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You know, this reminds me of SLIDERS. (Shock! Gasp!)

When Season 4 was airing, I remember sitting in class and chatting with my classmates, all of whom hated Season 4. They were confused by how isolated and setbound the soundstages looked. They were baffled by Wade's bizarre non-exit exit in "Genesis." They were put off by how our home Earth was now a Kromagg battleground that the sliders left -- yet, the very next week, the sliders liberated the world of "Prophets and Loss" with little difficulty.

They were confused by Quinn's new backstory as a Kromagg Prime refugee when "Invasion" was pretty clear that the Kromaggs hated all humans as an evolutionary deviation and could never have co-habited with humans. They were also disoriented by Maggie's suddenly non-acidic characterization and Quinn's lack of interest in tracking Wade down.

The Kromagg makeup was also extremely poor.

I insisted that it was fine. That surely Wade would be back and the whole breeding camp was just a Kromagg jibe. That we'd maybe get some flashbacks explaining Maggie's characterization. That SLIDERS had always needed an ongoing arc to bring to a huge climax in the season finale and surely this was it. That the Kromagg makeup would sort itself out.

That surely "World Killer" was a new dawn for the show. That "Just Say Yes" was poor, but not every episode could be a winner, and "Mother and Child" and "Net Worth" and "Data World" and "My Brother's Keeper" and "Roads Taken" were just speed bumps. That the season finale would be good, surely it couldn't be bad, and... and...

I just didn't want to admit that the fans had gone through so much torment and grief during Season 3 only to get pretty much the same quality and with Season 4 only being less offensive because it was less expensive and therefore less excessive. If I admitted that Season 4 was bad, then I'd be admitting that I'd invested and hoped and campaigned for nothing. That I'd backed the wrong horse.

In my case, Tracy Torme talked to me over AOL Instant Messenger and explained to me that he himself declined to read the Season 4 - 5 scripts or watch the episodes and it was fine for us both to concede that despite so much effort, he hadn't saved SLIDERS, that the show was past its sell-by date, and that it was okay for him and anyone else to move on and find something new to believe in.

Long time Republican campaigner Steve Schmidt, who is responsible for Sarah Palin, renounced the Republican party after Trump and pinned a lengthy repudiation on his Twitter account at https://twitter.com/steveschmidtses -- and showed that it's okay to admit when we've made a mistake.

I have to say, while Grizzlor's question was where to cut off SLIDERS continuity, I would personally be in favour of adding to it instead. I would want to add:

A couple stories explaining the gap between Seasons 1 - 2. Season 1 ended with Quinn shot, Ryan and Henry the Dog now joining the sliders. Season 2 dismissed it. So, I'd want to add Mike Truman's SLIDERS story, "All That You Can't Leave Behind," a flashback story where Wade recalls the events that took place between "Luck of the Draw" and "Into the Mystic" where Ryan, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo sought medical treatment for Quinn and Ryan chose to leave the sliders.

http://slidersweb.net/otherworlds/317/321.htm

I'd also want to add a second story after "Into the Mystic." Season 1 had the sliders constantly on the verge of homelessness, getting jobs. Season 2 dispenses with all that; the sliders just have money and stay in a hotel, no explanation given (because it was getting repetitive and stalling the plots).

I'd suggest a story where the sliders land on an Earth where the Cold War never ended and the sliders find in the Dominion Hotel a secret cache of cash, clothing, tailoring equipment and supplies. On each parallel Earth with a Dominion, the sliders will visit the hotel and find the cache in 2/5 versions of the Dominion, which is why we no longer seem them out of money and even alternating between outfits and why Arturo is always in a tailored suit.

Another story I'd want to add to SLIDERS canon: an X-FILES crossover. It's unfortunate that SLIDERS never crossed over with every single Vancouver-filming show airing on FOX. Nigel Mitchell's SLIDERS: "X Marks the Spot" story seems to fit the bill: http://freepdfhosting.com/2e80122e71.pdf

And I'd want to add a story into canon where Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are all reunited after the events of Seasons 3 - 5 in a way that doesn't invalidate or redact anything. :-)

I think any approach to continuity is best additive rather than subtractive.

So, the K1811 "Net Worth" of Season 3 by Steve Stoliar is not the "Net Worth" (K2806) of Season 4 by Steve Stoliar?

Is "Sliders' Ark" most definitely a separate story from "The Exodus"? The title is reminiscent of John Rhys-Davies' pitch for the sliders landing on a doomed Earth and helping to evacuate who they can and debating whether to bring artwork or food supplies and similar conundrums as reported by Sarah_Slider. And "The Exodus" was ultimately scripted by Tony Blake and Paul Jackson.

