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I'm told Chris Carter has been giving away X-FILES props that he'd been keeping since 1993. Carter seems like he's done with the show.

I'd be happy for Michael Keaton to read the phone book in a movie. To play Batman again? He's not my favourite, but if it makes people happy and makes the DC movies good, then I say go for it. Personally, I'd rather they just keep going with Robert Pattinson and have Pattinson appear in a FLASH movie.

But I'm currently operating on the view that THE FLASH will never, ever, ever be made. That if they were going to make it, they would have by now. That Ezra Miller is just done and even if Ezra Miller isn't done, I am done with him.

I seriously doubt that Ezra Miller is going to play the Flash ever again. But if I am wrong, I will write you another SLIDERS REBORN script where Rembrandt confronts Colonel Rickman and the sliders do what they should have done in the first place.

My niece said that I could be a part of her social bubble after months of having lunch on opposite sides of her deck or porch. I brought over a raw chicken (which I'd seasoned) and some raw vegetables, planning to roast the chicken and grill the vegetables. Then I mentioned having found a cast iron frying pan in my storage space and how that was annoying because I'd recently bought a new cast iron frying pan. She asked if she could have the cast iron frying pan and I said that I would drive home to get it, but she would have to handle the cooking. I returned a half-hour later to find that my plans for a roast chicken and a side of grilled vegetables had been converted into a chicken and vegetable stir fry with peanut and soy sauce.

I've never written teleplays for a TV show, but I'm told that this is exactly what it's like to write for TV.

So... nationally, police officers have revealed themselves incapable of addressing any situation without pointless brutality and violence upon unarmed individuals to the point of attacking a 75 year old man trying to return a helmet to them. Even when these police are aware that their actions are being filmed and broadcast globally, they have no ability to behave otherwise.

This is a deeply uncomfortable thing for me to say because I have friends who are like the cast of BROOKLYN NINE NINE. Individually, I know police officers and police force staffers who are like Jake and Amy. Anecdotally, every police officer I've met has helped me with the competence and ability of Holt and Terry. I have always been treated with kindness and care by police and law enforcement workers, some of whom are reading this.

Saying "defund the police" feels like I'm attacking my friends' livelihoods and all I can say is that the cops and cop-adjacent people I personally know are the solution, not the problem. They are good individuals often in good offices that exist within a badly and systemically corrupt institution where police seem answerable to nobody thanks to qualified immunity and a culture of internally protecting any officer from murder and assault charges.

The cops I know aren't deranged thugs who got a badge and a gun to bully with impunity, but they're not all cops. Every cop I like is proving to be an outlier.

I cannot stress enough in the name of Quinn's cat, Wade's teddy bear, Rembrandt's car and Arturo's bow tie that the opinions of ireactions are not those of Sliders.tv.

I'm more aligned with Slider_Quinn21, although TF and Transmodiar are right to note that we shouldn't confuse being against Trump with being for anything meaningful or worthwhile.

I've posted this earlier, but North Americans citizens generally expect their political candidates to represent them when Slate.com suggests viewing candidates as choosing an opponent.

Also, The Atlantic observed that Biden's concept of the presidency is a step back to what the role was designed to be: "president" was devised as a deliberately unthreatening term for a world leader when most world leaders were kings or emperors. A president, in the American framework, was meant to preside over national affairs, set the tone and delegate appropriately and accordingly. A president was not a ruler but rather a temp. A contract staffer whose job was to be a figurehead for a broad coalition of often contradictory interests. This eroded severely under Bush II and Obama acquiring executive powers that Trump inherited. Biden's vision for his presidency is clearly one where he is the ceremonial leader of a chosen team of staffers and advisors that he would like to include Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Andrew Yang, Gretchen Whitmer and maybe Stacy Abrams.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi … ng/609769/

I'm not a Republican, but like most Republicans who aren't Trumpists, I could tolerate Biden. He's the opponent I'd want to have if seeking universal basic income and health care, police reform, an end to student debt, a sensible federal response to COVID-19, investment in the UN, NATO and the World Health Organization -- I could live with choosing him as the alternative to the worst. Joe Biden. The best choice. Also the only choice. I had to check to be sure; Yang seemed smart; he dropped out. A presidency of nothing is preferable to a presidency of malevolence.

How much does voter suppression warp Slider_Quinn21's calculations?

(I don't know.)

