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Yeah, it's a shame the upscale can't handle the wider shots, but it's still pleasingly presentable. The fuzziness is a bit distracting to see when studying the video up close, but I just rewatched some of the Pilot on my HDTV and at sofa-seated distance, it's not really an issue.

RussianCabbie and I have been having a bit of a debate. He finds that Season 1 -- and to a lesser extent, Season 2 -- have a very desaturated, poorly contrasted look as though the film or master tapes were not correctly stored. But -- I think it's deliberate. I remember watching SLIDERS being marathoned five days a week on the local SPACE channel in my city. Season 1 had a very grayed out, low-vibrancy look -- which looks to me today as the choice of cinematographer Peter Woeste deliberately choosing a very natural-looking style of lighting.

Vancouver as San Francisco looks unaltered, unmanipulated and therefore very real, even if that reality is a Soviet controlled America or a world where scientists are revered the way athletes are viewed on our Earth. Season 2, with Robert Hudecek taking over, deepened the shadows and slightly raised the saturation a bit, but it was still recognizably Season 1, just more artful in light composition. Season 3, however, had an oversaturated, plastic toy look to my eyes that I found false and jarring.

I think that Season 1 is deliberately low contrast and low colour. Real life doesn't have colour correction. RussianCabbie disagrees and I've given him the details and settings for him to recolour the Pilot and I'll be curious about his results.

My opinion is that SLIDERS looks like it was made in 1994. I think it will always look like it was made in 1994. I expect that a recoloured version of Seasons 1 - 2 will look like it was made in 1994 with some added colour on top to account for the deeper backlighting of an HDTV.

After "Fever" encodes, I'm going to do "Virtual Slide" and "World Killer." And good news: the Mill Creek DVDs have a very grainy look for all Season 4 - 5 episodes. It looks ghastly onscreen, but the AI will be able to treat the grain as detail to extract and enhance for an upscale even as it deblocks the flaws.

"Obsession" in FakeD: The sliders react to Wade's marriage proposal from Derek Bond, and Derek invades Wade's privacy. You can see the skin texture on Sabrina's face. https://mega.nz/folder/5E1WnZxJ#Zgg_4d2jHZTolIin-iSevw

SLIDERS had so much to teach. Why didn't I learn it?

There's a moment in "The King is Back" where Rembrandt is upset that Rembrandt-2 upstaged him. Arturo points out that Rembrandt-2 "did all the work" to earn his fame and fortune which is his by right. There's also the fact that Rembrandt is shown to be a skillful but solemn stage performer. In contrast, Rembrandt-2 is joyful, hyperenthused and has the energy to win over a crowd that our Rembrandt has either lost or never had because he never put in "the work." SLIDERS is so full of positive life lessons.

And yet, despite having viewed them and appreciated them as a young boy from age 10 onwards, it is clear to me that my life until age 29 did not reflect these lessons. I have had to ask myself why.

In my teens and twenties, when facing upset people, I would escalate instead of de-escalating -- despite the fact that "The Guardian" offers a clear instruction manual of how to do the latter.

My conclusion is that the direction of SLIDERS after "The Guardian" spiraled so badly that it obliterated what the series had to offer me in my formative years. Instead of appreciating Wade's practicality in "The Weaker Sex" when she thinks to buy groceries for her friends after getting hired, I thought of her severed head in a fishtank.

Instead of noting Arturo's respect for Rembrandt-2's hard work in "The King is Back," I recalled Arturo's mumbled final words. Instead of thinking of Quinn's decency and calm, I remembered Jerry O'Connell's sneering, smirking half-assery throughout Seasons 3 - 4.

And instead of learning from Rembrandt's warmth and charm, I thought of how horrific it must have been to be kidnapped into the interdimension and to lose everyone and everything.

The values SLIDERS originally offered -- of literacy, knowledge, teamwork, friendship, humour and inventive improvisation to triumph over all odds -- that wasn't how I remembered SLIDERS. Instead, the way I remembered the show is, oddly, captured in Annie Fish's review of "The Dying Fields" as they wrote their summary of Quinn's reaction to his new Humagg friend being knifed to death.

And that's what I took out of the show with each cast member leaving, with each asinine turn of plot, with each running arc abandoned. I think that's how I went into the world and even though I didn't truly subscribe to that, I carried it with me until about 2015.

