Sliders.tv → Posts by ireactions
I was having dinner with a friend last night and got seriously distracted from our meal by Trump's threats to enact 25% tariffs on all Canadian goods. It was a mistake to open one of my newspaper apps.
It's a situation above my pay grade, I don't have the power to affect it, and I regret letting it distract me from dinner.
I distinctly remember advertisements for this series. It sure looked interesting at the time and I thought about getting around to watching it, but never did. Ain't no time like the present, I guess...
I'm not recommending MILLENNIUM as a TV show. It has its fans, but it's bleak and depressing. I'm just noting that MILLENNIUM was building to a cataclysmic conclusion with a final battle upon the millennium in the year 2000 -- only to not be on the air when 2000 came. The 2015 MILLENNIUM comic book offered the view that the TV show's all-consuming focus on the year 2000 could be viewed differently if regarded in the context of a larger span of time.
The comic posits that anything that may have happened in 2000 would have merely been one of many significant battles of good against evil over the course of a millennium, over each period of one thousand years, as opposed to the year 2000 itself.
The comic, in noting that "millennium" can refer to 10 centuries instead of a specific year, suggested that definitive victories and defeats for one side or the other are not really the nature of an ongoing and perpetual conflict, and it might be myopic to view any one success or failure as a permanent situation regardless of which battle or which side won or lost.
And evil won.
A long time ago, in the 90s, there was a TV show called MILLENNIUM, created by Chris Carter and in the same universe as THE X-FILES. MILLENNIUM was about the twisted nature of human evil as manifesting throughout society whether in the madness of serial killers or the insidious nature of governments and corporations and shadow organizations like the Millennium Group manipulating the world, with FBI profiler Frank Black encountering signs and portents that hinted at some cataclysmic global event to unfold in the year 2000, the apocalypse to be unleashed upon us all at the dawn of the millennium.
The end of days mythology of MILLENNIUM, since it was created by Chris Carter, is so confusing and contradictory that I'm not even going to try to explain it except that it was fundamentally about the omnipresent and all-consuming nature of evil whether corporate or governmental or industrial or supernatural, with the start of the year 2000 said to be the crux at which evil would take hold of the planet.
The show was cancelled after its May 21, 1999 episode and there was a peculiar November 28, 1999 episode of THE X-FILES ("Millennium") that offered an odd and confusing 'finale' that didn't make much sense. MILLENNIUM missed the moment of the millennium.
In 2015, comic book publisher IDW released a then-present day MILLENNIUM comic book in which Frank Black and the mysteries of the Millennium Group taking center stage. The comic distilled, explained and simplified the very confusing three season mythology of the TV show and explained the antagonist who'd been shaping events in all three years of the show, and also noted that the year 2000 had been a seemingly innocuous non-event and that the ominous foreshadowings had either been false or were in fact pointing to something more subtle and disturbing.
The fifth and final issue of the MILLENNIUM has Frank Black facing off against the villain and scoring a meaningful but slightly ambiguous victory as part of a very complicated mythos that I will not try to convey, and walking off into the sunset, recommitted to finding and battling evil. However, the final page shows that the defeated villain is recovering and regrouping. The villain remarks, "True good and evil never die, Frank. They just lay low for a bit, lick their wounds, and wait for the cycle to start again -- for an entire millennium, if necessary."
The 2015 MILLENNIUM comic effectively separates the mythology and the title of the series from the year 2000, declaring that MILLENNIUM was never about the year 2000 or any particular event in 2000, but rather about the eternal cycle of good against evil over a lengthy span of time, with each period of 1,000 years being a chapter in this conflict, with each period encompassing many disparate and separate events, instead of a single event in a single year.
Well, I trust your judgement and defer to it.
I thought Kamala had a medium chance to win and Trump had a small chance to win, and it was entirely too close for me to feel confident or certain about it. I posted a lot from Simon Rosenberg, but I posted with the caveat that he could just be saying what I wanted to hear and not what was accurate, and what he said was, by his own apologetic admission, not accurate.
Honestly, you and I could well be the crazy ones who have gone off the deep end for thinking democracy ever stood a chance or that it still does.
You and I also enjoyed the Whedon cut of JUSTICE LEAGUE, so it'd be foolish to think our views are objectively rational at all times.
I mean... why did it happen at all with this person?
Tom Welling is a wealthy man. Are we really to believe he couldn't call a rideshare to drive him home? Send a personal assistant to drive his car home? Hire a tow truck to tow it home?
What excuse could there possibly be? I don't know, but I hope there is one.
I am just shocked.
I have to wonder if Grizzlor's 'sources' on California wildfires are the same 'sources' that had him declare that my non-binary gender identity (under the transgender umbrella) makes me and any transgender individual and any drag performer a threat to children just for being in the same room and an issue for which he would "raise hell!!!"
I have to wonder if these same 'sources' told him drag performers and transgender individuals are synonymous. And if these sources told him that someone like me and any transgender or transgender-umbrella individual, just for existing is "putting actually WOMEN at risk" and that advocating for my human rights is an "absolutely over the top (largely out of nowhere) crusade to infuse "trans" sensitive everything, everywhere" as though Grizzlor is threatened by my personhood.
I'm going ask Slider_Quinn21, our peacemaker, what he thinks, and what he feels would be an appropriate process going forward.
