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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.

Well, Jeri Ryan is a great actress. I think? I’m hoping this isn’t another Danielle Panabaker situation where I’ve vastly overestimated someone based on a fond memory that’s wrong. Although I have no fond memories of Seven, but the actress seemed good.

I don't remember VOYAGER. Was Seven acting human and being casual and pleasant by the end?

**

My read on Spiner: he loves Data. He loves playing him. However, over the course of seven seasons, he aged. It's not noticeable if you're watching the show week to week because Spiner fills out gradually. The lines in his face deepen over the course of a year. The human memory always takes the present day face and puts it on top of your memories unless the changes are sudden like David Boreanaz suddenly thirty pounds heavier on ANGEL (because he was having knee problems and couldn't exercise) or Jerry O'Connell suddenly having a sun-tan and very short hair. This bothered Spiner because even though he was a healthy man, he viewed Data as a childlike figure. He didn't like how he was playing a very innocent, naive character when physically, he was clearly a middle-aged adult. He felt he couldn't sell the character anymore.

Onscreen, Data looks like a man in makeup with very subtle but narrative body language to indicate his artificiality and it's really the performance that makes him seem like an android instead of an actor with an altered skin tone and contact lenses. The performance can always be maintained, but the character benefits from a youthful appearance that Spiner couldn't offer anymore. He felt he couldn't do his job properly and that was why he didn't want to be onscreen as Data anymore.

It looks like PICARD has solved the problem. I have guesses: one is that Data is a CG creation and Spiner is providing the voice in post. My second and more plausible guess is that Spiner is on-set in some form of the makeup with tracking dots all over his face. Then in post, his body is slimmed. His skin is buffed to remove any signs of aging. My third guess is that Spiner's on set so that Stewart can perform with him, and then he's performing the scene again in a special effects bay with a tracking suit and dots to map his expressions and movements to a CG model. My fourth guess is that a body double is playing Data on set with his face and voice replaced afterwards with Spiner's face recorded separately, edited to remove his age and weight and grafted onto the double. My fifth guess is that it's some combination of all of the above depending on the scene.

Data doesn't look realistic, but given that Data is an artificial being, it works for Data to look synthetic.

Awhile ago, I posted about how our world has gone crazy and we desperately need the sliders back. We need Quinn's cool under fire. We need the Professor's wisdom and perspective.

When watching the STAR TREK: PICARD trailer, I realized that while I will always want Professor Arturo to come back, I suppose I could settle for Jean Luc Picard and his diplomacy in the face of savagery, his steadiness when faced with madness, his diligence in response to threat and his ability to find common ground and offer understanding, negotiation and enlightenment that turns enemies into friends and danger into unity and teamwork.

I need the Professor. But I could be alright if our Captain came back.

**

THE ORVILLE is moving to Hulu! Makes sense. It's an niche product.

Recently, Joss Whedon expressed anger towards Donald Trump's corruption, love affair for fascism and criminality. Informant responded to Whedon and told Whedon to seek psychiatric help and get medication, equating criticism of the US president with mental illness.

Speaking only for myself and as someone whose opinions in no way represent the views this community, I am exiting the Informant business and his list of contributions to SLIDERS can stop at six items.

Whedon should absolutely get psychiatric help: he is a serial cheater and liar who gave his wife post-traumatic stress with his numerous affairs with actresses and fans with no concern for what his wife might have to face medically when having intercourse with a husband who was hiding his extramarital relationships. He has serious issues with power and women, describing how he viewed his cast, his employees, as powerful and needy women with whom he could have sex. He presented himself as a feminist in a monogamous marriage when he was using power imbalances in sexual relationships and cheating on his wife.

However, it is not a symptom of mental illness to observe that Trump hires business partners and family members into government positions. Nor is it an indication of psychological impairment for anyone to note that Trump engaged in obvious obstruction of justice, willfully delivers falsehoods to the American public, wrought havoc with America's diplomatic and economic relationships via random threats and sanctions and seeks support from white supremacists, Nazis and dictators. That is simply observation of obvious facts.

Observing facts that do not serve a flatteringly right-wing conservative narrative is not mental illness.

To equate not being conservative with mental illness is rhetoric designed to intimidate. To take a stigma for mental illness and extend that stigma towards not being part of Informant's preferred water cooler circle. To allow Informant to dismiss information that runs against his biases as mental illness. To favour Informant's biases of choice and present his personal politics as the societal default, the community consensus, and the perfect picture of mental health.

It's one thing to have conservative views, but something else entirely to claim that anyone who holds different views is suffering from a mental disorder. That is abuse and harassment.

Informant was not permitted to make such claims here without being contradicted at every turn and warned off doing so again. That's clearly why he left and I've decided that I'm glad he left.

I don't miss Informant. I am glad that he's gone. And I am finished with my list of his contributions. I've highlighted six, I'm not giving him anymore. Unless I change my mind, but right now, I have simply had enough. Sliders.TV may disagree. Sliders.TV may welcome him back. That's absolutely fine. This is NOT my message board. I am not the ruler of this community, I am its servant. Any nominal response I posted to Informant's political screeds was strictly to serve and not to debate.

I can only speak for myself and speaking for myself, I am done with Informant.

ireactions OUT.

I always thought it was hilarious that any time a black man is shot to death by a police officer, Informant is always staunchly in the police officer's corner and firmly declares that no examples of racism raised by anyone were actually racist and also, the person raising the issue is racist or in some way hypocritical and therefore not entitled to protest mistreatment -- but if a traditionally redheaded character is suddenly black, Informant feels stigmatized and threatened. Oh God, now I'm still typing as though he's actually here.

I do think it is absurd to act as though redheads are the victims of systemic discrimination and oppression ingrained into the very fabric of Western society as a white-centric construct. Redheads are not targeted by law enforcement as immediately guilty criminals, are not incarcerated in greater percentages than other demographics, are not stereotyped as criminals or illiterates, are not legislated against to deny them voting rights, and generally enjoy all the privileges of being Caucasian. People with red hair are not facing institutional injustice at every level of society.

ireactions cannot stress enough in the name of the whisper, the vortex roar and the electric hiss of the timer that his opinions do not represent the consensus of Sliders.TV.

There was a report that Tom Welling had announced he'd appear on ARROW in Season 8 ("I will be on ARROW next season") immediately followed by a report where Tom seemed confused and thought ARROW had ended with Season 7. Bizarre. Now there are clickbait articles claiming Welling will play Batman but merely show fan art of Welland in Ben Affleck's suit.

Still, it seems worth getting into. I'd love to see Tom Welling in anything! I can't really see him playing Superman as Tyler Hoechlin has that job, but I could see him playing a police officer or a friend. I can't see him playing Batman. The role calls for a certain cultured, moderately elitist, sharp intelligence and that's just not in Welling's wheelhouse. Welling is best playing characters of humble, earnest decency who give freely and without thought; he convinces you of his superhuman goodness. Welling's characters are not characters of calculating thought or defined by brainpower. Instead, Welling gives the sense that doing the right at personal cost is his natural instinct, his default setting, an immediate reflex that requires no thought whatsoever.

I guess I'd have him play Apollo. Apollo is from the Wildstorm comics, a company that presented analogue versions of DC characters in their comics WILDCATS, STORMWATCH and THE AUTHORITY. They had multiple variations on Superman: Mr. Majestic was a regal, royal Superman; Spartan was a robot and an AI Superman and Apollo was Superman as a social justice activist (freeing children from shoe factories) and he was gay and dating Wildstorm's gay version of Batman (the Midnighter). Yeah! I'd have Tom Welling play his best role, Superman -- but gay. It'd be a wonderful step forward for representation. Not as awesome as actually hiring a gay actor, but it's Tom Welling and Tom Welling is only slightly less awesome.

My niece wishes to inform me that it'd preferable for gay actors to play gay roles so that when young people who are gay look up the actors playing gay characters, they feel the actors represent the fans who need them. Oh, alright. Matt Dallas can play Apollo. Tom Welling should play Dick Grayson. My niece informs me that this is acceptable.

Day Six: Informant on Reasoning and Metaphor. ("29.7" will have to wait.)
 
Informant was a huge fan of FRINGE, an X-FILES-esque paranormal procedural where the bizarre events were revealed to be the result of a SLIDERS-esque machine that opened a gateway between parallel worlds. Informant is also a fan of SUPERNATURAL, an X-FILES-esque procedural that determinedly renders its reality in terms of magic. And Informant watched THE X-FILES revival and expressed dismay at how from week to week, Mulder and Scully seemed to ricochet between a science fiction universe of alien technology and a magical universe of ghosts and demons. The former presented technology that was beyond human creation but not beyond understanding; the latter declared that humans were at the mercy of otherworldly forces that defied all rationality.

I remarked that THE X-FILES' showrunner, Chris Carter, should be admired for letting each writer write their own version of the show and Informant rebuked Carter for this, saying it led to a schizophrenic, incoherent series. Informant conceded that all the writers Carter permitted free rein had gone on to become successful showrunners themselves (Tim Minear, Vince Gilligan, Glen Morgan, James Wong, Darin Morgan, John Shiban, Frank Spotnitz, Howard Gordon, Jeffrey Bell and more), but that Carter's job had been to find a coherent and consistent vision for THE X-FILES, not to running a training camp for the writers of the future.

