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In terms of the ARROW resurrections, I don’t think ARROW is saying that Tommy, Moira and Quintin never died — I think it’s saying that they died and these current versions are from a parallel Earth where they survived and they’ve been folded into Earth 1.

Chibnall says in an interview that this is not a parallel universe Doctor so... TF could be right. I wonder if, playing fast and loose with the lore -- what if TF is right about this being a post-"War Games"/pre-Pertwee Doctor? I don't think it can be Patrick Troughton in disguise necessarily -- but at the end of "The War Games," the Time Lords declare that before condemning the Doctor to being trapped on Earth, they will change his face. Troughton protests, rejects every proposed face and the Time Lords say that they will choose for him.

At the time, regeneration had yet to be established as a death; instead, it was a metatextual nod to the fact that while the Doctor would be a mercurial adventurer in time and space, he would now be played by a different actor who would emphasize different aspects of the character. It was only with the Third Doctor's demise that it was (in contrast to previous stories) presented as a form of death, a death of self, a death of identity, a death of the specific persona. Which means, retroactively, that if the Time Lords forced the Doctor to regenerate in "The War Games," they were executing him. But the Troughton Doctor doesn't protest death; he describes it as a change of what he looks like.

If TF's theory is right, then it's possible that he wasn't forced to regenerate; he was biologically masked/rewritten into a new appearance.

However... it's not just the fact that Ruth doesn't recognize the sonic screwdriver. Ruth does not recognize the term "sonic screwdriver," and refers to it as "that gizmo" derisively and when Jodie Whittaker calls it by name, Ruth declares that she is "smart enough not to need one." The Doctor would never be so disdainful towards a piece of technology that she created herself. Which means that this Doctor never created it. (?)

There's another aspect of DOCTOR WHO lore to consider: "The Brain of Morbius" has the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) telepathically attacked and he sees his previous faces. We see Pertwee, Troughton, Hartnell -- but then we see additional faces before Hartnell. (They were played by various members of the production team.) Fans took this to mean that the Doctor had regenerated in the past, before Hartnell -- but later stories quietly ignored this detail, with "The Five Doctors" confirming that Hartnell was the first Doctor period. However, the Seventh Doctor's era hinted at a mysterious figure in Gallifrey's distant past and curiously, the Doctor began referring to historical Gallifrey figures as though they were his contemporaries.

The Seventh Doctor novels further indicated that at the dawn of Time Lord society was a mysterious Other, a Time Lord who died but whose genetic material were later 're-used' in the biological machines that create Time Lords, whom the novels depicted as a sterile, sexless society. The final Seventh Doctor novel revealed that the Doctor is a reincarnation of this Other, and the "Morbius" faces were this Other's incarnations. However, as time has passed and as more time travel stories have altered the Doctor's past, this history has been thrown into flux with the Eighth Doctor novels having the Doctor at one point remembering both the Other backstory and a childhood with parents. The revived TV show would later present Time Lords as reproducing sexually, so these novels have been gently set aside as a parallel timeline.

Anyway. There is some (ignored) precedent for there having been Doctors before William Hartnell.

I think I'll have to watch the video and offer my own thoughts, but even before that -- I do think it's very easy for an unmade film to be the epitome of excellence because the imagined product will never exist; it'll never conflict with actual reality.

So, BATWOMAN --

Recently, I was telling my film student niece that often, things that I know are good are not necessarily enjoyable for me while the things I find enjoyable are not necessarily good. By this, I mean that I am aware that LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is an excellent feature film, but I find it really slow and tedious. By the same token, I am aware that BATWOMAN is not actually good by any conventional standard of quality. I mean, Alice escaping from the Crows headquarters -- what is that!? What kind of fly by night security organization is this? They have a deadly assassin of a prisoner and their security to hold her and transport her is so meager that she only has to defeat two guards before waltzing out? And BATWOMAN expects us to believe that the Crows are a serious law enforcement operation!

Then there's Kate Kane who, being the lead character of a CW superhero show, magically does not get set ablaze in a gasoline-soaked car because the flames helpfully wait for her to extricate Beth before they ignite. There's the sloppiness of Curtis somehow knowing that Kate's been kidnapped despite no news and no indication that the Crows would notify him and then meandering around the office BEFORE Beth arrives and only after a chat with her does it occur to him to locate Kate via GPS tracker. Then there's the nonsensical situation of having Beth wander into Mouse's trap without dispatching any Crow agents to assist, although admittedly, after their ineptitude with Alice, maybe it's best that they were kept out of this one.

And yet...

Kate's grief and agony over seeing who Beth would become if she weren't Alice is heartfelt. Kate's guilt over realizing that she could have saved Beth from the car if she'd tried is painful. Rachel Skarsten's performance as Beth versus her work as Alice is astonishing, showing a tenderness and warmth matched with a wonky sense of humour that is strangely like Alice but without the homicidal bent. There's something subtle and beautiful about seeing Beth attempt to masquerade as Alice but where Skarsten plays Alice is a terrifying storybook themed serial killer, Skarsten plays Beth playing Alice as an awkward grad student struggling to maintain composure in an itchy wig.

It's cool that the show seeded this development with a few brief shots of Beth, in the previous episode, wandering around, allowing the viewer to think that it was Alice in disguise.

The sequence where Kate cannot get the trunk of the car open as it's set ablaze is shot with a horrific panic as Kate rips open the backseat of the car but is barred from Beth by the grating and then Beth seizes Kate's face as though knowing that the show can kill her off because even though the actress is on contract, she has another role on the show. Then there's the relief of Kate prying the seat frames open to retrieve her sister before she expires from smoke inhalation, Mary saying that she can see in Beth what Kate wanted to save in Alice and it is so perfect and emotional and meaningful.

BATWOMAN is not a good show by any sensible standard, but it's good in terms of my obsessions. I like lesbians. (Transmodiar once called me a "fag hag," and I value our friendship so much I've decided not to look up what it means.) I like women fighting crime. I like superheroes. I like BATWOMAN, but I wouldn't put it up for any awards. It's sort of like how Slider_Quinn21 once said that he really enjoys Marvel movies, but he doesn't consider them Serious Cinema. Admittedly, the stuff that I would acknowledge as Real Cinema tends to be very long and boring and I'd rather watch Ruby Rose fight crime.

Oh dear God. Now I have to watch the video. I was hoping you would summarize it and spare me the trouble. Alright fine.

I've been rewatching DAWSON'S CREEK (my niece lent me her Amazon Prime account) and it's neat: the later years had Greg Berlanti of the ARROWVERSE running the show. DAWSON'S CREEK mirrors SLIDERS' creative trajectory in many ways: the first two seasons were run by show creator Kevin Williamson who then left the series; the remainder was run by Berlanti and some other producers. Unlike SLIDERS, DAWSON'S CREEK had a subsequent showrunner who respected and loved the show. But just like SLIDERS, DAWSON'S CREEK's later years ran the show into the ground creatively (although viewership held steady). It's very strange: Berlanti and his fellow writers approached DAWSON'S CREEK's third to sixth seasons with the best of intentions but somehow replicated almost all of SLIDERS' errors in Seasons 3, 4 and 5.

Golden Age: Original showrunner Kevin Williamson had crafted Seasons 1 - 2 as intricate blend of dysfunctional teen characters who talked like English professors but expressed the immaturity and insecurity of children. It was semi-autobiographical with Dawson, like Williamson, being a teen filmmaker. Entire episodes were built around Williamson dramatizing his childhood anecdotes. There was also a frank but tender attitude to sexuality: the characters discussed sex in terms both clinical and romantic without being tawdry.

