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With some time and distance, I've come to feel that BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE ULTIMATE EDITION (actual title) was a non-apology apology for the destruction porn of MAN OF STEEL. There was definitely some effort given to showing human consequence as represented by Bruce's seething rage in the Superman/Zod battle. However, the movie never outright declares that Superman failed to turn Zod's battle out of Metropolis.

Zack Snyder is not interested in ordinary people and his attitude led to bizarre scenes in MAN OF STEEL like Lois and Superman kissing and flirting when surrounded by flattened skyscrapers. When Zod and Superman smashed through buildings, the people inside them were mostly computer generated extras. He just wanted the spectacle. BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE ULTIMATE EDITION (actual title) excuses this by having the Doomsday fight happen in an area that's described as nearly empty. While Batman goes to war with Superman over what happened in MAN OF STEEL, he's ultimately convinced to let it go out of sentiment and BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE ULTIMATE EDITION (actual title) declares that Superman's actions in MAN OF STEEL were correct and appropriate.

I think it would have been possible in Batman and Superman's first confrontation to have Batman declare that Superman failed to use his powers to protect civilians and Superman saying he didn't know how at the time, that he'd never been in a fight before, that he was trying to stop someone from obliterating the planet. Maybe a shot where Doomsday and Superman are plummeting towards a residential area and Superman says, "Not again. Not this time" and steers their path elsewhere.

It's interesting that the light, funny, goofy Marvel movies have Tony Stark assuming full responsibility for civilian deaths in the fight against Ultron. He specifically says that "we dropped a building" on people even though he was, in AGE OF ULTRON, actively trying to prevent that. BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE ULTIMATE EDITION (actual title) doesn't ever give Superman any guilt because Zack Snyder ultimately doesn't feel MAN OF STEEL made a mistake and BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE ULTIMATE EDITION (actual title) simply tries to excuse itself from the same criticisms.

https://www.ign.com/articles/zack-snyde … n-superman

No reshoots for the Snyder Cut. Just post production and effects work.

I too thought the extended home release of SUICIDE SQUAD was the Ayer cut.

Someone said something to me about Ashley Platz’s audition — that she acts like homophobia is amusingly beneath Kate and that she’s laughing at the restaurant manager trying to kick her out — and it gives the impression that Platz has never encountered homophobia and only knows it in the abstract. In contrast, Rose conveys all the grief, disgust and fury of someone who has spent her life belittled, abused and punished for her sexuality and is enraged by the invasive bullying.

Part of this may be due to Ashley Platz being bisexual and able to pass for straight, but it’s also because Platz was performing earlier script pages where Kate was more of an upper class socialite than the punk rocker Rose made her.

I wrote two and a half pages of script for how BATWOMAN could introduce a new woman as Kate Kane in Season 2, follow up on the Season 1 cliffhanger and jokingly acknowledge that Kate has the face of a stranger.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1say … OIeFs/edit

Oh. Oh, right. I totally forgot about that. That feels like it happened years ago. Warren Christie. Yes, I see. He has a good look. I've never seen him in anything.

They've really slipped through a loophole; BATWOMAN still does not have the license to use Bruce Wayne on the show. They can use Hush because nobody else wants to use such a no-hope D-list abortion of a character no matter how well Gabriel Mann plays the role and Caroline Dries scripts it. They can only feature Hush impersonating Bruce Wayne. They received a special dispensation for CRISIS to have Kevin Conroy as an older Wayne, but that has expired. That's why, when Kate asked Luke if Bruce would ever return to Gotham, Luke flat out said that Bruce wouldn't be back.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat- … ng-1295102

There are reports that the SNYDER CUT could be a four hour mini series. Will we spend an entire episode detailing Steppenwolf's first war with the Amazons and the Green Lanterns before any Leaguers even appear? Will one installment be devoted to Bruce and Arthur sitting in a bar talking? Will an episode be set entirely in Barry's bunker as Bruce and Barry share a pizza? Will the first fight between Diana, Barry, Cyborg, Bruce and Steppenwolf be expanded to fill a whole hour?

It looks like the SNYDER CUT came about because with filming stalled on every WB project in film and TV, there was the wish to produce some new product when so much of this project was already complete. Effects, editing, dialogue recording and other post production work can be done in isolation; it doesn't require assembling people into groups. The SNYDER CUT will come because, well, it's not like DC properties have anything else going on right now.

The original Batwoman was Kathy Kane, introduced in 1956 as a circus performer and a love interest for Bruce Wayne. Her niece, Bette Kane, became Bat-Girl a love interest for Dick Grayson. But in 1967, DETECTIVE COMICS #359 introduced Barbara Gordon as Batgirl with no reference to Kathy or Bette who were not referred to again until 1977 when Kathy Kane briefly came out of "retirement" in BATMAN FAMILY #10 to help Barbara and was then killed off two years later in DETECTIVE COMICS #485. Barbara Gordon had proven popular. Then CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS wiped Batwoman out of existence (but Kathy and Bette Kane remained alive and well and Bette would later take on the identity of Flamebird).

2006's 52 series introduced Kate Kane as a separate character from Kathy Kane and unlike Kathy, Kate is a blood relative of Bruce Wayne on his mother's side (Martha Wayne was born Martha Kane).

