja get 'em?

Another peculiar (and strictly anecdotal) situation: the Turbine blu-ray files offer superior results on my Android TV. I don't know why this is.

I tried playing the raw Universal DVD files and the raw Turbine blu-ray files of "Luck of the Draw" on my Android TV box (hooked up to my HDTV) with the MX Player app.

My Android TV box did something strange: it oversaturated all the colours, making Quinn and Arturo look weirdly orange. Everything was too rich. There seemed to be some oversharpening as well: the raw DVD file looked blocky, jagged and the amped up colour accentuated the DVD compression and artifacts. It looked hideous.

I tried playing the file in VLC and got the same results. It must be something within the MiBox 3's SoC and decoding settings that's adding increased saturation. I've never noticed oversaturation with my other video files on my MiBox 3. Maybe they benefit from it and Season 1 of SLIDERS doesn't.

I have no idea why it did this; my HDTV has the same colour profile for the blu-ray player. I played the raw file on my blu-ray player and my blu-ray player didn't increase the colour or sharpen the video so unflatteringly.

I played the Turbine version of "Luck of the Draw" on my MiBox 3 -- the blu-ray file as MKV. The colour saturation was increased here as well, but because the raw file was discoloured, the increase made it look normal. In addition, there seemed to be some mild sharpening and the raw blu-ray file looked okay -- certainly not HD or even at the level of the post-Season 1 episodes, but adequate and acceptable as an upscaled image on an HDTV. It looked as good as the upscaled Universal DVD on my blu-ray player.

It's very strange. Speaking only for the equipment I have here: for Android TV playback, the Turbine versions turn out best. For upscaled DVD playback, the Universal versions are best.

I was trying to watch the ArtemisHQ upscaled version of "Prince of Wails" on my TV (Hisense 55H7608) via my AndroidTV box earlier today. I ended up turning it off and deleting all of my upscaled Season 1 files.

The issue I have with it: the closeups look really good, but all medium and wide shots have a distractingly inconsistent effect where the AI is trying to sharpen the outlines of all people and objects and creating jagged edges that flicker into blurriness and back into jagged edges. It's because the algorithm is seizing on what little grain there is to upscale and it doesn't have enough to work with.

Out of interest: I tried watching the DVDs and blu-ray of this episode with an upscaling blu-ray player. I started with the Mill Creek disc of "Prince of Wails" and watched Prince Harold and Wade's scenes. This is the first time I've watched SLIDERS on an HDTV with an actual blu-ray disc player (a Samsung BD-J4500R). Before, I had just a PlayStation 3. While the PlayStation 3 was DVD and blu-ray capable, its DVD 'upscaling' was little more than deinterlacing and scaling the image (like any SD DVD player) and applying various noise filters that blurred the image. And my TV is just a budget 55 inch with zero upscaling features.

The Samsung player is a bargain basement budget model, but it still extends some effort to upscale DVDs to 1080p during playback. Comparing the output and what I've seen on the raw disc files, the Samsung player employs progressive scan on DVD (an interlaced format) to blend the odd and even fields more smoothly than standard deinterlacing. The player also adds a moderate amount of pixel contrast to the edges of images to sharpen up the image for 1080p. It deblocks the video to reduce the DVD compression. It mildly tones down jagged edges that result from the scaling. It leaves film grain intact.

On the Mill Creek disc, all this is useless. The picture is blurry with no detail to sharpen. The colour is shockingly washed out due to Mill Creek compressing the file too much; the vivid blue of the boiler room where Prince Harold is locked up is instead a dull grey. Wade's purple sweater with its texture of squares looks smoothed out in the medium shots.

I switched to the Universal DVD of "Prince of Wails" and found the colours really strong: the blue of the boiler room and Quinn's sweater, Wade's purple top -- it all came through along with the texture of the clothes. My blu-ray player did a good job of scaling the image to look presentable on HDTV, sharpening edge details but leaving surfaces within any outlines alone. There remained a bit of haziness to the image, but unlike my AI upscale of "Prince of Wails," it was consistent throughout and therefore not distracting. Despite the deblocking, there was still quite a bit of noise from the DVD compression, but the blu-ray player toned it down a touch in the upscale. My blu-ray player upscaled the Universal DVD to look presentable on an HDTV.