Necessary Contrivances: In the DVD commentaries,  Williamson said that the show was hard to write. The creative Dawson, the academic Joey, the troubled Jen and the dysfunctional Pacey were not cops or lawyers, so every episode needed to find some contrived crisis or goal to create drama whether it was Dawson trying to make a football movie when he hates sports, Joey and Pacey trying to avoid failing a class through a remedial extracurricular, Jen in trouble for getting in a fight with a teacher over euthanasia or Pacey having an affair with a teacher. In the second season, Williamson noted, he hurriedly introduced new characters for the year to create new situations and problems because Dawson, Joey, Jen and Pacey alone would never do anything but sit around and talk.

The Exodus: After the second season, Williamson left the show; he was committed to scripting the SCREAM film series and no longer had time to run DAWSON'S CREEK and drifted farther and farther into films. Berlanti, Paul Stupin (SWITCHED AT BIRTH) and many other writers stepped up -- and they promptly stumbled. The first eight episodes of DAWSON'S CREEK become ridiculously oversexualized with Dawson running a strip club out of his house one episode and women now filmed as though they're Kari Wuhrer in Season 3 of SLIDERS. There's also an emphasis on fist fights, arguments, and the hyperchatty Dawson and Pacey are suddenly throwing punches at each other like they're Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Maggie in Season 3.

Overzealous: It's strange: the writers were attempting to continue Williamson's highly sexual content and intense interpersonal interactions, but they misjudged the tone: they went from earnest and sweet in the sexuality to lewd and objectifying, and before the halfway mark, they began urgently pulling back from this.

The middle of the season attempts to tone down the antics and refocus on high school drama in a more restrained fashion, but then the writers miscalculate as well. As the writers had Pacey and Joey developing feelings for each other and hiding it from Dawson, they adopted a more severe tone to the writing that, while well-scripted, lacked the quippy humour and self-aware charm of Williamson's writing. Pacey becomes a vigilante defending Joey's artwork; Dawson has a nervous breakdown when his student film is poorly received -- and DAWSON'S CREEK takes a less offensive but joyless spin into grim, depressing stories much like the back nine of SLIDERS in Season 3 where the sliders are perpetually confronting corpses and monstrosity and death and doom.

The writers attempted to reduce the sexual extremes, but they unfortunately made the series too serious and not a lot of fun to watch, very much like Season 4's attempts to rebrand SLIDERS from comedy to seriousness with a home invasion and rape camps.

Season 3 Quinn Syndrome: In addition, when Dawson finds out that Pacey and Joey are an item, the third season Dawson is suddenly scripted as a vengeful, petty brute who seeks to humiliate Pacey at every turn -- a far cry from the self-absorbed but considerate and gentle character of Seasons 1 - 2 and alarmingly similar to Quinn Mallory becoming the volatile lunatic of latter Season 3 episodes of SLIDERS. In trying to allow Pacey to grow from being the dysfunctional friend to someone whom the bookish Joey could see as an equal, DAWSON'S CREEK accidentally turned their title character into a villain.

Overrestrained: In Season 4, these same writers, recognizing the oversexuality, overhostility and overseverity of Season 3, attempt to pull back. Dawson is scripted with calm gentleness and apologizes for his violence and vindictiveness of the previous season and the warring friends make peace. The sexuality is dialed down to interpersonal romance rather than physicality. The arguments are presented with a high level of restraint. The teen drama issues are scaled back. But the result is that in trying not to be overly sexual, overly antagonistic or overly serious, Season 4 of DAWSON'S CREEK ends up not being much of anything.

The Bill Dial School of Screenwriting: Entire episodes plant the characters in a hospital or a house or a restaurant and then have them converse aimlessly about their feelings without moving the story along -- very much like a fifth season episode of SLIDERS where characters restate known information to pad out the running length. In addition, Season 4 episodes are devoid of outside crisis or incident or goals that force the characters into action; instead, school assignments, academic problems and personal objectives are in the background while in the foreground are... Dawson, Joey and Pacey conversing about their feelings at a party, then at one of their houses, then at school.

One episode has Dawson go on a roadtrip and spend the entire episode stranded between destinations due to a flat tire to stretch the story to fill the hour, very much like "The Great Work" and "Map of the Mind," and the show became so unwatchable that I couldn't make it to the fifth and sixth seasons.

Best Intentions: DAWSON'S CREEK did not become offensively bad like SLIDERS. Its third season featured a perpetually confused tone, going too far into sexuality and retreating, then going too far into serious seriousness before retreating again.

You could feel the writers' boldness and then their apologetic withdrawal in Season 3. And you could feel their timidity in Season 4: they went too far last year, they're now trying to be restrained as possible. They're not trying to hurt their show; they have complete respect for their show -- but they tried to change it and it was disastrous; they tried to imitate the previous incarnation and it was awkward; now they're staying within a limited, suffocating formula of inoffensiveness and have become indecisive and hesitant and now their show is slow, tedious, boring and impossible for me to follow because I started going into a mental coma when watching even when there were two seasons left to go.

The Return: I did skip to the end -- where original showrunner Kevin Williamson returned to write the two part finale which is set five years in the future in order to show where all the characters ended up / avoid having to address the Season 6 plots. Suddenly, all his missing skills return to the series: Dawson is struggling to complete a season-ending script for a TV show based on his life; Pacey is struggling to run his new restaurant; Joey is struggling to deal with an unwanted marriage proposal; Jen is struggling with some health issues -- and these situations unfold in the course of the characters having conversations about their feelings which are affected by the arcs.

Each scene has the characters attempting to accomplish something in the course of their conversations instead of standing around one of the sets making idle chatter until the commercial break. The sexuality is presented with amusement, charm and a sense of romance; the Serious Life Issues in the stories are explored with humour and tragedy. At one point, a character bans crying or histrionics and insists on laughter in the face of personal crisis.

DAWSON'S CREEK is bizarre, but it does show how, even with the best of intentions, shows with leaders who suddenly leave can lose their way even when his successors are committed and devoted. DAWSON'S CREEK's scripts at their best came from a writer who was mining his personal life for content, and when that writer wasn't there anymore, the show became incredibly confused, and DAWSON'S CREEK (and SLIDERS) may be a strong argument for TV shows to be staff driven rather than being defined by a single voice who might leave.

Why a backdoor pilot? It seems to be the result of a strange contractual situation where CW ordered ten episodes of ARROW, but Stephen Amell only wanted to do 13 episodes this year which production distributed across nine episodes of arrow, one episode of THE FLASH, one episode of SUPERGIRL, one episode of BATWOMAN and one episode of LEGENDS) -- which meant that for one episode of ARROW, Stephen Amell would not be present. Wondering how to fill the hour, the thought came to make Mia Smoak the star of the show for one episode and even a sequel series.

Eeeeeeeeeeeek! It's like getting Professor Arturo back.

There's a lot in CRISIS that I liked and overall, I thought it was good, but it definitely had its flaws and as Temporal Flux and Slider_Quinn21 have both observed, it didn't make good use of the supporting cast outside of Lena in Part 1. Tom Cavanagh had no idea what to do with the Pariah character; I'd argue that Stephen Amell was just as hapless playing the Spectre: Oliver was defined by his aggression and obsessive drive towards justice and the Spectre-incarnation was just Amell being vaguely mysterious.

The Death of the Flash: While I do think that substituting John Wesley Shipp's Flash-90 for Grant Gustin worked from a plotting standpoint, it didn't work from an emotional standpoint. While some argued that we saw Shipp die in Gustin's place and that Shipp had been on THE FLASH since the first episode, Shipp only played the Barry of Earth-90 for a few scenes in ELSEWORLDS and ultimately never rebuilt his connection to the audience, so it came off as a dramatic cheat rather than the death of a friend from nearly three decades past returning to sacrifice himself.

