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https://www.vulture.com/2019/04/allison … -case.html

Allison Mack has pleaded guilty. Actual remorse or a cold calculation that it was her only chance at escaping life imprisonment and having to register as a sex offender?

At the very least, I think Mack should be registered as a sex offender for her trafficking and subject to permanent GPS monitoring. She's dangerous and is a threat to any women who cross her path.

Maybe?

Honestly, I didn't even go to see CAPTAIN MARVEL in theatres. I have a new 55 inch tv with a subwoofer and lights behind the screen so there's no reflection on the screen and it seems silly to go our and pay for movie tickets when I have so much I can watch at home and when it suits me. It probably says something that rather than running out to see AQUAMAN and SHAZAM, I stayed home to watch Jerry O'Connell fight crime.

(It doesn't say anything about the franchise. I’ll comment when I can watch it at home.)

I've watched a few more episodes of CARTER and it continues to be not horrible at all, but one longs for more. It is a cop show where the supporting cast tell the lead that he's not a cop and life isn't like cop shows, followed by standard cop show fare in which our Jerry O'Connell does everything expected of a cop.

CARTER calls out procedural tropes like detectives using guesswork and crime scene technicians performing days of analysis in minutes -- but then has them work as they would in any procedural.

One wishes for Danny Pudi's detailed acting and Abed spouting the procedural tropes he wants to re-enact as scripted by Dan Harmon -- except Jerry O'Connell is perfectly capable of all of that. Jerry could have played Abed. Jerry's hypermaniacal, goofball enthusiasm would be perfect to play a leading man obsessed with living the conventions of a detective show. But the scripting never sets up situations to show Carter trying to re-enact a scene only for reality to conflict.

Jerry is, I assume, completely familiar with the structure of police dramas after an astonishing NINETY-THREE appearances as Detective Woody Hoyt on CROSSING JORDAN and LAS VEGAS. Jerry's played a police officer more than he ever played Quinn Mallory and he is a very fine writer ("Narcotica" is a great comic). Jerry's fought more TV crime than you've fought colds.

Jerry should be completely capable of remoulding CARTER from the generic cop show that it groundlessly claims it isn't. He should offer a focused product where Carter is more interested in roleplaying as a detective with zingers, chase scenes, posing, costumes, slang and such than he is with solving crimes.

Why isn't CARTER better? Why isn't Jerry making CARTER better? My theory is that CARTER is an extremely low-budgeted show with showrunner Garry Campbell churning out scripts but distant from the set, meaning the writing isn't being tailored to capitalize on the actors' performances and hasn't been given the be refined and developed. It's made on a tight timeframe and budget with 10 episode seasons and not many calendar days to write and film it. The emphasis is on being functional and airable.

I don't think CARTER's a Season 5 of SLIDERS situation of witless half-assery; it's more like the end of Season 2 of SLIDERS' production where the cast and crew were extremely tired. "The Young and the Relentless" staggered into production with a decent standard of professionalism but limited energy. Jerry is likely filming 10 episodes of Carter a year between other commitments and doesn't have time to revise the writing. He's there to be on set, perform the scripts to the best of his ability and high-tail it back to LA to play Sheldon Cooper's brother, do voice acting as Superman and pester Torme and NBC about SLIDERS.

CARTER strikes me as a faded photocopy of another mediocre cop show, PACIFIC HEAT. PACIFIC HEAT is animated, but it has the ARCHER-esque comedy towards cop shows that CARTER seems to want: PACIFIC HEAT opens with a team of police officers about to storm a building of criminals, but leading man Todd grumbles about who gets to say "lock and load" and protests wearing a helmet because he likes how his hair looks. After bursting into the building, Todd's partner Zac hesitates before a firefight to get a soda out of a vending machine. Todd barks out questions when interrogating people of interest, and when they answer, he has to ask them for a pen because he can't remember the addresses they've given him. En route to pursue a suspect, Todd gets distracted by a pretty girl, drives around in circles and gets lost.

PACIFIC HEAT shows its cop characters as frivolous and incompetent for comedy purposes; CARTER would have a reason for Jerry O'Connell's character to be so unprofessional.

It's funny. Jerry O'Connell once thought he'd be playing Spider-Man in globally released superhero blockbusters. Now he's proudly headlining an affable cable show that produces 10 episodes a year. It says something. It says that he has advanced to the John Rhys-Davies stage where, like John, he's never too proud to turn down smaller projects with good work (not great work, but good), not seeing TV and indie film as being beneath him, and never giving any script less than his all because for all of CARTER's many mediocrities, Jerry's performance is thoughtful and hyperenthused..

I was worried about watching Jerry in anything because I have such fondness for Quinn, but Jerry's performance as Carter is nothing like Quinn. Carter is a childish man of impulses who talks before he thinks and everything he says is regurgitated from a script for a generic cop show than the character presumably performed once as an actor. Jerry plays Carter as a manic innocent who doesn't entirely understand that reality has consequences because he has grown accustomed to living life on TV sets. Carter has nothing of Quinn's calculating intelligence or cunning; Jerry is careful to make Carter guileness without being foolish.

It's a performance from an actor who has thought through the material and done his best to put himself in it. This is a actor who is happy to be working. This is an actor who hopes for more but will settle for less and has made his wife and children his joy rather than any rewards from his career. This is a man who could lead a SLIDERS revival.

I watched one episode of CARTER, Jerry O'Connell's TV show and it's... not terrible. I'd actually been avoiding watching Jerry in anything for years because I was writing a lot of dialogue for Quinn in my scripts and I didn't want Jerry's persona interfering with his character, preferring to instead use Tom Welling's body language and Tom Cruise's voice (from the fifth MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movie). I knew he'd gotten better because he was terrific in the MUNSTERS reboot and in his guest-appearance on SAMANTHA WHO, but yes.

Anyway, CARTER's gimmick is that Carter (O'Connell) is an actor who plays a detective on TV and now he thinks he can be a detective in real life. It's at this point that I fail to grasp or explain what CARTER's joke is -- CARTER is a TV cop show where the lead cop character is... regularly informed that he is not actually a police officer at which point he... performs the role of a leading man in a cop show... and is reminded periodically that he is not really a police officer and... and... what?

I don't get it. CARTER seems to draw a lot of humour (?) from having characters comment on how Carter isn't the character he plays, but given that this is the only time we've ever seen Carter onscreen and have no scenes of him in his TV show, there is no comparison to be made. There's a lot of noise from this cop show about how life is not a cop show and it's blatantly hypocritical.

Certainly, not all roads of comedy lead to COMMUNITY, but when COMMUNITY did an homage to LAW AND ORDER, COMMUNITY had all the lead characters behaving with deadly serious demeanors as they systematically and analytically sought the truth in investigating the murder of... a smashed yam. At one point, Abed and Troy discuss a suspect behind plate glass and the suspect yells that the wall isn't actually soundproof and the glass isn't one-way. At another, Shirley admonishes Troy and Abed for overstepping, regarding them like a police chief character in a procedural as she intones, "You're not really cops." COMMUNITY took a very silly crime very, very seriously. With CARTER... it's really clueless as to what the joke is unless this is some sort of extended pisstake of Jerry's CROSSING JORDAN role (which I've never seen).