I got an email recently asking if I collaborated with Tracy Torme when writing the "Slide Effects" screenplay based on his story idea.
https://earthprime.com/etcetera/slide-effects-2 The short answer is no and putting Tracy Torme on the title page is somewhat deceptive. (My email writer can stop reading now. Haha!)

Torme told me his story idea in 2000 and I dismissed it until 2011 when I wrote it. In addition, the script as it stands is severely contradictory to his wishes and style. It is not the script Torme would have written nor does it achieve the goals he would have wanted to accomplish with his concept. But it's his idea; while I have some gifts for writing stories about *the* sliders, I simply don't have the talent of coming up with Torme's simple, straightforward, elegant, beautiful means of restoring Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo in his hypothetical Season 4 premiere.

Having Quinn wake up to find that time has been rewound to the Pilot is the perfect way to open a new season of SLIDERS where a lot of confusing events have taken place in the previous season(s). Finding Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo alive and well in this scenario is ideal. Revealing that the situation is a Kromagg trick along with all the episodes produced during Torme's absence from the show is very clever and a little mischievous.

The thing about "Slide Effects" as Torme conceived it: he came up with the idea before the cast was mutilated, so he wasn't trying to come up with a story to fix everything that went wrong. He just wanted a season premiere that would re-establish the characters and the concept; he didn't imagine this premiere coming after all the characters and the concept had been warped and twisted and broken. And had he actually produced it, it's unlikely Torme would have consented to watch the episodes he'd missed, so there would have been no specific references to the episodes he was removing from continuity.

The "Slide Effects" script has 'clips' from episodes of Seasons 3 - 5 with the sliders of Season 2 reacting to them. There's a specific explanation for the continuity gaffes. There's an explanation for Quinn's odd behaviour in "Mother and Child." It's very clearly a psychodrama produced by an upset fan demanding an in-universe explanation for real world negligence, and I simply don't see Torme (or any professional TV producer) making television that exists to comment on other television so specifically.

I think Torme would have, instead, focused on the characterization: what if Quinn is tempted to stay in this perfect simulation of home and to let his friends have the illusion of having never been away? What if the Kromaggs offer Quinn this conclusion to the sliders' journey instead of whatever horrors may await them -- in exchange for some aspect of the sliding equation that will further empower the Dynasty? And what if Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo refuse, saying that while they miss home, sliding has made them stronger, smarter, kinder, better -- and they wouldn't trade their friendships and adventures for a facsimile?

Also, the "Slide Effects" script ultimately declares that everything after "As Time Goes By" was part of the Kromagg simulation and that Quinn had the tracking device in his brain. This is fundamentally at odds with Torme's wishes; he would have rewound time to after "The Guardian" and he believed the tracking device was in Arturo, not Quinn. I decided to change that because I wanted the implant to be the reason why Quinn was experiencing Seasons 3 - 5 and because, if "Slide Effects" were the last SLIDERS story, the unfinished threads of Logan St. Clair and the Professor's illness would no longer be a factor.

It's not inaccurate to have Torme's name on "Slide Effects," but I do consider it a degree of false advertising because it suggests that Torme would have written or would approve of this version of his story. I did that because, in 1996, after Captain Kirk had been killed off, there was a STAR TREK novel called THE RETURN which resurrected the character. It would have been dismissed as a meaningless STAR TREK novel like the 40 - 50 published every year, but THE RETURN had significance because it was STAR TREK: THE RETURN BY WILLIAM SHATNER.

While STAR TREK novels are not canon, Shatner's name gave THE RETURN weight even though in reality, the novel was written by veteran TREK novelists Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens based on phone calls with Shatner who would read the manuscript before it was published -- and I was unquestionably stealing that marketing by using a memory of an AOL Instant Messenger chat session with Torme, knowing that TRACY TORME'S SLIDE EFFECTS grabbed more attention than IREACTIONS' SLIDERS FANFIC.

I'm actually seeing a lot of this sort of crediting in post-"Slide Effects" spin-off media with other franchises. Two years after "Slide Effects," comic book publisher IDW announced THE X-FILES: SEASON 10, a comic book continuation with series creator Chris Carter's name on the covers, given top billing and suggesting that he was writing the comics. In reality, the comics were scripted by comic veteran Joe Harris and Carter would review the scripts at most. Carter vetoed one element of the comics -- the SEASON 10 villain was originally a teenaged William Mulder. Carter asked that the comics not use William and the writer complied.