The writers did cover branching away from the originally teased CRISIS, however, by having Nora Allen's visit to the past alter the timeline last year. But the real reason -- after notorious sexual harasser Andrew Kreisberg was fired off running the Arrowverse, the remaining staff were no longer willing to use his material or continue his plans or do anything that would give him credit or entitle him to payment. As a result, they threw out all of his plans for SUPERGIRL's third season and threw out his plans for CRISIS as well, whatever they were.

Ezra Miller: I don't know that the DCEU Flash appearing in the Speed Force to Barry made less sense than… anything else in the heightened, exaggerated reality of a superhero TV series where meaning and symbolism will trump sense and reason. I thought it made sense that with the multiverse destroyed but remnants left in the Speed Force, there was an echo of the Flash from the DCEU universe with Miller's Barry being confused and unable to interpret the CW version of the Speed Force as his own.

I also liked how the cinematography juxtaposed the two Flash costumes: Ezra Miller's costume is highly technological and a little unpolished and worn down; Grant Gustin's costume is a runner's bodysuit -- and probably less heavy for an actor to wear on the long shoots of a TV schedule throughout multiple seasons.

Restoration: I think it's safe to assume that all the Earths we saw destroyed in previous episodes were restored and that the worlds of the Tim Burton and Adam West versions of Batman are doing just fine along with BIRDS OF PREY and SMALLVILLE; the clips of TITANS, DOOM PATROL, STARGIRL, GREEN LANTERN were to promote upcoming shows. I also feel confident that the Spectre restored Earth-90 even if Shipp's Barry remains dead. And the shot of Brandon Routh's Superman flying by with yellow back in his emblem would suggest that the Spectre not only restored the world of the 1979 SUPERMAN, he also undid the murders of Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Perry White, making Routh's Clark change his S-shield back to what it was.

Farewells: I didn't mind that Team Arrow wasn't present for Oliver's farewell because it didn't seem to me that Supergirl and Barry were having a funeral for Oliver. Instead, they were saying good-bye to the Green Arrow / the Arrow / the Hood while honouring the legacy of Green Arrow. In contrast, Team Arrow would say good-bye to Oliver as a friend and leader on their own show. But I can see why it felt awkward and there were, as always, a number of awkward aspects to CRISIS.

I didn't feel that CRISIS had Oliver dying twice; in my view, he died in Part 1 of the CRISIS and his reappearances afterwards were as an echo, not as a resurrected character. But I understand that most won't see that distinction.

Fight Scenes: Budget has always been a problem for these crossovers and I felt the fight scenes with the shadow creatures of the Anti-Monitor reflected this badly; the actors are clearly flailing at empty air and there is no sense as to why these insubstantial attackers who seem to be less-than-solid can be defeated by being struck with Kate's staff or Diggle's bullets. The fourth episode also shows where CRISIS is trying to set aside some money for the finale by having the surviving heroes wander around a wrecked Time Master base at the Vanishing Point that's scattered rubble on an interior set.

Inclusion Without Purpose: There's also an insistence on including elements that have no space to breathe. Brandon Routh's Superman has a terrific entrance as he battles Tyler Hoechlin -- but then, having introduced him, Superman does little to nothing in the story; his only significant contributions afterwards are to describe what his black S-shield means; then he's erased by Lex Luthor.

The SMALLVILLE sequence is also an inclusion that doesn't serve much narrative purpose; it isn't used as collateral damage, it doesn't tell us anything about the Anti-Monitor. It's simply a fan-pleasing moment, but unlike Routh's Superman, SMALLVILLE's return is merely one scene whereas Routh's role is teased as having a significance that it ultimately doesn't. Even the use of BIRDS OF PREY and BATMAN (1966 and 1989) served as collateral damage.

Inclusion Without Reasoning: All these elements also raise questions that CRISIS declines to fully address: specifically, why does Lex Luthor look like Jon Cryer on one Earth but like Michael Rosenbaum in another? SMALLVILLE's Clark notes that Cryer's Luthor is clearly not the Lex he knows. Why does Barry look like Grant Gustin on one Earth but Ezra Miller on another and John Wesley Shipp on another? And why does Superman look like Tyler Hoechlin on at least two Earths but look like Brandon Routh on another, and why does the Superman played by Routh look like Ray Palmer? 

The differences are observed but not explained; Ray and Kara note that Superman looks like a "jacked" Ray and it's something the characters would wonder about and question -- but the only explanation is Oliver's voiceover in Part 5 reflecting upon the infinite variations of the multiverse. One longs for the Monitor to remark that each parallel universe incorporates and echoes previous versions but in strange reflections.

Enjoyability: Ultimately, CRISIS is a five part arc that's designed entirely for the enjoyment of each moment rather than logic or reason or any grand purpose as the sum of all the parts. Its purpose is to show these different characters bouncing off each other and using their powers together without worrying too much about making sure all the pieces fit together.

CRISIS is more concerned with making sure they are present, and this is conveyed rather definitively with the end where SUPERGIRL and BLACK LIGHTNING are now on the same Earth as ARROW, THE FLASH, LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, the upcoming SUPERMAN AND LOIS (it's been ordered to series) and the in-development GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES (which will, if ordered, feature Mia Smoak as the lead).

The Merging: It's interesting: I originally thought the merging would happen with FLASHPOINT years ago and there were even some teaser-test scenes filmed with the cast of SUPERGIRL, ARROW, FLASH and LEGENDS together -- but it was ultimately decided to keep SUPERGIRL separate to explore aliens on Earth, a subject that the other shows didn't get into. But at this point, LEGENDS has shown a human run Time Bureau, metahumans on THE FLASH have become commonplace, ARROW has gotten into time travel, and ELSEWORLDS showed so much spark between Kate Kane and Kara Danvers that CRISIS paired them together and has now dispensed with Kate and Kara being in separate universes.

It'll certainly make it easier for them to explore their friendship now that they're on the same Earth -- although it does make the mass evacuation of Earth-38 to Earth-1 rather unnecessary now that Oliver restored everyone except himself and the Flash of Earth-90.

Ultimately, I liked it, but the annual crossover is always a large story and it doesn't surprise me that with so many balls in the air, things get dropped. I felt it was okay to drop a few things.

From the SUPERNATURAL thread:

See? It's important information and clearly somewhat urgent.

It's a Samsung Chromebook 3 with an Intel Celeron processor, 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. Found it on eBay with the search filters set to look up Chromebooks less than $100 and new (ha!), open box or manufacturer refurbished. I found an open box one. I'm still seeing a bunch on eBay in the $50 - 90 USD range, but with 16GB of storage.

Although God knows what will arrive in the mail: I'm told it's being held in Erlanger, Kentucky on suspicion of containing hazardous materials. For all I know, it contained an intelligent living flame or penicillin or a disc containing the unredacted Constitution or a super-intelligent snake or an anti-Kromagg virus or contraband coffee. This is as much as I can stand to type on an iPad.

I’ll respond to this when my Chromebook laptop arrives in the mail. I’m currently down to a tablet for leisure computing; I’ve had to rip all entertainment and social media out of my Windows desktop to focus on Work. And I can’t do long form message board posts on an iPad.

I have never watched THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE as we have plenty of Nazis in the real world with whom to contend and I would prefer to watch BROOKLYN NINE NINE. That said, as Chuck of SUPERNATURAL would say, endings are hard and even harder than endings is trying to use ambiguity.

