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Day Eight of Informant: Smallville - "Alternate"

Informant wrote another screenplay, not for SLIDERS, but for SMALLVILLE. SMALLVILLE often pastiched other TV shows and movies (THE MATRIX, RESIDENT EVIL), and Informant scripted a SMALLVILLE pastiche of SLIDERS called "Alternate," set in Season 6 of SMALLVILLE. http://someplacethatiselse.net/shared/g … rnateB.HTM

Season 6 of SMALLVILLE is when Clark and Lex are no longer friends; Clark alienated Lex with his obvious deceits and avoidance and distance, Lex's isolation and loneliness has driven him to extremes like having the Kents attacked to try to force Clark to use his powers (except Clark had lost his powers that week and got them back later). Meanwhile, Chloe is in on Clark's secret.

In "Alternate," Clark discovers that Lex is attempting to replicate teleportation powers from one of the Kryptonite mutants. Clark interferes in the experiment and is shunted into a parallel universe.

There, Clark discovers a Lex-double living on the Kent farm. In this universe, Clark left Smallville at the end of Season 2 and never returned. Lex-B, saddened by Clark's disappearance, had a nervous breakdown, lost his fortune and is now running the Kent farm. This alternate Lex is a friend. But on this world, Chloe is the one who became warped and twisted by Lionel Luthor is now using her journalism powers to serve Lionel's empire. Clark is forced to confront that in his life, his friends will always turn against him; it was always going to be either Lex or Chloe.

With "Alternate," Informant taps into an interesting and underexplored aspect of SLIDERS: the idea of branching points in parallel universe as the result not of choices, but of chance. Chance is the only variable on display; the SMALLVILLE narrative is defined by inevitabilities. Clark was always going to become a superhero whose childhood friend would become his sworn enemy. "Alternate" says that the only difference across two parallel realities was who that enemy might turn out to be.

Informant, arguably a more cynical and defeatist writer than most SLIDERS writers, has "Alternate" present the multiverse as an inexorable march to a preordained outcome even if the roles might be redistributed in different realities. If Lex doesn't meet his fate to be the villain, Chloe will assume that path.

On some level, that's entirely fair. No matter where SMALLVILLE went, its ending was ironclad.

But Informant has Clark ultimately win the alternate Chloe back and convinces her to help the alternate Lex topple Lionel Luthor. Informant, in the same story, offers a very small, very minute flicker of hope: that perhaps reality isn't immutable. Perhaps the problem is Clark's behaviour: his withdrawal, distance, deceit and lies alienated Lex Luthor on his world and alienated Chloe Sullivan on another. It's possible, Informant hints, that the inevitability is in the outcome of Clark's patterns rather than in the multiverse.

It is a very small spark of solace and not one that Informant sustains. We may have choices available to us. We may be able to look at ourselves and see our flaws and choose to change. But "Alternate" notes that the SMALLVILLE universe is clearly not designed to accommodate any openness or free will.

SMALLVILLE demands that Lex end the series as a villain even if the actor and the individual episodes diverge from that destination; SMALLVILLE insists that Clark Kent wear a skintight costume even when the character clearly prefers different garments.

SMALLVILLE and SLIDERS are closely linked, but not obviously so. SLIDERS was sabotaged by FOX network executive Peter Roth firing John Rhys-Davies; Roth later shepherded SMALLVILLE to the WB. Clark Kent and Quinn Mallory are both geekboys played by athletes. They even dress the same in flannel and jeans and have the same hair. Both shows are about an isolated young man reaching out into the world and tapping into his boundless potential. SLIDERS offered its characters infinite possibilities (and subjected them to all the worst ones).

"Alternate" shows that SMALLVILLE does not have infinite possibilities. "Alternate" highlights how SMALLVILLE is a show where all the characters have outcomes that are set. Even in a parallel world, fate is merely reassigned, never changed. SMALLVILLE is in many ways a prison for its cast, a jail cell from which even sliding offers no escape.

As with "29.7," Informant's story offers implications that are troubling and unwelcome, but his conclusions are difficult to dispute and deeply disturbing in how they reflect a simple assessment of circumstances as they are instead of how we would wish for them to be.

Next: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

I like women. I like reading stories about strong, stalwart women. One of my favourite writers for such characters was Brian Wood, a comic book author accused of sexual harassment in 2013 at which point I banned myself from buying his work. The accusations from female artists in 2013 didn't seem to affect his career as Wood was hired by Marvel to write an all-women X-MEN comic. Recently again in 2019, there was a new accuser, a comic book journalist, who detailed Wood preying on her and affirmed the previous accusers. As a result, Wood's current publisher, Dark Horse, severed all ties with him and Wood is unlikely to work again in comics. It's about time.

It confuses me that a man whose writing had such regard and respect for women engaged in such predatory behaviour towards them.

TRANSMODIAR: "Death of the author, good sir!"

My friend Kara once said to me, "You have a type, Ib! You like women who are strong. Confident. And kind of weird." Wood's comics were filled with such women, women who would have punched Wood in the throat had he:

(a) Invited them into hotel bedrooms despite him being married with a child
(b) Continued to press them for sex even after they'd refused to have an affair with somebody's husband
(c) Accosted them the next day and screamed at them for declining sex.
(d) Responded by falsely telling their employers that they had sex with him in a stockroom at their workplace and getting them fired
(e) Forced them to kiss him
(f) Deluged them in texts soliciting them for sex

I was disgusted and ashamed at the accusations and of Wood's tepid response where he chose one accuser, confirmed that he'd "made a pass" and then forgotten it, while carefully avoiding any acknowledgement that there were multiple women who'd come out against him. It was clear from Wood's non-response that he had done all of these things and rather than confess, apologize and commit to penance and reparations, he largely ignored his victims and carried on.

I can't bring myself to throw out his comics, although I haven't put a penny in his pocket since 2013.

I wonder if the comics he wrote are a lie and he didn't actually believe in his characters.

I don't know, but it continues to trouble me because Wood's writing was a huge part of making me realize my own appalling behaviour towards women. I discovered his writing after grad school, and putting myself in his female leads' heads made me realize that my condescending, intrusive, grossly disrespectful communication would have had Wood's female characters put a boot through my testicles. I never engaged in Wood's specific behaviour, but I made inappropriate remarks because I didn't understand how to flirt, I would entangle myself in class projects with women I was interested in whether they wanted me to be there or not, I would follow women around campus and stare at them blankly and tongue-tied and I thought myself inept and harmless.

Then I read Brian Wood's comics. They featured women battling unwanted overtures, seeing through shallow come-ons, defying harassment and standing up to men who saw them as possessions. His writing showed how behaviour like mine could be threatening, disturbing, unnerving, distracting and harmful. His work made me realize what I'd been doing and would never do again. Also around this era, I joined a bunch of book clubs with women describing harassing, predatory behaviour which I recognized in myself and stopped, but Wood was the initial catalyst. Most of my friends these days are women. That wouldn't have happened without Wood's writing.

I've often thought that autobiographies can lie but fiction reveals authors whole. Wood's fiction lies, suggesting a compassion, empathy and respect for women that he plainly didn't live by even as he wrote it. Transmodiar once described me as writing in "a fugue state," making me wonder if as a writer, Wood adopted a better persona that he couldn't maintain in real life.

Informant would say that Brian Wood's self-aware wokeness was an act because all self-aware wokeness is an act. But that can't be totally true, can it?

I'm not going to pretend that I didn't 'act' when I stopped being a harasser. It was not natural for me to befriend women strictly as platonic associates. It was not natural for me to decide that I would no longer fantasize about my female friends, not even in the privacy of my own head. It was not natural for me to encourage them to treat me as one of the girls. I acted against my natural/worst impulses because I knew that if I kept behaving the way I used to, I would always be alone and never have the friends I wanted to have.

The act became second-nature. I recently said to an actress friend, "You're a beautiful woman. It means nothing. Beauty is just skill and maintenance, but you shouldn't feel insecure about your appearance in auditions." I recently had a coldly technical discussion with a platonic friend about her sex toys and recommended a specific oil to maintain the motor. I took a friend bra shopping and remarked only on the markup.

I used to have to rehearse for such situations, but what was second nature is now my nature. If I'm on a date, I might not maintain that vacancy of sexuality, but all my friends are women and I know that sexual coldness matched with social warmth will put them at ease. It comes naturally, it isn't an act, but I don't deny it started that way. You fake who you want to be until that's who you really are. I remade myself into someone who would be accepted by Brian Wood's fictional women; those fictional women would be ashamed of their author.

But what if Informant's right about Brian Wood? Did the comics somehow filter out his abusive, harassing traits because (a) that would be unpublishable and (b) he was concealing his predatory behaviour from a general audience by stripping it out of his fiction? Before 2013, I felt relief from thinking about Brian Wood's writing because he'd saved me from continuing or expanding on my misdeeds. I could have easily become a serial harasser or worse, entitled and cruel and prone to reprisals. I felt gratitude towards him. Now I feel sickened by him.

I was reflecting on Tracy Torme's "Slide Effects" notes and decided to write up my thoughts. And, because I love pastiching my favourite writers, I wrote them up as though they were a review written by Darren Mooney of www.them0vieblog.com.

_____________________________________________________________________

Earth 213: On a world where Darren Mooney obsessed over Sliders instead of The X-Files, Darren reviews "Slide Effects":

The Sliders screenplay, "Slide Effects," is a relatively lean beast.

Quinn wakes up to find himself home. It's 1994; sliding doesn't exist; Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are alive and well. Only Quinn remembers sliding and the last five seasons and he thinks that he's losing his mind. The scenario is revealed as a Kromagg simulation, the Sliders escape and slide off to new adventures.

It is a direct and focused story, tightly plotted in a way Sliders so singularly wasn't throughout its run, and that focus is both to its credit and a major flaw.

Scattered Attention
Sliders always seemed to struggle to map out a clear direction or identity for itself. Threads like the FBI searching for the Sliders or the Professor's son never amounted to anything. This problem was most obvious in Season 4 as Marc Scott Zicree, Bill Dial and David Peckinpah rewrote the mythology from one story to the next.

All the elements introduced in "Genesis" with the Kromaggs setting a trap for Quinn were dismissed with a line of dialogue in "Mother and Child." Freeing Earth Prime was reduced to a footnote in "Revelations" and "Strangers and Comrades." Even "Requiem," a story presumably about the fate of Wade Welles, didn't commit to killing her off.

