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Who wouldn't have lunch with Cleavant Derricks? Transmodiar ATE Cleavant Derricks' lunch once. He's a very pleasant person. Anyone who insists on having family dinners with David Peckinpah is clearly determined to like people.

Where are you getting 290 votes for Biden? Five Thirty Eight puts him at 326 and they warned of a Trump victory in 2016. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/20 … -forecast/

The Economist projects 334. https://projects.economist.com/us-2020- … /president

NPR puts 101 votes as a toss up with Biden holding 268 and Trump holding 169 meaning Biden only needs to win one toss up state out of six whereas Trump needs all six. On paper, Trump is done. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/16/91200417 … till-ahead

In reality, there’s an issue of voter suppression.

I don't know what's going to happen. But I believe in truth. And I'm a big fan of justice. And I am always heartened by the unique capacity that America has for both. It hasn't always lived up to it. But I believe that it can. I have hope.

I think Jerry would be very eager to be in a SLIDERS reboot and would agree to do an audio drama. I don't know that a SLIDERS audio drama needs a large, pre-existing fanbase; it can court a new audience and if Jerry wouldn't do the voice, the producers could hire someone else. It'd be fine so long as the writing were presenting a reboot and not requiring that Quinn sound like the same character we met in 1995. But... I think Jerry would probably do it if it didn't interfere with his other work even if the pay were minimal. And if we can't get John, we could settle for his vocal stand-in, Bob Joles (a voice actor hired to play John's characters on animated shows if John is too busy to return).

I don't think Jerry O'Connell's profile in 2020 is any different from where it was in 2004. Jerry in 2004 and today is a working TV actor, but he is not a big star. He is, like John Rhys-Davies, a known name and a character performer. He isn't a long-term lead, hasn't been since 1996. I guess he leads CARTER, but that show only produces 10 episodes a year and there's no word on a third season.

Jerry's best chance was from 1994 - 2002. From 1994 to 2002, he tapped into a vital market as the sensitive, earnest, intelligent, thinking man's action hero. In 2010, Benedict Cumberbatch would redefine that sort of character as Sherlock Holmes in SHERLOCK, but Jerry had the first mainstream crack at it and could have kept going had he chosen his post-SLIDERS roles differently. The role that Jerry craved and missed out on and failed to win was the role of Peter Parker in the Sam Raimi SPIDER-MAN movie.

Peter Parker would have been the perfect synthesis of Jerry's brainy science hero persona with a cultural icon known worldwide -- but Jerry in 2002 would have likely played the character with the same smirking, preening arrogance that he applied to Quinn in Season 3. I think after that, Jerry's ego took a massive hit and since then, his performances have rebounded significantly. His episode of SAMANTHA WHO was hilarious as he played a reformed mugger.

He was terrific in the MUNSTERS reboot. He is absurd and self-mocking on CARTER. He has plenty of voice work in animation, he earns a great living -- but his career isn't really that different from 2013. I don't think his feelings have changed: he lost his chance to play THE science hero, Peter Parker as Spider-Man, and now longs to play HIS science hero, Quinn Mallory. I don't think his enthusiasm for SLIDERS has waned; I think it was non-existent until 2002 and now it increases with each passing year. And I think Jerry would like to play Quinn again -- even for a meagre rate -- to play his science hero one more time.

I don't see how it's "one side prepping for all out war" when the Trump administration has called for delaying election day, called mail-in ballots fraudulent despite the president using them himself, called for military force to intimidate voters in Democrat cities, wants federal agents to do the same, declared that only Election Day results should be accepted and that mail-in ballots should be discarded, says that any loss on his end can only be due to fraud even when he's losing every national poll, is bragging about crippling the US Postal Service to prevent people from voting against him, is denying foreign interference in his favour even after being impeached for courting it and has every intention of using the full force of his office to steal the election.

Democrats would be insane and suicidal not to run the war games and prepare for Trump administration's loudly advertised tactics and self-confessed intentions to prevent counting all votes in the election, to make it as difficult as possible to vote in the election, to declare victory regardless of the outcome and to refuse to accept any result other than the one the Trump administration wants. It isn't arson to hear a fire alarm and start reaching for an extinguisher. It isn't bioterror to see mounting infections and wear a mask.

The Democrats accepted defeat in 2016 when their polls put Clinton's lead over Trump within the usual margin of polling error and the results put her slightly behind instead of what they thought was slightly ahead. Biden's lead is well above the margin of error.