Ambiguity can be handled beautifully or terribly and it's not terribly in vogue because in storytelling, an artificial representation of a fictitious reality, ambiguity can easily come off as indecisiveness with the writers unwilling to commit to a direction or create clarity in their narrative.

TV Tropes presents the movie BEFORE SUNRISE as the standard bearer for ambiguous endings. In BEFORE SUNRISE, two college kids meet on a train in Europe. Jesse's going back to New York the next day; Celine is heading home to Paris. With little money and a long layover in Vienna, they spend the night walking the streets, chattering endlessly, falling hopelessly in love and conflicted by their time now and the deadline approaching them. The movie deliberately ends with Jesse and Celine suddenly and abruptly promising they'll meet again in six months' time on the train platform where they're parting ways, fading out before revealing whether or not they made it.

In the sequel, made nine years later, Jesse is asked if he ever met Celine and he replies, "I think how you answer that is a good test if you're a romantic or a cynic"; the ambiguity is for the audience and not necessarily the characters.

One instance of ambiguity that worked for Slider_Quinn21 (and only Slider_Quinn21) -- the conclusion of LOST. (I have literally never seen anyone speak well of the LOST finale aside from him.) LOST ultimately never answered any questions as to why the island was so peculiar or offered any rationale to the paranormal anomalies there. FRINGE would have explained that there was a rip in reality between two parallel Earths; that the ripples of temporal and spatial energies were affected by the psychological states of any visitors to the island.

LOST suggested it would do so but ultimately shifted to focusing on the characters' personal journeys and was clear and definitive about the people even as the island was a foggy, variable element of vagueness, and as Slider_Quinn21 was primarily invested in the cast, the island is an unknown, ambiguous catalyst for stories defined more by how it affects the characters rather than its specific origin or method of operation.

THE X-FILES is the standard bearer for how ambiguity can go wrong by constantly establishing information and then reversing it. It spent its Season 9 finale laying out the alien colonization conspiracy and planned invasion; its Season 10 premiere immediately debunked and dismissed it because it was no longer convenient to explore or develop as the invasion date had passed between the hiatus of Seasons 9 - 10. The push and pull between debunking and validating and dismissing the conspiracy became so tangled and repetitive that even Slider_Quinn21, a gentleman who historically dislikes reboots, agreed that THE X-FILES should be rebooted.

I have literally never seen Slider_Quinn21 champion a reboot for any show other than THE X-FILES.

One story of ambiguity that hits the middle ground is an episode of VOYAGER, "Sacred Ground," a show that Slider_Quinn21 (and only Slider_Quinn21) enjoys. (I have literally never seen anyone other than Slider_Quinn21 express fondness for this series.) In "Sacred Ground," Kes is injured and Starfleet medical technology can't help her. Janeway engages in an alien religious ritual involving tests of faith and the show leaves it unclear what heals Kes.

However, the episode, while an intriguing piece of drama, feints and dodges between faith and science so much that it's not really clear what it's saying about either.

And one story of ambiguity that I really like is AMAZING SPIDER-MAN: "The Book of Ezekiel" (#506 - 509), the 2004 end to a story that started in 2001. In AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #471, Spider-Man is approached by Ezekiel, a middle-aged man with spider-powers just like Peter's.

Ezekiel knows Spider-Man's true identity and asks Peter: is he sure that the radioactive spider is what turned Peter Parker into Spider-Man? Given that the radioactive spider was destroyed and never examined, does Peter know for a fact that his powers came from the spider? Or is it possible that the spider unlocked something in Peter that was there all along?

Shortly after this, Peter is relentlessly hunted by a seemingly invincible energy vampire, Morlun, who has hunted 'animal-totems' across the globe, draining the lifeforce of superhumans who have the powers of animals. With Ezekiel's help, Peter barely survives. Peter continues to explore the mystical side of his powers in subsequent stories and investigate Ezekiel, a billionaire industrialist who appears at various crises in Spider-Man's life to give him advice. Ezekiel informs Peter that his powers are part of a mystical "web of life."

In "The Book of Ezekiel," Peter discovers that as a young man, Ezekiel learned about the mystical "web of life" where the totemistic powers of animal spirits may be granted to humans. Decades ago, Ezekiel used his wealth to convince a shaman to trick the web of life into granting Ezekiel spider-powers, enhanced longevity and physicality -- but decades later, predators like Morlun eventually began hunting Ezekiel for his life force and Ezekiel approached Spider-Man to serve as a larger target, defeat the predators -- and now Ezekiel has prepared a ritual where he will feed Spider-Man to a mystical spider-entity as a sacrifice to free Ezekiel from any further attacks.

However, when Peter is tied up, the two bond telepathically in the ritual and Ezekiel sees Peter's entire life flash before his eyes; Ezekiel realizes that Peter has spent his entire life helping others whereas Ezekiel enriched himself; Ezekiel takes Peter's place in the sacrifice and dies to free him. A revived Peter finds the shaman and asks him: where do his spider-powers come from? Do they come from the science of radioactivity altering the genetic structure of a spider and altering Peter's DNA? Or do they come from a mystical web of life of magical totemistic energies?

The shaman replies that tomorrow, the sun will rise. Peter would describe that as the result of gravity, light transmission, planetary rotation and visual observation of vanishing points and horizons. But the shaman would say that it rises because it is meant to rise. And that he sees no difference between either perspective.

I initially ripped this off in SLIDERS REBORN in Part 5, a script where Quinn (Jerry O'Connell) is trapped in a burning building and hallucinating and sees Mallory (Robert Floyd) who encourages Quinn not to give up and find a way out. In the script, Quinn asks Mallory: "Are you really here? Or are you just a manifestation of my subconscious mind?"

The original response from Mallory was: ""The 1995 limitation. You're trying to fix it. You'd say you're at war with a broken reality and the warped rules of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. But I'd tell you -- you're in a war of indifference versus compassion. Apathy versus hope. Determinism versus potential. I see no difference. Do you?"

I am not very happy with Part 5. The only part I like is Quinn's question and Transmodiar's response to it. In addition, Slider_Quinn21 is the only person who enjoyed Part 5.

I have literally never received any positive feedback on it from anyone but him.

I'd say a massive problem: Disney decided they wanted a new STAR WARS episode every two years. This led to exhaustion and burnout: the cast were strained severely; Rian Johnson declined to sign on for EPISODE IX when EPISODE VII was demanding all his time and energy; JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio were given two years to write, film, edit and release IX -- and now everyone is worn out.

Daniel Craig was worn out from SPECTRE from working 18 hour days and relentless fitness training and also being at the end of his contract and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. But he wasn't happy with how SPECTRE turned out, so he consented to try to give his Bond another finale.

The development schedule also seems to have been an issue on SOLO where directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were slowly taking time to let their cast improvise and leading to massive overtime. This didn't suit the factory production model that Disney had stipulated, leading to the no-fuss hyperefficiency Ron Howard hired to replace them.

With a TV show where actors are doing 20 - 22 episodes a year, rest periods are build into the schedule because TV shows stick to specific shooting locations and sets. Also, it's possible to give Jared and Jensen a week off now and then and let an episode focus on Jodie Mills or Eileen or Rowena. Blockbuster films are a relentless race to the finish with STAR WARS films being made all around the world. On the two year schedule, a period of rest is immediately followed by another driven march to finish.

I think Disney may have tried to squeeze too much out of STAR WARS too soon with three core features and two spinoffs so soon. They probably should have aimed for one movie every three years with JJ Abrams leading the stories and supervising directors to handle filming and performances, and only after that should they have entered the spinoffs and TV shows.