When writing SLIDERS REBORN in 2015, poor Transmodiar had to go through my outlines and asked me with some bleakness why my supposedly 'back to basics' approach was cluttered with facing down Season 3 - 5 story elements, why it was so important for the sliders to use MACGYVER style tactics to fight Season 3 monsters. "What are you trying to accomplish?" he asked me, and I eventually settled on SLIDERS REBORN as the equivalent of a fan-oriented media tie (like the X-FILES comics of 2013 and the William Shatner STAR TREK novels).

Slider_Quinn21, in reviewing the material, seized upon another questionable area: SLIDERS REBORN declares that in 2001, Quinn reset reality to remove the Kromaggs and sliding from history, recreating an unharmed home Earth to which he could return Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. However, this damaged the multiverse, limiting all branching points to the first day of sliding in 1994/1995, which means every Earth in this curtailed multiverse has the same environmental damage and will soon be unable to support human life.

Transmodiar and Slider_Quinn21 both did not buy this, saying that the Earth wasn't doomed in 1994 - 1995. I don't... entirely buy it myself. Yet, I insisted on it, and I think I now see why: me saying that the multiverse is innately and fundamentally damaged by the events of Seasons 3 - 5 and the offscreen Season 6 -- that  is actually me saying that I have been innately and fundamentally damaged by those same events.

The multiverse of SLIDERS REBORN -- like my mind -- has been traumatized by the death of Professor Arturo, the sexual assault of Wade Welles, the disappearance of Quinn Mallory, and the unbearable burdens left for Rembrandt Brown to shoulder.

Interestingly, the cancellation of SLIDERS is not presented in SLIDERS REBORN as another mentally/cosmically cataclysmic event, but as a moment of freedom and opportunity for Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo to regain control of the narrative and start repairing the damage.

Transmodiar described me as having "mainlined the insanity of Seasons 3 - 5" and says that I "went into a fugue writing state of epic proportions and committed to the insanity" and he couldn't understand why. "What are you trying to accomplish?"

To offer a long-delayed but finally accurate answer: it's become clear that SLIDERS REBORN is unknowingly but ultimately a story about confronting trauma, first by restoring the original sliders and their core values, then having them face down each specific instance of trauma on my behalf.

I don't believe you can erase trauma; you learn to live with it and transmute it. This is probably why, after re-establishing Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo as THE sliders, Maggie Beckett rejoins the team. It's why Mallory is presented in Quinn's dreamscape as a friend. It's why Diana Davis is hired by Sliders Incorporated. And it's why they ultimately have to fight the Season 3 monsters whose reappearances terrify Rembrandt into a frightened paralysis until Arturo slaps him and Rembrandt snaps out of it.

It's also why the sliders don't kill any of the Season 3 monsters and simply immobilize them.

And this is probably why it was only in 2015 when SLIDERS REBORN went live on EarthPrime.com that I finally started functioning the way a young man should after absorbing Seasons 1 - 2 of SLIDERS.

I am really shocked, hurt and angry that Joss Whedon fired Charisma Carpenter off ANGEL for getting pregnant. Lots of lead actresses get pregnant, take a leave of absence and then return to their shows. ANGEL should have been no different.

In addition, ANGEL worked because David Boreanaz's brooding intensity paired well with Charisma Carpenter's irreverent wackiness. Angel as a character is so grim and detached, but that characterization is only effective when contrasted with a high energy figure of lunacy like Cordelia who punctures Angel's self-importance and self-loathing.

I never believed that Whedon fired Carpenter off ANGEL for multiple reasons: first, Whedon wasn't actively engaged with running Angel and was mostly on BUFFY and then FIREFLY and second -- I thought it would be deranged, self-destructive and self-sabotaging to remove Cordelia from the series. That's like firing John Rhys-Davies off SLIDERS, an absurd burst of suicidal vindictiveness, and I thought that whatever Whedon might be, he wasn't David Peckinpah and Alan Barnette.

I was wrong. Whedon fired Carpenter and permanently unbalanced ANGEL as a series and Angel as a character, forcing David Boreanaz to be both the solemnly dour hero and the charming wisecracker, the latter role for which he was horrifically unsuited and which had been Carpenter's. The series hemorrhaged viewers without fans of Boreanaz and Carpenter's double-act and the show was cancelled a year later. Charisma Carpenter was the heart of ANGEL and Whedon stabbed and killed his own show.

Ridiculous. I never thought I'd speak of Whedon in the same breath as David Peckinpah and Alan Barnette, but here we are.