A part of me wanted to say: until Grizzlor addresses his claim that I am a threat to women and children for my gender identity; until he addresses his implication anyone in my community is a violent abuser and a sexual predator, he should see every post he makes on any other subject blanked out and not restored until this is addressed. That's how hurt I was.
But because I'm so close to this, I realized: I have to let Slider_Quinn21 make the decision. Can't go wrong with following the lead of the peacemaker. And obviously, Slider_Quinn21 would want Grizzlor to have the chance to clarify or reconsider what he said.
There's also the fact that Grizzlor previously called me out on threatening to suspend or ban him when he called mask wearers "terrorists" (later clarifying that he felt the maskers he saw on TV were acting like terrorists and not mask wearers like me in general). I heard him. And I gave him my word that should something like that happen again, it would lead to a conversation, not a threat.
I don't think anyone should get to post transphobic remarks which imply that anyone who falls under the transgender umbrella -- like me -- is automatically a violent criminal and a threat to cisgender children and athletes and and then go back to posting about STAR TREK and which timer is their favourite.
I wouldn't demand that Grizzlor convert to my worldview. But I would hope that he would address his remarks and how they have deeply hurt me, and then no longer make these false accusations where he implies that I am a threat to others simply for my personal identity regarding the difference between an X chromosome and a Y chromosome.
But I'm going to defer to Slider_Quinn21 on this. There will be a $25 USD honorarium in it for him.
Tom was arrested for drinking drunk.
https://www.tmz.com/2025/01/28/smallvil … influence/
I feel I speak for all SMALLVILLE fans when I say: what the actual fuck? Like, what?!
I'm just glad no one was hurt.
I've always thought that Mirror Georgiou and Section 31 seemed like two separate TREK properties that didn't necessarily have anything to do with each other. Yes, Mirror Georgiou fits right into the DS9 version of Section 31, but that's clearly not the Section 31 of DISCOVERY, and the lack of contrast between Georgiou's morality and the morality of black-ops work means there's no real conflict. Back when SECTION 31 was expected to be at least a two season series with 20 episodes planned, I thought Georgiou would have been a regular but not necessarily the lead, much like how Captain Holt is vital to BROOKLYN NINE NINE but not the star of the show.
Apparently, COVID-19 and Michelle Yeoh's post-pandemic schedule made that 20 episode series unworkable. The resulting SECTION 31 movie seems to be the result pulling various elements from the scripts and story outlines for those 20 episodes, using whatever preproduction work had been done to produce something so as not to completely write off whatever assets had been bought and paid for before the TV series was shut down, and then assembling and filming whatever could be made with the scraps and scrapings of the planned SECTION 31 series.
The fact that the movie is blandly professional but utterly devoid of anything memorable or distinctive is mildly impressive, but there's still nothing interesting about the final product. And it makes no sense. Despite Kurtzman's claim that SECTION 31 would explain the discrepancy between DISCOVERY and DS9's contradictory versions of Section 31, the movie has Starfleet lieutenant Rachel Garrett assigned to prevent the S31 agents from doing anything amoral, and Section 31 remains within Starfleet by the end of the film.
In terms of continuity... I agree with Slider_Quinn21. The opportunity to use a SECTION 31 series or film to transition from the DISCOVERY version of Section 31 (Starfleet's spy branch) to the DS9 version of Section 31 (a rogue operation unsanctioned by Starfleet) has passed. It would be best to just leave it alone for awhile.
I definitely like the idea of the Section 31 we saw in this movie being shuttered and dismantled with the general view being that Section 31 is no more, only to reveal that the Section 31 we've seen in DISCOVERY and SECTION 31 is an offshoot of the real Section 31, brought into existence specifically to be shut down, disassembled and brought to an end so that the actual Section 31 can continue their work without oversight from the Federation.
I'm not so sure any more about the idea of Q retconning Section 31, although I can see why Slider_Quinn21 likes it. I'd probably go with the Univeral Translator being reprogrammed across the Federation to replace "Section 31" with "Starfleet Intelligence" and the name Section 31 going out of use by the time we get to TNG.
Rachel Garrett's presence and youth actually situates this shortly after THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY.
I watched the whole movie and nothing much really happened. I am not sure why Georgiou is even the star of a SECTION 31 movie. One would think that the lead of a Section 31 film should be someone idealistic and innocent (like Dr. Bashir) being manipulated by a twisted, morally compromised mentor like Georgiou.
There is one arc I could see for Georgiou in a Section 31 series format: Georgiou is pressganged into running spy missions for the Federation and thinks this universe is full of spineless weaklings. But then she comes to admire and respect the Federation and begins to use her tactics to do all their dirty work that they can't bear to do to protect them from threats they otherwise can't fight. Her conversion to Federation ideals causes her to double down on her own in service of them. I could imagine that being the arc of the 10 episode series that got cut down to one streaming movie.
Ultimately, I find the whole thing almost... offensive. Section 31 already has a brand identity in STAR TREK: amoral black-ops agents without official sanction acting on behalf of the Federation without any morals or scruples regarding their methods. Section 31 is not a spy agency within Starfleet like James Bond's outfit or a gang of misfits and rogues like the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Section 31 is a loose group of operatives who recruit and co-opt resources and individuals as needed for each mission and are prepared to frame and assassinate and torture in order to protect the Federation. And anyone who doesn't want to tell stories about this agency should just use a different name and title.