Later, the FOX Network commissioned a tenth television season of THE X-FILES which flatly ignored the comic books and made it clear that the only 'canon' was on TV. IDW would relaunch THE X-FILES comics with the same writer, now doing standalone tie-ins to the TV SEASON 10 and continued to put Carter's name first on the cover -- but the SEASON 10 comics being ignored by the TV's tenth season made it clear that the name was meaningless marketing.

Carter's name on the X-FILES comics, like Torme's name on the "Slide Effects" script, certainly suggested some legitimacy to the material. The IDW comics publisher understood that fans would only engage with the content if it were presented as an actual, approved continuation to THE X-FILES.

I'm seeing a lot of that now even after THE X-FILES comics imploded. The BUFFY comics were steered by Joss Whedon working with writers from the TV show, but the finale series, BUFFY: THE RECKONING, was by Whedon's own admission largely written by Christos Gage with Whedon merely polishing the scripts after Gage was done.

A recent run of FIREFLY comic books boasted the WHEDON writing credit on the covers. The writer was Joss Whedon's brother, Zack, although Joss himself did review the material. Whedon's name is prominent on the subsequent comics written by Greg Pak and he is billed as overseeing the FIREFLY novels even though writers James Lovecraft and Tim Lebbon are the ones who really write them. The name sells the product. In some ways, the name is somewhat deceitful, but it's also part of the game. It's an invitation to let fans accept the tie-in as canonical while leaving their decision to their own discretion.

Anyway. In the next few days, I am going to revise the "Slide Effects" title page to make it clear that this is not a script that Torme wrote or would write, but that the idea is his and his alone.

I am really worried about voter purges and voter suppression in November.

Here's another question that may or may not belong in this thread:

Should TV productions be producing episodes where characters get in physical fights, shake hands, sit in close proximity together, eat in restaurants and take part in large crowd scenes? Because any TV show that does this is suggesting that it exists in a world where COVID-19 doesn't exist and that is simply not the case. I don't know if COVID-19 hit the Arrowverse, but it definitely hit the worlds of BROOKLYN NINE NINE and PARKS AND RECREATION and probably the world of Lifetime's YOU and it could be grossly irresponsible to have characters acting like viral transmission's no longer a concern.

I used to go to restaurants with my favourite actresses; now we're eating dinner over Zoom. I used to clock in at a busy bullpen; now I'm working from home. Is it right to show Team Flash heading down to Jitters or Team Supergirl hosting game night and running around a bustling bullpen in Catco or a foot-traffic heavy command centre at the DEO?

A lot of SLIDERS revival ideas were often about rewinding the clock back to 1996 and I always thought that was wrong for SLIDERS. SLIDERS should addressing today's world, not the 90s. SLIDERS should never be a period piece and all of these TV shows may be perpetuating the world of 2019 which is recognizably not 2020.

My guess — guess — is that there was some problem with the microphone they were using to record her dialogue, maybe a short or a blown connection in the boom mic, and they either didn’t notice or didn’t care and left it to the sound editors to resolve. It seems quite common in the latter half of the series: Maggie attacking a bar patron in “Breeder” had no sound effects, Robert Floyd was inexplicably not tasked with recording Quinn’s “Go, go!” in “Unstuck Man.”

Another thing about the Sci-Fi years that irks me: any time we see a closeup of an object like Wade’s necklace in “Genesis,” it’s in a frame-skipping, choppy shot as though they failed to leave the camera running for the full duration needed and had to slow it down to have it onscreen for longer.

I wonder if TV would have to have body double workers. For THE FLASH, maybe you'd hire a number of body doubles for Grant Gustin and Candice Patton who agree to social distancing and constant testing for the duration of the filming block. They perform any physical intimacy for filming and then deepfake technology is used to replace their faces with the likeness of the lead actors.

Effects are very much on the rise in TV and not just for science fiction and fantasy dramas. I recently saw a visual effects reel for PARKS AND RECREATION, a half-hour sitcom about people working in government. https://www.reddit.com/r/PandR/comments … l_effects/

WHY would this show need special effects, you might ask? Isn't it an office drama? The effects reel shows that most of the crowd scenes were created via computer effects, a more advanced effect of the doubling/editing used in "A Current Affair" for the president's press conference. Much of the background of the City Hall building interiors were apparently a green sheet with a lot of foot traffic and surroundings put in later.