It's interesting: Don Bluth has advised against rotoscoping (filming a scene live, tracing the outlines of the actors and then drawing on top of the tracings). He says that every time he tried it, it created the sense that the characters were 'floating' above the background because human beings ultimately have a gravity and weight that animated characters don't and the sense of being tethered to the Earth has to be achieved by drawing animated characters into an animated environment and interacting with it. His version of rotoscoping is to create video reference with actors and incorporate their movements into the animation.

I also love how Bluth hates TITAN AE, one of my favourite films, and it just goes to show how the artist is not the art.

Anyway. I'd like to see a SLIDERS animated series. But a 'realistic' vision of a SLIDERS animated series wouldn't capture the original appeal of the Vancouver years. Hand-drawn animation could give you the range of locations and set designs that benefit SLIDERS, but the only character who would translate effectively into animation as-is would be the bombastic Professor Arturo. Quinn, Wade and Rembrandt would need to be retrofitted significantly for simplified character designs and simplified animation which requires exaggerated gestures over subtle performance (as we've seen in LOWER DECKS). A computer generated version of SLIDERS might be able to have more body language and performance through the digital marionettes of such shows, but the locations would suffer in that the sliders would be exploring strangely empty worlds that only ever seem to have the immediate guest stars and no background extras (as we've seen in the Nickelodeon NINJA TURTLES).

I'm not saying SLIDERS couldn't face these problems, but it would be a very different version of SLIDERS than what we saw in Seasons 1 - 2 and it would have to create its own appeal because it wouldn't be able to capture what made the original work.

For the longest time, I tried to bring SLIDERS back and the only format I could offer was the zero-budget PDF screenplay which in recent years has become the zero-budget Google Doc screenplay. I think the audioplay might be the next step forward. If David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson will do X-FILES for Audible, it's possible.

That said, Audible put so little time, money and effort into their X-FILES project that they didn't bother to pay Duchovny and Anderson to do any kind of rehearsal on the script and had both actors record all their lines as they read the pages for the first time with no idea what they were saying or why they were saying it. Jerry O'Connell at this stage in his career would read your shopping list for union scale, but John Rhys-Davies wouldn't put up with that and demand rehearsals.

I bought a Marvel Unlimited subscription. For sixty bucks, you can read almost every Marvel comic from the 60s to about 2019 through their digital app. And it's great value for the money and far better than paying $5 - $7 for a 22 page comic book. But...

It is really hard to figure out how to read the crossover storylines. For example, SECRET EMPIRE (where Captain America was rewritten by a reality-warping weapon into an Agent of HYDRA) -- it unfolds across STEVE ROGERS CAPTAIN AMERICA, SAM WILSON CAPTAIN AMERICA, THUNDERBOLTS, then SECRET EMPIRE. But the SECRET EMPIRE event reading list provided in the app is missing at least 8 - 12 issues of each series. I had to go on Wikipedia and various Wikia sites to find the complete list and then manually search for each issue within the app. The average person is not going to do this.

Marvel Unlimited also provides reading lists for characters. But they too are riddled with missing entries. Sam Wilson's era as Captain America is missing the ALL-NEW CAPTAIN AMERICA series even though that was his first solo series in the role! DAREDEVIL has a fairly complete run except after the Frank Miller issues, the 233 - 317 range is riddled with massive omissions.

But again -- it's only $60 to read whatever you want that's there. That same $60 would only get you 10 - 12 physical comic books or individual digital releases from Marvel. And it really shows how Marvel Comics is not seeking to make very much profit or even offer accessible reading material to people who want to get into their comics without needing to dive into guidebooks and lists to figure out what to read in what order just to figure out how to read one storyline. It's research and development for feature films and Disney+ and Hulu TV shows.

Anyway. I'm mostly reading 90s era DAREDEVIL (which is hilarious with very funny writing from Karl Kesel and Joe Kelly) and MS. MARVEL (Carol Danvers who will be Captain Marvel) comics from 1977. I did read the entire SECRET EMPIRE story with Captain America and I really, really liked it, although I was very relieved when the real Captain America came back and fought the Nazi Captain America.