Anyway. I'm going to assume that some gimcrackery with the Universal Translator is why no one speaks of Section 31 by Dr. Bashir's time.
No one's misgendered me; I'm still using he/him. I just reject the entire idea that gender determines who someone is supposed to be or that, outside of awareness of societal privilege, gender needs to be a driving force in what anyone chooses to do with their lives.
Before I get further into this: I wish to reiterate that Slider_Quinn21 is not a politician or a paid political strategist and has the right to take a break from the news cycle. Most of us do.
Here's the Wikipedia page for Woke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
And now:
I would say the biggest problem on the Left right now, is the refusal to admit when one is wrong. On anything. Then there has been this absolutely over the top (largely out of nowhere) crusade to infuse "trans" sensitive everything, everywhere. They could not understand why parents were uncomfortable with "drag queen story time"???? I'm as socially liberal as you will find. If my niece/nephew were subjected to that, I would raise hell!!! WTF are we doing???? Trans-women make up a large portion of women's prisons, putting actually WOMEN at risk. So the left is fine with this, as well as having biological men in women's sports. Very safe. When middle of the roaders try to argue how this is insane, they are labeled viciously. NO, you're just void of common sense. Not female inmates fault that previously male or trans inmates committed crimes! Again, WHAT ARE WE DOING? Look, Ron DeSantis breezed in Florida when he went up against this crap, easily defeating supposedly all powerful Disney, because the VOTERS approved of it.
I don't think Grizzlor meant to offend.
I consider myself non-binary, which can fall under a transgender categorization.
Grizzlor claimed that transgender people are, simply by existing and advocating for human rights, a threat to cisgender women and children. Let's call it for what it is: hate speech. Based on nothing more than my personal detachment from gender, he accused me (possibly unknowingly) and anyone like me of being a sexual predator.
Show of hands: who among us has posed for photos with convicted sexual predator Allison Mack? Who among us then denied that said predator was running a sex trafficking ring and called it fake news? Oh, look, only one person's hand is up! Who is it? Whose hand is it?
Oh, look, it's Grizzlor.
Being part of the transgender community has no correlation to criminality at all. But posing for photos with known predators and denying their crimes could be a highly indicting point of information.
Shall we pursue that avenue?
Or might we prefer to say that calling people sexual predators based on gender identity or posing for a fan photo or anything else that doesn't actually pertain to a crime is a foolish game that no one should play?
I don't think Grizzlor meant to offend.
Greg and I are friends (yes), so he shouldn't declare that my gender identity correlates to criminality. Also, since he conflates drag and transgender, he isn't in a position of knowledgeability to speak on gender identities anyway.
As a friend, I should see Greg's photo for what it was: a fan posing with a performer and not an indication that Greg was part of a sex trafficking operation and he admitted he was mistaken to deny her criminality and hadn't been familiar with the situation at the time. He made his apologies and I think that, since we are friends, I should accept that to be sincere.
As a friend, I'm also prepared to see the hate speech as inadvertent and accidental, akin to Greg expressing his loathing for PRODIGY without seeing it: an ill-advised reactivity rather than genuine hate.
As Democrats lost and PRODIGY was written off and has no Season 3, it's a valid observation that electorally, transgender issues don't lead to enough votes for Democrats to win and PRODIGY didn't set the world on fire in streaming figures. I should see my friend Greg's words as an accident. A lengthy one, but an accident all the same.
However, it's up to Greg to be a friend and assure me of that.
And no one else is obligated to give Greg that chance. Nobody should have to come to a message board and be accused of a being a predator because they don't feel they match the body they were born in and want to make some changes.
Anyway. I thank our peacemaker for his ongoing and sterling service.
Musk's gesture looked like a Nazi salute to me and the far right and neo-Nazis have embraced Musk as one of their own. The Anti-Defamation League claims it was not a Nazi salute, but white supremacists have celebrated the salute as a Nazi gesture.
To defend the salute when it was embraced by neo-Nazis and white supremacists strikes me as self-affiliating with Nazism and white supremacy.
As for the rest of Grizzlor's post: I find it transphobic, bigoted, either ignorant or disingenuous, and an attack on me, and on transgender and non-binary individuals, simply for existing and reading this board. He may not intend it to be so, but let's go through each transphobic and bigoted comment.
Absolutely over the top (largely out of nowhere) crusade to infuse 'trans' sensitive everything, everywhere.
Your comment falsely implies that increasing visibility and inclusion of transgender issues and identities is unnecessary and intrusive as opposed to a long-overdue effort towards recognizing a significant population and their inherent rights and liberties as human beings. You're implying that transgender indviduals, just for merely existing and claiming personhood in a democracy, is a hostile attack on you and that they have no right to advocacy.
They could not understand why parents were uncomfortable with 'drag queen story time'????
This comment is transphobic and ignorant, conflating drag performers with issues surrounding transgender individuals. Engaging in drag and being transgender are not the same concepts. Someone who conflates the two is either doing so ignorantly or doing so deliberately to engage in bigotry by deriding transgender identities as performative and insincere.
Regardless of the reason, someone who speaks this way about drag performers and the transgender is does not have the knowledge to offer an informed opinion on either one.