Six Hundred and Seventy Two
In contrast, "Slide Effects" has a very clear idea of where it is going and no room for distractions in its 46 pages of script. This is even more apparent when looking at the original version of "Slide Effects" which is a general yet defined set of 1996-era notes from series co-creator Tracy Torme and a total of 672 words sent to EarthPrime.com as part of the 2009 interview.

From these generalities, Sliders fan writer Ibrahim Ng wrote a 46 page script that reflects the taut, trim plot of the series co-creator. There is no time for exploration or improvisation. Everything in the "Slide Effects" script serves a single purpose: resurrecting Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo and restoring the original premise of the show. This affords "Slide Effects" a purity and energy that was severely lacking in Seasons 3 - 5 as cast members and writers left or lost interest.

Tribute
Notably, "Slide Effects" is specifically a tribute to Tracy Torme. As a follow-up to the Season 5 cliffhanger, "Slide Effects" noticeably doesn't in any way address the events of "The Seer." And yet, "Slide Effects" resolves everything — and nothing — by offering a bridge from the fifth season back to the second season, and back to the version of Sliders that Tracy Torme built and would want restored.

Every page of the script basks in this thrill of apparent canonicity, in the validation that comes from being a script that originated from the co-creator of the series. The title page of Ng's document declares that "Slide Effects" is "a story by Tracy Torme" and Ng buries his own writing credit in the summary. It's an overture urging fans to accept the subsequent pages as a step above fan fiction or media tie-in novels (not that Sliders has any novels).

"Slide Effects" declares itself canon to Sliders and counts on fans to accept it as such because the plot comes from the series creator and executes his wishes and intentions.

Legitimacy
The 46 page script was written in 2011, a time of increasing appetite for legitimacy within fan communities, particularly as it related to licensed products. Perhaps owing to the ever-increasing importance of "the canon" in popular culture, fans expected significance and importance to their media tie-ins.

These expectations of canon come in all shapes and sizes, but they mostly tend to place an emphasis on the "worthiness" of the content for an adult audience. There had to be a sense of weight and heft to Doctor Who audioplays and Star Trek novels in order to justify the audience’s interest and expense, either through being decreed canonical or in being canon in lieu of any other options.

Real Stories versus Fake Stories
It seems likely that the increased attention paid to perceived legitimacy is an extension of this philosophy, insisting that media tie-in producers prove that their content is are worthy of attention and time by making them matter. That legitimacy is reflected in the way "Slide Effects" claims significance through its (passingly) direct involvement by a key figure from the franchise’s history. It is a way to delineate between what is perceived as "real" and what is "fake."

It is a stamp of approval, marking "Slide Effects" as vital to Sliders fans and tangibly essential regardless of its quality or artistic value, although in this case, it was the fan writer and not the creator who labelled "Slide Effects" so.

By Association or Authencity
To be fair, Ng may seek to declare canonicity through a paltry association, but he also makes tremendous effort to assert "Slide Effects" as important through the voices of the characters. The attention given to recreating a print approximation of performances from Jerry O'Connell, Sabrina Lloyd, Cleavant Derricks and John Rhys-Davies is astonishing, detailing the specific intonations and line deliveries of each actor with the script providing not just the words that the actors would speak, but the deliveries and the body language and the acting.

At points, Ng inserts double-hyphens and spaces into Quinn Mallory's dialogue to capture O'Connell's precise pausing and takes the time to describe a scar on the actor's face. The lyricism of Cleavant Derricks' voice is present in Rembrandt with a slight exaggeration that was never in the teleplays but certainly in the performance and it works well in the digital ink of a PDF document. John Rhys-Davies' booming voice can be heard in every line for Arturo. Interestingly, Ng expressed difficulty with writing dialogue for Wade Welles.

Altered Purpose
That is wise, because despite "Slide Effects" being a supposedly faithful adaptation of Tracy Torme's story idea, the "Slide Effects" screenplay makes a noticeable divergence from the creator's intentions. "Slide Effects" as a 46 page script is a story featuring the return of the original cast and clearing away the events of Seasons 3, 4 and 5. It does not seek to resolve the Kromagg/human war or liberate Earth Prime or split the Quinns, but those events are clearly central to "Slide Effects" devoting its pages to stepping back from these developments and declaring them to be "possible futures" that are not the actual future of the original Sliders.

It is a gratifying, earnest, emotional story that offers relief and comfort to the fans, but it is also clearly not what Tracy Torme conceived for this story.

Original Purpose
Ng has given his own separate account of receiving the "Slide Effects" plot. Torme shared it with him in an informal online conversation via instant messaging in 2000, shortly after the cancellation of the series.

"Slide Effects" doesn't actually wrap up the Season 3 - 5 plots and the reason why is clear: Tracy Torme had no idea what those plots were nor was he interested in finding out, nor could he have had advance knowledge of episodes from 1997 - 2000 when conceiving this outline in 1996. Torme's story was in no way designed to resurrect the Sliders from their deaths or reverse the Kromagg invasion of Earth or the merging of the Quinns.

Repurposed
Instead, Torme's plot was focused on creating a pitch for a second Kromagg episode that would not explicitly mention the Kromaggs when pitching it to the Kromagg-averse FOX Network. FOX would have refused to approve any Kromagg story. But they might have approved a pitch that asked: what if the Sliders find that time has been rewound to the Pilot? And what if only Quinn remembers sliding? Their approval would have allowed Torme to push the story into production with the Kromaggs revealed only at the end at which point FOX would have been obligated to air it.

Torme had no familiarity with the latter seasons, had no interest in watching them, and no version of "Slide Effects" scripted by Torme would have hinged upon confronting those latter seasons in any fashion.

Framework
As such, there is something quite endearing watching Ng struggle within a pre-existing plot to achieve aims for which it was never intended. In spite of its adulterated origins, there is a clarity to "Slide Effects" that resounds. There is no parallel Earth explored in this script: it's set on Earth Prime and the only parallel universe that features, a world where verbal communication was stigmatized against, is referred two only in a few lines of dialogue. Everything else is very consciously building towards the Kromagg explanation for Seasons 3 - 5 and how those episodes fit within the larger tapestry of Sliders continuity while ensuring that Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are front and center.

At times, the story can feel truly overstuffed with the sheer quantity of plot content in "Slide Effects." It addresses the Kromagg invasion, the dead characters, the Kromagg Prime backstory and even throws in addressing the question of which Professor slid, none of which was ever intended by Torme's plot.

Three Visions, One Story
Compounding the issue, there is the simple fact that Sliders was effectively three radically different television shows during its five season run. The first two seasons were an anthology series akin to The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone, albeit with a regular cast. The third season was a horror-action series. The fourth and fifth were a studio-bound cable action series. Any follow-up has to address these discontinuities and this is the biggest challenge that Ng faces with "Slide Effects."

Is the script to reconcile the different aspects of the show? Or will it put one above the others? When it comes to scripting a follow-up or sequel, how does one decide constitutes the "real" version of the show? It seems a fool’s errand to try to fashion them into a cohesive arc. As such, "Slide Effects" faces a considerable handicap.

37 Lives
In order to fit all of these details together, Ng offers an explanation with careful setup, so much so that it feels like his 46 pages exist to rewrite the series rather than expanding or continuing its story. The explanation is that Seasons 3 - 5 were the amalgamated experiences of 37 Quinn doubles, each with disparate and contradictory experiences in sliding, and with the the most traumatic experiences brought to the forefront. This is why Seasons 3 - 5 showed the Sliders dying one by one with any discrepancies declared to be the result of merging 37 lives into a single Quinn's story.

It is a very dismissive approach to a complicated mythology, separating Seasons 1 - 2 from 3 - 5 and declaring last three seasons to be other Sliders' problem and no business of the 'real' Sliders.

Simplified Shorthand
The emphasis on recategorizing the history of Sliders finds "Slide Effects" employing a sort of shorthand in its invocations towards the past. There are references to the Kromaggs and allusions to their shapeshifting, but no acknowledgement of how their appearances were revised for Season 4.

The script is careful to describe an "Invasion" era Kromagg with no further comment on the matter. There is no concern raised that the Rembrandt of the possible futures, the Rembrandt of "The Seer," remains without resolution in his arc. There is no direct acknowledgement of the Professor's terminal illness in "The Guardian" which this Professor could still develop.

In fact, the script for "Slide Effects" sharply diverges from the notes and Torme's wishes in two areas: the point at which the Kromagg simulation began is altered from "The Guardian" as intended to "As Time Goes By" in the script. The script also omits Logan St. Clair, a clear effort to avoid her and the Professor’s illness without even referring to either.

Self-Serving
This simplification is not necessarily a bad thing. Ng draws from the most iconic and recognisable elements of Sliders that haunt the show’s five season run. All the Season 3 - 5 regulars appear in "Slide Effects," but as imagery created by a Kromagg's telepathic powers creating illusions instead of in-character and in-person, which really helps to keep the story tight. Perhaps anything more would weigh the story down. This efficiency also helps to declutter the mythology somewhat. Seasons 3 - 5 were dominated by unresolved plots. "Slide Effects" is centered on the original cast, but it can seem somewhat self-serving.

Even as a potential Season 4 premiere, the plot alone is a way to for Torme to assert that only his tenure on the show is the 'real' version of Sliders and that any episodes aired during his departure are doubles and alternates. Ng's script pages magnify this with dialogue specifically to indicate those futures that aired on FOX and the Sci-Fi Channel could never happen to these versions of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo, the one, true Sliders. 

As self-flattering as that might be, there is still something endearingly open-minded in the grudging notion that Seasons 3 - 5 still remain valid with infinite versions of the Sliders out there, some of whom resemble or are the versions we saw in the last three years of the show.

A Tangled Web We Weave
As "Slide Effects" weaves through three years of Sliders continuity, it feels almost like continuity porn. At the halfway mark, Ng stops using Torme's "Slide Effects" plot to tell a story, but as a means to retroactively “tidy up” storylines that everyone (from broadcaster to viewer) would rather forget.

I’m a bit wishy-washy on the issue continuity – I don’t believe that basic continuity excludes an audience, but I don’t believe that it makes for a good story crutch. It’s nice to build on what came before, but exposition and elaboration over events that happened in the past are unnecessary at the best of times.

