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I remember being 11, I think, and loving the quirky comedy and fun and adventure of SLIDERS and reading the novelization in the school library -- and the opening has the sliders observing a mass shooting of victims and Quinn studying all the dead bodies and detaching, thinking of them as masses of flesh instead of people -- and it repulsed me.

SLIDERS would go on to traumatize me further with Arturo being shot and blown up after getting his brain sucked out and Wade being sent to a rape camp, but Linaweaver started this pattern of abuse.

I don't know why Linaweaver thought it was acceptable to produce a novelization of a charming, winsome dramedy and open it with a bloody mass shooting, a scene that is not in the Pilot, in none of the drafts I've read and completely out of step with the eccentric, satirical and eerie story crafted by Tracy Torme and Robert K. Weiss, who wanted Quinn's journey to begin with wonder, daring, adventure and curiosity. Linaweaver arrogantly decided to open with mass slaughter because he enjoys savagery and bloodshed whether the story calls for it or not and this story did not.

His novelization should be struck from the record; whatever deleted scenes are there, Temporal Flux has provided with his script outtakes and Linaweaver's episode guide is worthless when we have the one from The Expert who actually watched the episodes whereas Linaweaver merely read scripts.

**

I maintain that it is very hard to imagine Jerry O'Connell being too shy to ask Melanie Bradshaw out on a date and I wonder what he made out of those scenes, but however he played it, it wouldn't be as scripted.

Anyway. I would like to, for the 25th anniversary of SLIDERS, share the screenplay "Slide Effects" in the Google Docs format which can scale to desktops, tablets and smartphones.

Well, I can tell you why Informant devoured James O'Keefe: it's because Informant desperately needs to believe that the world at large loved BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (actual title) as much as Informant did and that anyone who didn't care for it is lying, delusional, unfair, mentally ill or in Marvel's pocket because the alternative would be to concede that Informant's personal views are not a universal default, not shared by all and not even within the mainstream. I noticed this when noticing how much it pissed him off to constantly be told, "I cannot stress enough in the name of all that is holy that the views of Informant do not reflect those of the Sliders.tv community."

By the way, I cannot stress enough in the name of Quinn's highlights, Wade's "Dead Man Sliding" dress, Rembrandt's shotgun and the Professor's orange slushie that the views of ireactions do not reflect those of Sliders.tv and that the Sliders.tv community at large is much smarter and cleverer than ireactions.

Informant, for example, is a much better writer and reviewer than I'll ever be. However... a person like O'Keefe assures Informant that his views are indeed shared by all and that anyone who claims otherwise is part of a conspiracy of electoral fraud and human trafficking because otherwise, Informant might have to concede that his point of view is only his own and a conspiracy panderer like O'Keefe assures Informant that anyone who disliked BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (actual title) is an agent of Disney.

And in terms of actual politics -- you have regularly pointed out that Republicans govern by minority rule; they use extensive gerrymandering to elect their candidates which undermines Informant's chosen belief that his politics are the default for all. O'Keefe's deceptively edited videos allowed Informant to justify gerrymandering by claiming it balances out the supposed electoral fraud that Democrats engage in. O'Keefe's work encourages white men to justify their sense of feeling under threat when their privilege is challenged, when a corrupt economic system that benefits them is questioned or when the world that's always validated them is called out as unjust for benefiting the few at the expense of the many.

I don't doubt Informant's sincerity in most areas -- except that curiously, O'Keefe is the one area -- the only area -- in which I caught Informant flat out lying. He claimed to be unfamiliar with O'Keefe's attempt to seduce a reporter and create a sex tape, but he later shared more and more of O'Keefe's newer videos; he was clearly following the man's career and would have known what he'd been up to.

Anyway. I am at the age where I welcome people challenging anything and everything I believe. I DEMAND that all of you disagree with me. My opinions are mine. You get your own!

**

Soooo, awhile ago, Temporal Flux made a very astute observation: the American population is fed up with Democrats and Republicans alike who promise economic relief, job creation, the chance to buy a home and start a family and have health care -- only to fail to deliver any real change. Temporal Flux said that the people voting for Trump didn't actually think Trump would help them; voting for Trump was a way to damage a government that had done nothing to help those citizens survive a collapsing economy and debilitating addiction and the breakdown of essential services and a social safety net. It was a protest vote, a scream of outrage.

And I understand that, but I think it's fair to say that not having a functional, semi-competent leader in government is possibly not the best move when that leader will be expected to, say, prepare his country for a pandemic with something resembling organization and an ability to solve problems and work with others.

I have believed a lot of ridonkulous things over the years and still often do. I believe that rock star vampires, super-intelligent snakes, animal human hybrids and Dream Masters fit into SLIDERS. I believe that Maggie Beckett is a very interesting character with a lot to offer. I believe that the sliders could somehow rotate between different outfits and that Arturo could have a tailored suit every week despite nobody ever carrying luggage. I even believe that David Peckinpah was talented.

But I do not believe that the Wave Rider only has one washroom under any circumstances. That's nonsense. It's a spaceship with multiple suites and extensive living quarters.

Well, this is a nice revisitation of Annie's sterling work on Think of a Roulette Wheel. There was the longest time when I dreaded Annie's review of "The Seer" being the last item on EP.COM and the next thing I knew, I had rented a hotel room a day before March 22, 2015 to urgently complete the first script for SLIDERS REBORN.

Looking at this now, there are certain insights Annie made that I have internalized as part of my personal SLIDERS dogma.

This is, to me, precisely the heart of SLIDERS and I would complete Annie's thought: SLIDERS has the backdrop of a science fiction show like STAR TREK, and the stories are deliberately arranged as a potentially deadly dramedy like THE TWILIGHT ZONE and THE OUTER LIMITS -- but SLIDERS is really a situation comedy like THE ADDAMS FAMILY and SEINFELD which is why I wrote SLIDERS REBORN as a sci-fi sitcom.

As for feeling tired of SLIDERS -- I think there comes a point when we all have said all that we have to say with SLIDERS and settle for revising our greatest hits and there's no shame in that; we had hits and they were great!

At this point, I think I've said that the parallel universe concept allows SLIDERS to resurrect all the characters whether it's in a simple one-episode story ("Slide Effects") or in a tie-in novella; that the characters would be just as fascinating at the actors' present-day ages as they were in 1995 and that SLIDERS can continue to reflect our culture and world and that the multi-genre platform of SLIDERS welcomes not only Torme's quirky comedy-dramedy but also Peckinpah's monster movies and Zicree's sci-fi focus and Bill Dial's cop shows (REBORN). And Annie finished their blogs shortly before the 20th anniversary and I debuted my scripts in time for the 20th and there's no law that says we have to keep doing something big every five years

That said, I'm sure Transmodiar has something cool in mind.