I'd like a SLIDERS animated series. SLIDERS would benefit from the range of locations and interiors and costumes and designs that come with animation. I'd like to see cel-shaded CG animation like the MTV SPIDER-MAN animated series which was hyperdynamic and full of life. And I'd like to see designs and motion akin to the work of Don Bluth and Gary Goldman (ANASTASIA, TITAN A.E.). Their films show characters that were drawn to be lifelike and animated with a full range of movement: body language, gestures, postures, walking and talking, changing their gait, leaning, sitting, standing again.

However, animation for TV has its drawbacks. The first: because of limited budgets, characters often don't have as much motion as live action. THE HOLLOW, a terrific animated show about three kids travelling to different worlds, needed its characters to be very exaggerated in their body language and expression, well beyond the subtlety of real actors. TV cartoons are often overblown parodies of people.

I've watched some episodes of DOCTOR WHO reconstructed in animation and while actor Patrick Troughton could make his face a fascinating canvas of mystery and emotion, a drawing of Troughton is simply a still with some movement.

Another issue: the freedom of locations can also be an issue. I really loved the CG animated shows NINJA TURTLES and BEWARE THE BATMAN. However, the budget was limited: with all the character designs and sets, the Ninja Turtles and Batman were living in cities that were oddly empty.

Both shows were conspicuously lacking in extras. Aside from the main characters and featured guest-stars, the streets and restaurants and hockey arenas and shopping malls and office buildings of these shows were devoid of people in the background. This could be a serious problem for rendering parallel Earth civilizations convincingly.

However, the technology is always leaping forward.

Well, I wouldn't have wanted you to be in a CIVIL WAR type situation like Steve Rogers being in trouble for harbouring a fugitive. If I camped out in your backyward, you could claim you didn't know I was there.

You know, Matt, if you're going to tell people you have cancer, you might also be specific in letting them know what you told me -- that you appear to be out of the woods but will be getting regular checkups. Much in the same way a once-potential arsonist might assure his readers that his days of wishing death and destruction for past slights and misdeeds are behind him.

Yeah, it's a good thing I didn't do this, or I would have been on your doorstep the next morning asking to pitch a tent in your backyard. The life of a criminal is not for me.

Chadwick Boseman saved me from a prison sentence.

I once had a very abusive employer who would deliberately give me vague instructions and scream at me for failing to meet the unspecified specifics. Who would give me assignments and then deny having done so, screaming at me for doing unsanctioned work. Who would then scream at me for not doing assignments she hadn't assigned. Who would accuse me of stealing from her office if she couldn't find something. Who would accuse me of sabotaging her computer if she forgot how to turn it on. I filed an abuse and harassment complaint and she was no longer employed. But I was still seething and furious from the constant, daily attacks. The indignity. The cruelty. I wasn't satisfied that she'd been chastised and dismissed; I wanted her to suffer more pain, more grief, more agony.

One night, in a fit of rage, I looked up where she lived and decided to burn her house down and then flee the country. But since I'd purchased my ticket to CIVIL WAR a week in advance, I had to see the movie first.

I'm glad I did. I'm I saw it on opening night. I'm glad Zemo's vengeful vindictiveness made me uneasy. I'm glad I heard Chadwick Boseman, playing T'Challa, tell Zemo, "Vengeance has consumed you. It's consuming them. I am done letting it consume me."

It made me realize that as angry as I might be, it wasn't worth destroying my own life and getting a criminal conviction for a passing moment of satisfaction. It made me realize that I had to stop thinking of transgressions, past or present, as something for which I had to mete out punishment or get even. It made me realize that self-defence is one thing, but actively pursuing people for past wrongs simply to satisfy a desire to strike back was a massive waste of time and only would only ever damage my own life and well-being. That repairing the damage they'd done was more important than hurting them back.

I would probably be in jail for arson right now if I hadn't seen CIVIL WAR when I did and if Boseman's performance hadn't been as moving as it were.

Biden didn't get more than a 1 - 2 point bounce in the polls after his convention. Trump got a bounce in the polls after his convention. Biden's ten point lead now looks like a mere six point lead with Trump catching up.

Pollster Nate Cohn (New York Times) notes that a six point lead is not a good place to be for either party as it's dangerously close to polling error.

And Nate Silver (Five Thirty Eight) thinks it's a small rise for Trump at the same time as a small diminishment for Biden after his small post-convention increase.