There is no evidence that children are harmed by drag performers and transgender identities. Anyone who uses such rhetoric is using the concept of defenceless children to justify transphobic bigotry and prejudice and falsely portraying all transgender individuals and their allies as child predators.
Trans-women make up a large portion of women's prisons, putting actually WOMEN at risk.
This declares that the mere existence of transgender women is inherently dangerous to cisgender women, pointedly ignoring what transgender individuals have to deal with themselves in prison, declaring the well-being of cisgender women and only cisgender women are to be considered. Like the drag performer/transgender conflation, it is a transphobic, bigoted and prejudiced framing designed to present transgender individuals as threats and dangers and undeserving of human compassion.
Biological men in women's sports. Very safe.
This comment about "biological men" is deliberately dismissive of transgender identity. The sarcastic "very safe" again implies that transgender women are a threat simply for existing, whether in women's sports or elsewhere, simply by being transgender, and that's not true.
Ron DeSantis breezed in Florida when he went up against this crap, easily defeating supposedly all powerful Disney, because the VOTERS approved of it.
An electoral victory may legislate bigotry, prejudice and transphobia, but it does not make it any less transphobic or morally and ethically broken.
Middle of the roaders try to argue how this is insane, they are labeled viciously.
It's interesting that the person implying "out of nowhere" that I'm a child predator for respecting the civil rights and liberties of the transgender community is complaining about being "labeled viciously."
When someone conflates transgender identity and drag, declares transgender individuals are a threat for existing and advocating, portrays transgender people as child predators and uses electoral wins to validate transphobia, they are clearly not a gender studies scholar or qualified to offer a 'middle of the road' perspective.
Middle of the road would be arguing that transgender political campaigns aren't effective at winning voters. None of these comments are 'middle of the road'. They are prejudiced bigotry. They are transphobic and and disappointingly commonplace for transgender communities to face.
They call it being "labeled viciously" when seen as transphobic after accusing transgender people and drag performers of being child predators and threats to cisgender women for existing; I'd call it being labelled accurately and anyone who dislikes being labelled as a bigot for bigotry could try looking in the mirror for who's at fault for that.
But when coming from this person, it may not necessarily be hatred.
I've seen a similar attitude from this person towards radioplays and the TV show STAR TREK: PRODIGY. This person wasn't really into audio drama or TREK animation, and in their general life, they gravitated elsewhere and weren't burning down recording and animation studios or anything insane.
But in their online discourse: whenever someone else raised audio or animation, this person had an intriguingly uncontrollable compulsion to respond and convey their fundamental intolerance and contempt for audio drama and cartoons and anything outside their tastes and personal perception of normalcy and anything they saw as 'other'. It's not enough to be uninterested; they need to actively act out their disdain.
The fact that its is present in how this person relates (or doesn't) to audio and sci-fi TV and the transgender community and the drag community suggests a general inability to handle human differences of taste and identity in a positive or even neutral way.
You know, Greg, I was really upset when you implied I was a terrorist for wearing a mask in public retail situations, but you effectively calling me a child predator for saying transgender people are people is... I mean, wow, Greg. This is quite the escalation.
Anyway. I'm going to find some trans-advocacy group and make a donation and also rewatch the transgender episode of QUANTUM LEAP and maybe some of us should learn the difference between drag and transgender, among other things, before speaking on it.
I'm not sure what happened with the SECTION 31 movie, but it went from a potentially interesting TV series to a single streaming film.
The resulting film is so narratively bland and devoid of life or purpose that I don't understand why they made it. I didn't find it offensive, but there wasn't a single memorable line of dialogue, not one standout character, not one stirring setpiece. Alex Kurtzman said the SECTION 31 TV show would explain why Section 31 on DISCOVERY was so public and overt back when it was still intended a TV show.
The movie, presumably the first 1 - 2 scripts reworked into a single film, does not offer any explanation. The depiction of Section 31 is flamboyant rogues who are completely overt, attention seeking and devoid of the covert, low-key, subdued, secretive Section 31 of DEEP SPACE NINE. The continuity gap with Section 31 in DISCOVERY not matching DS9 is not filled, but widened even more.
I didn't hate it, but it wasn't good or meaningful and it would have better to just write this project off and move on.
The day after the election, I cleaned out my phone. I deleted the Apple News app, I got rid of the news widget on the far end of my home screen, and I made my browsers (at home and work) default to a blank screen instead of a "random news" screen. I'm not withdrawing fully from the world - I don't go out of my way to avoid news - I find out plenty from my friends' group chat and just existing in the world. And I'm not going to go out of my way to slam my head so far in the ground that I don't know about stuff like the LA wildfires or stuff like that. Even trying to avoid inauguration stuff, I organically found out that it'd been moved inside.
Slider_Quinn21's attitude is a huge part of why Democrats keep losing elections.
By that, I mean: Slider_Quinn21 is not being paid to stay awake when it's not an election year, and he has earned his rest. But politicians and party strategists have treated the job of winning elections as something to only work on 6 -8 months before the polls open, and it's a serious problem. Slider_Quinn21 is right to take a break; the DNC should not be resting and Democratic politicians should not be capitulating to Trump... but so many are.
The Democratic Party has a tendency to go into hibernation unless there's an upcoming and nearing election. They've allowed conservatism and fascism to dominate social media and news while Democrats only really get started in an election year, aiming to eke out narrow wins. This sleepiness has led to a party that lacks strategic flexibility, is easily toppled by a more ostentatious and media-dominant party, and is boxed out of the mediasphere.