I went eight days without internet and only dial-up speed on my phone. I may never be the same again.

The essay I wrote on Routh is here: http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=7938#p7938

I'm still offline -- my home internet is down (and I have two technicians coming today and tomorrow), but that's why I haven't been that active and why I haven't been able to stream the Arrowverse shows. I have dial up speed internet through my phone.

I don't have a problem with Ray Palmer being written out. LEGENDS has always been a show where people come and go. Hawkman and Hawkgirl left; Nate came in. Jax and the Professor left; Snart left, Amaya left -- the Wave Rider was a journey for these characters, not their final stop. I don't think Brandon Routh and Courtney Ford would take issue with it -- except that, reading between Routh's extremely unspecific statements, it looks like Phil Klemmer didn't tell Routh and Ford that they were only going to be in eight episodes out of 15 until their contract options were picked up but only for half of their availability, meaning Routh and Ford had to find out from their paperwork when reviewing it with their agents. They did not receive a formal meeting with their showrunner informing them that they were being fired.

Fired is a strong word. Actors are very much freelancers with options for contractual renewal. John Rhys-Davies was fired from SLIDERS. In contrast, Meghan Markle (Amy Jessup) was not fired from FRINGE for having done something wrong; she was intended to be a regular but the season's storyline shifted away from supernatural threats to technological forces and Jessup's faith-oriented character no longer made sense without supernatural elements. Markle didn't do anything wrong and she wasn't thrown off the show, but it amounts to the same result of an actor no longer being employed on the series. Meghan Markle seems to have done okay since then, but if you don't communicate with an actor that their role is being written out and given a happy ending and a fond farewell, it feels like a firing.

And I think that was an issue for Routh and Ford because they had a home in Vancouver and their son was enrolled in school in Vancouver and they had expected to be working in Vancouver for the entire season of LEGENDS. When informed that they were only doing eight episodes, they suddenly had to plan for a move back to Los Angeles to find new work, take their son out of school, confuse their child with abruptly different surroundings, say good-bye to their friends and colleagues in British Columbia -- and the LEGENDS showrunners could have let them know much before they'd planned another year of their lives in Canada.

They may also have not been given enough notice to make sure they had projects lined up to make up for the loss of income after their LEGENDS exits.

I don't know why this happened, but we should never ascribe malevolence to what might be incompetence. Routh is worth $12 million on paper, so I assume he shall make it through the year, but he is of course upset. He says he won't be returning to LEGENDS but will guest-star on FLASH, SUPERGIRL, BLACK LIGHTNING, SUPERMAN AND LOIS and (if picked up) GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES.

The drug fell out of use when malaria became resistant to it, so supplies may not be readily available. It’s still being tested.

As Democrats go, Biden is a Republican, albeit one capable of not falling in with neo-Nazis and able to do his job or delegate others. Is marginal competence the best we can hope for? Is the alternative to having a cruel man with dementia in the White House instead an at-best tolerable man with Alzheimer's there instead?

Democrat strategist James Carville Jr. points out that liking or disliking Biden is irrelevant in this situation and I don't know if I agree. I think Slider_Quinn21 would agree. So here are Carville Jr.'s thoughts: that right now, what matters is winning.

TF and I are on opposite ends politically, but I once asked him why Cleavant Derricks was friends with David Peckinpah. Didn't Peckinpah fire all of Cleavant's friends and run SLIDERS into the ground? Why was Cleavant taking Portia and the kids to Peckinpah's house for family dinners and whatnot? Was the Peckinpah housekeeper's meatloaf really that good? Did they have bumper cars in the backyard? Dear God, WHY?

TF said that Cleavant was a professional and a businessman and that to accomplish anything in this world, you sometimes have to work with people you don't necessarily like or who have done things you find repugnant. That may or may not be why he didn't strangle me in my sleep for working with Transmodiar on SLIDERS REBORN.

Transmodiar would add/counter that Cleavant found SOMETHING to admire in Peckinpah, presumably their mutual love for their families. And that we should all do that; we should all look at the people around us and find some point of admiration or respect. This may or may not be why he kept resigning from SLIDERS REBORN and kept helping me with it.

It's possible the endpoint of Slider_Quinn21's view is that until someone other than the extremist Republicans have power, ideology is meaningless and so is ideological distaste for Joe Biden.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 … ll-of-shit

Joe Biden, the likely Democratic nominee for 2020, shows a total inability to control his hostility or communicate coherently in conflict.

I'm liberal, but I'm not a cultist who declares that whoever's been selected as a supposed standard bearer for my end of the political spectrum can do no wrong. That's something crazy people do. People like Allison Mack. I'm not insane, just a bit unsteady. And 2020 is looking like a contest between one incompetent, privileged, volatile, incomprehensible white man and another incompetent, privileged, volatile, incomprehensible white man.

I don't know if it's silly.

Whenever we care about a character, we will engage with what for us is the iconography of the role whether it's the performance, the appearance or some combination of both. It's interesting that pretty much everything that defines Seven of Nine as an icon of STAR TREK (for better or worse) has been dropped. The catsuit is gone. The tied back hair is gone. The lack of contractions is gone. The robotic monotone is gone. The repressed emotion is gone.

But because Jeri Ryan is still maintaining the character's severity and calculated distance, she (I hope) still feels like Seven to you, but her appearance and performance are so different that you're likely looking to the Borg facial piece as a point of recognition. And if it isn't meeting your expectations, it will throw you off.

The way you feel about the headpiece is the way I feel about Quinn Mallory's hair and clothes. To me, Quinn's long hair reflects how he only gets it cut three times a year and trims it himself each month to keep from being blinded by length. The clothes, to me, are his father's; he wears them to assume Michael Mallory's role in his home and world. The brown coat of Season 2 conveys a certain physical hardiness against the elements. The result is that Quinn is extremely recognizable from any distance or angle or lighting, much like Batman with his cowl or Superman with the cape and S-curl.

When Quinn's hair is trimmed short and styled with gel and highlights, I don't believe it. Quinn would never be at the hairdresser that often. When Quinn wears a leather jacket, I don't accept it; Quinn would want a coat, not a jacket. Something with more pockets. And something more nondescript. Jerry O'Connell wanted his hair short and gelled and highlighted and he wanted a leather jacket because the contrasted hair and reflective jacket draw attention. More specifically, a jacket is cut higher and doesn't obscure the backside; that's why Jerry wants to wear it.

But Quinn Mallory is a slider. Perpetually a stranger in a strange land that may or may not be hostile. Quinn doesn't want attention; he wants his grooming and wardrobe to help him blend, to not stand out to bystanders although it does to the audience. I can't accept the Season 3 look because Quinn is a slider and Jerry in Season 3 doesn't look like a slider. He looks like a Hollywood actor.