Admittedly, the financial success is mostly there, but there is also some withdrawal as Disney has elected to let the film franchise rest for now and focus on TV.

I think the only way we're going to be able to get a sense of what the intentions were and how much of a plan, if any, was in place, is to wait. Eventually, Colin Trevorrow's vision of EPISODE IX before Carrie Fisher died will be revealed and then we'll know what the ground beef would have been.

I read that Colin Trevorrow was reviewing THE LAST JEDI and monitoring where Rian Johnson's film EPISODE IX was going to prepare for filming the next movie. He confirmed that he had asked Johnson to include at least one additional scene -- it's where Rey introduces herself to Poe. Johnson didn't have it in his original script, but Trevorrow asked for it to be filmed. He wanted to be spared the need to have Rey and Poe meet for the first time in EPISODE IX.

However, whatever plans were in place were scrapped when Carrie Fisher died and then Trevorrow left. Instead of a third director taking the third installment in a style that would build upon the second, the third installment looped back to the approach of the opening act. It might seem symmetrical and fitting; it might also seem disjointed and contradictory.

I guess, for me, I don't really expect anything as provocative, subversive and individual as THE LAST JEDI from tentpole blockbusters and it was a pleasant surprise with the second film, but I never expected such iconoclasm to be sustained. It's sort of like on SUPERNATURAL where I enjoy the eccentric comedy episodes now and then, but I don't expect them to be the bulk of the season or the season premiere or the series finale.

I think of STAR WARS as fast food and while it's wonderful to have something as cinematically groundbreaking as STAR WARS (1977) or as high quality as THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK or as clever as THE LAST JEDI, I don't expect it. I generally expect a STAR WARS movie to be at about the level of THE RISE OF SKYWALKER. It's competent and professional. It's a Mighty Angus burger from McDonalds; arguably the best burger to be found in that specific fast food menu using never-frozen meat and well-baked buns, but it's still just fast food.

I enjoyed RISE OF SKYWALKER and am happy with it, but a lot of people aren't and I have a lot of room in my heart and head for different views.

Style: RISE OF SKYWALKER is so tautly, quickly, forcefully paced that it goes by fast. JJ Abrams is an entertainer whereas Rian Johnson is a philosopher. Rian Johnson was making pointed remarks about dynastic bloodlines, military strategy, theocratic governance and the hollowness of legacies. Abrams is making the point that it is COOL to have the Millennium Falcon flash-jump to different planets and to have Rey take down a TIE Interceptor with a lightsaber.

Space: STAR WARS has the space to welcome both, but it does leave RISE OF SKYWALKER open to valid criticisms: that it is shallow where THE LAST JEDI was deep. Also, THE LAST JEDI let the Empire/First Order win, had the Rebels/Resistance reduced from an army of hundreds of thousands to maybe 40 - 50 people aboard the Falcon, the Jedi represented only by Leia (whose actor died shortly after filming) and Rey (who is physically capable but emotionally troubled).

This is a massive shift from the capable if underpowered Rebels of A NEW HOPE and EMPIRE and a total reversal of their apparent victory in RETURN OF THE JEDI.

Repetition: In contrast, RISE OF SKYWALKER ends with the Rebels/Resistance having triumphed by killing Emperor Palpatine which seems significantly important except they'd accomplished the same thing in RETURN OF THE JEDI which means RISE OF SKYWALKER is in the unfortunate position of resurrecting Palpatine just to kill him again.

In a few decades time, we may find Rey leading a losing resistance once again while the Empire dominates the galaxy with, I dunno, a resurrected Phasma in charge.

Mastermind: However. RISE OF SKYWALKER establishes that the destruction of the Death Star 2.0 in RETURN OF THE JEDI was merely a decisive battle and that the Emperor survived but in so damaged a body that he can't leave his life support system. Which means that the Resistance being on the losing side of THE FORCE AWAKENS and THE LAST JEDI was all due to the Emperor running the First Order through the Emperor speaking through the Snoke clones (earlier versions of which are glimpsed in Palpatine's lair).

Details: Furthermore, RISE establishes that the planet of Exogol houses the Emperor's fleet; destroy the fleet, kill the Emperor, and the First Order loses all coordination and leadership as well as their most powerful weapons, so even though RETURN declared that destroying the Death Star 2.0 would be the final and decisive battle, RISE does some work to say that this showdown on Exogol will truly be the final and decisive battle and they meant it before but this time they mean it for realzies, but this is a yet another rerun.

RISE splits various hairs to claim this finale really counts, but if RETURN didn't count, why should this?

Reversal: Fans are also offended by Luke saying that he was wrong to have the attitude he did in THE LAST JEDI and Rey being revealed as not being nobody from nowhere but the Empress of the Sith and Palatine's granddaughter.

Enjoyable: I personally am not blind to these problems, but I feel that RISE OF SKYWALKER gets past all of these issues by being so quickly paced. Each scene flies by so fast with a minimum of exposition. Chris Terrio's script is expressive and sparingly dialogued. Where THE LAST JEDI was deliberate and controlled, RISE OF SKYWALKER is a relentless adrenaline burst and skillfully hurried and therefore a lot of fun.

Entertainer: There's also a certain desperation that reflects the pressure Abrams was under. Abrams has talked about how, when directing STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS, he lost track of the core themes of the story and just tried to make each scene as exciting as possible and hoped it would be coherent.

It looks like he has attempted the same with RISE OF SKYWALKER where he was parachuted into the film with two years to write, pre-produce, film and edit the movie; the previous script had been thrown out due to Carrie Fisher's death.

Continuation: Rian Johnson shuttered the Resistance, killed off Luke, left the First Order victorious, and suggested that the First Order would be defeated not by the Jedi and not by the Resistance but by a new generation of heroes. Abrams had to create a script that would follow up on all that but also feature Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Oscar Isaacs front and center, address Carrie Fisher's absence, resolve the Resistance/First Order conflict, conclude Kylo Ren's situation and serve as a finale.

Necessities: As a result, some of Abrams' obligations conflict with Rian Johnson's vision in THE LAST JEDI; THE LAST JEDI proposes that the STAR WARS universe continue with new characters in a First Order dominated galaxy with an open-ended approach; Abrams is required to cobble together a conclusion by undoing RETURN OF THE JEDI to restage its victory.

THE LAST JEDI suggests moving onto new characters represented by the boy with the broom and Rose Tico; Abrams is contractually obligated to have his core cast feature front and center and build their relationships with each other and conclude them in the same movie as they had only one scene together in the previous film.

Acknowledgement Without Focus: Due to this need, Rose Tico becomes anonymous base personnel. RISE OF SKYWALKER also fails to focus on the idea that there may be heroes outside the Resistance and the Jedi Order and the Skywalker families, but it does nod to it with Finn and Jannah both being former stormtroopers who have Force sensitivity.

And due to the need to reintroduce the Emperor to defeat him again and offer a sense of closure, Abrams is required to link him to a core cast member and chooses to reveal him as Rey's grandfather.

Blood: This last one rankles severely with fans. Fans who are adopted children were hurt by RISE OF SKYWALKER suggesting that people need to have defined bloodlines to have identities; critics have noted that the idea of children of legacies being above others is undemocratic and has no place in a world where people should be evaluated by ability and attitude over birth; viewers are irked that RISE OF SKYWALKER suggests that only people from important families can make a difference.

Harmony: Personally, I see all of that, but what I also see is another note to THE LAST JEDI, a film that declared that heroes can come from anywhere. When Rey confessed in THE LAST JEDI that her parents "were nobody," it was a moment of grief and loss.