Last month in the right-wing website, The Bulwark, a columnist remarked that all political races with candidates well-known to the public have "a natural equilibrium" that is highly predictable and that Biden's place in the polls before the pandemic hit was being ahead of Trump by six points which is where the polls have put him again. https://thebulwark.com/newsletter-issue … ds-really/

Cohn said we won't have a clear picture from polling until the the middle of September.

An X-FILES branded animated series is in development. It's a spin-off not featuring Mulder and Scully, and Chris Carter will be tangentially involved without being the showrunner.

https://tvline.com/2020/08/28/x-files-a … eries-fox/

One thing we haven't gotten into -- there were recently MASSIVE layoffs across all of Warner Bros. and the DC Comics division took huge hits. At last 12 senior editors were laid off and their office staffers were shuttered, leading to about one-third of DC Comics being let go as part of the 800 WB dismissals. Of course, CEO compensation remains at an all time high in WB. A small fraction of CEO salaries could have easily covered most of the costs of the lower level staffers being cast aside.

Looking at DC Comics and comic book publishing, however -- comic books aren't working economically and have not been working for a long time. As Temporal Flux has pointed out, you could buy 2 - 3 chocolate bars for the cost of one DC comic, buy a video game for the cost of 10 issues and you could get 15 - 30 hours out of the average video game but finish all 10 comic books inside 45 minutes. Comic books are overpriced, offer poor value for the content, and the industry has refused to change its format and business model because it is being kept afloat by comic stores that have a dwindling number of readers come in every Wednesday to buy the latest issues.

Marvel has survived because publishing isn't required to be particularly profitable and notorious cheapskate Ike Perlmutter ran Marvel Comics like a startup on the grounds that it was the Marvel movies and television shows and video games and merchandise that earned money. The comics were treated as research and development. DC Comics, in contrast, has never had that kind of protection or minimalism, and it was likely viewed as a publishing arm that generated a lot of product with a lot of labour for very, very, very little reward. With Marvel, the comics division was for a long time also working on TV and film. There was a separation around Season 3 of AGENTS OF SHIELD where TV and comics were under Perlmutter and film was under Kevin Feige. Last year, however, Feige was promoted to handle the TV and comic book branches as well.

In contrast, DC Comics has very little influence over DC properties in film, television and merchandising. While individual DC creators are hired to specific DC properties (comic book writer Geoff Johns runs STARGIRL and consults on CW shows), the DC branch was not considered to be part of the TV and film teams. With a third of DC Comics gone, the output of the comics will likely be cut as well. There could come a point when WB no longer sees the value in publishing DC characters in monthly comics that few people read and they'll exist in TV, film, video games, audio dramas and commercials -- but not comic books.

But it doesn't have to be that way, of course. If comics can be made affordable and accessible, it can work, but the industry is currently locked into monthly 20 page pamphlets sold by specialty stores. I stopped reading comic books regularly around Season 2 of SUPERGIRL, realizing that I wasn't a fan of comics as much as superheroes and everything I wanted from superheroes was now on Netflix, especially when the SUPERGIRL comic book was an unfathomable mess while the SUPERGIRL TV series was a delight.

DeJoy is going to do everything short of blowing up post offices to try to suppress votes, but he's been so overt and obvious that people can prepare in advance and work past him by voting early by mail or in person or by submitting their votes to ballot boxes. One wonders why he wasn't more subtle. Instead, he made a spectacle of it and that sounded the alarm.

The DNC was fine. Generally, I don't really think you get anything revolutionary or meaningful out of conventions that wouldn't come from the campaign, but the speeches were comforting and laid out the Democrats' position as servants and problem solvers offering empathy. Barack and Michelle Obama laid out a dark future for the country unless people exercise their power and vote and prepare for all the difficulties that are coming.

The major area where Biden solidified his public persona after his primary victory was made on a platform of vagueness -- Biden is a president who will guide the nation in their grief as opposed to the current president who is devoid of compassion or empathy. That's an emotional appeal rather than a policy position, of course.

I got the sense that Biden could be a serious security risk, however, in that he keeps giving his personal phone number out to strangers including an elevator operator and a boy with a stutter, both of whom spoke digitally at the convention. The latter, however, was a clever way of Biden doing what I asked him to do in a letter -- to tell the public that his supposed 'cognitive decline' when he says "Senate" instead of "President" and can't seem to speak the name of his former president are his struggle with his stutter.