Interestingly, this is also a problem in SLIDERS. Seasons 1 - 2 featured parallel Earth settings created by choosing a specific point in history and choosing a different outcome, then extrapolating what the present day would be as a result. Season 3 featured Dream Masters, man-made twisters, dragons, radioactive slugs, mutants, pancake parasites, super-intelligent snakes, vampires and animal-human hybrids and humans flying with angelic wings -- none of which were in any way justified by an alternate history and the supposed scientific rigour of SLIDERS.

At one point, I was rewatching FRINGE with a friend, Val, and Val remarked that the 'science' of FRINGE was essentially magic presented in technobabble terms. She seized upon the episode where in one universe, a widow's grief for her dead husband rips apart reality to reach a parallel universe where the husband lives and mourns the death of his wife. 

Val pointed out that there was no rationale, even within the show, for how human emotions could affect gravimetric or vibrational constants to alter the underlying fabric of reality; that there had to be some physical catalyst and feeling sad over a dead spouse didn't count. She said it wasn't science fiction; it was magical-realism masquerading as sci-fi through inadequate technobabble.

And Informant had a very interesting response. Informant pointed out that all reality is perceptual and fundamentally subjective, and that until we open gateways to parallel worlds in our world, we don't actually know whether or not our emotional states can affect reality. That FRINGE with that episode had featured a "soft spot" where reality was malleable and that the subjective perception of reality could potentially determine reality. Was that likely? Informant didn't know. But was it impossible? We could hardly rule it out.

It's at this point that I began pondering the Season 3 monsters and how they could be explained within the SLIDERS reality of Seasons 1 - 2. I had some thoughts about how the monsters were Kromagg experiments in genetic engineering, but when writing the SLIDERS REBORN scripts, I decided to go with Informant's idea of a damaged, 'softened' reality becoming subject to alteration based on perception and brought the Season 3 monsters in for the sixth scripts as representations of mental illness with the monsters originating from realities where the laws of science had been twisted and mutilated.

... I don't feel I really captured Informant's mentality, however. In the novella that offers a broad explanation for all the oddities of Seasons 1 - 5, Quinn explains that when the Geiger experiment ripped him out of reality, it removed every double and caused what the Doctor would call a "total event collapse" in spacetime due to so many of Quinn's doubles being entangled with the histories of parallel Earths. Reality cracked and began to manifest anomalies such as monsters and magic, the symptoms of a dying multiverse. 

Despite Quinn being in a mental asylum to deliver this exposition, I don't feel the monsters really represented mental health problems. And in the SLIDERS REBORN finale, I again didn't feel the monsters represented perceptual subjectivity; they were supervillains for the sliders to trounce in superhero action sequences and it was just absurd. I decided to turn into the swerve by playing it all for laughs by having the sliders use everyday items in bulk and delivered via vortex to defeat the robots and the dinosaurs and what-not, but I felt that I had wandered very far from Informant's original point and I never found a way to get back.

But anyway. I still think that the Season 3 monster sequences are a lot of fun and I really appreciate Informant's thinking in this area.

I don't know if we're really off topic. I won't have my essay on Informant's "29.7" ready until the end of the weekend.

Impeachment does not strike me as something you can run in the background. Once the Democratic Party rings that bell, it's going to be all impeachment at all hours on all days and I don't know how practical or worthwhile that is for a foregone conclusion of defeat. It could be a course of action from which there is no retreat, no shifting attention. And I recently made a terrible mistake in that area.

I'm flailing a bit, desperately trying to think of THREE MORE THINGS that could count as one of Informant's top ten contributions to SLIDERS. But I'm in too deep to turn back now. And I'll probably end up folding this thread into Informant's political thread. And reposting Informant's top ten contributions in a separate thread. If I can think of ten. Currently, I've only been able to think of six. I don't know why I said ten. A person who is never wrong would have said five things. Damn it.

I haven't seen DARK PHOENIX and I'm not eager to see it. I have nothing against it. But in a world of Netflix and Google Play and widescreen home TVs, I don't feel driven to dive down the street to the cineplex. I'd rather watch movies and TV shows on my tablet with Bluetooth eadbuds while on the treadmill in the gym.

Still, DARK PHOENIX is shaping up to be an interesting failure, a $100 million loss for FOX and the franchise leading up to DARK PHOENIX has been bizarre. X-MEN and X-MEN II were terrific, depicting a realistic world with mutants as a hidden subculture only beginning to receive global awareness. The world of these movies was a plausible, grounded reality with any advanced technology or superhuman phenomenon linked specifically to mutants.

X-MEN: THE LAST STAND and X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE, however, changed this. The world became extremely exaggerated and the new directors didn't have a strong sense of physical reality; there was no sense of terror from civillians when Pyro and Iceman started shooting off fire and ice; only muted reactions to Magneto moving bridges. Everyone in the ORIGINS film was a superpowered assassin or soldier. It's a bit like Bryan Fuller's criticism of Season 2 of HEROES: the powers no longer represented internal conflict and characterization.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS attempted a reboot with easter egg references to the previous films via Hugh Jackman's cameo as Wolverine and refilming the original X-MEN's opening scenes. FIRST CLASS was plainly a reboot set in the 60s, blatantly contradicting the original films with Xavier and Magneto meeting as adults rather than teenagers. FIRST CLASS was to kick off a new series of X-MEN films with the 60s cast. Meanwhile, there was another WOLVERINE film that continued the grounded aesthetic.

But then FOX made some strange decisions; they rehired the original director of the first two films to do the sequel, and rather than continue the 60s cast's adventures, the DAYS OF FUTURE PAST sequel killed the majority of the FIRST CLASS characters off camera and featured the 2000s-era Xavier and Magneto. It served as a finale story for the franchise. Director Matthew Vaughn would later express dismay that his sequel to his reboot became a conclusion to the original films.

With DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, the X-MEN franchise had come to a logical end and yet sought to make more films after having wrapped up their series. LOGAN offered what can only be an out of continuity finale for the Wolverine character that doesn't sync with DAYS OF FUTURE PAST's conclusion. I didn't see it, but I did read the script and the movie was, it seems, so well-made that viewers didn't care about the continuity. And then we came to APOCALYPSE which was simply peculiar.

DAYS OF FUTURE PAST declared that FIRST CLASS and the original films are set in the same timeline. The original films featured Cyclops and Jean Grey in their 30s in 2000. APOCALYPSE introduces the teen versions of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Angel, Storm and Nightcrawler in the 80s. Cyclops, Jean and Storm should have been around 10, Angel shouldn't have even been born yet.

Worse, APOCALYPSE largely cut down the scenes with these incoming characters, focusing entirely on the FIRST CLASS versions of Xavier and Magneto re-enacting their tired conflict for yet another round when DAYS OF FUTURE had situationally and thematically laid it to rest. APOCALYPSE featured lavish action sequences that were completely divorced from reality and were reminiscent of the video game aesthetic that marred X-MEN: THE LAST STAND and X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE.

And now we come to DARK PHOENIX. The Dark Phoenix storyline depends on an audience invested in Jean Grey and Scott Summers -- who were barely present in APOCALYPSE. The Dark Phoenix storyline depends on having fully established the X-Men team and seen them in numerous adventures together before they find themselves having to fight Jean, the compassionate center of this group. We've barely seen these characters together.

I just don't think this series is capable of telling this story in this format with these versions of the characters who have been underserved, underwritten and underfeatured. APOCALYPSE was a painfully mediocre, uninteresting film with nothing meaningful or important to say and I don't see how DARK PHOENIX can offer a climax to a series about Scott Summers and Jean Grey that never really started. If the X-MEN films formed any kind of a series, that series ended in DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. APOCALYPSE made me feel like the X-MEN movies had ended one film previous.

Which is probably why I stayed home and watched ONCE UPON A TIME in the gym instead.

As much as my blood pressure has relaxed ever since he stopped posting, it is going to be a lot less interesting around here.

Due to SLIDERS, I have developed a fixation on what my niece calls "interesting failures" where I really like movies and TV shows that don't quite work. I'm fascinated by the box office bombs that were TOMORROWLAND and TITAN A.E., enthralled by two Asa Butterfield movies (THE SPACE BETWEEN US and THEN CAME YOU which are both awkwardly misfiring romcoms).

The world at large just thinks these movies are terrible much in the same way the DCEU movies are reviled and... I don't feel that diminishes my interest in these projects. I don't feel insulted or offended when people don't share my subjective opinions. If I wrote angry letters screeching at people for not liking TOMORROWLAND, TITAN A.E., THE SPACE BETWEEN US and THEN CAME YOU and raging about how there's a left-wing mass media conspiracy to demonize excellent films in order to jump upon a fake bandwagon of wokeness --

Well, that would suggest that I am deeply insecure in myself, so insecure that I desperately need every stray thought or taste to be affirmed and echoed or I will not feel validated. And that I need to construct elaborate conspiracy theories to assure myself that you all actually agree with me, you've just been programmed not to, you gullible fools.