When Rey discovers that her grandfather is Palpatine, she is consumed with self-loathing, isolating herself to Ahch To as Luke did, burning her spacecraft, throwing away the lightsaber -- only for Luke to catch it and inform her that Luke and Leia have known all along about Rey's parentage and still chose to teach her, Luke in his indirect and cynical fashion and Leia with wholehearted love and devotion.

And while THE LAST JEDI has Luke declaring that it is time for the Jedi to end, his final scenes in that film had him changing his mind, saying that he wouldn't be the last after all, so Luke in RISE OF SKYWALKER declaring that he was wrong in THE LAST JEDI to isolate himself is continuing Luke from where Rian Johnson left him.

Legacy: THE LAST JEDI also had Luke calling the Jedi Order a legacy of failure noting that the prequels showed them to be incompetent (they allow slave labour to prosper), blind (they allowed the Sith to rise in their own government) and not worth preserving. RISE OF SKYWALKER has Luke telling Rey that she must face Palpatine or the Jedi will die, but Luke is noticeably not calling for the Jedi to be restored as a governing body; he merely wants there to be at least one Jedi in the galaxy and for that Jedi to be Rey.

Identity: There is affirmation and beauty in Luke revealing that he and his sister chose to see Rey in terms of who she was and could be instead of where she came from because, as THE LAST JEDI declared, heroes can indeed come from anywhere and I think that's summed up beautifully in the final scene. "I'm Rey." "'Rey' who?" "Rey Skywalker."

In taking on the Skywalker name with Luke and Leia watching approvingly, Rey is committing not to bloodlines -- but to the legend of Luke Skywalker as a person who will (in the end) help people find light and hope whether they're Darth Vader or the last 40 - 50 fighters in a failed Resistance or the Empress of the Sith.

Action: And it was nice to see all this in a fast-paced, driven, exciting action movie with so many cool scenes from Rey and Kylo fighting in the wreckage of the Death Star 2.0, the light-speed skipping sequences, Rey's obstacle course, Rey aided to victory by previous the voices of Jedi.

There's also some nice loophole logic where the Emperor declares that Rey killing him in rage and hatred will allow him to possess her body; Rey instead reflects the Emperor's lightning back at him and he kills himself.

I liked THE LAST JEDI as a thoughtful, contemplative film of defeat and I like RISE OF SKYWALKER as a widescreen action extravaganza of victory that harmonizes with THE LAST JEDI but is more of a crowdpleaser. I find that THE LAST JEDI and RISE OF SKYWALKER aren't at odds; they're saying similar things but with very different words spoken by very different people and I'm happy to have both.

Disclaimer: I may be in the minority on this. I liked JUSTICE LEAGUE, after all.

I really enjoyed RISE OF SKYWALKER and thought JJ Abrams made an enjoyable, professional product that will make the fans happy.

Another thought -- I said here that Informant is not a men's rights activist or a neo-Nazi or a white supremacist or a birther or a scam artist. However, I should specify that there is no Informant; Informant is merely the character that Kyle played on Sliders.TV and the character of Informant may or may not reflect the person who performed the role. Please don't call me in as a character witness if Informant or the man who was Informant ends up in court for any reason.

I liked the SMALLVILLE scene, but I understand why fans didn't. Many seem to think Clark woke up one morning and decided to stir some Gold Kryptonite into his eggs. But I imagined a very different story in which Clark lost his powers, and if Rosenbaum had signed on, maybe it would have been explained fully like this:

I think SMALLVILLE as a TV show was one long build to Clark putting on the suit which it failed to deliver. CRISIS, however, acknowledges that Clark's superhero career and the costume were ultimately outside SMALLVILLE's purview (for better or for worse).

Admittedly, SMALLVILLE as conceived could only have lasted for four years and stayed effective: it was about the high school years of Clark Kent. For the show to maintain its "no flights, no tights" policy, Season 4 of SMALLVILLE should have ended with Clark graduating from high school, stopping some mass destruction event while wearing the red jacket and blue shirt, but being spotted at a distance by children who would layer draw what they recall as a man in a blue bodysuit and red cape with an S-symbol on his chest. Martha would make Clark the costume, but Clark would decline to wear it, saying he needed to leave Smallville, travel the world, understand what he could do for the planet as a whole, and when ready, he would come back and wear it then.

However, the unexpected longevity of the show put it in a position where the plot expectations called for Clark to put on a costume and Tom's insistence on maintaining the "no flights, no tights" policy was at odds with SMALLVILLE continuing even after the high school years. SMALLVILLE fans, I suspect, wanted CRISIS to make up for "Finale" by truly showing Clark as Superman, but CRISIS instead chose to represent its SMALLVILLE scenes with a scene that actually represented what SMALLVILLE was as a TV show which was a show about "a guy working on his farm," as Clark put it.

Ultimately, that's yet another anti-climax in a series that was full of them and that frustrates those fans again: they spent 10 years waiting for Clark to become Superman and now they're told he was only Superman from 2011 - 2019.

However, I do think that Clark "gave up" his powers in a major, cataclysmic conclusion to his Superman career and given that he wasn't all that concerned about Lex trying to kill him, it suggested to me (and only me) that Lex is no longer a threat to humanity and that they're on good terms.

TITANS has featured Bruce Wayne as played by Iain Glen in the second season. TITANS in Season 2 has not been allowed to show Batman (and was only permitted to show him played by a nearly off-camera stunt double in the costume Season 1). Therefore, Glen appears only as Bruce Wayne and never in the costume. It's interesting: Iain Glen is 58 years old and renowned for playing men with astonishing fighting abilities especially on GAME OF THRONES, but he has a certain rigidity in his movements. He has a receding hairline.

Most incarnations of Bruce Wayne, even in old age, look more like Liam Neeson and Tom Cruise in their late 50s; when Glen showed up onscreen in TITANS, I thought he was playing Alfred. His barely suppressed Scottish accent under a weak American one was bizarre. When sitting down on a sofa, he noticably braced himself against the armrest. He looked infirm and weak and his voice was awkward; I couldn't imagine this slow-moving, gentle man as Batman.

The Batman that Dick imagined in the TITANS Season 1 finale was a demonic force who moved like a cracked whip whereas Glen seemed to regard sitting down as something he has to do carefully or he could miss the cushions and end up on the floor. The thing is, however, while Glen bracing himself against an armrest plays onscreen looks like physical weakness, it's in fact a mannerism in how he seats and orients his body. It does not reflect the extremely able-bodied and athletic man that Glen actually is.

Glen appears in a subsequent episode as a hallucinatory Bruce Wayne, and this time, his accent is much improved, but he's playing a sardonic, comedically mocking figure who voices Dick's insecurities. He doesn't seem like Batman. Later in the season, however, Dick hallucinates Bruce again and imagines Bruce beating him up -- and suddenly, Glen displays a stunning physical prowess. He dodges Dick's blows with instantaneous speed. He throws single punches that knock Dick and the camera to the ground. He counters attacks with a controlled ferocity.

Naturally, there's a bit of trick editing here to speed up Glen's motions and accentuate the force of his attacks. But it's up to Glen to sell it and he sells it.

Suddenly, the slightly unconvincing American accent doesn't matter. Glen's aged face and fading hair don't matter. Glen's physicality takes on a predatory, otherwordly presence and he conveys a cool self-assurance so as to be above Dick Grayson's neuroses and anxieities. Iain Glen suddenly doesn't need the costume and or the Batman-jawline of Christian Bale or the voice of Kevin Conroy. The awkwardness of his earlier appearances is cast aside. Glen is unmistakably Batman. It works.

Still, I'd be interested to see Slider_Quinn21's take on it.