That said, Jerry O'Connell's performance is engaged and sober and he has tremendous charisma as a leading man. On one level, the joke (if there even is one) could be that despite having regularly been criticized for only playing himself, Jerry is mocking his own career trajectory as he plays Harley Carter, a Hollywood TV actor who is slightly less successful than Jerry O'Connell himself, somewhat past his prime and grudgingly accepting that he has to settle for less in his career.

However, the ending of the first episode suggests that Harley Carter became a fake detective because he couldn't be a real one in order to solve the disappearance of his mother when he was a child, a crazily exaggerated, irony-free revelation that Jerry plays with oddly stirring sincerity and... yeah, I'd agree that CARTER is not bad but surely humanity should aspire to heights beyond not bad.

Surely Jerry's talents would be put to better use playing Quinn Mallory in a SLIDERS revival.

Specifically, that's armchair psychoanalysis, a term which specifically emphasizes how the analyst is amateur, untrained, unaccredited and has no professional grounds on which to offer any genuine assessment whatsoever.

I do see COMMUNITY as the spiritual successor to SLIDERS (no, it's not THE ORVILLE) -- but one thing SLIDERS struggled with in Seasons 4 - 5 was a reason for the characters to be doing whatever the hell it was they were doing. (By Season 4's finale, they've found three separate superweapons yet failed to use them to liberate Earth Prime; in Season 5, they have the coordinates to bypass the slidecage and a path to Kromagg Prime yet spend three episodes meandering.)

COMMUNITY seemed to hit the same problem in Season 5. It was the much heralded return of the creator which received positive reviews but was described by its own showrunner as listless and devoid of energy in his own commentaries. He explained much of that as failing to follow up on Jeff as a teacher because he got wrapped up in the DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS episode and a LOGAN'S RUN homage, and then episodes like Britta at a charity function with Duncan and the Save Greendale Committee putting on a bear/dog dance were conceived with the empty desperation of putting the characters in a standing set and giving them an argument.

Season 4, whatever its faults, had a clear purpose: the characters were trying to complete their degrees and graduate, Jeff attempting to do so in 13 episodes because he didn't have a full 22 - 25. Season 5 had our graduates return to Greendale to attempt what students taking more than four years to complete four year degrees call "a victory lap," but after one episode of Jeff teaching and Annie studying, academics seemed to evapourate. The Save Greendale Committee had a lot of meaningless busy work. Episodes were conceived in terms of a concept (a heist, a dance, a sci-fi dystopia, a treasure hunt), but with little to no attention to what the characters were trying to accomplish at Greendale or if they'd made any progress.

To Harmon's credit, he acknowledged this in the two-part finale where Jeff remarks that Annie and Abed aren't ready to leave Greendale as they're from a generation where post-education adulthood doesn't really begin until after the age of 30, and he had an insurance assessor declare that the Save Greendale Committee had turned Greendale from an insurance liability into a worthwhile property. But from episodes 3 to 11, there was the strong sense that Greendale was a safety blanket the show should have outgrown.

In Harmon's defense, his plans had been to do Season 4 as a "dress rehearsal" for a Season 5 where the group wouldn't need the Greendale campus to be in the same room (not necessarily the study room) on a regular basis. That was why he had Abed, Troy and Annie living together by Season 3 and had Shirley, Jeff and Pierce go into business together with Shirley's Sandwiches. The offbrand feel of Season 4 had Harmon decide to set Season 5 at Greendale at which point the campus became the focal point of the show instead of the study group which had lost Pierce and Troy. Harmon would later say to The Hollywood Reporter, "I needed to convince myself that Donald leaving wasn't the death of the show, but now that it's all over, I think we can agree that it was."

I don't agree with that. Glover's absence was followed by some below-average Season 5 episodes (which, compared to most TV, are still pretty good), but the problem wasn't the lack of Troy but rather the lack of clarity as to what the group is doing and if they're advancing or backsliding, and without direction, it feels like filler.

I haven't gotten to all the Season 6 commentaries yet, but in interviews, Harmon confessed that he was burnt out and tired and that Season 6 was also not his best work. I have very fond memories of Season 6 and recall that introducing Frankie (Paget Brewster) as a consultant to raise Greendale's reputation to professional stability gave the show new direction: it wasn't about saving Greendale through vaguely relevant filler tasks, but about working with Frankie to make Greendale a decent college in *addition* to being a halfway house for troubled dysfunctionals.

This gave COMMUNITY a sense of clear direction and it seemed less important to wonder about when the characters would get their degrees. There was still some confusion, however, in that Abed seemed to be getting paid for his work for Greendale as Frankie at one point threatens to fire him, Britta works on the committee yet has to clock in at a bar and Annie seemed to be taking blow-off classes like Ladders. However, Abed highlighted this in a fourth-wall leaning monologue about how it was a question as to how the characters get their money but one that he found deeply uninteresting. I remember Season 6 being superb and splendid and thinking that Harmon's disenchantment certainly didn't show in his work.

I don’t see how you can have ARROW without the lead character’s wife, but then again, flash forwards have shown that Oliver and Felicity aren’t physically together for whatever reason, so...

I wonder why Rickards isn’t doing the last 10 episodes. I don’t think she would’ve been contracted for anything past this season as all the actors signed at most, seven year contracts, so either she didn’t want to come back or couldn’t agree on a salary or she’s in a sex cult that demands she give her full attention to human trafficking. Hopefully, she can at least be secured for guest appearances.

It's strange -- I haven't really listened to Jerry for awhile. The last time I was really paying attention to his voice, I was watching Season 4 episodes and it was truly disturbing to hear an odd rasp in his voice, the aftereffect of many late nights at open bars and to hear the peculiar indecisiveness in his tone that's unique to an actor who has skimmed his dialogue and is performing hungover. It was comforting to hear him in this 2019 recording and find that his voice has regained its original qualities of clarity and well-timed control of tone and pacing.

I also noticed his almost Pavlovian reaction to being described as "the fat kid from STAND BY ME" where he nearly shrieks (somewhat jokingly but not) that he was "husky." It reminds me of that episode of COMMUNITY where Jeff tells Annie, "YOU -- are insecure. Because you didn't get hot until AFTER high school," a remark that seems true of Jerry O'Connell and explains his post-SLIDERS choices in roles (BODY SHOTS, MISSION TO MARS, TOMCATS, and KANGAROO JACK) where his character was defined largely by being an attractive young man, and something he didn't cast off for years.

It was also intriguing to hear Jerry's voice describing a science of sorts -- the science of acting and auditioning and for a moment, if one imagined Quinn pursuing acting instead of quantum mechanics, this would be the sort of thing Quinn would talk about and the way in which he would describe it.

I haven't been overly keen on Jerry for many, many, many reasons, but I have felt in recent years that his acting his regained the skill he seemed to lose after John Rhys-Davies was fired, and I really liked hearing a Quinn-adjacent voice in this podcast.

My niece seems to be experiencing some sort of mental health crisis over the announced conclusion of SUPERNATURAL. Honestly, I think she seriously needs to get a grip on reality because it's just a TV show.

ireactions' SLIDERS bibliography

• The Sliders Redux: http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=8527#p8527

• A Pitch for a Reboot: http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=8565#p8565

• The Slide Effects screenplay: https://earthprime.com/etcetera/slide-effects-2

• Sliders Reborn: https://earthprime.com/reborn

• An Alternate Season 3 and 4: http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=7548#p7548

• Net Worth: The Quinn and Wade Edition - http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?id=323

• Essay: The Assassination of Quinn Mallory - http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?id=212[/*

Hunnh. Robert Greenblatt quit NBC last year. Moved to Warner Bros. I guess all bets are off with NBC, but we should probably trust TF's assessment.