As a liberal, I spend more time criticizing liberals than conservatives because I'm more concerned about the failures of my side and what my side can do to correct them and how my side is constantly falling short of the values we espouse. If I were conservative, I imagine I'd be the same, just on a different side. And, quite frankly, I don't even think the politics were the problem as much as the means by which they were expressed.

My views are too bizarre to represent anyone else on this forum.  I have this joke that to this community, Transmodiar is Public Enemy Number One and I am the village mental patient. The weirdo. The eccentric mad scientist who produces unworkable, unusable creations.

I feel that you are all supportive of my love for SLIDERS, but you are not necessarily supportive of the means by which I love it or the opinions I express regarding it. Nor do I expect any of you to be.

This isn't something that Informant brought to SLIDERS, but it's something he taught me -- he pointed out a lot of the hypocrisy and failures of (neo)liberalism and how many who claim to be Democrats are undemocratic and sociopathic.

Harvey Weinstein supported the Democratic Party and Bryan Singer advocated for gay rights and Andrew Kreisberg made SUPERGIRL a champion of progressive values and all three are sexual abusers. Aziz Ansari, someone I once quoted for his words on feminism, was exposed for sexual abuse. Informant made me realize that democratic values are not necessarily the values of those who champion the cause.

Branding vs. Beliefs: Informant taught me to separate the branding from the person and I loved him for that. But I don't allow my love for him to blind me to how it's something Informant didn't do himself. Despite Trump caught on tape bragging about sexual assault and numerous women coming forward, Informant dismissed all the accusations.

It's not hard to imagine a Democratic double of Informant insisting that Weinstein and Singer and Kreisberg and Ansari couldn't possibly be abusers. I find looking at Informant's politics less enlightening than the behaviour itself where anyone he designated as his standard bearer or champion, he would refuse to see culpable or criminal even when their actions were abusive (Trump), self-admitted on audio recordings (Trump again), deceitful (James O'Keefe) or when their claims were misogynistic hate speech (Paul Elam) or in stark contradiction to facts (Midnight's Edge).

Rather than concede that he'd invested in people who hadn't deserved it (which I have too, see above) and that he should find someone else, Informant would deny their crimes to maintain some sort of ideological purity.

For me, I know that some of the people I once saw as representatives of my values have in truth betrayed them in ways great or small. Even my fitness idol, Brandon Routh, has failed to correctly explain the benefits of medium chain triglycerides and demonstrated confusion over the human circulatory system. But I like to think that my values are not mine alone (even if my expression of them is largely mine). I'd like to think that my values are greater than any one person and don't cease to exist just because people make mistakes or commit terrible wrongs.

Tours of Crazytown: I've learned to enjoy it when people think I'm weird. It's the entire basis of my friendship with Transmodiar. I live to hear him tell me that I'm crazy. ("You bought a steam cleaner -- for your stuffed animal collection? Hahah!") I didn't always do that. I used to yell at people for SLIDERS revival ideas that didn't clear the slate or for liking Lana Lang in SMALLVILLE or for calling Rey a Mary Sue or for thinking Ben Affleck was too old to play Batman.

Informant's behaviour rankled and made me realize: I should just express my views rather than trying to alter someone else's. I shouldn't have told pilight his reboot ideas were 'wrong,' I should have presented my own reboot ideas without commenting on pilight's at all. Instead, my argumentative attitude made an enemy for no good reason whatsoever. I hope I have turned a corner on that.

It was delusional of me to present my views of SLIDERS as being synonymous with SLIDERS. The opinions of ireactions are that of a troubled manchild recovering from an abusive boyhood during which the sliders felt like his only friends which in turn led to a horrific trauma where ireactions watched his father figure, the Professor, get shot and exploded after his brain was sucked out. I come from a peculiar place with peculiar opinions. And I expect all of you to pick away at my opinions and I will enjoy that.

Do I wish more people shared my views? Well, to have these views, you would have had to watch "The Exodus Part II" at age 12 with a black eye that your mother inflicted upon you while screaming at you that it was your fault your father left her. You would have had to watch Arturo die and not be able to distinguish the pain of seeing your father figure shot dead and the pounding in your head from the impact you took when your mother threw you down the stairs an hour previous.

I wouldn't wish that upon any of you. My perspective can only ever be my own and I would actually prefer it if you'd share your own views while still permitting me to think what I think and never behaving as though my opinion somehow trespasses on yours. That'd be awesome.

I would love that. I think it's funny. Try getting that deal from Informant.

But even so, I think we all know what Informant brought to this community and how very much we have lost with his departure. I am sorry that he's gone. I couldn't stop it. I couldn't change it. I couldn't save Informant. But I saved pilight and I'm very glad pilight is here.

Coming next: Day Six of Informant - 29.7

Day Five: Informant's SLIDERS Reboot

In 2013, Informant rebooted SLIDERS and he achieved something fascinating: he engaged with the politics of the era and managed to make SLIDERS both politically relevant AND apolitical.

Yes, technically, I produced the screenplay for SLIDERS (2013): "You Can't Go Home Again," a pilot script for a SLIDERS reboot set in the twenty-first century with the script asking: what would SLIDERS be like if launched with all the advantages of a major network show like LOST and HEROES?

Fully financed production values, recurring characters, ongoing arcs, flawed characters getting to know each other over time, complex backstories for Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo that would be revealed gradually and, above all, keeping the sliders completely recognizable as the originals but in a reboot for 2013.

http://freepdfhosting.com/ab3f9e4b78.pdf

However, I really just wrote the dialogue. Slider_Quinn21 wrote half of an outline and plotted everything up to the sliders landing on their first parallel Earth together. Informant wrote the second half of the outline, crafting a world where the War on Terror never ended.

The 1994 Pilot had presented a Cold War inspired story; Informant presented a terrorism inspired story to similar ends as a first outing for the sliders. His plot added in post-9-11 paranoia and detailed thoughts on how suspicion and fear could warp government agencies to creating just as much terror as terrorists themselves.

He created a stirring backstory in a fictional attack on San Francisco for an alt-world that stirred the emotions of 9-11 without crassly reproducing it, instead tapping into the anxieties and issues of a real-life situation but making sure that the story was about the story's situation and leaving it up to the reader to decide how it applied outside the fiction.

And, most interestingly, Informant created the concept of the Bio-D -- a surgically implanted chip placed beneath the skin of every American citizen -- for contact payments, for identification, for health care -- with legislation never specifically making it mandatory but making it impossible to work or find food and housing and education without it with children obligated to bring permission slips home to parents as little more than a formality.

The Bio-D, marketed by America as a means of health care, protection and convenience, is ultimately easily misused in times of fear as a tool of oppression by finding various reasons to criminalize individuals trying to live without Bio-D chips. The government-run Bio-D program is later revealed to be financially unfeasible without creating a massive American slave labour force of those who decline to be chipped.

It's curious -- when reading the outline and knowing Informant's values and politics, Informant's Bio-D was very obviously:

(a) An accusation that the Affordable Health Care Act was an invasion into American lives and a pointless, overblown, expensive promise of health care that couldn't be delivered (and something or other about how poor people shouldn't have health care and how Informant once nobly tried to save a doctor from being sued for letting a baby go blind).

(b) An anti-vaccination argument that requiring children be immunized to attend school or be around other children to avoid spreading preventable and deadly diseases is somehow unjust and undemocratic.

As the screenwriter seeking to convert the outline into dialogue and scene descriptions, I ignored that and looked at the story itself and plot was an exploration of how well-intentioned efforts to manage society in the midst of a terrorism-stricken nation had created safeguards that were very easily reworked into tools of tyranny with an inhuman establishment now assailing a noble revolution.

If you weren't aware of Informant's politics, his story, intended as a critique of the Obama administration (which Informant despised) could just as easily have been viewed as a parody of the post-9-11 Bush administration. Informant didn't attempt to create one-to-one correlations with real-world debates to present his side; he created a story that explored issues of government oversight becoming tyranny through public relations friendly measures of offering free health care and protection and safety becoming insidious and beneath your very skin.

And even more effectively, Informant left it ambiguous as to whether the government was malevolent or if their good intentions had been corrupted by fear of terrorism and the wish for security.

I don't really consider myself the writer of the SLIDERS (2013) script as much as a contractor executing Informant's blueprints. Slider_Quinn21, Temporal Flux and Chaser 9 were interior decorators.

Slider_Quinn21 suggested that Quinn and Bennish be partners in trying to create sliding and that Quinn and Wade be flirting online; Temporal Flux created the new backstories for why Wade was an introverted hacker/adventurer/escapologist and why Arturo was an underappreciated genius; Chaser9 crafted Rembrandt's backstory as a once serious R&B singer who went onstage crying after a breakup and achieved fame as "The Crying Man" which he perceived as an insult to the detriment of his career. The characters were almost unchanged from their 1994 selves, but had different pasts that created their presents.