Just to clarify -- you are saying that "Onliners" was a separate story from "Net Worth." But in describing one of JWSlider3's documents, you said that the March 1997 status report on scripts specifies four stories that aren't going to proceed, two of which are K1822 (titled Heat of the Moment) and K1811 (titled "Net Worth").

Even if "Onliners" and "Net Worth" were two separate stories, was "Net Worth" still originally a Season 3 episode?

I don't feel Temporal Flux has any further need to investigate the behind the scenes stories of SLIDERS. However, the degree to which he did investigate was vital and important in the time at which he did it. There was so much madness and insanity onscreen: the series went from Vancouver to Los Angeles. The characters went from looking like normal civilians to magazine models. The action-adventure excess of Season 3 became the stagebound, beige-coloured visuals of Seasons 4 - 5. The final episode of SLIDERS had only one remaining original cast member.

Temporal Flux's efforts brought sense and reason to the traumatic, inexplicable events on SLIDERS. The fans needed Temporal Flux and everything he had to give in that moment and in the moment in which he gave it. And if TF has moved on, well, he has accomplished the most important and meaningful thing; he brought understanding to the incomprehensible.

And speaking for myself and my own journey with SLIDERS, the answers he gave us were put into my SLIDERS fan writing as fictionalized versions of Temporal Flux's truth. The "Slide Effects" script reveals that the events of Season 3 - 5 were a simulation created by a Kromagg who was assigned to control the sliders' minds and came to despise them and their adventures -- just like David Peckinpah.

The SLIDERS REBORN stories declare that Seasons 3 - 5 and the disordered episodes and disappeared guest characters of Seasons 1 - 2 were caused by Geiger ripping all Quinn doubles out of all realities, causing a cataclysmic event across the multiverse that cracked the rules of reality, resulting in monsters, magic, the supernatural -- and says that reality began to break down and implode, resulting in Seasons 4 - 5 all being set in the same locations and interiors and reflecting how reality was beginning to shrink as it collapsed. I got a lot of fan mail applauding these explanations because they felt true and that's because they were the truth -- which Temporal Flux brought to us.

And if there's some area of truth where TF's information was incomplete and where JWSlider3's generosity and Transmodiar's diligence enlighten and clarify, then I look forward to it with appreciation, gratitude and fondness for all three of you.

I am not, as I specified above, all that interested in collectibles and archaeological items regarding SLIDERS. I also wasn't aware that the document regarding "Net Worth" originating in Season 3 came from you, but since you've informed me that it was yours, I would gladly put you in your place -- the place being that you clearly have a lot of interesting material and important knowledge and information regarding SLIDERS. You were/are in possession of important documents that confirmed what Temporal Flux had believed to be the case regarding "Net Worth" being a planned-for-Season-3 story even when the writer of the episode and a producer during Season 3 denied this to be the case. I thank and congratulate you.

I asked about your script exchange because you sent me a message two years ago about scripts and last year, Transmodiar said that "because of you," he was extremely busy, indicating that the two of you were collaborating on something interesting. I've never known Transmodiar to not be working on something interesting.

You also started this thread regarding an eBay sale of a script (which I mistakenly thought to be your sale), so I was curious to know if you'd succeeded in your wish to exchange SLIDERS scripts. If you were able to do this, then I would again like to congratulate you.

It's not that I wasn't interested in your endeavour and its success -- I referred you to someone else whom I thought might help you. But you were interested in a script exchange and I had no scripts to exchange with you; I didn't have anything to contribute. I myself don't have any SLIDERS collectibles (unless you count the Dual Dimension DVD set that I just found behind my bed while I was vacuuming).

I'm going to throw someone else's hat in and say that the idea for "Onliners" / "Net Worth" / "Net Worth: The Quinn and Wade Edition" actually came from fanfic writer Nigel Mitchell who wrote the SLIDERS novella "Reboot," which is the first published SLIDERS story featuring a computer-driven parallel Earth. Hilariously dated by now, but still splendid, and for some reason featuring Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt, Maggie and Max, an Arturo double introduced in a previous story from the INFINITE SLIDES fanfic series.

https://freepdfhosting.com/f964e65dc9.pdf

I liked CASTLE until about the middle of Season 4 -- at which point Castle and Kate's continued reluctance to act on their interest in each other became incredibly tedious. But the zombie episode was hilarious, an episode where Castle insists for almost the entire episode that a zombie apocalypse has been unleashed due to a zombie attacking a murder victim on a security tape and culminates in Castle and Kate surrounded by a hoard of zombies who turn out to be cosplayers engaged in a Zombie Walk event. And the finale finally opened up the Castle/Kate arc to romance and Season 5 has been a wonderful resurgence of the chemistry as Castle and Kate now have 1,000,000 new things to argue about endlessly even though they're now an item. Amazing episodes this year include the spoof of "The Ring," the spoof of "Rear Window" and the budget saving clip show where Castle and Kate argue about every argument they've ever had in the past five years while standing above a literal ticking time bomb.