Out of curiosity, I put on the SD Turbine blu-ray of "Prince of Wails" and found the video quality to look pretty much the same as the Universal DVD version except there were none of the DVD compression artifacts. This is very odd. I know from playing the raw file on the SD blu-ray on my comptuer: Season 1 episodes are blurrier than the Universal DVD versions and have washed out colours. But that blur and desaturation isn't showing on my HDTV.

My blu-ray player's upscaler has an automatic setting for "Deep Colour - HDMI" that may be amending that flaw by increasing saturation for blu-ray disc playback. And my player is likely blurring the Universal DVD a little in lifting off some (but not all) of the DVD compression. The SD blu-ray file has a blurriness that is native to the file. End result: my blu-ray player's upscaling improves both the Universal DVD and the Turbine blu-ray for Season 1 episodes to the point where both versions look presentable on an HDTV and both look about the same.

It's interesting. I said awhile that SLIDERS DVDs were no longer something I wanted to watch on my new 55 inch screen TV, but my blu-ray player seems to be able to improve the Universal DVDs and the Turbine blu-ray's issues. I guess my recommendation is to get a blu-ray player with a descent upscaler.

THE FLASH: What has gone wrong? I was rewatching the FLASH pilot this morning and I've come to realize something: THE FLASH was fundamentally a show about transformative trauma, but that is no longer the case.

In the pilot, Central City has been traumatized by the particle accelerator explosion. Dr. Caitlin Snow has been traumatized by the death of Ronnie Raymond. Cisco has been traumatized by his prize invention blowing up and killing people. Barry Allen has been traumatized by the horrific and inexplicable murder of his mother with his innocent father jailed for the crime.

When Barry encounters the Weather Wizard, the Wizard kills a man and the sequence ends with Barry crawling out of an overturned car. Barry is reeling, spiraling, tells his foster guardian and police officer Joe what he's seen -- and Joe howls at him that he's delusional, that his father is a murderer, that there is no such thing as a superpower. He retraumatizes Barry.

Barry stumbles into STAR Labs and blames Dr. Wells for the metahuman crisis and the murder and Wells accepts all blame, but tells Barry he has no business getting involved in the situation or trying to save anyone or stop any threat whatsoever. "You're not a hero. You're just a young man who was struck by lighting." He tells Barry that he's nothing more than a trauma victim. Barry tries to run away from it.

It doesn't work: even at superspeed, he flashes back to the night he saw his father forced into the back of a police car in handcuffs. The night he found his mother's dead corpse, eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling. Then he flashes back to the present; his jacket has burst into flame from the friction of his speed. THE FLASH, at least for Seasons 1 - 2, was about trauma. About experiencing savage, violent, dangerous, threatening, disturbing and mind-breaking event which form crippling, self-destructive memories that might not ever fade. And about Barry trying to outrun them.

But even at superspeed, Barry can't escape them, so he goes to see the most damaged, disturbed, broken and traumatized human being in the Arrowverse; he goes to see Oliver Queen. Barry tells Oliver: Barry is scared, unskilled, just a random person struck by lightning. But Oliver tells Barry that he has something special, a desire to protect people and shield them, that his speed will allow him to guard others from harm.

"I don't think that bolt of lighting struck you," Oliver tells Barry. "I think it chose you."

Barry confronts the Weather Wizard again but this time with a suit to permit his speed and with a support team to advise him. He unravels the Weather Wizard's tornado and defeats him; this time, Joe is present to witness it. Joe apologizes for his outburst and pledges to help Barry locate any other criminal metahumans and to find the truth about the murder of Barry's mother; Joe will work through Barry's trauma with him.

In Season 1, Episode 12, "Crazy For You," the teaser shows a car accident with a husband and wife inside the car. Barry arrives, superspeeds the husband out. The husband turns back to the car which explodes. The husband screams for his wife -- only to find that she's standing right next to him; Barry got her out in the seconds it took for the man to turn his head.

I remember watching this scene and feeling deeply moved. I was watching it with a girlfriend who told me she found the scene bizarre; it had nothing to do with the Peek-a-Boo villain of the week and her teleportation, no relevance to the plot. Why was it there? Seeing it again now: it was about a potentially traumatic moment that Barry averted.