What looked like expensive location filming in Washington, DC and various national parks and an aquarium were apparently shots with painstakingly recomposited backgrounds. All the outdoor storm conditions on camera were computer additions to shots filmed on indoor stages. Even when there was location, effects added all the birds and assorted wildlife in post. And no one really drives a car on TV these days.

I think having my flaws and deficiencies surgically removed is a pipedream anyway. :-) But I am astonished that you think you don't know me well given your regular exposure to my neuroses and obsessions.

**

I suppose it's possible Hartley Sawyer is a serial killer who hates women. But it's more likely to me that he thought his online self only existed in the online realm, and he didn't think of it as 'real' much in the same way someone might play GRAND THEFT AUTO and not consider that real. Most people who play in that digital realm as murderous car thieves would never kill or rob in real life.

Today, there is no distinction between an online identity and a real one. I would imagine that Sawyer, an animal shelter volunteer who, as Slider_Quinn21 and TF point out, worked for three years with black castmates, is not prone to racist behaviour face to face. And maybe on a show that wasn't already rocked by one scandal that nearly brought it all down, Sawyer's job could have survived.

I have no moral high ground myself. There could be a lot of AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger transcripts and email threads with my bad behaviour within. The best that can be said is that those conversations end with a apology (years later) for my intrusions and offenses and a promise that they didn't happen to anyone else.

I don't really *know* anything about Hartley Sawyer. Why would someone think it's alright to make homophobic slurs? I can't imagine myself doing that. But as a former sexual harasser of women in college who stalked three classmates and pestered one barmaid, all when I was in university, I have to believe Sawyer's apology is genuine because otherwise, I wouldn't be able to believe in my own capacity for change.

At the same time, it's foolish and always has been to think that social media is not a platform where everything we say will not come back to haunt us, so we should never say things we wouldn't be proud to say an hour later or a year later. We should ask ourselves how it would impact us. Or how a woman or a person of colour or a member of the LGBTQ community or a prospective employer would feel if they found our words. Or if they were reproduced all over Twitter.

I don't anticipate ever being a celebrity, but if I ever became one and you investigated me, you would find creepy messages from me to women that I wrote back when I was in university. You would also find messages to them from a few years ago where I tell them that I am very sorry for stalking and harassing them and that I've befriended a lot of women and been in a lot of psychotherapy and realized how threatening and intrusive and hurtful my behaviour must have been and that I'm very sorry and ashamed. Anyone in the public eye, for their own job security, should look at everything they've put in public and if it is reprehensible, they should out themselves before someone else does it and apologize for it.

In 2013, comic book writer and artist MariNaomi blogged about how she was on a panel at a convention and a writer next to her started flirting with her inappropriately in front of an audience, making oral sex jokes about her microphone, asking her if she orgasmed when eating a mango, etc.. She didn't name him. Not even 24 hours later, prolific comic book writer Scott Lobdell made a statement to the comics press and identified himself as the harasser and apologized. It wasn't a great apology; he apologized for his humour not being understood and directed far too much of his apology to MariNaomi's husband. But he stood for his misdeed and his career survived it because he came forward himself.

Hartley Sawyer probably does not hate women or black people or gay people -- he likely just saw those areas as a place to say shocking, ridiculous things in a similar spirit that a SLIDERS fanfic writer might declare that Maggie Beckett is a wonderfully versatile character or declare that his next SLIDERS story will feature the rock star vampires, the animal human hybrids, the fat craving zombies, the underground predators, the dinosaurs, the dragon, the killer robots and the remote controlled cars that shoot lasers -- a form of humour that is based in absurd overstatement so exaggerated that it is meant to amuse.

The problem is that the subject matter Sawyer chose is treating certain segments of our society as less than human, a real world mentality that harms and even kills people every day. His jokes, however insincerely intended, were threatening and hurtful to the women, people of colour and homosexuals who might watch THE FLASH and THE FLASH desperately does not want any more accusations that could alienate their audience.

What could Sawyer do at this point? Well, his job is definitely gone. He could focus on... he seems to have a love for animal shelters, maybe he could get into that field. But his career might be over. As an actor, you have to be a chameleon; your public persona needs to be positive but also not interfere with disappearing into whatever roles you'd want to perform. Sawyer could teach acting classes. Sawyer could be an acting coach. Sawyer could do PR behind the scenes for actors and let them learn from his social media mistakes and guide them in the opposite direction.