Anyway. If Seven's headpiece looks wrong to you, then it's wrong. You ought to know. You're the only fan of Seven of Nine in existence. I have literally never heard anyone speak fondly of the character. Just as I am literally the only person in the world who has given Quinn's hair and flannel this much thought.

We shouldn't dismiss such concerns; we should seek to understand them because when we grasp why these things matter to us, we understand ourselves. And when we understand ourselves, we go from having psychotherapy sessions twice a week to once every 90 days.

So... the Ruth, the Fugitive Doctor, is indeed a past Doctor -- and it ties into the Doctors seen in "The Brain of Morbius." *spoilers&

"The Timeless Children" reveals the birth of the Time Lords and the secret origin of the Doctor. The Doctor is not a Time Lord. The Doctor is the first Time Lord. The Doctor was an abandoned black girl found on a distant planet by a Gallifreyan astronaut, Tecteun. Tecteun adopted the child as her own; the child died in an accident only to regenerate into a new body -- and Tecteun became obsessed with experimenting on the child to learn the secret of regeneration to ward off death. Tecteun forced the child to regenerate multiple times; the girl became a boy, changed race,  changed ages -- and while Tecteun couldn't learn anything from the child about where she'd come from her who she was, Tecteun finally learned how to graft regeneration into her own body and then other Gallifreyans but set a limit of 13 lives to control its use.

It's implied that the secret of regeneration also led to time travel, producing the Time Lords while the Time Lords continued experimenting on the child, allowing her to age to adulthood, dispatching her on various missions that would often take lifetimes, wiping her memory each time -- and then, for reasons unknown and erased, the child was mind-wiped once more, regenerated into a male form, locked to 13 lives and starting as the William Hartnell Doctor.

At one point, the Jodie Doctor looks at her own memories and there are clips from previous episodes and one of the clips is the additional faces in "The Brain of Morbius" and another is the Ruth Doctor.

The episode itself is a bit pathetic: Jodie Whittaker spends nearly the whole episode locked in a cell receiving all this exposition. At the end, Chibnall puts her in a position to blow up Gallifrey and the Master and she decides to do it but then hesitates and then stops and then a guest character blows up the planet for her so that the Doctor can run away. Chibnall doesn't have the imagination to come up with a satisfactory solution, so he creates a suicide plan for the Doctor and then has someone else carry it out. He's not a good screenwriter -- but this revelation -- I like how it makes the Doctor even more of a mystery. Who was she before she became the first Time Lord? Why was she abandoned? Where were her parents? Why couldn't she answer any questions about where she came from? Where did she come from?

Why did the Fugitive Doctor's TARDIS look like a police telephone box when the First Doctor's TARDIS only took on that form when landing in 1963 in the series premiere?

It suggests a much lengthier history behind the Doctor and the TARDIS and for every question of the Doctor's origin that's answered, a new question has been raised, and if the Doctor's Time Lord heritage and Gallifreyan origins are no longer where she started, merely a middle ground of her life, then Chibnall's decision to remove the Time Lords and the planet after Steven Moffat restored them makes sense.

It also explains a lot of peculiar continuity errors over the years. The First Doctor said that he had been "exiled" from his home planet, but the Second Doctor later said that he had run away. The Third Doctor said that he had lived for "thousands" of years but the Fourth Doctor confirmed his age to be around 400 years and mentioned that his departure from Gallifrey had involved some scandal he'd fled (which reduces the distinction between exile and running away). There's also those Morbius faces)

The Sixth Doctor was constantly bragging about his experience, but the Seventh Doctor hinted that he had personally interacted with Rassilon and Omega, the founders of Gallifreyan society at the dawn of time which if the Sixth had remembered, he would have discussed repeatedly.

Then there's the confused memories: Seven says he doesn't remember ever being a child while Eight recalls lying in the grass with his father and Ten speaks of running across fields as a boy. It looks like the Doctor's memories were edited to remove her pre-Hartnell lives from mind, but each regeneration seems to have opened up more and more with the Third remembering "thousands of years," the fourth recalling the pre-Hartnell lives -- and even the Second Doctor starting to feel that leaving Gallifrey was due to a subconscious instinct that she had been exploited, experimented upon, abused (and a woman forced to live in a man's body) -- and that her supposed excommunication was in truth an escape.

That said, Chibnall's grasp of plot, action, situation, resolution and exposition remain shockingly poor. I'm not sure what this person is doing writing television. He's a great producer: the anamorphic lens filming, locations, lighting, blocking, interiors and effects are beautiful as is the music -- to the point where I may rewatch Series 11 and 12 with the sound off and the score playing and then fill in the stories myself.

Also... if Lex was a hero in this new timeline (as far as the public is concerned), wouldn't the events of Season 4 be extremely different from what Kara was watching on Myxflix?

Like I said -- people who write altered timelines without Slider_Quinn21's guidance do so at their peril.

Looks like Generation Five at DC is still moving forward:
https://www.bleedingcool.com/2020/02/25 … comics-5g/

Icheb was recast. It's not the VOYAGER actor playing the character. And thank God for that. Manu Intiryami tweeted that Anthony Rapp should get a grip for viewing Kevin Spacey's assault on him as assault.

**

To get to Freecloud, the ship entered the Beta Quadrant (Romulan and Klingon space), so I assume that Freecloud is in the Beta Quadrant and that it doesn't reflect on the Alpha Quadrant at all.

**

Is there a novel or a comic book? Who cares?! The STAR TREK: COUNTDOWN comics that tied into the 2009 movie and showed how the NEXT GENERATION cast tried to stop the Romulan supernova featured Data alive and restored; that's being ignored. DISCOVERY: DESPERATE HOURS had Burnham meet Spock which is completely ignored by their TV meeting in DISCOVERY's Season 2. Also, DESPERATE HOURS has Spock visit the Shenzhou and remark that it looks a bit primitive compared to his much more advanced Enterprise ship which he describes as looking exactly like the 60s sets; DISCOVERY also ignored this by modernizing the Enterprise sets but using some of the same colours. What does it matter if there's a novel or a comic book for PICARD? It'll just be ignored before the season is even over. Who cares what's in the PICARD comics and novels?

The PICARD COUNTDOWN comic is about how Picard befriended Zhaban and Laris and how they moved into his chateau. The first issue is about Zhaban and Laris moving in the furniture. The second issue is Picard arguing with them about where to position the stove and refrigerator. The third issue is Picard painting a room blue but changing his mind and deciding he wants it to be brown instead and then there's a heart-pounding race to the store to pick up more paint before it closes for the night.

(You don't know that it's not.)

There's also a novel that I haven't read yet, THE LAST BEST HOPE, which I assume is set during Season 6 of DEEP SPACE NINE where Picard and the Enterprise-E crew dock with Babylon 5 to attend Worf's wedding only to realize they got the wrong space station and the title is based on Babylon 5's mission statement as the "last, best hope for peace."