Artist Joe Quesada once advised that people always be free and open with ideas and I agree with that, but it makes me nervous to offer ideas in response to a question when the person asking that question may excoriate those ideas based on reasoning that, to the uninformed observer, looks suspiciously random.

Anyway. I'm going to offer a vision of a SLIDERS reboot done to Slider_Quinn21's specifications, built on ideas offered in this community, and I'll hope Slide Override won't be mean to me about it. This is a reboot, not a rebootquel, not a revival and it is an effort to do it in Transmodiar's style and play it completely straight.

No monsters! No crossovers! No superhero elements! No multiversal crises! No psychodrama! No Kromaggs! No continuity with the original show! Transmodiar won't have anything to complain about with this vision (aside from its existence). In fact, he will love it. The goal here is to make something Transmodiar would love.

Writing to Transmodiar's tastes has been a really fulfilling exercise. Maybe... maybe I'm now equipped to write original fiction.

I can't quite figure out what the problem with THE FLASH is this season as each new episode seems to have a different set of problems. It was interesting to watch last week's FLASH and last week's ARROW. THE FLASH has spent all season plodding with low intensity towards a confrontation with Cicada, but as noted above, Cicada is simply a thug with a knife and not remotely compelling. There is no reason why Barry can't knock him out like any other freak of the week.

Last week, Nora was exposed as being in league with Thawne and it fell flat, partially because we've known for weeks and are ahead of the characters. But it also occurs to me that THE FLASH isn't really using superspeed in daring, inventive ways this year. Barry and Nora are just speeding in and out. Aside from a few isolated moments, there have been no memorable moments of exploring frozen time or manuevering through impossible situations. Even Nora's endless timeloop episode had Nora unable to stop Cicada because of what looked suspiciously like luck without the story presenting an actual no-win situation. Have the writers used up all their ideas in previous seasons? In contrast, the combat in ARROW this year is quite deliberate in creating situations that call for Oliver to use a bow and arrow.

The Barry/Iris/Nora relationship hasn't come alive. Nora is a grown woman and doesn't seem like a child. Barry's tutorials for Nora have been extremely limited and laboured and there is no sense of Barry imparting wisdom or knowledge or ability or confidence that Nora didn't already have. As a result, when Nora confesses that she's been working with Thawne, there's no warm father/daughter bond to shatter, just dialogue that has them declaring their relationship.

THE FLASH seems really slow this year. Compare that to ARROW which showed Mia Smoak's upbringing and combat training in a swift montage. The infiltration of the Glades was taut and gripping. ARROW has a propulsive energy and Katherine MacNamara gives Mia this deranged, homicidal smile before she launches into combat. ARROW has pacing, momentum, a compelling set of parent-child conflicts. THE FLASH has Barry and Nora talking about how much they like each other and Nora telling Iris how Iris has impressed her. THE FLASH has the heroes talking about how dangerous Cicada is when he's just Chris Klein with unpleasant kitchenware. THE FLASH has lost its sense of showing over telling.

It can be relevant when contemplating a revival/reboot of SLIDERS in response to your questions. It is very difficult to understand what your parameters of plausibility are and to provide material that works within them.

I think you have a great sense of structure, plotting and how an audience reacts to material. However, your criticisms of PARALLELS: you described every instance of advanced and/or mysterious technology and declared it a plothole or an absurdity, an approach that would dismantle any work of science fiction or fantasy. Given that you're on a SLIDERS board, you're clearly capable of suspending your disbelief, but you have a specific standard for what is and isn't worthy of your suspension that you haven't been able to elaborate.

I imagine you have a rationale, but without a clear sense of how you evaluate absurdity and science fiction contrivances, it's impossible to offer material that would meet with your approval because any aspect of a SLIDERS pitch could be targeted as absurd by a standard that, to the outside observer, looks like an arbitrary yet blanket rejection of any sci-fi elements.

With Transmodiar, it was clear why he disliked SLIDERS REBORN. To me, a story where Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo have come back from the dead to save the multiverse is a superhero story. Spider-Man's died and come back to life and he's fought twisters, dream masters, vampires, zombies, dragons, animal human hybrids, radioactive worms, intelligent living flames and remote controlled cars that shoot lasers and he's seen the multiverse crushed to nothing, combined and rebuilt.

The sliders all died. The Professor's brain was sucked out, he was shot and blown up. Wade was sent to an alien prison camp. Rembrandt saw home invaded by aliens. Quinn lost his body, was merged with another person and 'lost.' Pretty much the same things happened to Spider-Man over six decades of publishing with most of these examples happening in the 90s. From 2013 - 2014, Peter Parker was merged with another person and 'deleted' and that was actually one of the less eventful periods in his life and he came through all of that and he always came back. He's a superhero and if the sliders could be superheroes, they could come back as well.

That was my mission statement and it just didn't work for Transmodiar because for him, SLIDERS is not a superhero series and it was just a bizarre psychodrama from an emotionally troubled friend with screenwriting software. I understand that.

With you, Slide Override -- I just don't understand your metric.

Transmodiar sent me a VHS cassette of the DOORWAYS pilot awhile ago. I watched it. It's one of the worst things ever made and it also broke my VHS player.

There may not be a market for lots of shows about parallel universes. But you have plenty of ideas for other shows about other subjects. Marvel executive Joe Quesada was once asked, why should creators ever offer their ideas to Marvel on a work for hire basis with royalties instead of self-financing their ideas and owning all profits?

Quesada replied that Marvel could bring those ideas to life with infrastructure and resources while creator-owned work would be self-financed. He advised that creators always find a good balance between work for hire and self-owned projects and he disagreed with the attitude that one should hoard ideas strictly for creator-owned projects, saying that creators who do so take the view that imagination is finite and then spend more time obsessing over past ideas rather than developing new ones.

If your concept is no longer competitive, if you can't reconfigure parallel worlds into time travel or underground cities or alien planets or virtual realities, then you can always cycle to the next idea.

Robert Patrick had scheduling issues; he was written to appear in the Season 11 premiere, but he couldn't make it and was replaced with Christopher Owens. Annabeth Gish did return; she was in four episodes of the revival. Admittedly, fans weren't happy with her character's portrayal...

The only thing I would insist upon: the sliders are lost in the multiverse, they're trying to find a way back home. This rules out returning to Quinn's home Earth on a regular basis as SLIDERS' drama functions on being away from any sort of reliable home environment. This rules out strict 30 minute slides as after a few worlds, the sliders would simply stop sliding as 30 minutes isn't enough to search for a way back home. If you lose the platform of exploring an unfamiliar new Earth every week while searching for the familiar, it's not really SLIDERS.

Outside of that, I think any showrunner could tailor SLIDERS to their talents and interests whether it's recurring villains, altered backstories and relationships, two-parters, etc..

Transmodiar once informed me that his car had been totalled in an accident (he was not at fault, don't raise his rates). At another point, he informed me that he had been laid off from his job. He announced both instances of financial and professional devastation in a cool, solution-oriented, good-natured fashion and explained that he'd been receiving care packages at his office and he wanted to inform his social circle that it was no longer his office.