In 2011, BATMAN writer Grant Morrison declared that the 2005 reality-warping events of the INFINITE CRISIS crossover had restored every aspect of Batman's continuity since 1939. BATMAN INC. featured flashbacks to all of Batman's adventures with Kathy Kane as Batwoman but from a modern perspective where Batman and Batwoman form a crimefighting family with Bat-Girl, Ace the Bat Hound and Robin -- only for Batwoman to suddenly dump Batman and tell him she doesn't want to become anyone's wife or mother. She is later killed. However, it's later revealed that Kathy was planted by the spy organization Spyral to infiltrate Batman's life; she fell in love with him but the agency threatened to expose Batman's true identity unless she broke up with him and she later faked her own death so he could move on. Kathy returns in the final issue of BATMAN INC. to save Bruce's life and the character now runs Spyral and assists the Batfamily from afar.

It's also revealed that "Kathy Kane" is an alias, chosen to catch Bruce Wayne's attention by being his mother's name.

I don't think this heterosexual version of Batwoman is suited to taking over from the Ruby Rose incarnation and even if she were, it wouldn't work. I suppose you could have Julia Pennyworth become Batwoman, but that wouldn't work either. The generational approach to superheroes has never worked once a bearer of the mantle has become entrenched in popular culture. Barry Allen was not the first Flash, but he solidfied the mythology of the Flash as a science hero and all efforts to replace him with Wally West and Bart Allen and John Fox were ultimately temporary whether intended so or not. Hal Jordan was not the first Green Lantern, but he solidified the mythos as a space police force and all efforts to replace him with John Stewart (Diggle), Guy Gardener and Kyle Rayner failed as well.

Specifically with BATWOMAN -- it can't be done because Season 1 ended on a cliffhanger where Tommy Elliot will impersonate Bruce Wayne to use his relationship with Kate Kane to steal the Kryptonite from Wayne Tower. Kate Kane has an adversarial relationship with Jacob Kane who has declared war on Batwoman. Kate Kane has a troubled mistrust of ex-lover Julia Pennyworth and a guarded secret from ex-lover Sophie and a burgeoning mentorship with Parker Torres and a working partnership with Luke Fox and another one with Mary, all of which are in a state of flux, none of which could possibly be addressed with killing off Kate Kane because Ruby Rose will not return to perform a death scene and using a distantly filmed body double could not address these arcs satisfyingly.

The only route to address all these plots and relationships, and the route that BATWOMAN has chosen, is to find a new actress to play Kate Kane. I imagine they'll need to take some time to re-establish the foundations and fundamentals of the interactions: Kate's mildly adversarial partnership with Luke, Kate's grudgingly tolerant partnership with Mary, Kate's resignation to Parker's presence, Kate's frustration with her father in and out of costume, Kate's longing for Sophie, Kate's discomfort with Julia, Kate's reverence for Bruce -- and they'll want to do that with the new woman in Kate's costume so as to keep the Kate Kane character moving forward. These relationships are too critical to Batwoman's plots to be disposed of by killing Ruby Rose off camera and bringing in Kathy or replacing Kate with Julia.

I think, to let fans and the new actress get to grips with a new face for Batwoman and to pick up on how Tommy Elliot intends to exploit Kate Kane's love for her cousin Bruce, it might help to have BATWOMAN's Season 2 feature (a) flashbacks to a Kate's childhood with Bruce using the child actress who plays the young Kate and (b) have these flashbacks age into the new performer playing Kate Kane. Or to see Batwoman in costume first and unmasked as the new actress second.

Well, it's a cognitive bias of favouring the hypothetical over the actual, where the JUSTICE LEAGUE that wasn't seen is considered superb and truthful and masterful because there's no evidence to the contrary while the JUSTICE LEAGUE that was seen is deficient and flawed because it can actually be evaluated.

While I enjoyed JUSTICE LEAGUE a lot, it is an objective fact that the general public disliked the movie if they went to see it at all. I have literally never heard anyone other than you, me, Informant and Kevin Smith speak well of the film.

I hope that, for the sake of the Snyder fans, the film will be edited so as to not leave unfinished subplots.

I imagine there could be some additional dialogue recording and replacement, but I doubt anybody got back into physical shape and costume to complete this film.

Anyway. I thought MAN OF STEEL was a good Zack Snyder movie that reflected the themes, interests and style of Zack Snyder. If you don't like Zack Snyder (and I'm not really a fan, but I respect his craft), you will not like MAN OF STEEL. I felt that the ULTIMATE VERSION of BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (actual title) was a good movie -- lacking in the hope and optimism I'd prefer for superheroes, but just because a project isn't aligned with my tastes doesn't mean it can't be good. I enjoyed JUSTICE LEAGUE as a hybrid of Zack Snyder's brutalism with Joss Whedon's quippy humour, but I respect that for normal people, it did not work at all.

Informant is probably very happy right now because Zack Snyder's cut of JUSTICE LEAGUE will be released.

https://www.comicsbeat.com/zack-snyders … x-in-2021/

Well, I deleted every trace of the Google Doc, so that's unrecoverable, but some of the posts that I thought his are here: https://kinja.com/avclub-52a3239961f9db … iscussions They were posted in the comments to individual episode reviews and it's only for the first eight episodes. There were an additional six reviews posted under the same handle on Collider (I think) in comments that seem to have disappeared after the site was reorganized, but each time I found them, I copied them and saved them to the Google Doc that no longer exists. I thought he wrote them, he says he didn't, and I should have asked before sharing them as his.