Minutia
Including a throwaway line which explains that Arturo likes Jeopardy adds personality and doesn’t detract from the story at hand. On the other hand, devoting 23 pages of a 46 page script to explaining how every crazy event in the Sliders history was the result of a Kromagg plan kills momentum and would have likely confused viewers if this script as Ibrahim Ng writes it had ever been filmed.

I’ve argued before and I’ll argue again that this focus on specific minutia is damaging to science fiction television, playing to diehard fans and locking out a general audience.

Not Recommended
If a kid asked me to recommend a Sliders episode and I had them read "Slide Effects," I can assure you that they’d probably never go near the show again again in their life. "Slide Effects" isn’t intended as an episode for new viewers. It’s for fans who know their episodes inside out and that is in stark contradiction to Tracy Torme's plot which made this story a season premiere, an introduction for new viewers by taking them back to the beginning of the show.

Television shows make mistakes. Frequently. Unlike with movie series featuring James Bond or Batman, TV writers generally can't just reboot after a mistake. They have to work around the mistake that they’ve made in order to steer the story in a worthwhile direction. Even in comic books, Batman's abrasive personality is revealed as a nervous breakdown and Green Lantern becoming a mass murderer is explained as his being possessed by a primordial fear demon.

Don't Dwell
However, I don’t see the benefit to anyone in dwelling on those mistakes or seeking to waste valuable time addressing gaps that nobody cares about. I’ll bet Sliders fans would have been glad to see the end of those particular storylines, and certainly didn’t want to see them again – and would have been just as happy if "Slide Effects" were the more character-oriented, introductory, general audience script that Tracy Torme would have wanted.

Move On
Killing Arturo was a mistake. Making Quinn a mythical chosen one in an interdimensional war was a poor choice. Dispatching Wade was a wrong turn. Feeling that Sliders was out-of-touch with an 18 - 25 audience, FOX tried to clean out the cast. They turned Quinn Mallory into a sociopathic action star, introduced Maggie Beckett and had the Sliders' frame of reference with the audience -- Earth Prime -- turned into a Kromagg outpost.

All of this could have been forgotten even and especially with a more faithful version of the "Slide Effects" plot, filmed and aired as a season premiere. It could have been implied that Seasons 3 - 5 were part of the Kromagg scenario without being overt. Those seasons were in the past, best forgotten about. After all, we don’t spend a few hours everyday remarking on how stupid parachute pants were – we just don’t wear them anymore. Life moves on.

A Wizard Did It
"Slide Effects" makes a valiant attempt to retroactively “fix” bad decisions. And, in fairness, the detailed replays of Season 3 - 5 episodes are the right maneuver to attempt something like that. "Slide Effects" writes off those seasons as not “really” being the Sliders adventures but the adventures of their doubles. If you’ve watched The Simpsons, you’ll recognise that he’s pretty much saying “a wizard did it” – which is just lazy writing.

However, that’s not the problem. The problem is that "Slide Effects" spends half its length explaining to us exactly which wizard did what. Quinn's out of character behaviour towards a captured Wade in "Mother and Child"? Quinn subconsciously didn't believe in the situation; any subsequent jerkiness was the result of his detaching from the Kromagg simulation. "I stopped believing in the life you gave me." Rembrandt suddenly having a Navy background? It came from the false Arturo's memories and was folded into Quinn's amalgamated timeline. "You got sloppy," says Quinn. "You combined my life in ways that didn't make sense."

Insular
Perhaps I’m reading too much into this, but it does bother me. It’s exactly the kind of insular continuity obsession that the alienates mainstream viewers from science fiction and fantasy television. Anyone reading my reviews of say, The X-Files, will know that I have enough problems with storylines dependent on contradictory references to past episodes to make sense. Here the storyline is dependent on fragments from three seasons of Sliders. I’m not interested in the the scheme of a master villain which exists in the form of a convoluted set of plots for a troubled TV show.

Storytelling Sacrifices
As much as "Slide Effects" feels tighter and focused than the three seasons that preceded it, it also feels like it sacrifices a lot of storytelling opportunities. In order to condense Torme's plot and addressing all the unresolved arcs down to 46 pages, Ng has to make a number of storytelling sacrifices and cut off a number of promising ideas at their root. There are any number of clever premises at work in "Slide Effects" that the script rushes past in order to get to that final confrontation between the Sliders and the Kromagg agent.

Arcs Untouched
The most obvious of these forsaken premises is the very idea of Quinn remembering sliding where no one else does. The possibility of building a whole character arc around Quinn finding himself home and trying to rebuild sliding is intriguing. There is something dramatic and compelling about Quinn having to decide whether or not he might want to slide again and whether or not he should bring his friends with him on this second effort or leave them home and safe.

In addition, even within the first two seasons of Sliders, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo had changed significantly. By resetting the clock back to the Pilot, "Slide Effects" invites them to contemplate whether or not their character development has been worth their nomadic and homeless situation in the multiverse. The script fails to delve into these questions, leaving the premise of the Sliders finding themselves home somewhat underexplored.

Rush to Reset
The abbreviated length of "Slide Effects" undercuts its own premise significantly. There is no sense of Quinn struggling with finding himself home only to lose it again. Earth Prime is established in a single page of script that exists primarily to have Quinn quote Mallory's final line from "The Seer" and realize that he is home. The confrontation between the Sliders and the Kromagg pays no mind to the characters' development between the Pilot and "As Time Goes By" and is strictly concerned with the traumas of Seasons 3, 4 and 5. "Slide Effects" never fully capitalises on the potential of its plot, rushing towards a reset instead of exploring the characters' mindsets.

Passengers
There are other issues with this compressed pace. Most obviously, every Slider who isn't Quinn Mallory feels like something of a passenger across the arc. Wade's role is to send Quinn to a therapist; Rembrandt contributes nothing to the story beyond being part of the quartet and making numerous funny remarks. Both are granted little time to develop their own agendas or motivations. The Professor leads the charge in exposition, but aside from that, only Quinn Mallory seems to have any real agency.

No Soft Sell
In fact, there are a whole host of ideas that are broached and ignored. The Kromagg declares the Earth Prime illusion to be a gift of what the Sliders want most, their heart's desire — and the emotional cost of rejecting it is never discussed except in a joke from Rembrandt. In fact, the idea of a softer sell with the Kromagg tempting the Sliders with the choice to stay in the illusion in exchange for helping the Kromaggs invade the real Earth Prime never comes up at all, an odd lapse for these master manipulators.

No Reason
The rationale behind the Kromagg deliberately forcing Quinn to endure the most traumatic experiences of 37 Quinn doubles is also strangely non-existent. The desired outcome is clear: "Slide Effects" seeks to acknowledge Seasons 3 - 5 but then write them away. But the Kromagg telepathically inflicting Seasons 3 - 5 on Quinn is in direct contradiction to the Kromagg's stated mission: to give Quinn and friends happy memories of Earth Prime to spur them to stop sliding randomly and find a way to locate their home coordinates so that their homecoming would be followed by a Kromagg invasion fleet.

It's at this point that Ibrahim Ng's effort to rework Tracy Torme's 672 word story idea into a resurrection for the original Sliders shows its greatest strain. The plot from Torme only highlighted the Earth Prime in 1994 scenario as part of the Kromagg simulation. Ng attempts to extend that to every Sliders episode after Season 2 and Torme's framework stretches at the seams with the effort to contain far more than it was ever meant to hold.

This is where Ng's attention to the post-Torme episodes begins to work against Torme's intentions. Likely, had Torme's "Slide Effects" aired as a Season 4 premiere, any dismissal of previous episodes would have been done without specific references to the past, a level of vagary that Ng's script cannot countenance in its wish for closure.

Bait and Switch
But despite seemingly offering closure, "Slide Effects"' final pages work against any sense of an ending, instead leaving off with an extension of the original status quo: Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are still lost, still exploring the multiverse, still searching for a way back home — albeit without the threat of the Kromaggs or the Earth Prime invasion or Logan St. Clair pursuing them or the Professor dying from a fatal disease.

Readers could be forgiven for being surprised when "Slide Effects" declares itself to be a new beginning for a new run of Sliders episodes that will never be written. Sliders was not good at endings and even "Slide Effects" offers an amusing nod to this tendency.

Non-Ending Ending
In a very real way, "Slide Effects" might just be the most satisfying non-ending ending to Sliders ever written. There is a quick glimpse of episodes from Seasons 3 - 5 as as the Sliders peer across the myriad realities, but the story effectively ends with the original Sliders resurrected (having never been dead or separated). The trauma of Seasons 3 - 5 is vivid and compelling and the resolution to the emotions if not the plot points is cathartic and comforting. Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are heralded as the true, core, original Sliders and presented with heartrending sincerity.

And three years of TV episodes are effectively erased, treated as more of the alternate realities that were so central to the larger mythology of Sliders, serving to offer a glimpse of a framework into which multiple versions of the canon might possibly be integrated.

One Step Forward, One Step Back
Meanwhile, the Sliders end the story with resuming their nomadic search for home, precisely where they were at the end of Season 2. No lasting harm has been done, but no progress has been made. It is certainly a kinder fate than what later seasons offered and, in contrast to those seasons, a stirring and joyful coda while in no way a conclusion.

To be fair, this seems to be the point. Ng seems to argue that the Sliders traveling endlessly on amazing adventures is the happiest way to leave them while ruefully observing that compared to death and body horror, interdimensional homelessness is merciful.

It is a wry and self-aware non-ending ending, one that acknowledges Sliders as a truncated and abbreviated TV series in its first two seasons that has been overshadowed by where the last three seasons chose to venture.

The Officially Hypothetical Series Finale
All of this makes "Slide Effects" rather unique in the context of Sliders. This is a fan fiction screenplay that is also a story from the original co-creator of the series. It exists exclusively for the purpose of wrapping up arcs that were left unfinished yet the only wrap-up it presumes to offer is sentiment, distance and reversal.

Ultimately, it serves as a version of Sliders that is what Tracy Torme would want. It presents a restoration that Torme may have contemplated but may not have settled upon. And even if Torme had chosen this route, no Torme script would have been as continuity-oriented as this screenplay.

Modern Day
"Slide Effects" is short and rushed and is less authentic than it presents itself in its conception and creation. These are serious issues.

However, the story is genuine and heartfelt and provides a convincing depiction of all four Sliders and presents their friendship as overcoming all odds. The narrative also feels a lot tighter and more constrained than the stories it seeks to resolve. These storytelling sacrifices allow "Slide Effects" to build both plotting and emotional momentum as it rushes towards the finish line and it leaves the reader's fondness for Sliders as redeemed and restored along with the Sliders themselves.