He then went about securing a new vehicle and new employment in a somber, goal-driven, emotionally healthy approach. I assume he took the same route when SLIDERS lost three-quarters of its original cast and was cancelled with Season 5. Should SLIDERS return and interfere with his professional creativity, Transmodiar will create another concept in another market and do so in a positive and appropriate manner. Transmodiar always moves forward.

Transmodiar sees television and film with high definition clarity, very much like a TV producer. He can see that a SLIDERS revival would simply be an exercise in cycling through an archive of a presently unused copyright and making an effort to monetize its existence. It's a perfectly valid perspective from a person who views things as they are without becoming overly sentimental over anything other than his wife and children and a scattered assortment of family and friends. I think we should welcome such perspective.

And on the subject of story structure, since Slide Override raised it:

There's some other stuff with Transmodiar and Slide Override that I... "dislike" is a mild term and would still be too strong a world. Transmodiar and Slide Override will often declare that elements of plot and characterization are "ridiculous" because the story doesn't meet a standard of plausibility that they have personally defined and they take the view that this standard is an objective measure universally agreed upon by all rather than a subjective perspective.

I'm not knocking it; I'd just say it's an area where we have agreed to disagree. Slide Override declared PARALLELS ridiculous because he said that a building that can travel the multiverse is a ridiculous concept. Transmodiar said he disliked the Claymation episode of COMMUNITY because a sitcom offering a Claymation story is ridiculous. Neither have ever offered any clear rationale for where they draw the line between plausibility and absurdity or how this subjective scale could be applied by others, so it's clearly a personal view on which we shall have to agree to disagree.

When working on SLIDERS REBORN together, Transmodiar would often tell me that plot points were "ridiculous" and I took the view that if Transmodiar felt something was implausible, it didn't mean he was telling me not to do it; it meant he was telling me that my writing needed to do more to earn the Transmodiar's suspension of disbelief.

Transmodiar would inform me that no, he was genuinely telling me not to write a script where Mallory exists as an individual entity within Quinn's subconscious mind. I ignored that part but appreciated that his words were delivered out of sincere concern.

This happens with all friends whether close or distant. There are areas where Tracy Torme and I agreed to disagree in 2000 (I think SLIDERS could totally do monster movies and horror stories and Torme does not). There are areas where Robert Floyd and I agreed to disagree (he voted for Trump). There are areas where Slider_Quinn21 and I agreed to disagree (he doesn't like the line in SLIDERS REBORN where Smarter Quinn tells Quinn, "Everything around you is just mediocre fanfic that doesn't matter and doesn't count").

I think true friendship is where both parties can find it fun to debate these disputes. I think Transmodiar should continue to express his lack of interest even if SLIDERS is revived and that his ideas go well-beyond distaff SLIDERS pitches.

I don't doubt that a revived SLIDERS would be different from the show that aired in 1995, but 2019 has had over two decades of refinement and advancement in television storytelling and over 20 years of culture and societal upheaval and technological development for SLIDERS' satirical perspective.

I wouldn't want SLIDERS to come back fixated on the Berlin Wall and the Summer of Love; I wouldn't want SLIDERS to lack running plotlines or see characterization evolve only between season finales and premieres; I wouldn't want SLIDERS to have guest-stars leap into the vortex at the end of one week only to not be mentioned the next week. And if SLIDERS in 2020 has different priorities and goals than the 1995 incarnation, then it's being exactly what it needs to be because good shows change to face the issues of the era in which they air.

I once asked Temporal Flux who his dream showrunner would be for a revived SLIDERS. He said ANYONE could do a great job with SLIDERS because the format is so wide, so varied, so full of boundless potential with a new universe to explore every single week in every single episode. Not everyone has a FRINGE story to tell or a COMMUNITY episode to pitch but absolutely anyone and everyone has at least one amazing SLIDERS story in them.

Transmodiar has left SLIDERS behind emotionally and I confess that over time, I have come to do the same; I no longer have to see it as a representation of my childhood traumas. I don't need the show any more, but television needs SLIDERS and the world needs Quinn and we all need the Professor.

In a world of streaming services and home theatres and digital filming and affordable CG and high polygon effect counts, TV needs SLIDERS to show the limitless platform of its anthology format matched with its vivid and lovable characters who represent every person struggling to cope with a world of constant and confusing change. And on a planet faced with endless conflict environmentally, socially, economically and politically, we need Quinn Mallory and Professor Arturo to show us that every problem can be confronted with knowledge, teamwork, analysis and understanding.

I recognize and respect that Transmodiar has outgrown the show, but SLIDERS is so much more than what Transmodiar or I have ever needed from it and without it, I fear for the future of our civilization and the continued existence of our universe.

IB: "Lauren! Next year, will you watch FRINGE so we have something to talk about without SUPERNATURAL?"

LAUREN: " ... I am not ready to joke about this yet."

Recently, I was visiting my niece and yelped at the sight of a book lying on the floor. She asked me what was wrong and I pointed a shaking finger at the man on the book cover. "He killed Dad!" I shrieked. My niece picked up the book. It was an autobiography of Roger Daltrey (Colonel Rickman v1.0). "You know he's just an actor, right?" my niece said gently.

I sheepishly asked to borrow it and read it and Mr. Daltrey is a very pleasant and funny soul and no, he didn't kill my father (who is still alive) and the Professor isn't my dad. I have an unusually personal connection to SLIDERS and the Professor's death was *like* the death of a parent. I realize that this connection is neither sensible nor sane, but it wouldn't be any more sensible or sane to deny it.

I was 10 years old when SLIDERS first aired and I was excited to see my fantasy figure hero from MY SECRET IDENTITY playing a boy genius. Quinn was everything I would have wanted to be: scientifically literate, physically capable and daringly adventurous. He also seemed at ease with women without being inappropriately flirtatious (until "Dragonslide" when he fell in love with an unconscious woman).

My father wasn't around when I was a kid. My mother regularly told me that her divorce was my fault and regularly shriek at me that Dad left because I forgot my homework at home or didn't make the track team. It didn't really matter what I did or didn't do; Mum was always going to find some excuse to blame me for the failure of her marriage and beat me and hold knives to my throat and starve me and destroy my schoolwork. The only relief I had was BOY MEETS WORLD for the comfort of a familial setting and SLIDERS because it presented a father figure.

The Professor was wise, amusing, bombastic, grandiose and seemingly all-knowing while also arrogant, cowardly, egotistical and insecure. He was a real person, wonderful but human. Wade was a delight, Rembrandt was hilarious and the sliders were my friends. This is the most pathetic thing I've ever said about myself, but not as pathetic as it would be to lie about it.

When I was 13, my mother took to randomly ripping the cable out of the television because she wasn't happy with my piano playing. She also threw me down the stairs. I barely managed to reconnect the TV in time to catch the second half of "The Exodus Part II" and for my trouble, I saw the Professor get his brain sucked out. Then Colonel Rickman shot him and Arturo's corpse was left on a planet that exploded. I felt like I'd watched my father die.

Anyway. My father and I have a pretty close relationship these days with weekly Friday phone calls and I find that my mother's invective towards me was largely a self-portrait where my grandparents weren't speaking to her and my father had fled her, not me.