THE FLASH is a show about transformative trauma. Season 1: the traumatic murder of Barry's mother. Season 2: the trauma of Wells' betrayal. Season 3: the trauma of Barry's father being murdered and the Flashpoint timeline. Season 4: all of the S1 - S3 traumas collectively risking that all of Barry's progress and the life he's built since will be unraveled with his (wrongful) murder charges.

And then in Season 5: there was no trauma. Barry had recovered. Barry had his family. Barry had moved past the murder of both parents and giving him new traumatic episodes was too repetitive to keep doing. It's possible that once THE FLASH resolved its core theme, it should have ended.

Seasons 5 - 7 of THE FLASH are not about trauma. Seasons 5 - 7 of THE FLASH are not about transformative trauma. And Seasons 5 - 7 of THE FLASH are not about the wish to outrun trauma. This is why THE FLASH has lost its unique voice.

I was just joking. But also not.

Tracy Torme is a genius. A brilliant visionary. A unique mind. He is the Vincent van Gogh of television. The Tesla of 90s broadcast. Unappreciated and undervalued in his time. But he's stubborn and difficult.

Marc Scott Zicree doesn't do stubborn, he does sweet. Zicree doesn't do difficult, he does deferentially sociable. Put him on Seasons 1 - 2 of SLIDERS and have him facing FOX executives and his approach would have been decidedly different from Torme's.

"Explosions? Absolutely, SLIDERS should have explosions! SLIDERS can tell any kind of story, some of those stories should have 10 - 20 nitroglycerin explosions so that you can have those in the trailers; but hey, that'll blow the budget, so how about next week, we save some money and do an episode where Rembrandt is like Elvis... "

"The People's Court scene is too silly? Well, how about this: we'll do a cut with it and a cut without it and you screen the version with it and if it gets no laughs, you cut it, but really, it's a great joke. Listen, it's a really good breather and it'll really set the mood so that we can have more of a car chase scene later, you like car chases, right? Walking here lets us drive faster here... "

"I was thinking we could do a dinosaur episode! SLIDERS does dinosaurs!! But again, very expensive, so next week, could we do this cheap story where the sliders think they've gotten home... "

"So, I don't see all these BAYWATCH extras fitting into many of our scripts after the credits. But before the credits, we always have a short world, and I think we could really make sure that all of our teaser parallel Earths can have lots of these women in those outfits you like, how about that? And we've got a world where most of the men died off and we've got this Vegas type episode where we could do that sort of casting and we could write some more recurring female doubles if there are any actresses you want to showcase."

"I know you're not sure about introducing these Kromagg characters, but that could lead to a lot of action sequences with spaceships firing lasers at the sliders and there could be lots of explosions, too. Great for trailers."

"I think for a 22 episode order, we could definitely do at least 11 action-heavy shows, but again, those are very expensive, so for the other 11, we really need to do more bargain bottle episodes like a world that prioritizes academics over athletics, where the gender divide favors women over men, where Mexicans rule America, where Wiccanism toppled Christianity, where psychics run government. The bottle episodes let us do the episodes with gunfights and car chases and explosions and foot races and motorcycle stunts and of course, those are our top priority, those take the bulk of our resources -- and these social satire episodes are really to pace our spending so we can get you the action that you want."

I've been rewriting the first post of this thread, updating it with a summary of the video quality of each DVD set.

I've come to realize something: the Universal DVDs are not bad. I've said repeatedly that they are, but they aren't. Yes, DVD compression and interlacing can diminish video quality, but upon further review and comparison, the Universal SLIDERS DVDs don't have particularly small file sizes (1.6 - 1.8 GB per episode). The non-Pilot Season 1 episodes look terrible because the video masters are blurry, because they were film transferred to analog low resolution videotape. The DVD compression and interlacing don't do it any favours, but lifting off the compression and decombing have only further revealed the poor quality of the image underneath.

Seasons 2 - 5 on the Universal DVD sets look good. DVD compression and interlacing have marred them, but the underlying video image is sharp, detailed and defined; the film to digital videotape transfer has maintained a scaled down version of the film's crisp detail. An upscaling blu-ray player and/or HDTV upscaling can make them presentable; AI upscaling can make them look like impressive HD approximations.

Mill Creek, however, is bad; Season 1 looks terrible, blurry and artifacted from overcompression, Seasons 2 - 3 are hovering around poor to okay, looking fuzzier than the Universal versions and covered in blockiness and noise. Seasons 4 - 5 look average; the 16mm film image is grainy to begin with and a decent blu-ray player and/or HDTV upscaler can smooth out Mill Creek's damage while AI upscaling can remove it completely.