I'm not saying CASTLE is the greatest show ever made, but it's made with great love and passion for its characters, at least as far as Season 5. Season 4 was a bit too long, however, and dragged out the distance between Castle and Kate for an entire year when it probably should have been resolved by the middle of the year.

I would never call CASTLE excellent, but it is very competent within its low hanging target and it consistently hits that target.

Say, whatever happened with your script exchange? Weren't you working on something with Transmodiar?

I felt Season 3 was okay when it was working as pitched and planned -- as an action-adventure show. However, within a few episodes of Season 3, the show took a very odd turn towards horror and fantasy with "The Dream Masters" and "Dragonslide," both of which essentially present magic, and this went to its nadir with "The Exodus" making the sliders' archnemesis a slasher villain akin to Jason and Michael, "Stoker" with the vampires and "This Slide of Paradise" which is unwatchable.

The problem with this sort of story for sliders: the characters are normal people who (more often than not) survive to get to the next episode and two of them are scientists. Scientists attempt to understand the underlying rules of existence and manipulate them. And you also have Wade, who understands sociological rules and Rembrandt, who understands artistic principles. Ideally, these characters would survive by acquiring and applying knowledge -- but when the magic and monsters and supernatural are uncontained by any rules relating to the characters, then the sliders end up solving their problems with force and violence rather than cleverness and it doesn't get to the heart of the characters themselves.

But if the episodes had stuck to the template of "Double Cross" -- technology, chase sequences, eye candy -- I think SLIDERS would have been okay. It would not have been the thought provoking, mind-expanding, satirical series of Season 1, but it would have been an enjoyable, acceptable, professional product. I also gently reject Torme's assertion that movie ripoffs should not be done on SLIDERS; I think SLIDERS is a perfect vehicle for pastiche. It'd be interesting to see the sliders devise a scientific solution to toppling dragons, defeating vampires, shutting down killer robots and step into other genres: the romcom, the conspiracy thriller, the espionage adventure, the office drama, the found footage episode, the documentary, the re-enactment crime show, the locked room mystery, and so on.

Unfortunately, Season 3 becomes overly fixated on horror and is also hit by a massive downturn in competence: scripts are clearly not reviewed before filming, budget is mishandled so badly that the back nine episodes of Season 3 are beset by financial shortages, actors misdeliver lines and yet those takes are aired, sound effects are missing from scenes.

Seasons 4 - 5, I don't really find all that different except Season 4 had the benefit of Marc Scott Zicree working on the first third or so of the season. Afterwards, the show becomes fixated on another genre -- the sci-fi technology drama. Pretty much every episode of the last two years is overly concerned with doomsday machines, computers, cloning, cryogenics data crystals, slideships, and this fixation on futuristic technology removes SLIDERS' charm as a dramedy focused more on sociology than technology.

For this reason, despite my personal fondness for the show, I don't really consider it "the best show ever" or even good. The first 22 episodes of the show are well-worth watching as a very grounded speculative fiction series akin to THE OUTER LIMITS and THE TWILIGHT ZONE but with a regular cast of lovable misfits. Everything after that is problematic in the extreme from its horrific chauvinism, its causal attitude to rape, its blatant hostility towards science whether it's aeronautics, archaeology, a baffling decision to waste money on a large and costly cave or hotel set that has to be included in the majority of episodes, the inability to retain actors who are contracted for six years, the overlong scripts that repeat already-established information to fill a page count.

SLIDERS is a personal favourite, but when I say that, I'm referring to the first 22 episodes and what comes afterwards, I tend to think of as a peculiar offbrand variant. It's unfortunate that to the public at large, people tend to remember SLIDERS for the bad movie ripoffs that were done with an incompetent charmlessness.

I tried to forget, Grizzlor. There was a really dark period in 2005 where I would get upset any time I was in a restaurant and saw sliders on the menu, and on one of these days, there were sliders at the restaurant, I got my foot stuck in a sliding door, I was cleaning out my house and found a Motorola phone, and then I tried to escape into DOCTOR WHO with a novel called "The Stealer of Dreams," by Steve Lyons where the Doctor, Captain Jack and Rose land on a parallel Earth -- I mean, an Earth colony -- where they realize that fiction doesn't exist.

There are only news periodicals and history and science and engineering books. There are only documentaries and news shows on TV. People who write fiction, sing, draw or create are arrested, imprisoned, and either treated psychiatrically or lobotomized. The sliders don't understand how this can be and begin to investigate by splitting up. I mean -- the Doctor and friends split up.