But from age 13 - 26, I never really grasped that. The Professor's death was a horrific incident that left me forever shaken and unsure. In 2000, after SLIDERS was cancelled, I had a conversation with Tracy Torme where I described how much the Professor had meant to me and Tracy apologized for what happened, explaining that he had not been in a position to choose his successor on Season 3 and that he'd needed to spend time with his ailing father. "I'm sorry you lost your dad," said Tracy, taking my grief dead seriously when a less sensitive person would have rolled his eyes and moved on. "I lost my dad too."

I asked him what he would do if he had one last episode of SLIDERS. He said he would open a new season with Quinn waking up to find time rewound to the Pilot. Wade, Rembrandt and the Professor would be alive with only Quinn having any memory of sliding. The scenario would be revealed as a Kromagg trick along with any episodes after "The Guardian." It was a pleasant dream.

Over time, I found other shows -- I fell in love with DOCTOR WHO when DOCTOR WHO had been cancelled and obsessed over the Eighth Doctor novels which carved out their own place in a defunct TV show. I loved William Shatner's STAR TREK novels which resurrected Kirk after GENERATIONS. I found ways to placate and avoid the hole that the Professor's death left in my life, but sometimes, I found myself staring right into it.

In 2005, DOCTOR WHO was revived and one of the first novels for the new show was "The Stealer of Dreams" by Steve Lyons in which the Doctor and friends visit a planet where fiction is illegal and those who traffic in art are institutionalized and lobotomized. This stirring, beautiful novel was everything that "Map of the Mind" wasn't and when reading it, I wept for SLIDERS. The wound had never healed. For a time, I could ignore it, but it always came back.

In 2009, Tracy did the EP.COM interview and mentioned his story idea. EP.COM asked me to write essays and reviews. In 2011, I wrote his story idea up as the "Slide Effects" script and I felt a little better at offering a vision of how we could step back from Seasons 3 - 5. But it wasn't enough -- it was an idea of how we could have done Season 6 in 2000, but we were 11 years removed and all the actors had aged.

Later on, I became enamoured with the TV series COMMUNITY which is about a study group of misfits at a community college. As an exercise, I would take COMMUNITY scripts, do a find-and-replace to put the cast of SLIDERS into COMMUNITY screenplays and was astonished at how true and heartfelt results would seem.

REMBRANDT: "Whoa."
ARTURO: "What?"
REMBRANDT: (looking at Arturo's plate) "That's a lot of pasta for no veggies."
ARTURO: "You're not in charge of what I eat!"
REMBRANDT: "That's true. Wade?"

Wade steps in front of Arturo and glares at him and his pasta-covered plate. Arturo takes a fearful step back to the cafeteria counter.

ARTURO: (to the server) "And some damn broccoli!"

There was something so vivid, so distinct, so full of life in these transposed script pages. Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo gained vivid definition on paper as scripted sitcom characters and I longed to see them written so in full-fledged adventures.

I was also spending a lot of time in psychotherapy and it became apparent that SLIDERS was a potent metaphor for my childhood trauma and abuse. Meanwhile, THE X-FILES had returned in comic books continuing their mythology at the present day with THE X-FILES: SEASON 10 with Mulder and Scully reopening the X-Files in 2013. I wanted SLIDERS to have a similar product. "Slide Effects" had proven that Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo could come alive in the screenplay format, THE X-FILES comics had demonstrated how to pick up on a long-removed cliffhanger and go back to basics despite an extensive catalog of unresolved plots.

And I realized that if I avoided looking into the gaping hole in my heart left by the Professor's death, I would never mend it. It would never heal.

From 2015 - 2016, I wrote a six part series of SLIDERS REBORN screenplays with the original sliders 15 years after the events of "The Seer." My therapist described these scripts as the equivalent of a doctoral thesis. The first two scripts were posted on EarthPrime.com on March 22, 2015, twenty years to the day that Quinn's first adventure aired on FOX. "You finally did it," I crowed to myself. "This is YOUR show now." My sister, visiting that week, overheard me, knew what I was talking about and remarked, "Doesn't that just tell you how nobody else wanted it?"

I posted the final script on December 27, 2016 and felt complete and fulfilled. SLIDERS now had a series finale that was respectful and inclusive of every season of SLIDERS and my childhood torment was at an end. I was the researcher for REWATCH PODCAST when they were covering SLIDERS -- my role was to send them bullet-point emails documenting everything Temporal Flux had ever shared with this community about SLIDERS which they would mention in their podcasts. For LOIS AND CLARK, I read all the teleplays and sent them deleted scenes.

But after SLIDERS REBORN was complete and as the LOIS AND CLARK rewatch was winding down, I sent The Rewatch Podcast an email telling them I felt it was time to step away from covering other people's creations. "Everything in my life has been a reaction to the death of Professor Arturo," I wrote without a hint of irony although I knew Tom and Cory would laugh. I explained that it was time to move forward, try creating work of my own, and let SLIDERS be something to remember fondly rather than keep it in my present.

And I guess that's part of why SLIDERS returning to NBC or Netflix or Apple or whatever would be difficult for me. SLIDERS REBORN was very much about confronting my childhood trauma. I resolved SLIDERS, I put it aside, and I revisit it largely in terms of turning each and every conversation about other TV shows back to SLIDERS on this message board (and only this message board).

If we see Quinn and the Professor onscreen again played by Jerry and John, then SLIDERS is very much in the present and future and that could be a little uncomfortable for me. But I shouldn't be selfish. A true fan of SLIDERS would want SLIDERS to be bigger than any one person's experience of it.

I think Marvel genuinely fired him. But, over time and with investigations and further soul-searching, it became clear: Gunn is not a pedophile. Gunn is a rape victim who was making 'jokes' about a childhood trauma. Furthermore, Gunn made no excuses and cast no blame for his behaviour, declaring that he understood Disney's decision to fire him and all of that made it easier to rehire him, especially when Taika Waititi declined the job of directing GUARDIANS 3 before he'd even been offered the job.

Marvel has decided that the only director who can replace James Gunn for GUARDIANS 3 is James Gunn.

https://deadline.com/2019/03/james-gunn … 202576444/

I'm sad that ARROW is ending, but it makes sense on every level. I could have seen ARROW going on and on like SUPERNATURAL, but ARROW seeded a whole family of shows with THE FLASH, SUPERGIRL, LEGENDS, BLACK LIGHTNING and BATWOMAN. SUPERNATURAL will likely cease to be a going concern once Jared and Jensen retire as neither BLOODLINES nor WAYWARD SISTERS went to series; the Arrowverse doesn't need ARROW to keep going.

Season 1 of ARROW was a masterpiece of unintentional comedy, trying to do a grim and gritty Christopher Nolan movie on a SMALLVILLE budget. Season 2 found its feet as an operatic, larger than life fantasy with Felicity's regular role lending some much-needed self-awareness. Season 3 started strong until it stumbled into the nonsensical mythology of death cults and magic resurrections and what-not.

Season 4 was even more nonsensically magical with demons and telekinetics and voodoo rituals and Stephen Amell was appalled, declaring that if Season 5 didn't return to ARROW as a street-crime series, there shouldn't be an ARROW series at all. Season 5 was almost universally acclaimed as a return to form; Seasons 6 - 7 have retained that back-to-basics template and some people like it and some don't.