I think Season 1 looking so bad on Universal just made me feel biased against the rest of the Universal discs, but I've come to realize that SLIDERS' video quality on the Universal DVDs is as good as it can be within the limitations of DVD and the masters.

I have read a lot of reasonable, negative reviews of DISCOVERY and PICARD. As a writing mentor once said to me, "We are not the final arbiters of taste." I am quite happy with both shows, but if others aren't, it's because they wanted or expected different story and character elements that I either didn't need or could do without. For example, PICARD has the Federation existing in a capitalistic system with Picard being rich and Raffi being poor and shrieking at Picard about how his chateau looked so lavish and luxurious and a pilot saying he's "very expensive." That does not work for me; in my personal vision of STAR TREK, money doesn't exist. But I'm prepared to accept that IREACTIONS' STAR TREK is not PICARD and appreciate PICARD on its own terms. Others have found that a dealbreaker and so they should.

Peckinpah is a rare instance where his professional output is the direct result of his abysmal personal conduct. Marc Scott Zicree during the podcast, at least in my view, seemed to regard Peckinpah as an object of pity, a person who suffered from terrible demons that made him a pariah on his most well-known, widely broadcast project (SLIDERS) both during his life and after his death. Zicree clearly felt no need to indict Peckinpah any further; Peckinpah's work convicted his own legacy.

**

I'm not familiar with Kirk Douglas' body of work, although his reputation in recent days is deeply disturbing. It's possible your grandfather could see something in Douglas' demeanor, body language and presence that he recognized as something shared by your great-grandfather. In Season 3 of SLIDERS, there was a moment in "Season's Greedings" where Jerry is chatting with Chase Masterson and Jerry adopts this entitled smirk and preening physicality that I found deeply out of character for Quinn and reminded me of some of the more arrogant and belittling classmates I had in high school.

I started to see more of them and less of myself in Jerry's portrayal and it deeply offended me. In Season 4, I also recognized something in Jerry that I found myself associating with a number of my classmates in his empty, deadened facial expressions on camera; I would in later years recognize that as Jerry being hungover on camera. Part of this is unquestionably because David Peckinpah created a work environment where substance abuse was the norm and being inebriated when working was acceptable because the boss came into work intoxicated.

In 2005 or so, I think, Jerry stopped drinking for health and fitness reasons and viewed going to the gym to work out as part of his job as an actor. He said, and I paraphrase, "My work day didn't end when the director said cut." Since then, Jerry has been extremely professional and reliable in all his work; his acting on CARTER is in some ways overworked to the point of being unnatural, but I'd rather have Jerry trying too hard than not trying at all. I would love for this older, matured, experienced and as talented as ever Jerry O'Connell to play Quinn Mallory again and with Tracy Torme's leadership instead of David Peckinpah's.

And, as I said, if Torme and Zicree could team up, Zicree should do all the talking.

On myth-arcs and masterpieces:

I'm trying to work out what episodes of THE DEAD ZONE (2002 - 2008) deserve to be upgraded from standard definition to high definition via the magic of AI upscaling. The thing is, the DVDs are in very good state thanks to the episodes being shot on 16mm film, edited on high definition videotape for the first three seasons -- then shot on HD digital and edited digitally for Seasons 4 - 6. Some episodes deserve to be shown in the splendor of 1080p. A lot of them... don't. I definitely want to upscale the episodes with high levels of special effects. The rest... I dunno.

Unfinished: THE DEAD ZONE is in some ways like THE X-FILES (1994 - 2002, 2016, 2018). Both shows teased an impending apocalypse. Both shows were largely standalone episodes. Both shows had specific myth-arc episodes dedicated to the apocalypse. Both shows had a lot of excellent mythology episodes. And both shows failed to bring the mythology to a climax and conclusion, making the myth-arc episodes seem disappointing and pointless in retrospect. The frustrating thing is that all of the mythology episodes of THE DEAD ZONE were really really really good -- but they were ultimately prologues and middle chapters without a conclusion.