The Doctor/Quinn and the Professor convince a police officer to let them accompany her on a ridealong where she arrests numerous people who are in schizophrenic rages and have become violent and dangerous. Wade/Rose meets a renegade fiction writer. Captain Jack/Rembrandt tries to locate the local resistance.

Captain Jack/Rembrandt is arrested for being an artist, institutionalized and about to be lobotomized. Wade/Rose begins to experience the same hallucinatory delusions that the Doctor/Quinn and Arturo have observed in the criminals being rounded up. Rembrandt barely escapes the lobotomy and the sliders regroup in the asylum lab and realize: the population is suffering electromagnetic radiation from a revolutionary new power system that disrupts the human mind and prevents vulnerable brains from distinguishing between fiction and reality. (There's also some stuff about planetary micro-organisms of energy that are better suited to a DOCTOR WHO story than a SLIDERS story.)

The Doctor/Quinn and Arturo devise a cure and heal the population. Months later, the Doctor and friends/the sliders return to see that this world is once again beginning to create and dream and hope for the future. I read this novel and I wept for SLIDERS and the misbegotten hackwork of script editing that was "Map of the Mind."

Since then, I occasionally re-read "The Stealer of Dreams" but implant the sliders into it and it always seemed right -- until now. Reading DECLASSIFIED made me realize -- it's not really a very SLIDERS-esque attitude to have technology or a new discovery or alien lifeforms being the cause of society's problems. It would be more in tune with SLIDERS' original vision to have fiction become made illegal based on some cataclysmic event to our culture -- perhaps Orson Welles' accidental hoax in convincing listeners that Earth was being invaded by Martians led to hyper-restrictive censorship. But then how would you have the sliders enter, resolve the situation and leave? I suppose it wouldn't be a very SLIDERS-esque attitude to have everyone madly hallucinating until Arturo magics up a convenient cure.

Golly. I don't know how to write SLIDERS. This is a painful admission after writing nine SLIDERS scripts. Whoops.

(By that, I mean I don't know how to write Temporal Flux/Tracy Torme style SLIDERS scripts. I can write Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo scripts.)

Incredible! I had no idea there was so much intrigue around SUICIDE SQUAD.

David Ayer is hilarious. Someone wrote a thunderingly negative review of one of his films, BRIGHT, and Ayer proceeded to retweet the review, thank the critic for his attention and interest and detailed incisiveness, and put the review on his own fridge. It takes many years to have that good natured warmth towards negative feedback.

https://www.comicsbeat.com/the-snyder-c … ero-genre/

A lengthy editorial on why Zack Snyder's toxic fans shouldn't be rewarded with a Snyder cut.

My response is -- I don't really care about the happiness or sadness of those people and wouldn't make decisions based on validating or repudiating them. Zack Snyder had a vision and he was asked to make it come to life until he wasn't. His cut is sitting semi-finished on his hard drive during a time when superhero movies and TV shows are not being made and cannot be made, so why not finish it off and put it out there? The ARROWVERSE has been furloughed, theatres can't allow audiences to assemble for WONDER WOMAN and whatnot, so WB might as well do something with the DC property it has nearly finished that wasn't released.

Ashley Platz. Hmm. I don't buy her as Ruby Rose, but I could certainly accept her look as Kate Kane. Not sure about the acting ability. She didn't give a bad performance in her audition, it's just that her version of Kate skews positive and light whereas the version as aired skewed negative and cynical. Platz didn't make bad choices in her performance; Rose just made different ones and the show went with Rose's.

Oh, also -- Hush is a great character. He just isn't very well regarded in the world of comics. I think it's safe to say that any villain who shows up on BATWOMAN isn't in demand by WB's licensing department. I mean, there isn't exactly a legion of fans calling for (laughs) Magpie or (snickers) Slam Bradley or (haha) Nocturna (hahahahahhahaahhaa).

A character's standing in the world of comics has no bearing on how well they're presented in a story. Quinn Mallory isn't exactly going to rank high on twentieth century heroes of science fiction. Hush has been great on BATWOMAN.

I liked Ashley Platz's audition, but I can see why BATWOMAN went with someone else. Platz's performance indicated that her Kate was fundamentally at ease with being an ostracized outsider whereas Rose's performance of the same dialogue conveyed bitterness, frustration, seething outrage and fury. Platz's Kate was completely confident whereas Rose's Kate is perpetually on edge. That said, Platz could certainly change her interpretation.