Stephen Amell confessed in his podcast with Michael Rosenbaum that he was tired and that it would be up to him if ARROW were to have an eighth season and he would make that decision with thought and care.

I'm glad ARROW will get a good finale. I'm glad that Stephen Amell, having launched the DC television universe, can get some well-earned rest and maybe drink beer and eat chips again. I'm grateful that ARROW introduced us all to our friends Barry and Kara and Caitlin and Iris and Cisco and Alex and Jefferson and Jennifer and Sara and Ray and Nate and Eva.

I totally agree with you that it was a mistake to keep DISCOVERY in the 23rd century after the anthology format was discarded. Admittedly, that allowed CBS to renew THE NEXT GENERATION for an eighth season, but still.

However, I think that using the original footage of "The Cage"/"The Menagerie" had a neat effect. They could have reshot those clips with Anson Mount and the DISCOVERY version of the Enterprise and the DISCOVERY version of Talos IV. Why didn't they do it? Initially, I wondered if in the context of DISCOVERY, these clips are Pike's memory of "The Cage." Does he, over time, remember past adventures as though they're 60s pulp sci-fi adventures because he himself is a fan of twentieth century TV and science fiction? Is it that the Talosians, due to their mind-altering powers, cast a sheen over any experiences with their involvement that cause memories to be slightly distorted?

I kept waiting for a line of dialogue to address it much in the way DOCTOR WHO in the last Christmas Special used footage of the First Doctor from "The Tenth Planet" and had a shot of William Hartnell morph into David Bradley as the First Doctor with the Twelfth Doctor commenting, "You're in mid-regeneration, aren't you? Your face -- it's all over the place," explaining the new actor's appearance.

But DISCOVERY declined to do this. Instead, DISCOVERY flash-cut from Jeffrey Hunter's Pike to Anson Mount's Pike and simply asked us to accept that this is a new actor playing the old character. When Michael explores Talos IV, she finds the same singing flowers that Spock did in "The Cage," but the flowers are not blue cardboard on straws seen through a fuzzy cathode ray tube; they look like real flowers made as props, animated with computer generated imagery and presented for a high definition format. In essence, DISCOVERY is wordlessly asking to accept that just as the role of Pike is being played by another actor, the roles of visual effects artists, model builders, costumers, cinematographers, set designers and such are also being played by others -- and asking if we could go along with it.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/featu … ip-1192660

So, leaked texts in the Hollywood Reporter seem to indicate that WB president Kevin Tsujihara offered actress Charlotte Kirk acting work in exchange for sex. SLIDERS has had some of this with the SLIDERS crew, according to Temporal Flux, having many theories on why Alan Barnette was so keen to hire Kari Wuhrer. TF says Barnette wouldn't shut up about Wuhrer's chest. From reading the HR story, I get the sense, however, that sex only bought Kirk access and opportunity but didn't actually get her any work.

It looks like Tsujihara was able to get Kirk auditions, but casting directors largely declined to hire her. In her texts, Kirk is outraged that she isn't receiving roles in exchange for sex but doesn't seem to have any thoughts on how her talent and artistic ambitions were suited to specific roles; it's just the expectation that having a physical affair with a Warner Bros. executive would get her hired regardless of the project or her ability. In addition, Kirk describes sex as though it were an activity after a business deal. My office just buys everyone pizza; Warner Bros. under Tsujihara hires sex workers. (Allegedly. This conversation is privileged.)

I don't know that there is anything untoward in that Kirk didn't actually net any significant acting work out of this supposed trade. I just know that it makes both Kevin Tsujihara and Charlotte Kirk look utterly pathetic. Tsujihara's worth $2.5 million; if he wants sex, then hiring a prostitute or going online and finding someone interested in a purely physical relationship (or delegating the task to an assistant) is well within his ability. To dangle a false offer of acting work is a childish, immature effort at feeling influential and powerful. It makes Kirk look ridiculous; she clearly doesn't have the talent to win at auditions and doesn't believe in her own skill and ability and isn't willing to take the classes and training and wants to leapfrog into success by offering sex for acting roles and it doesn't even work.

I have always been doubtful that Kari traded sex for work if only because her roles -- short-lived regular roles, small guest-appearances, direct-to-video cable filler -- were so low-budget and limited in release that I don't think she would have bothered. There wasn't exactly a shortage of softcore erotic thrillers in the 90s. And Kirk's leaked texts would suggest that it's not a remotely effective strategy.

I'm suddenly reminded of the TNG episode, "Phantasms," where a malfunctioning Data attacked Troi with a knife and stabbed her bloody and at the end of the episode, Troi paid Data a visit in private and happily sat alone with him to enjoy some cake. I was nine years old when I watched that one and I honestly think that episode stunted my emotional growth and social skills, making me think that violently attacking someone could be easily forgiven and forgotten inside a single hour of TV and as I type this, I am convinced that "Phantasms" made me the sociopath I became in my late teens and early twenties. Strangely, that episode, much like the first part of Isaac's betrayal, was also written by Brannon Braga. I trust Seth MacFarlane will do better.

I would divide SLIDERS diehard fans into two quadrants. The first is the Transmodiar sort who views SLIDERS through the lens of the TV producer and views SLIDERS in terms of practical elements. Torme, writing the Pilot, needed some background characters to fill out Quinn's graduate studies class and used stock characters and ethnicities: a snarky Asian (Wing), an anxiety-ridden mess (Montague), a token girl (Nan) and a stoner (Bennish). To attribute any greater meaning to any of that is absurd.

Then you have the fan historian, Temporal Flux, who views SLIDERS as an archeology and cultural humanities project. The pilot script, from this perspective, reflects Tracy Torme's life and obsessions: UFOs, hippies, Cold War paranoia, a talented but troubled teacher (Arturo might be a fond, rose-tinted remembrance of Gene Roddenberry), a boss who is ignorant and full of himself (Hurley is based on Maurice Hurley of STAR TREK), and Quinn's messiness and wearing the same clothes for weeks reflect how Torme surrounded himself in his office with empty pizza boxes and takeout containers as he hunched over his word processor and cranked out pages.

And then, well off the map and far away from any common frame of reference is ME. I was a viewer who was enthralled and then repulsed by the later seasons and came to view SLIDERS as a traumatic event of lifelong repercussions who drifted from SLIDERS to DOCTOR WHO, always watching the Doctor step into his TARDIS with longing and regret, listening to River Song declare, "Next stop: everywhere" and wishing to hear Rembrandt say those words and inhabit Steven Moffat scripts. And at the time, I was reading comic books and the horrors there were so much worse than SLIDERS.

I saw Batman's back broken and then he got vaporized. and I watched Green Arrow, Superman, Blue Beetle, Captain America and Iron Man die. I saw the Flash melt into nothing and later, Green Lantern went insane, murdered his friends and teammates and incinerated himself in the sun. I saw Professor Xavier keep an enslaved prisoner in his basement, watched Cyclops abandon his wife and son to take up with an old girlfriend. I read a comic where Wolverine was revealed to be descended from a line of magic wolves.