Awakening: THE DEAD ZONE, coming into the world just as THE X-FILES was fading off the air in 2002, was an incremental improvement on THE X-FILES (to start) before falling into all of THE X-FILES' worst habits, and its only saving grace in that respect is that THE DEAD ZONE wasn't on the air long enough to  be as exasperating and disappointing as THE X-FILES. DEAD ZONE's first season starts with schoolteacher Johnny Smith waking up from a five year coma to discover that he has psychic powers; one touch of a person or an object handled by a person and Johnny sees that person's past, present and future in hallucinogenic (and special effects heavy) psychic visions.

Standalone (But Connected): The first season was largely standalone with running subplots. Each episode had a beginning, middle and end with its A plot while B-plots would run through the background and become an A-plot in a subsequent episode.

The B-plots were all personal elements; Johnny trying to rebuild a relationship with his fiancee who had married another man while Johnny was in his half a decade coma, Johnny dealing with his son, born during the coma and raised by his fiancee and her husband as their own. Johnny investigating his mother's death during his coma. Johnny discovering that his family estate was now in the control of a sinister televangelist preacher. Johnny discovering that the preacher whom he disliked and suspected of murder was actually a staunch and loyal ally who could be trusted.

Season 1's finale had Johnny encounter a rising politician, Greg Stillson. When Johnny shook his hand, Johnny saw America ravaged by nuclear hellfire with Stillson, a secretly violent, savage, psychotic man, at the center of this armageddon.

Standalone A-Plots, Running B-Plots: In Season 2, it's a running B-plot that Johnny is investigating Stillson's past and learning that Stillson's political success is due to bribery, threats, blackmail, violence, and likely outsourcing various murders, all of which will, according to Johnny's visions, somehow turn Stillson into President of the United States and lead to nuclear war. However, the Stillson arc was only the focus of two episodes in Season 2; the rest of the time, it was a B plot in standalone episodes with Johnny researching Stillson but setting it aside 'temporarily' to deal with the latest mine collapse or kidnapping or whatnot. USA Network wanted standalones; showrunner Michael Piller wrote the myth-arc as a subplot into otherwise standalone episodes.

Broken Silos: This was a mild distinction from how THE X-FILES handed its myth-arc where, despite an alien invasion coming in the future, Mulder and Scully never discussed it during their monsters of the week cases, only in the season premieres, the season finales, and the 1 - 3 myth-arc episodes in the middle of each season. THE X-FILES' monster of the week stories seemed to be taking place in a totally different TV show from the alien invasion episodes. In contrast, THE DEAD ZONE kept the myth-arc present throughout Season 2 even if it wasn't prominent.

Silos Rebuilt: Season 3 seemed to dial back the myth-arc's presence. Season 3 opens with Johnny chasing down a lead on Stillson and the nuclear apocalypse, but the three part season premiere shifted the plot away from Armageddon by the end of Part 1. Part 1 ended with Johnny being falsely accused of murder, Part 2 had him clearing his name (and being too busy to deal with Armageddon). Part 3 had Johnny dealing with the fallout of his accusation but didn't turn back to Armageddon. Episodes 4 - 10 of the third season then ceased to address Armageddon in any way, creating the siloed effect of THE X-FILES.

Ignoring Armageddon: It was bizarre that the end of the world was coming and Johnny Smith was not prioritizing it at all. We see a lot of this today with people shrugging at climate change and ignoring COVID-19, but Johnny Smith was supposed to be the hero. It was something I'd never seen before where in mid-storyline, a myth-arc episode shifted to a standalone arc and didn't go back to the myth-arc.

Standalones Win Out: Season 3's Episode 11 mentioned Armageddon briefly. Then the Season 3 finale, episode 12, revealed how the Season 3's first three episodes had tied into Armageddon after all -- only for Season 4's premiere to abruptly jettison and set aside the Armageddon plot again for another run of standalone episodes.

With Seasons 4 - 5, THE DEAD ZONE went into full X-FILES mode with the myth-arc; outside of the season premieres, finales and one middle episode, the Armageddon arc was not addressed or mentioned. It was bizarre; the premieres, finales and middle myth-arc episodes had Johnny stressed and worried about Armageddon; the episodes outside that had Johnny leisurely, lighthearted -- which diminished myth-arc episodes.