There's also the fact that Democrats have a tendency to embrace the working class when they're not in power but focus largely on the upper middle class and wealthy when they win elections. Kamala Harris' campaign had a lot to say to people in a position to make down payments on their first homes and start new businesses and pretty much nothing for the casual shift worker scrambling to make back rent and skipping meals to cover the water bill. That's what you get from a supposedly left of center political campaign run by Uber executives speaking to other Uber executives instead of to people who work for a living.
Anyway. Slider_Quinn21 has earned a rest; Simon Rosenberg, James Carville Jr. and others have a lot of work to do.
Two summers before the election I knew this was coming. The only doubt I had was after the msg rally and the subsequent erroneous Iowa poll in the final couple of weeks. The democratic party invited this future. In 2020, Biden won because people simply wanted to vote against trump. In 2024, it could have been trump or a number of other republican candidates but Biden couldn't win and Harris was not someone with a vision that would help people move off of the Biden white house's performance, particularly the last couple of years.
Shame on Biden for not transitioning after people voted him in with his promise as a one term transition president.
Yeah, I had a very, very, very, very bad feeling about Biden even before the first debate, but Biden seemed absolutely confident and... I wanted to believe, and I hoped he could eke out a win or pull off a miracle. With Kamala... it was a close race and I had hopes, but I've come to see it's foolish to think that a close race means a good chance because if chances were good, it wouldn't be close.
Simon Rosenberg, ever since the election, has issued mea culpa upon mea culpa and admitted that he has far more questions than answers. I'm hesitant to post what he has to say, but I appreciated his admission that he was wrong and he has lost a lot of certainty, and he is hesitant to give a definitive summary of how things turned out so very, very, very badly. At the same time, he has noted that there is a lot to be done and that needs to be done in the second age of Trump.
I would hope that diversity, equity and inclusion are balanced equally with merit, common sense and competence rather than having one at the expense of the other.
Jacobin contemplates where the Biden presidency lost its way, primarily with the Build Back Better bill being split.
https://jacobin.com/2025/01/biden-domes … res-legacy
During the other night's #SlidersRewatch, Jerry actually made a joke about that....
https://x.com/MrJerryOC/status/1875727449256030443
Jerry O'Connell @MrJerryOC · Jan 4
We shot Sliders on 16 Millimeter. A lot of TV was (at the time). It is not formatted to our TVs now. I remember being on set and asking about it and being told: 'We'll be dead when the wider format is the norm.'
#SlidersRewatch
Seasons 1 - 3 don't look like 16mm film to me.
16mm film has a really distinct look: it's extremely grainy. Extremely grainy looking shows include DAWSON'S CREEK, CHUCK, SCRUBS, VERONICA MARS, YOUNG INDIANA JONES, HIGHLANDER, MY SO-CALLED LIFE and Seasons 1 - 2 of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. All were shot on 16mm film.
On these shows, the high grain look, when downscaled to SD, created a sense of texture, detail and made everything look more tactile. However, the 16mm film image, when presented in HD release, can have a high level of graininess that can range from mildly or severely distracting; 16mm film grain in 1080p can look like a layer of static or dirt on the image. At 4K, the grain is even heavier.
16mm grain can also add a certain de-glamorized, down-to-earth feel to a TV show. It can be highly effective for DAWSON'S CREEK, SCRUBS, VERONICA MARS and MY SO CALLED LIFE all being about working and middle class people in urban situations as opposed to a pristine spaceship or a glass and steel law firm.
However, that graininess can seem like an unwanted layer, and a lot of people will use noise reduction filters on their TV to tone it down. In addition, most streaming services will denoise their digital files to reduce file sizes and then add grain back as a filter effect during playback.
16mm graininess would seem very out of place in a show like STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION or ALLY MCBEAL which is about pristine environments (a spaceship, a prestigious law firm).
35mm film, compared to 16mm film, has more sharpness and detail and seems less grainy. This is because as 35mm film is a larger format, the grains are smaller and and finer. 35mm film has a very crisp, clean, crystal clear look with a slight grain texture. The pilot episode and Seasons 2 - 3 look like 35mm to me. Episodes 2 - 9 of Season 1 look like they have the frame rate of film (albeit distorted for 30 fps SD TV and converted back to 24 fps from DVD to modern HDTV), but due to the analog videotape editing format, it may have blurred out the visual markers of 35mm film.
Jerry directed one episode of Season 3 ("Stoker" which looks like 35mm) and four episodes of Season 4. All of Season 4 looks like 16mm to me, so that's likely the film he used for 80 percent of his directing and what he remembers using.
I myself noticed that Seasons 4 - 5 are 16mm because I don't have the high bit rate Universal releases, I have the overcompressed Mill Creek release and the slightly lower resolution for PAL Turbine release, but even in these poor formats, Seasons 4 - 5 look pretty good thanks to the heavy film grain causing the image to better survive the compression.
I suspect that the reason so many TV shows are taking place in this era: it's an enclosed space that won't interfere with bigger budget movie productions.
I'm excited to see the latest season soon!
What kinds of episodes do you see your ideas producing?