But the key takeaway for me was simply how SLIDERS was a very interesting sociological lab. Informant's internet posts had the attitude that anyone with any perspective save his own should be banished to the cornfield, as Slider_Quinn21 put it. But when Informant's ideas were transplanted from actual reality into a parallel universe, they became thoughtful ruminations on where the world might be going, raising questions without presuming to have any answers.

Informant's SLIDERS reboot was a politically charged vision of SLIDERS that could speak to anyone on any end of the political spectrum. His work is unquestionably one of the most important pieces of SLIDERS fiction ever created and it was an honour to be part of it.

http://freepdfhosting.com/ab3f9e4b78.pdf

Apple CEO Tim Cook was once asked how he would deal with Facebook's public relations crisis of misusing and failing to protect personal data.

"I wouldn't be in that situation," Cook replied, saying (perhaps truthfully, perhaps not) that Apple does not attempt to monetize user data the way Facebook and Google earn money.

SLIDERS never had to write John and Sabrina out. They were on contract. John was fired. Sabrina was technically fired after saying she wouldn't work with Kari Wuhrer anymore and wanted to leave. Kari apologized for this.

SLIDERS could have had Jerry in Season 5 if the production had agreed to use Charlie O'Connell. The only reason Jerry could make this power play: Sci-Fi was late in renewing the show and his contract had expired. I go back and forth on this, but I fail to see how Diana Davis was any worse than Colin.

SLIDERS never lost its actors. SLIDERS discarded them. Fans wonder about better ways to write the actors out; I think that's an interesting exercise in disaster planning, but in this case, the disasters were completely self-inflicted.

But okay. If in Season 3, John needed to quit to take care of his sick wife, I would have Arturo somehow sent home but without the other three sliders.

Then in the next episode, Quinn, Wade and Rembrandt encounter Max Arturo (played by 90s teen heartthrob Jonathan Brandis after SEAQUEST's cancellation). Max is a teenaged version of Arturo from a Van Meer Earth where time is decades behind. Same history, same historical context, absent 40 - 50 years. Max joins the cast and now Quinn, Wade and Rembrandt are mentors and parents to a boy who was once their mentor and father figure.

If, in Season 4, we lose Sabrina due to Sabrina being stranded in Africa with a broken ankle, then Wade is trapped in a state of quantum limbo, frozen in time between dimensions, but can be freed with the timer if the sliders get back to Earth Prime and match Wade's quantum signature to the home coordinates. Losing the timer now takes on an additional risk; losing the timer means losing Wade forever.

Wade is replaced by a female FBI agent, Maggie Beckett, played by Kari Wuhrer. Agent Beckett joined the FBI agents who were pursuing the sliders in Season 1. It's revealed that Arturo has been working with the FBI to find his friends and has been a mentor to Agent Beckett. Having a law enforcement officer from home on the team creates some conflicts where she seems to think SLIDERS is her show and she's the lead character, but only Max takes her seriously.

Maggie's presence rankles Quinn and Rembrandt. Wade was gentle; Maggie is brash. Wade was diplomatic; Maggie is aggressive. Wade was caring; Maggie is focused on survival. Wade was appropriate; Maggie is crude. Wade was part of a team; Maggie views the other sliders as hapless civilians who have only survived through luck, luck and luck.

If in Season 5, Jerry has to quit the show to go into rehab for alcoholism, then Quinn is accidentally merged with Logan St. Clair and Zoe McLellan returns to the series and takes over as Quinn Mallory. Max develops a crush on the female Quinn which Rembrandt finds disturbing given Logan's affair with the alternate Professor. Meanwhile, the merging of Quinn and Logan's memories creates a darker edge to this new Quinn with an identity crisis where Quinn has to fight Logan's cruelty and greed.

All the replacements should have come from 'our' Earth and all the exit stories should have been written to keep the absent sliders alive and well in some form and to allow them to easily return for a series finale. The finale could feature Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt, Arturo, Max, Maggie and Logan with Quinn/Logan split apart but both carrying the same memories and mindset in the female and male form. And the final shot of the series could have had Jerry, Sabrina, Cleavant and John in the center but with Kari, Zoe and Jonathan Brandis next to them.

... but why even go there? Plan for success, people.

I'll get back to Informant later... and I'd prefer not to berate him any further. As for pilight, I have come to the conclusion that I have only myself to blame. pilight never behaved like this until I ripped into their SLIDERS fan fiction which is a rather shocking failure of character given how you, Transmodiar, were extremely encouraging (in your way) and tremendously constructive (although you'd insist you weren't). I see now that I am responsible for pilight's actions. If they talk crap about refugees, it's my doing. Which means that when I berate them, am I not ultimately berating myself? When I find fault in them, am I not finding my own faults and failings?

I miss and favour the good things about Informant. I oppose and don't miss the bad things about Informant. (QUINN: "Way to go out on a limb.")

**

pilight, I was recently reading about a child whose family had recently gotten refugee status in my country and a home in my city. Much of their family had been killed in tank warfare in Syria in the next neighbourhood and the child, while having never been physically present for the tanks blowing apart houses and buildings, had heard the sounds and screams and learned from others that her relatives had not survived and been traumatized.

By your peculiar metric of human suffering, you would have told her that she was not really a refugee (because she hadn't witnessed the killings, having been a block away from what had happened). That she had not actually suffered any harm (because she heard about what had happened to her uncles and grandparents from a secondhand source and didn't witness their deaths). That she shouldn't be upset (because you feel her memories of her home should not have been affected by its destruction). And that she shouldn't expect to experience any ill effect (because you once saw fictional characters in a TV show seem totally unaffected by similar events).

Please don't be a jackass. It's one thing to mock me, I actually encourage it, but this has really crossed the line.

**

pilight, I've been re-reading my posts in the Reviving SLIDERS thread and I see now that I was harsh and cruel and unconstructive in my remarks. Whatever I actually thought, if I didn't have anything kind to say, I should have said nothing. If my inability to stop talking about SLIDERS could not be controlled, I should have said that your fanfic ideas sounded like interesting novels and comic books for SLIDERS fans but that I wondered if there might be more entry-level approaches for new viewers. I shouldn't have been vitriolic because fan fiction is a fundamentally idiosyncratic art form and I should have started a different thread for reboots without the acidic, abusive, harassing remarks.

I think I behaved that way because, at the time, I had a strongly possessive, proprietary attitude to SLIDERS and had specific views about the franchise (such as it is) that I considered universal and unquestionable. Looking back, I see that my sense of ownership should have extended to my own fan fiction and absolutely nobody else's and that I projected a tremendous amount of personal relevance into SLIDERS, equating its troubled production with my abusive childhood, which is really no excuse for being abusive towards you. I also see that your compulsive opposition began after that. I blame myself. I'm sorry. I should also not be a jerk.

This was precisely Informant's point; that the search for home that the audience could recognize as their own was a way for the show to connect with the audience.

If you don't agree that it was essential and have a different perspective of your own, that'd be great, but I don't think you actually have a different perspective. And I've found requesting your perspective in the past to be a dead end of discussion. At one point, I described seeing the sliders as superheroes and you said this was wrong because superheroes are selfless and the sliders, seeking to survive, are selfish. I asked you why it was selfish to survive because by that logic, it's selfish to sleep, eat, take medicine for illnesses or do so much as breathe. You had no response.

At another, I remarked that I would have liked the sliders to fight the Season 3 monsters using scientific means and reasoning; you mocked this for being like MACGYVER; I asked you how you would have them fight the Season 3 monsters and after ignoring the question twice, you then said you would have used scientific means and reasoning -- meaning that despite mocking my opinion, you had the same one.

At another, you criticized my pitch for a SLIDERS revival featuring Quinn Mallory on the grounds that my pitch for a SLIDERS revival was overly focused on the creator of sliding, a nonsensical chain of logic which tells me you don't actually object to my opinions. You object to me having anything to say at all.

You remind me of Informant on a bad day. It's appropriate to this thread, but I no longer find this amusing or upsetting. Informant's self-implosion wasn't funny. It was tragic and sad.

In recent years, I've met several refugees who've fled their countries which were devastated by war, who saw families and friends enslaved and murdered, who survived prison camps. The claim that people whose homes were destroyed and whose loved ones were either killed or forced into brutal servitude "doesn't change" their perspective and that their memories are "unchanged" is... sociopathic and indicates an total lack of empathy.

Dear fellow fan and message board poster, I am sorry for whatever hardship, grief, loss and despair has pushed you to such indifference to human life and such a diseased approach to discourse. I am also sorry for criticizing your SLIDERS reboot pitches in terms that were too harsh and not constructive, but you must have suffered greatly in some fashion to become as you are. You must have lost something precious or experienced some horror that no person should ever have to endure. You are excused from any further frustration and anger from me. My heart is with you. Please get help. https://www.goodtherapy.org

DC Comics has been releasing a series called DOOMSDAY CLOCK which is arguably the SLIDERS REBORN of the Superman mythology. Actually, I would say that DOOMSDAY CLOCK is SLIDERS REBORN, Part 4, "Reminiscence" where Quinn reflects upon five years of crazy continuity and explains why episodes aired in the wrong order, why the extra sliders and Henry disappeared, why Season 3 had monsters, why the Kromagg Prime backstory made no sense, why the show was stuck on the backlot in Season 5, why Quinn-doubles vanished after Season 4 and, most importantly, why it's 1994 in the Pilot but 1995 in "Summer of Love."