No Rewrites: All this happened because original showrunner Michael Piller had cancer, and in Season 3, became too sick to keep rewriting scripts. He had rewritten all the Season 1 - 2 episodes, and rewritten Season 2 episodes specifically to integrate the myth-arc, but his contributions to the show were limited in Season 3, near non-existent for Seasons 4 - 5, and he contributed nothing to Season 6 due to a mild case of death.

There seemed to be some peculiar situation where the studio didn't want to publicize that Piller was sick and therefore avoided hiring a replacement showrunner; only Piller seemed to be rewriting scripts to have arcs and running plots and he was rewriting less and less and then not at all. Only after Piller's death was his long illness and lack of involvement in his own show made public.

Anti-Climax: In Season 6, a new showrunner, Scott Shepherd, came aboard. In his premiere episode, THE DEAD ZONE concluded the Armageddon arc and in an offhandedly dismissive fashion. A key player in the Armageddon arc was killed off (off camera, then the death shown in a flashback) and Johnny's visions of Armageddon ceased. It was in some ways another insult to the mythology -- but it seemed unavoidable and necessary. USA Network was clearly not going to let THE DEAD ZONE focus on the Armageddon arc; the bulk of the show was going to be standalone, so Shepherd ended the arc. It was anti-climactic and disappointing; it was for the best as the subsequent standalone episodes were no longer viewed with the shadow of Armageddon haunting lightweight fun.

Last Gasp: The Season 6 finale was written to anticipate a Season 7, so the episode brought Armageddon back -- except the show got cancelled. However, given how easily Armageddon was cancelled in Season 6's premiere, the finale bringing it back didn't really seem like a big deal, like doomsday would always be infinitely delayed and kicked down the road.

Anyway. The result is that even though almost every single DEAD ZONE mythology episode is excellent, they're not really worth rewatching because they were ultimately pointless; the storyline received a hasty and unceremonious burial in the Season 6 premiere and a half-done exhumation in the Season 6 finale.

And sadly, most of the standalones in Seasons 3 - 5 are pretty garbage. Season 6 has a lot of good ones, though.

Diamonds in Dirt: I guess this has been a pretty good argument for not bothering to upscale the mythology episodes of THE DEAD ZONE to HD. I'll just upscale the special effects and/or character heavy episodes to HD. I shouldn't be using CPU and GPU cycles to refinish episodes of a TV arc that the TV show itself did not finish.

It's frustrating because so many individual episodes of THE DEAD ZONE were not only good, but great; not only great, but revolutionary; not only revolutionary, but truly masterful to the point of being a high benchmark of creative quality and technical achievement among television shows. The point of a television show is to create situations and characters with which the viewer can empathize. Johnny's powers were ultimately empathic and THE DEAD ZONE's finest hours let you feel what it meant to be Johnny Smith and those hours are masterpieces.

I suppose that to qualify as a masterpiece episode of THE DEAD ZONE, the episode must demonstrate astonishing creative and technical achievement either in terms of writing and performance and/or special effects, and it must be enjoyable as a standalone product. Despite so many excellent myth-arc episodes, they aren't standalone and didn't have a proper finale, so those are immediately discounted.

My personal masterpiece collection of THE DEAD ZONE in HD will be:

Season 1

• "Wheel of Life" and "What it Seems": The masterful two part pilot episode which has Johnny discovering his psychic powers.

• "Netherworld": Johnny is trapped in a vision of doom.

• "The House": Johnny is haunted by visions of his dead mother.

• "The Siege": Johnny must use his powers when held hostage in a bank robbery.

• "Dinner with Dana": Johnny having sex leads to visions of every man his new girlfriend has ever been with.

• "Shaman": Johnny discovers his visions can lead to conversations with other psychics who died centuries ago.

Seven masterpieces out of 13 episodes to upscale. The others were really good too, just not masterpieces.

Season 2

• "Descent": Johnny must use his powers to save teenagers in a collapsed mine.

• "Ascent": Johnny must use his powers to enter the mind of Sheriff Walt Bannerman, the husband of Johnny's fiancee who was injured saving the teenagers in the mine.

• "Precipitate": Johnny receives blood transfusions from six different donors and starts having visions of six lives.

• "Misbegotten": Johnny is kidnapped by three 'fans' of his psychic exploits.

• "Cabin Pressure": Aboard a plane, Johnny has visions of a crash.

• "The Man Who Never Was": Johnny has visions of a retired spy in a bad situation.