From this perspective, it feels like "Slide Effects" is the kind of story that many fans and critics would expect from an entry-level season premiere as it lays the previous season(s) to rest, reaffirms the concept of the show, and clears the slate for a new run of adventures.

In that respect, this 2011 screenplay adaptation of a 1996 story idea is a very modern type of Sliders story.

According to Temporal Flux, the de facto authority figure on the series, Sabrina Lloyd left because Kari Wuhrer was harassing her on set. Wuhrer made multiple remarks about how Sabrina, engaged at the time to a crew member, was dating the help. She verbally abused Sabrina to the point where Sabrina would flee the set and lock herself in her trailer and cry.

Cleavant Derricks said in an interview with EarthPrime.com webmaster Transmodiar: Lloyd loved John Rhys-Davies dearly and considered him the father figure of the set. When John was fired off the show, an invitation that TF recovered shows that Sabrina hosted John's farewell party at her own apartment. Cleavant said that Sabrina was miserable after John left and Wuhrer's harassment didn't help.

In an interview, Sabrina said that she felt SLIDERS was no longer challenging her acting abilities which is certainly true given that the production no longer required actors to learn their lines or deliver them correctly.

TF's account: when SLIDERS was renewed for a fourth season, Sabrina said that she didn't want to return to the show if Wuhrer remained aboard. Showrunner David Peckinpah informed Sabrina that he would prefer to retain Wuhrer and Sabrina asked to be released from her contract.

She promptly found another role on an Aaron Sorkin show, SPORTS NIGHT, a major network series with a devoted creator and clearly what Sabrina preferred to be working on instead.

Asked about SLIDERS, Sabrina said that she had seen the episode that wrote her out and that she would never return to the series and was happy on SPORTS NIGHT. She did a voiceover for one episode in Season 5, "Requiem," and Cleavant Derricks revealed that he had to ask her to do that as a personal favour. Otherwise, an impersonator would have recorded the lines.

Actually, if you're going to follow Transmodiar's list, make sure to watch "Requiem" before "Eye of the Storm" or a line in the series finale, "The Seer," will throw you off. This is the first time I have ever encouraged ANYBODY to watch "Requiem." God help us all.

Just... make sure to read "Slide Effects" after you watch the series finale. So many people went on with "The Seer" as the last word on SLIDERS for so long and no one should have to live like that. Not when the creator of the show himself has offered a coda to the show. (Admittedly, a coda that wasn't much more than a post-it in its original form, but a coda nonetheless.) https://earthprime.com/etcetera/slide-effects-2

I am going to try to answer this question Seriously when I haven't in the past and instead posted a list of fanfics.

Assumes serious face.

Fair Warning: For new fans, I don't recommend watching anything outside of Season 1, Season 2 and from Season 3: "Double Cross," "The Guardian," "Dead Man Sliding" and that's pretty much it. According to SLIDERS expert Temporal Flux, co-creator Tracy Torme gave up on the show in Season 3 and stopped going to the set after "Dead Man Sliding." The other co-creator, Robert K. Weiss, had left after Season 1.

I'd suggest reading Wikipedia entries to finish out Seasons 3 - 5.

Gems Throughout: Season 4 has some great episodes. "Prophets and Loss" is a throwback to 80s style television formula but done with incredible craft and passion: there's one scene where the sliders are interrogated and it seems to happen in real-time. "Virtual Slide" has some neat perceptual tricks and deft twists of plot. "World Killer" is a minor masterpiece of SLIDERS.

"The Alternateville Horror" has some brilliant touches of humour and cinematography and staging. "Slidecage" has some spectacular hard sci-fi concepts and one of the finest visual realizations of the series. "Slide By Wire" is an impressive, well-paced tech thriller. "Way Out West" is a very amusing Western spoof.

Seven standouts in a season of 22 isn't great.

Diminishing Returns: In Season 5, "The Unstuck Man" is a clumsy, witless, joyless hour, but there's something impressive in writing Jerry O'Connell out of the show with a note-perfect impersonator. "Applied Physics" is a brilliant exploration of the new situation and a moral crucible for the new slider, Dr. Diana Davis, but the threads it sets up are unfortunately discarded in the rest of the season.

"New Gods For Old" is a magnificent exploration of free will, individuality, collectivism and community but sadly destroys what "Applied Physics" set up. "A Current Affair" is really lighthearted and funny. "The Return of Maggie Beckett" is one of the best scripts ever written for the show. And that's it. Four standouts and one interesting failure is pretty sad for a season of 18 episodes.

Setbound and Bottled: The show changes in ways that aren't to its benefit. Season 3 moved production to Los Angeles and proceeded to set the show there and make no effort to use night filming, stock footage, lighting and colour processing to maintain the San Francisco setting, declaring that the sliders would now slide to LA from now on (aside from two episodes in Season 3 and one in Season 4 that insisted on San Francisco). The show's use of backlots and outdoor studio sets eviscerated the indie film look achieved in Seasons 1 - 2 with location filming.

Should've Travelled Light: According to Temporal Flux, the Season 1 - 2 team had very bare, empty soundstages that could be reconfigured into any interior. If they needed Quinn's basement, they wheeled in the blackboard, the sliding coils, the worktable and the furniture into any soundstage and that would be the basement. If they needed a courtroom, they rented a judge's bench, a jury box, the tables and some chairs. For a hotel room, they'd put up false walls and windows, bring in some beds and put a TV on a dresser. Then they'd pack all that away and bring out what they needed for the next set.

Police Stations: In contrast, the Season 3 team built an expensive cave set that ate up their money with rental costs and maintenance and forced them to include it in episode after episode whether the story called for a cave or not. In Season 4, the production built a vast hotel set, the Chandler, with its lavishly decorated halls and bedrooms consuming the money in rental fees and upkeep and forcing nearly every episode to be set in the hotel whether the plot needed the hotel or not. And they kept it for Season 5. The Season 3 - 5 producers were veterans of cop shows which maintain a police station set; they were indifferent to how SLIDERS needed a different approach.

Beige Curtains: Visually, the show takes a nosedive. Season 3's standing sets are livened up by high contrast and high saturation and a good amount of location filming in LA despite the cave set. Season 4, however, is largely studio-bound and it's a bleak, dim, gray, dull looking show. Season 5 maintains the same look and starts filming in the Hill Valley Square from BACK TO THE FUTURE and it looks ridiculous.

No Review: There's also the sense that the script editors and producers are not performing quality control. Starting in Season 3, characters are often not introduced by names and reviewers have had to check credits and scripts to know how to refer to the guest-characters. Exposition is given in the most artless fashion through a guest-character, Diggs, dumping the information onto the sliders through inane dialogue. Actors misdeliver lines and see those takes aired. Characters also behave in shockingly sociopathic ways and the writers and at times actors are totally indifferent to how bad it makes them look.

Sociopaths: We have Quinn falling in love with an unconscious woman in "Dragonslide," Quinn flirting with Wade's sister when Wade is despondent in "Season's Greedings," Quinn flirting with a married woman in "The Exodus Part I," Quinn refusing to let his friends go back to their home Earth for no clear reason in "The Exodus Part II," Quinn tricking his terrified friends into thinking he's being electrocuted in "Sole Survivors," Quinn abandoning the sliders in "Slither," Quinn having no interest in saving Wade from a rape camp in "Mother and Child," Quinn having no interest in saving his mother in "Revelations" -- some of which is poor writing and some of which is the actor mis-performing the scripted dialogue or adding his own subtext to scenes -- and these incorrect takes being aired anyway.

Disavowed: We have a series-ending cliffhanger despite the show's producers knowing full well that there wouldn't be a sixth season.

SLIDERS was, after Season 2, abandoned by its original creators, denigrated by its gradually departing cast and disavowed by those involved. Seasons 3 - 5 are, on the whole, not an enjoyable, professional product. Whatever fanbase the show has is entirely due to the first 22 episodes and a few scattered throughout the last three seasons. In the years to come, the lead producer for Seasons 3 - 5, David Peckinpah, died and there was much rejoicing in this community. His family posted on the now defunct Sci-Fi Channel forum and defended their family patriarch, protesting the way SLIDERS fans reveled in their loss.

Binge: On the IMDB boards (also defunct), one of Peckinpah's sons explained: Peckinpah had been a good father, a devoted family man and a recovered drug addict who had been sober for 20 years in order to focus on his wife and children. In 1994, Peckinpah's 16 year old son, Garrett, died suddenly from bacterial meningitis. Peckinpah fell apart and fell back into heroin and cocaine.

Peckinpah had a development deal with Universal and was assigned to SLIDERS in Season 3. Peckinpah's grief and addiction made it impossible for him to properly oversee commissioning stories and reviewing scripts or ensure actors performed their lines. "The Exodus" two parter of Season 3 was commissioned not because it was a good story, but because it allowed Peckinpah to hire musician Roger Daltrey for a guest-role and devote two weeks to an on-set rock concert with Roger Daltrey's band. Filming the episode was something to do between performances and binge drinking sessions.

Addict: Peckinpah was bitter and angry towards anyone who questioned or protested his attitude, firing John Rhys-Davies off the show and driving Sabrina Lloyd to quit as well. He had no concern for the content he was producing and it showed. After SLIDERS, he moved from LA to Vancouver, presumably to develop new projects but really to indulge his addiction. Without his family and friends to watch him, Peckinpah overdosed and died, so Seasons 3 - 5 are simply a symptom of a deeply troubled human being and his gradual self-destruction. Season 3 is cocaine, a superficially thrilling but emotionally dead experience. Season 4 - 5 are heroin, a sedating, lifeless endeavour.

Fans view Peckinpah as a demonic monstrosity. He was just a man. Broken and lost. Peckinpah killed himself and in the long process to do so, he took SLIDERS down with him. He died longing for his son, he died in infamy, and he died alone.

Restoration: Anyway. If you do watch the show past Season 2 and somehow get to the end of Season 5, consider reading the "Slide Effects" screenplay which was what Tracy Torme would have liked to happen next in SLIDERS. https://earthprime.com/etcetera/slide-effects-2

I bought a copy of this.