I also ultimately deleted my comments on the subject from Reddit, but I can still look up his displeased responses to my deleted comments, so please enjoy me being rightly told off by a wronged party from whom I really had it coming:

He later said:

I apologized. After a period of time, however, I wiped out all my posts on the subject because I didn't want to carry it with me anymore. So I can't look that up, but I do have his response:

I'm sorry -- because I let you all down. I acted at my most thoughtless instead of emulating the best of Temporal Flux and Transmodiar and Slider_Quinn21 and Grizzlor and SlideOverride and RussianCabbieLotteryFan and pilight.

And so, I had to keep my distance and for myself as well. This whole exchange terrified me. I never wanted to talk about it. But I didn't think Slider_Quinn21 would believe me if I said I needed to take a break from a show I've praised and copied so relentlessly, so I decided to explain myself if only to confess my failings to my friends and pledge to do better.

I didn't see it; I recently rewatched the entire series with audio commentary and could use a break from it.

No. That's a lie. I am avoiding the show and its creator right now due to an extremely embarrassing and painful interaction for which I accept full responsibility. Something really strange happened last year. I found a bunch of comments posted on various TV review sites that appeared to be the showrunner commenting on the season during which he was absent from the show, commenting on how his temporary replacements were respectful but overly imitative instead of being themselves.

I assembled these posts into a Google Doc and posted them in a bunch of discussion forums thinking them legitimate. The posting dates were before the creator's return season had aired. They indicated story ideas that were ultimately present in those future episodes.

The posts also included a number of references to a female employee to whom the creator later issued a public apology for his harassing behaviour -- and they had been posted before this public apology had been released. For these reasons, I thought them genuine -- except the creator then responded to say that they were fake. That he hadn't written them. And that he was extremely upset because the references to this employee whom he'd harassed would call further attention to her and force her to revisit his behaviour when she likely wanted to move on.

However, because of my penchant for pastiche and the fact that SLIDERS REBORN was initially declared as attempting to duplicate his style for SLIDERS, I was briefly accused of fabricating these posts -- until someone else kindly noted that the posts were dated in the comments system as written three years before the creator had confessed to his sexual harassment, something an imitative fan would not have known about or been able to copy. And the dates couldn't have been faked.

Whoever wrote these posts was likely an acquaintance or employee who had been aware of the creator's actions.

The showrunner was gracious enough to accept my apology.

I felt really bad about this and deleted everything and then went through my own writing which had jokingly been a bit of a pastiche of his style and followed the SLIDERS fanfic tradition of writing fake interviews and fake reviews from the parallel Earth where the fanfic was actually filmed. I removed all references to this creator, swapping in Geoff Johns (ARROWVERSE producer, writer of many fan service oriented superhero comics like GREEN LANTERN REBIRTH, THE FLASH REBIRTH, DC UNIVERSE REBIRTH) instead.

I'm really ashamed of my behaviour because I know Temporal Flux and Transmodiar would have made sure to verify authorship before posting those collated comments and would have been careful with comments that might be upsetting, much in the same way TF was cautious with specific details of John Rhys-Davies and David Peckinpah's personal lives during the period when candor could have been damaging in 1997. And the way Transmodiar accommodated actors' requests to revise off-the-cuff interview remarks that could have harmed careers in 2000.

They taught me better. I failed to live up to their examples.

To this day, it makes me really uncomfortable and I am trying to leave the creator alone. I should have asked him if he wrote those posts before posting them as his. I really didn't want to talk about this, but if I can't confess to Slider_Quinn21, who can I talk to, really?

I haven’t been engaged with superheroes lately. Superheroes at their best are a reflection and response to the world outside our window and that world has been horrific lately which is why, in consuming fiction, I’ve been retreating to TV shows made during Obama’s first term. But Slider_Quinn21 makes me realize that I have two episodes each of LEGENDS, SUPERGIRL and BATWOMAN to finish. Maybe I can do it tomorrow.

I'd like to see this idea. It's reminiscent of some of the unfilmed scenes from "In Dino Veritas" where the original plan was to see sliders accidentally joined by Geraldo Rivera attempting to document their travels only to be eaten by a dinosaur. In your idea, the whole world is Geraldo.

Geraldo seemed popular in the 90s. The Season 3, 1995 episode of LOIS AND CLARK, "Chip Off the Old Clark," also had a script in which Geraldo Rivera was to be investigating a scandal where a woman claimed that Superman had impregnated her. The script specifies that Geraldo and Lois are old friends. Geraldo was also too busy for this one.

... why am I talking to Temporal Flux like he doesn't know Geraldo was planned to be in the dinosaur episode?

The entire first season of PARKS AND RECREATION was filmed as a pilot. Due to a delayed approval and impending air dates, Season 1 was filmed in entirety before it aired, before the people working on the show had a chance to show it to anybody else. Also, Season 1 was written without a clear sense of who the characters are; the creators hired some top shelf comedians and then threw them in front of the camera and asked them to improvise various scenarios.

Usually, shows film a pilot and then there's some retooling before the rest of the series is filmed. That didn't happen with PARKS AND RECREATION, so there was no adjusting the scripts to suit the actors until between Seasons 1 and 2.