(You don't know that it's not!)

I actually haven't gotten to the Tom King run yet. I'm perpetually 2 - 4 years behind comics, buying them in bulk during a Comixology sale and reading through them then. I often wait for a run to be complete -- except I never got around to reading the Brian Michael Bendis run on X-MEN or the recent run of THE FLASH. With superheroes in TV and film, superhero comics aren't a terribly rewarding medium for me these days. But I shall defer to your judgement on it as you know your stuff.

**

Ethan Van Sciver and Cosmic Book News are... not the most reliable source of 'news,' to be frank. Van Sciver is a brilliant artist, but he hasn't worked for DC since 2017 after multiple writers (with the sales figures for Didio to leave them alone) refused to work with him again for reasons not specified but easily inferred. It was the same year that Van Sciver (a brilliant artist) told a fan to kill themselves and everyone from colorists to writers condemned him.

Van Sciver (a brilliant artist) apologized and made a donation to a suicide prevention charity, but that struck me as the end of brilliant artist Ethan Van Sciver's career in mainstream comics and DC hasn't been willing to hiring him since. When Mark Brooks, Chris Sotomayor, Paul Jenkins, Marc Andreyko, Mark Waid, Cully Hammer, Fabian Nicieza and B. Clay Moore and just about anyone in comics holds him in contempt, who employed at DC or Marvel would even talk to Van Sciver (a brilliant artist) at this point to give him the inside scoop? Would Van Sciver (a brilliant artist) know anyone even peripherally involved with DC who'd be anyone but a fellow disgruntled former employee?

Van Sciver is a brilliant artist, but his story doesn't even make any sense. Why would AT&T fire Dan Didio from DC and then declare that they will be letting the company live or die based on the publishing initiative spearheaded by... the guy they just fired? Don't corporations generally prevent the previous executive's projects from coming to fruition?

What gain would there be in letting Generation 5 go forward? If it's successful, the previous executive takes the credit and one wonders why he was let go. If it's a failure, one wonders why the company allowed a project produced by someone they deemed incompetent to continue existing. There is absolutely no advantage to carrying G5 out especially if the plans were a few Post-Its at best, and there is absolutely no rationality in firing Didio over his management of G5 and then declaring DC publishing to be dependent upon G5's success or failure when firing Didio makes it clear that the project was failing AT&T's standards of competence.

Except there's a grain of truth in the story from the brilliant Van Sciver: DC (and Marvel) haven't made much money from publishing in years. The comics division is largely research and development for feature films and TV shows. And DC's owners could very reasonably decide at some point that they can do R&D without publishing monthly comic books. The brilliant Van Sciver's seemingly revelatory 'news' about DC Comics' fate is something that could have happened at any time in the last 20 years; he's just taken a guess at to what the flashpoint could be and I don't think it's a good guess.

If I keep guessing that at some point, Slider_Quinn21's child will start talking, I'm going to be right eventually. It doesn't mean I've installed spy cameras into his home.

**

I am still in the process of re-reading VAMPIRELLA comics written by Grant Morrison and Mark Millar from 1997. I'm pretty behind the times in my reading; Grant Morrison and Mark Millar don't even talk to each other anymore. :-)

Well, Cisco says that all the previous rules of the multiverse have been replaced with new ones that he doesn't know, so doubles occupying the same world is open to different results. ARROW has (according to Slider_Quinn21) featured doubles who were 'created' by altering the past so that where they originally died, they now survived to the present in the new timeline. The Brainiac 5 doubles of SUPERGIRL were (presumably) from alternate/potential futures who have time travelled back to the present which is now the merged Earth Prime. And Beth was, like Supergirl, from a parallel Earth that has folded into Earth 1 except where Earth 1 didn't have a Supergirl, Earth 1 did have a Beth in the identity of Alice.

I don't believe Picard specified that he sold his wine, but he's putting a lot of effort into a large crop. Regardless, PICARD is declaring that capitalism is part of the STAR TREK universe and not acknowledging that it hasn't been since 1988. The more I think about it, the more uncomfortable I am with PICARD ignoring TNG, DS9 and VOY's declaration that money does not exist in the Federation.

Even though the writers mocked the concept, it's been an established part of the STAR TREK universe for 22 years and upheld by every writer up to NEMESIS. And the truth is, despite the writers saying it didn't make sense, the replicator technology offered a path of world-building to make this concept work.

I think PICARD should have gently retconned the no-money concept while still maintaining it. Every Federation citizen gets a basic replicator and housing allowance. When you can make anything from nothing, the social safety net ensures you always have at minimum a dorm room, health care, clothing and food. Education is free (thanks to holographic transmission). If you want more possessions, more storage space, more privacy, a kitchen, you can work to earn it. Restauranteurs, booksellers, filmmakers and lawyers ply their trade out of interest in their field and do receive additional replicator allowance that they can use to buy homes and furniture and clothing and whatever. However, no one is interested in working for the money any more; the money is incidental to their lives.

Seth MacFarlane once joked that THE NEXT GENERATION boasted the most professional people ever seen on television. No one was ever bored, tired, bad-tempered, anxious, nervous or uninterested in their job except for Reginald Barclay and when that came to Picard's attention, it was so unusual and peculiar that Picard had an entire senior staff meeting about how to assist and support an underperforming employee.

THE NEXT GENERATION has been regularly mocked for how blandly pleasant and therefore uninteresting the characters were and while that's a fair point, one also has to note: the replicator can make ANYTHING and the ship has an AI that operates and cleans and can presumably run almost every function automatically. Of course no one is ever drained or weary; no one has to do chores. No one has to cook or clean or do laundry.

This means that Geordi goes to the engine room because he loves engines, Dr. Crusher goes to sickbay because she's fascinated by medicine, Worf goes to the bridge's security post because he loves weapons, and so forth. There's a scene in "Hollow Pursuits" where Barclay is late for his shift and Riker towers over him, glaring at the terrified crewman and tells him, "I don't know what you got away with at your last posting, but this is the Enterprise. We set a different standard here."

Why is Barclay so scared? So what if he gets fired? He's not going to default on his loans or lose his house. Who cares about any of that in a replicator-equipped society? No, Barclay is scared because he would lose the little place and purpose he has in life.

I recognize that this can be difficult to write and that the writers in TNG, DS9 and VOY never took it seriously and PICARD, wanting to have Picard lack the unlimited resources of the Enterprise and Starfleet, has used money to hold him back. But they could have softened the discrepancy a bit by indicating that the Federation was culturally disinterested in money, that payment has become incidental, that the true acquisition is purpose and achievement -- but that there is an underlying currency of replicator credit that the average person is not interested in. It's not that money doesn't exist; it's that it's become beneath notice.