I don't know anything about Wallis Day's acting ability having seen her in nothing, but if Temporal Flux approves of her and if the BATWOMAN/KRYPTON fandom think she's good, and if she's worked on WB television productions and if she has an existing relationship with the creators and if she's proven she can handle fight scenes and shooting schedules -- well, the fact that she looks a LOT like Ruby Rose shouldn't be the deciding factor. But it would definitely help visually if Kate in Season 2 looks enough like Kate in Season 1 that the viewer will instantly accept slightly different body language and expressions and a different voice if the face smooths over any discrepancies.

My personal choice is Brianna Hildebrand but she's really young. I have, however, seen her act and I can confirm that she would be good in the role and physically similar to Rose and her performance would be adjacent without being all that different. Hildebrand tends to play confidence as dismissive arrogance (like in DEADPOOL as Negasonic Teenage Warhead) whereas Rose played her confidence as shaky bravado. Hildebrand has also played shy, near-mute and geekily awkward in TRINKETS and she has a lot of range.

And if they go the Ashley Platz route of someone who looks nothing like Rose but will provide a strong Kate Kane performance that won't be anything like Rose's interpretation but hit the same points of character, that's good too -- but TV is a visual medium and while I wouldn't choose a bad performer who looks like a Rose-clone, I wouldn't dismiss it either if the lookalike comes with a superb level of craft, talent and skill.

Robert Floyd talked a lot to me about how he followed Jerry O'Connell where there were specific aspects of the scripts he would single out in "The Unstuck Man," "Applied Physics" and "New Gods for Old" where he would make sure to mimic Jerry O'Connell's vocal presence and expressions and mannerisms.

However, he was careful not to merely imitate Jerry as the whole of his performance; instead, he would add Jerry's traits periodically on top of his own interpretation so that it wasn't a photocopy, but Floyd's own take on the character that was informed by Jerry but not enslaved to empty mimicry. The problem with an actor doing an impression, as I'm sure you're wary of, is that it's so focused on imitating that any part of the impression that's off becomes distracting and an impression isn't creation, just approximation.

Realistically -- if they can get an actress who can mimic some of Ruby Rose's mannerisms to lightly include throughout an episode now and then to create some continuity with the original while giving the newcomer her own space, that'd be great. Whether that's Rose's pursed lips and titled head as she cracks a joke or her vaguely Australian accent or her spaced shoulder bearing or her dancer's gait, I'd leave to the performer, but I'd suggest choosing 2 - 3 elements to maintain. And idealistically, if that person looks as much like Ruby Rose as Wallis Day, the physical resemblance would speed up the viewer's acceptance and jump that hurdle immediately rather than gradually.

Whatever route they choose, I'm sure it'll be great. I believe in Batwoman.

Currently, BATWOMAN fandom seems to want KRYPTON actress and discrete lesbian Wallis Day to star as Kate in Season 2. I've never seen her in anything, but it's certainly an interesting mental exercise to imagine seeing this face under the mask and cracking wise with Luke, Mary, Sophie and Julia next year like she's been there all along. Day is English; maybe she could maintain Ruby Rose's awkward American accent as well where it would randomly switch into Australian.

I think it's easier for me and other fans to acclimate to Ruby Rose's departure because Batwoman existed even before Ruby Rose played her. And Batwoman fans will continue to like her even after someone else puts on the wig and mask. I'd love it to be Brianna Hildebrand (although she's too young). I was also deeply heartened by Camrus Johnson (Luke Fox) tweeting that he was sorry everyone was so shaken and hurt by Rose's departure, but that BATWOMAN had been renewed for a Season 2 and that all cast and crew would be devoted to making a show that would be a an action-packed superhero showcase for an LGBTQA audience.

An entertainment reporter in my city with a lot of Vancouver crew member friends reported that Ruby Rose was despised by her castmates and the crew as a "sociopathic narcissist" and there are reports that she was late to set for filming or often a no-show leading to stunt and body doubles picking up the slack and a production that was exasperated. Looking at Rose's social media, she seemed to be in bleak spirits after her back surgery, noting that her insurance didn't cover it, that she was in pain afterwards.

But... it doesn't really matter why she left. She's left. I hope she's okay, but unlike the confused dismay and grief and hurt I felt when John and Sabrina and then Jerry left SLIDERS -- I've accepted that while it doesn't help BATWOMAN to lose its Batwoman, it happened, Ruby Rose resigned, but the show was renewed for Season 2 and the show must go on.

Batwoman was Ruby Rose. Batwoman will always be Ruby Rose. But as Johnson subtly implied and as I will say outright: Batwoman is also every young lesbian girl who needs a hero. She is every woman who needs to believe that she can be her own hero. Every non-traditionally feminine woman who needs to see herself reflected in heroes and leaders onscreen.