They all died and they all came back; Batman and Captain America turned out to have been dislodged and unstuck in time. Green Arrow was restored with temporal energies, Superman was in a coma, Blue Beetle's death was unwritten with time travel, Green Lantern's consciousness was retrieved from the afterlife and restored to a rejuvenated body which was purged of the yellow light energy fear entity that had possessed him and driven him to murder and all his teammates were shown to have been alive in stasis all along. The Professor was revealed to have been trying to free his prisoner all along, Cyclops' mind had been affected by a demon and that wolfman Wolverine concept was exposed as a false memory implant. They were all mutilated and murdered and they all came back and I wanted SLIDERS to see some of that action and I see SLIDERS through the lens of the superhero.

And, to me, Quinn Mallory's morphing backstory is oddly reminiscent of Captain America's origin story and formative years: his WWII adventures, due to numerous retcons and flashbacks, have characterized him as a hardened soldier who only ever fought supervillains who was actively overseas while sticking to defending US borders while never taking a single life in combat while regularly firing guns and dropping bombs on Nazis and being a virulently racist bigot who protested Japanese internment camps whose sidekick was a teen hero named Bucky who was actually a 21-year-old sniper who died before the end of WWII while actually having been captured and frozen and kept young and alive to the modern day.

The Pilot shifting from 1994 to 1995 is much like the floating timeline of a comic book where Iron Man originally fought Communists and was injured in Vietnam but has continually been updated to the current day.

The Season 4 Kromagg arc also reminds me of a peculiar late-70s retcon where a flashback showed that Captain America was driven to join the army after his brother died at Pearl Harbor, a retcon that added a nasty tone of vengeance to Cap that made him more like the Dirty Harry style heroes of the 70s than the purehearted hero he'd been before and a retcon that was subsequently undone by a later writer. Even by the loose standards of continuity in 90s TV shows, Quinn Mallory's fractured life is very reminiscent of a superhero comic -- which I rather like because then maybe he could come back the way superheroes always do.

It's interesting that CHUCK, which is sort of like QUINN MALLORY: THE SERIES, had a similar situation: the original Pilot script for CHUCK had our geek hero, Chuck, also crushing on his next-door neighbour, Kayla Hart (Natalie Martinez). Kayla was to be a wild, free-spirited music lover and Chuck, a Best Buy computer technician with extremely low self-esteem after getting kicked out of his engineering program at Stanford, would be so awkward around Kayla that he couldn't even say hello to her at an audible volume. However, shortly before filming, writers Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak felt that CHUCK's leading lady was plainly Yvonne Strahovski's Sarah and that they would never be able to fully capitalize on Martinez in the show as anything but a temporary guest-star. They also felt that giving Chuck too many love interests would be deeply implausible for such a damaged and isolated character, so they cut Kayla Hart from the script and released the actress.

Schwartz and Fedak have, as far as I know, never attempted to write Kayla Hart fanfic. In contrast, the Stephanie character seems highly significant to Torme. I have absolutely no idea why; the character never appeared onscreen, never showed up in a later episode, was never (to my knowledge) repurposed into another character.

In Torme's (unfinished) notes for the PDF screenplay he wanted to write as an officially unofficial series finale, the opening is set shortly after "The Guardian" where, due to Logan St. Clair's modifications in "Double Cross," the timer begins malfunctioning. Slide windows are getting shorter and shorter; the sliders regroup on an Earth where the super-continent Pangea never disassembled and they are welcomed to a family meal by Stephanie and her husband. Torme's details concluded here, but the plot to follow was that Quinn would rig the timer to send the sliders backwards through the interdimension, revisiting past Earths, seeing the outcome of their interference in previous episodes, and hopefully getting home before the timer burnt out.

In Temporal Flux's view, Torme's writing has often represented different aspects of his life and obsessions. Rembrandt was a representation of Torme's love for his father's music. Bennish represented what was the dominant counterculture in Torme's youth, the hippie. The Kromaggs seem to emerge from Torme's fixation on UFOs and spaceships. So what does Stephanie represent to Torme and what is her significance? Is she an insert for Torme's wife? (I dunno.)

SPOILERS

I thought the second part was good, but, well -- conventional. The ending seems to imply that Isaac will be back at his post next week with his colleagues happy to be serving with a comrade who was surveilling them to plot their deaths and participated in an attack that killed several crewman. Questions raised in Part 1 -- why was Isaac behaving differently after the download? Why wasn't he disassembled as the Kaylon said he would be? -- they're either not addressed because the writers have no answers or because they wish to imply rather than assert. In addition, it's not entirely clear why Isaac, having taken part in this invasion, drew the line at ejecting colleagues into space and executing Ty when killing them all would have been the endgame regardless.

The episode really needed the crew to lock Isaac up and demand answers for all of the above: how much did he know? Why did he change his mind? Instead, THE ORVILLE has taken the view that because Isaac has betrayed every Kaylon, he'll have to side with the Union if only by default and poses no threat. And that makes sense to a degree, but after what happened, it makes no sense for Mercer to allow Isaac to be unguarded with crewmen or for the senior staff to reactivate him. They're treating Isaac like he's Picard after he's been rescued from the Borg assimilation when they should be treating him like Grant Ward on AGENTS OF SHIELD.

Now, Seth MacFarlane is a writer of rare nuance and talent, and I can't imagine him failing to mine all of the above for drama and comedy in future episodes. Perhaps nobody wants to hang out with Isaac next week and Mercer has a security squad guarding him at all times. But it is really odd that Mercer, despite his forgiving nature and understanding, isn't demanding full answers and explanations from Isaac before securing Isaac's spot on the Orville.

The Netflix shows have been designed to be watched 2 - 4 episodes at a time if not all 13 in one day. I can sort of understand why Marvel TV wouldn't want to do standalones as they would seem like a distraction when the Netflix app automatically loads and plays the next episode. However, I binge-watched 10 seasons of SUPERNATURAL in about a year and I can't say the standalones were in any way disruptive, so the problem is that Marvel TV chose a format for their Netflix shows and have refused to break from it even when it only works for some shows.

DAREDEVIL's third season was great at this extended format because all the characters' separate arcs were a direct reaction to Wilson Fisk rebuilding his empire. Whether the story was about Agent Ray Nadeem, Foggy, Matt, Karen or Dex, it forwarded the season-long arc of Fisk's second rise to power. In contrast, there is no central event or situation for THE PUNISHER's second season. John Pilgrim's pursuit of Amy has nothing to do with Dinah Madani's obsession with Billy which has nothing to do with Frank guarding Amy which has nothing to do with Dr. Dumont's infatuation with Billy which has nothing to do with the Shultzes trying to hide their son's homosexuality which has nothing to do with Curtis' whatever. None of it's there to further explore the themes of THE PUNISHER. It's just filler and it drags.

And it really doesn't help that Frank spends 40 minutes of screentime on stakeouts in a single episode, as you've noted, and the budget is also clearly a problem. Just as SLIDERS blew the bulk of two seasons' budget on that stupid hotel set, THE PUNISHER has clearly expended most of its funds on location filming in New York City. There is a cultural relevance and urban texture to NYC that was essential to LUKE CAGE's Harlem and DARDEVIL's Hell's Kitchen, but with THE PUNISHER (and JESSICA JONES and IRON FIST and DEFENDERS), the show might as well be shot on the sets and locations of AGENTS OF SHIELD or SUPERGIRL or GIRL MEETS WORLD and they'd probably get a tax credit for their trouble. New York City is not a meaningful character in THE PUNISHER and the cost of location filming has not been worth it.