Section 31 in DISCOVERY seems integrated into Starfleet, but it's still a top secret division. The black comm badges are presumably not used in actual covert missions. The end of Season 2 orders that all Section 31 involvement be redacted from all official records. I would say that, despite Section 31 being integrated into the chain of command, it's less like the FBI (a public facing agency) and more like the Impossible Missions Force in the M:I movies. I freely admit that this is a stretch and it would have been best if the spy agency in DISCOVERY had been called "Starfleet Intelligence" or even "Section", a distant affiliate of Section 31.
The pilot was shot on film though, was it not? Versus video. Plus the blu-ray is going the way of the dinosaur.
Every episode of SLIDERS was shot on film: 35mm in the first three seasons, 16mm in the last two. You can tell from the film grain in most of the episodes that it's film. The pilot was clearly edited on film because of its video quality.
The remaining episodes of Season 1 were edited on analog, low resolution videotape, hence their blurry DVD quality. Seasons 2 - 5 were edited on digital videotape, hence their sharpness.
Every episode of SLIDERS except the the post-pilot Season 1 episodes will upscale well enough via AI or even through simple bicubic scaling because digital videotape retains most of the filmic grain that forms the image.
The Season 1 episodes that were edited on analog videotape do not have the film grain needed to create an effective upscaled image.
We should absolutely be working on bird flu vaccines; it could be the next pandemic.
The rest is interesting opinion.
I guess a simpler explanation might be that the DISCOVERY version of Section 31 is totally destroyed, except the absence of Section 31 simply causes new clandestine agents to take on black ops work on behalf of the Federation as per Article 31 of the Federation Charter and use the Section 31 name for a new organization that has no official ties to Starfleet and operates independently, becoming the Section 31 we see in DEEP SPACE NINE. Again, if Section 31 ceased to exist, someone else would simply create it.
Continuing with this supposition... what if Section 31 found the power to kill or control a Q, and the only way that Q could deal with it was to erase Section 31 from reality? Except that if Section 31 didn't exist, someone would simply create it...
Media normalization of Trump was one of the biggest issues of 2024. Grizzlor has had his finger to the pulse of lots of things and his predictions have been so right that I have had to cry myself to sleep a few times, but claiming media didn't normalize Trump is not factual.
Massive galactic mindwipe... ?
Fairly or unfairly, Henry Cavill's MAN OF STEEL and BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN were only modestly successful and JUSTICE LEAGUE was a failure. Gunn was brought in to restart the DC Universe, and you don't restart by doing what the last person was doing.
Sorry, my recall was wrong. I thought Akiva Goldsman was working on DISCOVERY in Season 2 when Section 31 showed up, but Goldsman stopped working on DISCOVERY day to day after Season 1, but returned to the franchise for STRANGE NEW WORLDS. He did use the Gorn name for a generic monster on STRANGE NEW WORLDS, but he isn't responsible for the generic Section 31 on DISCOVERY.
Kurtzman didn't become hands on with DISCOVERY until the middle of Season 2 when Aaron Harberts and Gretchen Berg were fired for allegedly abusive behaviour. Kurtzman oversaw the Klingon makeup going back to something more familiar. And for the most part, my recollection is that Section 31 in DISCOVERY was more Akiva Goldsman than Kurtzman. Goldsman has a tendency of writing generic concepts and applying mythic names to them.
Goldsman wrote a generic spy agency and called it Section 31 to make it seem vital rather than make it a less generic spy agency. Goldsman created a generic lizard monster race for STRANGE NEW WORLDS and called them Gorn to make them seem important rather than make them more distinctive characters.
Goldsman is a decent writer at crafting plots and character arcs, but when it comes to enemies and concepts, Goldsman has a tendency to use an interesting name to liven up an uninteresting idea.
I desperately need to know what Slider_Quinn21 thinks of how NEW BLOOD has been undone.
I guess that's what's weird to me. What is the point of doing a SECTION 31 movie if it isn't about the shadowy, espionage-noir intrigue of Section 31? Why do it at all?
And the DISCOVERY team completely mishandled Section 31, writing them as a totally generic spy organization within Starfleet that just happened to be called Section 31. Section 31 as established in DEEP SPACE NINE is an off the books, black-ops division that officially does not exist and is not acknowledged by Starfleet or Federation authorities. They answer to no one and nothing and do all the dirty work that the Federation doesn't admit to and flat out pretends doesn't happen. But DISCOVERY treated Section 31 like the NSA or CIA when Section 31 is more like the KGB but with no official sanction or existence.
Well, Section 31 is a rogue, black ops division that operates outside Federation law and Starfleet to eliminate anything they deem a threat to the Federation, doing so violently, savagely, ruthlessly, covertly and quietly, answering to no one and nothing. Effectively MISSION IMPOSSIBLE but without the morality. So fans were probably expecting a dark, morally questionable espionage drama, and this SECTION 31 film appears to be... I have no idea what it is, but it's not selling itself as a spy drama.
Mitt Romney (haha) in his autobiography (of sorts) bemoans how his failed presidential campaign foolishly focused on campaigning to the 'bosses' of America. After losing and after a pleasant lunch with the re-elected Barack Obama, Romney realized that most people in America hate their bosses and he should have campaigned to the people who work for bosses instead as there are a heckuva lot more workers than bosses. "Stupid!" he says of himself.
I'd never support this guy, but I could learn a lot from him.