The creators realized that Leslie Knope in Season 1 came off as ineffectual and deluding herself into thinking her job was meaningful or that she was good at it. They adjusted the characterization so that Leslie was aware of how hopeless her goals could be but remained determined to punch away at them with enthusiasm and optimism and even when she lost, her efforts were touching.

They altered Ron's character so that instead of being a corporate Republican who thought big business should take over everything, he was instead a Libertarian who believed that everyone should be capable of hunting and growing their own food and building their own log cabins as the actor was a capable handyman survivalist. This made the character more sympathetic than his Season 1 incarnation.

They altered Andy's character to be less of a user and more of an inept buffoon unaware of his behaviour because they liked the actor and wanted him to stay on the show as a regular and couldn't have him be malicious if he were to stick around. They left Tom the same opportunist fool, but had all the surrounding characters tell him off. They left Ann about the same except her discomfort with Leslie was removed to make them truly sisters. And once the writers knew who the characters were, the show worked beautifully and Season 2 is really when it starts.

They couldn't figure out what to do with Mark, so the character was phased out by the end of Season 2.

The show was quite heavily retooled and Season 1 is an awkward OFFICE-clone whereas Season 2 has a very clear sense of identity as a loving satire on government dysfunction akin to SLIDERS' first season of social commentary.

The people I know aren't really 'names.' They've stood at a cash register in a Whole Foods commercial, sang the jingle for pizza chain commercials, etc.. To have leading roles, they write and perform in their own stageplays.

I imagine there'd have been a contractual hold on the CANARIES cast for some period of time following the ARROW finale. I suspect that any contractual hold on Kat McNamara has not expired yet as Pedowitz said discussions are ongoing regarding CANARIES.

If it expires (and it will in the coming months), I suppose the network and studio could ask for an extension given the extraordinary circumstances, but Grant Gustin said that he'd been engaged in negotiations for Season 7 only for those negotiations to stop dead when the pandemic hit -- which means that if that hold expires, there probably won't be any further motion until after the pandemic, assuming that there is any after. I think McNamara would be happy to wait for CANARIES up to a point since she's a working class TV actress with an established career in playing action girls and headlining a CW superhero show would be a very sensible next step in her career. She wants to do CANARIES.

Well, hopefully, she’ll wait. Every time I see Kat descend from a jump line and land with her bow and arrow at the ready, I feel an uncontrollable, incontestable urge to go workout and only eat fat and protein and fibre. My health would benefit greatly if GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES went to series.

I am currently deep in watching WAREHOUSE 13, but if DEVS isn’t as dark and scary as the real world, I’d watch it. Is it?

Right now, I am also watching PARKS AND RECREATION, a fantasy show where American government is run by engaged, capable or at least not malevolent people. And CASTLE and WAREHOUSE 13, where people who work in American establishment institutions are capable of doing their jobs. You know. Fantasy.

I haven't really been keeping up with SUPERNATURAL and am not familiar with this show. But I've now found another account indicating that SUPERNATURAL was abruptly cancelled in the middle of Season 6 after recurring actor Mischa Collins was murdered in a Vancouver alleyway and then a guest-actor went on an inexplicable shooting spree during which he murdered series creator and former showrunner Erik Kripke and lead actors Jensen Ackles and Jared Padelecki were too traumatized to resume filming, meaning SUPERNATURAL abruptly ended with episode 14 of Season 6 and the CW posthumously aired Kripke's OCTOCOBRA in his honour.

There was a high school musical sequel that the CW indifferently permitted to be performed. This production wrapped up the series satisfactorily, but it was, as I recall, written by a fan who dashed it off in a fugue writing state and it involved musical solos and aliens and there were some scenes involving rock star vampires, fat craving zombies, breeder parasites, killer robots, dinosaurs, dragons and remote controlled cars that shoot laser cannons or I may have confused that with some other fan fiction sequel.

CW head Mark Pedowitz has said that discussions regarding GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES are still ongoing, so he hasn't pulled the plug yet.
https://www.eonline.com/ca/news/1151970 … cw-for-now

*gapes at Temporal Flux*

ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR was... unpopular... ? Ultimate Reed becoming a villain was... good?

TF is making me wonder if I am completely out of step with superhero comics now which, I admit, I don't read too often. I tend to let things pile up for a few years on Comixology and then catch up. I read everything between AVENGERS VS. X-MEN and HOUSE OF X last month.

ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR was a neat reimagining of the team with Reed as a gifted teenager drafted into a US Army think tank in New York City with Sue Storm as a scientist, Johnny tagging along just for the hell of it and Ben as the only friend Reed had from childhood. Mark Millar and Brian Michael Bendis did (I thought) a great job of updating the 60s team for the 2000s by making everyone (a) teenagers and (b) working for a US Army weapons farm and Reed and Sue accidentally turning themselves and two innocent bystanders into superweapons. Millar's action-oriented set pieces and Bendis' hilarious dialogue were (I thought) a winning combination for the first arc.