• "Playing God": Johnny must choose who will live or die when his visions allow him to control who will get an organ transplant.

• "Zion": Johnny's friend Bruce experiences a psychic vision of his own.

• "The Storm": On a roadtrip, Johnny has a vision of a destructive storm and must save everyone he can.

• "The Hunt": The CIA recruits Johnny to hunt Osama Bin Laden (yeah, really!).

• "Deja Voodoo": Another date night for Johnny Smith with much trouble along the way.

11 masterpiece episodes out of a season of 19. Of the other eight... I would say five were good and three were rather weak.

Season 3

• "Speak Now": At a wedding, Johnny must confront how his fiancee didn't wait for him and married another man.

• "Shadows": Johnny has a vision of himself committing a murder and must find out what could drive him to kill. Admittedly, there is a reference to Armageddon, but not plot development.

My God. Season 3 only has two masterpiece episodes that aren't affected by the myth-arc? Just two!!!? Out of a season of 12!?

Season 4

• "Double Vision": Johnny meets a lady psychic.

• "Still Life": Johnny investigates a painter and has hallucinogenic visions of art.

• "Babble On": Johnny has visions of his dead father in a hauntingly eerie episode.

• "A Very Dead Zone Christmas": This episode is garbage, but the lady psychic comes back and Jennifer Finnigan is great.

Honestly, only "Babble On" is a masterpiece. The rest are just 'okay,' but the visions are impressive and technically qualify as letting you feel what it's like to be Johnny Smith. Well, truthfully, the Christmas episode has no worthwhile special effects, but Jennifer Finnigan's performance should be considered a special effect.

Pretty sad that only one -- one -- out of 12 is truly good and standalone.

Season 5

• "Symmetry": Johnny is trapped in a set of overlapping visions. Possibly the greatest episode of THE DEAD ZONE ever made.

Oh my God. One non-myth arc episode worth watching out of a season of 11 episodes! THE DEAD ZONE was certainly in a dire situation. Notably, "Symmetry" was one of the few Season 4 & 5 episodes Michael Piller worked on (by sending in his notes and suggestions through AOL Instant Messenger).

Season 6

• "Ego": Johnny must save a psychiatrist being hunted by a crazy person who could be any one of her patients

• "Re-Entry": Johnny is recruited by NASA to save a space shuttle from destruction

• "Big Top": Johnny investigates a murder at a circus

• "Interred": Johnny has visions of being buried alive

• "Switch": Johnny is trapped aboard a train with a femme fatale and danger all around

• "Outcome": Johnny has visions of a bus station exploding

Only six out of 13 episodes worth upscaling! Hunnh. And I would only consider "Switch" and "Outcome" to be "masterpieces." They rest are above average and have points of greatness, but they aren't visionary works of television. Scott Shepherd was no Michael Piller. (Who is? I'm not knocking Shepherd, but if Michael Piller had lived, Shepherd would not have been running THE DEAD ZONE.)

After "Outcome," the show seemed to run out of money for any special effects or location shooting and the (myth-arc oriented) series finale was confined almost entirely to the standing sets. Jennifer Finnigan is in one of these Season 6 episodes and it was so boring I can't actually remember which one it was.

It's a shame. THE DEAD ZONE should have been a great show for all six seasons; instead, it only had a great two seasons and then fell badly into below average filler for Seasons 3 - 5. Season 6 should have been a great year, but it had obvious budget issues and despite half of the season being excellent, the other half of Season 6 has good scripts that made it to air as dull and boring hours of underbudgeted tedium.

Well, let this be a lesson to all of us: for a TV show to be good, the showrunner has to not die. All showrunners from now on must be contractually obligated to live with severe penalties incurred should they die.

One of my favourite shows in recent years is MOM on CBS about a girl gang of recovering alcoholics. One standout character is Jaime Pressly's Jill, a high society Texan. In Season 6, Jill meets a blue collar guy, a cop, Andy. And Jill simply adores Andy. Andy is an affable, down to Earth, sincere man who looks like a pro wrestler and has the street smarts of Mallory and speaks with the gentle humour of Season 1 Rembrandt. Will Sasso plays Andy. He's great.

Bah! Medium quality has been a disaster on every episode aside from "Fever," it all looks like watercolour animation. I give up! Life moves on! I want 1080p versions of all the masterpiece episodes of THE DEAD ZONE!