I mean, I'd mostly like to see STAR TREK: LEGACY, but from a marketing standpoint, it makes sense for a franchise as old as STAR TREK to court a younger audience even as it reaches out to older fans with STRANGE NEW WORLDS and such.
So, we now know how Dexter is alive and how the ending of NEW BLOOD is undone.
Spoilers: https://www.tvinsider.com/1166482/dexte … n-preview/
I wonder what Slider_Quinn21 makes of this. I have never seen the show, but this whole situation fascinates me.
There could be a reason why working class voters didn't vote Democrat for president that isn't about why working class voters didn't vote Democrat for president? What kind of tangled convolution is that?
I see we continue our habit of judging and dismissing a series sight unseen.
Here's an interesting article offering a view on why Kamala Harris and her campaign from wealthy Uber executives and such did not resound with working class people:
https://jacobin.com/2024/12/democrats-o … linton-dlc
Continuing ruminations on why Democrats lost the election in 2024.
https://www.salon.com/2024/12/13/democr … nt-truths/
"The working-class voters Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign needed were not moved by talk of joy. They were too angry about feeling broke."
The 2009 movie where Scotty nearly drowns in the watercooling pipes after a transporter mishap struck me as the moment when STAR TREK seemed to re-embrace comedy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSGV2kFhZvU&t=348s
The moment where STRANGE NEW WORLDS seemed to re-embrace comedy on TV for me was the Enterprise Bingo segment in Season 1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH4GjcAIvV8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p27sDWHBksg
LOWER DECKS is good. I'm disappointed that it's ending so soon. It looks like the show has hit a point where it's brought in all the new subscribers it can, and they need to shift to a new show to bring in new subscribers.
The original STAR TREK was a very silly show at the start and at the finish, but with some over-serious grimdark misery in the middle. TNG began the trend of TREK becoming Serious Science Fiction, albeit with some straight-laced humour. But it's not until Season 4 of ENTEPRRISE and the 2009 STAR TREK rebootquel that goofy humour came back into the series. DISCOVERY was grimdark too, but LOWER DECKS and STRANGE NEW WORLDS finally brought comedy back into full force.
I feel like if this was Smallville: the Later Years, the show would be fairly similar. I think Clark wouldn't be Superman, having retired, but I think he may still do work for Sam Lane and the DOD. I think it would be Clark and Lois retiring to Smallville to raise their kids in peace with Clark wanting a quieter life. The plot of the show is mostly about Clark Kent anyway so I don't think you'd need to change much. And if Tom Welling wanted to wear the suit, I think they could've played it exactly like Superman & Lois did. If they didn't want to, Clark could still stay in the action in his flannel.
I really don't think much would really change. And now I'm a little sad we didn't get that, as much as I liked the show as we got it
Well, I think, in this scenario, Tom would have to wear the suit, but SMALLVILLE VOLUME 2 would still have Clark and Lois returning to Smallville after being unceremoniously laid off or fired from the Daily Planet.
Here's an interesting thought experiment: what if SUPERMAN AND LOIS had featured Tom Welling and Erica Durance?
SMALLVILLE was about Clark as a teenager to their mid-20s. What if Tom Welling and Erica Durance returned to play Clark and Lois in their mid to late 40s? And of course, the continuity and cast of Seasons 1 - 10 would be retained, so Luthor would be Michael Rosenbaum, Sam Lane would be Michael Ironside, and Clark has already fought Bizarro and Doomsday.
What could have stayed the same and what would have had to change? What would have been the story of Clark from his teenaged years to his 70s?
I am super-behind on STAR WARS and I honestly don't know if I'll ever get caught up. I never got around to watching CLONE WARS and I'm currently rewatching the MTV SCREAM series. However, I'm sorry TV has been a mixed bag. It does seem like a waste of time to set so much TV during the short-lived period of the New Republic when we know it all ends in Luke giving up and becoming a hermit. It seems like TV is trying to stay out of the way and leave a clean slate for that new Rey feature film, a bit like the ABC and Netflix Marvel shows trying to steer clear of the movies' territory.
The theme park rides sound like a lot of fun! Did you get to interact with any of the performers playing the characters?
I remember riding the Star Tours ride at Universal Studios a lot when I was a child. I'm sure the experiences today are even more advanced, immersive and compelling.
A rumination on how Democrats have not evolved to face structural changes in states and electorate, which led to defeat in 2024 and will lead to even more if they don't make urgent changes.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/democratic … nationally
I did want more of John Henry and Nat and longed for their return... but the show camouflaged it well enough and made it so that the absences, as you said, felt more like story focus than cast unavailability. It'd be interesting to rewatch the series and see which ones are the big budget ones and which ones have been budget-reduced. Certainly, the premiere and the finale are the big spenders.
It was really good. Overall, it was a modern SUPERMAN movie in four chapters. Season 4 did a good job of shifting around the budget to maintain the cinematic flair for enough episodes that the smaller budgeted ones worked as a breather.
Ever since the first season, I'd been musing that Clark could do more for the world with a charitable foundation than with supersaves, so I liked seeing that play out in the finale.
QuinnSlidr will get an automatic email on Wednesday morning with his login details.
God help me.
Back to the subject at hand:
Joe Biden betrayed his promise. He vowed a separation of private concerns and public good, promising that he would not pardon his son Hunter. He broke his word.