I have successfully converted the first two SLIDERS REBORN scripts to a mobile format suited to phones and tablets and I am now working on the third. Also fixed one plothole and a typo where I mistakenly referred to the character of Laurel as Lauren (the real life young lady upon whom Laurel is based).

"Reprise" (1): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1awJ … sp=sharing
"Reunion" (2): https://docs.google.com/document/d/10Qf … sp=sharing

I'll definitely get "Slide Effects" and "Net Worth: The Quinn and Wade Edition" into this format as well. However, I think I'm going to leave the Quinn vs. Donald Trump script, "Resistance," alone -- I think its time has passed much like the Captain America and Spider-Man comics where they react to 9-11.

The thing that strikes me is how Mr. Mallozzi joined STARGATE (which I've never seen) in Season 4 and is yet championing it still. Obviously, he'd like another paycheque, but he's also telling the fans that he's a fan too. It seems strange to say this now, but back in the 90s, being a fan of science fiction struck me as something to be embarrassed by, especially when the product of which I was supposedly a fan included material like "The Breeder" and "The Chasm" and "The Great Work." There is something incredibly validating about being told that something of which you're a fan was worthy of your support and investment and was (sometimes) absolutely brilliant.

Josh Trank reviews FANTASTIC FOUR:
https://letterboxd.com/joshuatrank/film/fantastic-four/

I'm not a wholehearted fan of the episode "Double Cross" because it was filmed in Los Angeles and I will have a base level of distaste for any episode of SLIDERS filmed in Los Angeles. The script is very good.

Yes.

I don't know if this is Marketing 102 or even 101, but the trailers for CHARLIE'S ANGELS were awful; generic shots of action and the Angels in their finery and a very strange song with the lyrics "Don't call me angel" as though a CHARLIE'S ANGELS movie was ashamed of Charlie's Angels as featured in CHARLIE'S ANGELS. And after watching the movie, I felt the trailers were awful because the movie had so very, very little interaction between the Angels. The trailers had no shots of Elena the newbie Angel reacting with terror to Sabina and Jane's hijinks, no clips of Jane the pugilist and Sabina the seductress arguing about tactics, no lines from Bosley describing insane stakes as the Angels react, no brief displays of the relationships -- because there weren't any in the movie and the trailers had nothing to sell the film on aside from women and underchoreographed fights.

The other thing that's unfortunate is that angels are not always rendered as beneficent, gentle creatures but savagely dangerous warriors, but CHARLIE'S ANGELS maintains the view that an Angel's primary gift is baiting men with their bodies because men are god-damn stupid (which they are).

... like I said, this movie should have been my everything. Oh well. Hopefully, the next Sunday of BATWOMAN and SUPERGIRL will be good.

I've edited this thread title into being about Interesting Failures™ in general. And one interesting failure I saw in theatres recently (!!): CHARLIE's ANGELS. As you all know, I love powerful women; I love watching women fight crime. And I love director Elizabeth Banks (PITCH PERFECT II) and I think one of the greatest things I've ever seen was PITCH PERFECT III (not directed by Banks) where Rebel Wilson beats up a yacht full of thugs and then blows up the boat and jumps off it yelling. I adored Melissa McCarthy's SPY and Mila Kunis' THE SPY WHO DUMPED ME, I'd enjoyed DARK FATE and was up for another female-driven action film, so CHARLIE'S ANGELS (2019) should have been my everything.

As with TITANS, I just don't get what this movie is trying to do. If the movie is about three women with conflicting personalities trying to work together as a team in the face of deadly threat, why are the relationships so totally irrelevant to the spy missions where they almost immediately split up every time? If the movie is about Sabina (Kristen Stewart) being a hypercapable lady spy, why is she presented as distractably ineffectual to the point of repeatedly losing her target, losing the villain, losing her gadgets and losing her fights?

(Spy movies often have to work hard to make their hero seem competent while letting the villain's plot progress until the end of the film, but CHARLIE'S ANGELS doesn't try to finesse or counterbalance Sabina's defeats nor does it seem aware of how Sabina is inexplicably lauded for spy skills she doesn't demonstrate.)

If Sabina barely knows her boxing bruiser teammate, Jane, to the point where Sabina has to ask her for her name, then why Sabina later dissolve into tears over Jane as though they have a long-standing friendship?

If it's about female tech engineer Elena falling ass-backwards into the world of espionage, why is Elena so inconsequential to the spy missions except as someone who gets captured and has to be rescued? If it's about women in action sequences, why are the action sequences a rhythmically challenged series of posed shots with no sense of danger, physicality, impact or risk? Seriously, no punches seem to land, there are car chases where you can't tell how close or far apart the vehicles are and action that looks adequate on LEGENDS OF TOMORROW looks bare on a giant theatre screen.

If Jane and Sabina are trying to rescue Elena, why does Jane suddenly split from the rescue effort to spend time fighting a henchman who is not between the Angels and Elena? In fact, why is it that every time the Angels set out to retrieve some MacGuffin, they forget about the MacGuffin in favour of fighting henchmen and wasting time?

If it's a comedy, why are there scenes where the Angels accidentally kill people in the most gruesome manner possible before skipping ahead to a joking scene? If it's a movie about strong women, why does one bizarre scene have Patrick Stewart beating actress Elizabeth Banks in a fight? Patrick Stewart is 79 years old and walks like it takes mental effort to put one foot in front of the other and Elizabeth Banks looks like she should be teaching me how to work out.

I have never been more sympathetic to a film than I am with CHARLIE'S ANGELS, a movie that declares women can do anything and that men are foolish to never take them seriously. I have never been more dismayed at how a movie I agree with in principle is strangely devoid of ability in character arcs, physical action, motion, pacing, blocking, geography or maintaining character motivations in fight scenes.

There is one scene that really comes alive -- when Sabina and Jane join a dance party to infiltrate a secret base. This sequence has all the momentum and physicality that the fight scenes don't and I'm terrified to say that Elizabeth Banks can direct dancing and conversation but can't direct action because it might come off as me saying that about all women. Dear God. Lexi Alexander directed my favourite episodes of SUPERGIRL. Rachel Talalay directed all my favourite DOCTOR WHO action episodes.

The best I can say is that (a) I saw the movie for free because the projector blew on the Friday I first tired to see it and I got two free passes and (b) Elizabeth Banks declared on Twitter that if CHARLIE'S ANGELS were a bomb, at last her name was on it four times over (as an actor, producer, writer and director). She is a force to be reckoned with and I wish I liked her movie as much as I like her.

My logic here may be fuzzy because I'm at home sick, but I think SUPERMAN II: THE DONNER CUT was made because of the lucrative DVD market and because completing a somewhat makeshift Donner cut with some CG work would lead to significant units sold at Best Buy and whatnot.

We're currently in a world where CBS couldn't justify remastering DEEP SPACE NINE and VOYAGER to high definition because streaming services destroyed the home video market to the point where CBS lost money on the remastered NEXT GENERATION blu-rays. The economics don't encourage Warner Bros. to release a second edition of a movie that already failed the first time.

That said, I find it intriguing that all the people who hated Zack Snyder's vision for the DCEU insist that his version of JUSTICE LEAGUE must be good. It's very easy to dislike the movie you saw while insisting the movie you didn't see is the epitome of excellence because it is purely hypothetical. And Snyder's JUSTICE LEAGUE, in addition to existing largely in terms of the imagination, is also the first part of a duology where there won't be a second. Warner Bros. is wise to cut their losses.

But I do expect the Snyder Cut to come out some day, just not under present circumstances. It's not a never-ever situation, just a not-right-now.