I like to blame everything that's ever gone wrong on DARK PHOENIX. My coffeemaker got clogged with grounds this morning; I blame DARK PHOENIX. ;-)

It could be true, but it's corporate nature to blame any problems on a previous regime.

Thinking about this -- creatively, if Marvel Film agreed to avoid telling any stories that had major impact on New York City, then Sony's SPIDER-MAN films could carry on as though it's in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's New York City. Sony has the rights to Spider-Man and his cast of friends and enemies.

Most of Spider-Man's villains are situated in New York City. Sony could do whatever they wanted so long as their movies never ventured outside the five boroughs and Marvel could politely agree not to destroy planet Earth.

However, Marvel Film (Marvel Studios) is currently refusing to even acknowledge the existence of Marvel TV (Marvel Entertainment) with the writing staff of the Netflix and ABC and Hulu shows only knowing what happens in the movies when they attend the premieres, so I can't see Marvel Film showing any grace to a rival studio when they're coldly indifferent to their office mates in the next cubicle.

When VENOM came out, it was part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or at least Sony producer Amy Pascal said it was in a joint interview with Kevin Feige and Kevin Feige reacted with astonishment. In a follow-up, Feige said that only Sony's Spider-Man films were in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and that VENOM was a Sony project and had nothing to do with Marvel.

Pascal in turn said that she'd meant that VENOM was drawn from the Marvel comic book universe, but that all the Sony films featuring Spider-Man adjacent characters were set in the same world as the Marvel films even if they'd never be seen in a Marvel movie. Feige said that Pascal's explanation was "perfect" and it seems to be Feige's attitude to the Netflix, Hulu and ABC shows (although AGENT CARTER seems to get a special exemption from being exempted).

The key point of interest, however, is that whatever arrangement between Marvel Film and Sony existed, it allowed Marvel to bar Sony from featuring Tom Holland or Spider-Man in VENOM. Sony would have absolutely featured Spidey in their VENOM movie unless they couldn't; my guess would be that Holland's contract was specifically for CIVIL WAR, HOMECOMING, ENDGAME, INFINITY WAR, FAR FROM HOME and two more sequels -- and Marvel could prevent that from being expanded to Sony's spin-offs in which they had neither ownership nor profit. Marvel, fairly or not, was able to restrict Sony from fully making use of its Marvel characters (Venom, Morbius, Silver Sable, Black Cat) by withholding Holland and making them seem illegitimate.

It doesn't seem like Marvel and Sony will coordinate. I think we may have to see future Spider-Man films as being set in a parallel universe and featuring, in SLIDERS parlance, a double of Tom Holland's Spider-Man in a Sony variant of the Marvel Cinematic Universe where, for whatever reason, the AVENGERS characters and story elements do not appear again even if their impact on Holland's character remains intact.

It reminds me of how DAREDEVIL refers to the Chitauri invasion in AVENGERS, but only in the vaguest of terms, calling it "The Incident." Meanwhile, the Avengers Tower is inexplicably absent from the New York City skyline. And in LUKE CAGE, street vendors are selling videos of the Hulk/Abomination fight from INCREDIBLE HULK, but we have to assume that those videos would show Mark Ruffalo instead of Edward Norton and that the fight would be set on the same streets we saw in LUKE CAGE instead of the generic Canadian city that passed for Harlem in the movie. Except in this case, DAREDEVIL and LUKE CAGE were set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Sony's SPIDER-MAN films won't be on account of branding.

Wow. Even DAREDEVIL and LUKE CAGE can't seem to make clear connections to AVENGERS and INCREDIBLE HULK despite explicit references and DD and LC are part of the Marvel family. What chance does Sony have as the competition?

Tom Rothman's handling of the X-MEN franchise and superheroes with FOX is indefensible. The era in which he made a lot of these moves, however, was when superheroes were viewed with derision after BATMAN AND ROBIN. The technology wasn't available to render the spandex costumes of comics with 3D printed texture that matched the contours of the actors. The filming methods of the era made hypersaturated colours like the yellow of the X-Men's costumes or the blue of Superman's tights look flickeringly overbright.

Spider-Man's face, a vivid, elastic surface of human emotion in the comics, was an inflexible statue in live action. I think of this as the SMALLVILLE and UNBREAKABLE era where the film and TV avoided overtly depicting superheroics because they could not be rendered well onscreen. Rothman was working on the X-MEN in this time period when fantasy fiction seemed distant from the semi-plausibility of live action. He had in his hands the film rights to X-MEN and FANTASTIC FOUR and he used them the way studios use video game properties: he produced some shabby product before expecting he'd sell them back to the original copyright holders.

That's not the era Rothman's working in now. Rothman now exists in a world where on his watch, INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE offered a diverse and vivid canvas for Spider-Man characters as well as incredible profit. Where the two live-action SPIDER-MAN films he worked on have been massive earners. Superheroes have proven themselves at box office without diluting them or apologizing for their absurdities or refusing to show them in their costumes or using their powers.

The tech is there and there's money to be earned and Rothman wants that money. The same way he wanted some money for producing some films to make a quick return on a small investment before selling back the rights for a little more money. He might now see the value of Spider-Man as a massive franchise to be fostered and nurtured for what will be massive amounts of money as opposed to the smaller earnings he chased down before. We all have the capacity for the most incredible change. We can evolve into people who now adore superheroes while still staying true to our natures as people who are mostly driven by money. I'm not saying Rothman has changed, but the box office of HOMECOMING and FAR FROM HOME could have done something.

Or we'll get SPIDER-MAN: THE LAST STAND and ARACHNID ORIGINS: PARKER and DARK SPIDER followed by a NEW WEBSPINNERS movie that's so bad that the studio decides not to release it and dumps it on iTunes. But I prefer to be an optimist.

Hmm. Well, I'd hope that if they got Tom Welling for a storyline where Clark has outlived everyone and is at the end of time (hence Tom Welling's natural and healthy aging), they would also get Erica Durance to play Lois. The DC ONE MILLION story arc has Clark, living in the year 1,000,000. Everyone he ever knew is gone. But at the end of the story, Lois comes back to life and they live happily ever after.

There will be a fourth MATRIX movie by the Wachowski sisters and it will feature Keanu Reeves and Carrie Anne Moss.

Hunnh. The Wachowskis are amazingly talented, but SPEED RACER, CLOUD ATLAS and JUPITER ASCENDING were all box office disappointments. SENSE8 was cancelled off Netflix but revived for a finale, so it clearly didn't justify ongoing production. There is the sense of the Wachowskis now going back to an old franchise much as Matt Damon staggered back to Jason Bourne and Harrison Ford meandered over to Indiana Jones.

They're great directors, but as writers -- the first MATRIX movie was inspired largely by Grant Morrison's mind-bending, eccentric comic book THE INVISIBLES. The success of the film, however, led to sequels that had none of the perceptual, reality-warping twists of the first movie and offered only bland discussions of predestination and free will. The studio's wish for a summer blockbuster series, sadly, saw all of the Wachowski's reality-oriented storytelling shunted into the ANIMATRIX material. The sequels feel like an empty, pointless afterthought.

It'd be nice if THE MATRIX IV is great, but my view is that the first MATRIX and further explorations of the MATRIX universe with THE ANIMATRIX is all that were ever needed.

The Sony/Marvel agreement was more a consultancy than anything else. Marvel provided creative stewardship, but Sony kept most of the money and allowed Spider-Man to feature in Marvel's AVENGERS films. Sony also continued developing its Spider-Man-adjacent properties with BLACK CAT, SILVER SABLE, MORBIUS, SINISTER SIX, INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE and VENOM and did so separately from Marvel. It was evident that Sony didn't see the Marvel Cinematic Universe as their universe; they wanted a Sony-based Spider-Man Cinematic Universe.

VENOM is unfathomable to me, but for some strange reason, it was ridiculously successful. I'd argue that it was a fluke that's unlikely to be repeated. VENOM, creatively, indicates that without Spider-Man himself, all of these Spider-Man rights are fairly useless. INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, however, indicated that Spider-Man could indeed start a franchise separate from Spider-Man through using other Spider-themed heroes from Miles Morales to Spider-Gwen. INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE made a strong creative case for Sony ending their dependency on Marvel.

My personal opinion is... mixed. I do think Spider-Man benefits from being part of a shared universe with the Avengers. But I also personally prefer that Spider-Man, in film and TV, exist in his own universe. The Tom Holland version of Spider-Man, to me, is a diluted version of what I find appealing about Spider-Man. His connection to the Avengers and his tutelege under Tony Stark and his going on space missions and having a high tech suit -- none of that is Spider-Man to me. To me, Spider-Man is more like the characters of SLIDERS. The sliders have no official status, no authority, no support system and are perpetually faking and blustering their way through their heroics. Spider-Man, to me, is a blue collar, working class hero. The Spider-Man of the MCU is a rich kid; this version of Spidey has been tailored for the Avengers.

I don't see that changing if Spider-Man remains the Tom Holland incarnation but with no further references to the Avengers, but I also don't really understand HOW this character could function without the Avengers because he was created specifically to be on their team unlike Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. And this split is more business oriented than creatively oriented; Sony hit it big with VENOM and INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE and doesn't need the Avengers. Tom Holland's Spider-Man might, but they're not looking at it that way.

My other concern is Sony head Tom Rothman who was responsible for X-MEN THE LAST STAND and X-MEN ORIGINS WOLVERINE (actual title) and micromanaging the poor directors to the point of having sets repainted without their knowledge and slashing budgets relentlessly. Rothman delayed the DEADPOOL movie for years because he didn't believe in comedic superheroes while being firmly behind the unintentional comedy of X-MEN ORIGINS WOLVERINE (actual title). I don't think his creative instincts are strong and he was lucky to have Feige... although Rothman is also behind the brilliance of SPIDER-VERSE, so many he's changed. I mean, Robert Greenblatt cancelled SLIDERS, but he saved CHUCK. Sci-Fi betrayed SLIDERS at every turn, but they saved WYNONNA EARP. Transmodiar gave various people in this community PTSD, but he cured mine. People change.

To me, the defining characteristic of Jor-El is that he is a scientist. Whether he's Marlon Brando or George Lazenby or David Warner or Terence Stamp or Julian Sands or Russell Crowe, he's a thinker, a philosopher, a man of moral and scientific principle. Jerry O'Connell in Seasons 1 - 2 of SLIDERS makes me think of Jor-El as a young man; Julian Sands had that principled bent in his one full guest-appearance as Jor-El in SMALLVILLE.