Rembrandt's concert in "The King is Back" in FakeD HD! https://mega.nz/folder/5E1WnZxJ#Zgg_4d2jHZTolIin-iSevw

On SLIDERS and masculinity:

When I decided to start my upscaling endeavour for SLIDERS, I started with "As Time Goes By." It's my favourite episode. It's highly imperfect (but what TV isn't?). Wade gets nothing to do and Daelin is a cipher on paper. But I watched this episode at age 11 and I saw in Quinn Mallory everything that a man could be and should be.

The fight with Dennis-2 stands out most: Quinn pretends to be retreating from a physical confrontation, then punches him in the face. Most Hollywood action heroes would find this cowardly, but Quinn will use whatever measures he has to protect the vulnerable and he doesn't care if that makes him look like less of a man which paradoxically is exactly what a man should be.

Then there's Quinn's tenderness with Daelin-1 earlier. Quinn has feelings for her. She is engaged to be married. But Quinn still wants to help her and sees that he needs her help to save Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. Professor Arturo remarks at one point of a missing Quinn, "The boy is as slippery as an eel. He is undoubtedly in the lap of luxury as we speak," and at 11, I longed for my mother and father to think as well of me.

Quinn's regard for women is also educational. He regards Daelin with gentleness, not demanding anything of her and not threatened by her obligations to her fiance and later Daelin-2's daughter. He accepts both with grace and doesn't let that stop him from being a friend and an ally; he cares about her. Most interestingly, Daelin is Quinn's dream girl. What does Quinn Mallory want from a potential romantic partner?

Daelin is not a scientist or a genius like Logan; she is not a glamourous figure like June from "Greatfellas" or Kyra in "Slither," she is not a male gaze designed figure like Maggie. She's not even a good dresser, wearing the same flannel and jeans as Quinn and it looks like that's actually Jerry O'Connell's costume.

Daelin is a working class, blue collar labourer who has a tendency to "bring home strays" whether it's animals or injured men. She is a grounded, normal person who works hard to support her family. Quinn's ideal partner is just a nice, normal person defined by Brooke Langton infusing the character with an open gentleness and a quiet resolve to do her jobs and choke down grief and resentment to earn a living.

But more importantly for "As Time Goes By," Quinn is flawed. Quinn's fixation on Daelin causes him to tamper with cause and effect recklessly and desperately. Quinn almost dooms an entire dimension. Quinn's massive intellect means his solutions are brilliant, but his mistakes are corrrespondingly larger as well. A man should be capable. A man should be smart. And a man should be able to make mistakes, to acknowledge them, to face them and then learn from them.

It disappoints me to watch this episode and know that I have failed to live up to what this hour of TV presented to me when I was 11. In college, I wouldn't admit to mistakes and was needy and insecure with women. In grad school, I wouldn't learn from my errors. It took some serious blows to my ego after my graduate degree to finally take me back to where "As Time Goes By" had brought me in the first place.

I believe he's using the same source material, the Universal DVD set. He said that the Pilot looked great after upscaling but everything else looked bad -- undoubtedly because the Pilot does not have the interlacing errors that mar all the other episodes. I only have Seasons 1 - 3 from Universal, but I can confirm that "The Guardian" had the same interlacing error lines across the image that had to be decombed in Handbrake before the upscale in Topaz.

There is going to be a 20 per cent drop in my upscale quality when I switch to Seasons 4 - 5 because I only have Mill Creek for those. However, it'll also be a bit faster because I don't have to deinterlace the DVD rips from Mill Creek. I could buy Season 4 for $20, but I feel like David Peckinpah and Bill Dial's estates should pay me for procuring it. I could buy Season 5 for apparently $150 on DVD, but I would sooner throw that $150 down a drain.

I’ve had a few chats with NaterTot, but he seemed to be having trouble with any upscaling beyond the Pilot and I haven’t heard from him for over a week. His project made me decide to aim for 720p and not attempt a 4K conversion or even a 1080p. I set my sights on good DVD quality and I think it’s hitting the somewhat low hanging target. I’m currently converting one episode a day and am hoping to be up to two episodes a day by tomorrow and aim to have the entire first two seasons complete by the end of this. NaterTot, however — it’s entirely possible that he’s a healthy, well adjusted human being who isn’t hopelessly fixated on a show from 1995 that faded out of the world like an Unstuck Man.

I appreciate that, but I still don't know what this really opens given that these are all files sitting on my hard drive and I only dare upload samples.