I'm not going to bother watching the Republican convention. It's just going to be lies about how Trump did a great job fighting COVID-19 and claiming that Biden is a socialist. (I wish Biden were a socialist.)

The first two seasons established a very clear tone and visual identity for SLIDERS: location filming in Vancouver, lighthearted satire, heroic but troubled characters filled with strengths and human frailties, and a grounded tone that made SLIDERS look like an independent film rather than a big budget network show. Season 3 throws all this out, moving the location to Los Angeles, costuming all the characters as magazine models rather than according to their characters.

The satirical, comedic tone puncturing royalty, sports, celebrity, the prison industrial complex, youth culture, ageism, chauvinism -- that disappears too. Instead, the episodes become focused on action movie ripoffs where the sliders resolve problems with force and violence instead of cleverness, literacy, knowledge and improvisation. The series also shifts into fantasy with supernatural monsters and magic -- a bizarre choice when the fictional realities of SLIDERS have been based in technology, mathematics and physics.

Season 3 is also when the original creator left the show and a deeply troubled and unfortunate producer, David Peckinpah, was assigned responsibility for scripts and production. In the years following the show, Peckinpah's son explained: Peckinpah was suffering from a terrible family tragedy, the death of his teenaged son, and it caused him to backslide into a drug addiction. He was getting high before, during and after work. After SLIDERS' cancellation, his addiction would kill him.

As a result, Season 3 is sloppy: scripts are not edited properly to amend errors or shooting issues, actors deliver lines incorrectly and production doesn't bother to do a second take, missing sound effects are ignored -- the big two parter of Season 3 was basically an excuse to hire rock star Roger Daltrey to perform for the cast and crew for two weeks with making an episode treated as something to do between binge drinking sessions. This attitude continued for the last two seasons of the show with sloppy script editing and revisions and it's truly unfortunate.

Season 3 also has a horrific exit for the Professor, one that I saw when I was 13 and in many ways, it left me permanently damaged. I felt like I had watched my own father die. I still feel it. Once, when completing some SLIDERS research for a podcast, I confessed to the podcasters that everything in my life since 1997 had been a reaction to the death of Professor Arturo followed by a fearful avoidance of the void that was left in my life, a gaping hole that I was afraid to look into until enough time had passed and I could address it, confront it and fill it.

What I'm saying is that if you'll cover the postage, you can have my Season 3 set.

While I'm not a fan of Zack Snyder making a horror movie version of the JLA, he might as well be permitted to finish it.

There are so many versions of BATMAN that Matt Reeves should do whatever he wants. If it's bad, it won't matter and won't define the character in perpetuity.

I'm sure that both, whatever our enjoyment levels may be, will turn out as professional, presentable products.

THE BATMAN trailer: https://youtu.be/NLOp_6uPccQ

Goth rock version of Batman.

One of my favourite TV shows is the sleeper hit BLINDSPOT. Like every TV show I recommend, BLINDSPOT is about a troubled woman fighting crime for a secret federal branch (also the plot of THE BLACKLIST, FRINGE, AGENTS OF SHIELD, WYNONNA EARP). BLINDSPOT is a procedural about a mysterious, amnesiac woman (Jaimie Alexander who played Sif in THOR) who awakens in Times Square naked and covered in tattoos -- each of which provides a vital clue to a government crime and cover-up. Joining an FBI task force, the amnesiac woman takes on the name Jane and with her new friends, seeks to uncover the truth behind her memory loss, the individual crime connected to each tattoo, the creator of these tattoos and her true identity.

The main appeal of BLINDSPOT, at least for me, was Jaimie Alexander's performance. Her Jane Doe is astonished to discover that she has the combat skills of a Marine and Alexander and her stunt team presented Jane as a physically unstoppable force with an innocently gentle spirit contrasted in battle with the instinctive ferocity of a wild animal. Jane's fight scenes were a thrill with a regular sequence of improvised acrobatics for Jane to trounce roomfuls of villains using her surroundings and tolerance for pain.

The show is extremely well-done with a carefully considered mythology that is revealed over two seasons and comes to a climax and conclusion in Season 2. Seasons 3 - 4 deal with the aftermath and a new threat and reinvented the show while keeping the same formula and also lightened the show's paranoid, conspiracy minded tone to a slightly more comedic approach with the friendship of Jane's FBI team. The show featured astonishing action sequences and lavish location filming throughout New York City and overseas.