I don't see Tom Welling being able to play that. It's funny how Tom Welling was costumed like Jerry O'Connell as Quinn (flannel, jeans, long hair), but Welling doesn't perform brainpower like Jerry. Instead, Welling plays instinctive morality and compassion.

I think maybe Welling could play Commissioner Gordon. If I had to cast Welling as a character in the Superman family, I think I'd have Welling play Dan Turpin, a police officer who works with Superman a lot. Turpin was created by Jack Kirby as a police officer who works with Superman and the SUPERMAN animated series modelled him on Jack Kirby. He's a middle-aged police insepctor and it would be a physical fit for Welling.

If he HAS to be Clark Kent... I don't know if Tom would be willing to spend three months consuming no carbs and engaging in heavy cardio and weightlifting three times a day, living on egg white omelettes and bacon and salad greens and little else, doing push-ups and crunches to collapsing exhaustion before each filming day -- all for one guest-appearance.

I would probably suggest that Tom play the "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow" version of Superman. I'd say that in the offscreen Season 18 of SMALLVILLE, Clark gave up his powers to save Lois from a Sun Eater by transferring all of his solar energy into the monster and losing all his powers. Since then, Clark has lived as a human, worked as a reporter and mentored Connor Kent (the Lucas Grabeel-played Lex clone) as the new Superman, so Clark is now unshaven and at the average size of most 42-year-old men who aren't playing action heroes in TV and film.

Brandon Routh (whom I think is playing the KINGDOM COME Superman) strikes me as someone who is quite fixated on nutrition. During the miserable period where his SUPERMAN RETURNS sequel option was soon to expire, he was asked yet again when the sequel was coming. Routh said he had no idea, but he had been exercising a lot after a break between film roles. When asked if this was for Superman, Routh said that it wasn't; he was working out "just to do it." Routh lives for exercise and fitness. I think Welling lives for his family having spent 10 years living for SMALLVILLE and acting is now just a day job.

... I still haven't watched AQUAMAN. I have it on Google Play.

Should I watch it? Is it worth watching?

Should I watch it in my home theatre or is it okay to watch it on my tablet in bed?

The one thing that makes me unsure about Tom Welling playing Superman in an ARROWVERSE return -- Tom doesn't look like SMALLVILLE's Clark Kent anymore. He looks more like John Winchester. See here: http://sliders.tv/bboard/misc.php?actio … mp;preview

Tom has aged. The truth is, he probably aged this much on SMALLVILLE over 10 seasons, but he took certain measures to keep playing a young man. He worked out intensely except for the summer between Season 4 and Season 5 when he returned to the fall production overweight after what he called "a summer of gluttony" where the pressure of Seasons 1 - 4 had him spend the summer eating everything in sight and not exercising. He was constantly shaving and had heavy makeup to keep a smooth complexion, he was likely dying his hair, he had to have been on a specific diet and exercise regimen to have a muscled yet sufficiently narrow physique, he was most likely deliberately dehydrated for shirtless scenes. He likely had a dermatologist giving him daily facial treatments. The only reason to do any of that craziness is to look like a CW superhero.

Since then, Tom has stepped away from such roles. He has widened at the midsection. His hair has silvered. His face is weathered. He's lost the specific musculature he had during SMALLVILLE. For SMALLVILLE, he kept himself looking 25 for 10 years. He's now allowing himself to look 42. He doesn't look like a superhero anymore and I'm not sure if he would want to or if he should even be asked to. Surely Mr. Welling has done his time and given us everything he could (except a final shot of him in the costume which wasn't bright, but Welling's creative instincts for shepherding the SMALLVILLE could be needlessly fundamentalistic at times).

He's said himself that he has aged (because he let himself) and he doesn't know if it would be good for fans to see him as he is now playing Clark Kent. If Tom were still playing his SMALLVILLE role today and the show hadn't ended with Season 10, I can't see him staying 25, but I also don't think he would look the way he does now. Likely, he'd have the same widened frame but with muscle instead of fat and he'd have the smooth complexion he had before. And that might be a bit much to have him affect for a guest-appearance. I say let Tom Welling drink beer and eat corndogs in peace.

I didn't delete them. I moved them to Random Thoughts because if SliderNum5, JWSlider3 and Grizzlor feel my tangents are distracting from a sensible discussion of Marc Scott Zicree, then I felt I had to defer to them. It is no trouble to post my tangents in a different thread and it will make others here happier.

Responding to a post in the Marc Scott Zicree thread:

While I appreciate your support, I'm going to ask you to defer to others on this one. I confess don't fully grasp why every thought provoked by the name Marc Scott Zicree isn't relevant to the thread. But it's important to respect other people's positions even if we don't understand them so long as those positions are not ones of bigotry and hatred.

At the end of the day, if Grizzlor and SliderNum5 and JWSlider3 want to have a sensible discussion about Marc Scott Zicree as opposed to his relevance to my personal life, then I respect it fully and will behave accordingly. This is their board too. It is no trouble to create the appropriate quotes and post such content in the Random Thoughts thread.

I guess, because our threads on Informant's legacy and our Marvel Cinematic Universe thread have invariably meandered into politics and superheroes from different companies, pondering Zicree and the morals of deception and the question of redemption and the mental conflict of being friends to both Temporal Flux AND Transmodiar seemed germane to me. Others disagree and at the end of the day, I don't rule this forum; I serve it. I work for all of you.

It'd be interesting to contemplate what Marvel TV shows would be like if Joss Whedon had stayed with Marvel after AGE OF ULTRON and continued to be the bridge between the film division and the TV branch.

Well, I'll definitely watch this. I mean, I once watched the entire first season of the TRANSFORMERS cartoon because TF spoke well of it in passing.

I was going to write something to respond to you about how Zicree sometimes says things that are totally true while leaving an impression that's utterly false and how Zicree can have different goals that are in opposition but not mutually exclusive... but then it's pretty much what I already wrote above, so I can't answer your question any more than I already have.

I haven't seen FAR FROM HOME, but that puts me in the same position the AGENTS OF SHIELD writers were in when conceiving their Season 6 threat. What about the Avengers Initiative? What's their situation post-ENDGAME? The AOS writers decided not to refer to what they didn't know.

However, even if the Marvel Film and Marvel TV connection were intact via Joss Whedon and even if the actors were willing, available and affordable, AOS could not have brought the Avengers into the Izel storyline.

If AOS had been in the ENDGAME and FAR FROM HOME loop, I can only see the references being made by having Daisy declare that they can't call in the Avengers because if Izel possessed Hulk or Dr. Strange or Captain Marvel or even Ant Man, she'd kill all of SHIELD in a second.

The AOS writers have said that the uncertainty of whether Season 6 would air before or after ENDGAME was also an issue, in which case such a scene might have been filmed twice: once with specific Avengers named, once without specific names, and both times establishing the same effect: The anti-possession devices are ultimately devices. They're breakable and possessing a human is bad enough. SHIELD cannot call in any more superhumans. Yoyo is already a liability.

That's the only Avengers tie-in I see being possible. Season 6, whether by accident or design, created a villain who made it unwise to bring in any Avengers.

This is a ridiculous and unreasonable complaint, but when SUPERGIRL was first announced and when TITANS debuted and when BATWOMAN was launched, it always struck me as absolutely bizarre that we have all these spin-off shows but we don't have the core characters for these different DC families.

In 2006, the Wildstorm 'adult' superheroes line (populated by imitations of DC and Marvel heroes) relaunched its titles: WILDCATS (a bit of an X-MEN knockoff) and THE AUTHORITY (a JUSTICE LEAGUE pastiche) along with other titles such as MIDNIGHTER (Wildstorm's Batman), STORMWATCH: POST HUMAN DIVISION (basically AGENTS OF SHIELD), GEN 13 (an X-MEN/TEEN TITANS knockoff) and a few others. However, due to various production problems, WILDCATS and THE AUTHORITY didn't come out on time or at all even though the other titles did.

It was almost as though SUPERMAN, BATMAN and JUSTICE LEAGUE failed to make it to comic stores and readers had to make do with SUPERGIRL, BATWOMAN, GREEN ARROW, TEEN TITANS, LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, BLACK LIGHTNING and, uh, AGENTS OF SHIELD.

When I look at the CW shows, I can't shake the feeling that we're looking at spin-offs of core shows that were never made. It's weird and it's too late to change it.

I have two sets of thoughts on this.

The first: Zicree is a very interesting person. It is always a pleasure to hear him speak. He imparted wisdom to Temporal Flux that we still receive from time to time (such as how to decode an exit story to determine the circumstances under which an actor left the show).

Dinner: Zicree had a nice dinner with Transmodiar in the early 2000s (I think) under circumstances Transmodiar has declined to share as the result of events Transmodiar would prefer not to divulge. I assume this was when Transmodiar was a volatile firebrand and before Transmodiar became an indulgent, self-effacing goofball. If Transmodiar during this meal was anything like his message board posts of the era, we should be impressed that Zicree didn't put Transmodiar's face through a restaurant window but instead let him grow up into the very sweet and patient man he is today.

(The amount of work Transmodiar put into SLIDERS REBORN was insane. "Indulgent" and "patient" are understating it.)

I'm sure that Zicree's audio commentary on "World Killer" and "Slidecage" (and perhaps "Genesis" and "Revelations"?) will prove enlightening with regards to the craft, structure, pacing, plotting, characterization and visual realization of a TV episode.

Second Thoughts: However, and this leads into my second set of thoughts: Zicree has been less than honest regarding Season 4. In every exchange, he declares that he accomplished everything he set out to do, that he was happy with giving input into nearly every episode of the season, that he was pleased with his work, that he was sorry not to return for Season 4, that Jerry O'Connell was splendid, that Bill Dial was great, that David Peckinpah was lovely and that the only bad thing Zicree has to say about the season is that "The Chasm" was awful.

Courtesy of Temporal Flux, we know full well that all of the above is technically true but misleading. TF has called Zicree a master of tact (or, as I'd call it, a master of lying). TF explained that Zicree communicates very indirectly when expressing dis-satisfaction.

TF's behind the scenes information and the circumstances, interviews and information indicate that Zicree:

• Won the story editor job through an interview with Peckinpah where Zicree reiterated everything Peckinpah said in a paraphrased repetition that convinced Peckinpah that Zicree was either a genius or a controllable yes-man.