Here's the ending of "Gillian of the Spirits" in FakeD.
https://mega.nz/folder/5E1WnZxJ#Zgg_4d2jHZTolIin-iSevw

Well. Let's not go nuts. The stairs on Quinn's house are clearing giving the AI a lot of trouble in the upscale. The Sorcerer scenes suffer badly when there are high levels of light that blow out the character's faces in the highlights.

It is probably fixable and I know Transmodiar will have thoughts, but I'm going to refer back to what Transmodiar said when I told him how terribly my first draft outline of SLIDERS REBORN had turned out -- let's just aim to get matters from terrible to adequate.

Here's "Into the Mystic"'s scene of Quinn unmasking the Sorcerer and the sliders' homecoming. I ripped it from the fully upscaled episode using Handbrake, the sample re-encoded in their HQ720 preset. https://gofile.io/d/yuKsqB

I think the SLIDERS equivalent of WANDAVISION might be a story written by "ThomasMalthus," called "Gilded Mirror." Set during Season 4, Quinn, Rembrandt, Colin and Maggie encounter some sort of simulated environment where Quinn and Rembrandt are reunited with Wade and Arturo. The joy gives way to suspicion, danger and horror, however ,as this happy reunion turns out to be nothing of the kind and gives way to the sheer bleakness and grief of Season 4 with home destroyed, two friends lost and the entire purpose of SLIDERS shattered on every level. What's lost is gone forever. What was destroyed will not be rebuilt.

http://slidersweb.net/otherworlds/fics/gilded.htm

It's a good story, but... I ultimately don't subscribe to it. This is SLIDERS, for heaven's sake. To me, thinking Wade and the Professor are dead is like taking Marvel Comics seriously whenever they kill off Peter Parker (by my count, he's died nine times). And I think WANDAVISION is asking if the Marvel Cinematic Universe subscribes to the Marvel Comics view that superheroes always come back. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, superheroes can die (or retire) because actors age and contracts end. But can the Vision really die? Even if Paul Bettany didn't want to do the makeup and prosthetics anymore, wouldn't they just find someone to wear them and ask Bettany to do the voice?

In Episode 5, when Wanda is reunited with someone she thought lost in a new form that remains recognizable -- Elizabeth Olsen's performance really moved me and I've seen that expression on her face before. I've seen it in the mirror. I saw it in 2011 when I wrote and uploaded "Slide Effects" where Quinn wakes up to find that time has been rewound to the Pilot, Wade and Rembrandt and Arturo are alive and well and things will be alright. I saw it in the mirror again in 2015 in the bathroom after I'd just uploaded "Reprise" to EarthPrime.com where Rembrandt comes out of the vortex in "The Seer" and finds Quinn, Wade and Arturo waiting for him, miraculously restored and impossibly alive, telling a doubting Rembrandt that they are sliders and that nothing is impossible.

It wasn't Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo as I knew them, of course -- it wasn't Jerry O'Connell, Sabrina Lloyd, Cleavant Derricks and John Rhys-Davies. It was pixel-formed text in a PDF (and later Google Docs) presentation. It was an approximation of the actors' performances converted into the format of the novel and presented as a screenplay to offer a reformatted but recognizable version of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo -- just like Wanda's visitor.

Spoilers

Interesting. Evan Peters doesn't appear to be playing Peter Maximoff from the X-MEN movies.

He declares that he is indeed Pietro Maximoff from AGE OF ULTRON, and he isn't sure why he looks different, but he clearly has Pietro's memories (or has access to Wanda's memories to answer any of her questions) and he is aware that the reality of Westfield has been rewritten to Wanda's desires and considers it benign and even generous to the hostages.

In addition, despite his alternate appearance, Wanda believes that Evan Peters is her brother; she accepts him, she relates to him as her children's uncle, she didn't bring him but wanted him to be present.

Quinn says he yelled at his father for not helping him and it was the last thing he ever said to his dad. Whatever Michael Mallory did or didn’t do that made Quinn angry was before his death.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/1 … ter-468748

Project Veritas and James O’Keefe are banned from Twitter.

I’m sure Kyle would say this just proves how real and true these deceptive video editors and hoaxers are. I’m also sure that he’s seething about it while insisting it’s not an issue that his favourite news source is being deplatformed.