DOOMSDAY CLOCK is fascinating in its blatant metatextualism and a sequel to WATCHMEN, a seminal superhero epic published independently of DC Comics in 1986. Written by comic book visionary Alan Moore, WATCHMEN featured superheroes in a starkly realistic context in contrast to other superhero comics. In WATCHMEN, superheroes are a part of American history and led to America's victory in Vietnam with President Nixon never ousted and most heroes becoming part of the military and part of a global arms race of superhumans leading inevitably to another world war.

Mad Scientists: The most powerful of the WATCHMEN heroes, Dr. Manhattan, is a detached, aloof being of omnipotent, time-altering, reality-warping power devoid of empathy or love; becoming super has completely eroded his humanity. One of the supposed heroes attacks civilians, murdering half of New York City, then claims non-existent aliens were responsible in order to unite all countries and avert WWIII.

Dr. Manhattan elects to leave Earth, tiring of human life and its confusion and disorder. WATCHMEN is a cynical, insistently logical take on superheroes declaring that in a realistic world, superpowers would corrupt any human who had them. It was highly influential and very much why other superhero comics adopted the 'grimdark' in which Zach Snyder labours for not only his DC movies, but the WATCHMEN movie he directed.

Genesis: In 2011, DC rebooted its universe with the New 52 relaunch. Many superheroes got new starts while superheroes who sold well (like Batman and Green Lantern) continued their pre-reboot plots as though nothing had changed. Superman had not been selling well; Superman was rebooted into a more alien version to emphasize his detachment from normal people. Some good stories were told with this Superman, but a few years in, DC editorial decided it had been a mistake to eliminate Superman's marriage.

A LOIS AND CLARK mini-series revealed that the pre-reboot Superman had survived the relaunch; he and Lois were living under false identities in this new universe, avoiding contact or interference with the current Superman, and they'd also produced a son named Jon. The contrast was striking; this extremely human Superman struggling to wrangle his kid and having conflicts with his wife was a lot more fun to read.

The Unstuck Man: In a reality-warping plotline where reality around the Loises and Clarks began to break down, it was revealed that the New 52 Superman and Lois had were not doubles, but fragments of the originals. The story ends with the love between the original Lois and Clark restabilizing reality and they absorb their fragments back into themselves. The pre and post New 52 timelines are reconciled into one reality with the original Lois and Clark having never been absent. Their friends Jimmy and Perry and others now remembered Lois giving birth to Jon and Lois and Clark raising him.

It was inelegant, but it took the sting off deleting either version of Superman. DC had decided to merge their two Loises and Clarks much in the same way Dr. Geiger had combined Jerry O'Connell and Robert Floyd. Long-term fans were placated; new readers weren't that interested, but superhero comics lately have really been research and development for movies and TV shows and for superheroes, sales matter less than in other publishing endeavours.

Roads Taken: Despite the happier situation, Superman and Lois were still unsure: what mysterious force had attempted to sever Superman's connection to humanity? What unknown entity had cut open his timeline to remove the Legion? To kill Jonathan and Martha Kent earlier? To erase his marriage? And why did the reality around them begin to fall apart?

This is also the period where Wally West, the red-haired Flash who was erased from existence, also returned to the DC Universe. Wally warns that some dark force from beyond has been changing the DC Universe, erasing Wally, erasing families, legacies, histories, ripping time itself out of the superheroes' lives, making them angrier, colder, crueller and alone. The man responsible for all this is revealed to be Dr. Manhattan from WATCHMEN.

Revelations: Doomsday Clock delves into what Dr. Manhattan has been doing to the DC Universe. Ever since the events of WATCHMEN, he has been wandering. He has become fascinated by the DC Universe's heroes but found them difficult to relate to and their history of shifting retcons and reboots confusing. He sees that it starts out straightforward enough with the Golden Age Earth where Superman debuted in 1938.

But then there's a second Silver Age Earth where Superman first appeared in 1956 and both Earths' timelines begin to overlap. Then the Crisis moves Superman's origin to 1986. And Dr. Manhattan notes that moving Superman's debut changes the underlying structure of reality: Batman and Wonder Woman always come after Superman with the past rewritten to move Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince to be born later in time.

This confounds Manhattan; the confusing, asynchronous, unchronological nature of events in the DC Universe is troubling and he begins to experiment, wondering if he can make the DC Universe more orderly, more sensible.

A Thousand Deaths: He makes one small change in the DC Universe: he observed the origin story of first Green Lantern, Alan Scott, was a 1940 railway engineer who was caught in a bridge collapse. Alan survived by grabbing a nearby lantern that turned out to have paranormal properties that gave him his powers. Manhattan alters time to move the lantern six inches away. Alan Scott dies, never becomes Green Lantern, never establishes the WWII Justice Society, never creates a legacy of heroism that will later inspire the Legion -- and the ripple effect creates the New 52 version of the superheroes and a Superman who debuts in 2011. This Superman is distant from humanity due to losing Jonathan and Martha at a very young age.

Applied Physics: Manhattan declares that he prefers this detached, aloof Superman, that Manhattan finds him more relatable -- and Manhattan is alarmed when the original Superman is restored. Manhattan realizees that the DC Universe is resisting Manhattan's changes, and that the DC Universe is, in his observation, a DC Metaverse, a central reality of which other universes are branches and reflections. It defends itself. And Superman is the crux of the DC Metaverse.

Manhattan notes that supervillains like the Anti Monitor of the 1986 Crisis or the Monarch of the 1994 Zero Hour situation have altered history to make Superman darker and colder, but Superman's hope and humanity are always restored -- and now Superman has become aware of Dr. Manhattan and is coming for him.

"To this universe of hope, I have become the villain," Manhattan observes. "I am a being of inaction on a collision course with a man of action."

The thing I like about DOOMSDAY CLOCK -- everything it's asserting within the fictional reality of the DCU/DCM -- it's true. It is completely true. The text reflects the reality and writer Geoff Johns has found a way to create a beautiful synchronicity between truth and reality from writers trying to alter Superman's hope and optimism to suit passing trends to WATCHMEN having darkened the DC heroes and the reality itself of the DC heroes now fighting back.

I almost wish I could go back and rewrite SLIDERS REBORN to tap into some of these metatextual techniques. The alterations to SLIDERS continuity detailed in "Reminiscence" (5) are explained as Dr. Geiger's Combine experiment retroactively altering the past, changing four years of happy adventures in alternate histories with the original quartet into the horror show it became by Seasons 3 - 4.

However, the motive for this is non-existent: "Reminiscence" asserts that it was completely accidental on Dr. Geiger's part, the unwitting effect of ripping Quinn Mallory and all of his doubles out of all realities, with Quinns (who are mostly sliders) having entangled themselves in so many timelines that removing him is like taking load bearing walls out of the apartment complex that is reality: it begins to collapse upon itself. I wonder if "Reminiscence" would have gained anything from making the alterations more deliberate and malicious.

Eye of the Storm: The other thing I really like is the awareness that Superman's presence specifically rewrites reality in ways that are still not fully understood. This is something you can only get away with when writing of a cultural icon like Superman. In X-MEN FIRST CLASS and APOCALYPSE, it was ridiculous to see Cyclops, Jean Grey and Angel appearing in the 60s and 80s when they would have either been non-existent or infants in order to be at their twentysomething ages in the 2000-era X-MEN films. Superman arriving to Earth later by two to six decades shouldn't change Batman and Wonder Woman debuting in the 1930s and 1940s, but it does -- and the justification that the DC Metaverse has made Superman its crux makes complete sense because this is SUPERMAN.

The Seer: The other fascinating thing is how Dr. Manhattan, while separated from any real emotion beyond empty and uncaring curiosity and a desire for order, seems to be at the closest he can get to experiencing fear. Dr. Manhattan can see time to beginning and end, but when he looks at the end for himself in the DC Universe, he sees Superman facing him and then nothing with the sense that Superman confronting him will result in some sort of cataclysmic end to time itself. Dr. Manhattan is afraid of Superman.

In contrast, I can't actually imagine any villain -- ever -- being afraid of Quinn. Quinn comes off as incompetent and barely functional and prone to being underestimated by his villains.

DOOMSDAY CLOCK is... wow. I normally wait until a series is complete before expressing anything towards it, even positivity, but wow.

Oh, I forgot to post about SUPERGIRL's Season 4 finale! I liked it.