And while only Ruby Rose could ever be Ruby Rose, there are many women out there who could be militaristic, aloof, passionate, troubled, ferocious, amused, lithe and with the willingness to shear their hair short, walk like a boxer, wear makeup-based tattoos and fight crime in a red wig. And I am looking forward to meeting whoever that woman will be.

I don't know if it will work out this way, but I choose to have faith because despite my issues with the production and scripts and blocking and direction and realization and visuals of the show, I believe in what it has to say to women and girls. I believe in Batwoman.

I really appreciate you saying this. And it makes me feel better. However. We can't waive our personal standards of conducting ourselves with consideration and respect for people even if some of those people are creepy, unpleasant, rude, deceitful, homophobic, transphobic, racist. We still have to acknowledge that Informant is an excellent writer of fiction.

And with regards to this other party -- I have to be grateful to him because, well, he helped me save my memories of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. His writing was a model I was able to apply to my fictional friends. You asked me in the pre-embryonic stage of my project, "What are you trying to accomplish?" And I wanted a jokey, bantery college reunion with my old friends and followed this person's writing model by applying it to SLIDERS and it worked.

He has my thanks and he should have also had the immediate option of saying he didn't actually write whatever comments were posted under a theatre school nickname he used use which included references to female employees he would admit to sexually harassing three years after the comments were originally posted.

(I'm not implying that he actually wrote these comments and decided to lie about it afterwards; surely someone as willfully confessional as he would have admitted to it. Likely, it was a Season 4 writer engaged in a thought experiment to criticize their own work.)

I mean, Diesel Mickey Dolenz granted your wish to have your past set aside from the Hall of Fame archives. We can't have one standard for volatile and antagonistic people and another standard for Transmodiar and Temporal Flux and Sarah_Slider and Grizzlor and pilight and JWSlider3 and SlideOverride and Slider_Quinn21 and Brand_S and Recall317 and Darren Mooney and other people I like.

I confess that I am deeply unconcerned with the feelings of a power mad stalker, but I don't excuse my own behaviour as it is a reflection on myself and those who choose to associate with me. I am responsible for myself and will use that shame to ensure never instigating such conflicts again. And also, I've moved on -- I've found a new TV show that will sit next to SLIDERS in my heart now.

(It's PARKS AND RECREATION, a show about nice people trying to do nice things under impossible circumstances.)

Finished the impromptu Season 1 finale of BATWOMAN. It's not a finale as much as a stopping point; the season arcs don't come to any climax or jumping off point for Season 2. The season concludes with the expectation that the two unfinished episode of Season 1 will be remounted and completed as the Season 2 premiere episodes -- except all the footage of Kate Kane in those episodes features Ruby Rose who will not be back to complete it.

I imagine that the studio and network WANT to cancel BATWOMAN at this point when they've lost the actress playing Batwoman and switch to BATMAN instead. Unlike THE FLASH and SUPERGIRL and SUPERNATURAL, the studio can't simply finish off episodes 21 - 22 because those episodes weren't designed to introduce a new actress as Kate Kane. It'll be too jarring to go back to Wayne Tower where Rose's Kate Kane was seated only to now find Clea DuVall on that sofa next to Mary.

But they can't cancel. The CW ordered a second season. Berlanti Productions is obligated to deliver a second season. The airtime is booked. The writers are contracted. The space is leased. The factory is set to start running the assembly line for its televised BATWOMAN action playsets and if the playset has the face of Brianna Hildebrand (or someone) instead of Ruby Rose, then so be it -- at least that's how the manufacturing plant that is television will see it.

As far as the CW and Berlanti Productions, they'll simply find someone sufficiently androgynous and athletic and willing to be (fake) tattooed and fits into the suit and wig and start cranking out their content.

They'll likely create a time gap. Maybe the first quarter of the Season 2 premiere features Batwoman seen only in shaky camera news reports and from a civilian perspective with Batwoman taking down Arkham escapee after escapee. It's also reported that Bruce Wayne has been sighted returning to Gotham. Then there's a scene where Alice tells Hush that they need to build to Bruce walking into Wayne Tower; he needs to be seen making his grand re-entry into the city. A scene where 'Bruce' is attacked by an Arkham inmate and rescued by Batwoman who, in costume with the red wig and battle armour, is visually indistinguishable from Rose.

Then Batwoman returns to the Cave, astonished that Bruce is back and she unmasks before Luke and Mary to reveal it's Kristanna Loken or Ashley Platz or Rita Volk or Brianna Hildebrand some other performer with (a) androgynous features (b) recreations of Ruby Rose's tattoos and (c) Ruby Rose's hairstyle.

It's a mess publicly, but it doesn't have to be a mess narratively if they commit fully and totally to a new performer playing Kate Kane and also ensure that we see her in costume first. The new performer should be of the same physical type as Rose and have a similar tone and pitch in her voice -- and the show also needs to accept that a lot of the character comes from the costume.