PICARD could say that Picard couldn't mount a Romulan rescue without Starfleet commiting the resources to synthesizing and replicating the equipment and fuel and then remark, "Even an admiral's replicator stipend won't produce what we need." Rios could say that he's "very expensive; well above standard replicator credit rates" because conventional civilian private charter and passage wouldn't have the security and safety clearances to go on Picard's mission. Raffi could be enraged that her basic replicator allowance entitles her to a dorm, a self-serve sickbay and access to a replicator canteen but no other luxuries. And then we could have Dr. Agnes Jurati confused. "I don't understand why you're so fixated on this 'money' concept; I haven't checked to see if I've been paid in years. I have a room above my lab and there's a replicator in the canteen."

Why couldn't Jake bid on the auction on DS9? Let's retcon that to say that replicator credits weren't accepted. Why wasn't Jake paid for his book? Let's say people receiving a Starfleet replicator stipend (which Jake was as Sisko's dependent) generally waive additional payment for their labour and what difference would it make if Jake's replicator credit could, from book sales, produce 10,000 daily root beers instead of the 100 his basic stipend covers? Instead of ignoring the past, let's add a bit of supplemental information. Why did Picard say "money doesn't exist in the 24th century"? Let's adjust that to say, "Money is no longer a cultural force in the 24th century when a replicator can create whatever we need."

But PICARD has simply blown off the no money concept (although the replicators are still present).

Towards the end of his life, Michael Piller said that he had somewhat ruthlessly enforced the "Roddenberry box" of restrictions that barred personal conflict and money from STAR TREK scripts and that writers were quite understandably fed up with Piller's insistence that writers write around these restrictions instead of throwing them away. Piller said that he completely understood when the writers working for him declared that if Piller didn't leave VOYAGER, they would leave VOYAGER. All I can say is -- PICARD is not the first series to feel that the no money element was too difficult to write, but Roddenberry introduced the no-money concept AND the replicators, so he did cover his bases there.

Well, THE NEXT GENERATION, DEEP SPACE NINE, VOYAGER and GENERATIONS, FIRST CONTACT, INSURRECTION and NEMESIS took place in a Federation that did not use money (however that works). PICARD is set 20 years after NEMESIS and money has become part of common parlance again, so I think we have to accept that in two decades, things have changed. Money is part of the Federation again.

THE ORIGINAL SERIES had Kirk referring to the Federation spending "a lot of money on our training" in "Errand of Mercy" and informing a crewman in "Doomsday Machine" that "You just earned your pay for the week." In "The Trouble With Tribbles," Uhura buys a tribble from merchant Cyrano Jones. DISCOVERY has Harry Mudd being very money-fixated.

THE VOYAGE HOME has Kirk referring to the 20th century "still using money," but in context, it suggests he means "money" as in "cash," with the Federation using some sort of digital credit system with no physical currency. However, THE NEXT GENERATION in "The Neutral Zone" went so far as to claim that money no longer existed in the Federation -- at Roddenberry's behest. The writers Roddenberry employed did not understand what this meant, but with the stories set aboard a starship and with replicators, money was narratively inconsequential to their scripts, so it rarely came up.

In FIRST CONTACT, Picard says, "Money doesn't exist in the 24th century. The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity." Ronald D. Moore wrote that and admitted he had no idea how that could work. But it was one of Roddenberry's rules. So he followed it. Later he wrote another script on DEEP SPACE NINE which pokes fun when Jake can't bid on a non-Federation auction and tries to borrow money from Nog.

Nog says, "Use your own money." Jake protests that he doesn't have any and Nog replies, "It's not my fault that your species decided to abandon currency-based economics in favor of some philosophy of self-enhancement." Jake repeats Picard's FIRST CONTACT dialogue about working for self-betterment and Nog says, "What does that mean exactly?" Jake cannot explain. Jake is also proud to be a professional writer only for Nog to note that Jake isn't paid for his book.

Except... Moore is wrong to entirely dismiss Roddenberry's vision of a society that has grown beyond money by TNG because TNG introduced the replicator. If you can create anything from those little slots -- clothes, food, medicine, building materials -- then money would naturally become a lot less significant. The social safety net could ensure a universal replicator ration. Roddenberry clearly didn't think through his moneyless society aside from declaring it to be so, but I can imagine money becoming irrelevant in the 24th century if the replicator could even replicate its own fuel supply.

I think Roddenberry would have done best to say that while money exists, it's become trivial; anything anyone needs can be replicated and everyone has a basic replicator allowance. While people receive additional replicator credit for work, the payment is beneath notice; Federation citizens can barter with currency but rarely see any reason to do so. Money could have become regarded with disinterest culturally even if present economically. Everyone is now employed in the not-for-profit industry.

But this is clearly over anyway by PICARD. People are using money. Raffi lacks money. Rios charges money. Picard makes wine to earn money. Something has changed between NEMESIS and PICARD.

Perhaps the replicator economy was dependent upon the perpetually rising scale of replication to keep pace with population growth -- and then the synthetics destroying the shipyards and being banned from use has made it impossible for the Federation to be as free as they once were with replicator power.

The thing is that Gene Roddenberry's original vision of Starfleet / the United Earth Space Probe Agency / the Space Service in THE ORIGINAL SERIES is not what Roddenberry later claimed was his original vision as presented in THE NEXT GENERATION. In THE ORIGINAL SERIES, Starfleet was the US Navy and while Starfleet and the Federation professed values of peace and equality, Kirk frequently found himself at odds with Starfleet. In "Errand of Mercy," Starfleet is notably imperialistic in trying to seize territory to gain advantage over the Klingons while professing that their technology will raise huts and villages into hyperadvanced cities. In "Metamorphosis," Starfleet is demanding that the Enterprise be a part of a show of military force, something which Kirk does not prioritize.

It's only with THE NEXT GENERATION that Starfleet became the bland, broadly pleasant relief organization Roddenberry claimed that it had always been, so having Picard being frustrated with a Starfleet that seems more concerned with sustaining itself than practicing its ideals is pretty in tune with Roddenberry's initial vision which he later disavowed.

I don't know how the other TNG and DS9 and VOY characters reacted to Starfleet abandoning the Romulan relief effort, but it has to be noted that if Starfleet would not commit ships, labour and resources to the evacuation and rebuilding effort, then the 20 - 30 person cast of those shows would not have been able to mount a rescue -- at least not as PICARD presents it. This is another area where, due to Roddenberry, I'm not entirely sure I understand the situation. PICARD claims that because Starfleet would not back the rescue effort, the Romulans were abandoned. This doesn't make sense because Roddenberry established that the Federation was beyond money; that people worked to better themselves; that anything anyone needed could be replicated anyway, so people worked because they wanted to, not to survive.