• Provided David Peckinpah with 10 pages of corrective notes on "Genesis"' portrayal of the Kromaggs and error with a double of Quinn's mother that were summarily ignored (and caused Peckinpah and Dial to view him as an annoying interloper).

• Pressed for Wade to be written out in a way that wouldn't demand the characters to focus on finding her (rejected).

• Pushed for Sabrina Lloyd to be hired as a guest-star to rescue Wade and send her off (couldn't be done with Sabrina declared she'd never come back after "Genesis" aired).

• Argued for Wade's status to be reported upon by a fellow Kromagg prisoner who would assure us that Wade had escaped (rejected).

• Sought for the Kromagg breeding camps to be explained as a necessity due to the Kromaggs being sterile (grudgingly carried out with 'The Dying Fields').

• Created the Season 4 arc in which Quinn is tricked into thinking he is Kal-El of Kromagg Prime.

• Sold "Revelations" as a season finale story where Quinn discovers that the Kromagg Prime backstory is a sham and that he's been used as a pawn to unlock the Slidecage and allow the Kromaggs to retake their former home.

• Saw his story arc overturned when Peckinpah and Dial, displeased with Zicree's interest in rewriting scripts, reworking stories and doing his job instead of drinking and playing solitaire, declared that "Revelations" would no longer reveal Quinn's backstory as false -- simply to upset Zicree and drive him away.

• Gave up on Season 4 after "Slidecage" and stopped doing anything beyond the contractual minimum (if not less), presumably turning his attention to his MAGIC TIME project and his ANIMORPHS scripts.

• Decided not to bother returning for Season 5 and was replaced by (shudder) Keith Damron.

The Spin: But yes. Peckinpah was fun to work for if you didn't care about what you were producing. Bill Dial was indeed great when writing his own scripts: check out the real-time interrogation of the sliders in "Prophets and Loss." Jerry O'Connell put a lot of passion and effort into "World Killer." Zicree did give input into Season 4 scripts; whether his input was integrated is another question entirely. And Zicree did accomplish most of what he wanted with his two scripts of the year ("World Killer" and "Slidecage"). Zicree's impressive ability to focus on the positive, however, doesn't mean the negative ceases to exist.

The Best Liar: Zicree is the kind of liar who lies by telling you only things that are true, his omissions serving to create a false impression even though nothing he said was a lie. And his lies are never to make himself look better. Instead, it's to be merciful to others. As a result of his lies, Zicree:

• Doesn't get a reputation for speaking poorly of previous employers and being ungrateful.

• Avoids declaring a negative opinion of someone that is stored in perpetuity when that person might change and grow.

• Forgives others their trespasses by refusing to dwell on their misdeeds and harm, instead choosing to move forward and allow those who hurt him to one day move on as well.

Alternate Feelings: TF and I are somewhat in 'disagreement' regarding Marc Scott Zicree and Wade. ("Disagreement" is too strong a word.) TF thinks that Zicree didn't have a concrete plan for what to do about Wade beyond creating hope for fans that she was out there and that the SLIDERS might find her. TF actually talked to Zicree, so we should absolutely go with his perspective.

But personally, as someone who has watched a ton of Zicree teleplays on CAPTAIN POWER, BABYLON 5, REAL GHOSTBUSTERS, JAMES BOND. JR., DEEP SPACE NINE and MANTIS, I find myself not aligned with TF on this front. I feel that Zicree writes very purposefully; he understands the medium of TV, that every story element is an expense and an effort for a rushed production whether it's live action or animation. Any detail Zicree presents is there to serve his story, whatever that might be.

What was the Plan? I can't see Zicree wanting the sliders to know that Wade was out there or claiming that Wade's absence wouldn't take center stage unless he had a purpose for that story element, a goal in mind for it, and a plan to make it happen.

My supposition is that Zicree simply intended for Wade to be missing, presumed leading the resistance, in "Genesis" or sliding alone with a stolen Kromagg timer -- and the rape camp element caught him off guard and was likely a point of contention in his 10 pages of corrective notes.

Likely, in Zicree's mind: if Sabrina Lloyd could return as a guest-star to portray Wade as a resistance leader or a solo slider, fantastic. If not, guest-characters could tell sliders that they'd met Wade and that she was doing fine, an idea clearly floated in the writer's room as it was released to the fans as part of the Season 5 sting operation of a stream of rumours to identify the Expert's source.

Buried Deep: I could be wrong about Zicree's plan and purpose, but I feel it safe to think he had one. I don't think TF is wrong in any of his information; I just think there is more to Wade in Season 4 than what TF has discovered (or chosen to share). That additional information may be lodged deep in Zicree's consciousness, unspoken and unvoiced, buried so deep under professional goodwill and personal charm that Zicree may be functionally incapable of offering it.

I may be wrong about this. I have no factual basis for any of this. It is a feeling. An extremely personal one and in no way an objective, unquestionable truth. Those who seek such truths should go to Temporal Flux.

The Commentaries: I could be wrong, but I feel that Zicree will continue to be less-than-candid when it comes to the troubled circumstances behind the production. I don't think he's going to touch on David Peckinpah's drug addiction, Jerry's alcoholism, the resistance to his editing scripts, Bill Dial's dependent personality disorder, Bill Dial's fixation on Solitaire, the casting of Charlie O'Connell, the infamous Scene in "Mother and Child" or the way Zicree was spitefully barred from completing his story arc.

Zicree is not going to talk about rape camps (or write about them). Zicree has cultivated a very specific online persona: Zicree is Garfield. Zicree is instant cinnamon oatmeal. Zicree is inoffensive gentleness. Zicree is an almond milk milkshake with sugarless sweetener. Zicree only courts controversy within his script pages.

I think Zicree will continue to offer his insights on the craft of writing but touch only not at all on the circumstances of Season 4. Like a healthy adult, Zicree shrugged off SLIDERS' failures and moved on with his life. He didn't spend two years of his life writing fan fiction screenplays for SLIDERS.

And maybe that's for the best.

I dunno. It's hard to say because I am completely resigned to superheroes coming back from the dead and it's convinced me that Quinn and Arturo will also come back someday. I feel like Robert Downey Jr. is done with Marvel contractually... but even then, I feel like at some point, we'll get Corey Fogelmanis playing out the teen Tony from the past storyline at some point. Onscreen, Black Widow is defined by the fact that she's played by Scarlet Johannson who is a performer of rare talent and charisma. She's great in WINTER SOLDIER, but she's primarily a chameleonic blank slate.

I did have this joke I was going to make where you, Slider_Quinn21, were grousing about David Mamouz being too short to play Batman and I was going to ask why Batman brings out the worst in you: first your hatred for old people by raging about how Ben Affleck is too old to play the character, now your hatred for short people over Mamouz. But then your wife had that miscarriage and I felt I needed to take it easy on you and also, to say you have ever raged about anything is quite an overstatement.

Black Widow is not the hill I want anyone to die on.

**

People love the first AVENGERS. I thought it sucked when I saw it and the thing I hated most about AVENGERS was the ridiculous ending where destroying the Chitauri mothership inexplicably incapacitates all the foot soldiers, a bizarre and nonsensical design flaw that Joss Whedon apologizes for in the AVENGERS audio commentary, explaining that he was extremely tired.

I also thought CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER was absurd in that Steve is nonsensically determined to commit suicide by piloting the bomb-equipped plane away from its target and never considers bailing out before it blows.

Spoilers for the deleted scenes here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gViSJitqG4k

Naturally, I enjoyed some of the ENDGAME deleted scenes released a little while ago. There's one where Rhodey and Steve are reviewing Steve's final WWII mission and Rhodey point-blank asks Steve why he didn't parachute out of the soon-to-explode jet. Steve reacts with a blank stare, grimly realizing that his decades-long hibernation and time-displaced situation are because he got caught up in the moment and missed the obvious.

I also liked the scene where Rocket Raccoon expresses astonishment that the Avengers spent two to three hours fighting the Chitauri, an invading force Rocket describes as "the suckiest army" in the galaxy as everyone knows they're easily beaten by taking out the mothership. Steve explains that the Avengers weren't aware, Rocket laughs in their faces and Tony, who experienced post-traumatic stress after blowing up the mothership, grabs an electric razor and shaves a chunk of fur off Rocket.

I'd welcome being corrected if I'm wrong, but from glancing over the Wikipedia entries and fan sites, saying that Sci-Fi saved ANDROMEDA, POLTERGEIST, OUTER LIMITS and STARGATE seems like saying I saved a drowning man by tossing him an inflatable liferaft even though my next move was to shoot a hole in the side. ANDROMEDA, POLTERGEIST and OUTER LIMITS only lasted one season on Sci-Fi. Sci-Fi only 'saved' SLIDERS in that they commissioned an additional 40 episodes of a show with the same title. ("We think SLIDERS works better with three men, one woman. We don't care which one you keep and we're not taking into consideration the fact that one of those three men was Shakespearean actor John Rhys-Davies.")

MYSTERY SCIENCE FICTION THEATRE 3000 spent its Sci-Fi Channel years being subject to absurd network interference from Sci-Fi's parent company and eventually cancelled over it. However, there was a proper finale and three seasons is pretty solid.

ANDROMEDA, I know slightly more of than the others because I watched the first season (very good) and couldn't even finish the second due to the change in writers. I attended a panel after the show's cancellation that described the budget-strapped, lifeless fifth season that was missing most of the actors for a good chunk of the year and the ship grounded; that doesn't sound like a save to me.

SG-1, Sci-Fi not only cancelled but also barred from finding a new broadcaster in Apple -- which is the equivalent of giving a drowning person a lifeboat, waiting a bit before shooting a hole in the boat, then shooting Steve Jobs when he throws out a lifeline.

So, Sci-Fi as a show-saver -- well, they saved MST3K. I'll give them that. But it seems to me that MGM saved SG-1, not Sci-Fi; Sci-Fi just happened to be in the neighbourhood at the time. And as for ANDROMEDA, OUTER LIMITS, POLTERGEIST and SLIDERS -- did Sci-Fi save them? Or did Sci-Fi prop up four corpses on some sticks and parade them around for a bit? While claiming credit for bringing back the dead? While drumming up a little (low-investment) publicity for their niche network? And while offering a poor copy standing in for the real thing?

(No idea about OUTER LIMITS and POLTERGEIST.)