Val Kilmer recently talked about how a friend was bringing some children to the set of BATMAN FOREVER, so Kilmer stayed in the suit for the visit -- but the kids had no interest in talking to him. They wanted to play with the batarangs and climb into the Batmobile. They weren't interested in MEETING Batman; they wanted to BE Batman.

And that's another part of why BATWOMAN cannot be cancelled right now. I described a scene from BATWOMAN to my gay niece where the teen lesbian Parker rages at Batwoman for trying to sympathize with Parker having homophobic parents. Parker says Batwoman couldn't possibly understand being outed to a phobic home, assumes that Batwoman is straight -- and is then astonished and moved and validated when Batwoman unmasks to reveal the famously gay Kate Kane under the cowl.

My niece cried at my description and she didn't even watch the show, so I can only imagine the good this sort of material does for every young lesbian out there longing to see themselves in the heroes onscreen. BATWOMAN is so validating, so empowering and so much more than Ruby Rose. BATWOMAN is every girl who feels fear and shame for being drawn to women instead of men. The world needs Kate Kane and Batwoman far more than it needs Ruby Rose to play Kate Kane and Batwoman. It will be very hard to follow Rose's fabulous performance, but it HAS to be done. What BATWOMAN started must not be stopped. It matters. It's important.

Lauren CRIED from an impromptu recap of an episode, so this show is clearly saying something important and must continue past Rose's departure for Lauren's sake and Lauren doesn't even watch it.

I'm still watching the second-last episode of BATWOMAN for the year. This is a truly baffling development. As we know from SLIDERS and THE X-FILES, lead actors in TV shows are signed to multi-year contracts, usually 5 - 7 years. David Duchovny wanted to leave THE X-FILES by Season 5; he was obligated to complete his seven year contract. Jerry, John and Sabrina were contracted for at least five seasons of SLIDERS; John was fired and released from his contract, Sabrina requested that her pickup option not be exercised, and Jerry's contract expired when Sci-Fi missed the deadline to exercise their option on him by a few weeks.

Ruby Rose would have been contractually obligated to return for Season 2, 3, 4, 5 and I imagine 6. If she's not coming back, it's  either because she didn't want to return and so vehemently didn't want to return that forcing her to fulfill the terms of her contract would have been unworkable on set or in terms of her performance -- or it's because the production vehemently doesn't want her to return and is so unwilling to work with her any further that they are releasing her from her contract despite the publicity train wreck that comes from having to recast the lead actor of your TV series whose performance as a guest-star last year was the basis of building a whole new TV show around her this year. It could be some combination of both.

It could be any number of reasons stemming from how Ruby Rose is, to put it mildly, a deeply troubled human being. I know this because I am a mentally ill person myself at times and people like us can always recognize our own kind. Rose has been bullied since she came out as gay and was suicidal since age 12. Rose was raped by a family member when she was a child. Rose has clinical depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and body dysmorphic disorder. Rose was bullied off social media when first cast as Batwoman.

Rose is also physically unwell after an injury on BATWOMAN that nearly paralyzed her; she has two herniated discs and even before that, she was having spinal issues that put her in a wheelchair for a time. She has also struggled with an addiction to something, but she has never specified what except to say that she had to fight for her sobriety.

There is a lot wrong with Ruby Rose. A lot of it is onscreen in Kate Kane's repression, her grief, her rage, her loneliness and a lot of it serves the character. There is a forcefulness to Kate that is marked by Rose's melancholy and it made her perfect for the role. But it's also possible that that the things that are wrong with Rose are preventing her from doing five more seasons of 12 - 18 hour shoots on a TV show in which case it's best to recast her character sooner rather than later.

It's going to be very difficult. Rose has a unique physical presence and onscreen look due to her tattoos and lived experience. Rose has formed her character's relationships with Kara Danvers, Luke Fox, Jacob, Mary, Alice, Sophie, Julia and Parker -- now a new performer will have to start over while continuing what a different performer created. Rose was the image of BATWOMAN on which the series was proposed, built, sold and aired.

However, unlike the departure of Ben Affleck where he walked away from the DCEU Batman after only two full-length appearances, BATWOMAN has been established in the TV factory where there is an assembly line cranking out episode after episode. It looks like the CW considers that assembly line too high an investment to throw away, so they're going to find someone else to play Kate Kane and wear the costume and red wig and carry on.

Well, I caught up on LEGENDS and the evil dog episode was hilarious. I love how Zari often comes off as a gullible airhead only to reveal she sees right through any efforts to manipulate her.

LEGENDS then did a college campus comedy movie for an episode. I guess it was okay, although despite my love for COMMUNITY, I'm not really into raunchy stories of drunken behaviour and sororities and fraternities.