I was going to post some response to Slider_Quinn21's thoughts on abortion... but don't Informant's thoughts say all that needs to be said? Specifically, Informant's caution about assuming our own thinking to be the default? The fallacy of thinking ourselves correct by virtue of the belief that our own thinking can't possibly be wrong? And the danger of validating our own views by regarding all other perspectives as defective?

Slider_Quinn21 is indeed very good about seeing both sides of the issue. And he should set his mind at ease regarding the prospect of Smarter Quinn's utopia being the world in "Luck of the Draw." Smarter Quinn said that in utopia, no one was afraid. In "Luck of the Draw," a small but highly visible number of people were extremely afraid of the Lottery Police and there was fear towards anti-lottery protestors, so it clearly wasn't a world where no one was afraid.

(It was probably the world in "New Gods For Old" with the nanites having made everyone happy.)

Next: Day Four. Informant upon the importance of actors.

I don't know. Maybe he's worried about being banned. Informant has never done anything to warrant being banned, partially because he is a man of decent character and also because he does not use the language or invective that would could in any way be construed as abuse and/or harassment. Looking back, I do notice that I said that if he were to ever again present himself as the spokesperson of this forum, he wouldn't be doing it on this forum -- I didn't mean that I would ban him; I would have simply edited any post where he made such claims to include my message that he doesn't.

Yes, Informant made me uncomfortable, but I don't ban people for making me uncomfortable or for using language that doesn't invite debate and discourse. Expressing views in a disgruntled or closed manner is not abuse and/or harassment. I have only ever banned one person -- breederbutter -- for repeatedly saying that Cleavant was "the racial hire" and promoted above his station as "the racial hire." And you'll recall that I once banned myself for four weeks.

I'll get back to you on the other thing, but for now, here is Day Three:

Informant once expressed a very worthwhile criticism of Season 1 of SLIDERS and Tracy Torme and Robert K. Weiss that I think about a lot. He remarked: SLIDERS in the Pilot, "Summer of Love," "Prince of Wails," "Fever," "Last Days" and "The King is Back" take the view that our Earth's history is the correct course of events, the best outcome for all.

SLIDERS visits worlds where 60s counterculture remained dominant or the American Revolution failed or where antibiotics were not created or the atom bomb not produced or where Rembrandt never fell into obscurity -- and says that those are worlds where things went wrong.

SLIDERS takes the view that divergences from our Earth are where errors were made. Informant notes that this is a rather arrogant, self-flattering perspective for the SLIDERS writing staff and the sliders themselves, declaring that the what they perceive as the status quo is the best state of affairs and what is unfamiliar is morally defective or unjust or antithetical to fairness, equality and respect for others.

Informant pointed out that this comes dangerously close to declaring that anything perceived as different is immediately a threat. That it's the result of needing to create physical danger for the sliders as a result of unfamilarity with new environments, but the implication, possibly intentional, possibly not, is that 1990s North America is a near-utopia and anyone who finds fault or considers alternatives is part of a fascist and tyrannical government (the Russians in the Pilot, the British in "Prince") or an egotistical buffoon (Rembrandt in "The King is Back") or so technologically deficient as to be incapable or survival ("Fever," "Last Days").

He conceded that Season 1 does start to question this perspective with "Eggheads," "The Weaker Sex" and "Luck of the Draw," but he pointed out that despite the exceptions, the moral foundation of SLIDERS is flawed. We must question, debunk and/or deepen it with more points of consideration.

His thoughts really hit home with me and I carried them into SLIDERS REBORN. Most people seem to like SLIDERS REBORN, but there's one area that every single person took issue with -- the third script reveals that the multiverse is damaged. The only splitting points for the multiverse are drawn from a single date, March 22, 1995, and a single world, Earth Prime. History branches off at no earlier points and no later points due to a cataclysm that took place between "The Seer" and REBORN. And every version of Earth is headed towards doomsday scenarios as March 22, 1995 is a date where humanity is on a course of environmental destruction that leads inevitably to the Earth no longer being able to sustain human life.

Slider_Quinn21, Transmodiar and Nigel Mitchell and pretty much anyone else who read the scripts didn't buy that. They found it hard to believe that the Earth was that far gone by 1995. I agree; there's some wiggle room in that the date of divergence is also based on Quinn's Earth as opposed to ours or any other world, so maybe things were that bad on Quinn's Earth. But the reason I set it up that way was to raise Informant's argument: that Earth from 1994 - 1995 should not be presented as any kind of utopian ideal in contrast to other civilizations.

Thank you, Informant.

I was going to spend the next ten days listing Informant's 10 greatest contributions to SLIDERS... but I was checking in on him earlier and he was calling out various individuals who don't share his specific views on abortion and saying that they are liars, hypocrites, mentally ill or delusional, although using terms just mild enough to seem more microaggressive than aggressive. It's not enough for him to simply have his own views and disagree; he has to attack people for having their own minds.

He reminds me of how when I was eight, my mother would beat me when I wouldn't believe her telling me that my father was having an affair and then threaten to have me institutionalized unless I called him on the phone to accuse him. My mother had a brain aneurysm that was causing bizarre behaviour. Not sure what Informant's excuse is.

Slider_Quinn21 describes how social media has radicalized people to send anyone who doesn't have their mindset to "the cornfield," but Informant sends anyone who doesn't think just like Informant to the mental hospital for having a mindset outside his own. Jesus. But I guess better there than here.

*sigh* It changes nothing, Informant's contributions to SLIDERS are significant, meaningful and special.

Day One: A very, very, very long time ago, David Peckinpah's family posted on the Sci-Fi Channel Bboard expressing dismay at how fans were happy that Peckinpah had died of heart failure. (History doesn't record how the fans reacted to learning that Peckinpah had actually killed himself and been at it for years.) The Peckinpah family said that it hurt them to see their family patriarch mocked and derided. He had been a beloved father and a caring (if disloyal) husband.

Informant pointed out, "What you need to understand is that when you run a show like SLIDERS, you are leaving a legacy. People who don't want that legacy to be others mocking their work really need to put some thought into what they're producing.

"I have no doubt," Informant continued, "that David Peckinpah was a solid citizen. Unmatched in his moral integrity. The last good man on Earth. His show still sucked."

Yeah, I listened to it when it came out. I would like to offer an opinion... but I've never seen "Electric Twister Acid Test" and can therefore say nothing about whether Jim and Dan covered it well or not. I'm going to assume they covered it well.

Well, I did see the ARROW finale and I liked it. They did a good job of bringing the season to a close and continuing the restoration of the street-level superheroics of Seasons 1 - 2 -- which is why, as Slider_Quinn21 noted, it was just bizarre for a cosmic character like the Anti Monitor to come in at the end. It didn't feel like an episode of ARROW. It felt like a completely different series.

Emiko was adequate, but I'd agree with Slider_Quinn21 that she didn't really come alive as Oliver's sister. It actually reminded me of Season 2 of REVENGE where characters were almost at random declared to be someone's daughter's son's long-lost cousin's roommate's older sister to stir up some quick drama. If they'd had more screentime for her, it might have worked, but she was a bit crowded out by the flash forwards.

I really loved Katherine MacNamara is Mia Smoak, however, and thought that as superhero children go, she was much more exciting than Nora Allen with a streak of wild defiance and a terrifying glee in the fight scenes. I've walked past MacNamara twice on the streets of Toronto and recognized her and she always looked back at me with the pleasant, well-practiced smile of a celebrity who realizes she's been recognized and will gamely provide an autograph and a selfie if asked but is actually a bit tired and would be ever so grateful if you would just keep on walking and leave her to her thoughts.

In contrast, if I saw Mia Smoak on the street, I would turn the other way and run.

I was a bit surprised that Alena Whitlock wasn't formally inducted into the Arrowcave as the new Overwatch. I'm really enjoying Juliana Harkavy and I'm glad she'll be back for Season 8. Wild Dog continues to be great fun. I'm not sure how Season 8 will play out, but the showrunners say they hope Felicity will be in the series finale, so that's something.

I wonder if SUPERNATURAL will actually follow through on it. I wouldn't call SUPERNATURAL guilty of copouts, but their season-ending cliffhangers suggest season long arcs that don't last that long. Dean went to hell at the end of Season 3 suggesting that Season 4 would be set with Dean struggling to find some way to escape. The Season 4 premiere had him back on Earth right away. Castiel declared himself God at the end of Season 6, suggesting a human-angel-Castiel war for the whole of Season 7; it lasted two episodes. Season 10 was expected to be a season of Sam forced to hunt a demonic Dean like any other monster with Jensen Ackles now a villain; that lasted three episodes.

It's possible SUPERNATURAL will, by Season 15, Episode 3, have the boys encounter Chuck who is only human and explains that God separated the Chuck identity from the God identity to grant his human side independence, but now God without Chuck (while retaining the face) has become unbalanced and merging the two again will restore God as we knew him. It's not what I'd prefer, but it would get the show back to its usual formula. However, with Season 15 being the end, getting back on formula isn't as essential as it was for Seasons 4, 7 and 10.

But we just saw Dean finally taken over by Michael only for that to come to an end almost immediately in Season 14. We've seen this trick a lot -- although SUPERNATURAL does a great job of letting repercussions linger even if the resolutions come within a few weeks of the premiere.