**

Gina Carano fired from all STAR WARS projects for comparing anti-Trumpism to anti-semitism, lying that the election was stolen, lying about face masks being unnecessary and I'm really stunned at her behaviour and loved her in the movie HAYWIRE. But any time someone who used to fight people for a living behaves this way, I wonder if they have brain damage from their various blows to the head.

https://www.cracked.com/article_29593_3 … iring.html

"The Guardian" looks good with my process: MakeMKV to rip the DVD (as Handbrake can't seem to read the Universal DVD). Then open the file in Handbrake, set the quality output to Production Standard and switch on the video deinterlacing to remove the horizontal lines across the image. Then upscale in Topaz with Artemis-LQ and a custom resolution of 960x720. The resulting file is 2GB. For storage, I'll probably need to shrink the files to 700MB or so (and lose a little video quality)

Here are the boxing scenes. Also, here's the "As Time Goes By" Daelin-2 sequence on GoFile to download the MP4 instead of streaming it off Google Drive:
https://mega.nz/folder/5E1WnZxJ#Zgg_4d2jHZTolIin-iSevw

Next in the queue: I'll be upscaling "Time and Again World" tonight (because I want to see the bridge scenes in FakeD). Then I'll do "Into the Mystic" (because I want to see all the beautiful shots of the sliders in the Sorcerer's home) and "The King is Back" (because I want to see Rembrandt's concert in FakeD). Then "Gillian of the Spirits" (for Quinn saying good-bye to his friends) and "Prince of Wails" (because I love Robin Hood) and then "Obsession" and the Pilot.

After that, I'll do "Double Cross" and "The Prince of Slides, "Season's Greedings" and "Murder Most Foul."

I'll move to the Mill Creek set for some Season 4 - 5 episodes: "Virtual Slide," "World Killer" and "The Alternateville Horror," "Slide By Wire" and "Way Out West," "Applied Physics," "New Gods for Old, "A Current Affair" and "The Return of Maggie Beckett."

I think that covers all the episodes I really want to see again on my HDTV, so I'll fill in the rest of Seasons 1 - 2 that I missed before and then have Seasons 1 - 2 and a few select episodes after that in FakeD.

Here's the second Daelin sequence from "As Time Goes By," lifted from the Universal DVD, deinterlaced, then upscaled to 720p. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kbN9I5 … sp=sharing

Streaming it off Google Drive reduces the video quality: here's a download link for mobile browsers: https://mega.nz/folder/5E1WnZxJ#Zgg_4d2jHZTolIin-iSevw

The WAREHOUSE 13 blu-ray box only credits Universal, so I guess it was their home video department?

From what I can tell from having listened to people talk about STARGATE SG-1 and reading the blu-ray box set reviews, SG-1 was filmed on 16mm and 35mm for Seasons 1 - 7 -- but then it was transferred to video tape for editing. The special effects were also produced at 480p standard definition and transferred to tape for editing as well.

And the master tapes existed in this form before they were converted to digital and then upscaled, probably through simple bicubic enlargement with deblocking and noise reduction. Even if the live action shots exist on 16mm and 35mm, the special effects don't and there was no financial  gain in rebuilding them. I mean, we live in a world where the remastered STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION for high definition blu-ray with lavishly rebuilt effects for HD did not turn a profit, so studios have backed off of that. STARGATE SG-1 is likely part of the plug-and-play conversion to HD for most home video releases to come.

Hmm. Well, the upscale finished on "As Time Goes By," but it didn't work -- because the Universal DVD episodes are riddled with interlacing errors. The upscaling software could not deinterlace the video and upscale it, so there are horizontal lines flashing across the screen every split second. I've gone back to the original DVD and deinterlaced the video in Handbrake. I'm going to let the nine hour upscale process run while I sleep tonight and check it out tomorrow.

Well, it's a dramatization. If we're going to nickel and dime it: you told me "The Guardian" was filmed near you -- but the joke about a plaque commemorating  "Arturo-jumping" was a remark you posted on the forum followed by the disclaimer, "Not really," and I thought (internally), "YOU MONSTER!"

**

I don't know why I made a rip of the Mill Creek DVD for upscaling. I also don't know why I used the fastest possible setting on Handbrake which cost some detail for a faster encode. What strange choices in the middle of the night. I should have ripped the Universal DVD set -- which I had to dig out of The Box of Sci-Fi Channel news clippings that the Sci-Fi Channel inexplicably and nonsensically sent to Matt at his request. (Why did they do this? And at their own expense, too! TF snarked that people should ask Sci-Fi for a stapler and maybe they would have gotten one. After I went through it, EP.COM got 16 new articles for the Article Archive out of it.)