One of my favourite anecdotes about Jerry O'Connell is talking about how during SLIDERS, he became convinced that his good looks would allow him to coast to movie stardom and that SLIDERS fans were really Jerry O'Connell fans. Then, after the misfires that were his films MISSION TO MARS and TOMCATS, he signed on for a buddy comedy called DOWN UNDER and was nearly fired off the film for absurd weight gain due to endless binge drinking and late night pizzas. The supposed heartthrob had become a bloated mess and while he got back in shape to keep his job on DOWN UNDER, the film was ultimately reshot to refocus on a CG kangaroo and Jerry's last bid at stardom had him playing second banana to a digital marsupial.

However, there's an interesting actor with an inversion of Jerry's tale -- Chris Pratt. Pratt played a buff, toned football player type on EVERWOOD. His next significant role was on PARKS AND RECREATION where he was playing the dim-witted, absent-minded layabout Andy Dwyer. For whatever reason, Pratt at this point in his life was slightly overweight and he decided to intentionally stop working out and balloon in order to match his role. The rotund Pratt played the silly, absurd Andy for five seasons, his body expanding with each season and the awkward, clumsy physicality being absolutely hilarious and perfect for the role. This was a character who deliberately kept himself immobilized by leg casts for as long as possible because he enjoyed being waited on by his girlfriend, after all.

In Season 6, however, Andy was suddenly trim, lean and looked athletic although his clothes were slightly oversized as if to conceal his figure. Andy being significantly in shape did coincide with this hapless oaf finding gainful employment and finding more outlets for his energy than lounging and eating junk food, but he looked like a Marvel superhero actor. Characters asked him why he suddenly looked so different and Andy said he had lost fifty pounds due to no longer drinking beer.

In reality, actor Chris Pratt had gotten into shape to play Star Lord in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY. Pratt refused to leave PARKS AND RECREATION, however, declaring that despite many movie offers and being a secondary, supporting character on the TV show, he adored working with the other actors on the show and would not leave PARKS AND RECREATION; he didn't want to let down the fans by jumping ship or forcing his talentless brother into a lead role or performing episodes hungover. All he asked for was a few brief absences here and there to film GUARDIANS movies. And ultimately, Pratt didn’t view his vanity as his craft. Pratt embraced whichever character he was playing and let the character determine the physicality.

Well, naturally, it would HAVE to be Wade who starts getting her doubles' phone calls which triggers her long-standing fear that the telephone company is coming after her. And you could say that Wade and Wade-2 both bought duplicates of the same SIM card with the same unique IMSI code and when Wade-2's phone is destroyed, Wade's phone takes its place on the network. And you could say that Wade has always refused to buy a new SIM card and instead has been personally cutting her own SIM card to smaller and smaller sizes as needed to fit into new phones and that her double does the same, hence the matching IMSI code.

The prequels are bizarre in how overt and obvious the Jedi are in a galactic war despite Han in the 1977 film dismissing them as "ancient nonsense and hokey religions." And in making the Jedi so prominent, Lucas makes the Jedi look incompetent with REVENGE OF THE SITH and THE LAST JEDI calls him out on this.

STAR WARS declares the Jedi to be warrior monks working in obscurity and mystery, but the prequels present them as an ineffective galactic city hall.

I don't think you're ever going to get out of the 23rd century. It looks like we have two 23rd century shows now, SECTION 31 and NEW WORLDS, but it's understandable. It's where the mythology took hold. It's the basement office of THE X-FILES. The warehouse of WAREHOUSE 13. The Pawnee city hall of PARKS AND RECREATION. The basement lab of SLIDERS.

However -- you didn't need to watch DISCOVERY to understand PICARD. So I guess you won't need to watch the TOS era shows to understand the post TNG shows, especially with DISCOVERY set in the distant future.

I don’t get it either. And I’ve only ever seen the Clone Wars movie and the first two prequels.

In the original trilogy, the Jedi are regarded as myth that may or may not have ever been real. But the prequels declare that they were a branch of government, installed in political institutions and present in the public eye. In the original trilogy, the Jedi would have at their height been an urban legend at most.

https://bleedingcool.com/tv/star-trek-n … ew-series/

Jerry O’Connell’s career is in dire straits with SLIDERS not getting a reboot any time soon. However, his wife has a new job on a new STAR TREK show!

(I was kidding about Jerry’s career. He is doing fine.)

I was under the impression that the CW network had shuttered SUPERNATURAL  after the entire cast and crew were murdered in a strange event involving the Loom of Fate, an assassin, a shapeshifter and a drunk named John as revealed in the documentary series DC's LEGENDS OF TOMORROW.