Hartley Sawyer (Ralph Dibney on FLASH) has been fired from THE FLASH due to racist and misogynistic social media posts.
https://tvline.com/2020/06/08/the-flash … ic-tweets/

**

Regarding your BATWOMAN pitch: It's not that I dislike your writing or your ideas. I am simply disengaged from any season of BATWOMAN that doesn't feature Kate Kane as Batwoman and I have no enthusiasm for a follow-up on Season 1 that doesn't have Kate Kane confronting Alice, confronting her father and confronting Hush. It's just depressing for me. I just don't need this kind of grief from a TV show. I don't want to engage with a story that can ultimately only be resolved if Sabrina Lloyd / Jerry O'Connell / Ruby Rose returns to the series.

They've decided not to recast Kate Kane and move on from the character, so I'm going to move on from BATWOMAN and find another TV show to love and obsess over. I've made some contributions to the #KateKaneIsBatwoman effort on Twitter to offer a template for how fans could politely make their case to the creators without namecalling and attacks. And now, I need to just step back now lest this become another SLIDERS-level fixation for me. Unless you want to know what I think of something BATWOMAN related (yes, you, only you), I'm not going to even allow myself to think about BATWOMAN anymore unless they issue a press release in the next few months saying that, after some consideration, they feel Kate Kane is too central to the fans and show to remove and they've elected to recast Ashley Platz / Wallis Day / Brianna Hildebrand / whoever. I am just going to block it and forget about it.

I never want any show to fail and I hope it does great because if BATWOMAN succeeds, then SUPERGIRL and SUPERMAN AND LOIS and THE FLASH and LEGENDS and GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES (pending existence) also succeed along with every other superhero production out there. I love superheroes. But I'm not going to make myself watch anything that upsets me to this degree outside of 13 REASONS WHY and that's finally over.

The impression I got is that if Ruby Rose shows up on the BATWOMAN set again, it's with a flamethrower and a tank of gas. It was an acrimonious departure.

My feeling is that the creators have panicked and overreacted to losing their lead actress. In trying to fill the hole left in their series, they are now burying the park entirely and they have severely misread their audience, thinking that people would consider any new performer as Kate a Ruby Rose impersonator. But in this case, it looks like the fans would accept a Kate Kane who isn't Ruby Rose, but they won't accept a Batwoman who isn't Kate Kane -- much in the same way fans would likely reject a Superman who wasn't Clark Kent or a Batman who wasn't Bruce Wayne after a mere 20 episodes of leading their own show. Fans will accept a new person as (Green) Arrow after eight years of Oliver Queen, but not before that. There has been decades of R&D in comic books to

I don't consider the creators malicious; few modern day showrunners have a David Peckinpah level of contempt for their own properties, but I think they've made a mistake.

They could change their minds; they are months and months and months from starting production on Season 2. Sonic the Hedgehog was redesigned (or un-redesigned) due to fan outcry; the Snyder Cut is being released and like BATWOMAN, these projects depend on a certain level of goodwill from a devoted audience to function. BATWOMAN is currently being flattened under a ceiling of negativity from its devotees that that any show would struggle to overcome; I can't imagine a general audience being keen on BATWOMAN when even the diehards are so adamantly and uniformly against its new direction.

I finished the fourth and final season of 13 REASONS WHY.

It's finally over.

It's not my favourite episode. It didn't have enough of Kate and Castle arguing. But over six seasons, CASTLE's cast had endeared themselves to me. Esposito and Ryan feel so familiar and I was worried to see them surrounded by flames and running out of air. Esposito's showboating every time he has an audience is hilarious. Kevin Ryan modelling his hair and clothes on Castle is really funny.

I can't remember the plot of this episode in the slightest or who the villain was, but I was happy to see my buddies running around bickering, chattering, fighting crime and not beating up every civilian of colour in sight like actual New York City police officers.

I guess you would say that I am easily satisfied, but I've skimmed studies that say that people who watch television often experience the same neurological activity that the brain manifests when the person is spending time with friends.

If this is true -- and I don't know if it is because leaked casting sheets are generally unreliable and meant to obscure actual details -- this doesn't make sense. I know you weren't watching BATWOMAN, but the show is very carefully structured around Kate Kane and her relationships while living in the shadow of Bruce Wayne, her childhood confidante and friend. With the end of the truncated first season, all of Kate's arcs were up in the air: she reveres Bruce Wayne and is trying to live up to him and is about to be exploited by a villain who is impersonating Bruce and plans to exploit Kate's relationship with the real Bruce Wayne. She is engaged in a battle of wills with her twin sister, Alice. She is, in her Batwoman identity, at war with her father, Jacob Kane, the leader of Gotham City's primary law enforcement agency, the Crows, who have declared Batwoman an enemy of Gotham. She is dismayed to learn that her ex-girlfriend, Sophie, has started dating Kate's other ex-girlfriend, Julia. She is struggling to reconcile a schism with Luke Fox, her tech support worker and her main connection to the legacy of an absent Batman. She has welcomed a troubled teenaged girl into the Batcave. She is contending with a mass escape from Arkham Asylum.