I'm waiting until the Marvel shows hit Disney+ to subscribe. But I've read that the STAR WARS (1977) film on Disney+ has yet another George Lucas revision in addition to all the other dumbass alterations he's made over the years: he's added a new shot to Greedo's death scene where Greedo now yells "Maclunkey!" before he and Han fire on each other and Greedo inexplicably fails to shoot a target sitting across a table from him while Han's head nonsensically inclines to the left while Han's blaster kills Greedo.

... it's bizarre. The insert shot of Greedo with his new line breaks the flow of the blaster fire immediately following the, "I've been waiting a long time for this, Solo" / "Yeah, I'll bet you have" exchange. It's a discordant note because "Maclunkey" is not subtitled, so the audience can't even understand what Greedo is saying unless they remember watching THE PHANTOM MENACE and recalling that at one point, the Sebulba pod racer tells Anakin, "Maclunkey," subtitled as "This will be the end of you." https://slate.com/culture/2019/11/star- … unkey.html

Dear God, WHY?! It looks like Lucas made this revision for the 4K release before he sold the franchise to Disney (and, to be fair, gave most of the money to wildlife preservations, inner city youth programs, museums and educational initiatives).

Anyway, I'm never going to watch it. I have the Despecialized Versions. Okay, that's not entirely true -- I watch the blu-ray version of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

I've enjoyed Melissa Benoist in every season of SUPERGIRL. I don't take any issue with her character in Season 5, but I don't disagree that she lacks an arc in Season 5. I'm not sure she needs one right now. The main thoroughline of Kara in Season 5 is that she has merged the two halves of her life, or she at thinks she has. From a plotting perspective, it makes sense to give her an 'arcless' period of stability before Lena overtly turns on her or Kara discovers that Lena considers her a treacherous enemy.

That said, I'm trying to be more open to different kinds of characterization. In Season 1, the writing for Kara Danvers was a mess: she was an entry-level intern at a news agency who was a top level secret agent employed by a government espionage agency who was struggling to keep a secret identity amidst a regular cast where everyone except Cat Grant knew all about it who had a close relationship with Superman although Superman never appeared in person.

Season 2 got its act together at last: Supergirl is the friendly superhero face of a covert spy agency; Kara Danvers is a nervous mess of a human being who has to get her act together when trying to mentor a shiftless layabout, Mon-El, in the superhero game. Supergirl was everything Kara could never be in civilian life.

Season 3, unfortunately, got confused again and this was a season where Kara's only real arc was her grief at Mon-El returning a married man. There was a lot of intrigue over Kara's Kryptonian heritage, but Kara didn't really have a strong direction this season, likely because sexual harasser Andrew Kreisberg was fired off the show halfway into the season and none of the writers wanted to use his planned material once they were rid of him.

Season 4 was good, exploring how Lena is Kara's most rewarding relationship and Lena can't stand Supergirl. The constant collisions between Kara's civilian and superhero life were played out beautifully as Kara discovers that Catco's reporting is at threat, as Supergirl finds that she's part of a discriminated minority, as Kara finds that the ordinary people she lived among for most of her life consider her the other, as Supergirl realizes that she's part of a government agency that is falling entirely in line with a xenophobic White House administration.

The most heartbreaking moment of Season 4 was when Alex is forced to have J'onn erase Alex's memories of Supergirl and Kara feels truly lost. There's another beautiful moment where Supergirl, unable to defeat a Kryptonite fuelled villain and in a jail full of people who hate her, switches to Kara Danvers and is astonished to be dismissed by Supergirl's attacker and embraced by an inmate who is a devoted reader of Kara's articles. And the season finale is where Kara and Supergirl are at last united: Kara exposes the President and Supergirl stops Agent Liberty. Season 5's premiere was, to Kara, the seeming conclusion to this storyline where she tells Lena who she really is and now we're dreading how Kara thinks all is well when she has no idea what she doesn't know.

... is Kara in love with Lena? I think Kara and Lena should be the romance of the show -- but I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think it was planned for Katie McGrath to have such chemistry with Melissa Benoist, but it happened and the writers have tried to steer into it as much as they can, they've made the Kara/Lena friendship the center of Season 5.

However, Supergirl is owned by a corporation that took over seven decades to concede that Wonder Woman is bisexual (and that's with Wonder Woman living on an island nation of immortal women and no men since 1942). The character of Supergirl as she's been portrayed since 1959 is a boy crazy teenaged girl; letting the Melissa Benoist Supergirl be bisexual implies that every version of the character is the same because Benoist is the most commonly known rendition. I don't see this slow, lumbering and heteronormative multinational finding the institutional will to make one of their iconic properties bisexual based on the specific chemistry between one performer playing the role with a specific scene partner.

That said, accidents happen and good shows capitalize on them. ARROW realized that, despite Black Canary and Green Arrow being a couple in the source material, the onscreen chemistry of Stephen Amell and Emily Bett Rickards was the way to go whereas Katie Cassidy was better as Stephen Amell's friend. COMMUNITY planned for Troy and Pierce to be best friends; they soon realized the real bromance was between Donald Glover and Danny Pudi, just as they realized that Joel McHale's best scene partner was not Gillian Jacobs but Alison Brie. SUPERGIRL realized that Winn, despite being a Catco employee, worked better in the spyfi environment of the DEO and made the change for Season 2. MACGYVER started out with MacGyver a gunslinging, arrogant action hero but realized the actor was better as an unarmed innocent. SLIDERS meant for Quinn Mallory to be an unathletic, socially inept geek, but Jerry O'Connell transformed the character into a damaged, self-isolating athlete brainaic and Tracy Torme ran with it.

I doubt SUPERGIRL will capitalize on Supercorp any more than it's chosen to; SUPERGIRL has made Lena the most passionate friendship in Kara's life and I think that's all it can be. Institutionally. If SUPERGIRL were an original property and the showrunners could make decisions without worrying about whether or not they can use the Suicide Squad or get their content past DC Comics, I do think Kara would have been out and proud by the middle of Season 4.

I found a neat fanfic -- a virtual third season of SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES written in screenplay format.
http://tib.cjcs.com/terminator-the-conn … c-project/

I'm only on the fifth script and I'm depending on somewhat vague memories of the TV show, but these seem very solid, capturing both the screenplay format, the militaristic and somewhat defeatist tone of the TV show and the optimism of the characters within it. It's a very plausible rendition of a TV budgeted screenplay.

That said, despite maintaining the format of Sarah Connor's ruminations in voiceover and the troubled tone of the future resistance, there's a slight lack of emotion. By that, I mean I'm on the fifth script and John and Sarah only grieve for losing each other in brief moments. That's sort of the point; they have no time to really stop and process. But it's a little dissatisfying. I can't speak to whether or not this is a good pastiche because I haven't rewatched CHRONICLES, but it's working for me right now.

I'm also impressed with the writer's portrayal of Allison from Palmdale; Cameron is gone, but Summer Glau appears in every episode and the scripts have notes of Cameron except the writer shows how Cameron was in many ways a machine approximation of tiny facets of a much more complicated woman.

Admittedly, the SARAH CONNOR I would have preferred would have been a proper ending to Season 2 with a rewritten "Born to Run" where Catherine Weaver's entire plot is explained along with that three dots stuff, Cameron dies, Derek dies, Sarah sends John into a time bubble to escape certain death -- and he ends up seemingly alone only to be reunited with Derek, Kyle Reese and Allison Young, and John proves able to handle himself in the Skynet war thanks to Sarah's training, meaning that John is where he belongs and will be fine -- an ending that allowed the show to close out but still allowed for Season 3 should the Sci-Fi Channel have saved the show for two more years.