Anyway. Upscaling "As Time Goes By." The Mill Creek set was even more compressed than the Universal DVD set, and the image is fuzzy, which gave the AI video enhancement very little to work with over the course of a 11 hour upscaling process. The result was a 720p high definition file that looked... like a decent standard definition version of the episode.

Onscreen text like credits were now smooth and clean instead of smeared. Signs like "Vancouver Ice Cold Storage" at the start of the episode were now crisply legible. In moderately-lit scenes, faces had more skin texture. In brightly lit scenes, everyone's overexposed faces remained overexposed and without detail and there was a faint waxiness to the image where the blocky, pixelated quality was now smoothed out and certainly an improvement.

It looks presentable on my 55 inch HDTV whereas the original DVD from Mill Creek was a mess of jagged edges and squares that vaguely resembled an episode of SLIDERS. If Mill Creek had fit the 88 episodes on 24 discs instead of 15, it'd probably look a bit like this upscale. The results are definitely better than the Universal DVD version of "As Time Goes By."

The Universal DVD set itself is maybe 20 per cent sharper than the Mill Creek discs -- but is badly marred by interlacing lines, likely because the original master tapes are interleaved video, and when Universal converted them into digital formats for DVD, they neglected to deinterlace and decomb their video before mass producing the discs (except for the Pilot episode, for some reason).

They seem to deinterlaced their digital assets before handing their materials to Mill Creek.

Anyway, I'm running an upscale on the Universal version of "As Time Goes By" which should offer the AI more to latch onto, so we'll see if that's a leap forward or just a lateral move. I'll report back tomorrow night.

I recently got a new job running a communications department and feel that it's largely due to Transmodiar teaching me how to handle constructive criticism
http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=9332#p9332

How to engage in healthy and productive teamwork
http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=8159#p8159

How to manage a project
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19GS … it?tab=t.0

How to lead
http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=9577#p9577

And also how to handle WordPress web building.

Transmodiar insists that he didn't teach me anything, but that he will reverse his opinion if I ever get a book deal and take 20 per cent of the money. I'll be happy to do that as I'm sure he really meant eight per cent (of the advance).

Speculating on the motive for Wanda's situation and who's controlling it and what they have to gain from it -- it's very interesting. It reminds me of "Slide Effects" by Tracy Torme. Torme's idea: Quinn Mallory wakes up to find himself home, time rewound to the Pilot, all his friends alive and well, no one remembering sliding except for Quinn. The situation is revealed to be a Kromagg trick -- a dramatic device for Torme's return to undo any damage after his departure.

But... why would the Kromaggs do this to the sliders? What could they possibly have to gain from putting the sliders in a telepathic simulation of their home Earth? What would they get out of it?

I don't know and Torme's 673 word memo for "Slide Effects" provides no explanation either. The Kromaggs' reasons are a plotting necessity but an emotional irrelevancy, and I can see that being the case in an aired version of "Slide Effects" as well.

WANDAVISION, however, is extremely concerned with why Wanda is in this situation. Despite the lavishly detailed pastiches of sitcoms from decades past, the show takes pains to show how much control Wanda actually exerts over Westfield. She can 'edit' episodes by rewinding time and replaying scenarios. She can use her telekinetic and transmutational powers.

However, she isn't controlling the hostages' minds and Westfield's events. TF citing Agnes asking Wanda if she wants a retake of the scene is, as he notes, a sign that other force is tailoring them to Wanda's wants and wishes. There's been a lot of careful though and detail applied.

SPOILERS

DEADPOOL II indeed provided the only real explanation for why the X-MEN film continuity has been so fractured from film to film after X-MEN ORIGINS WOLVERINE (actual title). But I wonder --most people view interdimensional travel as damaging the universe, ripping open the fabric of reality. But could sliding instead cause two trees of reality to develop intertwined roots and become stronger for it? Creating strong bridges of regular passage?

That said, WANDAVISION is probably not going to bring all the FOX versions of the X-MEN into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Also, Peter Maximoff doesn't correct Wanda addressing him as "Pietro." He may not even be the Quicksilver of DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, he may be a double. Admittedly, since the story involves suppressing and altering personalities, that might be trivial.

Wow! John Byrne used to do some amazing stuff! (Although I love his more recent ANGEL comics in black and white and red.)

I never cease to be amazed at how well TF knows DC and Marvel. I've never read any pre-Kurt Busiek AVENGERS issues. Admittedly, I've been so busy lately I haven't been able to open the Marvel Unlimited app and I really need to soon to get my money's worth.