If BATWOMAN opens with a new person as Batwoman and Kate Kane just gone, all these arcs are effectively jettisoned. There is no reason to maintain the existing cast as they were on the show due to their relationship with Kate Kane. It makes no sense not to simply recast Kate; by throwing away the character, the show is dismissing the fans they already have and the arcs they spent a whole season building, arcs they could sustain and continue and resolve if they just found themselves another Kate. Ruby Rose is a unique performer, but she is only a performer.

Also, the generational replacement tactic has never worked and wouldn't work here when the show is so defined by Kate's relationships and arcs, all of which ended in a state of flux. There would be no exit story for Kate; she'd have vanished without closure. The villain of Alice, defined by her sisterly bond and enmity with Kate, would have no reason to exist. Sophie and Julia, Kate's exes and allies, would have no reason to be around. The Kate Kane character captured the imagination of the public long before Ruby Rose played her; it is crazy to think that the TV show can just throw some new name and character into the suit and expect that to have the same stature and meaning; it'd be like expecting the Inhumans to replace the X-Men.

I think that this is a huge mistake if it's even true, and I don't know if it's true because it makes no sense to me that the CW would allow this news to be leaked in a casting sheet to be posted on Reddit where the story was first reported. If the story is true, I think it at least has to be incomplete because this is a route where BATWOMAN would effectively alienate its existing audience and seriously overcomplicate its own narrative for no upside whatsoever. Losing Ruby Rose put BATWOMAN in a hole. Refusing to recast her is just digging in deeper.

It's crazy. And because the CW and Greg Berlanti and Caroline Dries and the Arrowverse gang aren't prone to self-sabotaging their own properties, I assume this isn't the whole story.

TF is referring to the text of Mr. Schmidt's tweets on June 20, 2018:

I imagine that Graham thinks backing Trump keeps him in office. We've seen such behaviour on this forum as well among our own members where a guardedly Trump-neutral figure became a fervent Trump supporter when Trump was winning, later insisting that there was no Muslim ban, that Trump's racist comments and self-confessed sexual assault weren't racist or confessional -- because he would support whoever claimed to be on his side or enabled him to (still somewhat guardedly) declare that women should tolerate sexual harassment (in coded terms like saying women-only screenings of WONDER WOMAN were unfair to men or encouraging viewership of Mens Rights Activist documentaries and deceptively edited James O'Keefe videos). He'd support whoever made his deep-seated but not wholly voiced views seem like the mainstream.

I am deeply displeased with Joe Biden, but I've come to terms with voting as a choice in who you want to be your opponent. Who do you think will be easier from whom to wrangle improved health care and federal oversight of police officers and a federal response to COVID-19 and debt relief and rebuilding America's alliances globally? Who would be easier to impeach if he abused his office? Who is likely to stand out of the way of equality for people of colour and essential but low-paid workers? The current president? Or Biden?

Which 2021 president is likely to come after you on Twitter and call for you to be harassed if you criticize his policies? The current president? Or Biden?

Andrew Yang is great. Andrew Yang is not running.

As for Tara Reade -- the liberal media was keen to attack her with charges of being a delinquent debtor as though someone who owes money couldn't possibly be telling the truth about being an assault victim. However -- another investigation that I think will stick is that Reade turns out to have a history of misrepresenting her credentials and work history specifically to present herself as an expert witness in criminal court cases involving violence against women.

The California district attorney is now forced to investigate at least six cases in which Reade presented herself as a graduate and former professor at Antioch University when the university says she never completed her degree and was only an administrative assistant. She also cited her past as a legislative assistant to Biden when working on the Violence Against Women Act when in truth, she sorted mail and had no legislative duties at all. A pattern has emerged: Reade has a history of frequently embellishing her past with Biden for notoriety. When it gave her importance and made her hirable, she praised him; now she's using her past association to smear him in the current climate. Her lawyer has dropped her, the cases in which she testified are going to have to be reopened and I think Reade's credibility is shattered.