Then came Warren Ellis, who brought his brilliant hard science approach into exploring how Mr. Fantastic stretches. How the Invisible Woman manipulates the molecular structure of her body. How the Human Torch can ignite. And how Ben is basically immortal now. Ellis had several great arcs and after a fill-in with the equally clever Mike Carey, we had Mark Millar bring his crazy action lunacy back to the team as he advanced the characters from operating within a secret branch of the army to existing as independent superheroes (and brought in the Marvel Zombies). Then Mike Carey came back again with some exciting extradimensional adventures that brought the crazy Kirby adventure with the youth of the Ultimate FF.

It was very much the energy of SLIDERS with the sci-fi creativity of Douglas Adams and the humour of David Mamet -- but now that I think about it, maybe it wasn't that popular because Marvel ended up blowing it all apart with that weird ULTIMATUM crossover that massacred the X-Men and the Ultimate Avengers and blew up the Fantastic Four's headquarters and had the team break up.

I guess Marvel wouldn't have blown the team apart if the book had been selling well.

Then came that very odd ULTIMATE ENEMY series where Reed killed his parents and sister and attacked the Earth with his new alien allies and became a crazy supervillain, a bizarre turn of character that was completely at odds with the gentle, polite, merciful scientist who tried to help Doom, clearly adored his baby sister, and spared the Marvel Zombies when he could have gassed them to death and called it a day.

It was the equivalent of Quinn Mallory becoming an emotionless sociopath in Season 4 of SLIDERS and I waited for the comics to explain what the hell was going on. Instead, Ultimate Reed became even more of a psychopathic, mass murdering sociopath who renamed himself The Maker.

It was bizarre and everything there remains as incomprehensible as Quinn being unconcerned with Wade in "Mother and Child" and as baffling as Quinn being indifferent to rescuing his mother and adopted home Earth in "Revelations" and as traumatic as the Professor's horrific murder in "The Exodus" and typing all this is actually making me upset and distraught and pained and agonized and confused and Temporal Flux is right and ULTIMATE FF was a terrible experience I can't go through this again good bye.

So, what's wrong with THE FLASH this year? ARROW had a strong final season. LEGENDS has been very enjoyable. SUPERGIRL is continuing its strengths from last year. But THE FLASH -- something still isn't quite right with the show. Season 6 is alright. It has moments of excellence. But I don't find it excellent overall.

Despite the ticking clock of CRISIS, despite the well-written storyline of Barry losing the Speed Force, THE FLASH doesn't seem as fun, inventive or quick-witted as Seasons 1 - 2 and I suspect that the problem cannot be solved; the problem is that the Flash is a *very* difficult character to write and the only creator with a strong vision for THE FLASH as a TV show was rightly fired out of television.

The hardest part of writing any superhero is writing for their gimmick. XENA, CAPTAIN AMERICA and BATMAN must create situation after situation that can only be resolved with the characters throwing a discus or a batarang. SPIDER-MAN must create decades' worth of problems that can only be addressed with webbing. And THE FLASH must devise 22 problems a season that can only be resolved with superspeed. Unrepentant sexual harasser Andrew Kreisberg had an enormous talent for crafting threats and villains where Barry's superspeed seemed useless or a liability from the Reverse Flash to Zoom to Multiplex to the Thinker. He wrote scene upon scene where the Flash doesn't make any headway into this year's mystery or mythology, but he saves civilians in an exciting special effects sequence. He yanks them out of car wrecks, rips them from collapsing buildings, evacuates them from floods.

That's been missing for awhile. It's been missing ever since unrepentant sexual harasser Andrew Kreisberg was thrown out of film and TV during the last quarter of Season 4. You can spot exactly when unrepentant sexual harasser Andrew Kreisberg carried his boxes out of the office: it's when the remaining writers turned the Thinker into Sylar from HEROES, as Slider_Quinn21 put it. Kreisberg's staff didn't have the skill to keep the Thinker sufficiently threatening through his thinking, unfortunately -- which is something even a resurrected Douglas Adams would have needed some time to work out. And Kreisberg's surviving staff presented Season 5 as the year where the Flash spent over 20 episodes unable to defeat a villain with a knife.

With Season 6, the writers have attempted to address their mistakes: they split the season in half so that the Flash wouldn't seem incompetent in needing all year to stop one normal speed villain. They've spread their attention around Barry's team so that the characters without superspeed have problems too. They've brought the theme of speed back into the stories by having Barry race against the countdown to CRISIS, then race against his depleting Speed Force. They are responsible, reliable professionals who have not sexually harassed anyone and are therefore vastly preferable to unrepentant sexual harasser Andrew Kreisberg.

But, unfortunately, THE FLASH's sixth season reflects a painful lack of skill in crafting high speed situations that can only be resolved with the Flash applying his superspeed in a clever and innovative way. There have been no newly developed speed flourishes. No impossible puzzles of human life to be resolved with imaginative application of Barry's powers.

THE FLASH is a very difficult concept that requires a certain mindset to plausibly threaten the Flash and make his victories seem hard earned and the Season 5 - 6 writers simply don't have that skillset. It's not a knock against them -- I can't draw or write SLIDERS-style social satire and the FLASH's current writers can't write superspeed effectively. The current writing team on THE FLASH were never hired to lead their show; they were hired to follow the lead of unrepentant sexual harasser Andrew Kreisberg who is no longer leading anything or anyone and never will again. They have been promoted in his permanent absence. It is an impossible situation for those who remain.

Season 6. I mean, it's fine. It's not as horrific as Season 3 of SLIDERS or as tedious as Season 5 of SLIDERS or as incompetently incoherent as Season 4 of SLIDERS. It is okay.