Never a huge hit, BLINDSPOT survived thanks to Greg Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. lowering the license fee to NBC, strong overseas sales, extremely positive press and ratings and a budget that went down every year to make its ad revenue enough for NBC to keep ordering it.

With Season 5, NBC and the studio agreed to a short 11 episode season to bring the show to a solid 100 episodes with a conclusion -- but this renewal came at a price. Season 5's premiere opens with one of the cast members suddenly killed off in a brief appearance with series creator Martin Gero confessing that the budget cuts for this final year had caused them to lose a cast member (although the actor returned for flashbacks in two subsequent episodes).

The budget also meant that the majority of the season had Jane and her friends confined to a bunker and when they ventured away from it, they were exploring empty warehouses or back alley streets with few extras. While the season had the team in hiding as fugitives and called for the confined locations, the budget also showed in that most of the season came and went with Jane showing off her fighting skills in only a brief fight scene. Showrunner Gero acknowledged that Jane's fights were a large part of the show, but with less money than ever, he had been forced to move away from that.

There were entire episodes confined to the bunker and one another interior set, very much like Season 5 of SLIDERS in the Chandler. The confined surroundings also meant the characters were interacting more than ever and their voices and relationships came through well as they worked through some of the darkest circumstances of the series. The voice of the show was present, but it was frustrating to see my favourite thing about BLINDSPOT -- Jane's physicality through Jaimie Alexander -- absent except for short bursts of athleticism. In fact, Season 5 folded Jane into the ensemble and presented BLINDSPOT as a team show instead of Jaimie Alexander's show -- something I think few viewers would protest as all the characters were splendid. Still, it bothered me.

But then episode 11, the finale, aired and it was astonishing. In this Jane-centric story, nearly every prominent guest-star from the previous 99 episodes returned for featured roles or cameos. There was extensive location filming on the streets of New York City and the climax was set on location in Times Square. Crowd scenes, pyrotechnics, and an incredible final action sequence for Jane where in a single shot, she defeats six heavily armed henchmen. It was apparently shot over three months and all the cut corners of the previous 10 episodes had led to the massive expense of the series finale.

BLINDSPOT's fifth season wasn't ideal, but its sacrifices early on ensured that its finale reflected all the strengths of its first four seasons. There's something about a strong landing that can alleviate the discomfort of a shaky takeoff.

This is a really good tutorial in how to write SLIDERS stories. The twist with Bennish is great. I will try to apply it later in theory as a post on this forum.

I mildly disagree with some of TF's views on SLIDERS stories, but given my inability to write them without story ideas from Nigel Mitchell, Tracy Torme and Transmodiar, I'm not sure anyone should agree with me. I would personally be intrigued by a SLIDERS reboot where Quinn and Wade are teenagers. TF astutely says this is redundant as teenagers already feel like the world's rules exist to annoy them and older adults would have a more meaningful reaction to being put off by a parallel Earth. Personally, I think teenagers being predisposed to irritation towards any and all social and societal conventions is precisely why it's a great idea.

I don't really disagree with TF saying he prefers stories where the sliders *don't* save the world and merely survive it. I would say that I like them when they're done well, but it is *very* difficult to write convincing stories where four strangers in a strange land with no resources can somehow topple the dominant regime and bring the local revolution to victory. This is probably why the first episode of SLIDERS was scripted to have the sliders succeed in rescuing Commander Wade Welles of the Revolution but revised to have them fail.

The sliders' success in defeating royalty in "Prince of Wails" required numerous contrivances: that the Professor looks like the municipal despot, that the sliders wander into an assassination plot against the prince, that they then just as conveniently blunder into the rebels and so on. It's incredibly uplifting and endearing, but by the time we get to "Prophets and Loss," the charming and amusing coincidences to have a few hapless civilians defeat a brutal regime has become a lazily executed formula rather than a plausible course of events.

I don't feel I made a mistake in my SLIDERS stories taking on the tropes of a superhero story with resurrection, restoration and the sliders saving the multiverse like it's DOCTOR WHO -- but I would say that I don't think anyone would want an ongoing series of SLIDERS stories to be anything like my deliberately limited mini-series. I've gotten enough fan mail to know that fans *definitely* wanted Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo restored and to know who they'd be in the present day -- but once that was done, they would have wanted ongoing SLIDERS stories like the ones TF comes up with.