Following that logic -- what exactly was to stop Picard from assembling a legion of volunteers and replicating whatever he needed to save the Romulans? The argument, I suppose, could be that mass scale replicators to build ships need a certain level of power that is beyond any small group of individuals' allotment for replication, and that an effort of that scale needed the approval of synthetic labourers who were now banned.

That said, Rios tells Agnes that as a pilot, he is "very expensive," Picard can't get a ship without help, he harvests grapes for wine -- PICARD doesn't seem to be maintaining the idea that the Federation is above and beyond money and unless I missed it, they haven't even referred to it.

**

Picard letting people call him JL strikes me as two factors. The first is that Picard has relaxed. From Seasons 1 - 7, he was gradually softening until by the series finale, he joined the weekly poker game and was cracking wise with Data by NEMESIS. The other factor is that Patrick Stewart has relaxed. Originally, Stewart for Seasons 1 - 2 had a reputation for being strict and irritable with his cast members for conversing and chattering between takes, bellowing at them, "WE ARE NOT HERE TO HAVE FUN!"

Michael Dorn addressed this with care and maturity by using Worf's workstation as the perfect perch above the captain's chair to crack eggs over Stewart's head.

Eventually, Stewart realized that his forceful insistence on relentless seriousness had less to do with being an actor and more to do with his unaddressed grief and trauma over being a child and watching his father repeatedly kick the shit out of his mother day after day, year after year. Stewart grew up with a constantly simmering hatred towards his father matched with a paralyzing fear of the man that prevented him from defending his mother as she was on the receiving end of another fist to the face and a boot to the stomach. The most he could do was use himself as a human shield.

As a result, Stewart grew into someone who believed he always had to be locked down and controlled to restrain his rage against his father or others and out of fear that he could follow his father in becoming a physical abuser. His firm, militaristic behaviour was a mask on top of isolation and grief and helplessness.

Over time, as Stewart addressed this, he stopped being so controlling over himself and his show and this is very obvious in his performance. He became quicker to laugh; he was no longer burying a horrific childhood and could begin to relax, and it's like the things that used to upset and enrage him like actors chatting between takes or breaking character or experimenting with blocking and cue lines became trivial and welcome. He became laid back to the point where Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis would address him as "Old Baldy" and he enjoyed that because it indicated how comfortable it was to be around him now.

Also, I recently ran into a schoolteacher I remember being very much a disciplinarian. He informed me that he was now letting students call him various insulting nicknames because "I am really old and I have no fucks left to give."

Which is probably why Picard went from someone who required being addressed as "Captain" or "Sir" is now happy to be greeted with a casual, "What up, JL?"

Finished the mobile conversion for Part 5 of SLIDERS REBORN, a script called "Revolution."

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nYv … sp=sharing

This script... I don't feel it works. I felt that SLIDERS REBORN needed an installment where Jerry O'Connell's Quinn and Robert Floyd's Mallory would share scenes.  I decided to make Mallory a hallucination after Quinn is exposed to hallucinogenic gas through a series of events so convoluted that it required a psychic character from "Obsession" to rationalize it and I think it's just too confusing.

Slider_Quinn21, however, really likes "Revolution" and feels that it worked to dimensionalize Mallory and get into Quinn's head, and I suppose that there are times when the author needs to remember that his perception of his work is not the reader's perception.

Still, I feel Tom and Cory best summarized my feelings on "Revolution" in their REWATCH PODCAST segment.

CORY: "Okay. Part 5 of Sliders Reborn: it's a 46-page script called 'Revolution,' written by ireactions and published on June 6, 2016."

TOM: "June! So, it was eight months between 'Reminiscence' and 'Revolution'?"

CORY: "I guess life happened or something?"

TOM: (laughing) "Eight months to write... this."

CORY: "This one -- can we actually try to get through a summary?

TOM: "You can try. Uh, maybe we should play the usual music."

The plot summary background music begins.

CORY: (chuckling) "Okay -- so the script is mostly a dream sequence where Quinn is trapped in this mansion that's on fire and Quinn's in a room filling with toxic gas, and he hallucinates Mallory."

TOM: "This would be the character played by Robert Floyd in Season 5 -- the lab assistant that got merged with Quinn. So -- the whole script here -- it's mostly Quinn and Mallory talking."

CORY: "Yeah, Mallory asks Quinn how he ended up in this room filling with poisoned gas, and Quinn runs through his day: this lady in the merged San Francisco was buying tech from parallel Earths, building a virtual reality machine and bankrupting her company and putting all her employees out of work to build it. Quinn went to confront her and got really upset. He went to her house to sabotage her machine only to accidentally set off the hallucinogenic gas that the machine uses -- "

TOM: (verge of laughing) "Because the VR machine uses hallucinogenic gas. Because -- what?!"

CORY: "I don't know."

TOM: "Hahahahahah!"

CORY: "Let's try to get through this. The gas is not only a hallucinogen but highly flammable, Quinn's now overcome by the fumes, he's trapped in the house, he's hallucinating Mallory, and Mallory is trying to talk to him and figure out why Quinn was so fixated on this woman. Tom -- you finish the rest of this summary. I just -- I can't do it."

TOM: "Hahaha! Oh-kay... "

Tom takes a deep breath.

TOM: "Okay -- so it turns out, this lady -- she's Melanie Wallace -- a character who appeared for like one minute in the Season 2 episode with the psychics. She's a psychic. Quinn wanted her help to fix this broken multiverse, but Melanie's seen the future and there's just no hope, and she built this VR machine to... to give herself a perfect afterlife? I mean, I don't even... I don't even -- ughhhh."

CORY: "Keep going, you're almost there."

TOM: "Okay, so, Quinn accidentally detonated the gas. Melanie's dead. Quinn's dying. Quinn has lost hope for saving reality, Mallory gives him a pep talk, and this dream sequence helps Quinn find a way out of the burning house and survive and feel hope for the future? Okay?"

CORY: "Okay."

TOM: "Okay."

The background music ends.

TOM: "I don't even -- I don't think we exactly summarized this story.

CORY: "I think these 46-pages defy a synopsis."

TOM: "Well. You were right before -- all of ireactions' plots are sort of flimsy excuses to get the characters he wants together in the same room -- and for this story, he wanted to get Jerry O'Connell's Quinn and Robert Floyd's Quinn together in the same room.

CORY: (horrified whisper) " ... why... ?"

TOM: "Well, ireactions interviewed Rob Floyd, remember? So, as of this script, Maggie and Diana had joined the cast. And he said in his notes that he didn't feel comfortable leaving Mallory out because it'd be insulting to Rob Floyd -- I mean, they're not like best friends or anything, but they're friends. So he wrote this dream sequence script, y'know?"

CORY: (exasperated) "Jesus."

TOM: "Hahahahah! He said -- he says in his notes -- he sent the script to Rob Floyd, and Rob thanked him, but Rob never got back to him with what he thought, probably because Rob hasn't seen that many episodes of SLIDERS and didn't understand it."