Wait, WHAT?

When was it established that Harrison Wells and his doubles were retroactively erased from the past?

When was it established that Jay Garrick was erased from the past?

I don't remember this at all! Maybe I was looking at my phone when this established. What?!!?

**

Regarding Batwoman's angst on having taken a life and Curtis informing her that even Batman couldn't stick to that rule 100 per cent of the time and that the Joker is dead -- I am okay with this. In superhero comics, superheroes exist in a highly impressionistic world where human beings seem far more resilient than their real world counterparts. But in live action -- as Informant once pointed out, there is a weight and physical impact to superhero battles that makes it unbelievable that Batman never killed any henchmen when crashing through buildings and throwing people off balconies.

That said, I would prefer that even live action superheroes never set out to intentionally murder anybody and when Kate killed her captive, immobilized prisoner, her prisoner was a man who had warped and broken her sister and was actively tormenting Kate into attacking him with lethal force for the second time. He wanted her to kill him and Kate understandably lost control. I wouldn't give Kate a medal, but I would excuse her for being victimized by a master manipulator who deliberately pushes people into murderous desperation.

Barry killed the Atom Smasher in Season 2, exposing him to lethal doses of radiation and stopping an otherwise unstoppable foe. There was no onscreen discussion about the morality of this.

Superheroes generally don't kill in comics, but that has less to do with morality and more to do with not wanting to kill off villains that writers might like to use next month. BATWOMAN has decided to step into shifting Batman's moral code to being less a requirement and more a preference that sometimes has to be waived. I wouldn't want the comic book characters to do that, but I understand and respect it in live action.

Recently, someone said regarding the show CASTLE:

A treasured writing mentor (no, not this one, it was Informant) pointed out to me that we're writers. We aren't gods. We might be creating a fictional reality and populating it with living beings, but we don't know everything, we don't understand everything, and we'll often have to accept that our creation is flawed because we don't have the information or time to define every corner of our world. We'll have to prioritize making specific elements of our work entertaining and plausible at the expense of some other area where we are less skilled.

Informant argued that these areas of low priority are not even necessarily flaws as much as areas outside the author's chosen focus.

Another beloved writing mentor (this one) once asked me a very incisive question. He asked me, "What are you trying to accomplish?" Was I trying to write an exploration of alternate paths that events might have taken? Was it a series of science fiction set pieces? Was it a deep dive into the minutia of a television show that most people had willfully blocked out of memory? Was it a drama surrounding a college reunion? And what was I doing to meet any of those goals? "What are you trying to accomplish?"

With that in mind, I'd say that if a TV show decides that its priority is giving its leads episode-long arguments and that's what it chooses to excel it at the expense of other priorities, then those non-priorities are not flaws. STAR TREK was not a plausible depiction of naval life; FRINGE wasn't a likely rendition of FBI task forces; LOST was not a realistic picture of survivalism and THE FLASH is not a serious presentation of forensic investigation.

They were trying to accomplish something else and we might be better off asking ourselves what the creators were trying to do, if they achieved it and then ask whether or not it was worth the attempt or if the goal was flawed. If CASTLE sets out to have Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic arguing and then it manages to fill seven years' worth of episodes with Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic arguing, then its failure to present other content is no failure at all.

On the other hand, if the eighth season features Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic only sharing the screen in two scenes per episode because the actors refuse to work together for more than two days a week, then it has absolutely failed.

I really don't see anything sloppy about the writing. Across TOS, TNG, DS9 and NEMESIS, the Romulans had shown a propensity for treacherous backstabbing at every opportunity. It's perfectly reasonable that after the Romulans attacked the Klingon Empire and razed Cardassia in the Dominion War and tried to blow up Earth in NEMESIS, few people outside the Romulan Star Empire were inclined to offer a helping hand that had traditionally been cut off every time anyone tried to do anything for the Romulans. The Zhat Vash were deranged extremists more interested in their pet values of hating all artificial intelligence than aid for their suffering people and reprogrammed the Mars robots to attack.

Picard's outrage at Starfleet abandoning the Romulans is because Starfleet pledged to help anyone in trouble no matter who they were or what they'd done before. And his fury is reasonable, but I think PICARD also establishes that the Federation can't be blamed for deciding that they would prefer not to assist a brutal dictatorship that always took any effort of charity as an opportunity to attack. Picard welcomed Romulan refugees to live in his home; the Federation wouldn't match his effort.

https://medium.com/@r0ckthastarz/alliso … 45b8281f45

A highly anecdotal account of meeting Allison Mack. *shudders*

**

Also, Grizzlor’s photo with Allison Mack is now her Wikipedia headshot.

COUNTDOWN 2009 did indeed feature a restored Data as Captain of the Enterprise. The TNG novels, which don't tie into COUNTDOWN, also featured a restored Data.

The android insurrection on Mars was revealed to be caused by the Zhat Vash, a faction of Romulans who loathe artificial life and expect that its rise would bring about an AI apocalypse.