I'm not entirely sure how Chuck would work as a villain. Can we see Chuck plotting villainy with his minions and addressing power plays like Crowley? Why would he need to? Can we imagine Chuck engaging in some lengthy plot of terror for some unknown end like Metatron? Seems kind of small-minded for God. Can we visualize Chuck trying to dominate and control all of America's hunters like the Men of Letters? I just don't quite know how SUPERNATURAL can fight God, but that's the appeal of the concept and the challenge for Season 15 -- unless they decide to gently nudge the reset button as they have before.

Another aspect of meaningful discussion: we should speak in a manner that invites other people's opinions, encourages people to make fun of us, and assures them that they should feel safe in disagreeing (while noting that hate speech has no place in safe spaces). If you can't indicate openness to other perspectives -- well, it's not a banning offense or in any way a crime, but it creates discomfort.

In Informant's final days here, he shared his views on abortion. I responded with... nothing. I just put up my disclaimer.

Informant thought the disclaimer was stupid. I thought it was stupid too, but I didn't want one of my female friends coming to the message board I talk about a lot and finding Informant's views going unchallenged.

Informant, quite correctly, noted that the disclaimer had no real content, just a running joke of finding different SLIDERS props to incant. Then (I assume due to my adding a message to his post to reiterate the disclaimer), he took off in a snit. Last I checked, he was having another meltdown over Chuck's characterization in the SUPERNATURAL finale. I'll look in on him later.

But regardless, I feel Informant did not create a safe space to share personal views of abortion unless those views were Informant's. I felt he would, rather than respect that we have different views, attempt to argue my own values into submission the way he argues that Marvel movies are failures: he says that people who like these movies are simply falling in line with what's popular, buying into a media bias and that their opinions are not sincere or their own.

Slider_Quinn21, on the other hand, has always made me feel safe. (Transmodiar, too, since 2011.) Slider_Quinn21 and Transmodiar made me feel like it was okay to admit to incredibly pathetic and silly truths -- such as how SLIDERS is important to me because I was a lonely 9 year old in 1994, Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo were my friends and I watched them die.

They made me feel it would be alright to confess the stupidest thing I'd ever said to date: that when I saw the Professor get shot and fall over, I was 12 years old and I felt like I was watching my own father die. That I had a panic attack this past year when I was visiting my niece over Roger Daltrey. She had a copy of his autobiography and I screamed at the sight of Colonel Rickman's face on the cover. "He killed Dad!" I shrieked.

I don't think it's exactly a state secret that Temporal Flux and Transmodiar don't get along and that I have a lot of love and respect for both. It's a bit like being Mystique when Professor Xavier and Magneto are going through a (very long) rough patch. (Actually, it's been pretty quiet lately.)

Neither of them have ever tried to make me take their side or dislike the other. Temporal Flux and Transmodiar have always encouraged me to be friends with the other even if they aren't friends themselves. My wise uncle (TF) and my cool older brother (Transmodiar) both respected that my feelings were my own; they offered their own perspectives on their feud but always concluded with advising me to form my own opinions.

They made me feel safe. This is something we should offer everyone in our community over every subject. I have not always succeeded in doing this, but I won't fail to do so going forward.

And because in the wake of Informant's absence, Slider_Quinn21 has made Sliders.TV feel like a safe space -- here are my views on abortion which are my own, formed from many late nights chatting with various women but not taken from them. These are not the views of Sliders.TV. They are not the consensus of this community. You are not required to agree with my take which is:

I believe life is sacred and begins at fertilization, but I also believe abortion should be legal. I think the best way to prevent abortion is comprehensive sex education as early as Grade 1 with contraceptives and birth control widely available, provided for free to children and adults, paid for by tax dollars.

I think abortion should be legal for many reasons. First, criminalizing it does not prevent it; it merely ensures that women will do it themselves and do it wrong. Second, I think trying to prevent pregnant women from getting abortions is a waste of time. If they're pregnant and want to terminate, then I feel the ship has sailed and we all need to back off.

Third, I find it morally bankrupt to call for legislation to impose my personal belief (that life begins at fertilization) upon the medical decisions of people I don't know, whose lives I haven't lived, whose struggles I can't comprehend. I will live my beliefs without having them intrude upon others. I find doing otherwise to be arrogant and I reserve arrogance for talking about SLIDERS and Jerry O'Connell's career.

I feel the best way to prevent abortion is to prevent unplanned pregnancy by empowering everyone with the knowledge and technology to do so. Rather than fight against abortion, I would fight for sex education and readily available contraception.

As for Informant's claims that various states want to make it easy to terminate pregnancies after an infant is fully formed and kill the child after birth -- the reality is that only 1.3 per cent of abortions occur after 21 weeks. Usually due to fetal abnormalities and nonviability or delayed access to abortion services.

Ralph Northam misspoke and misconveyed the situation to make it seem like healthy infants would be killed for unwilling mothers. In reality, he was discussing whether infants with severe birth defects should be kept alive via painful measures. His media training was poor. He was incompetent, but nobody should be seizing upon clumsy communication to spew further misinformation.

It was grossly irresponsible of Informant to reiterate incorrect data especially on so sensitive a subject. We should not be presenting false information whether it's Keith Damron's lies, phony STAR TREK news sites or that of alt-right news outlets. We are entitled to our own opinions but not our own facts.

I think abortion should be legal in the same way I think Season 3 DVD sets of SLIDERS should be legal; I'm not thrilled with its existence, but I accept that it's here. If I attempted to legislate it away, people would find some way to get their hands on it and it'd be distributed on piracy sites and false files would spread computer viruses. That's not good for anybody.

I used to be anti-Season 3; every time I saw the DVD set in stores, I'd quietly slip it into a microwave or drop it behind a shelf. That was pointless and unrealistic. You can see the change in thinking in my scripts. My first SLIDERS script, "Slide Effects," removes Seasons 3 - 5 from continuity, treats it as traumatic and unwelcome, declares that it never happened.

SLIDERS REBORN accepts that Season 3 can't be dismissed, that it's part of the series' legacy, and REBORN leaves it in place but offers a subsequent, supplementary option to exist alongside and in addition to Season 3 should the fan choose to take it. The Season 3 monsters return for the end of REBORN, but they aren't killed or destroyed; they're contained, they continue and they may be needed again.

And yet... it actually pisses me off that in 2016, SLIDERS REBORN was the second most popular section of EP.COM. The second. What was the most popular? It was the Season 3 episode guide section. That makes me so angry, angry enough to post an angry rant demanding that Season 3 be made illegal and subject to criminal prosecution. I won't do that; I want people to feel safe.

Informant didn't make me feel safe to talk about abortion. I had dinner plans with Laurel Hills (the real-life version) that night. I wanted to eat Chinese food with Laurel and contemplate who might write a SUPERNATURAL: SEASON 16 comic book. I felt Informant would have no respect for my personal views and ruin my night.

And that's strange because when it comes to the art of storytelling, Informant's viewpoint is truly enlightening. When talking about writing, Informant says that writers should not dictate where stories should go; they should create characters and situations and let them play out with whatever tone and emphasis makes for the most interesting results.

He points to FRINGE and how it's unlike a lot of other fantasy TV because rather than go for bombastic drama, the tone is very low key, very thoughtful, very contemplative, and how the show came to that over time rather than deciding at the outset. He points to SMALLVILLE where the writers decided Clark would be a reporter without having done the work to earn it via episodes of Clark attending journalism classes in college (or even attending college). FRINGE felt sincere and genuine; SMALLVILLE felt staged and forced.

Widened outside of storytelling, that perspective becomes truly empowering and generous: it would be saying that we should all look at the world and find our own approach, our own perspective, our own values -- and that we can be informed by others without being dictated.

This is more than a principle of writing; it is a beautiful philosophy for life. I have always felt deeply honoured that Informant would share such uncommon wisdom with us.

I don't think Informant always lived up to it and wouldn't have in a discussion on abortion. He would have made it a hostile, aggressive argument. He would have belittled me and drowned the Bboard in conspiracy theories and links to documentaries and essays from professional hate speech artists and willful misunderstandings and more misinformation based on Northam's asinine communication. He would, as he has before, call me a an human voice recorder reciting mass media liberal views. (Probably not in those words.)

Slider_Quinn21 makes me feel like even if he disagrees with me, he'll just share his opinion and offer new or correct information. ("You cannot have the sliders fight the radioactive slugs with road salt; they're in San Francisco, they don't sell road salt there.")

I've made discreet inquiries. He's fine.

I think Informant is displeased that Sliders.TV would not be his echo chamber for men's rights activists, birthers, neo-Nazis, scam artists and alt-right white supremacists -- oh, I'm sorry, Informant, I mean "free-thinkers" and "Libertarians." That was a typo.

Informant is not a men's rights activist or a neo-Nazi or a white supremacist or a birther or a scam artist. Informant's a really good guy -- but he has particular views and those are the 'experts' he turns to in order to support his personal perspectives.