CORY: "Well, I've seen every episode of SLIDERS and I barely understand what's going on."

TOM: (snickering) "Yeah."

CORY: "You've got a psychic creating a VR machine that uses hallucinogenic gas that explodes, a video game company, a terminal illness, Quinn being obsessed with the VR machine, and the VR machine creating a digital afterlife because... ?"

TOM: "Because it creates a situation where Quinn's trapped in a burning building and hallucinating and the hallucination of Mallory gives him information that helps Quinn escape."

CORY: "I think -- I've generally liked Parts 1 to 4 of SLIDERS REBORN. There's some issues in ireactions' approach -- he has a lot of tricks where he obviously works out the scenes he wants before he works out the plot, and he dresses it up with humour and jokes and it's all good."

TOM: "But this time -- it's not."

CORY: "This is where his tricks don't work. The story's a mess."

TOM: "Yeah. The main appeal of ireactions' writing is that he captures the voices of the actors which you said before. But I don't think he pulls it off for Robert Floyd's Mallory -- mostly because Mallory never had a strong voice on the show, so really, ireactions doesn't have anything to work with."

CORY: "You're exactly right. I can excuse pretty much all the problems with Parts 1 to 4 because they get characters I really like back, but Mallory isn't one of those characters."

TOM: "Also -- in Parts 1 to 4, all the references to the past were really effective. But here -- Mallory tells Quinn he's beaten all these bad guys in the past, the CDC, the Prime Oracle, the Zercurvians -- and there's all these descriptions of people Quinn's helped -- but I couldn't remember who any of these people were."

CORY: "I did know who all these people were -- Gillian, Holly the hotel manager and her son, uh, the kid from the Western episode -- but it felt like this joyless shopping list."

TOM: "Well, yeah, especially the kid from the Western episode that you love so much. 'Come back, Quinn! Come back!'"

CORY: "Gnnrrrghhhhh!"

TOM: "Throughout that, I felt ireactions was really trying. He comes up with an arc for Quinn. He finds a way to show that Quinn's scientifically talented, but Mallory knows people. But the plot's too scattered. It's just too convoluted to work Mallory into the story and give him something, like, substantial to do."

CORY: "It just shows that ireactions' strengths are in writing Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo -- and if those four characters aren't on the page in some form, his style just falls apart."

I got to the end of the latest PICARD when _____________ shows up to the rescue and my heart soared and I was pleased because I knew that Slider_Quinn21 (and only Slider_Quinn21) would be happy to see ___ again. I am somewhat indifferent to ___ and I have also literally never seen anyone other than Slider_Quinn21 express fondness for this character and I know he will be glad to reunite with this old friend.

Thanks for the link! Margot Robbie's thought process is... puzzling and misguided, to say the least. I'm not sure if Robbie trying to co-opt the BIRDS OF PREY brand was egotistical in the way Tom Cruise (successfully) turned MISSION IMPOSSIBLE from a team-based series with a rotating cast into a star vehicle for him and him alone. Did Robbie want to become synonymous with BIRDS OF PREY in the same way and take the name for herself?

It's possible, but given how BIRDS OF PREY establishes a team called the Birds of Prey and promptly declares that Harley Quinn isn't on it, I get the sense that Robbie misunderstood and misidentified the core elements of the BIRDS OF PREY. She says in her interview that BIRDS OF PREY seemed to be open to featuring any female superhero or anti-hero in the DC Universe and she rejected GOTHAM CITY SIRENS as a title because it was about Harley, Poison Ivy and Catwoman as Gotham-based women with a penchant for seduction. That's fair, but Robbie seems to think that BIRDS OF PREY was a generic brand for any superheroine and that is simply not the case.

While the 2000 BIRDS OF PREY TV show had many, many, many faults, it was ultimately true to the concept: the show featured Barbara Gordon as a wheelchair-bound Oracle of cyberspace guiding her superhero field agents through crimefighting missions. It wasn't a completely faithful adaptation: Barbara's field agent was Huntress instead of Black Canary; the Black Canary character was represented as a teenager (later revealed to be the daughter of a more comics-accurate Black Canary); the Huntress was Bruce Wayne's daughter (which the Huntress was in a parallel universe, but in the prime universe where the BOP comic is set, she wasn't related to Batman).

The show was bound to Gotham whereas the comic was a globetrotting series; the show had Alfred who at most cameoed in the comic -- but it was still about a woman with a disability leading a superhero team from within her base of operations. It was still BIRDS OF PREY.

The BIRDS OF PREY movie is not about a woman with a disability leading a team from her base of operations. In fact, Harley Quinn is never even on the team. I think making a HARLEY QUINN movie and making a BIRDS OF PREY movie were completely at odds; at best, the Birds of Prey are a tangent. It'd be like retitling the SPIDER-MAN HOMECOMING to be called NED LEEDS: THE GUY IN THE CHAIR FOR PARKER or retitling IRON MAN to be called JARVIS: THE STARK DIGITAL ASSISTANT or retitling the JAMES BOND series to be called THE MAN WITH THE WALTHER PISTOL or retitling SLIDERS to be called MOTOROLA. The Birds of Prey are not irrelevant to the HARLEY QUINN movie, but it reflects how Margot Robbie had a truly irrational attachment to the title. This is not a BIRDS OF PREY movie. It's a HARLEY QUINN film with a supporting role for two characters (Huntress and Black Canary) who form a team at the end but well outside Harley's involvement or interest. It's like Robbie was caught between her job to make a HARLEY QUINN film and her desire to make a BIRDS OF PREY movie and tried to do both in one film.

Tom Cruise was scorned and ridiculed for what he did to the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE series, but he got through it because (a) he eventually allowed the team concept to re-establish itself and (b) he was financing the films with his own production company instead of having the studio assume all the cost and risk of his creative obsessions. I don't see that happening with Margot Robbie; she's brilliant, but she's not the only person in the world who has or will play Harley Quinn.

Creatively -- I think it works out fine. The movie is extremely enjoyable and an absolute joy. From a marketing standpoint, however, the title makes no sense whatsoever and suggests an ensemble; it suggests that BIRDS OF PREY is another team film with Harley in a supporting role like she was in SUICIDE SQUAD when it is in fact the Harley Quinn spin-off focused on Harley Quinn. And Margot Robbie seemed to also have an irrational attachment to an R-rating that is totally unnecessary; a version of this HARLEY QUINN film with "damned" instead of "fucking" would still be the same movie and teenaged girls -- the perfect audience for this story -- could have gotten in to see it.