I don't know how intentional this was, but given how the Federation is suddenly using money in PICARD when it was a post-scarcity, post-currency society in TNG, DS9 and VOY, I think we have to take it to mean that the destruction of Mars impacted the Federation's ability to produce and maintain replicators. But PICARD takes the view that the Federation didn't do its best under difficult circumstances; that it just gave up and cut the Romulans loose on the grounds that the Romulans had (a) sided with the Dominion 24 years ago and (b) tried to blow up Earth 20 years ago. That the Federation didn't even do what it could; it just decided to do nothing.

Years ago, I was working with a new guy in my office. This is unusual for me because my friends and co-workers are generally women and I have a strong aversion to men unless they're Temporal Flux, Slider_Quinn21, Transmodiar, Grizzlor, or dating / married to one of my friends. Andy, a junior high aged summer intern, asked me if I'd ever seen WAREHOUSE 13 on Syfy. He said it started out very badly but he loved it from episode 4 onward. He insisted that episode 4 was the greatest thing he'd ever seen.

I bought the Season 1 DVD set at this used electronics store and the first three episodes were a clumsy, awkward X-FILES clone filmed in Toronto for 1/3 of the budget with a lot of beige hallways, very much like Season 5 of SLIDERS. The cast seemed talented but unsure of how to characterize some thin scripting; Secret Service agents Pete Latimer and Myka Bering are put to work tracking down supernatural artifacts to contain in Warehouse 13, but they exhibit a strange lack of curiosity as to who created Warehouse 13, who runs it, how these artifacts function, etc..

The pilot episode of WAREHOUSE 13 seems like something that nobody wanted to make. The original idea was from Ronald D. Moore. The first draft of the script was by Rockne O'Bannon (FARSCAPE) and Jane Espenson (BUFFY, ONCE UPON A TIME, GILMORE GIRLS, JESSICA JONES) but Syfy bought it and retooled it with D. Brent Mote (DR. QUINN), then again with Espenson, then finally with David Simkin (LOIS AND CLARK, DARK ANGEL, ANGEL, CHARMED).

As a result, the pilot has the story elements of a paranoid, conspiracy-minded series of secret agents in a shadow government organization, the concepts of a madcap sci-fi/fantasy comedy, and the tone of simple, Nickelodeon children's show where the heroes look to find and contain dangerous supernatural objects and the questions of who they work for and why is not something kids would ask. It is inherently contradictory and confused, clearly the product of multiple writers working at cross purposes. It was weak and dull, but Andy struck me as a bright young man of interesting tastes, so I struggled to episode 4.

Listening to a podcast with WAREHOUSE 13 showrunner Jack Kenny, it seems he was also struggling. He was not involved with WAREHOUSE 13 until after the pilot had been filmed and the series had been ordered. Assuming control of the series, Kenny's version of WAREHOUSE 13 took until episode 4 to materialize when the show is livened up by a new character: a troubled, spunky 19-year-old computer hacker named Claudia who breaks into Warehouse 13 to demand answers to all the questions above.

Claudia is snarky, sardonic and quippy in the way young women on TV are when written by good men in their late 40s who write teenaged girls. ("Dude, just shut it down." "This is so not groovy!") Claudia is gifted with all the wit and charm of much older women, serving as an aspirational but relatable figure to young girls. No teenaged girl is like Claudia, but her daring braininess makes her a healthy role model.

Claudia sparked something in the rest of the cast that finally made the Warehouse 13 team cohere as an eccentric family unit with Claudia as the child among them. Claudia is daring and outspoken in a way that a junior high school student like young Andy likely found admirable. Claudia is capable and strong but deeply troubled in a way that a junior high student like Andy might view as making her accessible. Claudia is a driven go-getter and I know Andy's mother, a co-worker in my office, to also be a driven go-getter.

I have no doubt that Andy found Claudia sexy with her punk appareil and purple tinted hair and Allison Scagliotti’s slender, gym toned figure, but he obviously liked her because she was smart.

Claudia on WAREHOUSE 13 was a somewhat age appropriate crush for a junior high student and Allison Scagliotti was/is a pretty girl, but she was presented as a powerful girl, a skillful investigator, and an eager pupil in the art of paranormal investigations and, in my view, an extremely healthy sexual and romantic fantasy for Andy. Claudia was a portrait of a girl close to his age and with ambition, drive, ability and determination. Claudia is a bit like the Season 3 Wade who became some sort of superhacker that year.

I hope Andy found someone like Claudia in real life. I should ask his mother if he did.

WAREHOUSE 13 is the undemanding, low stakes procedural that I need right now. The procedural that America needs right now! And I consider "QED" an episode of the show. WAREHOUSE 13 has some interesting parallels with SLIDERS and the potential for legally dissimilar shows about parallel universes. Watching the first several episodes of WAREHOUSE 13, WAREHOUSE 13 is clearly a legally dissimilar copy of THE X-FILES with two government agents (Secret Service, not FBI!) investigating supernatural artifacts (to confiscate and cover them up, not to expose them! Not like THE X-FILES at all!).

The pilot episode of WAREHOUSE 13 seems like something that nobody wanted to make or take ownership of, much like Season 5 of SLIDERS. The original script was written by Rockne O'Bannon (FARSCAPE) and Jane Espenson (BUFFY, ONCE UPON A TIME, GILMORE GIRLS, JESSICA JONES) but Syfy bought it and then retooled it with at least four different writing teams before landing on Jack Kenny, a veteran of children's fantasy show THE SECRET WORLD OF ALEX MACK. By the time WAREHOUSE 13 made it to air, it had become an indecisive, confused product. A photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy with many contradictory sensibilities.