The final straw for him, I suspect, was when he posted anti-abortion conspiracy theories parroting mostly false claims that Ralph Northam had said infanticide was legal in order to express Informant's anti-abortion views. Informant later declared this anti-abortion view to be the default view of the Sliders.TV community.

(Northam himself is a moderately convoluted issue due to Northam's inarticulate incoherence, please see https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump … n-execute/ for a full summary.)

I edited Informant's post to add a paragraph in bold containing a message from me saying that Informant in no way spoke for the community and that he was (probably) joking (about that part). After that, I think he got fed up.

Do we miss Informant? I don't know, I don't speak for this community. Do I miss Informant? I miss the good he brought to this community. I don't miss the bad.

I miss Informant's storytelling skill and analytical ability when it comes to plot, characterization, structure and execution. The SLIDERS fan community is a huge part of how I went from troubled teenager who cowered in the face of any and all criticism to someone who could laugh and agree when Nigel Mitchell (or you, Transmodiar) called my writing indecipherable and unworkable. Informant offered a different approach to criticism when commenting on my SLIDERS writing process where I was nervous about having the sliders defeat the Season 3 monsters with non-violent MACGYVER-esque tactics.

Informant said that all fiction has specific goals on the author's part where authors decide what kind of story they want to tell and achieving those goals can mean accepting that other objectives won't be met. A story where Rembrandt defeats the animal human hybrids and with a bag of peanuts may be funny, earnest and show a triumph of imagination over mental illness and horror -- but it might not be totally rational and plausible. A story where the sliders run a fast food operation specializing in mini-hamburgers may be a delightful joke -- but it might not be sensible and logical.

But, Informant pointed out, if the author wants whimsical lunacy over tightly plotted rigour and realism, then it's alright to accept flaws in favour of acquiring specific strengths.

Informant always advised me and other creators to tell our stories our way. To welcome and embrace criticisms always and mine them for what they're worth. (TRANSMODIAR: "You can't have the rock star vampires defeated by high intensity soundwaves. They're ROCK STAR vampires.") But to also make sure to distinguish between advice that helps our stories and advice that instead tells other people's stories. (TRANSMODIAR: "Quinn has a secondary backup personality in his brain and that personality is Mallory?! That is ridiculous. Go back and re-read what you just wrote!")

I've read every single book Informant has ever written and they're all really good. They are not the stories I would write, they aren't necessarily the stories I would want to read, but they are extremely well-written and are fundamentally opposed to fascism, inequality, racism, prejudice and cruelty and indicate strong moral principles and great compassion for the weak. I follow Informant on Twitter (which is how I know he's alive).

Which brings us to what I do not miss about Informant: he has specific political and sociological views which aren't even the issue here. Transmodiar's politics are not ireactions' politics. Temporal Flux's politics are not ireactions' politics. Both Transmodiar and TF are a massive part of my philosophical foundations and yet, we're not remotely aligned. I cannot stress enough in the name of Quinn's brown jacket and Rembrandt's train-track-creased boots that ireactions' views do not represent the views of Sliders.TV.

When writing the SLIDERS script where Quinn meets Donald Trump, I asked Transmodiar to create Quinn's political opinions for me and Quinn/Transmodiar's views were decidedly not my own. My criticism of Informant isn't that I disagree with Informant on The Issues; my criticism is that he never seems quite content to let his personal opinions be his own but insists that his incredibly idiosyncratic worldview is universally objective.

I find this insistence on a singular viewpoint to be benign when dealing with fiction but upsetting in real-world situations. Benign examples: Informant is clearly a devout Christian with a fairly traditional view of God. When the character of Chuck appeared on SUPERNATURAL and revealed himself to be (a) a cynical slacker without much faith in humanity and (b) God himself, Informant's reaction was enlightening.

Informant declared that Chuck was clearly pretending to be depressed and downbeat in order to manipulate the other cast members into taking action. Informant's perspective on Chuck was completely detached from the actual TV series, but rather than accept that a TV show might present a different vision of God, Informant declared his God to be SUPERNATURAL's God and ignored what was actually onscreen because it didn't suit his preferred thinking.

When discussing the DC and Marvel superhero films, Informant declared that CIVIL WAR (an adaptation of a 2006 storyline where Iron Man fights Captain America) was an attempt to rip off BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN (2016). Informant backed off that one but then continually insisted that MAN OF STEEL, BVS and JUSTICE LEAGUE are strong successes despite the fact that the people making them being demoted and/or fired and DC fleeing the shared universe market. It wasn't enough for Informant to say that he liked the DC films more; he had to declare them objectively superior to Marvel by way of financial earnings (because BVS earning 874 million with two iconic characters somehow triumphed over CIVIL WAR and its two B-list heroes earning 1.153 billion).

And when it comes to immigration, health care, feminism, racism, cops executing black men, rape, abortion, electoral fraud and birtherism, Informant is not content to simply hold his own views and share them. He then seeks out questionable secondary sources to bolster his views. These sources include men's rights activist Paul Elam, a man who said that women who dress revealingly and go to bars deserve to get raped -- whom Informant offers up as an expert in debunking feminism. James O'Keefe, a noted scam artist who creates deceptively edited videos and made false and disproven accusations of human trafficking against a charity, a man who has been completely discredited as a liar -- whom Informant declares to be a rational investigator into electoral fraud.

Informant also seems to have a peculiar but guarded fixation on white supremacist Richard Spencer (who was espousing neo-Nazi rhetoric and then punched in the face). Informant protested CRISIS ON EARTH X featuring Nazi villains and Nazi villains being punched and complained that the real world keeps smearing anyone with Informant's views as being advocates of the Third Reich, an interesting chicken-or-egg conundrum as Informant's views of race, health care, immigration, economics and elections are often espoused by neo-Nazi groups and individuals.

What it comes down to, I think, is that Informant has certain political positions that are held sincerely by Informant but often espoused by those who use such positions as a facade of legitimacy over racism, hatred, cruelty, savagery, white supremacy, protecting the wealthy over the underprivileged and silencing the marginalized and powerless.

Informant proceeds to defend these men's rights activists, white supremacists and disgraced 'journalists' and conflate that with defending his own views. To the outside observer, it looks like Informant has a not-so-secret love affair with Nazis. To a friend inclined to think well of him (and I am very inclined to always think the best of Informant), it looks like he's insecure in his opinions being merely his opinions and seeks outside affirmation and is less than discerning about where that support comes from.

There is a certain irony to this because everyone on this forum loves a TV show that the vast majority of the population rightly and sensibly considers to be utter crap. Even the hallowed first season is, as the Think of a Roulette blog observes, full of holes and problems and misjudgements and that's even by the standards of 1995.

Loving SLIDERS is a personal view, a highly individual choice -- much like writing ten SLIDERS screenplays and treating Seasons 1 - 5 as a vast and infinite and coherent and sensible mythology of science fiction fantasy. I don't need anyone else to validate this extremely peculiar and bizarre perspective and Informant does not need anyone to validate his political views or his preference for DC movies over Marvel movies -- but he feels the need to find support in some troubling places and that I find annoying.

The most aggravating thing Informant did recently, I felt, was his insistence on presenting the Midnight's Edge video channel as a reliable news source on STAR TREK. This would be the YouTube channel insisting that DISCOVERY is actually set in the rebootquel STAR TREK universe and that DISCOVERY's continuity discrepancies are part of a master plan to purloin the TREK rights from CBS and take them to Paramount.

This is a painful misunderstanding of how the STAR TREK rights are held (CBS owns STAR TREK lock, stock and barrel and is in the business of TV shows; Paramount has the film license and the infrastructure to make and market films. Even if CBS inadvertently made a rebootquel continuity show, CBS would still own the show). Despite this obviously uninformed and incorrect view, Informant continued to present Midnight's Edge as a reliable news outlet when the only thing Midnight's Edge had going for it is that they don't like DISCOVERY and Informant doesn't like DISCOVERY.

It wasn't enough for Informant to just have his opinion, he had to fall in with liars and scam artists and white supremacists to feel more secure in his opinion. And that's the part of Informant I won't miss.

But having typed all this, I conclude that on the whole, Informant had a lot of important and positive and vital contributions here and he will be missed and it's a shame to lose him even if I could do without the other stuff.

I think the other stuff stresses me out more than other posters because I have rebuilt this message board more times than Chuck has rebuilt Castiel. I am to a degree responsible for whatever is on this forum and if Informant supports people who engage in hate speech on this forum or shares their views, I feel honour-bound to post a brief response. Not an argument exactly -- I never want to tell anyone they're not entitled to their beliefs or views. But to say that those beliefs and views don't represent this community. That Informant's opinions are his own.

I guess I'd just want to reiterate definitively and totally that I know Informant is not a fascist, not a neo-Nazi, not racist, not a misogynist and not a white supremacist. I know this because I've read all of his books and I believe that while autobiographies can lie, fiction reveals all.

I love Informant. I will always be grateful for what he shared with this community and with me and be glad for the positive role he played in my life.