All of this is from the two-volume oral history of STAR TREK, called THE FIFTY YEAR MISSION. Braga's pretty frank and some of this is my criticism of his own remarks about himself.

Braga was an intern when he got his first writing job on STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION. It was his first professional sale, his first staff position. He became a producer and a showrunner, but the problem, from my perspective: he never learned how to write ANYTHING other than the idiosyncratically structured scripts that would fall within Gene Roddenberry's bizarre content restrictions (no drama, no conflict), restrictions that were largely maintained even after Roddenberry died.

Also, Braga's writing skills: he wrote brilliant high concept episodes of mental confusion and temporal dissonance. What he did not write were character arcs, ruminations on society and human nature, reflections on the world around him. There's a place for that in STAR TREK, but STAR TREK also has to offer thought provoking social commentary and satirical introspection. Braga's stories, when they're not about his high concepts, are about STAR TREK and that in itself isn't really meaningful.

Braga only knew STAR TREK and when he moved to VOYAGER, he ran the show so as to keep telling the extremely limited palette of stories he knew how to tell -- shipbound adventures contained within an episode. As he took over more responsibility for all scripts, his limitations in shepherding other writers became clear: too many ENTERPRISE episodes feature pointless escape-capture chase scenes to stretch out the length.

Braga's organizational skills were also suspect. Writers have described how he would tell them to throw forward their ideas, he'd disappear into privacy, and then come out with assignments. When the first drafts came in, he would personally rewrite all of them into what he viewed as an appropriate template for TREK and fell within Roddenberry's restrictions. Not only were Braga's skills unable to rewrite scripts into effective pieces of drama, the process was exhausting for him and he was not producing his best work in these circumstances. He didn't know how else to work. No one had ever taught him.

One writer, Michael Piller, had a very similar approach to screenwriting. However, Piller thrived on rewriting people's scripts, he had an open submission policy for ideas on his show THE DEAD ZONE and would then personally redraft every episode's screenplay with his themes and character arcs of choice. When Piller got sick and couldn't rewrite anymore, THE DEAD ZONE's third, fourth and fifth seasons featured what were seemed to be first draft scripts unrefined by any showrunner.

Braga was no Piller. At the end of the day, Braga's rewrites were to move scenes to standing sets, to pad out length with repetitive action and dialogue or to remove anything that might offend the deceased Roddenberry's sensibilities. He never learned how to do anything else. Why didn't he leave? I think it's hard for someone to come from nowhere and nothing to running STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION and STAR TREK VOYAGER and think you'll ever find another job as good as that. I guess he stayed for the money and because he fell in love with Jeri Ryan.

Braga was also a little spineless. He plotted out a grand origin story for ENTERPRISE, half a season of building the first Earth starship ever -- and folded the second Paramount pushed for the ship to leave spacedock in the Pilot. Now, it seems to me that setting THIRTEEN EPISODES on Earth trying to build a starship is something you need to fight for or your show is just empty product filling a timeslot. And if Paramount fired him for his refusal, SO WHAT? What show wouldn't be happy to hire Brannon Braga? (As a staff writer. Let's not go nuts.)

Around the time INSURRECTION came out, Leonard Nimoy was asked why the response was so tepid, if STAR TREK was dated and tired and irrelevant and should be laid to rest. Nimoy shrugged. My response would be: it was RICK BERMAN AND BRANNON BRAGA'S STAR TREK that was dated and tired and irrelevant. For too long, the franchise was entirely too synonymous with two men who were excellent for the syndicated market of THE NEXT GENERATION. Berman let Ira Steven Behr do his thing on DS9, but when Berman was personally involved in a show and had Braga working with him, their results were tired and staid. Braga didn't know how to run a show. Braga's excellence on THE ORVILLE, I think, speaks for itself. He's a brilliant writer. A great talent. His apologies for his past behaviour and his writing are also revealing. He has a great heart and he was a very crappy and troubled and insecure man who has become a better one.

Showrunning is not for everyone and it was not for Brannon Braga. Or David Peckinpah. Or Bill Dial.

Please don't watch shows you find boring. You deserve better.

I recall Temporal Flux and I enjoying the ENTERPRISE pilot and then neither of us being able to keep watching the show. It wasn't holding our interest. Can't speak to whether or not TF ever came back to ENTERPRISE.

When I heard that Season 3 had improved halfway through with the coming of Manny Coto, I got caught up by reading Wikipedia entries and watching only the episodes that didn't seem like another rote runthrough of the TREK fast food formula. Season 3 in the second half is a quantum leap forward for the series. Season 4 is also really good except for the finale which Braga describes as being so awful that the usually mild-mannered Scott Bakula lost it on Braga.

Braga, in interviews, described how he had wanted ENTERPRISE to spend half a season on Earth building the ship and for the ship to be primitive, but Paramount wanted a TNG situation ASAP. Chris Black, however, remarked that Black had been on enough shows to see that it's up to a showrunner to FIGHT for the series they want (and he's plainly speaking of Bill Dial and Keith Damron). In Black's opinion, Braga didn't really fight for his show and viewed himself as middle management.

Response #1: That's cool!

Response #2: Jerry O'Connell is screwing with me. He knew that Picard and Data's return could allow me to finally let go of the Professor and Quinn, so naturally, he makes sure that the face of Quinn Mallory is the FIRST THING I see when I open up the Hall H video.

Response #3: That's cool and Jerry O'Connell doesn't know I exist and we should keep it that way.

I am reasonably sure that STAR TREK was referred to as the McDonalds of science fiction long before VOYAGER, but with VOYAGER, it became true. My issue with VOYAGER is that despite numerous fine episodes, on the whole, it's executing the TREK formula without much spirit or innovation or personality from its creators.

VOYAGER tells its stories functionally, but for a story to be good, it has to have something to say. A point about human nature or the futility of war or fears of machine automation or obsession or military conflict. The original series and TNG often said incredibly stupid things about these subjects, but they said something.

VOYAGER is largely following the fast food recipe and I think that TREK as mass-produced fast food hamburger rubs the audience the wrong way. TOS was vivid pop-art. TNG had Shakespearean level actors with humour and humanity. DS9 was dark and politically challenging. VOYAGER is a McDonalds hamburger and not even a Big Mac. It's the junior cheeseburger from the kids menu and ENTERPRISE for three seasons was like a half-microwaved White Castle.

I'm not knocking the role that fast food burgers have in our lives; sometimes, you need a junior cheeseburger or a White Castle. But I don't think you need 45 of them, one per minute, every week, for ten years. And I think it's offensive when creativity is reduced to executing a formula and nothing else.

Whatever DISCOVERY's faults, it has a perspective, it has values, it has meaning. The first season is about questioning Starfleet's ideals during a time of war. The second is about reconciling with the inevitable whether those inevitabilities are a doomsday prophecy or making DISCOVERY sync up with TOS. There's plenty to criticize, but I couldn't and wouldn't try to sum up DISCOVERY by looking at the McDonalds menu.

None of that is necessarily true. Spiner might have aged, but Data in the trailer looks young (through the magic of CGI). I think it's pretty clear that Data is going to be a computer generated character. The only uncertainty is the degree to which Data will be CGI.

Is Spiner only doing the voice and some motion capture? Is Spiner performing on-set and receiving digital makeup and body modification to make him look young and slim? Is a different actor playing Data on set with Spiner performing the same scenes in a VFX bay for his face and voice to be added on top?

The thing about Data is that the character as we know him was not really based in technical trickery or special effects. You could tell it was a man in makeup; you could see the lines in Spiner's face, the bags under his eyes. It was the body language and demeanor that made Data seem artificial.

Spiner had a peculiar movement system that subtly implied mechanical calculation. He had a crisp, abrupt, machinelike approach to human mannerisms and behaviours from eye contact to speech. His voice was an extremely pleasant exercise in perfect neutrality, neither happy nor sad but certainly curious and innocent. Data was one of the first depictions of artificial intelligence where the intelligence was an accommodating, endearing personality. Every child wanted their own Data to play with them, to explore the world with them, to protect them. There is something bizarre and sweet about how Picard, who is Data's boss, spent a lot of time having boyish and innocent adventures with Data, going fishing and playing detectives.

A lot of what made Data so special was unique to Spiner; at times, body doubles were hired for episodes where Spiner played multiple roles. These body doubles often walked stiffly or moved with harsh intensity, completely missing Spiner's subtle indicators. Jonathan Frakes once remarked, "You don't realize how subtle and brilliant Brent Spiner's performance is until you see someone else doing it -- badly."

I wouldn't want Data to be the product of CG artists. He should start with Spiner and the CG team should go from there.

It's at this point that I am forced to confess something that I feel may be a betrayal. I miss Quinn Mallory. I need Quinn Mallory. But I could probably carry on if Data came back.

I think the simplest explanation for Data's return if they're not bringing him back to life: he's a holodeck program. And if the show is about Picard dealing with old age, it's very important that Data look young.

I am prepared to accept this opinion on Seven as it comes from the primary, premier (and only) fan of VOYAGER. I'm assuming. I have literally never heard anyone else speak fondly of the show. Let's trust him.

While I have a lot of issues with Brannon Braga, he seems like a decent guy these days. I feel safe to assume that Braga and Ryan dated each other and kept their love and professional lives separate. Ryan was hired before she and Braga dated. Seven was going to be a major character even if Braga were a eunuch, so dating Braga had no impact whatsoever on Seven's role. If Braga were predatory towards her or abused his position, I think it would have come out when Ryan also detailed Kate Mulgrew being harassing and abusive.

I've heard horrible things about Braga being unprofessional during script meetings and interviews. I've also heard Braga immediately confess all of these things and apologize to the people involved, admitting that he was arrogant and also didn't understand that his job and his attitude could hurt people's feelings. His work on VOYAGER and ENTERPRISE has been trashed by fans and Braga has appeared in the comments to apologize to them as well. Braga and Paramount TV mutually agreed to demote him for Season 4 of ENTERPRISE, but when the Season 4 team needed a script urgently rewritten to be filmable, Braga accepted the job graciously, happy to be basically be an intern on the show he used to run.

His stewardship of STAR TREK was poor, but he seems to have come into his own with THE ORVILLE as a staff writer where instead of the organizational and administrative work that clearly sapped his creativity, he's part of the team. He wishes he hadn't been a Jerry O'Connell level jerk and that he'd done a better job and he's taken a another massive demotion and will try to do better now. I can identify with that.