The Pilot has the story elements of a paranoid, conspiracy-minded series of secret agents in a shadow government organization and a simple, Nickelodeon children's show where the heroes look to find and contain dangerous supernatural objects and the questions of who they work for and why is not something kids would ask. WAREHOUSE 13 also seems to be visually very similar to Season 5 of SLIDERS with interior locations being redressed beige hallways if it's not the warehouse set that's the equivalent of SLIDERS' Chandler Hotel.

But WAREHOUSE 13 cast well. And by the end of the first season, WAREHOUSE 13 had succeeded in doing what SLIDERS did in its first two seasons: it created a strong ensemble with the exuberant and childish Eddie McClintock, the bookish and flustered Joanne Kelly, the sardonic Allison Scagliotti and the jaded Saul Rubinek. And their affable, friendly chemistry smoothed out the conceptual confusion of their show. WAREHOUSE 13 was still a legally dissimilar X-FILES shot on a much lower budget, but it was an amiable, undemanding, unchallenging, lightweight X-FILES clone that was soothing and relaxing. Aside from the comedy episodes, THE X-FILES was never fun.

WAREHOUSE 13 being a clone of a pre-existing property and then cloned from subsequent drafts of the clone itself, however, was always something that held it back. I wonder if it is simply bad development strategy to look at a previously successful series and try to replicate it but with just enough differences to a void a lawsuit. But it can work sometimes. BILL AND TED was plainly an American Polaroid of a DOCTOR WHO episode. STAR WARS was an American portrait of THE HIDDEN FORTRESS.

**

What would JOHN RHYS-DAVIES' SLIDERS be like?

Jerry O'Connell and John Rhys-Davies, last year, were very enthusiastic about conceiving a new SLIDERS project. Assuming they could get Cleavant and Sabrina back and that they would be setting the creative direction -- what would Jerry and John want to do with SLIDERS? John most definitely has serious creative ambitions for SLIDERS. He wanted to run the writer's room and write scripts. But he also wanted to be the lead character and for Jerry to be his sidekick. I don't know if that's changed in the years that have passed.

I imagine that John would probably want JOHN RHYS-DAVIES' SLIDERS to just start over from the ground up again and he would want to take ownership of the new show and define it with his personality and interests. And I'm not sure John's interests are in social satire; judging from his personality, he would probably be more along the lines of overt lecturing and moral outrage and it would be a very different voice for SLIDERS having originally been more indirect and comedic.

John also doesn't want to do more than a year or two of playing Arturo before quitting and moving on.

I suspect Jerry doesn't have any real creative ambitions aside from always being happy to be working. He's the executive producer of CARTER and it's very obvious from watching CARTER that Jerry just wants to hang out with his friends on the set for 10 episodes a year.

I wonder if this might become a thread about all my favourite action girls.

Sooo, watching Jerry O'Connell's very mediocre CARTER had me moving on to watching CASTLE. CARTER strikes me as a legally dissimilar photocopy of CASTLE, about a man from the entertainment industry blundering into crime solving with a no-nonsense lady police detective. Except CARTER foolishly made its leading man an actor with no applicable skills to fighting crime and whereas CASTLE features a mystery novelist who actually has something to offer a procedural series.

But I have to say, the appeal of CASTLE is Nathan Fillion's interaction with Stana Katic and Stana Katic's Detective Kate Beckett is another interesting model of what Maggie Beckett could have been. Katic is strangely similar to Kari Wuhrer at certain angles with the cheekbone defined triangle of Wuhrer's face and the reddish brown hair that frames her face just like Wuhrer. But CASTLE films and costumes Katic so differently: the angles on Katic are specifically to bring out her furrowed brow and laser-like glare as she glowers at Nathan Fillion's antics.

Katic's costuming is also terrific. In Season 1, she only wears a dress in two scenes. The rest of the time, she's clad in large lapeled coats, leather jackets, smart blazers, sharp blouses -- and there's some impressive subtlety in the tailoring where at certain angles, the camera picks up on the curve of Katic's back or the rounding of her cleavage, but it's always incidental, the result of Katic wearing clothes that have been fitted to her form.

Kate Beckett is very well-written. Admittedly, her character is just running through all the procedural tropes. But what makes the character comes alive is Katic playing off Fillion. While Fillion gets all the good wisecracks, Katic easily punctures his ego and the fact that she retains composure and focus when Fillion is being so funny -- it makes Katic's Kate Beckett seem like a focused, professional, clearheaded public servant with a crisp cool that is perpetually unruffled. Katic ensures that even when Beckett is annoyed, Beckett is still in control. Where Fillion is aggressively reacting, Katic is aggressively thinking.

There are many, many shots of Katic looking curiously around various crime scenes, her eyes narrowed pensively, her bearing thoughtful and and calculating, her face absorbing all information around her -- it reminds me of how Jerry played Quinn. It reminds me of Jerry's performance in "In Dinos Veritas" where Jerry is looking around The Cave, showing Quinn spotting all the entrance and exit points and coming up with a plan. Katic quietly conveys that Kate Beckett is a crimefighting genius whose cleverness is obscured by Castle's showboating.

Maybe Stana Katic should play Quinn Mallory.