But I have absolutely no doubt that Biden engaged in inappropriate touching throughout his life and we should absolutely hold that against him from now to forever.

Trump refusing to leave office should he be defeated in the November election would be severely damaging to the already-shredded fabric of America. But I'd kind of like to see this scenario of Trump's refusal to vacate play out for the catharsis of seeing Trump evicted from the White House in handcuffs:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 … leave.html

I’m at the CASTLE episode where Esposito and Ryan are in a burning building!!! Eeeeeeek!!!

I love the characters in this show.

I'm concerned to hear that Temporal Flux is getting surgery. Without knowing enough about it to comment, I'd say that any day is conceivably our last even without an upcoming surgery with a high success rate but a troubling family history. And while I don't feel you should think that you're marked for death and behave as such, I do think it's important to have goals and ambitions with (flexible) deadlines for increments of progress because, like the sliders and their timer, we always have limited windows of opportunity and should make the most of them. At the same time, we should always be open to seeing new opportunities present themselves. I'm glad you completed and released the DECLASSIFIED script and I'm grateful for how it prompted a lot of thought.

It is important to review results -- in this case, the misbegotten mess of Seasons 3 - 5; a show that sci-fi writer Warren Ellis described as "an abortion" watched and renewed "by a bunch of cultural rejects every fucking year."

But. It is also important to review actions separately from results. To view them not in terms of the outcome, but in terms of the quality of these choices based on the information available at the time these decisions were made. The effort to save SLIDERS was at its greatest with Season 2 likely to end in cancellation.

The fans rallied to save the show; as far as the fans knew, a third season of SLIDERS would be filmed in Vancouver with Tracy Torme, Alan Barnette, Tony Blake, Paul Jackson, Nan Hagan, Scott Smith Miller and Jon Povill and with Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo continuing as the actors were contracted for several more years. The campaigning fans had no way of knowing that Season 3 would be run by David Peckinpah; the fans gave the show a fighting chance.

The result wasn't worth it, but the effort was absolutely worthwhile in the moment at which the effort was given.

Well! This is very interesting.

Alright, self-published. Haha!

Thanks for the corrections. It makes me wonder if the reason Stoliar had no memory of "Onliners" being the starting point for "Net Worth" is because it was Torme's idea and not Stoliar's.

I never actually saw the document. Transmodiar was merely kind enough to mention the “Net Worth” factoid while discussing my latest mental health crisis. Haha!

For those who aren’t aware: TF was of the view that “Net Worth” had originally been a Season 3 pitch entitled “Onliners” and featured Quinn and Wade doubles in the roles of Rick and Joanne and was shelved after John was fired. Writer Steve Stoliar, however, said he had no memory of “Net Worth” being anything other than a Season 4 episode. Producer Paul Jackson had no recollection of anything called “Onliners.” Transmodiar informed me that this was likely one of TF’s few errors, possibly a miscommunication due to a lot of story ideas being communicated verbally but not on any documents that were preserved.

But that didn’t make any sense. Tracy Torme’s notes for Season 3 indicated that he had received a story idea called “Onliners” that he liked and that the Season 3 team might reject; he was going to ask Acclaim to consider producing it. And the script for “Net Worth” has unaired dialogue for Rick where he is familiar with sliding and where Maggie claims to be familiar with Joanne despite having only known her for two scenes — dialogue that only makes sense for a Quinn double and Wade speaking to her own double. The role of Mrs. Montana is also clearly written for Linda Henning.

Transmodiar reviewed JWSlider’s documents which included a mid-season progress report on Season 3 scripts. It included “Onliners,” which had been retitled “Net Worth” and put on hold.

A few years ago, I wrote “Net Worth: The Quinn and Wade Edition,” featuring the original sliders in the story with doubles of Quinn and Wade and Hurley and Amanda Mallory replacing Rick, Joanne, Jack and Mrs. Montana.

http://freepdfhosting.com/5e12f7fac9.pdf

My niece was furious with me for removing Mark Sheppard’s Jack from the episode as she loves that actor in SUPERNATURAL but was placated when I made sure to give him a cameo in my SLIDERS REBORN. Transmodiar was dismayed by how I spent three months working out a solution to how the sliders survived a bazooka aimed at the ceiling of their hotel room and gobsmacked by my having never seen MACGYVER and horrified when I declared that Wikipedia made MACGYVER sound like the greatest show ever and had inspired me to have Quinn find a way to defeat the bazooka. Transmodiar also thought it was unrealistic for the resulting script to feature Hurley and Wade’s parents and sister and to exclude commercial breaks and said it was very obviously fan fiction. He is correct.