I do not like THE X-FILES. I am not a fan of THE X-FILES. And yet, I was recently listening to X-CAST podcast interviews with Brendan Beiser (Agent Pendrell) and William B. Davis (he played Professor Myman on SLIDERS in the episode "Eggheads" for one scene).

Beiser was talking about how Pendrell died in a myth-arc episode and Davis was talking about he had no idea how the Smoking Man went from being conspiracy middle management in Seasons 1 - 9 to its leader in Seasons 10 - 11 or what the hell he was even saying when describing the Spartan Virus. I was marvelling at how THE X-FILES was SLIDERS' sister show and had all the advantages SLIDERS didn't -- its original creator running the show throughout its lifespan, actors who fully completed their contracts, massive budget increases, two feature films, a recent two-season revival -- and yet, THE X-FILES is in the same narrative mess as SLIDERS albeit with better cinematography.

In the first page of this thread, I remarked that the retconning of the Colonization arc as a hoax made sense. But listening to these podcasts, I've changed my mind. Too many story points of massive emotional weight were pinned to Colonization. The Smoking Man's depiction as a power-addict who saw Colonization as flattering to his self-importance no longer holds together, leaving poor Davis clueless about his own character.

If Colonization is a lie, then it completely undermines the deaths of Melissa Scully and Emily and the Lone Gunmen and even Agent Pendrell and it means Mulder and Scully's search for the truth was a search for nothing at all. The emotional arcs of THE X-FILES becomes totally unworkable due to "My Struggle" and the subsequent episodes seemed at a loss. "Founder's Mutation" has Mulder referring to the Syndicate like he didn't debunk them completely one episode ago; "My Struggle II" has Scully describing the human collaborators in Colonization as the conspiracy behind the Spartan Virus when the virus and the alien invasion are two completely different conspiracies with two completely different endgames. "My Struggle II" has Mulder and the Smoking Man confront each other; Mulder doesn't even comment on the change in the conspiracy. "This" has Mulder visiting Deep Throat's grave and not commenting on how Deep Throat's hints at impending invasion don't fit the Conspiracy of Men theory he advanced in "My Struggle."

I've changed my mind. I realize that many people watch THE X-FILES like Slider_Quinn21, someone who doesn't remember Seasons 1 - 9 all that well and for whom continuity barely exists aside from confusion over Mulder and Scully being a couple in "This" and being amicably separated in "Plus One." But THE X-FILES' character arcs were so intertwined with its myth-arc that declaring that myth-arc retroactively non-existent means that even the characters have become a muddled mess. Carter should have respected the myth-arc especially when he's the one who created it.

You know, I haven’t seen any Scottish people for about a year. I’m starting to wonder if all Scottish people have ceased to exist. ;-)

**

Slider_Quinn21 is quite unfair, taking no issue with VOYAGER regularly killing and resurrecting Harry Kim and others via time travel and alternate universe doubles. But DISCOVERY has apparently crossed some line.

I don’t see what’s so problematic here. When Stamets kissed Dr. Culber’s dying body, he acted as a lightning rod and transferred Culber’s ebbing lifeforce into the mycelial network in which Culber’s consciousness reasserted itself and his perceptual effect on the interphasic dimension reconstituted his physical form and actually no, I see the problem here and Slider_Quinn21 is right, this is complete and total nonsense.

**

I honestly don’t have much to say about Slider_Quinn21’s criticisms of DISCOVERY being set in the wrong era. It wasn’t when DISCOVERY was intended to only have the first season set pre-TOS, but now it’s a problem. He’s right again.

**

It won’t be difficult to square Section 31 being a branch of Starfleet intelligence in DSC with Section 31 being a secret cabal that pre-dates the Federation itself on DS9 — at least in terms of the STAR TREK universe. As early as “Return of the Archons,” TREK indicated that telepathic technology that can wipe memories exists. But even without that, Section 31 is only being spoken of openly aboard a highly classified warship and Captain Pike knew of 31 not because he had worked for them, but because he was friends with one of their agents.

The issue is not really the continuity as much as the authorial intent. Behr’s Section 31 was not within Starfleet; it was a separate organization that occasionally recruited or impersonated Starfleet officers. In addition, I don’t really see Behr’s Section 31 being dispatched to hunt down escaped mental patients. DISCOVERY is treating Section 31 like Starfleet’s personal assassins and thugs; the point of Behr’s Section 31 is that they run rings around Starfleet and seem to have little difficulty co-opting it without existing within it. Behr’s Section 31 would be giving Admiral Cornwell orders (or ‘suggestions’).

I feel DISCOVERY has been pretty clear that the Red Angel phenomenon is not supernatural or metaphysical in nature?

**

Oh, Section 31. I feel like Section 31 has been completely mishandled. Ira Steven Behr created them because he felt it unlikely that the Federation's utopia could exist without some sort of black-ops wetwork division. In their three episodes of DEEP SPACE NINE, the most disturbing thing about Section 31 is their lack of official existence. We only get to know one agent, Luther Sloane, and there's no record of him.

In their second episode, a Romulan proves that Section 31 doesn't exist and that Sloane concocted it as a hoax to assassinate an old enemy; this proof turns out to be staged by Sloane himself, showing that Section 31 could cease to exist on his say-so. Starfleet doesn't acknowledge its existence. To Bashir and Sisko, it's an urban legend or a rogue nation (like the Syndicate in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE). To Odo, Section 31 IS the Federation and claiming otherwise is just an exercise in plausible deniability. And to Sloane, Section 31 is like the Impossible Missions Force. Is Section 31 part of the Federation? Are they heroes? Are the villains? Could Section 31 be trickery and fakery with Sloane using a transporter and a holodeck?

Ira Steven Behr created Section 31 specifically to exist in this ambiguity and I think subsequent writers missed the point. With INTO DARKNESS, Section 31 tries to spark interstellar war between the Klingons and the Federation, a ridiculously attention-demanding tactic from what was a covert organization of spies. Strangely for me, I dislike the SECTION 31 novels which umambiguously declare Section 31 to be villains and have Bashir expose and defeat the organization.

And I think DISCOVERY has missed the point too, showing Section 31 in the chain of command, taking orders from admirals, being known to Captain Pike and sporting special badges. The point of Behr's Section 31 is that they exist entirely as a state of mind and the belief that the ends justify the means and that the Federation's hands can be kept clean if the black-ops wetwork is performed by individuals who aren't sanctioned but also aren't enforced or prevented.

Sloane, at the end of his second episode, tells Bashir that Section 31 engages in betrayal and sabotage and assassination so that Bashir doesn't have to -- so to present Section 31 as a branch of Starfleet Intelligence undermines the reason why their writer created them. Section 31, as presented in DS9 and briefly in Enterprise, predates the United Federation of Planets and exists within the depths of human nature itself.

I concede that Alex Kurtzman has acknowledged the discrepancy between Section 31 being a branch of Starfleet in DISCOVERY and Section 31 being an urban myth in DS9. He says he'll show the transition in Michelle Yeoh's SECTION 31 TV show and I imagine he'll have the Discovery crew reject 31 and shut it down, leaving it as a quiet arrangement between individual officers rather than an actual Starfleet department -- but even that would explicitly declare that Section 31 isn't the Federation and rather misses Ira Steven Behr's point.