Still relevant.

I have a question for you, TF. How would you shape your ideas into a story for the sliders (Alli, Reese, Gibbs, Bennish or Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo)? What is the introduction, situation and climax for the characters? I ask you this because this is a part of the SLIDERS code that I personally cannot crack even when a visionary like Nigel Mitchell was holding my hand. When writing my own SLIDERS stories, I had a very clear vision for who I wanted Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo to be in 2015 and what I wanted sliding to be -- but I did not have any gift for conceiving interesting parallel worlds.

Nigel worked with me, coming up with alt-histories, backstories, little details of visual or societal data -- but I don't think I used it well. Ultimately, my SLIDERS stories featured the character interactions I wanted and Nigel's parallel worlds were a backdrop or Season 3 Diggs-type scenes where someone explains what the world is in a monologue or a conversation. And it was adequate -- but it wasn't the sliders doing what SLIDERS should have them do and what you and Nigel would have them do: get caught up in the culture and workings of an alternate history, encounter inversions of our own struggles, and come out the other side with renewed perspective and even enlightenment.

How do you tell a story with your alt-history concepts? What would the beginning, middle and end of these stories be?

Speaking with the New York Times, Jed Whedon said that was indeed the explanation -- that the Snap happened some time during Season 7, but the Agents dodged it as they were time travelling and moving to different timelines via the quantum realm when the erasures took place. The explanation was filmed. It was cut for time. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/arts … inale.html

However, this explanation would have contradicted Season 5, episode 22, "The End" in which the Thanos-directed attacks on New York City and Wakanda are happening concurrently with the Agents confronting General Talbot in Chicago. But from Season 6 onwards, the writers wrote each script as though it were before INFINITY WAR even though Season 5's finale had led right up to the conclusion of INFINITY WAR.

As the filmed explanation wasn't onscreen, I'd prefer to go with the original authorial intent of the TV and film productions -- that it is all one shared universe unfolding on one timeline. Why isn't the Avengers tower visible in the Netflix shows that didn't wish to spend the money on the effects? Because Stark was testing out a new cloaking mechanism (as seen on the Zephyr) and made the building invisible. Why didn't the Snap take place during any Season 5 or Season 6 episodes? It happened between scenes of "The End."

House Democrats are ending the recess early to hold hearings on USPS sabotage. Postmaster general Louis DeJoy has been summoned and is being threatened with arrest if he fails to appear. Six states are preparing to sue the Trump administration and prosecute DeJoy for interfering with an election. Democrats are preparing a voter education campaign.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/pl … ver-490091

I'm only six episodes into AGENTS OF SHIELD's final season. It's really good. It looks to me like they spent a massive amount of their season's budget on the first four episodes set before WWI and in the 50s and 70s with all the sets (practical and digital) and location filming. Then they've switched to episodes set the standing sets (the plane, the Lighthouse base) and I guess we'll go outdoors again for the finale.

Season 4 with Ghost Rider, the LMDs and the Framework was definitely the last season in which AGENTS had its full ABC budget. Season 5 had a massive cutback so that aside from the season premier, a mid-season episode and the final two of the year, most of the episodes had few extras and used the Lighthouse sets, redressed as needed if outside the Lighthouse. Every henchman wore duplicates of the same costume so that they could use the same stuntmen over and over again.

Season 6 (and 7) seem to have had a modest increase, likely because ABC renewed the show for two short seasons of 13 and spent less money over all than they would on a full 22 but still more on each individual episode. Season 6 once again had location filming and extras with four setbound episodes to save some money for the premiere and finale.

Season 7 was renewed during the filming of Season 6, and it looks like ABC and Disney made that decision so that they wouldn't have to pay the costs of shutting down and then restarting production between Season 6 and 7. As a result, they lost Iain De Caestecker as Fitz; he'd booked some projects to film during the Season 6 / 7 break only for there to be no break, but he was still contractually obligated to be away. It seems he returned for the finale, thankfully.

There was definitely some chatter about Peggy Carter returning to conclude AGENT CARTER's unresolved Season 2 cliffhanger. However, it looks like because Season 7 started filming right after Season 6, it would have been difficult to advance book a lot of the guest-stars they might have wanted like Hayley Atwell, Adrienne Palicki or Nick Blood with no real time between seasons.