I'm glad you like Season 4 because I never want anyone to have a bad time. I said the same thing to REWATCH PODCAST when they gave "The Exodus" a positive review. Grizzlor has done so much for the SLIDERS community. There is no subjective point of disagreement with him that in any way diminishes him. Season 4 is trash.

It's frustrating because there's clearly a lot of talent in Season 4: Marc Scott Zicree and Chris Black are highly engaged, Kari Wuhrer shows actual talent, but the majority of Season 4 episodes are clumsy, unprofessional, sloppy and dull, but the absence of Season 3's excesses make it seem less abrasive, obnoxious and unwatchable. If you watch "This Slide of Paradise," any TV episode that comes after "This Slide of Paradise" looks brilliant just by being not as incompetent and inept as "This Slide of Paradise."

But it's a terrible season. "Genesis" trashes the SLIDERS storytelling platform by making our home Earth a Kromagg outpost and Quinn an interdimensional refugee; he and Rembrandt can no longer compare parallel worlds with their own without angst and grief for the audience if not the characters. Jerry's performance in most episodes is sleepy and he is clearly hungover in most episodes. Cleavant Derricks retains his usual gusto, but his character has lost his everyman charm, his penchant for song, his comedic voice and the musical background that Tracy Torme brought to the character. Kari Wuhrer's performance is an improvement in that it's actually a performance, but it's so painfully performative and over enunciated and overconsidered. Charlie O'Connell has no idea what he's doing and has been overpromoted from playing Quinn Mallory's corpse and Jerry's occasional body double to a regular role for no good reason whatsoever.

The stories are unable to focus on parallel worlds. The script editor, when present, did a half-decent job of making the stories filmable and with some worthwhile ideas. But the ideas are entirely focused on technology rather than culture and the people living in these worlds: instead of facing dogma, prejudice, bureaucracy, tyranny, sexism, monarchies, and other forces of society, the sliders now fight spaceships, superweapons, superviruses, superdrugs, cryogenics, clones, virtual reality, virtual reality, cybernetics, cryogenics, bubble universes and superweapons.

Marc Scott Zicree contributed two teleplays to Season 4, introducing the slidewave and the slidecage and that's great, but when nearly every episode of Season 4 is fixated on technology, it's repetitive and monotonous and detaches the stories from characterization and cleverness. Despite Zicree giving up on the show after the first third of Season 4, the remainder of the year features his worst habits but without his inventiveness, wit or charm for most of it. Keith Damron does a good job with "Virtual Slide." Chris Black does a good job with "Slide By Wire." But they're the exception instead of the rule.

Wade's non-exit exit is an abomination in "Genesis," playing rape as a joke. Even worse is the follow up in "Mother and Child," where Jerry's reaction to learning that Wade was/is near is to hurry off camera without performing any reaction, likely because he was drunk. Every arc in Season 4 is treated with the same contempt: the team leaves Earth Prime in search of a superweapon. They find a superweapon in "Common Ground" and "World Killer" and and "Slidecage" and "Mother and Child" and "Revelations" and use none of them.

The need to save Earth Prime is their core mission in "Genesis" but mentioned incidentally in "Revelations." The search for Kromagg Prime is their main goal in "Genesis"; they have the coordinates and the means to bypass the slidecage in "Revelations," they don't use them. "Genesis" establishes that the sliders are being permitted to survive Kromagg outposts to locate Kromagg Prime; "The Dying Fields" and "Mother and Child" show the Kromaggs actively trying to kill the sliders and the plot is forgotten.

Ultimately, Season 4 is only superficially different from Season 3 due to the lower budget. But like Season 3, the fourth season alienated its most talented creator; it introduces arc elements that are forgotten almost immediately; it savagely mutilates another original cast member; it has an unwatchable season finale -- this time because it's tedious, a third of a beat sheet stretched out to fill the entire timeslot. And once again, they tied up their budget with another standing set -- a hotel instead of a cave -- and created a dull, repetitive look to nearly every episode.

Season 4 was billed as the return of SLIDERS with all the creative support and freedom it had been denied. And this is how it chose to use it. I would rather SLIDERS had been cancelled with Season 3.