I don't blame him at all. I totally agree with all the moral and ethical criticisms of what he has done. But given the impending Trump presidency, I cannot blame Biden for taking every step possible to protect his family from the Trump-steered Department of Justice and FBI. It's morally and ethically wrong, as laid out in the parameters set by Biden himself -- but it shows how much Biden must fear the Trump presidency and how short on options, hope, and belief in America he is at this point.
Biden has decided that the shattering of his moral principles and his political legacy at this point is happening regardless of what he does or doesn't do, and has elected to save his son. I hope all fathers would do the same for their children, but it shows how truly dark the world has become.
My father once told me, "Son, if you robbed a bank, I wouldn't hire a lawyer for you, but I would visit you in jail." However, I'd like to think that if my dad thought I'd be targeted for more than just the crimes I committed, he'd come to my aid.
At the same time, I have a lot of room for the views of those who point out that Biden has turned his back on his own declared standards of right and wrong and betrayed the public trust with his actions.
Out of love, gratitude and respect for Slider_Quinn21, QuinnSlidr's ban will be lifted on Wednesday morning (Eastern Time).
But my mental health really cannot handle any more discussions getting derailed into unproven conspiracy theories and weird accusations of insufficient loyalty to Democrats or fealty to Republicans for the crime of criticizing Democrats and how they lost the election. There probably isn't a single poster here whom QuinnSlidr hasn't accused of treachery or fascism because they didn't buy into his talking points. I only have so much energy in a day and shouldn't be devoting so much of it to monitoring and moderating and addressing this behaviour. I have a day job and my mother needs a lot of attention and care. The only reason I am posting right now is because I am ill at home for the day after my COVID vaccination.
Out of deference to Slider_Quinn21, the ban will be lifted on Wednesday. Because, well, I respect Slider_Quinn21 and I am honour-bound to try things his way even if I foresee only exhaustion and grief waiting for me.
This is yet another example of you trying to weasel out of your behaviour: you focus on your most recent harassment and minimize or deny it while avoiding how you have a lengthy history of harassment.
Your history includes accusing someone with doubts about Biden of being a Trump supporter; accusing someone who disliked a speech from a black person of being racist; accusing someone who reported Kamala Harris' 2024 loss of being ignorant for reporting basic facts of public record; accusing anyone who didn't buy into unproven election denialism of being a Trump supporter; accusing someone trying to have a serious discussion about pardon powers of demanding respect for Republicans.
You have also repeatedly posted election misinformation to intimidate anyone with criticisms of Democrat politicians and campaigns. You falsely insist that Democrats won. You do this deliberately to make people uncomfortable criticizing Democratic strategy and hesitant to say that Kamala Harris lost the election; you want them to fear your misinformation and accusations.
You are a serial harasser. Your defense is to claim that whatever harassment you engaged in most recently didn't happen while ignoring the massive track record of harassment behind you. It is perfectly clear at this point that despite multiple warnings, you have no intention of curtailing this behaviour.
This track record of repeated harassment and intimidation both overt and subtle is why you are no longer welcome to post here.
dYou have repeatedly accused anyone who doesn't share your political talking points of being a Trump supporter or a Republican, and now you have done the same with me. I tried to have a sensible, serious discussion about Biden's use of his pardon power, you turned it into another campaign of accusing another poster, in this case, me:
I will never respect a republican. Ever. Again.
I didn't tell you to respect Republicans. I am absolutely sick of your harassment. You have repeatedly mischaracterized other people's posts, deliberately and willfully.
On multiple occasions, you have falsely accused posters of being racists or Republicans and Trump supporters when they didn't share your talking points of choice or weren't as fervently supportive of the Democratic National Party as you demanded.
You have harassed people for reporting that Kamala Harris lost the election and for not buying into your unproven conspiracy theories.
You are now harassing me by claiming that I demand you respect Republicans when I try to discuss how much threat Biden must see in Trump for Biden to pardon his son Hunter.
This is a clear pattern of harassment in your behaviour.
You have been warned about all your forms of harassment repeatedly, you have been warned that any further harassment in any form will lead to a ban and I am sick of warning you.
This is your final warning, I will not speak to you about it again.
I am raising a serious subject of threat and danger, morality and ethics, and you are making light of it.
You are deliberately mischaracterizing a call for serious discussion as a demand to respect Republicans, and your mischaracterization is obvious and ridiculous.
Your LOLs are completely inappropriate for the subject matter at hand. If you can't discuss serious subjects seriously, go somewhere else.
I was not asking you to respect Republicans; I was asking you to show some respect for how Trump is going to use law enforcement agencies to target Democrats and their families and take the threat seriously instead of treating it like a joke.
You are treating this like a joke. You are fixated on mockery and ridicule.
Trump is trying to have deranged loyalists run the Department of Justice and the FBI and they would most certainly pursue Biden's son for revenge. Biden's family and everyone who's ever opposed Trump -- the Clintons, the Bidens, Jack Smith, Gretchen Whitmer -- they're all going to be targets.
Show some respect and take it seriously.
Biden pardoned Hunter.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/president-joe … =116358693
He broke his morals, he broke his code, he broke his ethics, he had no choice. Trump is coming after the Bidens, he had to try to save his son.
Probably not Allison Mack!
Now that it's been six months since I had COVID-19, I am getting my next dose of the COVID vaccine on Sunday.
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