I'm really glad TF is so happy with Marvel, too. Feige, after years of labouring around Perlmutter, was finally granted full control of everything: comics, film and television. Feige is basically to Marvel Comics what Temporal Flux is to SLIDERS.

**

SPOILERS for the end of Episode 5:

On a more pedestrian note of conventionality: what was going on with that ending? Wanda's grief over Vision's death and her long-simmering sadness for Quicksilver's death back in AGE OF ULTRON is the driving force of her situation. Then a restored Quicksilver appears on her doorstep except it's not Aaron Taylor Johnson's Pietro from AGE OF ULTRON. It's Peter Maximoff, the version of Quicksilver who appeared in the FOX series of X-Men movies played by the brilliant Evan Peters.

Kat Dennings' Darcy Lewis identifies Peter as "Pietro" because both have white hair and a connection of some sort to Wanda. Peter greets Wanda as his sister. Wanda regards Peter as her brother. What the hell is going on here!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

We've seen in CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS that speedsters can transcend the dimensional barriers. Can something similar happen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the multidimensional axis that contains the (by my count) four parallel timelines of FOX's series of X-MEN movies? (X-MEN - X2 - THE LAST STAND - WOLVERINE: ORIGIN - THE WOLVERINE | FIRST CLASS - DAYS OF FUTURE PAST - APOCALYPSE - DARK PHOENIX | LOGAN | DEADPOOL.) Did Peter Maximoff, in his adventures, find the gateway to parallel worlds, enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe and get drawn into Wanda's pocket reality? In DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, Peter had a little sister whose name was not given; have his memories of his sister been modified to match the Hex scenario to acknowledge Wanda as his sibling? Is Peter's presence accidental or by someone else's design?

Here's another question: is this even Peter Maximoff from DAYS OF FUTURE PAST? Or is it a new character, a Westfield resident whose memories have been suppressed and altered to fit Wanda's scenario, an innocent man who merely has the (mis?)fortune to be played by the brilliant actor Evan Peters?

(Sorry these ponderings aren't as cool as TF's, but whose are?)

WANDAVISION: Episode 5: The ending.

WTF?!?!?!!?!?!?

**

Oooh, Wanda's accent is back!

**

Temporal Flux is as prescient as ever.

**

Something that came to mind as I was watching it -- a lot of us have grieved for Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. And a lot of us have created our own worlds where we bring them back and live the lives we wanted to live with them. But -- I don't believe that Tracy Torme, Nigel Mitchell, Mike Truman, Slider_Quinn21 or myself were trying to ensnare hostages or hold people prisoner in our preferred world or deprive our fictional friends of their free will in our post-"Seer" stories. I think we all did what we did because we wanted to save the sliders and then set them all free.

Well, the showrunner has said: she doesn't object to recasting Kate. What she objected to was:

• Having Ruby Rose's Kate trick Alice into locking herself into Arkham Asylum and earning Alice's vengeful wrath.

• Having Ruby Rose's Batwoman try to ally herself with Jacob Kane only for Jacob to turn on her, pull a gun on her and vow to hunt her down and kill her.

Followed by

• Having Wallis Day's Kate Kane be the one to face down Alice now trying to kill her.

• Having Wallis Day's Kate Kane be the one to unmask as Batwoman in front of Jacob Kane and reveal her true identity.

The tacit argument made by "Whatever Happened to Kate Kane" in having those arcs resolved by Kate's plane crash is that to have a new face confronting Alice's now-murderous feelings towards Ruby Rose's Kate is visually disconcerting. And that to have Batwoman unmask before Jacob Kane to reveal Wallis Day's face instead of Ruby Rose's face is also visually disconnected. (I'm just throwing in Wallis Day's name as a fan based dreamcasting.)

There's also the issue that Ruby Rose spent a whole year working with Rachel Skarsten and Dougray Scott. There is a familiarity and rapport and sense of family that was created over the course of many, many, many episodes. A new actress could fake it, that's what acting's all about -- but there's a naturalism that takes time to build and it's not going to exist after a one-week readthrough. There would be the odd sense that an arc that originated with Ruby Rose's Kate Kane is now concluding with some other Kane daughter.