I'm not sure I would have been too thrilled to see Peggy as a guest-character to resolve her Season 2 cliffhanger.

I really loved the first season of AGENT CARTER with its period New York City setting, Hayley's amazing chemistry with Lindsay Fonseca as Angie -- but then Season 2 took an odd turn due to the budget cut and the retooling.

AGENT CARTER moved its setting to Los Angeles so that it wouldn't have to do as many computer generated sets to create a post-WWII New York City and taking Peggy out of New York made the series lose its distinctive visual style. The emphasis on Peggy being torn between two love interests was incredibly juvenile for a character as driven and mature as Peggy. The loss of the Angie character with whom Peggy had a terrific rapport caused Hayley Atwell to lose a vital scene partner. There was a lot of intrigue with Peggy's pre-WWII past and dark secrets that led to a cliffhanger that was never resolved.

I understand why AGENT CARTER couldn't afford to do the period New York setting anymore. But in moving the show from its setting, it lost almost everything that made Season 1 special with Season 2 -- and seeing Peggy as a guest-star in someone else's show and to once again see AGENT CARTER further stripped of its identity by having its remaining parts collapsed into AGENTS OF SHIELD -- I just wouldn't have liked that.

I would rather just forget Season 2 of AGENT CARTER unless Disney+ can follow up on it properly with a third season; I wouldn't want a half-measure on AGENTS OF SHIELD. Either fix it properly or leave it alone.

Alright. Back to work.

LOWER DECKS is good. DISCOVERY was going for STAR TREK done in the style of FRINGE and ALIAS. PICARD was the arthouse version of the franchise. And LOWER DECKS is attempting the RICK AND MORTY hyperactive comedy version. LOWER DECKS declares that STAR TREK no longer has a house style and is no longer required to have every character talk like a lawyer and have every scene written as a business meeting. Instead, each show is a different artist's rendition of the same universe.

They are working on it. They have been all along.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/politics … index.html

But they haven't been particularly public about their plans, possibly to give Trump as little time as possible to react and possibly waiting for something like today where Trump spouted off that he's deliberately sabotaging the post office and refusing to negotiate on a relief package to prevent funding from going to elections and USPS. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/1 … ing-394692

Lol

Tucker Carlson also helped to explain how to pronounce her name. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z12Y_wN540

This is the forecast: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/20 … -forecast/

In a podcast, Five Thirty Eight said that exit polls in 2016 didn't reveal any secret Trump voters; the support shown for him in polls was largely a match for his votes -- and that Trump's victory over Clinton was in the 2 - 4% range of polling error, a margin accentuated by the failure to rate voters without college degrees as a weighted demographic.

While Biden's chances by the Five Thirty Eight scale are the same as Hillary Clinton's in 2016, Biden's polling lead on Trump is well outside the margin of error. Five Thirty Eight also gives Biden a 71 chance because "there’s still a long way to go until the election," 82 days. I'm not sure that's true. Politico doesn't think it's true. It's actually 49 days to early voting in Arizona, Ohio and Iowa during the first week of October. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/0 … rtn-389707

But Five Thirty Eight still strips away 29 per cent from Biden's chances. Trump has given up on getting more votes; he's instead trying to sabotage Democrat votes by slowing down the post office, calling for a delayed election, attempting to contrive executive actions to prevent ballot counting (even though elections are run by states), declaring federal agents will be in force on Election Day in Democrat cities, planning to declare victory on Election Day before all the votes are counted, planning to call for all mail-in ballots to be discarded.

Will he succeed? I don't know; he's grossly incompetent. Grizzlor doesn't think voter suppression could suppress Biden's lead and Wisconsin has shown that voter suppression affects both parties and may have actually evened out the playing field. Slider_Quinn21 thinks Trump's team has proven inept and incompetent (couldn't simply sit back and let the experts manage the pandemic, couldn't kill Obamacare despite having Congress, couldn't call on Ukraine and China to interfere in the 2020 election without getting caught). If they're as successful with voter suppression as they are with everything else, they will fail -- except I have to point out that they have successfully short circuited the US Postal Service.

Even then, Slider_Quinn21, Salon and Lifehacker think that the sabotage of the mail can be bypassed if Biden's voters simply vote as soon as possible and the Democrat convention will reportedly feature guidance on how to fight the post office and do everything possible to get ballots counted. Five Thirty Eight is maintaining a healthy uncertainty over that.