It's a shame because Robbie is an amazing performer and creator and clearly had a meaningful and special vision for producing her film and battling for her ideas -- but she seemed ludicrously insistent on (a) making her HARLEY QUINN movie launch characters who weren't Harley Quinn (b) choosing a title that emphasizes characters who aren't Harley Quinn and (c) acquiring a content rating that would keep Harley Quinn's most devoted fans from seeing the HARLEY QUINN movie.

And now Part 4 of SLIDERS REBORN: "Reminiscence" (4) is converted to mobile.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Qpn … sp=sharing

It's strange: this short novella was mostly me with very little input from others, yet it exists in its current form and position entirely because of Transmodiar. Originally, this was Part 2. Part 1 opens with Rembrandt emerging from the vortex of "The Seer" and collapsing in an alley due to the injection. He briefly regains consciousness to find Quinn, Wade and Arturo with him, miraculously, impossibly restored to life and to Rembrandt's side. The plan was for this novella, "Reminiscence," to explain how this came to be. The original novella had Quinn being erased from reality, struggling to anchor himself by telling his story to a woman who doesn't know him, the entire story of sliding and how he, Wade and Arturo came back to life, found Rembrandt and restored Earth Prime. At the end, the woman is revealed to be his mother who remembers him and her remembrance bonds Quinn back into the multiverse.

You can read the original draft here -- https://freepdfhosting.com/221bcaa5ee.pdf -- and Transmodiar thought it was ghastly, pointing out that the dense continuity was alienating even to him, a man who had watched SLIDERS far more than is medically safe. He said that the plot hinged on Quinn telling a CRAZY story to a woman who doesn't know him and nobody would tolerate this extremely long, convoluted tale of lunacy from someone who was clearly insane.

I proceeded to rewrite the entire thing in its present form where Quinn is in a mental ward telling his crazy story to a psychiatrist (supposedly the one from "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome"). I put the text of Transmodiar's emails questioning the plot into the psychiatrist's dialogue -- verbatim -- so that Quinn could answer his questions and explain the issues.

I'm not sure "Additional Plotting" is entirely the correct credit for Transmodiar's contributions except to say that it would not have been written without him and this is my favourite installment of SLIDERS REBORN and possibly the most-enjoyed chapter of the series -- I still get emails about it now and then.

People really liked this one and all the strengths they point to -- the format, the structure of Quinn explaining his ludicrous life to a doubtful doctor in a mental asylum -- they originate from Transmodiar even though he didn't suggest them.

The script for DUEL OF THE FATES by Colin Trevorrow has been released. Many questions are answered, many quandaries are settled, but I confess that the only one that interests me is what Slider_Quinn21 thinks. :-)

http://freepdfhosting.com/19e18635e0.pdf

I too just finished watching the PICARD season premiere. I was relieved to see Patrick Stewart winded by a heart-pounding walk up a flight of stairs -- because I was appalled by GENERATIONS, FIRST CONTACT, INSURRECTION and NEMESIS turning Picard into an action hero wrestling villains on bridges, firing tommy guns through Borg (although it was meant to be appalling), shooting down drones and leaping about catwalks and racing dune buggies. That's not what Picard is for.

In PICARD, Picard is afraid. He is frail. He is weak. But infirm or not, he took an oath as a Starfleet officer to stand for those who couldn't, to defend those who came to him for aid, if not with force, then with knowledge and strategy and care. And he's an old man; he's lived his life, so he's willing to put his body in the line of fire if it means saving someone else.

Dajh's supsersoldier combat while Picard hides behind a bench -- it suggests that fighting may be superficially flashy, but it isn't special or unique. We wouldn't bring Professor Arturo back to have him wrestle Jeffrey Dean Morgan or blow up a radioactive worm, after all; we'd bring him back for his big ideas and John Rhys-Davies' bombastic scenery chewing and his problem solving. Any fool can wrestle and shoot. We need a peacemaker.

I can assure you that I warned her and did so before asking eBay to intervene. I sent her a message quoting passages from eBay's specific policies, including:

• "Even if you specify no returns accepted, under the eBay Money Back Guarantee, the buyer can still return an item if it doesn’t match the listing description"

• "In some instances, we may not require that an item be returned to the seller"

• "For example: if the return request was opened because the item was not as described"

• "Or if the seller did not provide a return shipping label"

• "This User Agreement, the Mobile Application Terms of Use, and all policies and additional terms posted on and in our sites, applications, tools and services (collectively "Services") set out the terms on which eBay offers you access to and use of our Services."

I seriously doubt she didn't know she was selling a 16GB item as 32GB because she refused to apologize for it and insisted that she wasn't responsible for the accuracy of her own ad when eBay policy is pretty clear that ads have to be correct. I think she was angry that she got caught. And angry to discover that selecting "No returns accepted" would not prevent consequences for fraud.

I told her that she could either give me a partial refund to cover the cost of a microSD expansion or she'd pay out the cost of the sale, the cost of the shipping, and the cost of the return shipping. She refused, shrieking, "No returns! No refund!" I reset and reboxed the laptop for a return and contacted eBay.

After eBay refunded me and told me to keep the item, I told both eBay and the seller that I'd still return her laptop even though eBay's terms no longer required me to do so. I just needed a prepaid shipping label.

She replied, "He wants to return it! He pays for shipping!" eBay responded to say, "We advise you not to pay for the shipping." She responded to say that she'd sue if I didn't return the laptop and would sue after I returned it if she wasn't happy with its condition.

At this point, I ran out of patience and had a lot of data entry to work on, so I decided to reopen the box and get to work on my $0 laptop and not worry about this person who seemed pathologically incapable of taking responsibility for her mistakes or taking action to amend them and who thought it was a good idea to threaten me when I had (a) the money (b) the item and (c) less and less reason to return either with each new threat.

Is that actually Jerry O'Connell on location? Or is it his body double?

Funnily enough, his body double in "The Unstuck Man," James Bamford, has gone onto become a regular director and producer on ARROW.

I like TF's theory of a memory virus (but don't we always like TF's theories?). However, a few years ago, there was an episode of DOCTOR WHO where the Doctor shrieks at a woman to stop sitting on a galaxy destroying weapons cube as it's a galaxy destroying weapons cube and not a chair. The woman replies, "Why can't it be both?"

And fewer years ago, there was an episode where the Doctor's companion, Clara, asks him to take her to see Robin Hood. The Doctor says that Robin Hood is a historical fiction, not a historical figure, but he transports the TARDIS to an approximate year and location but tells her she'll be disappointed. They step out to find Robin Hood in Lincoln green emerging from Sherwood Forest. At the end of the episode, Robin asks the Doctor if it's true that in the future, history will remember Robin as a legend instead of a real person. The Doctor confirms this and says he's still suspicious; Robin Hood is a fictional character. Robin smiles and tells the Doctor, "I'm as real as you are."

Memory virus. Altered timeline. Unaltered timeline with doubles. Why be picky? Let's say it's all of the above.