However, if Kate is offscreen for awhile, the creators would then have the option of bringing in a new actress to play her, explaining that the plane explosion required some facial reconstruction and skin grafts (to explain why the new actress looks a little different and doesn't have the tattoos) -- and because of her absence, the performer would be building her relationships with Ruby Rose's supporting cast just as the character would be rebuilding them.

Looking at Season 2 so far: Kate's diary entry and letter were read by the character reading the message when TV convention usually has the person who wrote the message reading the voiceover. This tells me: BATWOMAN cannot get Ruby Rose to do so much as a voiceover, that every effort to send her a microphone and a voice recorder has been rebuffed. This tells me that the relationship between Rose and production is so hostile and acrimonious that she is never returning to that set.

If they don't want to recast Ruby Rose, then I think the simplest solution is that Safiya is lying, she doesn't have Kate and Kate really did die -- but in some brief LEGENDS crossover, Ryan gets sent 80 years into the future and discovers an in-her-60s Kate Kane (played by another actress who is older but looks and sounds like Rose) who reveals that some CRISIS-related whatever transported her out of the plane explosion and 50 years into the future where she resumed her career as Batwoman after Ryan had retired, becoming the Bat of the Future that the Monitor called her, then retiring herself and training a successor.

Ryan can return to the present and assure Mary and Luke that Kate will return some day. Just not today. (Like Sisko in DEEP SPACE NINE!) And fans are assured that Kate will return (off camera, in the future, long after the actual BATWOMAN TV series concludes).

Biden is a politician and he signed up to be hurt. Everyone should feel free to take a swing at him. It's the president's job to be the country's punching bag; it is without question the worst job in America and Biden is a deeply average and mediocre human being (as are most of us).

My question is -- will a Trump trial hurt the people? Or will it help them? Will it heal the country? Or will it deepen its wounds?

I honestly don't know, you're a deeply polarized nation.

I've concluded that I just don't understand the CW's business model. BATWOMAN has been renewed for Season 3. It's averaging 700,000 viewers. Three episodes into the year!

Well, I adore the show, but I can't pretend I grasp the economics here.

BATWOMAN, FLASH and LEGENDS have gotten early renewals for a 2021 - 2022 season. SUPERMAN AND LOIS are getting boosted from 13 episodes to 15.
https://bleedingcool.com/tv/cw-renews-w … s-add-eps/

I felt a hankering to watch "The Guardian" today. I have the Universal version of Season 3 on DVD. (I also have the complete series from Mill Creek, the Dual Dimension set of Seasons 1 - 2 and a box of press clippings from the offices of the Sci-Fi Channel.)

I popped the Universal disc for "The Guardian" into the external blu-ray drive for my desktop computer -- but I accidentally scraped and scratched the disc. It is no longer loading properly. Now that the only episode I really care about in the Season 3 set is damaged on its disc, I can now throw out the Season 3 set. It is the season of hell and I'm relieved to be rid of it.

I put the Mill Creek disc with "The Guardian" in my blu-ray drive, ripped the episode with Handbrake, then copied the file to my iPad. I have to say, the Mill Creek release looks really good on my iPad (2017 with a Retina display). Despite the high resolution of the iPad screen, the DVD quality looks good enough on a 9.7 inch screen in a 4:3 ratio.

Anyway. This remains one of SLIDERS' finest hours, marred only by the fact that it was clearly filmed in Pasadena instead of Vancouver when the script calls for the sliders to be wearing their Season 2 outfits and engaging with the gray and chilly physicality of British Columbia and to look like flawed human beings and not magazine models. Wade's lip gloss and Quinn's leather jacket are particularly alarming.

It's strange: when writing my own SLIDERS scripts, I didn't turn to this episode to get Quinn's voice and body language in my head. I prefer to use "As Time Goes By," partially for the aesthetics, but because Quinn is flawed and makes mistakes and screws up whereas "The Guardian" is somewhat insistent on Quinn never taking a wrong turn and never being out of his depth.

That said, every page I've ever written for Quinn is clearly modelled on this episode: Jerry (and John's guidance) present Quinn as someone with wisdom and perspective that seems to be entirely too much to be contained within Jerry O'Connell's form. There's a weighty, thoughtful presence to Quinn in this episode, beautifully balanced between world-weariness and a joyful sense of wonder. Quinn Mallory in "The Guardian" is the perfect science hero, the perfect slider -- probably too much so. This version of Quinn is never truly challenged, never out of his depth, never presented as a character whom we should doubt or question.

I've never watched this DVD on my 55 inch TV with my blu-ray player, but I'm sure it looks horrible.